IV - Forever spinning … Round dances

From kids' games in kindergartens to more elaborated choreographies on theater stages, round dances find naturally their place in this "spinning forever" recollection. As shown by the selected examples below, this particular spinning move may carry various meanings according to the circumstances...

1-In The Golden age, Lucas Cranach the Elder seems to set the stage in the Garden of Eden surrounded by a brick wall. A merry society lives there without much worries in company of peaceful a wild animals... three couples spend the time chatting, seated, laying or bathing in the river while a in the center a dance around a fruit tree is taking place. One can observe the typical Cranach's ideal (tall and slim) nudes and notice the difference of skin tones between men and women. This painting, close in time with the  Rabelais's Abbaye de Thélème (Gargantua, 1534/1542) is generally considered as an illustration of Hesiod's poem Works and days. No work, just fun!, food grows by itself... it may also be seen as an illustration of a favorite motto of the time: Utopia (See also to Thomas Moore). The initiation of the Lutherian Reform, the discovery of the "new world", the Copernicus system.... opened new perspectives in a slowly ending Middle Age world locked for thousand years by Christianity. 

Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472-1553),
The Golden age, ca 1530, Alte Pinakothek Munich,
Credits: Wikipedia

2-In the detail screenshot of the engraving below, P. Brueghel's shows a kermesse in a district nearby Antwerp. There is an evident expression of happiness represented by the round dance but there is also the materilaisation of a strong social link within this community. During the XIVth and XVth centuries, Brugge and Antwerp were flourishing trading cities before Amsterdam took over (mid XVIth) as a consequence of the Dutch revolt and the Declaration of independence in 1581. 

Pieter Brueghel the Elder (1525-1569),

The Hoboken kermesse (detail), 1559 (engraving), Bibilothèque Albert Ie, Bruxelles

3- Arnold Böcklin is generally considered as a symbolist painter. He refers here to the Greek God Pan surrounded by young spinning dancers on the rhythm of his flute music. Curiously, the satyr is not using a pan flute but a traverso or a concert flute :-). This round dance, a revisit of the mythology, may likely be understood as an allegory of music.

Arnold Böcklin (1827-1901), 

Pan in children's  round dance, ca 1884

Museum Folkwang, Essen

4- There are many versions of Matisse's work called La Danse (including variations) starting  from 1910 up to 1938+. Matisse uses here vivid complementary colours (orange and blue) to model the "shape" of the dancing bodies making the lines of the drawing of secondary importance. This concept will culminate with the Bather in the reeds/Baigneuse dans les roseaux (1952) where the drawing line will be replaced by a cut of colored paper glued on a white sheet. In La Danse, there is no decor in the background for this group of mixed dancers. The spinning is rendered by the posture of the naked bodies and the lightness of the "flying" arms. The effect is extremely decorative and could be a motive for a fresco or a kind of arabesque? Debussy already used this word to name  two of his compositions twenty years earlier: Deux arabesques...

Henti Matisse (1869-1954)

La Danse, 1910

The Hermitage, St Petersburg

Credits: Wikipedia

5-Emile Nolde was a member of "Die Brücke" founded in 1905 in Berlin. This group of German artists was strongly influenced by new trends in arts at the turn of the XXth century. Paris was at that time a mandatory "incubator" to visit and a place to study. The French Fauvist group, even if recognized as such later, started from 1900 to introduce vivid colors in their painting. This new approach was continued by the Expressionnists in Germany. If the use strong colors is an essential element in all his production, Nolde's interest for mysticism has to be noted. In addition to the Golden Calf below, one can also mention in the series of religious scenes: Last Supper (1909), Christ in Bethany (1910), Life of Christ (1911/1912), Burial (1915)...

Emile Nolde (1867-1956)

Dance around the Golden Calf, 1910,

Pinakothek der moderne, Munich

6-This work of Max Pechstein (Another member of Die Brücke) obviously echoes La Danse displayed above. The post-Impressionnists and French painters were known in Germany before the first world war through several important exhibitions (Paul Cassirer). It seems in Pechstein's work here below that the Matisses's lesson has been somehow learnt. In addition, this drawing reflects some other aspects of the Expressionnist ideology around 1900: to live freely, to get closer to the nature, reject conventions,  to return to the essentials of early societies etc… the opposite way of life pushed by the "modernity" where industry, technological innovations, economy were carrying the hope of a better and safer world for all... If the expressionists welcomed the irruption of the first world war in 1914 as a trigger to change the world according to their own ideas, they rapidly changed their mind when they realised the atrocities and the suffering coming out of the conflict. 

Max Pechstein (1881-1955),
Der Tanz, 1912 Lithography,
Land Museum Oldenburg

7-These three voluminous sculptures exhibited in the Nikki de Saint Phalle exhibition (Le Grand Palais, Paris 2014) were on display on a spinning table. This move cannot be rendered by the still picture but fits however perfectly with our post related to round dances. This work is, at first, representative of the excentricities produced in the 60ies. In a period where economy was blooming with no limits, everything seemed possible in all domains and the population mood was quite optimistic (at least in Western Europe). This utopia culminated with the 1968 revolts (May 1968 events in France) and was stopped with the start of a series of energy crisis in 1970. Considering the Nikki de Saint Phalle's very fleshy and flashy women production in particular but more generally a large number of produced work of this period, one can wonder wether these will survive five hundred years as  the Cranach's Golden Age for instance did …  :-)

Nikki de Saint Phalle (1930-2002)

Les trois graces/Three graces, 1995-2003

Le Grand Palais Exhibition, Paris - 2014