Una sexualització de la mirada - les funcions d'Eros en la poètica de Hans van Manen

Abstract

This doctoral research employs a series of phenomenological parameters inherent in the cultural representation of Eros –referring to seduction, transgression, pornography, and desire, among others– as a tool for interpreting the poetics of the Dutch neoclassical choreographer Hans van Manen (Nieuwer-Amstel, 1932). In this perspective, I propose a dissection of the symptomatic operations that characterize the choreographer's poetic signature, situating them both in their historical and cultural context and in the discursive and phenomenological universe of the erotic experience._x000D_ _x000D_ In an interview from the year 1998, Hans van Manen stated: "I cannot imagine anything without eroticism." This assertion raises intriguing questions, such as: What are the poetic powers encapsulated in phenomena such as sexual arousal or the erotic experience of transgression, once they are applied to the realm of staged dance? How do these powers become apparent in the specific case of his ballets? Can it be argued, based on the example of Hans van Manen, that the notion of choreography can be read from an erotic perspective?_x000D_ _x000D_ To address these questions, I propose that the erotic charge of Van Manen's work is conveyed, first and foremost, through the gaze that the choreographer directs towards his creative processes – always activated by the pursuit of a certain phenomenological tension. Secondly, that this charge manifests itself through a choreographic style seeking to seduce the audience by presenting a series of tensions and perversions that affect both the formal (or syntactic) and expressive (or semantic) dimensions of his artistic language._x000D_ _x000D_ Regarding the syntactic aspect: Influenced by the aesthetic, philosophical, and political currents of his time, Hans van Manen constantly plays with the possibility of transgressing the original muteness of classical dance from a modern and cheeky perspective. However, he does so without completely abolishing the conventional and nineteenth-century paradigms that govern it, thus generating a formal tension with the same code with which he writes his dances. Using the term coined by Roland Barthes, in this research, I describe Hans van Manen in this sense as a logothete: a language founder, more interested in how signs are tensed under the scrutiny of his gaze than in the potential collective truth they may point to._x000D_ _x000D_ Regarding the expressive or semantic aspect, Hans van Manen understands dance as a coded system of abstract forms that, nevertheless, emerge in the world through the action, dynamism, character, and expressiveness of human bodies in motion – with all that this implies in terms of possible dramatic or emotional reading. From this premise, I propose that what is erotic in van Manen's poetics is not so much his preference for a literal exploration of the interplay between sign and referent within the dramatic order of sexual attraction between individuals, but above all the manner of seeing that is imposed upon us, as spectators, regarding the dynamic, interpersonal, and human relationships that are configured through his choreographies._x000D_ _x000D_ In the negotiation between sign and syntagma, in the promise of achieving something akin to a form of verbal eloquence: it is in the delighted suggestion of this possibility through different resources and strategies (and in its constant renunciation) where the most vertiginously seductive potential of his proposal lies.

Date of Award	18 Sept 2024
Original language	Catalan
Supervisor	Roberto Fratini Serafide (Director)