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Signs for a science: Aleksei Sidorov’s Choreology

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Abstract

The article is an inquiry into the contribution that choreology made to the Russian/State Academy of Artistic Sciences (GAKhN) as both an institutional and research project. Choreology was a new discipline that Aleksei Sidorov and Aleksandr Larionov created following up Vassily Kandinsky’s idea that dance and, more widely, the art of movement, should be a subject of scholarly and scientific investigation. In his capacity as the academic secretary of GAKhN, Sidorov founded the Choreological Laboratory (1922–1929), and Larionov served as its head. Both took an active part in movement analyses, made sketches and notes, and used photography to capture dance movements and to create a system of dance notation. Their search was informed by Allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft, and especially by Heinrich Wölfflin; at the same time, their interest in dance notation grew from their search for occult signs and symbols. In Sidorov’s notes and sketches from the 1920s, one can see the process of making signs for a language of dance notation. The attempt by the Russians to schematize movement and find an abstract language for dance paralleled an effort by the Central-European choreographer and dance theoretician, Rudolf von Laban. A unique and only half-realized project, choreology was a valuable contribution to the new “artistic sciences.”

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Notes

  1. For the discussion of Kandinsky’s ideal of “higher sensitivity” of the artist and its exemplification in abstract art and the combination of the senses, even synesthesia, see Sirotkina and Smith (2017).

  2. I thank Elena Glukhova for the reference to Sidorov’s mystical drawings.

  3. On the history of modern dance in Russia, see (Misler, 2011; Misler, 2017; Sirotkina, 2012; Surits, 1996).

  4. The journal, Zeitschrift für Ästhetik und allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft, was published by Max Dessoir; five congresses on general art history were held in Germany in 1913–1930; see (Kollenberg-Plotnikova, 2017). I thank Nikolaj Plotnikov for the reference to Laban in this context.

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Funding

Funding was provided by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation, grant No. 386757512).

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  1. Institute for the History of Science and Technology, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia

    Irina Sirotkina

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Correspondence to Irina Sirotkina.

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The author thanks Marina Bykova, Nikolaj Plotnikov, Roger Smith, and two anonymous reviewers for their constructive suggestions on early versions of the paper.

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Sirotkina, I. Signs for a science: Aleksei Sidorov’s Choreology. Stud East Eur Thought 75, 283–301 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11212-021-09428-z

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