From Anitra’s Song to the Tarantella
Recontextualization as a Creative Method
Abstract
The topic of the research reflections broached in this article involves two versions of the closing scene from the second act of A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen. A comparative analysis originating from a sketch from 1879, in which Nora Helmer sang and danced Anitra’s song from Peer Gynt, and a published variant in which she dances the tarantella, intends to demonstrate the character of changes introduced by the author. A synthetic work by Vilhelm Bergsøe about tarantism (1865), with which Ibsen was most probably familiar, is also presented as one of the contexts of such changes. An analysis of the tarantella motif is based on contemporary studies on the tarantella and tarantism. The article proposes the thesis that Ibsen preserved all meanings contained in the rough version but redistributed them in a different manner in the text of the drama; at the same time, by changing the music-dance motif he increased the number of mutually interfering contexts. Significant changes also affected relations between the dramatis personae. Resignation from exoticization and the introduction of the tarantella as a motif more open to performative clarification and semantically less stabilised than Anitra’s song contributed to a considerable expansion of interpretation possibilities.
Keywords:
Henrik Ibsen, tarantella, tarantism, drama, danceReferences
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Authors
Ewa Partygaewa.partyga@ispan.pl
Instytut Sztuki PAN Poland
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7929-2875
Ewa Partyga – pracuje w Instytucie Sztuki PAN, zajmuje się kulturową historią dramatu i teatru w perspektywie komparatystycznej oraz twórczością Henrika Ibsena i jej recepcją w różnych kręgach kulturowych.
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