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This idealising and totalising vision through which the seer takes possession of the seen is evident in many of the arts, most obviously in colonial landscape painting,[9] early-modern wilderness film,[10] or naturalistic drama of the proscenium arch theatre. In such cases the control of scale and creation of a single vanishing point ‘fix the structure of an objectively perceived world’[11] and create a ‘spectacle’ out of nature as much as any scientific paradigm.[12] Here, then, the frame of the painting or the ‘fourth wall’ of the theatre provides a one-way looking glass through which the spectator can examine and objectify human and other phenomena without being implicated in those phenomena.

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But the notion of the theatre as an instrument through which human behaviour can be objectively perceived and kept at a critical distance for examination is demonstrated in theatre far closer to home. I am thinking in particular of the post-Bauschian Tanztheater of the German dance artist Thomas Lehmen for whom I have danced and about whom I have written.[13] Lehmen asks the dancers with whom he works to choreograph their personal interpretations of a number of different concrete social actions (for example, ‘thinking’, ‘disco dancing’, ‘telling a story’) and what he calls the ‘human functions’ of ‘working,’ ‘eating,’ ‘sleeping,’ ‘fucking,’ and so on.[14] Crucially, one dancer’s interpretation can be compared with another through a specific system that organises those interpretations in time and space. Spectators are made absolutely conscious of the system that is used. For instance, in Schreibstück each spectator is given a print of the ‘score’ of the show so maximum attention is drawn to how each of the three trios who meet to perform the score differently realise the social actions and human functions of which it is composed.[15] In Funktionen spectators are made aware of the box containing the cards which dictate what the dancers should do and where and for how long they should do it.[16] Lehmen refers to each of these systems as a spiegelglas―literally the ‘mirror glass’ or transparent glass that divides, and mediates between, the inside world of the stage and the outside world of the auditorium.[17] It seems appropriate that the actions and functions seen through this spiegelglas are almost always performed on a white dance floor and are illuminated by an even wash of very bright, white light. The connotations of a scientific laboratory or operating theatre are unmistakable.

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A show that is conscious of the power of the one-way looking glass and literally features one is Dead Dreams of Monochrome Men, the now legendary work of the British-based company DV8 Physical Theatre which was created in 1988 from the four dancers’ personal responses to the notebook of the homosexual, serial killer Denis Nielsen.[18] The second scene juxtaposes two relations. The first is a sado-masochistic relation in which Nigel Charnock wraps himself around the shoulder girdle of Douglas Wright who, with trousers hanging around his ankles, staggers with increasing difficulty in a counter-clockwise circle around a plinth. The second is a primarily narcissistic-voyeuristic relation between Russell Maliphant and Lloyd Newson. Maliphant stands on the plinth assuming a number of different poses from classical sculpture and gay iconography whilst contemplating his own image in the reflective surfaces of a closed venetian blind. Abruptly the slats of the blind are opened to reveal Newson staring morbidly at Maliphant. Even though this work demonstrates remarkable awareness of the link between sexuality, sight and power―particularly the ‘the phantasy of control that the subject has over the object viewed’― it nonetheless provides no alternative to this despotic photology.[19] It is, then, ironic that a dance work which does provide an alternative photology involves a turning body and was choreographed, twenty-one years later, by Russell Maliphant himself. I am speaking of Afterlight.

AFTERLIGHT

COILING

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The full-length version of Afterlight consists of an hour-long trio, premiered in 2010, with lighting designed by Maliphant’s long-time collaborator Michael Hulls, and costumes by Stevie Stewart. The first part of this trio, now known as Afterlight (Part I), consists of a 15 minute stand-alone solo which was first performed by the Argentinean dancer Daniel Proietto in 2009 at the In the Spirit of Diaghilev festival at Sadler’s Wells. [20] Simply put, Afterlight (Part I) depicts Vaslav Nijinsky—Diaghilev’s lover and Ballet Russes’ greatest dancer—as he descended into mental illness at the end of his glittering stage career. The solo is in four sections which Maliphant calls ‘Turning,’ ‘Trails,’ ‘Opening Out’, and ‘Pouring In.’ [21] Each section is accompanied by one of the four Gnossiennes composed for piano in 1893 by Eric Satie, who went onto compose Parade for Ballet Russes in 1916. In what follows I want to concentrate on Afterlight (Part 1) because, by Maliphant’s own admission, that solo, and indeed his choreography of solos in general, has explored more fully the interplay between motion and light.[22]

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Indeed, as important as it is to recognise the articular and dynamic range of Maliphant’s choreography, an approach to Afterlight that only concentrates on that choreography might conclude that the work is still ensnared by a Cartesian way of thinking and thus provides a universalising and totalising effect, returning to what I earlier called a despotic photology. Certainly, a movement analysis of ‘Turning’, the first section, can suggest that the work engenders a narcissistic state of consciousness in which the meaning of the dance seems immediately present to the dancer’s perception of his own dancing. For this section Maliphant referred to publicity photographs of Nijinsky to create poses on Proietto, then evolved short movement phrases from those poses, and finally used Final Cut Pro software to edit those short phrases into longer ones. In so doing, Maliphant’s choreography makes substantial demands on Proietto’s ability to modulate the tensional qualities of his body as he morphs from one shape into another whilst continuously turning. This is especially the case with the way in which Maliphant makes most of Nijinsky’s épaulement. To get down to choreutic detail, at one point Proietto’s torso inclines on the diametal cross to right side high whilst his head tilts along the diagonal cross towards right back high. Simultaneously, his shoulders twist in the opposite direction to allow the upper half of his left arm to reach sagittally to back high whilst the lower left arm unfolds laterally to left side high. In contraposition to this, the upper right arm reaches down along the diagonal to right forward low whilst the lower right arm deflects sagittally along the diametal to forward low. Momentarily, Proietto is then let loose from this complex assemblage of counter-tensions and deflected planes into a faster turn and freer outward flow of energy with the left arm releasing to left side middle and the right arm in the same lateral plane to right side low. This choreutic analysis of just a fragment of Maliphant’s choreography is indicative of how, in general, Proietto’s body alternates between, on the one hand, suspenseful, centripetal counter-twists in which, as it were, time is squeezed to a stop, to, on the other hand, centrifugal releases in which time flurries and quickens, and that more importantly the release of tension and flow is not immediate but rather happens sequentially through a pouring of weight initiated from the torso towards the hands and other peripheral parts. Now, these movement sequences were produced from Maliphant’s grasp of the tensional qualities of Nijinsky’s poses, and his épaulement in particular, in terms of the myofascial meridians, a concept popularly known as Anatomy Trains developed by Tom Myers with whom Maliphant trained in Rolfing®. Anatomy Trains is a somatic practice in which sequential motion can be understood in terms of tracks of fascia which loop around the whole body.[23] So if proprioception is the body’s ability via receptors in the inner ear, muscles, tendons and joints to gather information about its own events, in particular the relative position of and relationship between different moving parts, then we can say that, by organising Nijinsky’s body shapes into a complex flux of tensions grasped at a myofascial level, Maliphant was not obliging Proietto to merely copy the exterior aspects of those shapes, but rather was inviting Proietto to delve within his own proprioceptive sensations of those shapes.[24]

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Accordingly, at this point Maliphant’s choreography provides for Proietto an intrasubjective and autoeffective structure in which Proietto gains a plenitude of his own proprioceptive presence. Indeed, this structure seems narcissistic: in performance, Proietto seems spell-bound by himself. Turning in the centre of his own aura, Proietto as Nijinsky seems fully self-possessed, riveted to his own being. In this sense, Proietto’s movement is ‘an internalising movement which Levinas describes as a “coiling” into [consciousness of] self.’[25] Although this self-sealed state of coiled consciousness is kinaesthetic, it seems as complete as ‘the Cartesian cogito, in which the self is immediately present to itself, is taken as the basic proof of existence, and things directly perceived are apodictically privileged.’[26]

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UNCOILING

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However, dance photology offers an alternative understanding of Afterlight. An approach that pays attention to the interplay of motion and light notices how Proietto’s state of consciousness is split open to suggest the dehiscence of a different kind of philosophical knowledge. In the central sections in particular we see the body uncoiling beyond its place as it encounters through light an anonymous elemental other that it traces but can never fully know. Crucially, the spectator, too, is involved within, but can never master, this encounter between motion and light. Apart from four profile lanterns set at just 15% either side of the stage, Proietto is only lit from a single source, which is not a theatre light at all but a film projected from 8.2 metres above Proietto’s head.[27] The images of globules of light and shade that are projected were created with Jan Urbanowski through specially-designed animation software in which particles are generated, split and shifted within the frame. In ‘Turning’ and ‘Pouring In’ (the first and last sections) those globules turn in time either with or in the opposite direction to Proietto’s turning body. However, in ‘Trails’ and ‘Opening Out’ (the central sections) those globules of projected light and shade expand and shrink, and swirl, suck and pour into different locations around the stage. As they do so, Proietto loses possession of his world: he is pulled forth, uncoiling beyond his place, rising and falling amongst those globules, unfurling his legs and arms in sinuous curves that trace and chase after or ripple through them. For these sections Maliphant was inspired by drawings by Nijinsky which show abstract trace-forms containing not arcs of a circle but curves with no obvious centre, suggesting the blurred after-image of a body shifting through space.

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Motions of Meaning

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We can understand these trace forms in three respects, each of which indicates that, if theory is ‘an instrument of multiplication [that] also multiplies itself,’ Afterlight is theory in motion.[28] Firstly, we can understand the trace as an arch-trace (arch-writing or proto-writing) in the sense meant by Derrida, that is, a différance in which things differ from one another, but also where the meaning of those things is differed from one thing to the next and where meaning has thus to be felt as a trace, or a motion of meaning, in between and through those things.[29] This is the case with these globules of light and shade. In a manner reminiscent of Merleau-Ponty’s magnificent meditation on the colour red,[30] the meanings of this light fluctuate from one unstable floating thing to another: from things above such as a cyclone seen from space or ‘a swirling feathery-edged cloud with a black hole in the middle,’[31] to things below such as floating ice, lily pads, rippling water, quick sand, fluttering silk, undulating velvet, and evaporating smoke. This is no longer the body getting a grip of itself, still turning in its own place, still groping around the perimeters of its own aura; rather, this is the body in ek-stasis, tracing the elemental qualities of an anonymous other that always recedes beyond reach.

Secondly, these trace-forms of an elemental other set up a relay from the present to the historical past. Certainly, in creating in Afterlight ‘a poignant meditation on [Nijinsky’s] later years,’ ‘Royal Ballet-trained Maliphant was also reflecting on his own life and career,’ but equally this rehearsal of [Maliphant’s] own kinaesthetic heritage extends not just to the way in which Proietto ghosts the trace-forms of Nijinsky’s drawings but to early-modern experiments with motion and light in dance, painting and science.[32] This not only includes early-modern dance works, but the representation of those dance works through photography and the influence that photography has had on modern dance choreography. Most explicitly, Hulls wanted to generate monochromatic lighting states to evoke the same battered old black and white photographs of Nijinsky and other dancers from the Ballet Russes from which, as I have already indicated, Maliphant created phrases on Proietto. Furthermore, the beanie hat worn by Proietto alludes to the hats designed by Léon Bakst for Nijinsky. Even so, those allusions are never confirmed: there is no earline-hugging hat to strengthen the suggestion of Nijinsky’s role as the Favourite Slave in Cléopâtre,[33] no ear-ring to ratify the reference to The Golden Slave in Shéhérazade[34], no horns to denote the Faun from L’Apres midi d’un faune.[35] These allusions in costume design, lighting and choreography are, then, part of a larger strategy of forming a relay with, rather than a slavish illustration of, the historical past in which both present and past are never conflated but find points of fusion or interplay to create what Gadamer calls a historically-effected consciousness.[36]

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When watching Afterlight the early modern dance works of which I become most conscious are those by the American modern dance pioneer Loïe Fuller. After Afterlight Maliphant created The Rodin Project,[37] inspired by the work of Auguste Rodin, and Maliphant says that Rodin’s drawings of Fuller’s hands have influenced his choreography for the Rodin Project and Afterlight.[38] However, the work that has had a more profound influence is, I suggest, Fuller’s own Serpentine Dance, patented by Fuller, and filmed by the Lumière Brothers, in 1896.[39] If Fuller was known as ‘the goddess of light’[40] then, as was wonderfully illustrated by the Royal Academy’s Degas and the Ballet exhibition of 2011, Fuller’s experiments with projected light on her own turning body were themselves influenced by visual art that evoked motion by testing the relationship between line, colour, volume and space, as in Degas’ paintings; photographic studies of human motion, as in Muybridge’s photographs and Marey’s chronophotographs;[41]and optical studies that used some kind of rotating circular device, as in Willéme’s photosculptures and Richer’s discs.[42]

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Unstable Auras

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For Fuller, Nijinsky and Maliphant, photographic light is essential to the aura of the turning body. I mean aura in several senses: aura in the scientific sense of the optical effect of diffraction, sometimes known as a corona, which surrounds an illuminated object; aura in the philosophical sense of the unique reality, rather than reproducibility, of a thing as perceived from a distance;[43] aura in the phenomenological sense of the ‘amplitudinal quality’ (or ‘felt expansiveness and contractedness’) of the ‘moving body’ which is one of four ‘cardinal structures of kinaesthetic consciousness;’[44]and aura in the metaphysical sense of an energetic field surrounding a body, sometimes known as a halo. Some of Nijinsky’s own drawings evoke aura in all these senses, in particular his geometric drawings in which eyes are figured in the intersections of circles and ovals, and one of Michael Hulls’ initial inspirations was the aura of soft cloudy light with a shadowy hole at its centre projected onto his bedroom ceiling from a domestic pendant light.[45]  With Urbanowski’s film this aura expands and shrinks. With Urbanowski’s film this aura expands and shrinks.

In clinical medicine the perception of an expanding and shrinking aura is known as Alice in Wonderland Syndrome.[46] This is not only because the perceptual distortions of AWIS are exemplified by the hallucinogenic effects of Lewis Carroll’s two Alice stories―their narrative transformations being effected by abrupt compressions or extended amplifications of time and space―but also by the visual artists and poets who, through direct or implied reference to Carroll’s works, have explored ‘the recognition and attribution of meaning as a cognitive process based on sensory perceptions.’[47] Given this link to Carroll’s Alice books and to AWIS, and the fact that Fuller’s Paris debut was in 1871 (the very year in which Carroll’s Alice Through the Looking Glass was published), I fantasise that Afterlight provides a looking glass worthy of Lewis Carroll in which Loïe Fuller and Vaslav Nijinsky appear as the positive and negative of a single photograph—or maybe the White Queen and Red Queen of early-modern dance history: one, an American female, lit from beneath through frosted glass to evoke fiery forms that arise and gather such as flames, orchids and butterflies; the other a Russian (albeit represented by an Argentinean) lit from above to evoke watery things that descend or dissipate such as vapours, streams and ice; both, though, are Paris-based, both possess colourful biographies and fluid sexualities, both turn continuously, both evoke natural forms and forces, both make light flicker. By providing such a looking glass to imagine the past, Afterlight sets up a relay, in the sense meant by the editors of this volume, that is, an event, which arises in the folds of artistic creation, which transmits and transforms the historical past, and also, which refracts and multiplies the historical present.

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