Ru
EnL. Menshikov, Z. Voynova
Gesture as a medium of music and dance: The theatre of Pina Bausch in context of the musical gesture theory
In the article, the phenomenon of gesture is considered as a coordinate system that allows us to study the relationship between music and dance in dance theatre performances. An integral approach to the analysis of music and dance through the concept of gesture provides opportunities for research and understanding of their aesthetic and expressive nature as a relationship between the visible and the audible. An approach based on the analysis of gestures reveals the deep meanings of musical works, embodied in rhetorical, as well as their stage embodiment. Gesture can be considered as a conventional language that allows you to convey emotions, mood, and ideas of a musical work. It includes facial expressions, body postures, and dance movements. These elements can be natural or specially designed for a specific composition. A musical gesture has not only aesthetic significance, can influence the emotions and perceptions of listeners, but also acquiring semantic content through conventional symbolism, which works in particular in the field of rhetorical gestures. Understanding gesture as energy activates auditory perception by including the visual factor. In music and interaction with energy, it can be represented in the interaction of the visible and the audible, materialized in dance and movement. The activities of the musicians also have vivid choreographic aspects in the performing gestures of the instrumentalists and the conductor.
The interpretation of gesture in Pina Bausch’s early dance theatre productions is based on the idea of the unity of music and movement. Speaking about the production of her “The Rite of Spring”, the choreographer emphasized the need to “get used to the music” by I. Stravinsky, to become one with it, presenting it as the sound of physiological rhythms, as a desperate struggle against death and a manifestation of the thirst for life. Similar tendencies are inherent in the play “Orpheus and Eurydice”, staged by Pina Bausch to music by C. W. Gluck.
Key words
gesture in the art, musical gesture, music and plastic, postmodern dance, Pina Bausch, rhetorical figures, “expressive dance”.
For citation
Menshikov L., Voynova Z. Gesture as a medium of music and dance: The theatre of Pina Bausch in context of the musical gesture theory. In: South-Russian Musical Anthology. 2024. No. 3. Pp. 82–94.
