Spatial Imagery: Visualization Strategies in Two Dance Performances of Romeo and Juliet
In: The Visual in Performance PracticeSearch for other papers by Bilha Blum in
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In this collaborative chapter we intend to explore the spatial imagery of two different dance performances based on the same Shakespearean play-text – Romeo and Juliet – and danced to the musical score composed by Prokofiev. In the first one, Rudolf Nureyev, working in collaboration with Ezio Frigerio as designer, choreographed a classical ballet piece (1991) depicting Renaissance Verona while following the plot of the play-text step by step; in the second one, Angelin Preljocaj and the renowned visual (mainly comics) artist Enki Bilal created a contemporary dance work (1997) portraying an imaginative futuristic totalitarian society, using the play-text as a mere inspirational starting point. The aim of our examination is to unfold the basic visual principles that frame the formulation of the spatial imagery in each of these dance performances and detect its perceptual and conceptual effects. Our analysis of Nureyev’s and Preljocaj’s respective visualization strategies moves along two main paths: the aesthetical, in which the stage imagery is revealed mainly through the interplay between the visual and the experiential space; and the cultural, which deals with the way the imagery can be understood in an historical and socio-cultural context. Informed by studies in visuality, we intersect between the aesthetical and the cultural and consider the two productions as an indication of the visual turn in terms of performance practice.