Defigurative Choreography: From Marcel Duchamp to William Forsythe

Author(s): Gabriele Brandstetter and Marta Ulvaeus

Source: TDR (1988-), Vol. 42, No. 4 (Winter, 1998), pp. 37-55
Published by: The MIT Press
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Defigurative Choreography
From Marcel Duchamp
to William Forsythe

GabrieleBrandstetter

Modern dance presents itself to the viewer as a text whose matrix absorbs
and transfigures a variety of codes. Three of these codes-image, body, and
language-will be considered in terms of distinct notions of the concept of
"figure" and the strategies of its integration into the choreographic text.
Choreography-with theatrical performance forms that are loosely classified
into different genres with such terms as ballet, modern dance, postmodern
dance, and dance theatre-brings into view the problematic of what is currently being debated in the discourse of "the crisis of representation." The
question "Are we conscious of the ways in which we represent things with
our bodies?" serves as the starting point again and again for the work of the
Frankfurt-basedchoreographer William Forsythe (in Odenthal I994:37). And
it is the code of classical ballet from which he draws his interrogation-ballet
that in the 20th century, in the process of its rejection,' its restoration as a
"pure," formal dance,2 and its hybridization as it is combined and cross-bred
with multiple other movement codes-that has undergone myriad transformations and therefore is always present in Forsythe's choreography if only as
the matrix of a performance convention.
The questioning of the possibility of representation is tied to the notion of
the figure. In what follows, the concept of "figure" will be used in four contexts: first, in the sense of the physical form of the body, in reference to the
corresponding convention in the visual arts, particularlysculpture; secondly, as
rhetorical figure, but here understood specifically as the unity of a movement
figure and its rules of combination in the vocabulary of ballet; third, as interpretive unity, in Erich Auerbach's sense of the "figura"of the figural principle
as it relates to the dramaturgy of the choreographic text in Forsythe's works
(see Auerbach I953); and finally, in the processual sense, as perceptual phenomenon (as in the phenomena of the "figure-ground relation" and the "figured after-effect").
"Figure"marks a unity of the prevailing language materialsin representation.
Derived from the Latinfingere,"figure" stands for the external shape of a body
and, in a broader sense, for sculpture as well. The spatial form of the dancer's
The Drama Review 42, 4 (T16o), Winter 1998. Copyright ? 1998
New York University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

37

38

GabrieleBrandstetter
body presents "figure" as a unity. In theatricalperformance conventions, figure
has traditionally been the bearer of identity. But in relation to the choreographic text, figure also means the unity of a movement figure and the derivative possibilities of its positioning in the syntax of movement sequences. The
task of choreography-with which Forsythe confronts himself in his works-is
to abandon this notion of "figure"as unity (or, as he says, as "operative unity"),
to stage this dissolution within and by means of the choreographic presentation
of figure. "One springs out of one's own body into nothingness, into 'Manwei3
nicht'[one doesn't know]" (Forsythein Odenthal I994:34).
Before I follow this process-the dissolution of figure, which presents itself
as defiguration-in Forsythe's work, I would like to show certain possibilities
of representation and dissolution (and dissolution within representation) of
"figure" using the model of the "Transformer" (see Hawthorne 1989 and
Lyotard 1977). A Transformeris a small figure, a toy statue, made of:
connected pieces, which in one form look like a robot, while in a second, they resemble something different: a vehicle (truck, car, motorcycle), an animal (insect or dinosaur), or one of the inanimate objects (a
cassette, a tape recorder) that increasingly have been making their way
into preteen culture. (Hawthorne I989:2)3
Transformers are two different figures in one, two corporeal manifestations,
which through certain manipulations-through slip mechanisms and snap devices-are converted into one another by means of hinges. The term "Transformer" describes the changing of form, which is not a metamorphosis, but a
folding of prefigured patterns into a mechanically equipped alter ego. They
are cars or radios anthropomorphosized. Through a few "opening" movements they are concealed or revealed as fantastic robots. An ad states, "Transformers-more than meets the eyes. Transformers-robots in disguise" (in
Hawthorne I989:6). The Transformer becomes the figure of a form-changing
and -disappearing in which a back and forth (fort/da) game of defiguration and
refiguration becomes visible-an illusion in which the Transformer is staged
as performer. The ad slogan refers not only to the doubled form but also to
the necessity of a double vision. The manifestation of the Transformer that is
in view doesn't let its alternate figure disappear completely. This one, on the
horizon of anticipated repetition, lies at the periphery of the visual field-it is
absent and yet still barely present on the horizon of the transformativeact. But
the mechanics of folding into the one or the other without an intermediate
space entering as a gap between them in the moment of twisting, a mechanics
which thereby admits no deviation from the cliches of the product, nevertheless reinforces a preset binary pattern in that it "reduces all relationships to
confrontations" (6). The fascination of the transformeris simple-Porsche as
Batman, Batman as Porsche.
As processes of defiguration and refiguration in choreography, "transformer/transformation" suggests something different. Forsythe's pieces work
at the opening of such simple folding structures. Choreographer and dancer
become transformersof open figures, transformersof themselves: "You're in
the situation that you watch a piece that isn't yours. I called it Alie/nA(c)tion.I
created a piece that's a stranger to me. I don't know the choreography"
(Forsythe in Odenthal 1994:36).
Alie/nA(c)tion,like Forsythe's other choreographies, has to do with this act of
the foreignness of "the same" as a modality of not knowing;4 it has to do with
the experience of otherness, strangeness,and alienation as performance, as "action," and as process. The dissolution-de- and refiguration-of "figure" in

DefigurativeChoreography 39
choreography is not possible without giving up the idea of identity that, in the
performance of signs, is coupled with "representation." I will trace these aspects along two lines: first of all, in terms of the surrender of "figure" as the
formula for identity and pictorial unity in artistic representation-a transgression of the borders of art as a system and its presentation in the artifact-which
is prominent in the works of Marcel Duchamp. As an example, I will consider
his work usually referred to as the Large Glass

(I915-1923),

as well as its cho-

reographic transcriptions.The relation of "figure" at the interface of image and

movement is evident in the work's actual title, La Mariee mise a nu par ses
celibataires,meme (The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even), a title
which no longer acts as the topos of identity indicating unity, but rather enters
into a choreographic translation with the decentering and marginalization of
meme,the topographical figure of identity. I will then follow the processes of
defigurative choreographing in various works of William Forsythe.
Meme-or

Decentered Movement

With Marcel Duchamp's work The LargeGlass-which he worked on from

I915 to 1922 and officially declared "definitively

unfinished"

in I9235-the

notion of the "work" in its insularity moves out of the center of representational conventions. With this work Duchamp formulated the question of
whether there exists between the designations of art and anti-art a third possibility-a locus of indifference in aesthetic specification. The work of the artist
begins at this site of indetermination, out of the not-deciding, as movement, a
movement that-"as critique of painting"6-becomes an open-ended passage
from the center to the margin of the field of determination in art. Duchamp
spoke of a "great delay"-a process which in no way refers to production. It
doesn't have to do with the time or tempo of the creative process, but rather
with the movement itself as the structure of representation. "Delay," as endlessly slowed-down movement, replacesthe appearance of the image. Movement becomes image. In the notes to the GreenBox (1934) Duchamp wrote:
"Use 'delay' instead of picture or painting; picture on glass becomes delay in
glass-but delay in glass does not mean picture on glass" (in Sanouillet and
Peterson I973:26). Thereby neither the category of the presentation itself (art
as the representational form) nor the genre (picture, painting, sculpture) is
nameable: Time, which can in no way be fixed, alone steps into the gap of indetermination-"A delay in glass" (Daniels 1992:73). Delay, referring to what?
Correlative sizes of the site, the relative time, and fixed coordinates are not
discernable. In terms of the motionless and static connotations of glass, this
formula of retardation works like an ironic reversal of the dynamism of the
avantgarde (the "Dynamo" of the Futurists,for example)-the process of endless slowing down until the melting point is reached.
Octavio Paz considered this "glass" and its enclosures-and here even the
spectator is enclosed, since he can't perceive this glass "sculpture" without
seeing himself in it-as "one of the most hermetic works of our century"
(1978:29). But I am not concerned here with an analysisof the many interpretations of the Large Glass, the MachinesCelibataires(see Carrouges 1954; see
also Szeemann I975). Rather, I am considering the act of staging as staging of
the act-of the act in the sense of action and acting as well as in the sense of
nude portraiturein the visual arts. Duchamp began his career with his scandalprovoking painting Nu descendantun escalier(Nude Descending a Staircase,
19I2)-a presentation of nudity literally set in motion. The choreography in
Duchamp's work, which moves the figure of the nude (as a unity) out of the
center and into an undefined border zone, already begins with this early

DefigurativeChoreography 41
painting; mise a nu7-a staging (mise-en-scene) of the nude as act of the act
and as staging of the staging, meme.
The movement of delay also appears in the title La Marieemise a nu par ses
celibataires,mmem...itself.8 The title stages a figure of decenteredness. In the
winding movement of the phrase, there is a pull toward the periphery-gliding out to the margin and over the edge in the ellipsis of an interrupted line,
as an undefinable rallentando[gradual slowing]. The adverb meme, pushed to
the edge, after the comma, was added later by Duchamp (Paz 1978:33; Daniels
1992:97 ff)-this too a delay. Used as an adjective, the word meme signals an
almost emphatic intonation of identity. According to Maurice Grevisse, meme
stands as "adjectif'indefini'et variable"for that instance that is "not the other"
("qui n'estpas autre")(I980:514). Meme, whose etymological roots go back to
the Latin egometipse ("moi-memeen personne"),9stresses identity in more ways
than one. Le grandRobertlists the following uses for meme: l'identiteabsolueof
the one and the same; simultaneity (la simultaneite);similarity (la similitude);
and equality (l'egalite) (Robert 1985:353)-the absolutely homogeneous, affirmed as a figure of unity with the term meme.
Does meme as a figure of identity now slip out of the center of the Large
Glass (the center that displays love-m'aime)'I to the periphery? As an adverb
following the sentence," meme, "self/even," moves to the edge, into a marginal
position, in which not identity but uncertainty and openness are indicated. As
an adverb, meme becomes a particle of indeterminacy, the supplementalword,
which Duchamp, in interviews with Pierre Cabanne, claimed he added precisely
because it had no significance and had nothing to do with the title or the artwork: "The adverb, a magnificent demonstration of 'adverbiality'meant notha figure of
ing" (Paz I978:33). The particle's ambivalent position-as
uncertainty-at the margin of the sentence, enables movement: the pull away
from the center-the point that in choreographic terms marks the midpoint (of
the circle) as the locus of identity of the figure (Forsythesets up and disturbsthis
ballet topos in his choreography for In the Middle, SomewhatElevated,I988)into the open produces a curious suction. This movement-always, of course,
slowed down-appears as repeated thrusts,as, perhaps, in the many supplemental notes, the texts from the so-called GreenBox, which enabled the LargeGlass
to become a book'2 and an exhibition room (en miniature).'3
This movement of supplements to the text of the LargeGlass, which stages
the "nude" anew as "eros' matrix," continues on the stage in the works of
Merce Cunningham and Jan Fabre, which I shall briefly examine. First, consider Merce Cunningham's choreography in WalkaroundTime (1968), for
which Jasper Johns reproduced Duchamp's La Mariee mise a nu par ses
celibataires,meme.The LargeGlass was divided up and screened on individual,
mobile, clear plastic boxes that were scattered throughout the room (see
Sontag I990:30

fi). This time, the Large Glass (which by I93I had been bro-

ken in transport), has stepped out, scattered, from its own center. In the
movement of the nine dancers (an analogy to the nine celibataires in
Duchamp's LargeGlass) between the transparent"glass"cubes, the figures are
staged to be next to each other and after each other at one and the same time. 1. The Bride Stripped
Their bodies show through the glass, and in a constant exchanging of posi- Bare by Her Bachelors,
tions, a proliferation of the figures occurs: they are alternately placed in front Even (The Large Glass)
of or behind the transparentgeometric bodies, appearing as if they are embed- by Marcel
Duchamp(1915ded in exhibition cases. Following Cunningham's choreographic principle of 1923). Oil, varnish,lead
taking every location and every figure in the room as equal and equally en- foil, leadwire.Philadelphia
titled, using chance to situate the bodies as "points in space and time" (see Museumof Art: Bequestof
Cunningham in Kostelanetz I992:37-39) and allowing all viewer perspectives
KatherineS. Dreier.(Photo
in this spatial arrangement, the multiplied glass becomes a staggered frame of
courtesyof the Philadelphia
movement. A frame, however, which-as mise-en-scene of the figures-itself
Museumof Art)

42

GabrieleBrandstetter
participates in the movement. The displayed transparency of the glass allows
the bodies of the dancers to appear incorporeal, transparent,comparable to the
exhibitive and mirror effect of shop windows.'4 The view through the exposed figures becomes the mise-en-scene of the mise a nu-of the act of
movement and of the unclothed figure. Cunningham sets Duchamp's cut-up
love-machine into separate geometrical figures within his choreography, and
the movement of the dancers in the gaps becomes the hinge of the decentered
parts.15
"The logic of the hinge," writes Paz, rules the world of Duchamp's work:
What unites, separates;by uncovering the object, transparencyinterposes
itself between that object and my gaze [...I]t is the glass that separatesus
from the desired object but which at the same time makes it visible. The
glass of otherness and of sameness:we cannot break it or escape from it
because the image that reveals us is our own image as we watch it watch.
(Paz 1978:152-53)

Always gliding toward the periphery-in the border position of the self/
meme, into the out(side) of the identity-figure-the dancers walk (sit, stand,
pause) in the circle of time.16 The alphabetof the Cunninghamesquemovement
figures, the elements of his trainingsuch as the "roll ups," everyday movements,
as well as complex jump combinations and balance positions, step into the transparent image-space of the glass:motion inclusions, implements of time.
"Delay," the deceleration of the relationship between text and production,
appearsto apply to the aforementioned transcriptionsof the LargeGlass as well
as to the Large Glass itself.'7 The circularity of the process in the erotic machinery of the LargeGlass-the WalkaroundTime of a never resolved suspense
of desire-becomes the motor that drives Jan Fabre's piece Elle etait et elle est,
mmem(She Was and She Is, Even, 1991).

Fabre, who counts Duchamp among the artists who have influenced his
work, staged the Large Glass as an incessantly cycling speech-movement (see
Mattenklott 1993). The Bride as "sex-cylinder" (Duchamp) in La Marieemise
nu par ses celibataires,memebecomes a speech machine in Fabre's transcription. In Duchamp's Glass, the "letter box" of the alphabet forms the hinge
between the vertical and the horizontal parts of the Bride: "The line of separation between above and below/

is my desire-magnet"

(Fabre I99I:37). Sub-

sequently, in delay, the mixture of letters is expelled. Fabre's nonstop speech

from the mouth of the Bride-the subtitle reads: "Solo for a Young (Mary
Ascending) Woman"-exhibits an ejaculate of never-changing words issuing
from desire's "machine celibataire."
My only function consists of making love
again
and again
and again
and again, and again, and again
in many different forms. (Fabre I991:30)

In a monotonous voice, the Bride, "sous toutes sortes de figures," spells out
text from Duchamp's LargeGlass, ordering its elements into an assemblage of
quotations: the "chocolate grinder," "fly wheel," "pistons" and "buffers,"
"cylinders," "tin, cords and iron wire," "illuminating gas" and "love gasoline"; men/spectators-"the poor suckers...voyeurs/ with a stolen glance/ in
wait for my undressing" (Fabre I991:33). Mise a nu de "moi-meme,"

and yet

DefigurativeChoreography 43
"no exposed I" (33)-a meme that is marked, and that indicates the "identite
absolue"-is revealed here; there is only emptiness.
Fabre'schoreography stages this "exposing" (of emptiness) through the positioning of the bodies and spaces. In the production of She Was and She Is, Even
he staged three spaces in a specific relationship: on one side, the inner stage
space, on the other, the audience space-as "a long, narrow, dark body for the
'voyeurs"' (in Hoet and de Greef 1994:127). In between lies another space, a
"no-man's-land"separatedby a lit surface:the space of the enrapturedfigure of
the woman (Assomption),Mariee/Maria."The in-between-space as eternal passage between longing and fulfillment" (127). This space, which remains
empty-blank-becomes the objettrouveof the choreography. The "lit surface"
is forced open as the locus of transparency;cut in as figure, and in there the "insect" of the Bride'8presents itself as (glass)enclosure. In France, "mariee"is the
popular name for a moth: "noctuelle" (owl moth) in "glass"(Paz 1978:33-34).
With the idea of the insect Fabre makes another connection to Duchamp, to
both the LargeGlass and the most famous of his Readymades,'9the urinal titled
Fontain(1917): to the one, with his object PassageI (1993), a sculpture of a urinal completely covered with preserved, large, shimmering-blue beetles; and the
other, with a series of female figures that are exhibited as an installationentitled
Wall of the ClimbingAngel (I994). Here, Fabre works with wire sculptures that
resemble female mannequins and are covered with dressesmade of shimmering
beetle shells. Suspended in the emptiness of the gallery space, these suits of armor-a frozen metamorphosisbetween nature and art-again etch the space of
the Mariee (the virgin/the insect) into the glass:"Transformersin the Skies."
Fabre'sinterest in working with insects, which from the very beginning and
in many ways has informed his creative activity, can be traced back to his
study of the research done by his grandfather, renowned entomologist JeanHenri Fabre (Hoet and de Greef 1994:19, 48). For Fabre, even drawing is associated with the image of the insect: in the activity of etching and in the idea of
metamorphosis. His works in the visual arts arise from the cutting of tracks
into a surface: the endless scribbling of the Bic ballpoint pen on cloth and paper. In ChangingLeaves,a series in which he mounts insects on Bic-blue paper,
a reversible encounter occurs-the insect as paper, the paper as insect (Hoet
and de Greef I994:4I). The idea of etching in space also dominates Fabre's
choreography. The etching cuts the physical form, the unity of the figure, in
two. The "insect," as the figure of the divided, segmented form, replaces the
"individual" as a figure of indivisible unity of form. In Fabre'sballet works De
danssecties(The Dance Sections, 1987) and The Sound of One Hand Clapping
(I990, a collaboration with Forsythe), the figures of the dancers-some of
them in armor, appearing like shining insects-cuts through the space in extremely slowed down, extremely precise movements and poses. Fabre calls
these performers of intersection "warriorsof beauty": "The warriors of beauty
are insect, actors and dancers. We are all social insects" (Hoet and de Greef
I994:13). In the theatre, the work of choreographing on the "insect" body of
incision in the end is directed toward the zone between the sharp edges of the
outline, which-like the contingent movement of the scribbling of blue surfaces-no longer derives from the workings of the rational codes of ballet. As
in the drawings, which he makes aggressive through "rips" (51), Fabre also
seeks to "rip open" the space with the staging of movement: as a tear in the
fissure in which "the space between the dancers begins to dance" (II7).
Such reflection of the self-mirroring open space points to the choreographic
search for the bottom of the bottom-the miseen abyme2?of the dance-which
Forsythe again and again stages in his works, literally, in the destabilizing of
the foundation of the movement in a gaping crack in the floor.

44

GabrieleBrandstetter

2. WilliamForsythe's
Alien/A(c)tion. Ballet
Frankfurt,1993. (Photo?
Dominik Mentzos)

Self Meant to Govern

William Forsythe'sChoreography
William Forsythe's works reflect always anew that the beginning and the
end of the text of choreography are not representable.The gesture of pointing
toward this nonrepresentability is imaginable, however-as performance. At
the "end" of Alie/nA(c)tion,the curtain rises and falls four times, in repetition
of the punning word game that a dancer/speaker (the choice of "languages"in
Forsythe's choreography releases all conventional patterns of ascription, roles,
or figures, of theatrical presentation) scans along with the rising and falling of
the cloth black-box: "Cut, Schnitt, Shit, Schnitzel..." The end as a "cut" and
the beginning of a piece as the preview of a (technical) rehearsal,in which everything has already happened and been repeated. For example, "Firstext,"the
first part of DreiteiligenBallettabend(A Ballet Evening in Three Parts, 1995),
whose title announces itself as the "first text," is dissimulated in a choreography "without a beginning." In Forsythe's words: "In SlingerlandI spin in all
directions like crazy. Beginnings are dark and there is no end in sight. No
fixed points, lines, or planes: no balance, no justice" (in Horowitz 1989).
In his choreography, Forsythe attempts to bring to performance those ideas
about text that have been put forth in the discourse of poststructuralism. A
passage from Roland Barthes's S/Z, about the inconclusiveness, the multivocality, the endless reinscription and translation of text, was printed in the
program of Forsythe's ballet Impressingthe Czar (1988):
In fact, the meaning of a text can be nothing but the plurality of its systems, its infinite (circular)"transcribability":one system transcribesanother, but reciprocally as well: with regard to the text, there is no

DefigurativeChoreography 45
"primary,""natural,""national," "mother" critical language: from the
outset, as it is created, the text is multilingual; there is no entrance language or exit language for the textual dictionary, since it is not the
dictionary's (closed) definitional power that the text possesses, but its infinite structure. (Barthes 1974:120)
The entry into a movement text, the picking up and rewriting of it as choreographic process, looks different in Forsythe'swork than is usual in ballet rehearsals.In the search for new combinations and positions of the dance figures,
he instructs his dancers to renounce the idea of "meaning": "You have to get
used to simply babbling these words and developing a sense of being confronted
with them in the middle of the sentence" (in Fischer i993:n.p.).2' In order to
show his process, to penetrate the transversalityof languages (speech, writing,
step), Forsythe relies on the system of (verbal)speech in nearly all his stagework.
Reaching for the thesaurusis part of the choreographic work. In Artifact(1984)
Forsythe presentsa "lexicon" of words and a structurescheme based on a syntax
that was developed in the rehearsalprocess (see R6mer 1993:27-46); in Eidos:
Telos(I995), definitions and etymological referencesarejuxtaposed.
What does the term "figure" mean in this context?
In the representationaldomain of dance movement, primarilytwo meanings
of the term "figure" are involved. In one, "figure" means the spatial form of
the dancer, that is, the statue, the outline of the performing body. And in the
other, the term refers to specific movement unities. Forsythe speaks of the figure as "operative unity." Ballet presents a system of such operative unities as
smoothly connected figures. Yet even within the terminology of ballet, the
term "figure" is not singularly defined. Since the I7th century, "figura" has
been used in social dance and in the dance of the theatre (ballet) to connote
specific step combinations (danzefigurate)as well as the con-figuration of dancers ordered according to a specific pattern.22 And in the early I8th century,
Raoul-Auger Feuillet defined "figura" as an element of choreo-graphy in the
senses of both word and writing in his system of dance notation for ballet: "figin which he designates"le chemin" as
ure," "le cheminque l'on suit en dansant,"23
"line," the prewritten line of choreography that the steps follow-"La lignesur
laquelleon danse."Jean Georges Noverre in Lettressur la danse([1760] 1966) used
the term in the sense of tableau. So the idea of the "figure" in ballet appearsto
waffle indecisively between image and writing, between body and line, statue
and ornament. Basically, however, the following holds: In classical ballet, the
logic of how steps and turs are combined, the rules that connect elements of
preparation, pirouette, and final position with the corresponding port de brasall follow the aesthetic principle of the (beautiful)unbroken line.
Choreography, as practiced by Forsythe, considers this unity of figure deceptive, the unbroken line a pretense. Forsythe's operations of de- and
refiguration do not aim for a superficial splitting or destruction of the code.
Rather, they direct our gaze toward the basic disconnectedness, toward the
gaps in the unity of the figure. The architect Daniel Libeskind, with whom
Forsythe collaborates, formulates this as follows: "What is revealed at different
points in different ways is the gap between the moments in time. The parts
that ensure that something continues are those parts that cannot be shown,
because they are missing" (Libeskind I989:I4).
Forsythe's choreography stages the absence of these connecting joints in the
figure, the hairline cracks in the line: the disappearance of the copula. He
starts with a classical pose, a ballet step or an enchatnement,disarticulates this
figure, distances or shifts the hinges by setting each line in relation to each
angle, and so arrives at a movement series that is defigured through multiple
joint locations, which "does not look like ballet at all":

46

GabrieleBrandstetter
But we began with a familiarballet position because we always orient
ourselves to it, we can always use it as point of reference. By continually
approaching such a figure differently, plucking it apartand putting it
back together in different sequences, I can bring forth a tremendous variety of information with very little material. (in Fischer 1993)
The mortar between figures disintegrates, the elision of transitioning parts,
the extremely rapid reversals in direction and counterdirection put synaptic
barbs into the gliding, into the appearance of seamless ballet figures. The elein
ments are inverted, juxtaposed, and put next to one another-often
a
of
disconwith
indistinct
and
following
grammar
edges,
clumpings
pastings
tinuity: figures of a "steptext" (the title of an early Forsythe choreography)
whose seams remain visible. It is those moments of congestion, of harsh arrangement, of vibration (the gap-jumping rhythm almost too fast to perceive)
in the choreographic line, that are so extraordinary about this dance piece.
The dancers, trained in the system of classical ballet, learn to work with it in
such a way that they rewrite, decompose, and build in, deviate from, or enlarge interruptions of the interlacings in the code, each in his or her own improvisatory experiment. An exchange of speaking (of the common code) and
spelling (of one's "own" defigured alphabet) takes place: "The dancers learn
to spell back their own language" (in Fischer 1993). Elsewhere, Forsythe
stresses that the dancers should create their own personal "ballet slang."
Amanda Miller, choreographer and long-term collaborator with Forsythe,
speaks in this context of "doodling"-scribbling and scrawling. The speaking
and writing of the movement text as a form of a parole,which-like scrawling and babbling-transform the langue of the fixed ballet code. Thus the
dancers develop a lexicon of multiply branched transcriptions of single ballet
figures and their combination possibilities. This results in the nearly exponential growth of movement lexemes, whose collection, selection, and recombination-with all the choreographic possibilities, (de)figuring with catachrestic
and metaleptic operations-can now be stored in a specially developed CDROM program, from which dancers and choreographers can draw. In works
like Self Meant to Govern (1994) or Eidos:Telos (I995) and Dreiteiliger
Ballettabend(1995), the choreographic patterns are based on these defigurative
operations:
[I]n other words, positions suggest movements within an associative
chain or organization, which is based on where the limbs are placed in
relation to each other. Your kinesphere functions as a memory-say, for
example, your hands are near your knee, and you remember that that is
where the movement sequence "A" begins or ends. You then perform
"A" no longer in its original orientation, as it is prescribed in the movement vocabulary. This unoriginal orientation puts your body into yet another orientation, accessing some other sequence of movements; but you
keep trying to re-adjust yourself back and forth between states of dis- and
re-orientation. (Forsythe 1995:39)
The movement of an oscillating "dis- and re-orientation" organizes the
structure as a constantly reversible process. The pro- and retrogression of
memory-the remembering of the order in the movement sequence, the memoria of the passing of time and space-become the generators of a vocabulary
that appears like an alternating current. "Reversals" of direction, metaleptic
exchanges complicate nearly every motion of the dancers. It is this effect that
not infrequently awakens in the spectator the impression that a figure or line is
growing out of the impulse of both an inward and outward mobilization.

DefigurativeChoreography 47
Up to now we have been discussing "figure" primarily as a movement sign
in the choreography and its defiguration in the transcription process of
Forsythe's work. But what has been said also applies in a comparable way to
the "figure" of the body: the dancers' spatial form, the "figura" of their outline, and the configurative form of their movement relationshipsfall under the
transformation processes of the code as well. In subverting the art figure of
their ballet bodies-molded into instruments of presentation through laborious procedures of inscription-the dancers become "transformers"of themselves. A dissolving of the outlines of and connections between the parts of
the body occurs through the continual isolation of single parts and their conventional coordination. Screwings, twistings, and multiple initiation centers of
movement impulses allow the bodies to appear as polymorphous figures.
Their fragmentation imparts upon the viewer the impression, as critic Edith
Boxberger writes, that the elements of the movement deform into a "meandering flow of contortions and intertwined convolutions, which fraysin all directions at once and spreads out amoebalike [...], an oscillating construction,
fickle and fragile, full of unrest" (I994:32).
The unity of figure, even as "operative unity," is not given. Despite the
implication of the title Self Meantto Govern,in Forsythe's choreography a center of operation that governs the movement cannot be discerned: it is
grounded in the loss of linking elements that are still capable of demarcating
the identity of the figure as a representational unity. Meme, as a particle that
signifies an identite absolue, is also displaced in Forsythe's text work: In the
verbal paradigm that forms the choreographic matrix of Artifact, "THE
SAME" stands isolated-in the middle yet pushed to the edge, as a term in
the function of a shifter: "'THE SAME' as stage direction, 'THE SAME' as
infinite principle, 'THE SAME' as the eternally repeating, the indistinguishable, the end of the exceptional and the unique" (R6mer I993:36). The artifact, whose working contours are ever dissolving in the dance.
The same occurs with the vocabulary of the dance. A figure that could to
such an extent be read as a concrete unity would be a ballet position, for ex-

3. "Despitetheimplication
of the titleSelf Meant to
Govern, in Forsythe'schoa centerof operareography
tion thatgovernsthe
movement
cannotbe discerned;it is groundedin the
lossof linkingelementsthat
arecapableof demarcating
the identityof thefigureas a
representational
unity."Ballet Frankfurt, 1994. (Photo

? DominikMentzos)

48

GabrieleBrandstetter
ample, or a pose like the arabesque-with the extension of the supporting leg
and the stretch, back and up high, of the free leg-a fragile structure suspended in gravitational and antigravitationalcountertension, whose immanent
sustaining dynamic lies in the play of balance. The place of the "self" that governs the figure is the center of gravity, as the center of the distribution of the
lines of strength. It is in this area of construction and control of the movement
figure that Forsythe's work begins-namely by turning to Rudolf von Laban's
"Choreutik," his theory of the relation between body, movement, and space:
I am in the process of approaching movement in a completely new way,
in which I am thinking about inner crystalline structures.According to
traditional opinion, movement in ballet moves from the center of the
body out into a hypothetical space. But I presuppose an internal, crystal
geometry that occurs naturallyin the body, which in turn influences the
movement in the space. (in Fischer 1993)
Here Forsythefollows ideas developed in the I92os by the expressionistdancer
and dance theoretician Rudolf von Laban, who systematically researched the
body and its relationshipto the immediate environment (kinesphere)and thereby
discovered the regularcrystalsof both the dodecahedronand foremost the icosahedron to be those stereometrical figures that could be used as models for the
plateaus and angularrelations of movement (Laban 1991). The crystallinestructure of the icosahedron enables a multilateraldescription of body movement in
the environment of the kinesphere,which takes severalperspectivesinto account
simultaneously. Yet the lines and planes of movement direction thus described
and the "swings"articulatedby the body and carried out according to these directions all emanate from one center, a midpoint between the spatialorientation
and the movement coordination. This is where Forsythe'schoreographicanalyses
begin. What happens, he asks, when multiple axes, planes, and points of the
kinesphere are activated and become the initiating point of movement? When
every point of the kinespheric figure of the body can become the center of
movement, a network of interferingsystemsdevelops. No longer does one single
center of gravity govern the movement figure, as is the case in classicalballet.
Rather, a multicentric agglomerate of points distributed over the body initiates
and conducts the motions in the space. For example, the solo in In the Middle,
SomewhatElevatedplays with this figure of the center-of the onepoint of gravity
and its control-with the topos in ballet'shierarchythat celebratesthe primaballerina as etoilein this "elevated position." In Forsythe'schoreographythe soloist
defigures this topos; she falls, so to speak, out of the discursive space. She dismantles the pose, for example, by gliding out of a balanced arabesque,extending
the figure to its tipping point, and then slipping into an extremely rapid pirouette-as with falling, passing over the conventional preparationand instead mobilizing the port de brasfrom the shoulder, in an isolated spasmodicoutstretched
movement, followed by a head movement of the epaulement,of a torsion of the
torso in the opposite direction, while teetering on her point shoe.
The synchronization of such defigurations of the ballet vocabulary in the
course of a sequence no longer welds unities together. This choreography is
simultaneously its own metachoreography, in the analysis of movement and
space of the given matrix. The figures generated in this way during the course
of transformationbecome similar to one another, they take on the visual quality of fractals: "Fractal geometries [...] are the images of the way things fold
and unfold, feeding back into each other and themselves" (Forsythe 1995). In
terms of the relation of figure and space, the patterns of such choreography
reveal a similarity with the designs that are known as "parquet deformations"
(Hofstadter I985:I95-2I8): gradually developing transformations of divisions

DefigurativeChoreography 49
of the plane, or tessellations, which, through the lengthening or rotating of a
line or through the introduction of a hinge, result in a complete distortion or
regrouping-like a type of ornamental morphing.
In Forsythe's choreography the complexity of the spatial figures and their
interferences is of course much greater:
Our gaze would be confronted with a space filled with a dense concentration of angularity, complex circularity, symmetry, laterality,
sphericality, contraposition, convexity, concavity, rectilinearity, and distortion [...;] the extraordinaryproliferation and perfect disorder of these
marks may bring to mind the appearanceof a page covered with incomprehensible glyphs. (Forsythe and Levine 1987)
In the polyphony of the figures in space, the line or the definable network
of movement signs falls apart. Their linking is disturbed, the stability of the
figure-as body and as movement sequence-begins to wobble. With each
step a fall is implied. Laurie Anderson describes walking as falling:
You walk...and you don't always notice it, but you're constantly falling.
With every step...you fall. You fall forward a little bit and you catch
yourself. You keep falling and catching yourself. And in this way you
walk and fall at the same time. (Anderson 1989:13)
Every step is a falling. The choreography inscribes the fall, not in an obvious
falling into one another of the dancers, as in the movement theatre of the Canadian group LalalaHuman Steps, but in one of the patterns that derive from
the basic structure: in the exploration of the borderline between stability and
fragility, between centeredness and decenteredness. At this point of equilibrium, which is displaced with every step, the conditions of the presentation of
"figure"-as a mode of choreographic representation-are put in question.
Marcel Duchamp was aware of this in the LargeGlass. The exposition of the
eros' matrix (matriced'e'ros)in La Marie'emisea nu par ses celibataires,
memeacts as
a critique of the myth of Eros and at the same time marks its never definitive
affirmation. A "delay in glass," in terms of equilibrium. Or in Duchamp's
words: "Et-qui-libre? Equilibre" (in Paz I978:72).
Forsythe's choreography exposes disequilibrium. The copula's falling out of
the order of the figures conceals and reveals the fall out of the center of gravity-a constant subversion of the balance structure that creates the illusion of
elevation and stable geometry in classical ballet. The movement pattern in
Forsythe's choreography consists of ellipses. In the network of the slipping,
destabilizing centers of gravity that are thrown all over the figure and-in
myriad points of interference-into the space, there nest gaps, holes, tears.
Here Forsythe follows the concept of a postmodern architecture that stages
Sturz und Rif [collapse and tear]: subversive structures that display the moments in which their stasisis threatened (Jonak 1989:7).
The outline of Forsythe's choreographic structures articulates a similar architecture of imbalance. In his analysis of Daniel Libeskind's works, Forsythe
comes to comparable conclusions; when the underlying model and its conventionalized axioms are corrupted, hybridized, the structures proliferate:
"The rational, orderly grid actually turns out to be made up of a series of
decentered
spaces"(1989:19).
The process of defiguration therefore also relates to the total structure of a
"piece"-whatever is to be signified with this formula of the performance of a
movement representation of a certain duration in a certain place. A ballet
work with a beginning and an end and a dramaturgyof repeatable figures and

50

GabrieleBrandstetter
climaxes can no longer be described. So there is no "figura"of representation
in the sense of a figural routine of expectable structures that are fulfilled according to the logic of the code. Instead, each performance realizes a different
possibility for the presentation of the figures-the body and the movement figures. Each repetition shows another surface of the text; each reading refigures
a new variant of how the figures can be linked. In the structure of the pieces,
choreographic, precisely established parts alternate with gaps, which the dancers fill anew in each performance (for which a time indicator behind the stage
serves in guiding the orientation in space and the temporal coordination).
Some of these choreographies seem to consist exclusively of such gaps, in
whose intervals the actual "sentences" are inscribed, as, for example, in Self
Meant to Govern, whose matrix is organized in such a way that each of the
dancers has to manage her own parcours.And so she has various structuralpossibilities to consider: there are clocks onstage, whose hands point toward letters
instead of numbers. Each letter denotes a movement sequence that consists of
figures, which are collected in a lexicon that was compiled specifically for this
choreography. For the dancers onstage, a certain movement (which can be
chosen out of her own "ballet-slang") is suggested by the letter that is indicated. In this way, the performerstransformthe figures and their interlacings.
Comparableprocesses-simultaneous and postponed within the grid of these
movement figures that are coming into contact with one another-concern the
complete score of the staging: sound, light, projections of pictures, objects in
constant coordination and isolation. But I'll leave this aspect for another time.
Finally, considered in the sense of perceptual unity, "figura" disintegrates
even in the spectators' perception. In the growing entropy of the choreographic textual weave there no longer are any fixed spectatorial vantage
points. Even the spectator falls out of the balance of his or her position: "But
recent spatial transformation has brought about an unforeseen difficulty: it is
no longer possible to see the entire text from one position. It seems that the
characterssuspended in the foreground obstruct our view of the characterslocated behind them" (Forsythe and Levine 1989).
The stability of the observation-from what Fabre calls the "king's perspective" in theatre-is subverted: a disturbed equilibrium of seeing. Forsythe
stages and thematizes the physiological perception phenomenon of parallax
(also the title of a 1989 ballet): an apparentsubstitution or change in the direction of the observed object, which seems to shift between the angles of sight
lines. The spectator is-in the network of the signs and figures of the textconstantly confronted with parallacticdisplacement. Furthermore, in the third
part of Alie/nA(c)tion, a translation of this perceptual phenomenon is staged,
which is known as "figural after-effect": the alteration of the figural or spatial
attributes of figures (their apparent slipping or tipping to the opposite side),
after a specific figure has for a while been fixed in the same region of the visual field. Forsythe plays with such perceptual phenomena: The sentence "Everything is all right," spoken by a black dancer, graduallyspills into a narration
of catastrophes, while the group of dancers synchronously translatesthe word
"right" spatially by dancing on the "right side." That it is a black dancer is
significant, since Forsythe is choreographically critiquing the polarization of
the political left and right as well as those who claim to know what should
and shouldn't be considered "politically correct." The spectator is faced with
the question: Who stands or moves on the right side of which text? The
words displace the figures, and the figures the words. In "Of Any If And," the
third part of GemischterBallettabend(Mixed Ballet Evening, I995), two speakers sit at the back of the stage, incessantly and nearly inaudibly whispering a
text, while at the front of the stage a couple of dancers repeatedly begin and
break off movements in an attempt to "con-figure" themselves. Out of the

DefigurativeChoreography 5 I

4. WilliamForsythe'sIn the Middle, Somewhat Elevated in 1992: "Afigurethatcouldto suchan extentbe read
susas a concreteunity wouldbe a balletposition,for example,or a pose like the arabesque[...,] afragilestructure
in
and
whose
immanent
lies
in
the
countertension,
dynamic
sustaining
play
of
pended gravitational antigravitational
balance." (Photo? Dominik Mentzos)

52

Gabriele Brandstetter

flies, staggered tiers of blackboards descend at specific intervals, on which are

written single, disconnected words separated by spaces-elements of a "universal writing" (Forsythe 1989:14) whose rules of syntax seem to be lost: a
spatialletter-box, which keeps pushing in front of the figures of the dancers; a
chiasmus24of speech, movement, and writing elements. Forsythe continually
works with various rhetorical and poetic processes within the text. For Impressingthe Czar, he included one of Oscar Pastior's "anagram"poems in his
choreographic textwork, whose title "Misverstandoderder Wegweiser?"(Misunderstanding or the Signpost?) likewise marks theme and anathema, lexicon
and material, in the context of "choreography."
The gaps in the text-its blurred zones-demand from the reader of this
text the search for another way of seeing. Forsythe's suggestion: "So, in order
not to miss relationships that could provide the key to understanding this language, let us move into the text" (1988). Thus the spectator him- or herself
becomes a figure in the choreographic text, no more integrated than the other
existing text elements left over from the process of transformation; an interrupted process, an act of writing with disturbance factors, as is reflected in the
title of another Forsythe piece: Enemy in the Figure (1992).

-translated by MartaUlvaeus
Notes
I. The passatismoof ballet, which was judged to be both an aestheticallyand technically

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.
7.

8.
9.
Io.
I .
12.

"decadent"form of theatricalperformancemovement, was, in a repeated Querelledes

et desmoderes(the aestheticquarrelthat has takenplace in Francesince the Reanciennes
naissanceover the question of which should take precedence, the ancient or the modem), a topos of new dance concepts in the early20th century. See Brandstetter(1995).
Since the era of the Ballet Russes under Serge Diaghilev, the aesthetic and the performance conventions of ballet have undergone massivechange. One of most profound of
these was the elimination of narrative.The destructionof the traditionaldramaturgyof
Igth-century ballet is a "wound" that, as we can see in current civic theatre productions, is still healing.
Hawthorne interpretsthe phenomenon of the Transformerin light of culturaland media/technological change and the associatedpolitical implicationsas a sign of the "irrevocable penetration of cybernetic into popular culture" and as a signal of the
"militarizationof childhood" (1989:2).
In Forsythe'schoreographyArtifact,the following lines are repeated uninterruptedas a
monotonous poem of no longer knowing: "they will never rememberwhere/ they always forgot which/ they never rememberhow/ they alwaysforgot where [...]."
The giving up of the idea of a completablework leads to another concept of the "artist," still within the romantic dichotomy of art and life. See Dieter Daniels (1992:82)
and Thierry de Duve (1989).
Marcel Duchamp: "Paintingis the critique of movement, but movement is the critique
of painting"(in Paz 1978:2).
In his above cited analysis, Octavio Paz comments that the translationof mise a nu as
"denuded" or "unclothed" falls short: "[I]t is a much more energetic expressionstrippedbare, exposed. It is impossiblenot to associateit with a public act or a ritualthe theatre (mise en scene) or an execution (mise a mort)" (I978:32).
Here I am using the title with the ellipses,which are sometimesincluded,other times not.
Meesmeand medisme,meisme(IIth century) comes from metipsimus(from the Latin
metipse[the same], which followed the model of superlativeslike maximus,minimus.
This homophony (meme/m'aime)has been suggested as the interpretation of the title,
but while Duchamp disputedthis, he also played with it (Paz I978:33).
Duchamp said in an interview that meme reminded him of the famous double monosyllableof Bosse-de-Nage, Dr. Faustroll'smonkey: Ha-Ha (Paz I978:33).
After the first exhibition of the LargeGlass (New York, 1926), Duchamp issued the
notes he made as he was creatingthe work, which were reproducedas exact facsimiles.

DefigurativeChoreography 53

13.

I4.

IS.
I6.
I7.

The GreenBox appearedin I934 under the same (meme) title as the LargeGlass: The
BrideStrippedBareby Her Bachelors,
Even.See Daniels (I992:I02 ff).
Later, Duchamp produced La Botte-en-Valise(I935-I94I), a numbered series of what
he called "portablemuseums":cardboardboxes with miniature replicas, photographs,
and color reproductionsof single pictures,Readymades,and the LargeGlass.
In reference to this effect of the LargeGlass, Duchamp noted in the White Box (A
l'infinitif):"i. Show case with sliding glass panes-place somefragile objects inside. Inconvenience-narrowness-reduction of a space, i.e. way of being able to experiment in 3 dim. as one operates on planes in plane geometry." And further: "No
obstinacy, ad absurdum,of hiding the coition through a glass pane with one or many
objects of the shop window" (in Sanouilletand Peterson I973:74).
For Cunningham's choreographic concept of space/time as "inbetween space," see
Brandstetter(1991).
How to Pass, Kick, Fall, and Run (1965) is another example of Cunningham's choreographingof everydaymovement as performance.
In the text of Jan Fabre'stranscriptionof The LargeGlassfor the theatrethis is statedas
follows: "I fulfill my function/ Very slowly... I give my best and create sparkswith/
my desire-magnet" (Fabre I99I:39).

i8. "The bride's names are Motor-Desire, Wasp, and Hanged Female" (Paz I978:33). For
H.P. Roche, the Bride in Duchamp's LargeGlassis half dragonfly,half prayingmantis.
I9. Duchamp'sideas lead to a furtherconnection between the Readymadeand dance of the
'9os. Meg Stuartpresentsthe body itself as "readymade"in her solo ThoughtObject,Ready
Made(1992). The dancer,who doesn't "dance"or move out of her fixed position, stands
at the center of the stage. Her movement consistsof "transmissions."
She transfersdocuments, bits of paper, alphabetletters (like those taken from Duchamp's box) from one
jacket pocket into the other-"memory junk" from the story of the self that the figura/
personaof her identity (soi-meme) can't find in her memory traces.The becoming transparentand disappearingof consciousnessremainsas facelessreadymade,an eternaldeferral.
20. Regardingthis and other notions of "mise en abyme,"see JacquesDerrida'sThe Truthin
essaisurla miseen abyme(I977).
Painting(1987) and Lucien Dallenbach'sLe recitspeculaire:
21. Forsythefurthercomments:
The most importantthing is that you may not try to make out a meaning,
as little as I try to put forth a meaning when I continuously recombine
these steps. I look for a result through mathematical, in this case, new
grammaticalcombinations. This result will look unnaturalsince I want no
naturalness.(in Fischer 1987)
22. The history of the concept of "figure"in dance and its many brancheshasn'tbeen sufficiently researched.It seems that the concept "figura"(firstreferredto following a ballo
a cavallo[horseballet] by A. Carducchi,called II Mondofesteggiante
[1641]) was firstassociated with specific "figures"of the popular contredanse
in the second half of the I7th
century. "Figure" in this case means step combination and the configuration of the
dancers'relationto one another (Desrat [I895] I977:I44).
23. This characterizationof "figure"can also be found, following the French tradition, in
early-I8th-century German-language dance publications. See, for example, Johann
Pasch, Beschreibungwahrer Tanz-Kunst ([1707]

1978:40).

24. The figure of the chiasmus appearsin many deconstructionist writings. Derrida visits
this switching of positions in "Parergon":"Passanspas [step without step/step without
not/not without step/not without not]" (I987:33).

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Gabriele Brandstetter is Professor of Contemporary German Literature at the

Universitdt Basel. Her researchinterests include classical and contemporaryGerman musical theatre and dance. Her most recent books include Tanz-Lektiiren: Korperbilder
und Raumfiguren der Avantgarde (Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1995) and TonSprache: Komponisten in der deutschen Literatur (Paul Haupt, 1995).