In the late Sixties, Nam June Paik, one of the creators of videoart, expressed his concern that “it is about time we make the distinction between video art and video taped art.” Looking at TV and video dance of the Seventies and early Eighties one feels compelled to agree with Paik, realizing that a distinction must finally be made between video dance and video taped dance. Even when given the opportunity to create a work for video, rather than adapt a proscenium piece, choreographers frequently continue composing dances from a theatrical point of view which are then more or less successfully captured by the media. In other words, instead of creating videodance — a blending of structural and perceptual elements intrinsic to dance and the media — makers unintentionally slip into the genre of video translations of existing works or of videodocumentation. It appears that this state of affairs is chiefly due to two factors. Dancers and choreographers, on the one hand, do not always seek opportunities for hands-on experiences in a television studio or even with portable video equipment (other than shooting a record tape in place of a dance score). Such a practice does not allow for an understanding of the nature of the medium and excludes a creative integration of its expressive potentials. The number of media artists, on the other hand, who are familiar with the nature of dance is small. Independent artists, such as Charles Atlas, Doris Chase, and Jeff Bush or TV directors Fred Barzyk and Rick Hauser, are a minority, and individual dance/performance/media artists, such as Birgit Cullberg, Amy Greenfield, and Elaine Summers are still exceptions.

In the last decade a new body of dance-oriented biomechanical literature has begun to develop. Much of this biomechanical research indicates that in some ways traditional dance pedagogical methods are in conflict with the physical realities of moving bodies in space and the scientific laws that govern the behavior of moving bodies in space, i.e., the laws of physics. A number of traditionally accepted instructional dance precepts are being revealed as inaccurate or impossible. For example, according to traditional dance pedagogical methods, the supinated or “sickled” foot is a strictly forbidden action. However, in her study of grand allegro steps, Ryman found that in turning leaps, the push-off foot “sickled” during the take-off phase. Indeed the laws of science dictate that such twisting is essential for providing the torque necessary in any turning motion. Ryman's documentation of the “sickled” foot is an example of the limitations in the traditional dance teaching methods that currently are being exposed by dance-oriented biomechanical research.

Many creative people have produced films using dance as the main or secondary subject matter. The past decade has brought such major studio productions as The Turning Point (Ross, 1977), Nijinsky (Ross, 1980), Saturday Night Fever (Badham, 1977), Flash Dance (Lyne, 1983), Staying Alive (Stallone, 1983), Breakin' I & II (Silberg 1984), and Dirty Dancing (Ardolino, 1987), and independent films like In a Rehearsal Room (Hahn, 1975), Dune Dance (Brown, 1981), and Space City (Brentano and Horn, 1980), as well as much of the rock-video genre. The directors and/or choreographers of these films have produced dances for the camera that often could not, or at least did not, exist except on the television or movie screen. Angles chosen to frame shots and the rhythm of editing used to determine pace were selected for the cinematic value they produced. They expressed either the creative impulses of the filmmaker, those of the choreographer interpreted by the filmmaker through an active collaboration, or (only rarely) those of the choreographer as filmmaker. In these cases the techniques unique to film and video have been used to create dance events for the screen.

But what of dance works that have been choreographed to be seen on the proscenium stage? It is, perhaps, even more challenging, if not as apparently creative, to try to preserve on film or tape the composition and pattern and inherent rhythm of such choreography; that is, to bring a faithful translation of the choreographer's vision to the audience in front of the screen. Dance film that strives to provide the same aesthetic result as that of the staged choreography is a demanding art form in its own right; it draws upon all our understanding of the principles of documentary film and of visual perception. What makes this such a difficult task? Why is it so hard to maintain the energy, the excitement, and the aesthetic values of the performance when presenting the content of the prescribed space and the specific time of the real world, on the screen? The reason may be that we do not yet fully understand the interactions that occur between that objectively limited space of the world and the subjectively defined space produced by the camera.

The development of pointe technique rightly can be viewed as a “technical revolution” in the history of ballet, but its origins and early manifestations are among the intriguing mysteries of this ephemeral art. The discussion that follows will explore those mysteries by examining sources heretofore largely ignored: the technical treatises about dancing written by ballet masters of the late-eighteenth through the early nineteenth centuries. These books and manuscripts reveal the most frequently taught steps and positions performed on full pointe, the dance phrases in which those movements occurred, and the exercises deemed necessary to “gain strength on the points of the toes.” Such an examination suggests that early pointe work was not an exclusively feminine activity, nor was the earliest exponent of this phenomenon a ballerina of the nineteenth century.

It would seem reasonable to expect dance technique notebooks and manuals to yield clear documentation and definitions of such a “revolutionary” phenomenon as pointe work. At the very least it would seem that the authors of those treatises would call attention to the new “discovery” which soon was to become “one of the prime features of the Romantic ballet.” But, that view of the revolutionary nature of dancing on pointe comes from our own twentieth century hindsight, not from those who first experienced the phenomenon. Rather, the earliest nineteenth century accounts by dancing masters treat pointe work in a casual manner, thus suggesting they were depicting a quite logical, but hardly remarkable, development. For example, E.A. Théleur's book on technique, Letters on Dancing (London, 1831), describes and illustrates poses corresponding to second, fourth, and fifth positions that can be made either “on the balls of the feet or on the points of the toes.” Théleur, in an even more nonchalant manner, uses his only two illustrations of dancers on the tips of their toes as examples of proper positions for the arms rather than as depictions of positions on the points of the toes.

What various experiences does dance elicit? And why do people involve themselves in it? Aestheticians have often debated such questions from an audience standpoint, but much less frequently from that of the dancer. Yet many theories, representing mainstream psychology's various subdisciplines, as well as related traditions such as psychoanalysis and existentialism, do suggest, either openly or by implication, reasons for indulging in creative work. Of these, a particularly promising avenue to the dancer's psychology has come from an author who is seldom thought of as a “psychologist” at all. We speak of Jean-Paul Sartre, and his analysis of interpersonal interaction known as the gaze, or the look (le regard).

Sheets has used other Sartrian notions to describe the phenomenology of dance from an audience perspective, and the gaze figures prominently in Sartre's own analyses of such creative persons as Baudelaire, Jean Genet, and even himself, but to our knowledge it has not previously been applied to the dancer. So that will be our purpose here. However, an initial clarification, and disclaimer, seems appropriate. We shall describe the gaze more fully later, but essentially it portrays all human interactions, without exceptions, as struggles for power and dominance. Therefore such interactions allow only two reactions: the sadistic, that seeks such power over others, and the masochistic, that submits to others, voluntarily or otherwise. We will argue that dancers almost inevitably must choose the second reaction, which may help us understand some of their typical psychological characteristics. But we must emphasize that in Sartre's usage, and therefore ours, the term “masochism” is not pejorative, nor necessarily suggestive of pathology. Everyone, the psychologically afflicted and all others, must choose one of these two reactions.