Dance on Screen
By Lila Moore PhD

Loie fuller was the first artist to blend cinematic and choreographic concepts into a new form of dance.

“I was more and more enthusiastic about her marvellous ephemeral art. That wonderful creature – she became fluid, she became light, she became every colour and flame, and finally she resolved into miraculous spirals wafted toward the Infinite.

She was one of the first original inspirations of light and changing colour”.

Isadora Duncan

Dance for the camera is a unique and evolving art form that manipulates movement in space and time to produce choreography as a film form and event. Maya Deren invented the concepts of “chorecinema”, “film dance”, “film-ritual” and “trance film” during the 1940s and integrated content and form into radical chore-cinematic depictions. In Ritual in Transfigured Time she combined dance forms, ritual forms, and films forms to explore the metaphysical dynamics of a rite of passage. Her fascination with tribal religious experience and extreme states of mind including ritual, meditation, and trance, inspired many filmmakers and choreographers.

Like other women before me, discovering Maya Deren’s films and writings has had a great impact on the course of my creativity as an artist and filmmaker and on the academic research that runs in parallel as a form of theoretical reflection. Moreover, it affirmed my conviction that there is a language with which the feminine realm of existence can be discovered and expressed through the fusion of film forms and dance forms. Language that is free from the old patriarchal conventions of Hollywood and as close to the truth as poetry. Language that does not rely on linear story-telling or even words, to express the complexity and beauty of the human experience and soul.

The extraordinary film At Land (1944) begins with Maya Deren washed to the shore by the sea, emerging from the primeval waters like ‘a mythological being from another world’. With sea waves rolling backward the scene is filmed and edited in such a way ‘as to transcend ’real time’. The woman seems to embody all time; it is as though she were walking through history and into the future’. (Cited from the article At Land by Margaret Warwick)

The silent black and white film contains inner music and vivid depictions that no colour or sound could match. The poetic substance, the performance and choreographic structure bring forth the dance of the feminine Self and Soul.

Maya Deren believed in the primal power of cinematic images to convey in a poetic and metaphoric manner situations that words or explicit illustrations often fail to deliver. With the aid of cinema she gave the dancers, and herself, the world as a stage. In her last film she even attempted to take her voyage to the Universe by placing dancers like starry constellations floating within The Very Eye of the Night.

In my PhD thesis entitled Dance on Screen completed in Middlesex University, UK I demonstrate choreography for the camera and the screen or Screen Choreography as a unique art form. It is a form that has its roots in the early movements of modern art, performance art, mixed media and experimental film. In parallel I show how this art form is often utilised for the expression of distinctive content that escapes other art forms or the limits of theatrical dance, plot driven and dialogue based cinema. The thesis evolves through reflection on the dance film Gaia – Mysterious Rhythms and the analysis of a series of award-wining films based on the creative concepts of Screen Choreography.

“I was born by the sea… My first idea of movement, of the dance, certainly came from the rhythms of the waves. I was born under the star of Aphrodite, Aphrodite who was also born on the sea… Isadora Duncan.


Gaia- Mysterious Rhythms
Dance film by Lila Moore

Coming out of the sea like a returning tide the woman follows the rhythms of the moon, earth and the sun across the sky from dawn to dusk in a dance-rite tinted by the shining hues of Gaia.

In quest for the mysterious Key of Life she merges in a poetic landscape of matter and spirit engulfed by soundscape that echoes Earth’s beauty and antiquity.

(Extracts from PhD thesis).

Visual Poetry
The film Gaia – Mysterious Rhythms was originated and created as a visual poem. According to Maya Deren, in the symposium on the topic Poetry and the Film, held in Cinema 16, 1953, “the distinction of poetry is its construction… the poetic construct… is an investigation of a situation, in that it probes the ramification of the moment, and is concerned with its qualities and its depth, so that you have poetry concerned, in a sense, not with what is occurring but what it feels like or what it means. A poem, to my mind, creates visible or auditory forms for something that is invisible, which is the feeling, or the emotion, or the metaphysical content’.

Maya Deren added another important factor to explain the inner-logic of non-linear progression of images and scenes in cinematic poetry: “The images in dreams, in montage, and in poetry… are related because they are held together by either an emotion or a meaning that they have in common, rather than by the logical action. …It is the logic of a central emotion or idea that attracts to itself even disparate images which contain that central core, which they have in common.

Russian film director Andrei Tarkovsky also explored the relationship between the language of film and poetry. In fact, Tarkovsky, who avoided making comparison between cinema and other art forms, actually found poetry, and in particular ancient haikku Japanese poetry, closer to the truth of cinema. Tarkovsky identified the basic element of cinema as observation, for him, ‘the cinema image is essentially an observation of a phenomenon passing through time’. Tarkovsky quoted the following haikku by Basho:
The old pond was still

A frog jumped in the water
And a splash was heard.

Tarkovsky found the verses beautiful ‘because the moment, plucked and fixed, is one. And falls into infinity…

And more precise the observation, the nearer it comes to being unique, and so being an image”

What attracts me to the poetic form and content, as exemplified in Gaia – Mysterious Rhythms, is the potential of visual poetry to convey ideas, meanings, impressions or feelings within the context of film-making. It is the option to work with images and sounds rather than with words, and the chance to reveal or discover, even for a brief moment, the invisible movement or emotion which resides at the heart of a visible phenomenon.

A Rite of Passage

Gaia – Mysterious Rhythms originally evolved from a series of images, which formed in my mind as separate scenes. The scenes that can be described as visual events are linked by the theme of a rite of passage and transformation.
The protagonist, a young woman, goes through a process of transformation whilst she interacts with the living elements of the natural environment. She exists in a universe where the earth, sea, moon and sun are ‘key players’. She reflects her environment and nature is reflected through her.

The rite begins at dawn, when the moon is still above the sea and the tide is out, and is completed at dusk, when the sun dissolves in the sea. Each scene is visually painted by the lighting conditions throughout the day following the movement of the sun across the sky.

Each scene is a stage forward in a transformation process and composed of a series of ritualistic movements. The major driving force to the rite is born from the longings to overcome physical, and in particular, man-made limitations, to bond with the natural environment and discover one’s identity through contact with the elements. As well as the desire to create one’s work or fulfil one’s sense of destiny along with the rhythms of nature. Therefore, by positioning the protagonist in the midst of a larger process of change, and within the context of a day transforming from morning to night, her personal rite is danced and performed within a universal context and law of transformation.

The rite takes place within the duration of a day, and what makes this day unique is the protagonist’s activity. However, she exists only for this purpose and only within that particular framework of time and space. She does not have an identity outside her role in the rite. She exists in space-time that can be described as ‘eternal present’ i.e. a concept of time as undivided and continuos phenomenon available beyond terrestrial limitations and Western culture’s rational perception of time via the ticking clock. The concept is associated with the notion of mythopetic-thought which has been used to describe an ancient idea of time as perceived by early human beings and also by the American Indian Hopi tribe who lived in ‘eternal present’, and didn’t have a word for time.

In Gaia – Mysterious Rhythms the dance-rite transcends terrestrial time into a timeless zone where the rhythms of the Earth, ancient Gaia, the sun and moon fall into the infinite. In mythic terms it is the eternal present of the gods and goddesses made available to mortals through their myths and rituals.

Photo: Mysteries of the Shell from Gaia – Mysterious Rhythms
The central theme of the film involves the interaction of the protagonist with the natural environment and elements. To emphasise the link between the woman and the environment as a living entity I titled the film Gaia. Hence, referring to ancient mythology and to contemporary views of planet Earth as a living, and perhaps even conscious, organism.

From a mythological perspective Gaia is associated with the beginning of the universe and the origins of life. She is the female creator appearing in the myths of the pre-patriarchal era. In The Women Spirituality Book author Diane Stein writes:” The oldest pre-Hellenic goddess is Gaia, though by no means the oldest of goddess creation stories. Like the Babylonian Tiamat, the sea, Gaia the earth arose from her self, from chaos. Whirling in darkness, she became a galaxy of fiery light and created the sun and the moon, the mirror of heaven. Merging with heaven, herself in the mirror, she gave birth to the seas and after cooling became the planet. Gaia’s body is the mother, the female, fertile earth.“

By referring to the feminine and mythical aspect of nature, a link was created between the identity of the protagonist and the environment as a manifestation of a female entity, creator or goddess. This has located the personal rite of the protagonist within a wider mythic context in which natural elements can be seen as symbolising female attributes. Moreover, the protagonist’s interaction with natural elements becomes a process through which she learns about her own female identity, and discovers her own nature as it is reflected through the feminine features of the world.

The Greek Delphic Oracle, referred to as the ‘naval of Gaia’, the female creator, is known for its particular call: know thyself. This is the very call that generates the protagonist’s journey in the film, guiding her via a passage, and leading her inward to knowing herself through contacts with aspects of herself and nature.

The physical and mythical connections of the protagonist with the environment are reflected through the use of colour. She wears a red dress, her hair shines in red shades and her lips are painted in dark red. Her character is linked to associations and symbols attached to the colour. The Hebrew word adama meaning earth contains in its root a host of related words such as: red (adm), blood (dam), mother (ama), man (Adam), dama (visual likeness or image). The inter-relationship between the earth and the colour red appears to be fused with a powerful life-force and creativity. Red is a highly dynamic colour expressing the physicality and intensity of life on earth. In Hebrew the word adama (earth) is a feminine term and Adam, man appears to be born from her. The red hues of the protagonist emphasise her physical connection to Gaia as earth and mother goddess. It also frames the protagonist’s personal rite within a wider mythic and symbolic context and reflecting her intimate relationship with the environment.

The props that the protagonist is using are attached to the natural environment. Dancing with a shell the protagonist forms a closer connection with the feminine life force and divinity that she finds in the sea. Her movements follow a delicate motif of waves and spirals. Diane Stein explains this fragile beauty at the heart of life: “Seashells are female symbols, symbols of the womb and birth, fertility and the emergence from the sea… Aphrodite, a powerful fertility aspect of the great goddess in pre-patriarchal Greece, is described as sea born, and often standing on a flat shell…. the conch that sounds the sea is in India the sound that made the universe. Many shells are rounded and hollowed womb or moon symbols and some are spirals – the shape of DNA and the labyrinth mystery symbol of the unfolding universe, the birth canal and the creative goddess”.

Another prop is the ankh, the ancient Egyptian Key of Life carried by the goddesses Isis and Hathor. The protagonist finds the ankh in the shallow water of the sea. According to Stein, images of women holding the ankh and associated with the sea, are powerful reminders of the force of female creation”.

Throughout the film the woman is seen reflected in, merging with, or emerging from, the sea. Reflection, duplication, water and sea are dominant images all linked to the feminine identity of the protagonist. “Symbolically woman is indeed water: mare, mer, mere and Mary (Miriam) … moving ever downward to collect in pools and lakes which mirror the sky. The feminine nature is reflective… By looking into the images in the deep unconscious, we come to know ourselves. Duplication, duplicity… belong to the feminine side.”

One of the most sacred emblems of the divine feminine is the pentacle, the five-pointed star. The protagonist’s dance in the centre of the pentacle invokes the primordial essence of the Goddess. Symbolically, the pentacle contains the union of matter and spirit, the four elements of nature and the fifth, which is the divine spirit and spark. The pentacle is an essential component in the rite protecting and empowering the woman, ensuring a graceful outcome.

The film begins and ends with a focus on the protagonist’s eyes, and throughout the film we see her in movements, which relate to her sense of seeing the world and herself externally and inwardly. The merging of her eye with the mythic and physical Eye of the Sun generates many possibly meanings. Fincher Susanne, author of Creating Mandalas writes that images of eyes “might be a message to pay attention to what it is that your unconscious sees”. The association of the eye to the divine feminine is found in Egyptian mythology where the goddess Matt was the “All seeing Eye and Mother of Truth”. “The universal mother word Maa was both the name of the goddess and the hieroglyphic eye”.

Ultimately Gaia – Mysterious Rhythms was made with the longings to form a connection with the feminine spirit of the world, the eternally dancing Anima Mundi. To reflect images of Her as a dance on screen and to find an expression that would liberate her essence. The language of the divine feminine originated in silence, and in the sounds, movements, and images of nature, long before the written word claimed to create our present world. The dancing shaman, the painter, designer and sculptor preceded the scribe. Once upon a time the world was rich with images that contained great wisdom. Yet, this is not an attempt to return to a lost paradise but the desire to explore new ways to describe aspects of the divine feminine without the constraints of literacy, which was often used to banish her.

David Abram writes in The Spell of the Sensuous: “Only as the written text began to speak would the voices of the forest, and of the river, begin to fade. And only then would language loosen its ancient association with the invisible breath, the spirit sever itself from the wind, the psyche dissociate itself from the environing air.”

The founding mothers of Modern Dance were the first modern women to reclaim and express the divine feminine through original art, utilising the feminine body as the centre of creation. Maya Deren, inspired by modern dance, transferred her feminine self to the cinema screen proposing a new way of looking at women and depicting their experiences.

In addition, she bravely produced a body of theoretical writings to explain and support her creative ideas that proved to be invaluable to future generations. This type of practice has constituted the foundation for this creative and practice-based PhD.

Gaia – mysterious Rhythms was made with the aesthetic awareness of a dance film choreographed specifically for the screen. It is an art form that offers many creative possibilities for the dance of the feminine spirit.

Copyright © Lila Moore