Taniec to (nie) walka. Agonistyka i antagonistyka a choreografia na przykładzie turniejów rycerskich i mieszczańskich w Niemczech

• Authors: Maciej Talaga

Title variants

EN

Dance is (not) a fight. Agonistics, antagonistics, and choreography on the example of knightly tournaments and urban fencing competitions in Germany

Abstracts

EN

What is dance? This is one of the key questions in dance research to which the relevant literature provides no definite answer. The classic approaches highlight the central role of movement, rhythm, and a slight excess of expressivity as the criteria for recognising a given practice as a dance. Seeking to deepen our understanding of the nature of dance, one should take a closer look at phenomena that escape or even contest the definitions accepted thus far. This article is an attempt at such an analysis of two historical European forms of martial arts, knightly tournaments and urban fencing competitions, in the late medieval and early modern Germany. Alongside their socio-cultural context their specific ‘kinetic sensitivity’ is also taken into account. The unfolding discussion leads to the central question: What made the viewers of contemporary knightly tournaments associate the opponents’ movements with a dance routine? In fact, the relevant literature began to describe them with terms derived from ballet de cour; however, they were never used to discuss the urban fencing competitions. In light of this, it is proposed to supplement the existing definitions of dance with the category of antagonistics defined here as a movement in which the essential criteria for the participants’ assessment and success, and therefore also the main driver of innovation, are not as much determined by aesthetic conventions as by factors not subject to social negotiations. Consequently, while easily encompassing the classically understood agonistics, the dance seems to end where antagonistics begins.

Keywords

PL

turniej rycerski; szermierka; agonistyka; choreografia społeczna; kinesis

EN

knightly tournament; fencing; agonistics; social choreography; kinesis

• Publisher: Narodowe Centrum Kultury
• Journal: Kultura Współczesna. Teoria. Interpretacje. Praktyka
• Year: 2020
• Volume: 111
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 157-173

Contributors

author

Maciej Talaga

• https://orcid.org/0000000161698623

Identifiers

DOI

10.26112/kw.2020.111.12

Biblioteka Nauki

1944358