The document provides information about the 2002 dance work "The Lost Dances of Egon Schiele" created by choreographer Lea Anderson. It was a reconstruction of poses from the early 20th century artist Egon Schiele's paintings and drawings performed by the dance group The Featherstonehaughs. The work explored representations of the human body in Schiele's works and how Anderson translated these into dance. It examined themes of copying works of the past, the male gaze, and how Anderson both paid homage to and challenged Schiele's artistic legacy through postmodern dance.
Drawing out the Connections between the Past and the Present
1.
2. • The Lost Dances of Egon Schiele (2002), a video-dance,
was created by the contemporary British choreographer
Lea Anderson and Kevin McKiernan.
• Performed by The Featherstonehaughs (pronounced
Fanshaws: Frank Bock, Stephen Kirkham, Rem Lee,
Eddie Nixon, Dan O’Neill, Luca Silvestrini.
• Music: Steve Blake; Lighting: Simon Corder; Costumes:
Sandy Powell, Photographer: Chris Nash.
3. • Anderson appropriates Schiele’s painterly images and
makes them her own.
• Her mode of re-working the genre generates new
manifestations in postmodern culture.
• Anderson combines the conventions he used with her
own discipline.
• She represents Schiele’s models while re-constructing an
artistic structure within which they could be performed.
4. • Was regarded by art historians as a
major exponent of Viennese
Expressionism (Kallir, 1981, Comini,
1978).
• He produced an oeuvre of painting
and drawings ranging from landscapes
to provocative nudes.
Egon Schiele (1890-1918(
12. A Point of Departure
• Between British postmodernism of late 20th century and
Viennese Expressionism of early 20th century.
• The work challenges modernist art while, at the same
time, creating a link with the past by addressing and
recalling it visually.
• From a historical point of view, does the return to a
model of art from the past supports the development of a
new practice or challenge it?
13. For My Art and for My
Loved Ones, 1912.
Chris Nash, detail from the
dance.
14. Chris Nash, detail from the
dance.
Self-Portrait in Lavender
Shirt, 1914.
16. Speaking of her attempt to reproduce Schiele’s Sketch
Books, Anderson says:
“…I suddenly thought, I wonder what it would
be like if I just reconstruct the ‘Lost Dances’ of
Egon Schiele?”
(in Robertson, 1998, p. 19.)
17.
18. Representation
• Make present again – by means of one kind of
simulacrum.
• Stands for something or someone absent – rests on a
principle of substitution. In theory it covers the entire field
of culture.
(Prendergast, 2000)
21. The Chain of Gazes
• The association between representation and power is
embedded in referential representation: the powerful
female spectator’s look avoid what Maulvey refers to as
‘masculinisation’ of spectatorship (in Doan, 1982).
• The shift from the object to the subject of representation -
the way Anderson transforms Schiele’s Expressionist art.
22.
23. Complexity of Representation
• Anderson: “every single position comes from a
painting or sketch of his.”
in Hutera, 1998.
• The traces of the past are represented as a duality
between 2 layers of time.
• Field of power – every point of view is a relative one.
• The dance works with two distinctive sets of images and
the space between them.
24. Representation – An Active Force
• The dance not only focuses audiences attention on
Schiele’s art, but to Anderson as an author.
• Anderson operates representations through
manipulations of theoretical discourses borrowed from
visual art (way of looking, artist and model, naked and
nude).
25. Conclusions
• The play emphasizes the distance between the
artists and challenges the impossibility of
representation in modernist culture (Connor,
1997).
• The application of imitation and pastiche is a
critical device that deconstructs the conventional
meaning of Schiele’s art.
• The web-like structure demonstrates a new
practice in which the arts to penetrate and enrich
each other.
26. References
Barthes, Roland. “Diderot, Brecht, Eisenstein” in Revue d’Esthétique, Vol. 26,
1973, pp. 185-191.
Briginshaw, Valerie. Lea Anderson Talks to Valerie Briginshaw about Flesh
and Blood. Dance Matters 13, Summer 1995, pp. 4-8.
Burt, Ramsay. Re-Presentations of Re-Presentations. Dance Theatre Journal
14:2, 1998, pp. 30-33.
Comini, Alessandra. The Fantastic Art of Vienna. New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
1978.
Connor, Steven. Postmodernist Culture: An Introduction to Theories of the
Contemporary. Oxford: Blackwell, 1997.
Doane, Mary Ann. “Film and the Masquerade: Theorising the Female
Spectator”. Screen 23:3-4, Sept-Oct 1982, pp. 74-88.
Dodds, Sherril. “‘Perfect Moments, Immaculately Framed’: Lea Anderson and
the Television Text”. Border Tension: Dance & Discourse. Proceedings of the
Fifth Study of Dance Conference, Guildford, University of Surrey, 1995.
27. References
Hargreaves, Martin. “Profile Lea Anderson”. Dance Theatre Journal, 18:3,
2002, pp. 16-19.
Hutcheon, Linda. Modelling the Postmodern: Parody and Politics. A Poetics of
Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction. London: Routledge, 1989, pp. 22-36.
Hutera, Donald. “The Boys get into a Viennese Whirl”. The Times, 10 February
1998, p. 34.
Jordan, Stephanie. The Cholmondeleys, Spring '88. Dance Theatre Journal
6:2, Fall 1988, p. 27.
Kallir, Jane. Austria’s Expressionism. New York: Rizzoli, Galerie St. Etienne,
1981.
Prendergast, Christopher. The Triangle of Representation. New York:
Columbia University Press, 2000.
Robertson, Allen. “G’day Schiele!” Time Out, 31 December – 7 January 1998,
p. 19.
28. Videography
Anderson, Lea and McKeirnan, Kevin. The Lost Dances of Egon Schiele, BBC
and the Arts Council of England, 2002.
