ABSTRACT
The pertinence of the above statement to this chapter is that it brings together several ideas that encapsulate the œuvre of performerchoreographer Liz Aggiss and composer-choreographer Billy Cowie, collectively known as Divas. Perhaps the most immediate is the link that critics identify between their stage work and the paintings of visual artist Otto Dix (Constanti 1987a, Phillips 1991), in particular the exploration and representation of human subjectivity at its most extreme. Related to this is the location of Dix within the early twentieth-century expressionist art movement since it is well documented that Divas’ choreography bears the lineage of an expressionist tradition (Constanti 1987a, Briginshaw 1988, Penman 1994, Phillips 1991).1 Finally there is the reference to the ‘grotesque’, a concept frequently alluded to as a source of inspiration for, and a stylistic trait of, Divas’ work (Constanti 1987a, Briginshaw 1988, Penman 1994, Phillips 1991, Aggiss 2000). With this in mind, I set out to examine how these choreographic characteristics extend to Divas’ film work in relation to both subject matter and its formal treatment.
