Books by Rosella Simonari
Alberto Spadolini, Apollo della danza, 2020
Alberto Spadolini (1907-1972) è stato pittore, danzatore e molto altro, ma la danza costituisce i... more Alberto Spadolini (1907-1972) è stato pittore, danzatore e molto altro, ma la danza costituisce il fil rouge della sua carriera. Nato in un’Ancona turbolenta e formatosi a Roma, debutta in Francia nel 1932, raggiungendo il successo come danzatore di music-hall ne La Joie de Paris, con Josephine Baker. In un’intervista si definisce “anarchico” e nel 1933 si esibisce nel Gala de danse, spettacolo di danza “pura” dove si percepisce una linea autoriale che lo discosta dal music-hall. Nonostante egli indossi costumi di vario tipo, viene classificato come “danzatore nudo” dalla stampa, per il fisico statuario che esibisce in alcune coreografie. Dagli anni Quaranta in poi, inizia a dipingere una serie di quadri incentrati sulle ballerine della danza classica, ricordando, per certi versi, Edgar Degas. Analizzando documenti anche rarissimi, il presente studio esplora il rapporto di Spadolini con l’arte coreutica, illustrando un altro nome col quale era conosciuto: Apollo della danza.
This is a detailed synopsis in English of my book in Italian on Martha Graham's choreography, Let... more This is a detailed synopsis in English of my book in Italian on Martha Graham's choreography, Letter to the World. The book has been published by Aracne, Rome, 2015.
Letter to the World (1940–41) è una coreografia poco conosciuta di Martha Graham dedicata ad Emil... more Letter to the World (1940–41) è una coreografia poco conosciuta di Martha Graham dedicata ad Emily Dickinson. Confrontandosi con documenti di vario tipo (scritti, orali, audiovisivi), Rosella Simonari si propone di ricostruirla e contestualizzarla secondo una prospettiva storico culturale che includa l’indagine microstorica e coreutica. Il risultato è potente e inusuale per l’epoca, dato che le poesie di Dickinson venivano ancora pubblicate in modo alterato rispetto all’originale e una critica su di lei non si era ancora pienamente sviluppata. Dallo studio di Letter to the World emergono inoltre aspetti poco indagati se non ignorati del lavoro di Graham, come la sua fascinazione per la Vergine, l’importanza del puritanesimo e il «motivo del viaggio», ovvero il percorso ad ostacoli che l’artista intraprende per portare a compimento la propria opera. Ritroviamo questi aspetti in altre opere di Graham (come Primitive Mysteries, Frontier ed Errand into the Maze) e in quelle di altri coreografi, scrittori e intellettuali, come Doris Humphrey, William Carlos Williams, Frederick Jackson Turner e Joseph Campbell.
Peer reviewed essays by Rosella Simonari
European Journal of American Culture, 2023
The Notebooks of Martha Graham (1973) is a set of notes Graham wrote between the late 1940s and t... more The Notebooks of Martha Graham (1973) is a set of notes Graham wrote between the late 1940s and the 1960s. They include quotations from various subjects such as literature, mythology and art. Fifteen pages are dedicated to William Shakespeare’s King Lear, as Graham had decided to choreograph a work on this famous tragedy, titled The Eye of Anguish. Graham did not perform in it and created the dance for her partner on stage and then husband Erick Hawkins. The notes present an interesting layout, have no date and are characterized by a fascinating question in regard to the relationship between quotations from the play and Graham’s comments. The notes address various topics, but one is particularly striking, that is the Fool image. The Fool is a complex character in King Lear and, at one point, Graham quotes Lear’s famous line ‘when we are born we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools’. What is her relationship to the ‘stage of fools?’ How does she elaborate her notes on the actual choreography? In this study, I intend to explore the notes following three aspects: the notes as such, their layout, date and quotation–non quotation arrangement; the stage-Fool binomial and how it reverberates across Graham’s work; the final notes on the choreography. The methodological tools used are those of dance and literary studies and cultural history.
Dance Research, vol. 38, n. 2, 2020
The Italian dancer and painter Alberto Spadolini was rediscovered when a box containing numerous ... more The Italian dancer and painter Alberto Spadolini was rediscovered when a box containing numerous documents relating to his artistic life was recovered in 1978 by his nephew, Marco Travaglini. This box forms the core of the archive assembled by Travaglini since 2004, containing valuable information about his uncle who had been largely-neglected. Spadolini (1907–1972) was born in Ancona, Italy, studied in Rome during the 1920s and moved to France in the 1930s. In 1932, he became a famous music-hall dancer performing in solo numbers and group works with Josephine Baker and Mistinguett, among others. Throughout the decade he came to be known as ‘the nude dancer’, possibly owing to the skimpy costumes he usually wore and his statuesque body. From the 1940s he began painting a series of works featuring ballerinas in tutus. He never spoke to his nephew about his life as dancer, so that when Travaglini found the box, he was amazed at what he discovered. The box constitutes a precious archive, containing photographs, posters, articles, and reviews relating to Spadolini's career as a dancer and painter. I intend to analyse Spadolini's box using methodological tools from archive studies and from dance and cultural history, with particular attention to the concept of cultural hegemony, in order to establish the fundamental importance of such archives to the recovery of neglected figures like Spadolini.
Roots-Routes - Research in Visual Cultures www.roots-routes.org, 2019
View article here: http://www.roots-routes.org/afrofuturist-degas-by-rosella-simonari/
Journal of Adaptation in Film and Performance, 2019
Letter to the World is a choreography Martha Graham created in 1940 and revised in 1941. It is de... more Letter to the World is a choreography Martha Graham created in 1940 and revised in 1941. It is dedicated to Emily Dickinson, one of her favourite poets. However, it is not a biographical account, but an introspective work, that, in Graham’s words, investigates the New England poet’s ‘inner landscape’. The protagonist is split into two: the One Who Dances who performs the most demanding dance phrases and the One Who Speaks, who utters lines from Dickinson’s poems and letters. The other characters embody emanations of the poet’s personality. The main narrative rotates around the struggle between the One Who Dances and the Ancestress, who embodies the poet’s Puritan tradition and death. The combination of dances and spoken lines provides a unique portrait of the poet.
In this article, I intend to analyse Letter to the World as a dance adaptation of Emily Dickinson. The method through which I will conduct my analysis consists of cultural and dance history, adaptation and narrative theory. First, I will focus on the notion of dance adaptation itself; then, I will present a reconstruction of the piece and proceed to explore the material Graham consulted for her work; after this, I will analyse it in terms of narrative highlighting the way the dances and spoken lines contribute to shaping it; I will conclude with a reflection on the reasons that brought Graham to focus on Dickinson.
European Journal of American Cuture, Jun 2014
Puritanism, in Martha Graham’s dance work, has been an important conception for the development o... more Puritanism, in Martha Graham’s dance work, has been an important conception for the development of her style, but has not been thoroughly analyzed by scholars. The Ancestress, in one of her most interesting and neglected pieces, Letter to the World (1940), embodies a powerful interpretation of Puritanism. The idea of focusing on a single character stems from the resonances it produces on the choreography and on Graham’s production at large.
Letter to the World is about Emily Dickinson’s poetry and personality, and the Ancestress represents the puritanical force of tradition that attempts to stop the growth of the poet’s (creative) life. In this sense, she can be compared to Mother Ann Lee, leader of the Shakers, who preached chastity among her acolytes and to the way William Carlos Williams portrays the Puritans in his book of essays, In the American Grain (1925), a book that influenced Graham’s vision. Puritanism undergoes an interesting transformation this time in one of Graham’s dance’s most celebrated pieces, Appalachian Spring (1944), where the Revivalist sums up what the Ancestress represented with three twists in terms of name, gender and dance.
Dance Research, 2008
Carmen was published as a novella in 1845 by Prosper Mérimée and in 1875 the composer Georges Biz... more Carmen was published as a novella in 1845 by Prosper Mérimée and in 1875 the composer Georges Bizet transformed it into what would become a universally known opera. It is a French myth of a Spanish Gypsy whose sensual beauty leads men to perdition. As such it makes use of recurring elements of Spanish culture which are often reduced to stereotypical images. The 1983 film directed by Carlos Saura, with choreography by Antonio Gades, questions the cliché associated with the figure of Carmen by focussing on two principal issues: the story’s multi-linear structure and Gades’s flamenco dance. The structure is characterised by a story within a story: a choreographer who is looking for a dancer to perform Carmen falls in love with the performer of his choice, thus following the storyline he is supposed to represent in his choreography. Gades’s flamenco dance is revealed as a work in progress, reconnecting the Carmen myth with its roots and, at the same time, deconstructing it from within. In this paper I shall analyse Antonio Gades’s flamenco dance in Saura’s Carmen in the light of current postcolonial perspectives. As Ermanna Carmen Mandelli has observed, Gades’s style was inspired by the poor people of his childhood background and in contrast with the españolada (a performance which exaggerates the Spanish character) promoted by the Francoist regime. The analysis will be concluded with a close reading of the tabacalera scene which exemplifies Gades’s style and his vision of Carmen.
Essays by Rosella Simonari
Corpi danzanti. Culture, tradizioni, identità, Conference Proceedings dedicated to Giorgio Di Lecce, Ornella Di Tondo, Immacolata Giannuzzi, Sergio Torsello, edited by, Nardò, Besa, 2009, pp. 209-230.
www.carmillaonline.com/archives/2008/09/002794.html, 28 September 2008.
Looking Back/Moving Forward, SDHS (Society of Dance History Scholars) Conference Proceedings, 2008, pp. 52-57.
Bolero-Spadò: Alberto Spadolini, una vita di tutti i colori, Marco Travaglini (ed.), Modigliana, Litografia Fabbri, 2007, pp. 118-126. Exhibition Catalogue, Sala Imperatori, Porto San Giorgio (Fermo), Italy, 10 August – 9 September 2007.
Conference papers and seminars by Rosella Simonari
Italy and the Classics Conference, organised by the APGRD, together with support from Modern Languages, Oxford and The Society for Italian Studies, 10 June, 2016
Dancer and painter Alberto Spadolini became famous in 1930s Paris as a music hall performer, some... more Dancer and painter Alberto Spadolini became famous in 1930s Paris as a music hall performer, sometimes as partner of Josephine Baker. His rediscovery has been done by his nephew, Marco Travaglini, who in more than a decade, has gathered documents, photographs, paintings and many other items which constitute a precious treasure to study his otherwise forgotten figure (Marco Travaglini, 2012).
One of the most interesting aspects of Spadolini is the way his body image was articulated through stunning photographs, his dancing, the interviews he gave, the articles on him and his paintings. In more than one instance, he is called ‘le danseur nu’ because of the succinct costumes he was usually wearing during his acts. If on the one hand, this aspect inserts him into the primitivist craze Paris was going through in the first half of the twentieth century (Rosella Simonari, 2007), on the other hand it poses questions regarding his masculinity connecting him with the Fascist-driven overvirile picture of the Duce. An aspect which recalls the classic “heroic nudity” (Christopher Hallet, 2011), a notion devised in classical Greece and Rome to conceive of nudity as powerful and heroic, especially for men. It is also reminiscent of the statue posing practice, “a bodily attitude imitating an ancient statue” (Carrie J. Preston, 2011), popular in Europe and the United States in the eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth century.
This paper will be devoted to the intricate connection between heroic nudity and primitivism in Spadolini’s figure as a dancer.
REFERENCES
Christopher Hallett, The Roman Nude: Heroic Portrait Statuary 200 B.C.-A.D. 300, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2011.
Carrie J.Preston, Modernism’s Mythic Pose –Gender, Genre, Solo Performance, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2011.
Rosella Simonari, “Alberto Spadolini e la danza”, in Marco Travaglini, edited by, Bolero-Spadò: Alberto Spadolini, una vita di tutti i colori, Modigliana, Litografia Fabbri, 2007, pp. 118-126. Exhibition Catalogue, Sala Imperatori, Porto San Giorgio (Fermo), 10 agosto – 9 settembre 2007. Republished online on my academia.edu page.
Marco Travaglini, Alberto Spadolini – Il danzatore nudo. La vita segreta dell’eclettico artista Alberto Spadolini, Fermo: Andrea Livi Editore, 2012.
What does it mean to adapt a text in choreographic terms? And what is a choreotext in the first p... more What does it mean to adapt a text in choreographic terms? And what is a choreotext in the first place? Is it the performance that was presented on the day of its premiere? Is it the one that was slightly or heavily changed for subsequent productions? Is it the reconstruction of one of these events? Or all of them altogether?
In this paper, I intend to trace a theoretical map on dance adaptation focusing on the thorny issue of what a choreotext is, drawing examples from dance pieces like Martha Graham’s Letter to the World and Antonio Gades’s Carmen.
Lamentation is a dance solo Martha Graham created and performed in New York in 1930, a few months... more Lamentation is a dance solo Martha Graham created and performed in New York in 1930, a few months after the Wall Street Crash. It is about the notion of grief conferred through minimal movement. Its particular aspect resides in the costume, a purple tubular-shaped dress made of jersey that de/forms the dancer’s body, highlighting the relationship between the body parts (like arms and knees) through diagonal, vertical and horizontal kinetic lines. It is an excellent example of modern dance, which reflected the changed time and values produced by the industrialization and the war.
In this paper, I intend to focus on the solo as an unusual adaptation of the City of New York. If on the one hand, it is rooted in a specific historical moment of grief experienced by the city and Western civilisation, on the other hand it formally recalls the lines and perspectives of its architectural development with a particular reference to the Flatiron building. I will conclude with a reflection on a recent video adaptation of the solo (2011) set in the New York underground and danced by former Martha Graham Company principal dancer Katherine Crockett, a video that powerfully reiterates the profound connection between the solo and the city.
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Books by Rosella Simonari
Peer reviewed essays by Rosella Simonari
In this article, I intend to analyse Letter to the World as a dance adaptation of Emily Dickinson. The method through which I will conduct my analysis consists of cultural and dance history, adaptation and narrative theory. First, I will focus on the notion of dance adaptation itself; then, I will present a reconstruction of the piece and proceed to explore the material Graham consulted for her work; after this, I will analyse it in terms of narrative highlighting the way the dances and spoken lines contribute to shaping it; I will conclude with a reflection on the reasons that brought Graham to focus on Dickinson.
Letter to the World is about Emily Dickinson’s poetry and personality, and the Ancestress represents the puritanical force of tradition that attempts to stop the growth of the poet’s (creative) life. In this sense, she can be compared to Mother Ann Lee, leader of the Shakers, who preached chastity among her acolytes and to the way William Carlos Williams portrays the Puritans in his book of essays, In the American Grain (1925), a book that influenced Graham’s vision. Puritanism undergoes an interesting transformation this time in one of Graham’s dance’s most celebrated pieces, Appalachian Spring (1944), where the Revivalist sums up what the Ancestress represented with three twists in terms of name, gender and dance.
Essays by Rosella Simonari
Conference papers and seminars by Rosella Simonari
One of the most interesting aspects of Spadolini is the way his body image was articulated through stunning photographs, his dancing, the interviews he gave, the articles on him and his paintings. In more than one instance, he is called ‘le danseur nu’ because of the succinct costumes he was usually wearing during his acts. If on the one hand, this aspect inserts him into the primitivist craze Paris was going through in the first half of the twentieth century (Rosella Simonari, 2007), on the other hand it poses questions regarding his masculinity connecting him with the Fascist-driven overvirile picture of the Duce. An aspect which recalls the classic “heroic nudity” (Christopher Hallet, 2011), a notion devised in classical Greece and Rome to conceive of nudity as powerful and heroic, especially for men. It is also reminiscent of the statue posing practice, “a bodily attitude imitating an ancient statue” (Carrie J. Preston, 2011), popular in Europe and the United States in the eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth century.
This paper will be devoted to the intricate connection between heroic nudity and primitivism in Spadolini’s figure as a dancer.
REFERENCES
Christopher Hallett, The Roman Nude: Heroic Portrait Statuary 200 B.C.-A.D. 300, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2011.
Carrie J.Preston, Modernism’s Mythic Pose –Gender, Genre, Solo Performance, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2011.
Rosella Simonari, “Alberto Spadolini e la danza”, in Marco Travaglini, edited by, Bolero-Spadò: Alberto Spadolini, una vita di tutti i colori, Modigliana, Litografia Fabbri, 2007, pp. 118-126. Exhibition Catalogue, Sala Imperatori, Porto San Giorgio (Fermo), 10 agosto – 9 settembre 2007. Republished online on my academia.edu page.
Marco Travaglini, Alberto Spadolini – Il danzatore nudo. La vita segreta dell’eclettico artista Alberto Spadolini, Fermo: Andrea Livi Editore, 2012.
In this paper, I intend to trace a theoretical map on dance adaptation focusing on the thorny issue of what a choreotext is, drawing examples from dance pieces like Martha Graham’s Letter to the World and Antonio Gades’s Carmen.
In this paper, I intend to focus on the solo as an unusual adaptation of the City of New York. If on the one hand, it is rooted in a specific historical moment of grief experienced by the city and Western civilisation, on the other hand it formally recalls the lines and perspectives of its architectural development with a particular reference to the Flatiron building. I will conclude with a reflection on a recent video adaptation of the solo (2011) set in the New York underground and danced by former Martha Graham Company principal dancer Katherine Crockett, a video that powerfully reiterates the profound connection between the solo and the city.
In this article, I intend to analyse Letter to the World as a dance adaptation of Emily Dickinson. The method through which I will conduct my analysis consists of cultural and dance history, adaptation and narrative theory. First, I will focus on the notion of dance adaptation itself; then, I will present a reconstruction of the piece and proceed to explore the material Graham consulted for her work; after this, I will analyse it in terms of narrative highlighting the way the dances and spoken lines contribute to shaping it; I will conclude with a reflection on the reasons that brought Graham to focus on Dickinson.
Letter to the World is about Emily Dickinson’s poetry and personality, and the Ancestress represents the puritanical force of tradition that attempts to stop the growth of the poet’s (creative) life. In this sense, she can be compared to Mother Ann Lee, leader of the Shakers, who preached chastity among her acolytes and to the way William Carlos Williams portrays the Puritans in his book of essays, In the American Grain (1925), a book that influenced Graham’s vision. Puritanism undergoes an interesting transformation this time in one of Graham’s dance’s most celebrated pieces, Appalachian Spring (1944), where the Revivalist sums up what the Ancestress represented with three twists in terms of name, gender and dance.
One of the most interesting aspects of Spadolini is the way his body image was articulated through stunning photographs, his dancing, the interviews he gave, the articles on him and his paintings. In more than one instance, he is called ‘le danseur nu’ because of the succinct costumes he was usually wearing during his acts. If on the one hand, this aspect inserts him into the primitivist craze Paris was going through in the first half of the twentieth century (Rosella Simonari, 2007), on the other hand it poses questions regarding his masculinity connecting him with the Fascist-driven overvirile picture of the Duce. An aspect which recalls the classic “heroic nudity” (Christopher Hallet, 2011), a notion devised in classical Greece and Rome to conceive of nudity as powerful and heroic, especially for men. It is also reminiscent of the statue posing practice, “a bodily attitude imitating an ancient statue” (Carrie J. Preston, 2011), popular in Europe and the United States in the eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth century.
This paper will be devoted to the intricate connection between heroic nudity and primitivism in Spadolini’s figure as a dancer.
REFERENCES
Christopher Hallett, The Roman Nude: Heroic Portrait Statuary 200 B.C.-A.D. 300, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2011.
Carrie J.Preston, Modernism’s Mythic Pose –Gender, Genre, Solo Performance, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2011.
Rosella Simonari, “Alberto Spadolini e la danza”, in Marco Travaglini, edited by, Bolero-Spadò: Alberto Spadolini, una vita di tutti i colori, Modigliana, Litografia Fabbri, 2007, pp. 118-126. Exhibition Catalogue, Sala Imperatori, Porto San Giorgio (Fermo), 10 agosto – 9 settembre 2007. Republished online on my academia.edu page.
Marco Travaglini, Alberto Spadolini – Il danzatore nudo. La vita segreta dell’eclettico artista Alberto Spadolini, Fermo: Andrea Livi Editore, 2012.
In this paper, I intend to trace a theoretical map on dance adaptation focusing on the thorny issue of what a choreotext is, drawing examples from dance pieces like Martha Graham’s Letter to the World and Antonio Gades’s Carmen.
In this paper, I intend to focus on the solo as an unusual adaptation of the City of New York. If on the one hand, it is rooted in a specific historical moment of grief experienced by the city and Western civilisation, on the other hand it formally recalls the lines and perspectives of its architectural development with a particular reference to the Flatiron building. I will conclude with a reflection on a recent video adaptation of the solo (2011) set in the New York underground and danced by former Martha Graham Company principal dancer Katherine Crockett, a video that powerfully reiterates the profound connection between the solo and the city.