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Reviewed by:
  • Dancing Naturally: Nature, Neo-classicism and Modernity in Early Twentieth-Century Dance edited by Alexandra Carter and Rachel Fensham
  • Sally Ann Ness
Dancing Naturally: Nature, Neo-classicism and Modernity in Early Twentieth-Century Dance edited by Alexandra Carter and Rachel Fensham. 2011. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan Press. 179 pp., 12 visual illustrations, index. £53 ($82.50) cloth. doi:10.1017/S014976771300017X

Do not let the slim, modest size of this volume fool you. Its essays, twelve in all, are chock-full of puzzles, paradoxes, contradictions, and questions. As the title indicates, the focus of the anthology is on nature as it relates to dancing. It is a relationship that enjoyed a sustained renaissance during the early twentieth century, both in British dance and also in what might be called its Anglo diaspora, among other places. The hope of the collection, as Rachel Fensham expresses it in the volume’s Introduction, is that its contributions will serve to “establish a context” and “provide a framework” for future research focusing more generally on connections between dance and the natural in other times and places (1, 2). Despite valiant efforts on Fensham’s part, however, that context and that framework never fully cohere, neither in her Introduction nor in the volume in its entirety. However, given the almost inconceivably complicated character of the conceptual/theoretical task it entails, the attempt alone, such as it is, holds merit.

The core of the book, and what arguably might have been a better focus for its constitution as a whole, is an examination of Greek revivalist dancing that occurred in Britain and parts of its cultural diaspora at this time. Roughly half of the volume’s essays are concerned with this topic. Fiona Macintosh sets the stage for it by providing a summary of the British fin de siècle turn to classical Greece, identifying some of the ways in which the freedom attributed to ancient Greek culture took on political significance in the British context—particularly in relation to the women’s liberation movement. Macintosh’s overview sheds critical light on why it was that representations of ancient Maenadic rituals in particular were singled out as the focal subject matter for Greek revival dance. It also provides a helpful summary of the different venues available for Greek revival dancers during this period in Britain (private salons, public performances, and chorus roles in Greek revival dramas). This clarifies somewhat the differing histories of the major figures defining the movement and their respective legacies.

Alexandra Carter launches the main discussion of Greek revival dancing in two separate contributions. The first focuses on two leaders of the movement, Madge Atkinson and Ruby Ginner, who creatively explored classical Greek naturalism through the combined strategies of developing original movement techniques, employing subject matter drawn from nature, and staging performances that afforded dancers opportunities for personal emotional expression. “Dancing naturally” for these Greek revivalists is characterized by Carter as, “the privileging of the physiological/organic functions of the body and their structural relationships as the foundation for dance” (28). This formulation identifies both what was at the core of the Greek revival process in British dance and also what connected it to the wider array of embodied practices represented in the volume. Carter’s second contribution, a collection of extracts selected from an unpublished manuscript Madge Atkinson wrote in collaboration with Mary A. Johnstone, provides a relatively direct point of access to the kind of thinking that sustained the revivalist movement in the British dance context. The excerpts exemplify some of the claims made in Carter’s initial essay about the constructed, non-spontaneous character of the dance training and the performances associated with it.

Rachel Fensham’s main contribution to the volume (in addition to her Introduction) [End Page 150] focuses on the costumes worn by Madge Atkinson’s Greek revival dancers. Fensham examines the cut, texture, and color of the silk and cotton dresses, tunics, and sashes used to create the flickering effects of patterned moving color that were a hallmark of Atkinson’s choreography. Fensham demonstrates convincingly that costuming was a defining feature of Greek revival dancing, and contributed significantly to its popularity and theatrical success...

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