Abstract

My paper presents an attempt at observing how the arts may mingle with each other and share technical features at the beginning of the modernist period (late XIXth/early XXth centuries), with particular attention paid to dance pieces inspiring works of poetry and poetic rhetorical figures being a source of inspiration for danced gestures. The encounter between dance and poetry, instead of confronting poetry with painting, or poetry with music, paves the way for establishing a new methodology which requires an interdisciplinary use of stylistic and rhythmical devices, as well as the combination of the Aesthetic, Linguistic and Semiotic disciplines. The confrontation of choreographical codes, operating silently, but rhythmically and visually, with the poetic ones, striving to convey such dynamic perceptions through language, will be analysed through Rainer Maria Rilke’s, and T. S. Eliot's poetry, both heirs and readers of Stéphane Mallarmé, in relation to the innovative avant- garde dancers Loïe Fuller, Isadora Duncan and Nijinsky. My aim is to state that this interaction between poets conjuring movement within verse and dancers evocating poetry through a choreography on the stage captures the very ambition of modern aesthetics, exploring through hybrid forms and blurred boundaries of traditional genres, the crucial notion of rhythm in every form of art. In this regard, I will try and explain why modern dance at its early stage in the XXth century epitomizes the modern thirst to investigate a renewed form of abstract and rhythmical expression, concentrating on representing dynamic conflicts, and on rendering rhythmical impressions upon the page, the score, the canvas or the stage.