Description
Book SynopsisThis book turns to history to show just how significant movement and the sense of movement were to pioneers of modernism at the turn of the 20th century. It makes this history vivid through a picture of movement in the lives of an extraordinary generation of Russian artists, writers, theatre people and dancers bridging the last years of the tsars and the Revolution. Readers will gain a new perspective on the relation between art and life in the period 1890-1920 in great innovators like the poets Mayakovsky and Andrei Bely, the theatre director Meyerhold, the dancer Isadora Duncan and the young men and women in Russia inspired by her lead, and esoteric figures like Gurdjieff. Movement, and the turn to the body as a source of natural knowledge, was at the centre of idealistic creativity and hopes for a new age, for a new man', and this was true both for those who looked forward to the technology of the future and those who looked back to the harmony of Ancient Greece. The book weaves his
Trade ReviewWhat makes
The Sixth Sense of the Avant-Garde an invaluable scholarly contribution is the persuasive and ambitious argument that the authors, Irina Sirotkina and Roger Smith, present in the book – an argument that extends well beyond literary and artistic studies of modernist practices. Specifically, they seek to reassess longstanding notions on the senses of perception … [The book] provides an interesting perspective on avant-garde art, offering a wide-ranging overview of the ideas that preoccupied intellectuals at that time. As such, it can be of interest to scholars of various backgrounds. Furthermore, while the authors try to redefine and even dismantle some of the stable categories and bring attention to a concept of the ‘knowing body,’ they also keep the content lively and engaging for their readers throughout the entire work. * Slavic and East European Journal *
This book is a treasure chest of personages and practices—everyone from Kandinsky to Blok, from Scriabin to Shklovsky, and multiple souls in between; everything from Dalcroze Eurythmics to the Foxtrot. It offers dynamic new ways to view the cultural history of this time. It all but exhorts its readers to go out and dance themselves. Many sources were crunched to make this book’s chapters, and many exciting roads lead out of them into future projects. * The Russian Review *
This volume examines kinesthesia—the sense of movement—as a foundation of personal knowledge and cultural innovation, claiming primacy of kinesthesia over the other senses in that it affords unmediated contact with the world... The extensive notes and suggestions for further reading compensate and make the book invaluable. Summing Up: Recommended. * CHOICE *
Table of ContentsList of illustrations Preface Acknowledgements Note on text/translation List of abbreviations Introduction: Movement and exuberant modernism Chapter 1 The sixth sense The senses Muscular feeling and kinaesthesia Chapter 2 Search for deeper knowledge The kinaesthetic intellect ‘The higher sensitivity’ Kinaesthesia and synaesthesia Chapter 3 Expression in dance The new dance The Russian Hellenes ‘Ach, the devil take it, they’re dancing here again’ Chapter 4 Speaking movement The perfect language: Andrei Bely on gesture The dance-word: the creative union of Esenin and Duncan Word plasticity: the
budetliane and the bare-footed Chapter 5 By ‘the fourth way’ The mystic arts From Dalcroze to Gurdjieff ‘Presence’ Chapter 6 Thinking with the body Mayakovsky dances the fox-trot Brik-dance Who thought up biomechanics? Chapter 7 Art as bodily knowledge Technique Kinaesthesia in culture Further reading Notes Index
