Coda

In 'L'Indélébile ephémère', the preface to Jacqueline Robinson's L'Aventure tie la danse moderne en France (1920—1970), the choreographer Dominique Dupuy proposes that 'la danse, comme la littérature, est "condamnée à l'ineffacable". Il ne s'agit donc pas de tourner la page, mais d'ouvrir un livre [...] C'est l'histoire d'un trou de memoire' [dance, like literature, is condemned to the indelible. It is not a matter of turning the page but of opening a book [...] it is the history of a gap in memory]. ¹ Whether narrated, rendered in poetry, frozen in a painting, or captured on film, the figure of the danseuse inhabits the space of her very disappearance. As she dissolves into time and exits the stage, the danseuse appears to invite projection and resist analysis. It is only after the fact — after the disappearance — that she can be discussed, debated, and finally defined. As a consequence, the figure of the danseuse re-appears as a sexual, economic, gendered function from which she, as dancer, is largely absent. The history of the danseuse in literary and visual arts reveals the extent to which representations of dancers serve as a trope for the ideological positions of an historical moment — whether as an enforcement of or a challenge to particular modes of femininity, nationality, aesthetics or class identity.