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Multiple Personae?


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I asked this question in the topic on the Indisputably Martha performance on the Dance forum, but I wanted to copy it here. It's a narrative device I'm curious about.

Graham makes use of a device in Seraphic Dialogue we see more than once, the fragmenting of a single character into several facets of their personality. A central Joan of Arc views three other dancers, Joan as Maid, Joan as Warrior and Joan as Martyr. It's a narrative device Graham uses often and so have many other choreographers (sometimes too often. Bejart had four Yukio Mishimas on stage in his ballet "M", all of them indistinguishable.)

Can the historians among us search back a bit to think of the origins of this narrative construct? Does it predate psychology or is it something that entered literature and art with Freud?

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No takers? Hey what's the matter? I'll have to set you straight on this one.

Everyone knows that the device of which you speak was created by Ginger Rogers in the title number of Shall We Dance? (1937) where twenty Gingers appear to dance with lovestruck Fred.

As with St. Joan and Mishima, not to mention Martha Graham herself, the reduplicated personae are a comment on the central paradox of celebrity; a person so unusual as to rise above the throng to lead them finds him or herself standing in a crowd of their own likenesses.

Or maybe its because dancers are cosubstantial with their work in a way unlike any other art, so that seeing four of the same one is really a lot cooler than seeing a roomfull of Cezannes. A dancer can't walk away from their dance and leave it for someone to look at later, just as Joan or Yukio could no more walk away from their movements no pun intended than Ginger could ditch Fred.

And it certainly evokes another fundamental attribute of dance, that it is a very internal artform that is almost always performed in the company of others.

Um.

Or maybe it's something else.

When you say "all of them indistinguishable" are you referring to the Mishimas or to Bejart's ballets? Just wondering.

op. cit. the 5,000 Fingers of Doctor T., Send In the Clones, The Patty Duke show, Mourning Becomes the Rockettes

Otchi Tchornya!

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I haven't responded to this query earlier because I'm not sure if this contribution is especially helpful, but here it is anyway. I can't really think of an analogy to this practice in other arts; the closest I can come to is the "twinning" of actors in movies for dramatic purposes, as in Brigitte Helm's Maria/False Robot Maria in Fritz Lang's Metropolis, made in 1927 if memory serves, or depicting the actor as actual twins, a common device which shows up in vehicles as diverse as The Parent Trap and Cronenberg's Dead Ringers (with an awesome turn by Jeremy Irons in the latter that shows how the dual role idea can be more than just a gimmick).

This idea may be too mundane for consideration, but I wonder if using several dancers as different aspects of one personality may just be a way of creating work for some soloists and filling up the stage. In Graham's case -- I'm thinking of Episodes here -- maybe she had reached an age where it was expedient to allocate the heavy lifting to other dancers; in earlier years she might have chosen to keep Mary all to herself. (Although, now that I think about it, Mary Queen of Scots did have her own four Marys, who were known as the Maries.)

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This doesn't really address Leigh's question, but it seems like a good time to recall one of the more unusual occasions in my ballet-going generally and Farrell-following in particular. There was a program produced by the redoubtable Kazuko Hillyer at the Beacon Theater on New York's West Side 25 or so years ago, called Ballet at the Beacon. One of the offerings was a Romeo and Juliet choreographed by Paul Mejia to Tchaikovsky's tone poem. It featured his wife Suzanne, and, I think, eight Romeos, all in black. Did anyone else see this?

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Originally posted by Manhattnik

I remember Oscar Araiz's Romeo and Juliet for the Joffrey, which had three, count 'em, three Juliets. For some reason.

I can't tell you Oscar Ariaz's reason for having three Juliets, but I can tell you how it worked in the dramatic sense.

When the child Juliet is introduced to her future husband Paris, a more mature Juliet comes through her bedroom mirror and dances a short pas de duex with him. This more mature Juliet then goes away (through) the mirror and takes over the role for the balcony pas through the death of Tybalt.

The third Juliet is the experienced - tragic Juliet, who deals with the emotions of losing her lover when Romeo is banished. She eventually takes her life in dispair.

In the crypt scene of the Ariaz verison, Romeo (Kevin MacKenzie) dances with dead Juliet, all three of them. He drags all three of them to her resting place before he too dies, and then all of the other dead bodies in the crypt stand up and strip out of elaborate costumes (keeping their nude unitards on) and dance individual love pas de deux.

This R&J was not a hit, though as a performer, I enjoyed it. The Joffrey Ballet eventually aquired Cranko's wonderful version and had great success with it.

I remember as the curtain came in on opening night of the Ariaz version, someone in the audience yelled "Bravo Romeo!". Was that you Manhattnik?

:D

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glebb, I think you description sounds rather interesting and wouldn't have minded seeing it at all. I kind of like the idea of the older Julilet coming out of the mirror... though the stripping of the costumes might have been too much. Did the 3 Juliets and Romeo do this shedding of their mortal skins as well?

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I wondered if someone would be curious about the costume symbolism. :D

The whole cast is in practice clothes in the prologue. The color scheme is black, gray, and a bit of off white. Every cast member's face is white with big blue cirlcles around the eyes.

The little girl Juliet is in a nude unitard in her chamber. Paris and Lady Capulet and the Nurse are in costumes. Juliet through the mirror is also in a nude unitard.

The full cast gets into costumes that are rolled on to the stage on a wardrobe rack, before the ball. As the cast is putting on the costumes they have unscripted conversation, probably not clearly audible to the audience but loud enough to know that conversation is going on. The dressing scene is to the music that is usually used for the guest's arrival at the ball. The ball scene is the first scene with the full cast in full costumes.

After the ball, the cast is in elaborate carnival costumes for Act II, until the strip down out of the ball over coats in the crypt (Act III). The three Juliets are in the unitards as well in the crypt scene.

The scenery is minimal. It consists of stuctures that could be a bed in Juliet's chamber, a slab in the crypt, etc. They are of gray/black color. For the balcony scene the structures are arranged to represent a balcony and Juliet (Ingrid Fraley) is in a costume that one would expect to see in the balcony scene.

As I said in an earlier post, this production was not a hit, though I always wonder if it would be accepted if it were seen today.

Mr. Joffrey was taking a big chance and giving a new choreographer exposure with a major ballet company, just as he had done with Twyla Tharp, Mark Morris and Laura Dean, to name a few.

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I actually think I missed the premiere of that Romeo and Juliet, Glebb.

There are many ballets which sound better when described than when actually watched, and I fear Araiz's R&J was one of them. One problem I had with it was that there wasn't much difference that I could see between Juliet #2 and Juliet #3. (Juliet #1 was clearly a rather young little girl.)

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Actually, I'm afraid many dance performances I've seen with multiple personae fail because of what Manhattnik mentions; too little differentiation - why have FOUR Yukio Mishimas onstage if they all seem indistinguishable?

To bring this back to the original question, would any choreographer before Freud have thought about having three Juliets to play facets of her character? Did any?

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