Ichnography of dance
By: Lucien Massaert
| ARTICLE INFO: Volume: 12 Issue: 01:Summer 2026 ISSN: 2459-2943 DOI: 10.18680/hss.2026.0002 Pages: 13-37 Lic.: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 |
KEYWORDS: Representation Space Ground Remainders Structure |
ABSTRACT
Just as François Wahl gave one of his works the title Introduction au discours du tableau, we could present this study as an Introduction to the Semiotics of Dance, although, to be more careful, we should rather be talking of a possible introduction to a semiotics of dance, starting by asking the question of an (im)possible representation of its space. The obstacles and aporias which this question encounters will lead us to make a detour through the representations of architecture, among others through a drawing by Baldassarre Peruzzi, which single-handedly sums up all the indecisions leading to the acknowledgment of an impossible totalization of the logics of representation. It is the ground of dance, as Valéry perceives it in Degas, which
leads us to the necessity of taking into account a dissolution of the figure in the semiotic approach to dance. At this stage a Real presents itself, that which of the body fails to signify, its objects, those remainders: breath, breathlessness, sweat, traces, that impossible of dance as necessary to knot its structure.
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