Anales de Historia del Arte

Choreographic art and its trace: a discussion around the ephemeral nature of dance, the choreographic notation and the technological revolution of movement capture

2025-10-17T09:06:12+00:00

Dance, unlike music, does not yet have a universal notation that is used as a generalized medium for sharing, teaching and preserving the choreographic heritage. Despite the lack of a global standard, numerous choreographic notations have been created throughout history. The first major notation systems, created during the 17th and 18th centuries, relied on description and pictographic representation as ways to combat the ephemeral nature of dance movement. During the 20th century, as first film and then video established themselves as the ideal technologies for the visual recording of movement, new forms of notation continued to emerge.

In the 21st century we find a wide range of technical possibilities capable of capturing a dancing body, such as biometric sensors or motion capture techniques. This not only enhances the research and documentation of dance, but also encourages us to ask ourselves how artists have incorporated these movement writing solutions into their creative processes.

This text discusses the romanticization that has been made of the ephemeral nature of choreographic art from the world of dance, in contrast to the solutions that choreographic notations and audiovisual technologies have brought to it. In addition, it is analyzed whether this may be one of the factors that have made it difficult to fight against the loss of dance heritage, while proposing the use of a specific terminology to face this problem within the perspective of the movement arts.

Spiritualis Laetitia, Contemplatio and Visio Dei. A first sight at the representations of dance, music and song in the Franciscan missal ms. Douce 313 of the Bodleian Library, Oxford

2025-10-17T09:05:58+00:00

In the Franciscan context, the spiritual dance of the saints and angels is understood as an expression of pure joy, leading to the vision and contemplation of God, with a strong eschatological connotation. With these characteristics, some choreomusical performances are represented in a unique way in a Franciscan missal preserved in the Bodleian Library in Oxford (ms. Douce 313) and produced around 1340-1360 by a follower of Jean Pucelle. Seen in sequence, the miniatures clearly depict the role of music and dance as vehicles for attaining divine vision and are presented as key elements of a discourse through images that reclaims the dance gesture as a preferred means of prayer and contemplation.

The music of dance and the dance of music: the choreutic iconography in the Paradiso of the Dante Estense [Modena, Biblioteca Estense Universitaria, it. 474 = α.R.4.8]

2025-10-17T09:06:19+00:00

The illustrative cycle of the codex known as Dante Estense occupies a prominent position within the illuminated production in Dante's field by virtue of its peculiar characteristics: the unprecedented extension of the figurations extended to the end of the third Canticle; the particular pagination; and finally, the high and central presence of choreographic and musical iconography in the representation of the Paradiso. The iconographic solution of the Ferrarese codex depicts an almost uninterrupted flow of angels dancing and playing musical instruments, engaged in a surprisingly dynamic choreography. The figuration of Dante Estense, recognising movement and performativity as the founding characteristics of the Third Canticle, stages the most punctual visual interpretation of Dante's non-verbal poetic and theological journey to God.

An enigmatic dance in Lo Bar de Lop (Provence), a painted sermon?

2025-04-07T14:29:52+00:00

The painting from So Barn (Provence) (end of the 15th century) juxtaposes an Occitan text of thirty-three monorhymous verses with a choreutic figuration of circular or spiral-shaped impulsion. Despite the usual descriptions, the figurative argument, intimately linked to the poetic content, has little of a macabre dance and much of an eschatological admonition, making it closer to an illustrated sermon. It recalls the individual judgement of the soul when confronted with the four Afterworlds shown: Death, Judgement, Paradise and Hell, on which the Christian must reflect if he does not want to condemn himself. The iconographic motif of the dance would be emblematic of a life that was not in keeping with the spiritual values prevailing at the time. An archer death assaults the first characters (all lay people) who lead the dance. The angel psychomop places the soul of the first deceased on the scales. At the top is Paradise, with Christ pointing to the scales. And below, the mouth of hell that swallows the first damned soul.

The panel has iconographic parallels with the fresco in the Franciscan convent in Morella (Valencia, late 15th century). On the one hand, the choreographic typology of the circle: a circle of the living around a dead person who are hierarchically identified (Morella), a spiralling thrust of upper-class living people culminating in one of them lying down (Bar). Outside the circle, the Grim Reaper shoots his arrows at the dancers (Bar), and the image recalls the death arrowing the tree of life that accompanies the dance of the estates in Morella.

The dance in drawings: E. W. Clay and social dancing in antebellum Philadelphia

2025-10-17T09:05:57+00:00

This essay treats the works of Edward W. Clay (1799-1857), citizen of Philadelphia, who created prints and caricatures of life in the United States. His artistic output reveals his interests, observations, and prejudices, as well as those of the young nation’s early residents. Focusing on three of Clay’s dance-themed works, this essay asks what these drawings reveal about the anxieties and aspirations early U.S. residents experienced as they grappled with the cultural and social unfolding of the nation. Laban Movement Analysis is utilized as the methodology for understanding the selected artworks, demonstrating the advantages and shortcomings of this system for understanding the selected artworks.

The illustrated covers from 19th century ballet reductions. A beautiful, unexplored territory

2025-10-17T09:06:18+00:00

During the 19th century both, the publication of dancer´s lithographs and the musical reductions of the most successful parts of the ballets, contributed to the dissemination and circulation of romantic ballets, their performers, and their music off-stage. Thus, many dances became accessible and recognizable to the society that played and also danced them in public and private spaces. At the same time, an equally important phenomenon arose that combined both elements mentioned above: the illustrated covers of musical reductions from the most outstanding dances from the ballets. On them the dancers who performed them usually appeared lithographed and worked as a decorative and especially advertising element of these scores.

Finding examples of these illustrated covers of dance´s reductions from 19th-century ballet will be one of my objectives, an aspect that is not included in the existing compilations on the subject. Also, the particularities of ballet lithographs of the period will be pointed out, the characteristics of these covers will be analyzed and explained from an artistic/graphic point of view, and the peculiarities of Spain regarding the use of these illustrated reductions will be briefly described. To do so catalogues of sheet music editions, musical archives, collections, libraries and museums that keep these materials have been consulted.

The information collected will demonstrate the existence of these materials, still little studied, as well as their outstanding role in different fields, because they are not only the testimony of musical legacy, but also provide historical, sociological, commercial, biographical, choreographic, artistic, graphic and scenographic information.

Victoria of the United Kingdom, Spanish dances and Manuela Perea "La Nena"

2025-10-17T09:05:59+00:00

Queen Victoria of Great Britain was a great enthusiast of dance. Classical ballet and Spanish dances were part of her recreational and cultural life. At Her Majesty's and the small Royal Theatre of Haymarket, where the queen regularly attended, the leading French ballerinas who excelled with Spanish steps in the great romantic ballets performed, as well as a Sevillian dancer named Manuela Perea "La Nena." Manuela became the main exponent of Spanish dances since her debut in 1845. The history of Spanish dances in Great Britain is a story of constant evolution, shaped by the stylized and choreographed Spanish dances by the romantic ballet masters and the adaptation of genuine Spanish dances, whether boleros or jaleos, to the taste of the aristocratic audience. The image the queen had formed of the city of Seville through opera and ballet since her childhood was an important factor in the scenic configuration that Spanish dance acquired in Great Britain.

Two Visions of Spanish Colonial Past in Late Nineteenth-Century Ballet

2025-10-17T09:06:09+00:00

During the late 19th century, plastic arts were instrumental for the construction of the Spanish national identity. The History Painting genre played a special role, as it allowed for the representation of historical events and characters related to the Spanish presence in Latin America. The purpose of this text is to analyze two different colonial-themed ballets that premiered in Spain from 1882 to 1887: an originally Italian Ballet remade in Madrid and a Spanish one that premiered in Barcelona, which depicted some episodes respectively set in Peru and Mexico six decades after both countries attained their independence. Through these two cases, we can study how dance played a part in the construction of the aforementioned national identity, the difference in perspectives between works composed in Spain with those abroad and how the dancer’s bodies manifested the ideas of exoticism and otherness often projected into the Pre-Columbian era.

From Aragon to Latvia: Exoticism, Identity, and Political Uses of the jota in the Baltics (1930-1948)

2025-10-17T09:06:14+00:00

The Aragonese jota (a Spanish dance) had a notorious impact in Latvia. We located thirteen ballets, divertissements, and short choreographic works that were performed at least eighty-one times between 1930 and 1948. These case studies were analyzed based on primary visual and archival sources. The Aragonese dance not only became the climax of Spanish-themed ballets but also of the programs danced by Spanish dancers Bonifacio, Nati Morales, and Manuela del Río. This article aims at highlighting the jota as a dance in which Latvian society was mirrored. The outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 increased the number of Spanish-themed choreographies in Riga. Latvian ballet master Osvalds Lēmanis choreographed a new jota in Don Quixote that turned into a soft power strategy of the Latvian Republic to improve the perception of this country abroad through the international tours of the Latvian National Ballet. The jota became a propaganda tool during World War II. In 1941 Laurencia was the first ballet premiered after the Soviet occupation. Its jota symbolized the Russian Revolution. After the Nazi invasion, Don Quixote was performed with four different jotas. The Blue Division (the German Army’s Spanish division) was in the audience. The jota, initially perceived in the ballet Jota Aragonesa as an exotic and distant other, became assimilated to such a point by Latvian dancers (e.g. Marta Alberinga) that it evolved into a cornerstone of their repertoire.

Naṭīr pūjā or the Expanded Stage: Theatricality, Dance, and Mural Image in the Educational Project of Śāntiniketan

2025-10-17T09:06:07+00:00

Naṭīr pūjā (1926) stands as a milestone in Rabindranath Tagore’s scenic and visual experimentation within the artistic-educational framework of Śāntiniketan. Its fluid movement across theatricality, dance, and visual imagery raises the issue of expanded representation and its intersection with diverse expressive media. Tagore’s staging was conceived as a synthesis of languages, articulating a relationship between scenography, painting, and architecture with conceptual and pedagogical dimensions. This study examines the relationship between stage and image in Naṭīr pūjā, focusing on its 1926 and 1927 performances, its 1931–1932 film adaptation, and its later pictorial translation into the Cheena Bhavan mural (1942). Through the analysis of photographic records and surviving film fragments, the article proposes a digital reconstruction of its scenic space to explore how scenography configured spatial frameworks and responded to visual principles found in Śāntiniketan’s pictorial production. The findings show that Naṭīr pūjā transcends conventional theater by embracing a model of artistic integration—recognized by UNESCO as a Gesamtkunstwerk in the recent designation of Śāntiniketan as a World Heritage Site. The digital reconstruction contributes to assessing the intersection of theater, cinema, and muralism within the expanded artistic vision fostered by Tagore, reaffirming its significance in the development of dance-theater and its legacy within the history of Indian stage arts.

Ancient Dance through the camera. Fin de Siècle between academic research and choreographic practice

2025-10-17T09:06:10+00:00

The dancers Isadora Duncan and Loïe Fuller and the composer and academic Maurice Emmanuel are some of the figures who, at the end of the 19th century, decided to turn their gaze towards Greek dance, either as an object of research or as inspiration for their choreographies. Using the movement captured in vascular images, bas-reliefs or the veils of Tanagra sculptures, they tried to put these figures back into action, seeking - or refusing - to reconstruct what the dance would have been like. These three cases also share a fundamental aspect, the links they establish with the ancient world are mediated through the new image techniques of modernity: chronophotography, photography and cinema. In this context, the confluence between the camera and dance generates specific uses of the image, as well as representing a major change for the dance medium, as it allows movement and choreography to be fixed in time. These uses respond to reflections on movement and hieratism, but also to questions of race and the construction of counter-hegemonic female models. In short, this work seeks to scrutinise the mentioned themes, trying to understand in what way and with what objectives the new image technologies are used in this process of approaching the Greek past and its dance.

Skirt Dance in the Early Years of American Cinema

2025-10-17T09:06:00+00:00

This work focuses on the study of early American films that depict dances such as the skirt dance and similar styles. The observation of movements that are very similar, if not identical, in the performances of dancers in films whose titles evoke very different dances raises the question of what was actually being danced in the United States at that time. In this regard, the main objective of this research is to determine what type of dance can be observed in early American film productions in order to establish an initial classification of the surviving recordings. The qualitative methodology of the study is based on documentary analysis, both textual and choreographic. The results of the first bibliographic inquiry point to the existence of a miscellany of dance styles on American stages during those years, which is later fully confirmed by choreographic analysis. At the same time, it is also evident a strong presence of later and, in a way, degraded versions of the English skirt dance, which had arrived in the United States a few years earlier.

Rudolf Laban’s visual thinking: Modern dance theory and practice in dialogue with art and architecture

2025-10-17T09:06:13+00:00

Rudolf Laban, a pioneer of modern dance, intertwined visual arts and crafts with his choreographic practice. He mobilized abstract geometric shapes in his dance education. His use of the icosahedron form, for example, derived from geometric and stereometric architectural models, has yet to be mined. It allowed him to renegotiate the relationship between body and space. The paper also compares Laban’s adaptation of the icosahedron to that of architects like Richard Buckminster Fuller, who used its implications of motion to create lightweight architecture. Laban, too, was interested in building domes made of lightweight material based on the platonic solids to perform his huge movement choirs. Based on a dialogue between visual art, modern dance and architecture, the article sheds light for the first time on Rudolf Laban’s visual thinking and the role of the pictorial in his work.

Martha Graham: yoga, and Indian dance

2025-02-21T16:40:29+00:00

This paper examines Martha Graham's early engagement with Indian and Indian-derived ideas, which she initially received from her mentor, Ruth St. Denis. Subsequently, as documented in her Notebooks, Graham engaged with various Indian writings likely inspired by St. Denis that continued beyond the Denishawn period and enriched her understanding of Indian philosophies and aesthetics, serving as a meaningful source of inspiration for her choreographies. I study the interplay between Graham and Indian dance, which is best understood through the impact of yoga on her technique and its role in integrating Indian aesthetics into her later choreographic dramaturgy, as documented in her Notebooks.

Spanish dance at the Museo Mariemma: Material embodied memory of living cultural heritage

2025-10-17T09:06:17+00:00

The expansion of dance into the museum allows for the contemplation of the debate between the uses of heritage and the staging of the dance event in spaces that challenge disciplinary, representational, and performative boundaries. Although choreographic manifestations are traditionally conveyed through contemporary dance in museums with very diverse thematic areas, here the novelty lies in the interaction within a museum dedicated exclusively to dance and from a performative approach to the artistic act. The object of reflection is the Museo Mariemma de Íscar (Valladolid, Spain), one of the few museums dedicated to the performing arts linked to Spanish dance as a legitimized artistic field. A detailed analysis of one of its events, Dancing on the Runway, Shaping Mariemma (2024), functions as a tool for exploring the dynamics of representation and its potential meanings within the context of fashion, music, and dance. It further reveals a strategic framework through which the museum is positioned as an ideal site for social interaction, intellectual exchange, and the promotion of cultural development.

Dance in the museum. Radicantes. Dance and other species at the Institute of Modern Art of Valencia, IVAM

2025-03-28T14:45:58+00:00

In 2016, Radical Dance and Other Species began at the Valencian Institute of Modern Art (IVAM), with the aim of improving dialogical processes between body, thought, and criticism in the museum. During this time, issues and realities related to the relationship between the museum and contemporary dance were revealed. Aspects such as the public, documentation, artistic practice, and the institution were revealed in their epistemological and ontological condition.

This article addresses all of this, seeking to delve deeper into the relational and impactful nature of dance and the museum through the experience of more than seven years of this program, which has had nine editions, establishing itself as a national model.

What falls is a body. Laughing Hole by La Ribot, and the crisis of the vertical regime of dance

2025-03-22T09:34:40+00:00

This article explores "Laughing Hole," a creation by La Ribot, a dancer, choreographer, and visual artist. Positioned within the realm of "conceptual dance" ("konzepttanz"), "Laughing Hole" represents a hybrid form that combines elements of dance and performance. This work challenges the traditional "verticality regime" of classical dance by examining falling bodies as a deliberate strategy to deconstruct the idealized notion of what Adriana Cavarero refers to as "philosophus erectus," a concept that has historically influenced Western philosophical discourse since Plato's allegory of the cave.

The concept of the "verticality regime" is evident in classical dance through choreography. This prescriptive system dictates how the body should move by emphasizing the importance of maintaining an upright posture and infusing it with a feeling of rising upward. In classical dance, experiencing verticality means feeling weightless and radiant and having bodies that surpass gravity and physical limitations. The normative body in classical dance refrains from complete embodiment. In "Laughing Hole," the performers' repeated collapsing to the ground subverts the entire disciplinary framework, resulting in a process of true embodiment and a tangible presence of the physical bodies involved.

From Rome to Toledo: A Missal for Juan de Medici in the Capitular Library

2025-10-17T09:06:05+00:00

The present study focuses on one of the most outstanding illuminated codices preserved in the holdings of the Biblioteca Capitular of Toledo. It is a missal intended for Cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici (1475–1521), the future Pope Leo X, whose provenance is linked to the personal collection of Cardinal Javier de Zelada (1713–1801), donated to the Primate Cathedral at the end of the 18^th century.

This manuscript stands out for its extraordinary decorative apparatus, featuring illuminated initials and vignettes that reflect the characteristic stylistic traits of the Tuscan illuminator Atavante degli Atavanti (c. 1452–c. 1525). Created toward the end of the 15th century, this missal represents an exceptional example of Italian artistic production of the period while also underscoring the richness and aesthetic sophistication inherent to the capitular holdings of Toledo.

Suffragette “vitrinoclasm” and other militant uses of the shop window. The political instrumentalisation of the shop window

2025-10-17T09:06:01+00:00

Taking the shop window as an exhibition device that replicates the spectacularised mode of visual production and consumption characteristic of the capitalist regime of attention, this article analyses the range of disruptive and militant uses of the shop window put into practice by the suffrage movement in the early twentieth century to channel and attract attention to their demand for women's suffrage. We begin by examining the phenomenon of ‘vitrinoclasm’, a neologism understood in this study as a form of cultural resistance against the commodification of the gaze and public space embodied by the shop window. The analysis then moves on to its implementation by the suffrage movement, particularly by the most militant faction, the suffragettes, who pioneered this practice from 1908 onwards. The subsequent spectacularised intervention in shop windows and their collaboration with the commercial system (against which they had initially launched their destructive window-smashing campaign) reflects their strategic appropiation of shop window culture for political ends. This ultimately leads to an ambivalent relationship with the scopic regime and the contradictory instrumentalisation of the spectacle inherent to the shop window. Through a visual investigation of the imagery of vitrinoclasm and other militant uses of shop windows by suffragettes, this article seeks to reflect on the aesthetic and political implications of this form of resistance.

Eduardo Chillida and Néstor Basterretxea at the II International Exhibition of Contemporary Sculpture in Paris

2025-04-23T18:19:58+00:00

En las últimas décadas, diversos estudios han abordado la relación tejida en los años cincuenta entre la vanguardia artística española y la administración franquista, especialmente en lo que respecta a su instrumentalización con fines propagandísticos en el contexto internacional. Sin embargo, la participación de determinados artistas en este aparato institucional apenas ha sido analizada. como es el caso concreto de Néstor Basterretxea y Eduardo Chillida. La presencia de estos dos autores, de profunda influencia en el panorama artístico vasco y con un papel destacado en la historia del arte español, en la II Exposición Internacional de Escultura Contemporánea organizada por el Museo Rodin de París en 1961, representa un punto clave para analizar el complejo equilibrio entre arte, identidad y poder en España.

A través del análisis de las fuentes documentales y registros administrativos generados durante la organización de la participación nacional, se reconstruyen algunas de las estrategias utilizadas tanto por los artistas como por el Estado en las distintas fases de gestación de éste y otros eventos. De esta manera, se rescata una vez más el papel de figuras como José María de Areilza y Luis González Robles en la promoción de una imagen nacional de España como nación moderna en el extranjero. En este caso, las obras Abesti Gogogorra I de Chillida y Kantauri de Basterretxea, con las que participaron, sirven como punto de partida para analizar las negociaciones políticas y culturales que tuvieron lugar dentro de un sistema artístico marcado por la necesidad de proyectar a la dictadura hacia estructuras económicas internacionales consolidadas como las de la Comunidad Económica Europea.

Past and present of the American myth: a study of the Western space and its narratives in Kelly Reichardt´´´s cinema

2025-10-17T09:06:16+00:00

This text analyzes the way in which the American filmmaker Kelly Reichardt uses the Western genre to propose new visions of the American myth that the genre itself was responsible for establishing during the 20^th Century. A study focused on the analysis of the space of the Western and its stories is proposed, arguing that the landscape is one of the fundamental semantic elements that open the genre to alternative possibilities. First Cow and Certain Women will be the two films from which the text is articulated, as they allow us to analyze how the American myth/dream was established in the past and what remains of it in contemporary America. The syntactic and semantic approach to the chosen examples allow for a detailed exploration of the elements that make up the Western and how they are treated in Reichardt's films.

Relatos en movimiento: investigar la danza desde el museo, la historia del arte y la escena. Una conversación con Christine Macel, Idoia Murga Castro y Natalia Álvarez Simó

2025-10-17T09:05:43+00:00

Dancing in the archives. Choreographers' notes and drawings as sources for art history

2025-10-17T09:05:40+00:00

Arte y danza. Introducción

2025-09-11T11:26:45+00:00

Arte y danza: cuerpos e imágenes. Narrativas cruzadas entre la historia del arte y los Dance Studies

2025-10-17T09:05:46+00:00

Zoa Alonso Fernández y Sarah Olsen (eds.). Imprints of Dance in Ancient Greece and Rome. Madrid: UAM Ediciones, 2024, 311 pp.

2025-05-11T15:36:11+00:00

Lynn Matluck Brooks, Sariel Golomb y Garth Grimball. Dance and Science in the Long Nineteenth Century: The Articulate Body. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2025, 321 pp.

2025-05-30T20:09:00+00:00

Beatriz Martínez del Fresno (ed.). Tesis en Danza. Madrid: Sociedad Española de Musicología, 2022, 294 pp.

2025-04-25T09:12:09+00:00

Noelia Silva Santa-Cruz, Francisco de Asís García García, Laura Rodríguez Peinado y Raúl Romero Medina (eds.). (In)materialidad en el arte medieval. Gijón, Ediciones Trea, 2023, 349 pp.

2025-02-28T09:25:00+00:00

Begoña Alonso Ruiz. Juan Gil de Hontañón, arquitecto del tardogótico. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 2023, 356 pp.

2025-01-11T18:25:42+00:00

Paul Aubert. La aventura de las vanguardias. Sevilla: Renacimiento, 2024, 692 pp.

2025-01-31T11:10:06+00:00

Juan Jesús López-Guadalupe Muñoz, José Antonio Díaz Gómez y Adrián Contreras Guerrero (coords.). De Austrias a Borbones. Construcciones visuales en el Barroco hispánico. Universidad de Granada: Granada, 2022, 432 pp.

2025-04-01T09:43:15+00:00

Nota bibliográfica Juan Carlos Ruiz Souza

2025-09-11T12:03:43+00:00

Luis Sazatornil Ruiz (ed.). ¿Museos para quién? ¿Museos cómo? El caso de Santander y sus contextos. Gijón: Ediciones Trea, 2024. 232 pp.

2025-06-27T13:09:58+00:00

Asier Aranzubia y José Luis Castro de Paz. Escuela de cineastas. Cátedra y Filmoteca Española: Madrid, 2024. 510 pp.

2025-07-11T08:27:33+00:00