This is a book about the Russian modern dance, which was part of the European Art of Movement at the beginning of the twentieth century. The author tries to answer the question about the genesis of Russian new dance. The book’s perspective, which includes the aesthetic theories of symbolism, post-Nietzschean concepts, Isadora Duncan’s "dance of the future," and the projects of the First Avant-gar- de, is supplemented by contexts related to the development of the new psychology, especially the psychoanalytic movement. Political events appear in the background. The author not only explores the multidisciplinarity of Russian art and science during the first three decades of the twentieth century, examining the interconnectedness of artistic, scientific, and political activities, but also delves into individual and collective undertakings while tracing the materiality (corporeality) of diverse cultural texts - externalized in the word, sound, gestures, and movement. The book introduces new threads to the history of art and science at the begin- ning of the twentieth century. The beginnings of the Russian psycho- analytic movement are discussed based on its characteristics and the reflection on affects and their bodily manifestations made jointly by neurologists, psychologists, poets, painters, dancers, religious scholars (representatives of Russian symbolism such as V. Ivanov and T. Zieliń- ski). The experiments of Valentin Parnakh, Stefanida Rudnyeva and the "Heptachor" studio, Ela Rabeneck, Ludmila Alexseyeva, Kasyan Goleizovsky, Lev Lukin, Alexander Rumnev, Nikolai Evreinov, Nikolai Foregger, Inna Chernetskaya, Vera Maya, Alexei Gastiev, and Nina Geiman-Alexandrova are described. A separate chapter is devoted to the process of institutionalization of the Art of Movement and the interdisciplinary work of the Choreological Laboratory at the Russian Academy of Artistic Sciences (with particular emphasis on the local research on the psychology of artistic creativity) and to the efforts of dance theorists and practitioners aiming at their movement’s survival at the outskirts of the Soviet culture of the Stalinist period. The issues presented in the book are discussed from the perspective inspired, among others, by Mieke Bal’s Cultural Analysis, with her notion of "travelling concepts," Jean-Marie Pradier’s ethnoscenol- ogy, and Stephen Greenblatt’s New Historicism. The book is largely based on the materials obtained during archival investigations at the Russian State Archives of Literature and Arts in Moscow, the Central Archive-Museum of Private Collections in Moscow, the archives of A.A. Bakhrushin State Central Theatre Museum in Moscow, and the Russian State Art Library in Moscow. The author proves that the emerging Russian modern dance was a hybrid project, developing at the crossroads of many fields of art and science as a project of comprehensive knowledge about human beings, touching their sensitivity and referring reflectively to their perceptual (sensory), kinesthetic, and cognitive abilities. Inspirations from the field of psychology and psychoanalysis played the role of a "catalyst" directing the search of Russian artists towards experiments with bodily expression which combined the conscious and unconscious realms of the human mind. The focus was on affects, subconscious desires, and impulses, manifested in gestures, postures, and unconscious, illogical body movements. At the pre-expressive level, the concept of subconsciousness became a tool and indicator like 'gesture" and 'body movement," and it was used in artistic work and workshop activities. In the culture of movement, dance was understood in terms of "ex- pressive charge," a form of expression shaped under the influence of an impulse, in which the desire to reveal oneself in movement was manifested together with the dance instinct characteristic of every human being. Traces of dance experiments can be found not only in aesthetic theories, theatrical practices, cinematography, poetry, and visual arts. Drawing on Mieke Bal’s concept of preposterous history, researchers have highlighted the early origins of Russian choreology in relation to Western proposals that emerged half a century later. These proposals include psychodynamic therapy, vegetological ther- apy by W. Reich, bioenergetics by A. Lowen and J.C. Pierrakos, and contemporary dance movement therapy. The book’s methodological attempt to go beyond reflection belonging to a single discipline and the analysis of various textual areas reveals the cultural significance of the experiments of the creators of the Art of Movement. Indeed, certain forms of these experiments - even though the Russian new dance in the 1930s shared the fate of the entire First Avant-garde, as well as the fate of psychoanalysis - have been preserved and employed, often unknowingly, by users with entirely different perspectives and
attitudes.
