From Text to Dance
Andrée Howard's The Sailor's Return
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 20458293 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Susan Jones (0000-0003-0639-1586, St Hilda's College, Oxford), Susan H Jones (0000-0002-0092-5834, St. John's College, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2008 |
| Volume | 26 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 1-17 |
| Publication date | 2008-04-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Dance Research (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0264-2875 • E-ISSN: 1750-0095 |
| Publisher | Edinburgh University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.3366/e0264287508000030 |
| OpenAlex | W2046185159 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 8 |
This essay explores the source material for Andrée Howard's 1947 narrative work for Ballet Rambert, The Sailor's Return. Howard based her libretto for the ballet on David Garnett's 1925 novel of the same name, closely following his story of a West African princess who marries an English sailor and encounters racial prejudice in England. I examine the textual and choreographic contexts for the ballet, relating its visual rhetoric and movement vocabularies to a variety of sources from nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature and dance. In investigating the novel, we find that Garnett drew on Richard Burton's 1864 anthropological account of Dahomey (now Benin) in West Africa, especially his striking descriptions of Amazonian dance. I locate these transmissions between text and dance in the context of modernist discussions of primitivism, showing that while aspects of Howard's ballet conform to enduring primitivist traditions, its focus on the female protagonist's individuality and ethnic origins reflects the anthropological thrust of the textual sources and offers a striking critique of racism in a realist mode. Howard's choreographic style can also be located in the context of contemporary experiments in black performance dance. Her sensitive handling of sources shows her important contribution to narrative ballet and the distinctiveness of her presentation of female experience in the period
Art · Art history · Ballet · Choreography · Dance · Literature · Narrative · Racism · Rhetoric · Sociology · Spectacle · Visual arts · Diversity and Impact of Dance · Gender Studies · History · Philosophy · Theater, Performance, and Music History · Theatre and Performance Studies
| Citations per year | 0.11 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2017 - 2017 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |