Introduction
Some years ago, I was in the habit of going to weekly public presentations on psychoanalysis. I would lose myself an hour or two in the rococo webs of a presenter’s case study, which they would lard with literary logics backed by vocal dramatics. It was an entertaining and instructive way to learn about contemporary psychoanalysis. Also, I would often hear some word or notion that would give me pause and, more than once, even make me sit up wide-eyed.
I was reminded of these experiences by Pauline Tremblay’s satirical slide-presentation performance piece, Corps social, corps dansant. The basic shtick of it is Tremblay’s presenter marching determinedly into recondite research only to wander off into an increasingly impatient detachment from the over-complex talk-talk, thus mirroring the general experience of too many real-life slide presentations. I chuckled and snickered, even guffawed, through Tremblay’s fine performance of a well-written and pretty spot-on satire.
But, from the moment the presenter explains her sense of what dance is and what it has to do with us and why – that is, almost from the very beginning of the performance – I had a sit-up-wide-eyed experience. In my mind’s eye, a figure of a “porous self”, a self that is a vague outline set into an infinite overlap of an infinite number of porous “self-defining” outlines set against a vast coherence of being there with. It kept me sitting thoughtfully in my seat after the performance wound up, perched on my shoulder, whispered in my ear, as I rode my bike homewards.
In the text, there’s no trace of the figure of the “porous self” I describe just above.
Just after the short biography is an extract from the notes Pauline Tremblay used as both prop and script during her performance of Corps social, corps dansant, 28 September 2023, as part of Étoile du nord’s Autumn festival, Avis de turbulences. A translation into English follows Tremblay’s original text.
Pauline Tremblay, dancer, performer, writer
With a consistent slant towards the off-beat, Pauline Tremblay’s creations straddle the frontier between performance, theater and dance, as well as between fact and fiction, the private and the public, between word and deed. Working as a dancer and performer since 2008, Tremblay trained in classical dance at Nantes and has undergraduate and graduate degrees in philosophy, esthetics, dance theory and therapy from the University of Paris 8, haut lieu of France’s post-modernist theory and analysis. Tremblay became an associate of the Gaëlle Bourges dance performance company in 2018. In addition to Corps Social, Corps Dansant, Tremblay’s recent creations include the dance performances One two One Two and Après alien. A new production tentatively entitled Trio pour une danseuse, une électroacousticienne et un.e batteur.se will see the stage in 2024. – Tracy Danison
Corps social, corps dansant – Pauline Tremblay
… 2) LE CORPS DANSANT
« Dans un premier temps, de quelle danse parle-t-on ? Danse dite « primitive », « traditionnelle », « folklorique », « danse de couple », « danse moderne », « danse contemporaine », « danse de création » … ? Et d’ailleurs, sont-elles si éloignées dans leurs approches du corps ?
L’histoire de la danse nous enseigne que c’est à partir du moment où la danse a pris conscience de sa dimension sociale et politique, c’est-à-dire que c’est à partir du moment où le corps dansant ne se résume pas aux différentes figures que traverse le danseur, qu’elle a tissé des liens avec son époque et que la danse a véritablement fait sa place parmi les autres arts.
- Une place particulière au sein des arts
En effet, La danse est un art particulier qui ne peut dissocier le sujet de son objet :
Le danseur ne peut pas poser sa danse à côté de lui et la contempler. Le danseur fait coïncider une image intérieure, une sensation intérieure avec le regard extérieur. Et la danse émerge alors dans cet espace intermédiaire. Ainsi, autant dans sa production que dans sa réception, elle ne peut pas être en dehors du regard que l’on porte sur elle. Le corps dansant serait donc un catalyseur du corps social, du corps politique et potentiellement du corps institutionnel. Et sans doute l’art le plus à même de l’évoquer, d’en dire quelque chose.
Deux axes d’observation se dessinent : on peut se placer soit du point de vue de ce que la danse peut représenter symboliquement sur une scène en terme d’idéologie, soit du point de vue ce qu’elle comporte d’effet immédiat de par sa puissance de mobilisation kinesthésique.
Ce qu’on entend par kinesthésique : c’est le pouvoir empathique, la façon dont chacun perçoit, en lui, par un processus de transfert et d’identification très fort, le mouvement de l’autre. Ce n’est pas du tout mystique ce que je suis en train de dire : cela a pu notamment être mis en évidence par la preuve de l’existence de neurones miroirs.
- Le corps dansant = Le corps dansant et le corps regardant la danse“
- Le corps qui danse
Qu’en est-il du corps dansant ? Est-ce que, parce qu’il est dansant, ce corps échappe à la contrainte sociale ? Ou est-ce une utopie ?
Le corps dansant est pris dans une dialectique de libération et de prise de pouvoir du corps social sur lui. La danse est un formidable moyen de libération individuelle et collective autant qu’un moyen de coercition individuel et collectif.
- Avant d’être considérés comme des instruments performants, le mouvement et la danse déploient une spatialité, une temporalité, un imaginaire, des éprouvés conscients et inconscients, c’est à dire une subjectivité. Certes.
- Mais ce corps, qui cherche à s’émanciper de sa condition de base, en déjouant la gravité par exemple, s’engage bien dans une performance technique, dans la recherche d’une certaine virtuosité qui implique une maîtrise, voire un quasi dressage, du corps naturel. Donc il y a bien une dimension productiviste du corps dansant, qui implique une dépense d’énergie, un effort, un travail….
- Le corps qui regarde le corps qui danse. Comme on l’a dit, la danse est aussi indissociable de son évènementialité.Porter la danse au regard de l’autre c’est donc l’inscrire dans un espace social, public, collectif, politique. Elle pose d’emblée la question du regard du public …
Mais de quel public parle-ton?
S’agit-il d’une identité sociale, bourgeoise ou populaire ? Le spectacle instaure-t-il une entité, une communauté, un être-ensemble, une communion au sein des spectateurs ? Le lieu de la représentation devient-il un lieu de recueillement, de rassemblement, à construire ou à détruire d’ailleurs ? Ou le public reste-t-il une masse hétérogène d’individus éparses ? Avec comme seul dénominateur commun le fait d’être enfermé ici et maintenant ? “
“Corps social Corps dansant”, Pauline Tremblay. Photo © Mireille HuguetTranslation
Corps social, corps dansant by Pauline Tremblay
… 2) THE BODY AT DANCE
First off, what dance are we talking about? “Primitive” dance, “traditional” dance, “folklore” dance, “couple” dance, “modern”, “contemporary”, “original” dance? And at that, are these so far from each other in their approach to the body?
The history of dance tells us that, from the moment when dance becomes conscious of its social and political dimension, that is, from the moment when the body at dance cannot be described by the different figures through which the dancer passes, it has become part of its time and that it has made itself a real place among the other arts.
- A special place among the arts
Dance is an art that cannot dissociate subject from object: The dancer cannot put their dance on the floor next to them to contemplate it. The dancer aligns an interior image, an interior feeling with exterior view. And it is from the intermediate space that the alignment creates that dance emerges. Thus, as much in its production as in its reception, dance cannot exist outside its exterior perception. The body at dance, thus, is a catalyst for the body in society, the body in politics and, potentially, of the institutional body. And, doubtless, dance is the art the best placed to point to, also to comment, the body,
Two ways of looking at the body at dance emerge. We may take the point of view of either what dance may represent symbolically in a context in terms of ideology or the point of view of what dance has of immediate effect through the power of kinesthetic mobilization.
What is meant here by “kinesthetic” is empathic capacity, that is, the way in which each perceives within them self, through the very strong transfer and identification process, the movement of the other. What Is meant here has nothing of the mystical; we could easily demonstrate the validity of the process described by pointing to the existence of mirror neurons.
- The Body at dance = the dancing body + the body looking at the dance
- The dancing body
What about the dancing body? Does it escape from social constraints because it is dancing? Or is this a fantasy?
The dancing body operates as a dialectic of liberation from and submission to the forms of body in society. Dance is as formidable a means of personal and collective liberation as it of personal and collective coercion.
- Before they can be tools, movement and dance must deploy spatial, temporal and perceptual contexts, conscious and unconscious proofs, that is, subjectivity.
- But the body, which looks to emancipate itself from its primal state by, for example, defying gravity, engages with performance technique in the search for a certain virtuosity, which implies mastery, even near domination, of the natural body. There is, thus, a productivist dimension to the dancing body, which implies, after all, energy, effort, work…
- The body that looks on the dancing body.
As has been said, dance cannot be separated from its context. Bringing dance to a spectator is to put dance into public, social, collective and political space. Off the bat it poses the question of public perception…
But what public are we talking about?
Are we talking about a bourgeois or working class social identity? Does dance performance install an entity, a community, being-together, a communion in spectators? Does the performance space become a space for mediation, for gathering; also, is it to construct or demolish? Or do spectators remain a heterogeneous mass of scattered individuals with the sole common denominator being to be shut in together in a particular here and now? – Tracy Danison
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Author: Paul Tracy DANISON
