El ritmo teatral. La configuración rítmica de la existencia como sistema de creación en la vanguardia de 1900 y su recepción en la Needcompany, la Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio y la Peeping Tom

Abstract

Conclusions: Rhythm and score According to Patrice Pavis, for contemporary theatre, and specifically in the late 20th century and early 21st century, rhythm becomes an essential element that gives structure and cohesion to the scenic event. Indeed, Pavis defends the theory that has been explained throughout this essay: The rhythm recovers its function in structuring time in episodes, (...) connects the various materials of performance (...) arise the specific rhythms of all the stage systems (lighting, gestuality, music, costumes, etc.). Each stage system evolves according to its own rhythm; the perception of differences in synchronization, the different shifters, the different connections, the hierarchies between signifying systems, all this is part of the ordering (...) of the mise-en-scene by the spectator. (2002, p. 404). In our analysis, we have considered the evolution of the conception of rhythm for the companies under study, with the following findings: firstly, a phase of deconstruction of the meaning of rhythm throughout its evolution in relation to scenic art. That is to say, there is an objective to understand the meaning of each one; secondly, a phase that assumes the eclectic and mannerist coexistence of the most interesting rhythms for the creator or creators -this pastiche was generally based on a cyclical conception of rhythm, i.e., exposition, climax and denouement; and thirdly, a rhizomatic approach to rhythm in order to transform this new notion into one of the most novel characteristics that occurred during the period under study. Rhizomatic rhythm consisted of a heterogeneity -a mixture of different rhythmic patterns linked and juxtaposed in an orderly fashion, according to the taste of the creator. Therefore, it adopted a pastiche with no unity, a dissonant rhythm, a precarious rhythm regarding the possibility of being new and hopeful. Thus, we could assume a new rhythm in society at the end of the 20th century. We refer to a period of time that was not integrated within the concept of history and progression, but appeared as a horizontal present -without past or future- that unfolded in small non-correlative events with the intention of generating small temporary ellipses -matching the necessary space to get to another spectacular position. Thus, we encounter a conception of time based on the dynamism of speed where instantaneousness and ontological scarcity of the now eliminate the possibility of future events. According to Sanz Loroño, there are two reasons why this happens: because instantaneousness can only be possible at the expense of said representation, since instantaneousness does not have space (...) and because time, as such a function, can only occur thanks to standardisation. The change, or the difference, is only viable thanks to homogenisation, which makes the world a stable structure without external places for escaping, thus relegating the difference to the condition of exchange within a homogeneous structure (quoted in VV.AA. 2011, pp. 224-225). It was a time of multiple discourses, a time for proclaiming the real impossibility of collective union and consensus. A time where tolerance and respect create the basic form for the coexistence of stories. This new conception of time brought about a problem regarding the idea of subject. As Blanco Gálvez explains, Vattimo started from the eventualisation of Heidegger's being to explain that there is no longer an “eternal, stable, immutable presence’, but rather the presence of being ‘is trans-mission, sending, transmission of messages that come from the past, the echoes of language that will make us discover the linguistic aspect of this occurrence of being” (Blanco Gálvez, 2007, p. 34). Thus, Deleuze points out the consciousness of a new individual whose main characteristic is segmentarity: “Dwelling, getting around, working, playing: life is spatially and socially segmented.(...) We are segmented in a binary fashion, following the great major dualist oppositions: social classes, but also men-women, adults-children, and so on” (2015, p. 214). Therefore, the new individual of the society of the spectacle, mediated by images, composed its identity in the same way that theatre composed its time through montage, which unites different rhythmic cosmogonies. That is to say, the being is no longer an absolute and closed entity, but rather, it presents itself as an energetic force in constant construction-destruction, a ductile and mouldable force, which has a liquid form according to Bauman's words: 'Liquid modern' is a society in which the conditions under which its members act change faster than it takes the ways of acting to consolidate into habits and routines. Liquidity of life and that of society feed and reinvigorate each other. Liquid life, just like liquid modern society, cannot keep its shape or stay on course for long. (Bauman, 2017, p. 9) Conclusions on rhythm: society and art. As we have seen throughout this essay, there is an unbreakable relationship between rhythm, theatre and society. Similarly, we feel that the perception of rhythm creates a time system that organises the duration of a life and, likewise, affects every area of the community, including ethics and aesthetics. What follows is a brief summary of the evolution of rhythm from the crisis of modernity of the late 19th century to the emergence of metamodern times at the beginning of the 21st century. Let us start from the figure of Baudelaire, representative of Symbolism, who used silence to promote an attitude of suspicion towards the tempo-rational rhythm pattern prevailing in Western culture. In our view, these symbolists were the prefigurers of the idea of ‘end of history’ in a teleological sense. This was demonstrated by the reflections on Baudelaire's concept of fashion, Benjamin's theory of ruins, and Rimbaud’s ultimate conclusion: ‘One must be absolutely modern!” That is when the genesis of Postmodernity takes place. As Habermas said: The anarchistic intention of exploding the continuum of history accounts for the subversive force of this new historical consciousness. (Post)modernity revolts against the normalizing functions of tradition; (Post)modernity lives on the experience of rebelling against all that is normative. (quoted by Sarasola Santamaria, 2014, p. 204). Furthermore, the temporary revolution carried out by the proletariat of the 20th century redesigned capitalist enterprises, which began to be based on a new conception of the time of the subjugated: work time and leisure time. The latter produced a cultural upheaval based on fashion, consumption and advertising, as the new capitalist system was grounded in the confirmation and co-aptation of the rhythms of different urban cultures. Therefore, emerging rhythms became aesthetic attitudes of purchase and sale administered by capitalism. This was amplified by the emergence of the mass media -promoting forms of behaviour identification- which range from social success to radical dissidence. It was at that time that the society of the spectacle emerged, and it could be defined as a society that, through entertainment, annuls any critical capacity of society so that there is no possibility of an event outside of economic power. We refer to a society based on pastiche, relativism and indifference; a society that generated a situation which was eternally suspended in a nostalgic and melancholic present where it was impossible to build a future. Finally we could highlight, from the rhythmic analysis of the selected scenic pieces, how the appearance of a last rhythmic period would succeed in giving rise to metamodern times. Below, we analyse each of the points that gave rise to this new concept of rhythm, which was not presented linearly or consecutively in any case. In the first place, we find a phase consisting in an attempt to understand the mechanisms that make up history, art and thought by means of deconstruction. This phase ended up revealing, once again, the cyclical rhythms of human being, who did not wish to impose them at all. Next, reconstruction led to a new construction process: the rhizome. This process did not imply the genesis of an original rhythm, but an arrangement of the existing ones -based on the principles of connection, heterogeneity, multiplicity and asignifying rupture. (Deleuze & Guattari, 2015). This rhythmic structure gave rise to a new way of conceiving time: the becoming. Both the notion of rhizome and the becoming imply an intrinsic relationship to space. And both of them annul teleological time to focus on the production process of the elements that have already been configured. Thus, everything starts from the erosion, which produces energy on the surface and gives rise to two kinds of spaces: smooth space and striated space2. Again, their combinations generate the different rhythmic possibilities. Deleuze and Guattari explain it as follows: This raises a number of simultaneous questions: the simple oppositions between the two spaces; the complex differences; the de facto mixes, and the passages from one to another; the principles of the mixture, which are not at all symmetrical, sometimes causing a passage from the smooth to the striated, sometimes from the striated to the smooth, according to entirely different movements. We must therefore envision a certain number of models, which would be like various aspects of the two spaces and the relations between them. (2015, p. 484) Thus, the becoming and the rhizome are produced by the consciousness of generating any kind of cosmogony from the multiple combinations between energy and space, that is, rhythm. However, despite the possibility to re-build our identity offered by structuralism, we cannot leave aside the great burden inflicted by global capitalism, as it controls the process of fragmentation and signifying appearance, adopting all systems promoted by the rhizome and the becoming. Subsequently, we reach a final phase of thought in the society of the spectacle: metamodernism, which, as we have already mentioned, is a dialectical tension between hope and irony. In rhythmic terms, it involves a montage based on two stages: structure and appearance. Structure is built up from organic and transcultural cyclic rhythms that allow a start point for identity; and from appearance, arising from the free disposition of any existing rhythm, which lost all kind of activist essence, so as to generate a pastiche in constant movement, and, at the same time, it is related to the defence of minorities. Thus, metamodernism, without any kind of critical and dissident purpose regarding cultural industry, is awaiting some new rhythm to be introduced as an event in Baudouin's terms: It is something that brings to light possibilities that were invisible or even unthinkable. An event is not by itself the creation of a reality; it is the creation of a possibility; it opens up a possibility. It indicates to us that a possibility has been ignored. The event is, in a certain way, merely a proposition. It proposes something to us. Everything will depend on the way in which the possibility proposed is (...) set out in the world. This is what I call “a truth procedure” (Badiou, 2013, p. 21). Conclusions to the starting hypothesis of our research work After going through our research project from top to bottom, we only need to check the hypothesis and questions gave rise to this work. Therefore, we must return to our Main Hypothesis: “Rhythm, as an ethical and aesthetic category, allows to establish direct relationships between theatre and the configuration of existence from its origins to the present.” In our opinion, this hypothesis has been sufficiently demonstrated after drawing the necessary relationships between theatre and society through rhythm, to generate different patterns: cyclic or pre-dramatic, rational or temporal, the crisis of reason and silence, postmodernity and the pluralism of the avant-garde movements, and finally, capitalism of the spectacle and rhizome in metamodern times. As mentioned previously, this was possible through a mimetic translation of the rhythmic perception of the universe into an artistic object that united ethics and aesthetics. As Holderlin stated: “everything is rhythm; the whole destiny of man is a single heavenly rhythm, just as the work of art is a unique rhythm” (Poems, 40, 41).