Conclusions
Dance manifests, therefore, a complex function of communication, which necessarily implies an intersubjective dimension. This is constitutive of language, in general. In the functioning of any language, objectifying the code is based precisely on the users’ intersubjectivity. Particularly, dance semiosis, yet inaccurately mapped, is located at the confluence between certain subjective, idiosyncratic contents and a collective pattern of representations. This ambivalence offers a premise for the interpretation of the aesthetic. Greimas’s dichotomy “practical/mythic” (with a particular meaning of the second term) is a useful tool in describing gestuality, including certain kinesic-postural configurations specific to different types of dancing. Used as a “practical” communication code, gestuality represents only a non-verbal translation of the means of linguistic communication; while gestual elements rendering “mythical” contents structure their own semantism according to a global principle of “functional and narrative” coherence, as Greimas said; particularly, the kinesic-postural figures lose their individual, prior signification, modifying it within the global meaning of the choreographic program to which they co-participate. Thus, in a choreographic corpus, we can find the attributive, modal, mimetic and, respectively, ludic kinesic-postural configurations, which Greimas identified also in relatively commun gesture; but in a choreographic discourse, these configurations vary and specify their semantism, owing to their hypotaxic relations.
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[1] A show performed at the Paris Opera, choreographer Rudolf Nureev (after Marius Petipa), music by Ludwig Minkus.
[2] The choreography is signed by Yuri Grigorovici and the music by Aram Haciaturian; the show was put on stage at the Grand Theatre in Moscow (a 1975 record).
[3] Choreography by I. Perro (after Marius Petipa), music by C. Pugni; a show performed at the Saint Petersburg State Theatre (1994).
[4] Greimas (1970) discusses and illustrates both the “arbitrary and constant”, contextually conditioned nature of “communicative” gestual semiosis, by arguing that there is often no “natural” motivation to correlate an opposition at the level of expression (such as closed eyes vs. open eyes) with an opposition at the level of content (cunningness vs. innocence, for example).
[5] Between mobility and its opposites – observes J. Cl. Schmitt (1990) – there is not only an opposition, but also “a hierarchy which organizes the beliefs and ideology and contributes to shaping the judgments made concerning gestures” [our transl.]. Thus, “simulating immobility, hieratism, displaying relics or ritual objects, slow and solemn processions are attributes of power and signs of sacredness. (…) The Medieval Eve exploited gestures in terms of everything related to attitude more than to movement, for example immobility in prayer, as a sign of recollectedness and listening to divinity” [our transl.] (Ibidem).
[6] “Personal distance” – a name which, as Hall himself confesses, is owed to Hediger – contains, in its turn, two aspects: the “close phase” (45 – 75 cm) and, respectively, the “far phase” (75 – 125 cm). The latter is relevant for what “to keep somebody at a distance” means (see Hall 1971: 151).
[7] The gesture performed by the hand with the stretched index may be considered a (semiotically) “motivated” sign, to the extent in which we accept the fact that it results from a “miniature reduction of the cane, spear”, thus referring to a semantic content of aggression (see Sulger 1986).