Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-8ctnn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T00:44:29.907Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Bad Language: Transpositions in Mark Morris's Dido and Aeneas

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 August 2012

Selby Wynn Schwartz
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In the middle of Mark Morris's ballet Dido and Aeneas, set to the Henry Purcell opera of the same title, a female dancer mimes the story of the Greek goddess Diana and her unfortunate suitor, Actaeon. While hunting in the mountains, Actaeon catches sight of Diana bathing nude, and the fiercely chaste goddess transforms him into a stag; his own well-trained hounds, baying triumphantly, turn on their master. When the word “mountain” is sung, the dancer marks out two jagged peaks over her head with one hand. When the hunter Actaeon is mentioned by name, the dancer mimes a bow being arched and an arrow shot from it. Then, as the line “here, here, Actaeon met his fate,” is being sung, the dancer points one finger down at a spot on the ground, nodding emphatically. It was here, she is saying—right here, where I am pointing, see?

Type
Articles
Information
Dance Research Journal , Volume 44 , Issue 2 , Winter 2012 , pp. 71 - 94
Copyright
Copyright © Congress on Research in Dance 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Acocella, Joan. 1993. Mark Morris. New York: Harper Collins.Google Scholar
Acocella, Joan. 1995. “A Mark Morris Symposium” (with Wendy Lesser, Stephen Greenblatt, Nicholas McGegan, and Alastair Macaulay). The Threepenny Review (61): 20–3.Google Scholar
Acocella, Joan. 2001. “Growing Up: Mark Morris's Twentieth-Anniversary Season.” The New Yorker March 19. http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2001/03/19/010319crte_danceGoogle Scholar
Acocella, Joan. 2006. “Queen for a Day.” The New Yorker March 13. http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/03/13/060313gore_GOAT_recordings1.Google Scholar
Anderson, Jack. 1992. Ballet and Modern Dance: A Concise History. 2nd ed.Princeton, NJ: Dance Horizons.Google Scholar
Anderson, Zoë. 2005. “Mark Morris Dance Group, Sadler's Wells, London: A disciplined cast do justice to the magic of Morris dances.” The Independent Oct 19. http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/news/mark-morris-dance-group-sadlers-wells-london-511584.htmlGoogle Scholar
Austin, J. L. 1962. How to Do Things with Words, 2nd ed., edited by Urmson, J. O. and Sbisà, Marina. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Burt, Ramsay. 2000. “Dance Theory, Sociology, and Aesthetics.” Dance Research Journal. 32(1): 125–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burt, Ramsay. 2006. The Male Dancer: Bodies, Spectacle, Sexualities, 2nd ed.New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Butler, Judith. 2004. “Bodily Inscriptions, Performative Subversions.” In The Judith Butler Reader, edited by Salih, Sara and Butler, Judith, 416–22. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.Google Scholar
Carman, Joseph, Sucato, Steven, and Perron, Wendy. 2005. “He Said/She Said: Dancers and Choreographers Talk about the Role of Gender in their Lives and Work.” Dance Magazine 79(11): 60–4, 66–70.Google Scholar
Croce, Arlene. 1984. “Championship Form.” The New Yorker Dec 17: 138–44.Google Scholar
de Certeau, Michel. 1984. The Practice of Everyday Life, translated by Randal, Steven. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Desmond, Jane C. 1993–94. “Issues in Dance and Cultural Studies.” Cultural Critique 26: 33–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eulenberg, Alex. n.d. “SUM: Words that are their opposites,” Linguist List 6.74 http://www.linguistlist.org/issues/6/6-74.html.Google Scholar
Foster, Susan Leigh. 1986. Reading Dancing: Bodies and Subjects in Contemporary American Dance. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Foster, Susan Leigh. 1996. Choreography and Narrative: Ballet's Staging of Story and Desire. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Foster, Susan Leigh. 1998. “Choreographies of Gender.” Signs 42(1): 1–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foster, Susan Leigh. 2002. “Walking and Other Choreographic Tactics: Danced Inventions of Theatricality and Performativity.” SubStance 98–99 (31: 2–3): 125–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foulkes, Julia L. 2001. “Dance Is for American Men: Ted Shawn and the Intersection of Gender, Sexuality, and Nationalism in the 1930s.” In Dancing Desires: Choreographing Sexualities On and Off the Stage, edited by Desmond, Jane, 113–46. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Garafola, Lynn. 1989. Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Garafola, Lynn. 2005. “Mark Morris and the Feminine Mystique.” In Legacies of Twentieth-Century Dance, 205–9. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.Google Scholar
Garber, Marjorie. 1997. Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Gere, David. 2001. “29 Effeminate Gestures: Choreographer Joe Goode and the Heroism of Effeminacy.” In Dancing Desires: Choreographing Sexualities On and Off the Stage, edited by Desmond, Jane, 349–84. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Goellner, Ellen W., and Murphy, Jacqueline Shea. 1995. “Movement Movements.” In Bodies of the Text: Dance as Theory, Literature as Dance, edited by Goellner, Ellen W. and Murphy, Jacqueline Shea, 1–18. Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Gold, Sylviane. 2009. “Mark Morris at Work, Right There in the Gym.” New York Times, Feb 6. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/08/nyregion/new-jersey/08dancenj.html?scp=1&sq=%22mark%20morris%22&st=cse.Google Scholar
Halberstam, Judith. 1997. “Mackdaddy, Superfly, Rapper: Gender, Race, and Masculinity in the Drag King Scene.” Social Text Queer Transexions of Race, Nation, and Gender, 52/53: 104–31.Google Scholar
Khadarina, Oksana. 2008. “Mark Morris Dance Group: Dido and Aeneas.” http://www.ballet.co.uk/index.htm (accessed November 2001).Google Scholar
Kisselgoff, Anna. 1989. “Purcell's ‘Dido and Aeneas’ As Mark Morris Sees It.” New York Times, June 9. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950DE6DA113FF93AA35755C0A96F948260&scp=20&sq=%22Mark%20Morris%22&st=cse.Google Scholar
Macaulay, Alastair. 1989. “Dido and Aeneas; Theatre Varia, Brussels.” Financial Times. March 30: 25.Google Scholar
Macaulay, Alastair. 2000. “Dido's Wounds.” The Dancing Times. 90: 1077 (June): 815–17.Google Scholar
Manning, Susan. 2004. “Danced Spirituals.” In Of The Presence of the Body: Essays on Dance and Performance Theory, edited by André, Lepecki, 82–96. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.Google Scholar
Martin, Carol. 1999. “Mark Morris' Dido and Aeneas.” In Dancing Texts: Intertextuality in Interpretation, edited by Adshead-Lansdale, Janet, 130–47. London: Dance Books.Google Scholar
Martin, Randy. 1995. “Agency and History: The Demands of Dance Ethnography.” In Choreographing History, edited by Foster, Susan Leigh, 105–18. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
McClary, Susan. 1995. “Music, the Pythagoreans, and the Body.” In Choreographing History, edited by Foster, Susan Leigh, 82–104. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Montgomery, Paul L. 1989. “Mark Morris vs. Brussels Press.” New York Times, Apr 29. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950DE7D7123AF93AA15757C0A96F948260&fta=y.Google Scholar
Morris, Gay. 1996. “Styles of the Flesh: Gender in the Dances of Mark Morris.” In Moving Words: Re-Writing Dance, edited by Morris, Gay, 141–58. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Newton, Esther. 1996. “Dick(less) Tracy and the Homecoming Queen: Lesbian Power and Representation in Gay May Cherry Grove.” In Inventing Lesbian Cultures, edited by Lewin, Ellen, 161–93. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Nijinska, Bronislava. 1981. Early Memoirs, translated and edited by Nijinksa, Irina and Rawlinson, Jean. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.Google Scholar
O'Mahoney, John. 2004. “Moving Spirit.” Guardian UK, Nov 6. http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2004/nov/06/dance.Google Scholar
Parkerson, Michelle. 1987. Storme: The Lady in the Jewel Box Revue. 16 mm/video, 21 min.Google Scholar
Preston-Dunlop, Valerie, and Sanchez-Colberg, Ana. 2002. Dance and the Performative. London: Verve Publishing.Google Scholar
Roach, Joseph. 1995. “Culture and Performance in the Circum-Atlantic World.” In Performativity and Performance, edited by Parker, Andrew and Sedgwick, Eve Kosofky, 45–63. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Roy, Sanjoy. 2008. “Step-by-Step Guide to Dance: Mark Morris.” Guardian UK, Nov 5. http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2008/nov/05/dance-mark-morris.Google Scholar
Rule, Doug. 2009. “Music Man.” Metro Weekly, Jan 29. http://www.metroweekly.com/arts_entertainment/dance.php?ak=4026.Google Scholar
Senior, Jennifer. 2002. “Mark Morris.” New York Magazine, Dec 16. http://nymag.com/nymetro/arts/dance/n_8102/index1.html.Google Scholar
Siegel, Marcia B. 2008. “Dido's Fate.” Boston Phoenix, June 3. http://thephoenix.com/Boston/Arts/62515-MARK-MORRISS-DIDO-AND-AENEAS.Google Scholar
Silbiger, Alexander. 2003. “On Frescobaldi's recreation of the chaconne and the passacaglia.” In The Keyboard in Baroque Europe, edited by Hogwood, Christopher, 3–18. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Singer, Thea. 2008. “Reimagining Dido and Aeneas.” Boston Globe, 30 May. http://www.boston.com/ae/theater_arts/articles/2008/05/30/reimagining_dido_and_aeneas/.Google Scholar
Summers, Claude J., ed. 2004. The Queer Encyclopedia of Music, Dance, and Musical Theater. San Francisco: Cleis Press.Google Scholar
Sweete, Barbara Willis. 1995. Mark Morris Dance Group in Dido and Aeneas. DVD. Canada: Rhombus Media.Google Scholar
Teachout, Terry. 1999. “Opera and Dance, Siblings Too Often Estranged.” New York Times, June 6. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C03E7DE1030F935A35755C0A96F958260&sec=s&spon=&pagewanted=all.Google Scholar
Ulrich, Allan. 2010. “Marching to a Different Drummer.” Dance Magazine, 84: 11 (Nov): 26–8.Google Scholar
Zeitlin, Froma I. 1985. “Playing the other: Theater, theatricality, and the feminine in Greek drama.” Representations 11: 63–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar