THE AVANTGARDES AND THE SCENE
In 1896, the Théatre de l’Oeuvre in Paris, one of the most alternative and revolutionary theaters in the city, premiered the play Ubú Roi, by the controversial Alfred Jarry. It was a particular reinterpretation of Shakespeare's Macbeth. Most importantly, however, the author himself designed a creature that looked very much like a human person, in the shape of a balloon with a spiral on its belly and a large cone-shaped hat.
With Ubú Roi was born the stage avant-garde, which would go hand in hand with the plastic and literary avant-garde.
So, during the interwar period, the Voltaire Cabaret in Zurich hosted all kinds of shows close to the cabaret and the music hall, always with the plastic component of the break. They coincided with Dadaism and Futurism. Surrealism also had its theatrical exponents, either with the creation of texts or sets. The tandem of Federico García Lorca i Dalí was fundamental during this period and his surrealist and tragic poetry made his works universal.
THE RUSSIAN CONSTRUCTIVITY THEATER
After the Industrial Revolution, the heavy working hours wore off the workers, as they had to endure the repetitive movements of the assembly lines.
It was then that Vsevolod Emilievich MEYERHOLD, a Russian theorist and theatrical set designer, came to the following conclusion: Reaching the essence of the movements without wasting energy on any other gesture that is convenient for the task, the operator will achieve a much higher performance in the assembly line and will be much less tired. "
This thought was the seed of theatrical biomechanics, a work that directly affects how to manage body movement. The factories were the inspiration for MEYERHOLD, who developed these theories to create precise exercises that would be translated into acting training, stage device, and theatrical methodology. A physical theater that could go hand in hand with the word, but that was moving away from conventional text theater.
One of MEYERHOLD's aspirations was to overcome the limitations imposed by theatrical buildings and constructivist scenographic constructions allowed him to perform both in traditional spaces and in factories or shipyards.
FROM MOVEMENT TO DANCE
Biomechanics arrived on the scene in the form of dance, but until then there was no music to accompany this type of movement. It was STRAVINSKY who composed a large number of classical works addressing various styles such as Primitivism, Neoclassicism and Serialism, but he is known worldwide mainly for three works from one of his initial periods: The Firebird (The Oiseau de feu), Petriuxka and The Consecration of Spring (Le Sacre du printemps).
And both in music and in stage movement, we find traits that unite these arts in a single language: the juxtaposition of movements (in dance) and sounds (in music) and the clash of opposites, as well as contrasts and repetitions The music breaks down as if it were a collage of various rhythms and styles.
We can define STRAVINSKY's music as mechanical music that needs dance and choreography that share the same sensations. And the figure who gave this music a sense of movement was Sergei DIÀGHILEV, choreographer and performer of Stravinsky's musical pieces.
For the first time, performance, music and stage space came together to retell a story together. DIÀGHILEV elaborated his choreographies on the basis of creative processes with his dancers, who proposed movements and gestures to which he gave form and content, to tie them into a single discourse.
His stagings were risky and he surrounded himself with great plastic artists to provide them with a unit of great plastic artists to provide them with a superior unit. Leon BAKST often designed the scenographies and promoted great dance figures, such as Anna Matfeievna PAVLOVA or Vaslav NIJINSKI himself. This is currently the working methodology of great Catalan choreographers such as Sol PICÓ or Jordi CORTÉS.
Apart from DIÀGHILEV, we must also mention the American dancer, Loïe FULLER. This is a dance artist who not only brought movements to the scene, but also used special costumes that complemented these movement sequences. But FULLER was not inspired by the world of mechanics, but by the world of nature, and heads the following idea: "the dancer is said to be a character to represent an idea, a state or a concept".
Thus a dancer can represent the movements made by a leaf falling from the tree, but not by imitating them, but by making a poetic and subjective abstraction of the real movement.