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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. Quite a different perspective on one dance
was presented by Paul Gerrard in a review in Isthmus,
Madison's weekly alternative newspaper. "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:
Dances,
Archetypes and the I Ching
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 a 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. What
follows is an exercise in seeing the world in another way, of
sensing what lies behind and within the given world.
The
opening scene had two spheres radiating 7-foot-long white
sticks. The 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
worlds. 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 –it is 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 a person’s first experience
of a possible wholeness and reunion with the One. Memories of
one's first love can linger throughout life. We see the
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 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 and the archetypal/eternal needs time/space to
manifest. 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 a woman, 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 move along diagonal lines, 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 auditorium 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. My favorite scene from the
movie Steppenwolf was Mozart standing at an open window waving his
hands towards the heavens. Lightening zapped from his
extended fingers.
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 described as the straight lines or
paths of energy connecting these power points. In Yaqui sorcery as
presented by Carlos Castaneda, 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, darkness and the 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 energy cycles, each expressing a different pattern of the
natural movement of energy. Each of the 6 lines of a hexagram
express a particular state of energy. Each line presents its
own situation as an aspect within the hexagram qualified by its
hierarchical position, relationships to other lines, and the inner
dynamics of the hexagram.
One
hexagram is either preceded or followed by its opposite in the
sequential arrangement of the 64 hexagrams,. Hexagram
11--Peace, for example, has 3 yang lines below 3 yin lines while
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.
The dancers 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:
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. (p. 68)
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 many years 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)). We are gathered around a
beautiful painting the artist has done. It is a painting of
concentric ovoid shapes of iridescent hue like the inside of a clam
shell. I am taken by the beauty of the painting when I'm
suddenly overwhelmed when I realize 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 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 thought 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: Madison: (608)
255-9330 ext. 5
Milwaukee:
(414) 332-7400
Fax:
(608)
255-7810
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