Parisian Cake Walks.pdf - ResearchSpace@Auckland

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19TH CENTURY MUSIC � ♭ ♭ 2 � 4 � ♭ ♭ � 2 4 6 304 �� ♯� 1 �� ff � � � � � � � � � � ♭� � �� 2 en avant � ♭ ♭ � � � � � ♯� � � � � � �� ♭ ♭ � � � �� 13 � ♭ ♭ � � � � � � � � � � �♯� � � � �� ♯ �� ♭ ♭ � �� ♯ � � � � � �� 19 Introduction � ♭ ♭ � �� ♭ ♭ � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �� z � �� ♯� � � � � � � � ♯� � � � � ♮� � � � � � �� ♮� �� 2 2 de coté 3 2 en avant e 2 figure: Pas allongé � � � � ♭ ♭ � � � � � � � �� ♮ � � �� ♯� � � � � � �� 1 st figure: Pas de Cake-Walk: �� ♭ ♭ � � ♯� � � � � � � ♯� � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � ♯� � � � �� ♯ �� ♭ ♭ �� ♮� �� ♭ � � � � ♭ � � � � � �� ♯ � 26 1 � � � � � �� 2 Pas de Cake-Walk: en arrière the musical beat, marking time physically by lifting or lowering their arms. 67 Synchronizing bodies to the beat, the music becomes a kind of metronome, locking the dancers’ movements to a codified aural pattern. It might even be said to have a propelling effect, driving physical movement forward with engine-like regularity. In his study of a single 67 The reference is as follows: “Pendant qu’ils dansent et chaque fois qu’ils lèvent un pied, ils doivent marquer le rythme avec les bras qui descendent et remontent”; see Antréassian, “Le Joyeux Nègre,” F-Pn N. 912. Example 1: Antréassian, “Le Joyeux Nègre.” �� ♮� � � � � � � � � � � � � � year, In 1926: Living on the Edge of Time, Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht suggests something similar. Discussing the European importation of African American dance, Gumbrecht describes how the coupling of the dancing body with musical meter creates the excitement of performance. The coincidence of visual and auditory beats, he implies, is a powerful machine. 68 68 See Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, In 1926: Living on the Edge of Time (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997), pp. 70–73. ��
There might, though, be another, related angle from which to conceive of this audio-visual coupling. What, we might ask, if such coupling were not only a cue for the dancer, or even a Gumbrechtian powerhouse, but also a cue for the spectator? What if it were not only a means of bodily coordination but also of coordination of the gaze? In other words, what if music were a spotlight, directing spectatorial attention toward the synchronous visual event—in the case of the Elks, the moving limbs? This idea seems to have a good deal to commend it. Generations of film directors and scholars have tacitly observed the hegemony of the synchronous: that an image, when synchronized to a sound or musical effect, will necessarily demand and receive audience attention. 69 Moreover, compared to that of other contemporary dances, the cake walk’s coupling of music and movement might appear particularly charged. Whereas in the minuet, gavotte, and others the metric coordination and stability offered by a musical accompaniment is reaffirmed by a dance partner, in the cake walk there is no such doubling of structure. The partner is often relegated to a merely pictorial level; bodily contact between dancers is reduced and is certainly unnecessary for purposes of balance or guidance. The cake walk could be—and often was—danced alone. In place of the dance partner, the music might come into greater focus, taking on the role of spatial and metric guide. A new type of interaction and dependency would be set up: between body and sound rather than between body and body. These ideas about bodies and spotlights are inevitably exploratory. Period sources, and indeed Cocteau’s account, make no reference to either the audio-visual combination or the music’s function. Moreover, claims of gesturalmusical synchronization might seem inadequate to describe the cake walk’s essential specificity. Despite the potential significance of music’s role as dance partner, its principal function as a metric guide is hardly unique. Dance music has always functioned to struc- 69 See, for example, the seminal work of French filmmakercomposer-critic Michel Chion, in particular his Audio- Vision: Sound on Screen, trans. Claudia Gorbman (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994). ture and coordinate movement, be it on a beatby-beat or measure-by-measure level. Dictionaries and theories of dance, from Charles Compan’s Dictionnaire de danse, contenant l’histoire, les règles et les principes de cet art (1787) to Lussan-Borel’s Traité de danse avec musique contenant toutes les danses de salon (1899), continually affirm the notion of a gestural dependency on music. Analyses of dance moves take musical divisions as their point of reference; steps might correspond to beats, “ternes” (sequences of steps) to measures. 70 But something else about the cake walk’s audio-visual synchronization might encourage us to persist with the interpretation. Perhaps the most vivid parallel between the dance’s music and gesture concerns style rather than meter, sensibility rather than structure. The music, we might recall, reflects the cake walk’s physical juts, starts, and asymmetrical postures with its own brand of offbeat accent. Remarking on the dance’s accompaniment, Le Petit Bleu describes “le rythme d’une musique bizarre, heurtée, saccadée, inharmonique, mais entraînante” (the rhythm of a bizarre, jerky, staccato, unharmonic but rousing music). 71 L’Actualité française illustrée reminds us further: “la musique est une sorte de polka-marche, très rapide, hérissée de contre-temps et de syncopes!” (the music is a sort of polka-march, very fast, bristling with offbeat rhythms and syncopations!). 72 Here, then, is an impression of angularity that maps stylistically onto the dance itself—an aural impression that might serve to heighten the visual one, drawing attention to the bending and stretching of the body, and perhaps even contributing to the foregrounding of the physical recorded by Cocteau. Spotlit by both musical and gestural systems (not to mention the spotlights them- 70 See Charles Compan, Dictionnaire de danse, contenant l’histoire, les règles et les principes de cet art, avec des Réflexions critiques, et des Anecdotes curieuses concernant la Danse ancienne et moderne (1787; rpt. Genève: Minkoff, 1979); and Lussan-Borel, Traité de danse avec musique. As Compan states in his entry on “L’Oreille”: “la musique devroit diriger [les] mouvements, fixer [les] pas et déterminer [les] temps” (p. 278). 71 “Le Dernier ‘Cri’,” Le Petit Bleu de Paris, 18 December 1902; clipping, F-Po B pièce 347. 72 Gérard, “La Danse à la mode de cet hiver,” L’Actualité française illustrée, n.d.; clipping, F-Po B pièce 347. 305 DAVINIA CADDY Parisian Cake Walks
Page 1 and 2: Parisian Cake Walks Review by: Davi
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