Classic English Futurism & Fiume

Futurism & Fiume · Unit 3 of 6

Dance in words

In Unit 2, Kochnitzky wrote that "Fiume dances before death". The avant-garde wanted to change dance too: dancers who move like machines, puppets that replace dancers, actors trained like factory workers. In this unit you will read about four new kinds of dance, learn the language of movement, and write a dance : a set of written instructions so clear that a reader can see the dance in their mind.

  • Reading and scanning
  • Grammar: verbs of motion · adverbs · prepositions of movement
  • Writing a dance score
  • Oral presentation

01Reading: dance like a machine

Marinetti's Manifesto of Futurist Dance, 1917, and Giannina Censi's aerodance, 1931 · written for this lesson

1. On 8 July 1917, in the middle of the First World War, Marinetti published the Manifesto of Futurist Dance in the Florence newspaper L'Italia futurista. He looked at the most famous dancers of his time: the Russian star Vaslav Nijinsky, the American Isadora Duncan, who danced barefoot in Greek tunics, and Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. He admired Nijinsky's "pure geometry", but he said that all of them still belonged to the past. A Futurist dancer must not copy swans, flowers or waves. "We must {T}imitate{/T} with our {G}gestures{/G} the movements of machines," he wrote. He dreamed of "the ideal body multiplied by the motor".

2. He proposed three new dances, all taken from the war: the Dance of the Shrapnel, the Dance of the Machine Gun and the Dance of the Aviator. In the Dance of the Aviator, a dancer with a white-painted face and a hat shaped like a small plane moves across a huge map covered with words. A {C}celluloid{/C} propeller fixed to her chest shakes as she moves. She lies flat on her stomach and tries to take off, again and again, and fails. She {K}crawls{/K} on all fours; then she jumps up with her arms open. At the end she spins as fast as she can, chasing a big golden cardboard sun, bursts through a paper frame and scatters golden stars. Around her, signs give short messages: "15 degrees below zero", "enemy 700 metres away".

3. Fourteen years later, a young dancer finally performed what Marinetti had imagined. On 31 October 1931, at the Galleria Pesaro in Milan, Giannina Censi danced the first aerodanza ("air-dance"). She had trained in classical ballet with the great teacher Enrico Cecchetti, but she wanted to turn ballet into "something different, something of the future". She danced barefoot and alone, with no music, while Marinetti read his poems about flying from behind the stage. Her arms stretched out like wings and turned like propeller blades. Her aunt, Rosina Ferrario, was one of Italy's first women pilots.

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Write at least 20 characters first.
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02Reading: a woman answers back

Valentine de Saint-Point (1875–1953) · written for this lesson

1. In Unit 1 you read point 9 of Marinetti's manifesto: "scorn for woman". One Futurist replied. Valentine de Saint-Point was a French poet, painter and dancer, a great-grandniece of the poet Alphonse de Lamartine. On 27 June 1912, at the Salle Gaveau in Paris, she read her Manifesto of the Futurist Woman. It begins: "Humanity is mediocre." Her argument was that men and women are equally mediocre, and that both need the same energy and courage.

2. On 20 December 1913, at a theatre on the Champs-Élysées in Paris, she presented a new art she called Métachorie: a "total fusion of the arts". She danced to her own poems and to music, while lights and geometric shapes were projected behind her. She wore almost nothing but pieces of silk, and a {V}veil{/V} covered her face, so that the audience would watch the movement and not her expression. In April 1917 she brought Métachorie to the Metropolitan Opera House in New York.

3. Marinetti did not approve: in his dance manifesto he called Métachorie old-fashioned. Saint-Point's life went in a direction no one expected. She became a Muslim, and in 1924 she moved to Cairo, took the name Ruhiyya Nur al-Din, and wrote in support of Egyptian and Arab independence from Europe. She died there in 1953.

Valentine de Saint-Point in Métachorie, about 1913–1917. Her face is hidden behind a veil, as the text describes. Date and photographer unknown.
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Write at least 20 characters first.

03Scanning: dancers made of wood

In 1918 the Futurist painter Fortunato Depero and his friend, the Swiss writer Gilbert Clavel, had an idea: replace the dancers with {M}marionettes{/M}. Depero made wooden figures painted with bright, flat colours, and a puppet company moved them on strings. Here is the programme of the first night, translated. The original puppets were destroyed; copies made in 1980 are in the Mart museum in Rovereto, Italy.

Programme, Rome, 1918 · translated for this lesson

Plastic Dances

at the Teatro dei Piccoli, from 15 April 1918
with an exhibition of the painter DEPERO

5 Plastic Dances

Scenery: bright architectural perspectives · Costumes: wood painted with coloured {E}enamels{/E} · designs by DEPERO

{CH}Choreography{/CH} with Gilbert CLAVEL · musical direction by Alfredo CASELLA
performed by the Gorno Dell'Acqua Marionette Company

  1. 1. The Clowns · a village of lights and flowers
    Clowns, a ballerina, a hen and butterflies · music by Casella
  2. 2. The Man with the Moustache · a golden street
    A blue ballerina, drunken dances, white mice, a rain of cigarettes · music by Gerald Tyrwhitt
  3. 3. The Savages · a tropical landscape
    Red and black savages, the giant savage woman and the green snake · music by Francesco Malipiero
  4. 4. Shadows · moving shadows built from grey and black planes
  5. 5. The Blue Bear · the bear's dance and a parade of the marionettes · music by Chemenow

Note: dance 3 uses the word "savages", which is how many Europeans described non-European peoples in 1918. Today we see it as an insulting word.

See the puppetsPhotographs of the reconstructed puppets (the Hen, the Cat and others) are in this exhibition review: Finestre sull'Arte · Marionettes as art and avant-garde. Depero's work is still under copyright, so we link to it instead of showing it here.

Watch: the puppets dance

In 2012 the Plastic Dances were performed again in Rovereto, Depero's home town, with Casella's music. Watch the first part.

Depero, Balli plastici, music by Alfredo Casella · Rovereto, 2012

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Find it fast

Scanning means looking quickly for one piece of information. Answer from the programme in a few words. Try to finish in two minutes.

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04Reading: the actor as a machine

Vsevolod Meyerhold (1874–1940) and biomechanics · written for this lesson

1. On the far left, in Moscow, the theatre director Vsevolod Meyerhold had the same dream as Marinetti, for different reasons. Meyerhold supported the Russian Revolution of 1917. In the early 1920s, at his theatre school, he created a training system for actors called biomechanics. He was inspired by the American engineer Frederick Winslow Taylor, who studied factory workers with a stopwatch to make every movement faster and more {EF}efficient{/EF}. Meyerhold wanted actors to move like the best workers in a modern factory: no wasted movement, every gesture clear, the body a well-built machine.

2. Biomechanics is built from short exercises called études, with names like "Shooting from the Bow", "Throwing the Stone", "The Slap" and "Stab with the Dagger". Every movement has three parts. First the actor makes a small movement in the opposite direction, to prepare (otkaz, "refusal"). Then comes the movement itself (posyl, "sending"). Then a sharp stop (tormoz, "brake"). In 1922 his actors performed the comedy The Magnanimous Cuckold on a bare stage, using a wooden construction by the artist Lyubov Popova, with ladders, platforms, a slide and turning wheels, like gym equipment.

3. Under Stalin, experiments like Meyerhold's were no longer welcome. His theatre was closed in 1938. In 1939 he was arrested and tortured, and in February 1940 he was shot.

Two of Meyerhold's actors perform a biomechanics étude, Moscow. Date and photographer unknown. Which étude could this be?
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Write at least 20 characters first.
Write at least 20 characters first.

Watch: "Shooting from the Bow"

This is one of Meyerhold's études, performed today by a teacher of biomechanics. There is no real bow and no arrow: the actor shows them with the whole body. Watch it twice. The first time, just watch. The second time, look for the three parts of each movement: the preparation, the action and the stop.

Write at least 20 characters first.

Meyerhold's étude "Shooting from the Bow" · International Centre for Theatre Arts (CITA)

A sequence of biomechanics exercises, photographed frame by frame. The sheet is marked 1927 and 1930. Photographer unknown.

05Grammar: the language of movement

Three tools

ToolExamples
Verbs of motion say exactly what the body does. Choose a precise verb instead of move or go.She lurches forward. He pivots on one foot. The arms sway.
Adverbs of manner say how. Most are adjective + -ly. After -le, drop the e (gentle → gently); after a consonant + y, change y to i (heavy → heavily); after -ic, add -ally (mechanic → mechanically).slowly · suddenly · gently · heavily · mechanically
Prepositions of movement say where to.across the floor · through the frame · around the chair · towards the camera · onto the table · away from the light

Put them together: verb + adverb + preposition phrase. She crawls slowly across the map. Irregular adverbs: fast → fast (not fastly), good → well, hard → hard.

Practice: complete the sentence

06Writing: your dance score

A dance score is a set of written instructions for a dance. Write a Futurist dance in eight counts for a modern machine. Nobody will dance it: your words must do the work. Write each count so precisely that a reader can see the movement in their mind, the way you could see the Dance of the Aviator in section 01.

Word bank (words you use light up)

0 words

07Speaking: present your dance

In class, you will present your dance score on camera in about two minutes. You speak; you do not dance.

  1. Introduce it. Say the title and the machine, and one sentence about why you chose it: I chose the drone because…
  2. Read the score. Read the eight counts slowly, one at a time, with a short pause between them, as if you are reading to dancers.
  3. Explain two choices. Choose two counts and explain them: In count 4 I used "jolts" because a drone stops suddenly when…
  4. Connect it. Say which artist from this unit your dance is closest to, Marinetti, Saint-Point, Depero or Meyerhold, and why.
  5. Answer questions. Your teacher will ask you one or two questions about your words. Answer in full sentences.

08Vocabulary

The twelve words to learn from this unit. Tap 🔊 to hear each one.

09Send your work

Words