Violence and aggression: reflections on sexuality


 Photographer: Jan Murphy
The Diaghilev exhibition which my late friend and colleague Leslie Ann Sayers worked on - she died last April in her sleep, very suddenly- is now on at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Diaghilev was the man behind the Ballets Russes, one of the first modern dance companies in the early 20th century, which truly revolutionised the art and performance world, forging alliances with some of the best painters (Bakst, Picasso and many more) to create amazing scenography and which, choreographically, relied upon the genius of the dancer Nijinski.
Nijinski, who later suffered a major nervous breakdown and was diagnosed schizophrenic, was a visionary whose work  shocked his contemporaries. He was daring in the choice of  subject matter and the way he put it across, developing a new dance language which subverted the classical ballet dominance.  When his  The Rite of Spring was first presented at the Paris Opera in 1913 , with music by Igor Stravinsky, it literally created a riot and the performance could not go ahead. People found the music unbearable and the dancing impossibly weird. The story was that of a human sacrifice, a maiden who is chosen by her tribe to dance herself to death and it was inspired by Russian tribal circle dancing. The Rite of Spring as a piece of music did extremely well in subsequent years becoming one of the best known pieces of classical music made in the 20th century - who has not heard the pounding rhythm of The Rite? Stravinsky at his best.

The dance was forgotten, never danced again after that premiere, but it became almost mythical and  inspired and continues to inspire countless new versions including one by Yvonne Rainer, presented in New York in 2007.  However, the original Rite of Spring was reconstructed by Millicent Hodson for the Joffrey Ballet and first performed in 1987, causing another controversy - many people thought that Hodson had no business to go and reconstruct a dead ballet and cattily referred to it as Hodson's Rite of Spring, unwilling to accept it as a historically accurate version.
 Another dance choreographed by Nijinski, even more intriguing, was  L'après midi d'un faune (The Afternoon of a Faun), with music by Claude Débussy,  in which he interpreted a faun, half man and half beast,  who spots some nymphs playing , takes a fancy to one of them, attempts to seduce her, finally she manages to get away from his grip and he chooses not to pursue her, consoling himself by engaging sexually with the scarf she leaves behind and orgasming , in what is now regarded as a fetishist representation, in which  the female body is seen as totally redundant to his male sexuality.
When this came out in 1912 there was an uproar, the audience left the theatre disgusted and Gaston Calmette complained on the front page of Le Figaro that " the over-explicit miming of this mis-shapen beast, loathsome when seen full on, but even more loathsome when seen in profile, was greeted with the boo- ing it deserved. Decent people will never accept such animal realism." But the sculptor Rodin defended Nijinski and praised the fact he had attempted to “recover once more the freedom of instinct and discover again the soul of tradition, founded on respect and love of nature”.   L'apres midi is now regarded as a classic of modern dance.

I was watching it yesterday with a group of students who are currently grappling with ideas of classicism embedded in modernism. With its abundant references to archaic Greek culture and movements inspired by Greek vase painting L'apres midi is an ideal work to view. Inevitably we discussed Nijinski's attitude to sexuality, a recurring theme in his work. He was bisexual  and had a long stormy affair with Diaghilev which ended when he married a wealthy South American woman who had pursued him relentlessly. He choreographed and also danced his own works.  L'apres midi has been analysed as a work that challenges normative sex and gender roles. Nijinski and the faun are almost seen as one, partly because of his immense ability to fuse with the character he portrayed on stage.  I dont particularly wish to repeat here observations that have been made about how innovative is  Nijinski's vision of "male sexuality in its own right rather than as an effect on the female body " nor do I wish to consider how Nijinski has "haunted" gay male identity throughout the 20th century.

 Photographer: Martin Robinson
 In viewing the videorecording of the dance, as performed by Nureyev back in the 1970s, I was struck by the violence that is depicted in the "courtship" of the nymph. Though  it is masked by the stylisation of the gestures, the faun is predatorial, the nymph is almost pleading with him and made to assume very submissive positions - there is a moment when she slowly bends on her knees as he pushes her to the ground and her face shows terror, while he laughs, fully enjoying her submission. Yet it is not a rape, as she participates willingly in this play, fleeing when she has had enough. Somehow this struck me as having been downplayed by those critics of the work who  tried hard to demonstrate the impact of Nijinski's imagination in the construction of a queer sexuality. I found ambivalence in his portrayal of women, and much aggression in the representation of sex.  Nijinski's work may have been charting an erotic autobiography, as Lynn Garafola says, but his ambivalence to women is not divorced from aggression, on the contrary. And I dont see this as being particularly tied to Nijinski's bisexuality i.e. sometimes he loved women, sometimes he did not. I see it as a component of male sexuality and more generally sexuality, which somehow Nijinski was able to portray uninhibitedly.

L'apres midi has made me think again about male and female sexuality and how they are played out in gender roles. There is a certain vision of the sexual relationship between men and women which glosses over its inherent violence and aggression, which is  only brought out through BDSM. Here I am not judging anything or anyone, I am only acknowledging something that  to many feels uncomfortable to address. In a recent conversation  with a photographer whose work I truly admire, I wanted to discuss the possibility of extending my range and becoming involved in  fetish work and be photographed by him. He told me that it might be possible so long as it was clear to me that if I did it with him it would not be a glamorised version. Fetish, he explained, is about sexual humiliation, it has to be frightening and record the awful depths of it. It also has to reveal the sadness and grief that it conceals within the photographer, the model, and the viewer.  It is uncanny that as I watched  L'apres midi I saw exactly that, in its depiction of sexuality, from start to finish.  Nijinski was indeed ahead of his times.
(All photos modelled by  AlexB )

Comments

  1. Ah, The Rite of Spring! As for many classical music fans, this is one of my all-time favorite pieces of music. Are there any videos of the Joffrey/Hodson performance? I've often wondered what was so radical about the original dance, as opposed to the music, which was radical enough.

    You raise an interesting point about "the inherent violence of the sexual relationship." But is it inherent? Certainly through much of recorded human history, the violent elements of sexual intercourse have been at the forefront; but at least in the Bible, it was not so in the beginning. "And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man." (Genesis 2:23) And in the Song of Solomon, it is mostly the woman who pursues the man: "By night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loveth...I will arise now, and go about the city in the streets, and in the broad ways I will seek him whom my soul loveth..." (SS 3:1-2. I cannot accept the traditional interpretations that say the Song of Songs is a mere allegory about the soul's relationship to God; I feel it is that but also a splendid portrait of erotic love.) It is true that many of the Old Testament stories seem to feature male dominance and violence against women, but not in a complimentary way. And even the Apostle Paul speaks of sexual mutuality: "Let the husband render unto the wife due benevolence: and likewise also the wife unto the husband....Defraud ye not one the other, except it be with consent for a time..." (I Corinthians 7:3,5)

    In the Greek myths, of course, there is the mix of violence and mutuality, as L'après-midi demonstrates. But what do the Vedas and the Sutras say about these things, Alex? I know next to nothing about the Hindu scriptures, except for the Bhagavad Gita. Nor do I remember whether the Dhammapada deals specifically with sexuality...

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  2. Hi Jochanaan I thought you might like the references to Stravinsky and Debussy. the videoclip above is from the Joffrey/Hodson reconstruction. It is awesome.
    Interesting point about the scriptures. The Hindu view of kama sees it as a play - Siva and his consort Parvati are engaged in sexual intercourse that lasts for eons. But from my recollection of the kamasutra sexual play is not devoid of violence - there is much biting and quite a bit of hitting going on. You are also right about L'apres midi being inspired by Greek myths which do present a mix of violence and mutuality. I am very hazy about the Dhammapada. My point was about the 'rape' of the nymph which is not quite a rape but uses a lot of struggling. Interestingly the Nureyev version has that whereas the version shown in the film is more sedate. Nureyev is loathsome as a faun but that is precisely the point I think.

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  3. Every day when I look through the daily "feed" on my DA account, I see women tied with ropes or chained or suspended helplessly with expressions of boredom or pleasure or pain, and I always cringe. Sometimes I click on the images to try to make out why a model wants to be photographed like this and why a photographer wants this point of view of women to "brand" his work. What does this mean to those involved?

    I've posted on this but never been offered a comment on the "other side" of the S&M fad in art. I look on it as something kept underground for centuries that has managed to surface as mainstream today.

    As you know, I did fetish work with Andrew Mann this summer, and I love the images we produced. However, Andrew distinguished what we shot as "fetish fashion" as opposed to S&M. I also agreed to show myself in dominant roles - I hold the whip, and that is all I would ever agree to do.

    Do you plan to work with the photographer you mentioned?

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  4. thank you UL for your comment. I feel ambivalent about fetish but the photographer I mentioned has a point and yes, if it is at all possible, I would like to work with him. It does not have to be fetish in the conventional sense, I am not after bondage, but having viewed again Nijinski's work if I could manage to tap into the emotional depth of his representation of male and female sexuality I think it would make good work. I watched the same dance performed by George de la Pena in the film "Nijinski" and it did not have the same quality of the Nureyev's version. In that version both faun and nymph played out their play of aggression,submission, resistance in the film the nymph was simply smitten and she leaves him but almost unwillingly. The dance has inspired me in other words. Maybe it is not even fetish work I am after but something that conveys all of that I have explained.

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  5. I think you should slow down a little bit heading into this curve in the road. Fetish is a broad category which includes many harmless and silly activities, but bondage and S&M is pornography. I think your intellectualizing is allowing you to justify exploring this avenue. Go try it out if you want to have the experience but photographing human humiliation or pain is exploitation when it is used as art (entertainment

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  6. That's a strong statement and made without even seeing the results! The divide between art and pornography is often arbitrary but I am confident that I can deliver something that is both true and artistic. In any case I have to try.
    Thanks for the advice though

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  7. I may have gotten the wrong idea about what you are planning. I hope I didn''t offend you. I am just concerned. You seem to have a large footprint in academics and I fear you could damage that status.

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  8. of course not! I take your interjection as a friendly caveat. Things can go wrong, it is a fact. Thank you for being so honest

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  9. I think you should do what you want because you are interesting, only thing important

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