Dances,
Archetypes and the I Ching
I was watching a dance
performance in 1987 by a newly formed group in Madison when my
mind switched into an archetypal mode of perception.
I saw an archetypal dimension in every movement and in
the developing theme of the performance.
It was like watching an abstract archetypal story manifest
in front of me. I remembered almost every aspect of the
dance, and went home and wrote this article which I took to Isthmus, Madison's weekly alternative newspaper. They turned it down for they already had
a review by Paul Gerrard that I've included as a P.S. "Melrose in Archetypal Motion"
was never published so I'm including it on my web site as a description
of archetypal motifs in dance.
Melrose
in Archetypal Motion
Dennis
L. Merritt, Ph.D.
The first full-scale
performance by the Melrose Motion Company last Friday night was
a bit of a happening for the city of Madison.
Those of us fortunate to be there saw the emergence of
a professional company at every level--dancers, themes, music,
choreography. Our local dance group reflected to us what we turn to artists
to see--a deep look at ourselves, our society, our archetypal
roots.
Claudia Melrose and
company flashed a full spectrum of human experience before our
eyes. The interwoven play of images, like dream images incarnated
by human dancers, left me feeling as I do after waking from a
big dream. I would now have to reflect upon the immediate and
shared experience of watching the dances, talk about and re-feel
it in an attempt to raise to consciousness what I intuitively
felt and grasped at a deep level.
One corner of the spectrum
was anchored by the piece "The Canaries Wouldn't Sing." Long sheets of white paper were ingeniously
used by the dancers to develop a theme of loneliness and alienation.
Paper thin barriers separate one person from another, but
these barriers can be as isolating as steel cocoons.
Into this desperate psychic landscape moved an oasis of
escapism--a cluster of champagne drinkers and coke snorters.
"Living is easy with eyes closed" said John Lennon,
but what bird can sing after the high evaporates back into paper
world reality?
The other extreme flowed
out in two dances--"Oh, Coffee Never Tasted So Good"
and the improvisation "Speed Changes and Elbows."
Bach's "Coffee" cantata music provided the dancers
with a formal backdrop for jestering in the "Coffee"
piece. Their precise movements and the choreography
were hilarious. Comical
performances provide immediate feedback and interplay between
audience and cast via laughter--no waiting until the end of the
performance to recognize audience appreciation of a performance. Laughter, as immediate feedback, generates synergy between
cast and audience, and it does feed the cast. A dancer told me how much the dancers felt the electricity
with the audience --how we were right with them. The improvisation was masterfully done. Improvisation allows an audience to be
privy to the most sacred act in nature and the psyche--the creative
act. The act of creation and the product of creation are one with
improvisation. Within these parameter pieces came other
equally enjoyable dances by Claudia: "Tirade in Blue Notes," "White Chrysanthemum,"
and "Sanctuary," plus a wonderful dance by artist-in-residence
Judith Moss entitled "Thread-Clay-Glass." The dance that intrigued me the most was
"Spinnet" performed by Claudia Melrose and the gifted
Clyde Morgan.
As a Jungian analyst
I look for symbols and archetypes in dreams and life experiences. "Spinnet" seems to have been
born and developed in the archetypal realm. Its theme was the most fundamental of processes--the interplay
and union of opposites.
This process underlies and generates all other processes. The following is an exercise in seeing
the world in another way, of sensing what
lies behind the given world.
The opening scene had
two spheres radiating 7-foot-long white sticks.
These sticks began to rotate against a deep blue background. I was immediately drawn in. I felt as I do when I remember a big,
archetypal dream or I am working with an analysand on such a dream; one enters a timeless, eternal realm,
beyond space-time. It’s
the realm of myth and "once upon a time"--now and forever
sacred space. Within the matrix of the deep blue spiritual
domain were radiating a duality, symbolic of all dualities--time/space,
body/mind, dark/light, male/female, spirit/matter. For something to become conscious, it
must first become a duality so we can differentiate it from something
else. Two figures are often seen in dreams when something is about
to cross the threshold from the unconscious into consciousness.
The Chinese use broken and solid lines to depict
the opposites of Yin and Yang.
Yin and yang are the first visible manifestations of the
Tao--the unknown and unknowable, yet intuitively felt and experienced
in moments of divine inspiration and insight.
The dual spinnets symbolize
opposites in the most archetypically abstract forms. Archetypes? These
are the basic patterns that underlie all human experience. They shape our basic behaviors, responses
and the perceptions of our inner and outer world. They're most clearly seen in the themes
and motifs of religions, rituals, myths, fairytales and classic
(timeless) works of art in whatever form--dance, music, ideas,
images. They're also seen in dreams by the trained
eye and the symbolically oriented person (few in modern society
outside the artistic community).
The purest form of the
archetypes--abstract form, number, color symbolism--is far from
human consciousness. It
feels inhuman, spiritual--of the spirit realm.
To enter consciousness it must incarnate, take on form,
become grounded/embodied.
Looked at biologically and in terms of human development,
it's the personal experience of the basic human condition encoded
in our genes and typical patterns of development.
We each must experience our mother, our father
and our great love to incarnate the archetypes of the Great
Mother, the Father Spirit, and the Soul Image of the ideal man
or woman in our lives.
The spinnets can be
imagined as energy radiating out from a source. Sun
figures symbolically portraying God as light and the source of
all. Emergence begins in "Spinnet" (a dance of life)
when a form arises behind each sun ball.
It's an amorphous form, symbolic of all forms, i.e. no
specific form. Soon we see the particular form will be human as the
dancers show their faces after raising the lower part of their
bodies first. The
particular duality we will see is human male and female,
the opposites we are closest and most intimately life-bound to.
In the Chinese book of wisdom and philosophy, the I
Ching, the masculine is associated in purest form with Hexagram
1--the Creative. This
6-line structure (hexa-gram) is composed of all solid (yang) lines,
associated with one half of existence--the realm of strength,
assertiveness, light, spirit.
The feminine is associated with Hexagram 2--the Receptive;
6 broken (yin) lines forming the other half of existence--softness,
receptivity, darkness, and matter. The two hexagrams/life forces complement
each other. The interplay
of these two forces, also called heaven and earth, generate all
existence. Their
interaction and relatedness is essential and one dominating the
other produces the ills familiar to us in our distorted patriarchal
Western world.
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Hexagram 1--The Creative
Hexagram 2--The Receptive
Male and female dancers
then remove two sticks from their respective light sources. In alchemical imagery these sources would have been depicted
as sun and moon for the respective male and female figures. Jung recognized the alchemists, which
included some of the most brilliant men in the Western world (Isaac
Newton for example), as unconsciously being the first modern depth
psychologists. Alchemy for them was a spiritual process
attempting to heal the split in the Western psyche created by
Christian consciousness.
Christianity's rejected body, sexuality, and feminine elements
have to be re-incorporated into our collective consciousness before
we can heal our cultural, and thereby personal, split.
The synthesis of opposites with conscious awareness is
the goal of every meditative and religious system whether the
goal is described as union with God, enlightenment, or creation
of the philosopher's stone (alchemy). The basic symbolic elements of the process are the same.
The dancers take on
this energy, embody the abstract, give it form when they remove
the sticks/rays and began to move them.
The energy moves through them and they move the sticks/abstract--the
opposites are incarnate.
The dancers then rock back and forth with sticks extended.
This created a strange sense of space warp as the sticks crossed
behind the rays of the spinnet.
The dancers now fast
step around their respective spinnets, turning them as they go. In the opening scene the spinnets moved of their own accord
(so it appeared), symbolic of the collective unconscious, the
abstract archetypal, with its own energy and dynamism. As we live it out it seems we are the energy, that we
move the world rather than the world moving through us.
It is actually both, which is the paradox, the full sense of which
is the religious experience.
The dancers then squat
behind the spinnets. The
sticks are moved from the angle of the rays to a vertical position
as intensity is increased.
This is the last action before the dancers leave the spinnets,
move toward each other, and interact.
Their respective archetypal energies are now incorporated,
are individual and distinct, and can begin to interact.
It is akin to a child developing a sense of self, ego-hood
and sexual identity before interacting with the opposite sex.
In alchemy, the opposites must be separated before a real
conjunction can occur.
The seven foot poles
held outward created the distinct appearance of insect antennae. As such they symbolize a considerable extension into the world
of the individual's feelings and sensitivities. "Reach out with your feelings," Ben Obi-wan Kenobi
told Luke Skywalker. We
talk about "keeping our antennae out"--being alert and
aware. Insect antennae are packed with taste,
touch, smell and even sound receptors.
The first conjunction
of opposites now occurs as the dancers join back to back and move
forward and backward, up and down while dramatically moving their
sticks in circles or figure eights.
The sticks serve here as amplifiers of the arm movements.
Male and female are joined in a ritualized mating dance.
A spiritual epiphany
has been depicted--a conscious return to a sense of wholeness
and oneness. The physical and sexual union at this
stage of the dance is like one's first love --its idealized and
concretized and evaporates after the projections onto the opposite
sex are destroyed or the honeymoon ends.
But it is the first sense of a conjunction/union and one's
first experience of a possible wholeness and reunion with the
One. Memories of
one's first love can linger throughout life. We see this initial conjunction in the
fairy tale "Rapunzel", for example, when the prince
and long-haired Rapunzel have made love in the tower. The witch
discovers them and drives Rapunzel into mournful exile while the
prince is blinded after being cast into thornbushes.
The second and complete union comes at the end of the tale
after the prince searches for years before finding Rapunzel and
her twins and has his sight restored.
The dancers then do
a slow crossing pattern, one behind the other, moving their sticks
from vertical to parallel to horizontal.
This is followed by energetic floor tapping, then with
increasing speed whipping the sticks about in the air. The moves symbolize the opposites staying
in ritual relationship to each other and the mutually energizing
effect. The dancers then move around the balls,
reconnecting with their source energies.
The personal continually returns to its archetypal roots: religio means to link back. The
time/space bound needs a sense of the eternal. The woman dancer then lies on the floor and turns like the
spinnet. Then she
is turned by the man. The
abstract archetypal is now personally embodied by the feminine,
then responds to the yang masculine moving force (the animus in
Jungian terminology--a woman's inner "masculine" energies
and ideal male). The
man then pulls the woman dancer up. They do a diagonal pattern, then return to the spinnet to take
out 4 more sticks. Each
dancer now has 3 sticks in each hand.
It created a powerful effect to see them hold the sticks
extended like 3 giant fingers on each hand, like lines that could
extend into infinity. I was jolted by the echoes of this image
with two dreams I've had.
One occurred years ago in which I was in my high school
auditorium. Power lines extended outward into infinity
from each of my fingers.
It was an incredible experience to stand in the middle
of the floor moving my fingers.
The second dream I had a few weeks ago.
I was in a lab with other people.
Again it seemed that invisible lines of energy extended
out from my fingers. By moving my fingers I could actually
stir water in a beaker from a distance with these energy lines.
Fingers are symbolic
of creativity. The Greek word for finger, dactyl, is related to the mythical dactyls that helped Rhea
give birth to Zeus. The
phallic form of the fingers symbolizes yang energy and the creative
spark. With our hands we create, form, manipulate.
To be creative is to be in touch with the divine, to be
divinely inspired.
These extended invisible
power lines intuitively feel like they are related to the ley
lines seen by certain mystics. Holy
places like the pyramids and Stonehenge are believed to be constructed
over special power points on the earth, something like planetary
acupuncture points. Ley lines are straight lines or paths
of energy connecting these power points. In Yaqui sorcery as presented
by Carlos Castenada, it is believed that the world is composed
of lines that one can come to know directly with the proper exercises.
Each dancer had 6 sticks,
3 in each hand. Again
I sensed a connection with hexagrams of the I Ching
with the upper and lower 3 lines representing 2 different aspects
of the whole hexagram. The
lower 3 lines (lower trigram) represent the more unconscious,
inner nature, dark and unknown. The upper 3 lines (upper trigram) represent
the more conscious, outer, light, spirit and freedom. The Chinese believed they could illustrate
all basic cosmic processes with 64 hexagrams. (There are 64 different ways one can combine
6 solid and broken lines (yang and yin)). The hexagrams symbolically represent 64 phases of periodic
energy cycles, each expressing a different pattern of natural
energy movement. Each
of the 6 lines of a hexagram express a particular energy condition. Each line presents its own situation and an aspect within the
hexagram.
In the sequential arrangement
of the 64 hexagrams, one hexagram is either preceded or followed
by its opposite. Hexagram
11--Peace, for example, has 3 yang lines below 3 yin lines. Hexagram 12--Standstill, has 3 yang lines above 3 yin lines.
Opposites are always in relationship to each other.
This relationship of opposites at the most abstract archetypal
level was dramatically portrayed by the male and female dancers
with the 6 power lines radiating from their fingers.
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Hexagram 11--Peace
Hexagram 12--Standstill
The dancers then generated
various patterns of relationship to each other.
One pattern included touching the ends of the sticks on
the floor and pushing them into the partners sticks to form an
interwoven pattern of 12 sticks.
This union of opposites generates the number 12, one of
the most powerful conjunction numbers (a union of 3 and 4 [3 x
4]). The archetypal
wholeness of this number finds expression in the 12 months of
the year, the 12 apostles, 12 signs of the zodiac, etc.
This symbolic dance
of union preceded the second conjunction for the dancers where
they once again came together with the female atop the male, creating
a magnificent butterfly image with the sticks extended like the
veins of a butterfly wing. I thought of the Greek word psyche which means butterfly. The dancers then strut across the stage like peacocks, holding
the sticks behind them like a tail. The peacock with its colorful tail is one of the images for
the completed alchemical work when the alchemical vessel is opened
and one's transformed energies can radiate into the world. They then swing the sticks about and let them go and dance
a figure 8 path about the two spinnets.
This symbolic act creates a perfect conjunction number/figure.
The number 8 is seen as an infinity symbol since it is formed
without lifting pen from paper.
It is two circles combined, flowing from one to the other
in the process of creating or re-tracing the number 8.
It is two 4s combined, 4 being a number of wholeness.
The initial abstract duality presented at the beginning
of the dance has now been incarnated and combined, signifying
the end point of the alchemical process, the union with God, the
interrelationship between conscious and the unconscious.
The symbolic dance of life has been danced before our eyes.
A masterful piece by Melrose.
A fitting quote for
a dance of this magnitude comes from the I Ching
in Hexagram 16--Enthusiasm.
It is composed of the trigram the Arousing, thunder, over
the Receptive, earth. In Wilhelm's I Ching we read: (p. 68)
When at the beginning
of summer, thunder--electrical energy--comes rushing forth from
the earth again, and the first thunderstorm refreshes nature,
a prolonged state of tension is resolved. Joy and relief make themselves felt.
So too, music has power to ease tension within the heart
and to loosen the grip of obscure emotions. The enthusiasm of the heart expresses itself
voluntarily in a burst of song, in dance and rhythmic movement
of the body. From
immemorial times the inspiring effect of the invisible sound that
moves all hearts, and draws them together, has mystified mankind.
Let me close with 2
parts of a 3 part dream I had almost 2 years ago.
It is a further development of a series of dreams going
back to the beginning of my analysis.
Four people are standing
on a broad ledge half way down a mountain.
The people are myself, an unknown male to my left, a male
artist about my age standing directly across from me, and an unknown
woman to his right (in Jungian terms, the ego, the shadow (dark
side of the ego), the Self as creator (God image) and the anima
(ideal feminine) to his right). The four of us are looking at a beautiful
painting done by the artist.
It is a painting of concentric ovoid shapes of iridescent
hue, something like the appearance of the inside of a clam shell. I am taken by the beauty of the painting when I'm suddenly
overwhelmed to realize that its even more amazing how the painting
was made. The artist
has taken pieces of cloud and arranged them in such a way to reflect
light so that is looks like a painting.
Change of scene. I'm in a city and I don't know which city.
The sense of creativity carries over from the first part
of the dream. A voice says "Madison." End of dream.
Last Friday night I
experienced that creativity in Madison in its dance form. Bravo Claudia!
P.S. Paul Gerrard's Isthmus
review of "Spinnet" (Isthmus, February 27, 1987, p. 29) presented quite the opposite impression of
the performance. Under
the title "Melrose in a Muddle," Gerrard said:
"Spinnet,"
a duet danced and choreographed by Melrose and Clyde Morgan, was
less a dance than an exploration of the theatrical possibilities
of two people manipulating several long poles.
The concept sounds fertile:
You can imagine witty and elegant geometric variations.
But "Spinnet" had neither wit nor elegance. There were some imaginative stage pictures, but the apparent
aim was nothing less than an allegory for the creation of life,
with the poles used to suggest primordial sea urchins, insects
with whipping antennae, strutting peacocks and finally geometric
patterns (the birth of the rational mind?)
Add Michele Musser's ponderous post-Tangerine Dream electronic
score, and you have a work of ridiculous pomposity.
In some ways our two
perspectives agree. Gerrard
saw in the piece "an allegory for the creation of life"--and
its evolution. Jung noted that phylogeny recapitulates
ontogeny--the development of the individual recapitulates the
evolution of the species, physiologically and psychologically.
e-mail: DLMerritt@cal.berkeley.edu
Telephone:
(608) 255-9330 ext. 5
Fax: (608) 255-7810
Website: www.DennisMerrittJungianAnalyst.com
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