On "Cacophony for 8 Players"

By Torben Ulrich

What you really want is a kind of complicated simplicity — you want simplicity, but with all the implications of everything else within it.
                                                                        — Francis Bacon[1]

I broke away from Dada and from myself as soon as I understood the implications of nothing.
                                                                        — Tristan Tzara[2]

As for the title "Cacophony for 8 Players", we might start to see it a little bit in three parts, the first being "cacophony".

Conventionally, cacophony points to something like a collision of sounds, a colliding or clashing, where meaning collapses, where some sort of sense makes no sense, coming to naught. In that collapse, in that breaking down, however, we may also find a sudden opening: into an Open...

In Webster's New World Dictionary they speak of cacophony as something "harsh sounding, jarring", a "dissonance", coming from the Latin cacophonia and the Greek kakophonia, from kakophonos, from kakos and phone, where they give the last word as "voice". And we know from other sources that kakos and the substantive kakon have a long history in Greece and elsewhere referring to a range of things, never very pretty, from bad to downright evil. (Understandably, Harvard's Dictionary of Music avoids the term altogether.)

Secondly, we could go to the "8 players", where 8 means the number eight and players means fields, figures, actors, activities, assemblages, animate, inanimate, all inter-related, interwoven. Sometimes they may also be seen in pairs, pairings, in the form of 2 times 4 or 4 times 2.

By fields we may here understand a coming together of (eight) disciplines, or modalities of expression, of voices speaking in different registers, sometimes consonant, oftentimes dissonant, harmonia and cacophonia depending of course also upon: who listens.

By assemblages, animate and inanimate, we mean here specifically four still living beings, performers, and four not quite living beings, although still figures or actors, still performing, appearing in the form of sculpture, made of gut-skin and its perforations. (The very oldest of the first group serves as a mid-way point, a possible bridge to the inanimate.)

Thirdly, the word "for", as in "for 8 players", takes the meaning a little like the "for" in, say, Schoenberg's Three Pieces for Piano, or Brahms' Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, where the composer is of course both the composition and never quite the composition, both something more and something less, the two never coinciding, still part of a larger whole.

So, if we stay for a moment with this "for 8 players", we have something, a piece, a work, a composition, and then a field of eight players that will play out the composition. Which means, in a certain way, it adds up to a number nine, or there's a certain tension, a dynamic span, between the numbers eight and nine. This will remain part of what's in play here.

Let's be a little more concrete now: what eight fields are we talking about? Let's call them the architectural, the narrative, dance, music, the possible writing of poetry, the making and presence of sculpture, the mode of video, the marvels of light.

This coming together, this idea of assembling the various performative disciplines under one roof, one setting, one stage, one space, goes back a long, long time, traceable into a non-origin, a non-beginning. Still, we'll make a cut not too far back, say, with Richard Wagner, who was so taken up with this notion of Gesamtkunstwerk, the unifying of the arts, backed, for a while, by a young (piano playing and composing) Nietzsche, who dedicated his first book, The Birth of Tragedy, to Wagner and his wife Cosima. In Difference and Repetition, Deleuze has some succinct lines about all this, which ends with another eight-fold:

The Birth of Tragedy is not a reflection on ancient theatre so much as the practical foundation of a theatre of the future, the opening up of a path along which Nietzsche still thinks it possible to push Wagner. The break with Wagner is not a matter of theory, nor of music; it concerns the respective roles of text, history, noise, music, light, song, dance and décor in this theatre of which Nietzsche dreams.[3]

Notice the row of commas in those last lines, text, history, noise, music, etc. They might bring us to the writings of the Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky, who early in the 20th century was writing about Wagner and vigorously thinking about these ideas of Gesamtkunstwerk, then translated into the term "monumental art", a Theatre of the Future, in which the precious word "and" is key:

Thus, the worn-out words of yesterday, "either-or," will be replaced by the one word of tomorrow, "and."[4]

Following up on Kandinsky's "one word of tomorrow", we would then go back to Deleuze's lines and change the commas to ands: text and history and noise and music, etc. Even if Kandinsky doesn't adhere to that procedure himself in the quote below, where the words about "finding out" seem important: the process of finding out only by actually doing it, trying it, testing the degree to which we are prepared to move towards what he calls "this kind of genuinely collective creation":

The real collaboration of all branches of art on one real task is the only way of finding out (1) to what extent the idea of a monumental art has matured, both in its potential and in concrete form, (2) to what extent the ideas about such an art developed by different peoples are related to each other, (3) to what extent the different realms of art (painting, sculpture, architecture, poetry, music, dance) are prepared for this kind of genuinely collective creation, (4) to what extent the representatives of different countries and different arts are prepared to speak the same language regarding this most important subject, and (5) how far the actual realization of this idea, which is still in its infancy, can be carried.[5]

So if we say that the only way to find out how far this project, this idea, can be carried, is to actually try and try. To try and maybe to falter. And to try again. To find out, through repeating. This is maybe also where Deleuze will take us on some of the same pages as above, where he speaks of a theatre of repetition, connecting Nietzsche this time not so much with Wagner as with Søren Kierkegaard. And since being born and bred in Denmark, in Copenhagen, where Kierkegaard daily walked the streets in the 1840s (and whose early work Repetition I read the first time maybe 65 years ago), I have a weakness for this stuff, so bear with me staying around here for a few more Deleuze lines (hoping they will still re-connect, be relevant a bit down the line):

When Kierkegaard speaks of repetition as the second power of consciousness, 'second' means not a second time but the infinite which belongs to a single time, the eternity which belongs to an instant, the unconscious which belongs to consciousness, the 'nth' power. And then Nietzsche presents the eternal return as the immediate expression of the will to power, will to power does not at all mean 'to want power' but, on the contrary: whatever you will, carry it to the 'nth' power, separate out the superior form by virtue of the selective operation of thought in the eternal return, by virtue of the singularity of repetition in the eternal return itself.[6]

Repetition, then, not as replication but as intensifying: repeating to see if the work may open up, reveal itself further; repeatedly returning, intensifying intensity, to see if we are granted an insight, revealing some unseen "dynamic lines in space" as Deleuze says, in a language that "speaks before words":

In the theatre of repetition, we experience pure forces, dynamic lines in space which act without intermediary upon the spirit, and link it directly with nature and history, with a language which speaks before words, with gestures which develop before organised bodies, with masks before faces, with spectres and phantoms before characters — the whole apparatus of repetition as a "terrible power".[7]

So, maybe some lines appearing freshly in space, made dynamic by the spectres of Kierkegaard, Wagner, Nietzsche, Kandinsky, Deleuze. Or, still listening to Kandinsky, we should say: Kierkegaard and Wagner and Nietzsche and?

And apply that to our own list above: the architectural and the narrative and the dance and the music and possible writing of poetry and.

But we have a long ways to go, with that future one word of Kandinsky's, written soon a century ago. Wouldn't the current one, across the spectrum, from Iran to high school basketball, be "versus" shortened "vs.", benign spelling for war or upscale opposition.

Still, here we are, coming soon, as they say, to a theater near you, or at least back to Seattle, late days of January 2014, trying out our eightfold stuff. But, again, making the and also be tested for more than the merely additional: where the "and" itself (including its quote marks) becomes a field of entry, a criss-crossing, a kind of doubling up, of space, in space. Testing boundaries, liminalities.

An example of this doubling up, this criss-crossing of fields, disciplines, activities: the composer physically participating in events on the stage itself, being part of the overall movement; the choreographer (though of course not that rarely) also dancing; the dancer also singing, the director crawling or stumbling around on that same ground.

But wait, there's more. We've got another eightfold to add to the mess. Again maybe that figure 4 doubled up, eight voices, preciously, from the past: Bharatamuni and Abhinavagupta and August Bournonville and Vaslav Nijinsky and Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham and Pina Bausch and Maya Deren.

And if they are eight, they also come a little in pairs, in several ways. One of them, more concretely, in the sense that their voices come to us via the four sculptures situated (dynamically) on the stage: their voices (strictly speaking their words, strictly speaking also their translated words) coming toward us from the lower parts of the sculptures, two mini-speakers in each, playable electronically from bands wrapped on the composer's arms; and the voices coming also, visually, textually, from a video installation, where the pairings are kept, then randomized[8] together.

If we go to the upper parts of the sculptures, their more formal unfolding, we come into the question of memory, what we think we know and what we may have forgotten, what we think we know that we don't know, etc. The upper parts of the sculptures try to point in that direction, here specifically in terms of the paired eight: their names, the images their names may trigger, the textures of memory that may come up, the porosity of that memory texture, its fragilities, its see-throughness.

The very texturality of the sculptures also bring up the question of animate, inanimate, that we brought up above: the material used, its origin, very organic, coming out of living beings playing a particular role in a particular setting, now in a different state, deteriorating, coming apart, full of holes, spaces, remains, still addressing us, if we care to listen.

Which could bring us to the five elements, of earth and water and fire and air and space, that also may serve us to break down the distinction, the inbred dualities, of animate, inanimate, moving, not moving, outside, inside and so on.

And then bring in another eightfoldness, still a paired four, maybe the last ones, at least for now: coming to us from our first voice, Bharatamuni, who famously, maybe before Christ, maybe after, wrote a treatise called the Natyashastra, that dealt with Indian drama, dance and music, crucially all together, and setting up, at least as far as we know at present, the first printed version dealing with the term rasa in the context of these disciplines. Before we proceed with Bharatamuni's eight, and their possible extension, let's just touch upon the broad use of the term rasa, as articulated fairly recently by the American scholar David Gordon White:

Rasa (from the same Indo-European root as the English word resin) has one of the broadest semantic fields of any term in the Sanskrit language. Originally employed in the Vedas to signify the waters and liquids in general—vital fluids, animal juices, and vegetable saps—applications of the term rasa have proliferated over the millennia to embrace such fields as Ayurvedic medicine, hatha yoga, alchemy, and Indian aesthetics. More generally, rasa was and remains the "fluid essence" of Indian thought. If the universe is a great pulsating flow of essence and manifestation, rasa is the fluid "stuff" of that flow.[9]

That quote came from the opening lines of a chapter in White's book The Alchemical Body, with the subtitle Siddha Traditions in Medieval India, and if the term alchemical may be said to deal with the transformational, as in the ways of transforming base metal into gold, the word rasa seems to point, also in our setting, to a core element of something transforming or transformed. If we understand its usage in Indian aesthetics a little bit, it's about a feeling conveyed, but not necessarily the feeling. If feeling is a state of being, a feeling-state, then rasa is, firstly, the art of distilling that feeling into a performative act, to convey to an audience the very flavor of that feeling, though not too directly, rather: suggested. An audience, or some in the audience, may then, secondly, be open, in a receiving feeling-state, to what is being conveyed by the performer or the performance, and thus be transported, transmuted, accordingly. Rasa may then be that rapport, that communicative exchange, felt, without being directly stated.

Obviously there's a delicacy here that we may not be able to connect to right away. But we will not linger here, except to stay for a moment also with the extension mentioned above, coming from our second voice, Abhinavagupta, who's said to be the one mainly responsible for adding and articulating a ninth rasa in the Indian settings, so that from his time onwards there seems to be nine moods, flavors, rasas, although there seem to be still many to whom the number of eight is good enough, no need to change. For others, the first rasa, sringara, remains supreme (coming from the feeling of love, rati), even if they nowadays are enumerating nine: The first a kind of supreme among nine. What Abhinavagupta seems to point to (see also below) is a rasa, shantarasa, a peacefulness to the core, that runs through all the other eight, thus introducing or emphasizing an element not only aesthetic, but also yogic, liberational.

Were we to summarize now, in terms of where we've come so far, we may say that we have a kind of dynamic tension between the eightfold and the ninth, beginning with what we tried to say with respect to our cacophony title and down through the fields of the various disciplines, the range and spectrum of the specific eight personas or voices out of the past, and lastly what has been brought in through Bharatamuni and Abhinavagupta: early attempts at enumerating elements of (a shared) human existence. All this filtered through the lens of the words of Francis Bacon and Tristan Tzara at the very top: complicated simplicity, and the implications of nothing.

We may then try to lay these different yet similar settings into a kind of, shall we call it an arithmetical row? 1and1and1and1and1and1and1and1...and1.

But considering what we've said about and and openness and the implications of nothing, and considering that nothing may be ciphered as zero (since zero is said to come from both cipher and from the Sanskrit sunya, meaning empty, nothing), we may add a couple of zeros, for good measure, or, not to lose sight of the rasa of the comic strip: 0and1and1and1and1and1and1and1and1...and1...0.

A couple of tasks still remain: to approach the very headline above, the title of this piece; and to expand a bit on the territory around the terms feeling, emotion, intensity and expressiveness, both in their relations to what was said in connection with the Sanskrit word rasa, its translation into Western terms, but also the different understandings these terms themselves seem to have generated, among different sets of people, in different (performative) settings. (See also below: Highwater and Langer.)

With regard to feeling I would like to go to Herbert Guenther, who uses the term vector feeling-tone, which he says he's gotten from Whitehead. A note, a tone may be heard at a certain pitch, but the way it sounds will depend on the source and the overtones that are activated; if we add the term vector we add an element of direction and intensity. Feeling heard by itself seems to be floating a little anonymously in the air, whereas if we hear it here as vector feeling-tone we may have a better feel for the complexities involved when our sensory apparatus open up to the complexity of things happening around the performance, in terms of where we focus our attention, more broadly, more narrowly, on the music, on the movement of the dancing, on the meaning of the sculptures, of the texts, the lights, on the question whether all this will soon be over, so you can get home or go out and still find something to eat.

In terms of the vectorial aspects of our feeling-tones, the degrees of intensity, of energy, that we bring to bear, there's that distinction which Roland Barthes has articulated when he speaks of a readerly and a writerly text. The difference may be seen if we think of, say, an easy novel, where the plot and the meaning fall neatly into place, and all we have to do is merely to read it, sort of consumerly: that would be a readerly text, there it is, we either buy it or we don't. The writerly text is more difficult, more demanding, less a ready-made product, one has to work a bit, what does that mean, what's the idea here, what's the point, this seems a bit silly, etc. The whole thing may be understood in several ways, maybe there are several layers of meaning, maybe only the meaning you make, make up, etc. In other words, the text asks you to bring a little energy of your own, maybe even check a dictionary or, nowadays, go to Google.

Finally, taking a look at the word Transversality in the headline. I have it from the fine scholar Calvin O. Schrag, who says he first saw it in use by Sartre writing something on Husserl and consciousness. I bring it in here, you may say for two reasons: first as a possible continuation of what Deleuze above, in connection with Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, called the theatre of repetition, but then seeing it also as a possible term that might apply, today, to what Kandinsky and those good people called monumental art, as we saw above. That word always seemed a bit bombastic, a little too grandiose, or something. They also called it synthetic art, which again sounds, well, a bit synthetic.

At the same time they, or at least Kandinsky, stressed that this "and" (as in the title of his piece And, Some Remarks on Synthetic Art), stood for both external and internal movement, meaning in other words not only a horizontal arrow across all the "branches of art", as he says above, but also those vectors within, that sprung from what he called inner necessity ("The principle of internal necessity is in essence the one, invariable law of art."[10])

So there are these movements, then and now, coming and going in all directions, outside, inside, across, criss-crossing. Not necessarily coming to rest, settling down, not having an origin: yet in play, in play. Then I thought, following Deleuze above and having known Schrag's thoughts on transversality for a number of years, that maybe one could bring in that term here:

... the concept of transversality has been in the lexicon of academe for some time, finding employment in the mathematical, the physical, and the life sciences. In its varied usages across the disciplines — as a generalization of orthogonality in topology, as a definition of transverse mass in nuclear physics, as a description of the networking of bands of fibers in physiology, and as a characterization of the lateral movements of vertebrae in anatomy — the function of transversality can be variously expressed as that of convergence without coincidence, conjuncture without concordance, overlapping without assimilation, and union without absorption.[11]

A convergence, Schrag says here, without coincidence. In an interview he says that transversality "is a movement of openness"[12], and that "ontologically, it makes metaphorical use of the diagonal, splitting the difference between the vertically anchored universals and horizontally dispersed particulars."[13] In a footnote to that sentence it is phrased: "The movement of transversality is the possibility or condition of the horizontal and the vertical as well as their demise."[14] Later in the same interview, speaking on the connection of transversality to an "in-between" he also says: "That transversality broadens the 'in-between' to an 'among' is an important point."[15]

Does this not fit our situation? If our situation is: trying to weave, in repetition, a dynamic fabric of "ands: and fields and living figures, moving vertically, horizontally, diagonally, moving internally, betweenly? Traversing the complex, the nothing. Paying tribute, but paying tribute also through trying not to remain in a landscape or language where things contract into a versus, the always simple, closed-in, at ease with the insular. Schrag has a playful line that may take us out:

"No narrative is an island...each narrative is woven into a network of stories."[16]

Root texts of the eight voices

1. Bharatamuni

(c. 1st century BCE-3rd century CE)

Selected root text:
The prominent Bhavas are Rati (love), Hasa (laughter), Soka (sorrow), Krodha (fury), Utsaha (enthusiasm), Bhaya (terror), Jugupsa (disgust) and Vismaya (astonishment) ... Rasa (sentiment) is produced when various Bhavas get together.[17]

Extended root text:
he prominent Bhavas are Rati (love), Hasa (laughter), Soka (sorrow), Krodha (fury), Utsaha (enthusiasm), Bhaya (terror), Jugupsa (disgust) and Vismaya (astonishment). ... We shall say this—Just as there is the production of good taste through the juice produced when different spices, herbs and other articles are pressed together so also Rasa is produced when various Bhavas get together. Just as through molasses and other articles, spices, and herbs, six kinds of tastes are produced, so also the prominent Bhavas in combination with the different Bhavas attain the state of Rasa.

2. Abhinavagupta

(c. 950-1020)

Selected root text:
It is said thus: Atman's own nature is being (temporarily) colored by "laughter," "erotic love," etc. that can tint it into their own hues. But (all the same) it remains this extremely white (colorless) thread which shines (nirbhasamna) through the conglomeration of loosely strung (semi-transparent, colored) jewels.[18]

Extended root text:
It is said thus: Atman's own nature is being [temporarily] colored by "laughter," "erotic love," etc. that can tint it into their own hues. But, [all the same,] it remains this extremely white [colorless] thread which shines through the conglomeration of loosely strung [semi-transparent, colored] jewels. It assumes the shapes of all emotions like erotic love, etc. [that are superimposed upon it], since all these emotions can tint it into their own hues. But it still flashes forth through them as soon as the knowledge shines: "This is Atman."

Bharatamuni and Abhinavagupta: Root texts randomized (excluding Sanskrit):
The sentiment nature into thread prominent is is their which Bhavas produced being own shines are when temporarily hues through love various colored But the laughter Bhavas by all conglomeration sorrow get laughter the of fury together erotic same loosely enthusiasm
It love it strung terror is etc remains semi-transparent disgust said that this colored and thus can extremely jewels astonishment Atman's tint white
Rasa own it colorless

3. August Bournonville

(1805-1879)

Selected root text:
The arts, like everything achieved in this world, require two actions: giving and receiving. It is not just a matter of acting a part ... the dance needs an audience sensitive to true beauty.[19]

Extended root text:
The arts, like everything achieved in this world, require two actions: giving and receiving. It is not just a matter of acting a part ... the dance needs an audience sensitive to true beauty. ... As soon as what one expects from the theatre is nothing more than elaborate surprises, oddities of imagination, sloppy voluptuousness, bacchic joy, gross sensuality, delirium and insanity, then the fresh pleasures and the noble emotions, the frank joyfulness, the spirit, the poetry and the moral strength forsake the temple of the muses, and the ballet, reduced to a marketplace populated with odalisques, turns the Theatre of the Opera into a sick and enfeebled man.

4. Vaslav Nijinsky

(1889/1890-1950)

Selected root text:
Our company called itself the Russian Ballet. I gave my heart and soul to it. I worked like an ox and lived like a martyr.[20]

Extended root text:
Our company called itself the Russian Ballet. I loved the Russian Ballet. I gave my heart and soul to it. I worked like an ox and I lived like a martyr...
When I went upstairs it was already five o'clock. I went into my dressing room and changed. Going upstairs I thought: "Where is my wife? In the bedroom where I sleep or in another one?" And I felt my body trembling. I trembled as I tremble now. I cannot write because I am trembling with cold. I cannot write. I am correcting this, for I am afraid my handwriting will be illegible. When I went into the bedroom I felt cold before I saw anything. Her bed was without the pillows and the covers were folded back. I went downstairs having decided not to go to sleep. I wanted to finish writing down my impressions. I cannot write, for I feel cold in every part of my body. I ask God to help me because my hand is aching and it is difficult to write. I want to write well.

Root texts randomized:
The and the itself I arts receiving dance the worked like It needs Russian like everything is an Ballet an achieved not audience I ox in just sensitive gave and this a to my lived world matter true heart like require of beauty a two acting
Our soul martyr actions a company to
giving part called it

5. Martha Graham

(1894-1991)

Selected root text:
Practice means to perform, over and over again in the face of all obstacles, some act of vision, of faith, of desire. There is fatigue so great that the body cries, even in its sleep.[21]

Extended root text:
Practice means to perform, over and over again in the face of all obstacles, some act of vision, of faith, of desire. Practice is a means of inviting the perfection desired. I think the reason dance has held such an ageless magic for the world is that it has been the symbol of the performance of living. Many times I hear the phrase "the dance of life." It is close to me for a very simple and understandable reason. The instrument through which the dance speaks is also the instrument through which life is lived: the human body. It is the instrument by which all the primaries of experience are made manifest. It holds in its memory all matters of life and death and love. ... There is fatigue so great that the body cries, even in its sleep.

6. Merce Cunningham

(1919-2009)

Selected root text:
For me, it seems enough that dancing is a spiritual exercise in physical form, and what is seen, is what it is. Dancing is a visible action of life.[22]

Extended root text:
For me, it seems enough that dancing is a spiritual exercise in physical form, and that what is seen, is what it is. And I do not believe it is possible to be "too simple." What the dancer does is the most realistic of all possible things, and to pretend that a man standing on a hill could be doing everything except just standing is simply divorce—divorce from life, from the sun coming up and going down, from clouds in front of the sun, from the rain the comes from the clouds and sends you into the drugstore for a cup of coffee, from each thing that succeeds each thing. Dancing is a visible action of life.

Root texts randomized:
Practice all fatigue me form means obstacles so it and to some great seems what perform act that enough is over of the that seen and vision body dancing is over of cries is what again faith even a it in of in spiritual is the desire its exercise
face
There sleep in of is
For physical

7. Pina Bausch

(1940-2009)

Selected root text:
The only thing I did all the time was watching people. I have only seen human relations or I have tried to see them and talk about them. That's what I am interested in. I don't know anything more important.[23]

Extended root text:
The only thing I did all the time was watching people. I have only seen human relations or I have tried to see them and talk about them. That's what I am interested in. I don't know anything more important.

8. Maya Deren

(1917-1961)

Selected root text:
...in every man, there is an area which speaks and hears in the poetic idiom...something in him which can still sing in the desert when the throat is almost too dry for speaking.[24]

Extended root text:
I include myself, for I believe that I am a part of, not apart from humanity; that nothing I may feel, think, perceive, experience, despise, desire, or despair of is really unknowable to any other man.
I speak of man as a principle, not in the singular nor in the plural.
I believe that, in every man, there is an area which speaks and hears in the poetic idiom ... something in him which can still sing in the desert when the throat is almost too dry for speaking.
My films might be called choreographic, referring to the design and stylization of movement which confers ritual dimension upon functional motion — just as simple speech is made into song when affirmation of intensification on a higher level is intended.

Root texts randomized:
The human I an sing only relations am area in thing or interested which the I I in speaks desert did have I and when all tried don't hears the the to know in throat time see anything the is was them more poetic almost watching and important idiom...something too people talk
In in dry I about every him for have them man which speaking only That's there can
seen what is still

Quick links to Wikipedia pages:

• Bharatamuni (c. 1st century BCE-3rd century CE)
• Abhinavagupta (c. 950-1020)
• August Bournonville (1805-1879)
• Vaslav Nijinsky (1889/1890-1950)
• Martha Graham (1894-1991)
• Merce Cunningham (1919-2009)
• Pina Bausch (1940-2009)
• Maya Deren (1917-1961)

Addenda

Around Bharatamuni, Abhinavagupta and the eight rasas

(a)
rasa ('flavour', 'savour', 'juice', 'aesthetic experience') A term originating an aesthetic theory (and early discussion is in Bharata's Natyasastra), where it designates an impersonal and universalized experience, or 'mood', of joy and bliss, which is created in an audience out of the principal emotions (bhavas) evoked in a drama. Although rasa in itself is a single, ineffable experience of entrancement or aesthetic rapture, it is subdivided for analytical purposes according to the principal feelings which evoke it. There are said to be eight such emotions—love (rati), laughter (hasa), sorrow (soka), energy (utsaha), anger (krodha), fear (bhaya), disgust (jugupsa), and amazement (vismaya)—which engender eight corresponding rasa—the erotic (smgara), comic (hasya), pathetic (karuna), heroic (vira), furious (raudra), fearful (bhayanaka), grotesque (bibhatsa), and wondrous (adbhuta). Through his commentary on Natyasastra, Abhinavagupta developed a sophisticated theory of aesthetics which regarded rasa as a distinct mode of experience situated between ordinary awareness and enlightenment, although it differs from the latter only in degree. The concept was also imported in the bhakti environment of Gaudiya, and other Vaisnava devotional movements, where the bhava of erotic love, such as that experienced by the gopis and Radha, is thought to be salvific when experienced through the associated rasa of pure bliss.[25]

(b)
Rasa means either aesthetic enjoyment or that which is aesthetically enjoyed. The significance of the concept is best interpreted by the orientation of aesthetic enjoyment in reference to the feeling. As will be explained presently the artistic sentiment is not merely a feeling among feelings but the feeling par excellence standing as it does on a new grade or level altogether as compared with other feelings. The conception of Rasa or aesthetic ssence may thus be interpreted entirely in terms of feeling without any reference to the intellectual idea or the spiritual idea.[26]

(c)
Rasa theory is not a revelation of Bharata or Abhinavagupta. It is rather an adumberation [sic] of the idea of re-enactment of the first movement, of release of the seed or rather of fulfillment of the singleness in allness of a reintegration through disintegration (as described in the Purusa Sukta to be the First Principles). If we go into the different connotations of the word rasa, the above point is made out more clearly. Rasa means the latent essence. This latent essence of everything is within the bounds of direct perception, sight, hearing, smell, touch and flavor. So there is a beautiful coinage in the word jyotirasomamrtam. The primordial waters are described as illuminating juice of immortality. So rasa is the most desired flavor as well as experience of immortality. Immortality is a feeling of not dying, the refusal of death. It is a commitment to life. Another meaning of desire of rasa is to manifest and also the capacity to manifest. It is analogous to that sage of speech act, vak, where there is a desire to enter into dialogue with one's other self. This desire can be likened to an intense humid heat which makes the seed split into a sprout. It is a precursor act of manifestation. So it is neither manifest nor unmanifest. It is a sudden flash before illumination.[27]

(d)
The idea of two different world-views is embedded in the very concept of rasa, particularly the theory of basic rasas and the subsidiary rasas postulated by Bharata. Bharatamuni in his Natyashastra identifies four rasas as the original rasas — srngara, vira, bibhatsa and raudra. Out of each of these, four subsidiary rasas are generated. Thus, hasya is born of srngara, adbhuta comes of vira, bhayanaka is produced by bibhatsa, and karuna by raudra. Obviously, these rasas fall into two groups. There are rasas connected with pleasure and happiness which is derived from this mundane world. Then there are rasas which are basically connected with grief, fear or sad thought. It is in this background that the acaryas, including Abhinavagupta, have viewed two types or rasas — sukhatmaka and duhkhatmaka. Anandavardhana holds that all the rasas do not culminate into happiness. Rasa is formed by the mixture of mixed feelings, misrikrtakramorasa vartate.[28]

(e)
Probably the most important passage concerning santa-rasa is to be found in Abhinavagupta's commentary on Bharata's Natya-sastra. There it is directly likened to the higher atman, and the attainment of this rasa is clearly understood in terms of the cathartic transformation of ordinary reality. In the words of Abhinavagupta, when one wants to know the nature of aesthetic pleasure,

it is said thus: atman's own nature is being [temporarily] colored by 'laughter,' 'erotic love,' etc. that can tint it into their own hues. But, [all the same,] it remains this extremely white [colorless] thread which shines (nirbhasamana) through the conglomeration of loosely strung [semi-transparent, coloured] jewels. It assumes the shapes of all emotions like erotic love, etc. [that are superimposed upon it], since all these emotions can tint it into their own hues. But it still flashes forth (vibhata) through them as soon as the knowledge shines (bhasamana): "this is atman." It is devoid of the conglomeration of sorrows which consists of turning away from it. And since it is the attainment of the higher bliss (parama-ananda), it shines forth (nirbhasamana) whenever there is an "idealization" (sadharanata) [of emotions] in poetry and drama. And owing to this distinguishing of the direct perception it [transforms] the heart [of the listener] into an abode of this over-worldly bliss.[29]

(f)
One must say, however, that there is an exceptionally perceptive passage dealing with santa-rasa in the fourth chapter of Anandavardhana's Dhvanyaloka (4.5):

The goal of men, defined as liberation, is [regarded] as the only higher [goal] in the sastras, while in poetry it is the rasa of peace (santa-rasa), defined as the blossoming of happiness brought about by the quenching of thirst. ... Since is the main essence, its meaning can only be conveyed by suggestion (vyangyatvena) and not by literal means (vacyatvena). And indeed, the meaning of the main essence shines forth much more beautifully when it is not conveyed literally, in [ordinary] words (svasabdanabhidheyatvena). And it is agreed, whenever the skilful and the wise are convened, that a highly regarded object shines forth when it is being conveyed by suggestion and not directly (na saksac), not through [ordinary] words.[30]

(g)
He (Govind Chandra Pande) further says that in our Indian tradition, the learned thinkers analyzing the duality of pleasure and pain have accepted the Santa or Bhakti as the highest form of Rasa, while in Western literature those dramas are generally popular which have Hasya or Karuna as the dominant Rasa.[31]

(h)
Although ... Bharata does not specify the colour (varna) and the deity (devata) for shanta rasa, yet in his prose comment following karika 83 of the Natyashastra, he gives an exposition of shanta rasa, discussing it separately from the other eight rasas because, in his understanding, it is above and beyond them in that he considers the state of shanta rasa, a deep peace and harmony in the self, as the prakrita, natural or given state, of man, a state into which all of us are born, and all the rasas are seen as vikaras, deviations from that state, and life itself is a constant struggle to regain that original state. Also, he is aware of the controversy surrounding shanta rasa, that every one does not accept shanta as a rasa because, according to them, it does not fall into the structure of the rasa-theory. Abhinavagupta in his exposition of Bharata's karikas argues elaborately and convincingly that shanta rasa must be accepted as a separate, ninth rasa.[32]

Around Bournonville and Nijinsky

(a)
The Ballet comique de la Reine and the emergence of the ballet de cour thus marked an important departure from earlier practices: they invested dance with a serious, even religious purpose and joined it to French intellectual and political life. A strong idealistic strain derived from Renaissance humanism and amplified by the Catholic Counter-Reformation made cultivated men like those at the Academy believe that by welding dance, music, and poetry into a coherent spectacle they might actually begin to bridge the yawning gap between earthly passions and spiritual transcendence. It was a breathtaking ambition, and one that never really died in ballet, even if in more skeptical times it was sometimes forgotten or derided. The artists who created the Ballet comique de la Reine genuinely hoped to elevate man, to raise him up on a rung on the Great Chain of Being and bring him closer to the angels and God.[33]

(b)
The ideas first crystallized in the Ballet comique de la Reine, however, cast a long shadow. Well into the seventeenth century, distinguished scientists, poets, and writers looked back with admiration to the Academy's experiments, especially as Europe faced the renewed violence of the Thirty Years' War (1618-48). The Abbé Mersenne, whose home in the convent of Minimes at the Place Royal in Paris became a "post office" for the life of the mind in Europe in the first half of the century, wrote about the ballet de cour, and many of his friends and colleagues, including Rene Descartes, also discussed the art and in some cases even tried their hand at writing ballets. (Descartes offered the Ballet de la Naissance de la Paix to the queen of Sweden in 1649, just before his death.)[34]

(c)
... Noverre was careful to point out that by pantomime he did not mean the "low and trivial" gestures typical of the Italian bouffons or the "false and lying" gestures of society, which were perfected in front of a mirror. The pantomime he was talking about would cut past the artifice of court forms and strike directly to the human core. His pantomime would be like a "second organ," a primitive and passionate "cry of nature" that revealed a man's deepest and most secret feelings. Words, he said, often failed, or else they served as a cover, masking a man's true feelings. The body, by contrast, could not dissimulate: faced in an anguishing dilemma, the muscles instinctively reacted, twisting the body into positions that conveyed inner torment with greater accuracy and pathos than words could ever muster.[35]

(d)
The ballet d'action ... was more than a new kind of theatrical art. By focusing on pantomime, Noverre had tapped into one of the most fundamental ideas of the French Enlightenment—and tied the future of ballet to it. It was a bold ambition: if pantomime could cut through the thickly laid and stifling social conventions dragging French society down, then the ballet d'action could become the preeminent art of a newly modern man.[36]

(e)
(According to August Bournonville himself) All violent movements, exaggerated poses, and wild turns stem from Italian ballet.[37]

(f)
French artists registered these broader cultural upheavals, and created their own. In literature, Marcel Proust (a Ballets Russes devotee) found a way to document what he once called the "shifting and confused gusts of memory.' Music found a correlative in Debussy's Impressionistic sound, with its new and constantly shifting tonalities, and in subsequent innovations by composers such as Ravel, Poulenc, and Satie—all of whom would work with Diaghilev. The musical links with Russia were long-standing: Debussy had visited Russia in 1881 and admired Glinka and Mussorgsky, and he and Revel both followed and drew from Rimsky-Korsakov. The emerging art of cinema drew on similar undercurrents and seemed to exemplify the era: here was a machine-age "magic" that promised to show dreams and illuminate heretofore secret and unseen dimensions of human experience. The parallel with the Ballets Russes was direct and irresistible, leading one observer to dub the company the "cinematograph of the rich."[38]

(g)
Not content for him to be merely the foremost male star of the Ballets Russes, [Sergei] Diaghilev also encouraged Nijinsky as a choreographer, and this threat of rivalry hurt [Mikhail] Fokine deeply. A slow worker who labored endlessly over details, Nijinsky nevertheless managed to choreograph several ballets, each of them controversial. ... Nijinsky used a commissioned score by Debussy in 1913 when he choreographed Jeux, which depicted a flirtation among three tennis players. This ballet was notable for possessing a contemporary setting and it proved that, far from being suitable only for legendary or historical subjects, ballet could deal with aspects of modern life. Jeux might have had more impact if it had not been overshadowed by another Nijinsky premiere that same season, Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring), which occasioned one of the most notorious riots in theatrical history. As soon as the first notes of Stravinsky's score were played, boos and catcalls were heard. Fistfights broke out between Stravinsky's champions and opponents and the pandemonium inside the Theatre des Champs-Elysees become so great that the dancers could not always hear the music. Although it was the score's rhythmic and harmonic strangeness that caused most of the commotion, the choreography was equally unconventional. The ballet concerned rites of a prehistoric tribe and reached its climax when a Chosen Maiden danced herself to death to propitiate the gods. Although its setting was ancient Russia, the ballet managed to suggest that strange, primordial psychic forces may be buried within anyone. Like many works created for Diaghilev, Le Sacre du Printemps demonstrated that ballet could incorporate nonclassical, or even violently anti-classical, movement without destroying its traditional foundations; Le Sacre thereby attested to both the soundness of ballet's traditions and the art's capacity for change.[39]

Around Graham and Cunningham

(a)
Modern dance has a shorter history than ballet. It emerged almost simultaneously although somewhat differently in Germany and the USA in the second decade of the twentieth century. American modern dancers like Martha Graham took from and challenged the work of the preceding generation of "modern" or "interpretive" dancers/choreographers such as Isadora Duncan and Ruth St Denis. Duncan was notoriously anti-formalist and blasted a ballet's artifice and hierarchical structure in her dancing and writing. Graham's technique, based on the principles of "contraction and release", was forged out of the demands of her early choreography. The action of contraction is a concentration of the body's energy, which, initiated by squeezing out the breath, begins sharply in the pelvis and goes through the whole body. The force of the contraction can pull the body off balance and carry it from one plane to another. With the intake of breath, the action of release begins in the base of the spine and continues through the back, restoring the body to a "normal state" (see Terry, 1978, pp. 53-61). The Graham technique, like ballet, became codified and since the 1950s has been taught as an alternative to ballet in dance schools and universities in different countries.[40]

(b)
There is, though, at least one way of recording Events which can make them less forbidding, a point of view emanating from the philosophy which produced them in the first place. Cunningham, John Cage, and other artists in their circle regard art as an imitation of nature—but not in any literal sense, for that might result in nothing more than a superfluous replication of objects. Rather, they wish to imitate nature in its manner of operation. For them, the universe is Heraclitean, forever open to metamorphoses. Events, then, are attempts to reproduce in miniature the workings of the universe. In Events things happen and are transformed into other things happening, images are born a and disintegrate and reshape themselves into other images. Everything has its own form, yet form is always subject to modification. Frequently, even when the choreography is vigorous, Events somehow possess an overall feeling of imperturbability or even serenity. They resemble such phenomena as the running of rivers, the formation of crystals, the orbits of planets, or the flow of traffic through the streets: they partake of some process which can be related to the basic processes of earthly existence. The "experience of dance" which Cunningham says he desires Events to provide is thus very much like the experience of life itself.[41]

(c)
Merce Cunningham is our first Space Dancer. His galaxy of dances has expanded the parameters and horizons of modern dance, heralding the post-modern. Our conceptions of space, its boundaries and reality, and his radical ideas about time and structuration (through his lifelong collaboration with John Cage) have challenged the givens of our perception, and our presuppositions about the art of the dance.[42]

(d)
Asked what he thought music should do for the dance, Mr. Cunningham answered: "Leave it alone."[43]

(e)
"I don't think I've ever demanded particular things," he said the other day, referring to his work with visual artists. "My ideas about dancing are all so flexible, and working with artists has made them more so. I could just as well tell people to go and dance in a field, with or without a tree—it would be nice if there were a tree, but not essential. So many people think that decor should emphasize something, or define it, or frame it somehow, but life doesn't work that way, and I don't either. I grew up with this business of dance movements meaning something specific, but it always seemed to me that a movement could mean a lot of different things, and that it didn't make much sense to act like a dictator."[44]

(f)
(According to Cunningham himself) Dancing is movement in time and space.[45]

Around Bausch and Deren

(a)
In her initial season (1973-74) [at Tanztheater Wuppertal], Bausch revealed Jooss's influence as she sought her own movement language in the introspective tradition of Ausdruckstanz. As a choreographer her objective as a "sense connection" with her audience through movement developed from body language and personal revelation, often with little dance content as such. Eliciting responses from her dancers in rehearsal, in words and actions that revealed their experiences and motivations, she edited and collated this freely associated imagery to simulate the randomness of everyday life, allowing the performers to come close to playing themselves onstage. This montage technique was so skillfully used that Bausch could project atmosphere and situation without relying on plot, character development, or a "logical" progression of events.
Much of the movement woven into her "theater of experience" resembled pedestrian activity, heightened, under her meticulous guidance, to something far more expressive than its literal identity. A solemn presence whose deepset eyes seemed to penetrate the underlying irony of human experience, Bausch set the tone for the group. It was in large measure the dancers' dedication to her single-minded vision and their extraordinary emotional virtuosity that made Tanztheater performances so compelling.[46]

(b)
When I began making films, some years ago, my first concern was to emancipate the camera from theatrical traditions in general, and especially in terms of spatial treatment. The central character of these films moved in a universe which was not governed by the material, geographical laws of here and there as distance places, mutually accessible only by considerable travel. Rather, he moved in a world of imagination in which, as in our day or night-dreams, a person is first one place and then another without traveling between. It was a choreography in space, except that the individual moved naturalistically, as far as the body movements were concerned.
More and more I began to think of working with the formalized, stylized movement of dance, of taking the dancer out of the theater and of giving him the world as a stage. This would mean not only that the fixed front view and the rigid walls of the theater oblong would be removed, or even that the scene of activity would be changed more often than in the theater, but it meant also that a whole new set of relationships between the dancer and space could be developed. Dance, which is to natural movement what poetry is to conversational prose, should like poetry transcend pedestrian boundaries.[47]

Highwater and Langer: Around emotion, feeling, expressiveness

[The dance critic John] Martin — like [Mikhail] Fokine and [Jean-Georges] Noverre — was tied down to the literal, dramatic tradition of dance. His description of the neuromuscular transaction is biased in favor of a dramatic interpretation of dance, and this view has made the evolution of abstract, concert dancing problematical. To judge from what Martin wrote, all dance resorts to movement to externalize emotional states, and all dancers wish to convey through movement the most intangible emotional experience. This simply is not true. Or at least Martin's terminology creates confusion.
The problem here is not the neuromuscular transaction which John Martin described; the problem is found in his description of it — for dancing is not concerned fundamentally with emotional states or emotional experience any more than music is. These constant references to emotion in dance during the 1930s and 1940s now necessitate a qualification of terms. Is dance really emotional? What do we mean by emotion? Does the presence of emotion in dance necessarily make dance a dramatic form? And if emotion exists as part of the nature of dance, specifically what kinds of emotion are intrinsic to dance as an art form?
American philosopher Susanne Langer, who is greatly concerned with art as an expression of feeling, has suggested that what we mean by feeling in art is expressiveness — but not emotion.
"Expressiveness," she writes in Problems in Art, "is the same in all art works. A work of art is an expressive form, and what it expresses is human feeling. But the word 'feeling' must be taken here in its broadest sense, meaning everything that can be felt, from physical sensation, pain and comfort, excitement and repose, to the most complex emotions, intellectual tensions, or the steady feeling-tones of a conscious human life."
It is important to recognize the subtle revision of the definition of emotion which occurs in Langer's remarks — "everything that can be felt" represents both a physical and intellectual potential, both physical sensation and intellectual tension. Emotion in art has nothing necessarily in common with the rampage of the private psyche. It is not confined to lavish displays of personal emotion or to the imitation of dramatic events. It is not restricted to the physical depiction of psychological events but can also deal with the transactions of the abstract imagination.
What Langer is talking about is sentience and not mere emotionality. Contemporary choreographers agree with Langer and reject the notion that feeling and thought are incompatible.[48]

Around the terms readerly, writerly

writerly and readerly texts The usual translation of the French textes scriptibles, textes lisibles. A literal translation of the terms ('scriptable', 'readable') might be thought preferable; scriptable is one of the many neologisms coined by Barthes, whilst lisible is a conventional term which carries the same connotations as the English 'readable'. The distinction between the two types of writing and reading is introduced by Barthes in his extraordinarily detailed study of Balzac's short story "Sarrasine" (Barthes 1970a). The study originated from the two-year-long seminar held at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in 1968 and 1969.

The readerly text is a product, and its ideological function is to make meaning appear natural and to make the story that is being told appear credible by following the codes that the reader expects to find in a well-made text. It restricts the polysemy or multiple meanings of the text by obscuring its formal structure, limiting its connotations and reducing the activity of reading to the passive and unthinking consumption or enjoyment of the story and the fate of its protagonists. The story has already been told, and the reader merely consumes it. The writerly text, in contrast, is a process which disrupts codes and turns the reader into a producer of meaning who experiences the enchantments of the signifier in a never-ending present. Its overt polysemy means that a writerly text is never complete or closed. Barthes makes it clear from the outset that the writerly text is not a thing that exists, and that it is unlikely to be found in bookshops. It is in fact a utopian concept and its function is to subvert the obviousness and naturalness of the classic realist text, which is implicitly contrasted with the practices of representatives of the avant-garde such as Lautrémont and Joyce. The readerly/writerly distinction marks a transitional stage in Barthes' work. The readerly text, that is, has many of the features that Barthes previously ascribed to mythology and ideology in his quasi-Marxist period (1957), whilst the writerly text already displays the characteristics of the literary jouissance described in the more eroticized Pleasure of the Text of 1973.[49]