In Europe, since the Renaissance periods, literary texts, classical sculptures, paintings and architectural remains, as well as in later times the results of the archaeological excavations and the study of ancient artefacts, deeply influenced the artists’ imagination. Several of them composed avant-garde works by thinking to ‘revive’ old forms of performing arts (music, dance, theatre, poetry). In my presentation I will focus on a few examples of such a process taking place in Europe, North America, Russia and Asia, spanning from the second half of the 19th till the first decades of 20th centuries, in order to show how some artists got inspired for their own creative work by the ancient visual arts and the oriental cultures. By stressing on the revival of the glory of the past, often perceived as a lost primordial ‘golden age’, they actually elaborated new forms of ‘modern’ aesthetics, choreographic techniques and body languages.
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Tiziana LEUCCI, is a senior research fellow at the French National Center for the Scientific Research (CNRS) attached to the Centre d’Etudes Sud-Asiatiques et Himalayennes in Paris-Aubervilliers. Her Ph.D. thesis in Cultural History and Social Anthropology (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris) dealt with the South Indian dancers and courtesans’ culture. Leucci studied ballet and modern dance at the National Academy of Dance in Rome, and South Indian Bharatanatyam and Odissi dance styles in India for twelve years (from 1987 till 1999). She performed and gave master classes in Europe and Russia and authored two books and several articles on Anthropology and Dance History. She directed a research project titled ‘Connected Histories of Dance’ at the Maison des Sciences de l’Homme of North Paris, and at present she is co-directing two seminars and a research workshop at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales. Since 2010 she teaches Indian Bharatanatyam dance at the Conservatoire de Musique et Danse ‘Gabriel Fauré’, Les Lilas-Est Ensemble (France).