ABSTRACT
This chapter was in a sense the outcome of a dramaturgical experiment on Pasolini, a dance-theater work I presented at the Akademie der Künste, Berlin in 2008. It was also the opportunity to bring dance theory into conjunction with Pasolini’s film theory and hence to continue the intermedial exploration of the visual and the performative. Forsythe’s work on Bacon had allowed for an extended meditation on dance and drawing (Chapter 6), Schlemmer’s Bauhaus dances broached the theme of dance and architecture (Chapter 8), Nam June Paik’s exploration of the relation of Merce Cunningham to Marcel Duchamp took place in video (Chapter 12), and Kazuo Ohno’s relation to La Argentina was reignited through a painting (Chapter 11). This extended reflection on Pasolini’s use of dance in his film as mediated by his film theory of the kinem reveals a theoretical position both out of step with the surge of semiotics of the 1960s and one that is prescient of Dance and Performance Studies. This rich complexity of Pasolini’s theory and practice is only possible by considering his artistic expression in conjunction with his theorization and weighing both in the historical crucible of his own time in relation to what followed.
