| This study considers the aesthetic and thematic inclusion of dance and the figure of the dancer in the writings of Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Frank Wedekind, and Gerhart Hauptmann, whose works are explored within the contexts of body culture movements, innovations in dance, and emergent modernity. Although traditionally associated with the primitive, archaic, pre-cultural, and natural, the body in dance is mobilized by these three authors as a vehicle for exploring a new aesthetic at a time of social and artistic upheaval. Hofmannsthal's interest in dance is shown to be part of a broader discussion of art and the artist. In the dancer he seeks a synthesis of the archaic and modern, of representation and expression, of the body and mind, with the dancer serving as both a model of the creative process and a means to thematize the role of reader or viewer. Through the figure of the dancer, Hauptmann reflects on the relationship of the body and imagination, on artistic production, and on aesthetic tendencies of the early twentieth century. Departing from the expressive paradigm, Wedekind's bodily aesthetic reads the surface of the body through structure, style of movement, the constellation of figures, and mechanics. By examining questions of materiality, representation, and expression in literature and dance, correspondences in modes of representation emerge. Further, these ideas are embedded in each author's relationship to literary movements of the twentieth century. For all three, dance was more than merely a thematic preoccupation or a playful diversion; dance constituted a confrontation with modernity and the creative renewal in forms of representation. |
