I’m writing this paper on this guy named Oskar Schlemmer and his crazy dance piece, the Triadisches Ballett. I’m not sure what to make of him, so I’m submitting my ideas to the collective mind of facebook.
The tradic ballet appeared early on Schlemmer’s career at the Bauhaus, and, in keeping with Bauhaus custom, saught to fuse all of the arts together into a single coherent whole. In his later theoretical work, Man and Art Figure, Schlemmer detailed how the ‘stage’ can represent the entire scope of human activites; from its intial “sacral” origins (that is, the priestly, the ritualistic) to the comic commedia del arte. The stage, according to Schlemmer, is the realm where mankind cannot only see transcendence enacted on a stage, but also create a transcendental, “dematerializing” effect on the corporeal body. He begins his treatise with nothing less than a cosmic claim: “the history of the theater is the history of the transfiguration of the human form. It is the history of man as the actor of physical and spiritual events, ranging from naivete to reflection, from naturalness to artifice.” (Schlemmer, Man and Art Figure, 17)
These physical and spiritual events that Schlemmer refers to constitute the rest of his theory; by abstracting the human form through “mechanical” costumes, man can bridge the gap between the physical and the spiritual, creating a symbolic figure who breaks the limitations imposed upon it by physical reality. To do so, then, requires a complete revaluation of space; “Man, the human organism, stands in the cubical, abstract space of the stage. Man and Space. Each has different laws of order. Whose shall prevail?” (22) In answer, Schlemmer proposes that “natural man, in deference ot abstract space, is recast to fit its mold.” (23). This, according to him, is the meaning of abstract stage.
We’re left with a dilemma. In order to achieve what Schlemmer calls “dematerialization” away from material, Schlemmer creates bizarre and extensive costumes that obscure the human body entirely, and even make its movement prohibitive. More material, more mechanization equals dematerialization and transcendence.
This paradox has been well remarked on, and Schlemmer is often scoffed at because of it. Yet I propose that Schlemmer’s theory, and the ballet that he invented from it, actually mean to make life more accessible, to place the “stage” and the new man in the center of society and, by so doing, remake the very foundations of culture itself. “Dematerializaiton”, in this view, would mean not only the dematerialization of the body but the dematerialization space, society, and city all at once. Ever found of the expression “man is the measure of all things,” Schlemmer’s art would ultimately destroy all the boundaries man currently slaves under.
There is something incredibly political about this, and possibly, even, proto-fascist. Yet before I label him, I need to do more research. In the mean time, I’m left to grapple with a bunch of questions. Perhaps you can help me out with them:
1. How political is Schlemmer’s stage, and how is that related to the body?
2. Is Schlemmer’s new conception of the body really that of “dematerializtion” through mechanization, of is his relationship with machine more ambivalent? How could this be related to Russian constructivism or Italian futurism?
3. Does the Triadic Ballet, of all things, really succeed in this aim?
4. Can we ever know for certain if Schlemmer succeeded, since that footage and documentation is lost to us? Is the attempt to cast praise or blame on Schlemmer silly—should we re-evaluate the terms we’ve used so far to imagine him?
I don’t know.
That’s what I’ll find out.
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