Literature and Theology Advance Access originally published online on July 24, 2008
Literature and Theology 2008 22(3):354-367; doi:10.1093/litthe/frn024
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This article appears in the following Literature and Theology issue: Sexing the Text [View the issue table of contents]
Dancing Modernism: Ritual, Ecstasy and the Female Body
University of Glasgow
s.anderson.1{at}research.gla.ac.uk
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Abstract |
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This article considers the intersection of ritual, dance and embodiment in the work of Isadora Duncan and H.D. I argue that dance lends itself to explorations of gender and embodiment in modernism and that the significance of the body is especially problematic for the female dancer. Modernist writing about dance tends to erase the body of the dancer, presenting her as a disembodied ideal. However, analysis of Isadora Duncan's work reveals a contradictory movement towards an understanding of dance as a bodily grounded art form. The article then traces the role of ritual and the Dionysian ecstasy in their work and their differing treatments of embodiment and sexuality. Jane Harrison's work on the connection between art and ritual illuminates the connection between the moving body and ecstatic ritual for H.D. and Duncan. In ‘The Dancer’, H.D. explores a connection between the desiring body, creativity and spirituality that forms the centre of her poetics. She is preoccupied with dance as a fusion between eroticism and ritual. For H.D., art and spirituality are rooted in the erotic body. Finally, I suggest that the nexus of ritual, ecstasy and embodiment proves to be a creative source for a number of other modernist writers.