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Abstract
The ancient Greek myth of Ariadne provides clues about the vitality of movement—its expression and action—and how it evokes a concept of selfhood that does not venerate arrival. This article analyzes how symbols from Ariadne’s myth appear in performances by Martha Graham and Jeanine Durning, which similarly offer examples of dancing as liminal immanence. Ultimately this research shows how a depth psychology perspective, based on Carl Jung’s theories, brings unconscious material to consciousness through analysis of image and symbol and might be a generative framework for analyzing dance and choreography as they connect to theories of individuation and anima/animus.
Correction Statement
This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
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7 C. G. Jung, “A Study in the Process of Individuation,” trans. R. F. C. Hull, in The Collected Works of C. G. Jung: Vol. 9 pt. 1. Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, ed. Herbert Read, Michael Fordham, Gerald Adler, and William McGuire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), 291, https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400850969.290.
8 Giorgio Agamben, Potentialities: Collected Essays in Philosophy, trans. and ed. Daniel Heller-Roazen (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), 228.
9 Gilles Deleuze, Pure Immanence: Essays on a Life, trans. Anne Boyman (New York: Zone Books, 2001), 27.
10 Christopher Meyers, “C. G. Jung and the Inheritance of Immanence: Traces of Spinozistic, Nietzschean, and Freudian Influence in Analytical Psychology,” Scientia et Humanitas: A Journal of Student Research 5 (2015): 69–78.
11 Agamben, Potentialities, 228.
12 Ovidius, “The Epistles of Ovid,” lines 9–19.
13 Ovidius, “The Epistles of Ovid,” lines 28–38.
14 C. Valerius Catullus, Carmina. Perseus Digital Library, Poem 64, para. 5, lines 1–14, http://data.perseus.org/citations/urn:cts:latinLit:phi0472.phi001.perseus-eng2:64.
15 Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica, trans. Christopher Kelk, Poetry in Translation, lines 1115–20. https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Greek/RhodiusArgonauticaIII.php.
16 Walter F. Otto, Dionysus: Myth and Cult, trans. R. B. Palmer (Dallas, TX: 1981), 176.
17 Homer, The Odyssey, 11.321.
18 Bethany Williams, “Rewriting Ariadne: What is Her Myth?” The Collector, August 2, 2021, para. 14, https://www.thecollector.com/ariadne-and-theseus-myth/.
19 Homer, The Odyssey.
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21 Williams, “Rewriting Ariadne.”; Carol P. Christ, “Was Ariadne the Most Graceful Bull-Leaper of All? Deconstructing and Re-Visioning Greek mythology,” Feminism and Religion, March 2, 2014, https://feminismandreligion.com/2014/03/03/who-is-ariadnedeconstructing-and-re-visioning-greek-mythology/.
22 Arthur Evans, The Palace of Minos. A Comparative Account of the Successive Stages of the Early Cretan Civilization as Illustrated by the Discoveries at Knossos (London: MacMillan, 1921); Senta German, “Dance in Bronze Age Greece,” Dance Research Journal 39, no. 2 (Winter, 2007): 23–42.
23 Brewster Ghiselin, “Our Cretan Dilemma: Labyrinth or Dancing-Place,” The Sewanee Review 80, no. 1 (Winter, 1972): 39–46. The Johns Hopkins University Press.
24 Lillian Brady Lawler, “The Geranos Dance—A New Interpretation,” Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 77 (1946): 113, https://doi.org/10.2307/283449.
25 Homer, The Iliad of Homer, trans. Richard Lattimore (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961), 8.590–606.
26 Jennifer Saint, Ariadne (London, Wildfire, 2021), 7.
27 Jeremy McInerney, “Bulls and Bull-Leaping in the Minoan world,” Expedition 53, no. 3 (2011), https://www.penn.museum/sites/expedition/bulls-and-bull-leaping-in-the-minoan- world/; Andrew Shapland, “Jumping to Conclusions: Bull-leaping in Minoan Crete,” Society & Animals 21 (2013): 194–207.
28 McInerney, “Bulls and Bull-Leaping,” para. 4.
29 Carol P. Christ, “The Legacy of Carol P. Christ: Was Ariadne the Most Graceful Bull-leaper of All? Deconstructing and Re-visioning Greek Mythology,” Feminism and Religion, 29 Aug. 2022, https://feminismandreligion.com/2022/08/29/the-legacy-of-carol-p-christ-was-ariadne-the-most-graceful-bull-leaper-of-all-deconstructing-and-re-visioning-greek-mythology/.
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31 Anna Kisselgoff, “Exploring Myth to Find the Contemporary Psyche,” New York Times, October 7, 1994, C3.
32 Carl G. Jung, “The Shadow,” trans. R. F. C. Hull, in The Collected Works of C. G. Jung: Vol. 9ii. Aion, ed. Herbert Read, Michael Fordham, Gerald Adler, and William McGuire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), para. 470, https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400851058.
33 Carl G. Jung, The Red Book: Liber Novus, ed. Sonu Shamdasani, trans. Sonu Shamdasani, Mark Kyburz, and John Peck (New York: Norton, 2009), 227.
34 Jill Dubisch, “Greek Women: Sacred or Profane,” Journal of Modern Greek Studies 1, no. 1 (1983): 185–202. https://doi.org/10.1353/mgs.2010.0009.
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36 Dee Reynolds, “A Technique for Power: Reconfiguring Economies of Energy in Martha Graham’s Early Work,” Dance Research: The Journal of the Society for Dance Research20, no. 1 (Summer, 2002): 3–32.
37 See “Theseus and Ariadne,” The Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism, accessed December 5, 2022, https://aras.org/concordance/content/theseus-and-ariadne.
38 Paul G. Kuntz, (1966). “What Daedalus Told Ariadne,” The Monist 50, no. 4 (1966): 489.
39 Jonathan Zong, “Unruly Cyborgs: The Relational Set Designs of Isamu Noguchi,” Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies 15, no. 1 (2019): 1–13.
40 “Theseus and Ariadne,” para. O-1.
41 Ramsay Burt, “Dance, Gender and Psychoanalysis: Martha Graham’s ‘Night Journey,’” Dance Research Journal 30, no. 1 (Spring, 1998): 34–53.
42 Andrew Samuels, Bani Shorter, and Fred Plaut, A Critical Dictionary of Jungian Analysis (London: Routledge, 1986), 26.
43 Murray Stein, Jung’s Map of the Soul: An Introduction (Chicago: Open Court, 1998), 122.
44 Judith Butler, Undoing Gender (London: Routledge, 2004), 37.
45 Julius Thomas Fraser, Time and Time Again: Reports From a Boundary of the Universe (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2007), 17.
46 Fraser, Time and Time Again, 135.
47 Fraser, Time and Time Again, 189.
48 Hillman, Blue Fire.
49 Robert Avens, Imagination is Reality (Dallas: Spring Publications, 1980), 32.
50 Jeanine Durning, “inging,” para. 9, www.jeaninedurning.com/?page_id=31
51 Jeanine Durning, Personal communication with the author. 20 Nov. 2021.
52 Jeanine Durning, inging, filmed in 2015. Vimeo. https://vimeopro.com/chocolatefactory/videoarchive/video/150299224
53 Durning, inging, (18:08).
54 Hillman, Blue Fire, 42.
55 Hillman, Blue Fire, 44.
56 Cixous, “Sorties,” 208.
57 Samuels, Shorter, and Plaut, A Critical Dictionary, 35.
58 Fanny Brewster, The Racial Complex (London: Routledge, 2020), 13.
59 Thomas Singer, “The Cultural Complex and Archetypal Defenses of the Group Spirit: Baby Zeus, Elian Gonzales, Constantine’s Sword, and Other Holy Wars (With Special Attention to ‘The Axis of Evil’)” in The Cultural Complex, Contemporary Jungian Perspectives on Psyche and Society, ed. Thomas Singer and Samuel L. Kimbles (Hove, East Sussex: Brunner-Routledge, 2004), 20.
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61 Erel Shalit, The Cycle of Life (Carmel, CA: Fisher King Press, 2011), 117.
62 Singer, “Cultural Complex,” 32.
63 Jung, “Psychological Aspects,” 98–99.
64 Durning, inging, (1:02:27).
65 Brewster, Racial Complex, 15–16.
66 Hillman, Blue Fire.
67 Carl G. Jung, Nietzsche’s Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1934–1939 by C. G. Jung (Vol. 1), trans. J. L. Jarrett (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), 354–355.
68 Ovidius, “The Epistles of Ovid,” lines 9-19.
69 Tina Stromsted, “Authentic Movement: A Dance With the Divine,” Body, Movement and Dance in Psychotherapy Journal 4, no. 3 (2008): 9.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Arianne MacBean
ARIANNE MACBEAN is a somatic psychotherapist, writer, educator, and Artistic Director of The Big Show Co., a Los Angeles-based dance-theater group. She is adjunct faculty at Glendale Community College. MacBean holds a BA in Dance from UCLA, a double MFA in Dance & Writing from California Institute of the Arts, and an MA in Counseling Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute. She also holds a Certificate in Somatic Psychotherapies and Practices from Antioch University and is a Registered Associate Marriage and Family Therapist, (License #139718) employed by Here Counseling and supervised by Connor McClenahan, PsyD.