10.6092/issn.2036-1599/14132
L’articolo mira a rendere noto l’interesse suscitato dalle Danze della Morte nel quadro degli studi semiotici incentrati sulla vita sociale dei generi discorsivi e in quello della mediatizzazione di “lungo percorso”, il che significa che questo fenomeno viene considerato come costituente l’essere umano come una specie biologica. Dunque, nel saggio affrontiamo il percorso prospettico che esplora il fenomeno e la sopravvivenza delle Danze, in qualità di trans-genere, fin dal loro consolidamento nel Medioevo, ed inoltre, prendendo in considerazione quanto questo fenomeno oggi sia fortemente oggetto di studio, concentriamo l’analisi su quei casi in cui tale genere è rappresentato attraverso due modalità di espressione proprie dell’arte contemporanea: il cinema e la videodanza.
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Danza e ricerca. Laboratorio di studi, scritture, visioni
<em>Dances of Death</em>: From Trans-genre to Media Phenomenon
Text.Serial.Journal
https://danzaericerca.unibo.it/
Studi
2021-12-27
2021-12-21
2021-12-27
2021-12-27
193-215
danzaericerca
Susana Temperley
2021/12/27
10.6092/issn.2036-1599/14132
193
National University of Arts, Buenos Aires, Argentina
2036-1599
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215
<em>Dances of Death</em>: From Trans-genre to Media Phenomenon
https://danzaericerca.unibo.it/article/download/14132/13729
Susana Temperley*

Dances of Death: From Trans-genre to Media Phenomenon
27 dicembre 2021, pp. 193-215
DOI: https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.2036-1599/14132
Section: Studi [peer reviewed]




                       Articles are published under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial 3.0 Unported licence
                       (Authors retain copyright in their articles, permission to reuse third party copyrighted content is
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Abstract

L’articolo mira a rendere conto dell’interesse su-       The article aim to give an account of the in-
scitato dalle Danze della Morte nel quadro degli         terest aroused by the Dances of Death in the
studi semiotici, ponendo particolare attenzione          framework of semiotic studies with a focus on
alla vita sociale dei generi discorsivi e a quel-        the social life of the discursive genres and on
la della mediatizzazione di “lungo percorso”, il         that of the mediatization of “long journey”, that
che signiﬁca che questo fenomeno viene con-              is to say that we consider this phenomenon as
siderato come costituente l’essere umano inte-           constituting the human being as a biological
so come specie biologica. Dunque, nel saggio             species. Therefore we will address the pro-
aﬀrontiamo il percorso prospettico che esplora           spective path that explores the phenomenon
il fenomeno e la sopravvivenza delle Danze, in           and survival of the Dances since their consol-
qualità di trans-genere, ﬁn dal loro consolida-          idation in the Middle Ages, as a transgender,
mento nel Medioevo, ed inoltre, prendendo in             and then, considering their re-emergence as
considerazione quanto questo fenomeno oggi               an object of study in the present, we will focus
sia fortemente oggetto di studio, concentriamo           the analysis on cases in which this genre is
l’analisi su quei casi in cui tale genere è rappre-      called through two modes of expression typical
sentato attraverso due modalità di espressione           of contemporary art: cinema and video dance.
proprie dell’arte contemporanea: il cinema e la
videodanza.
   * Universidad Nacional de las Artes, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
                                                 Susana Temperley


  Dances of Death: From Trans-genre to Media Phenomenon




Introduction
                                                                                                    And death begins to order
                                                                                    a dance resisted, from which you can not,
                                                                                                           in any way, escape1


        In his master treatise, Gesture and Speech, Leroi-Gourhan2 briefly refers to the Dances of Death
of the Middle Ages, an art form founded on the syncretism of Northern European pagan tradi-
tions and Middle Eastern religious customs, which took hold and became widespread in Christian
Europe between the 14th and 16th centuries. According to the researcher, this form of artistic expres-
sion offered a profound evocation of the contrast between biological reality (in which the spiritual and
zoological are blurred) and the symbolic apparatus of human social life. This was made possible via a
simple and sufficiently raw theme: death calls to each and every individual, of all social strata, without
exception, and invites them to dance its dance as a precursor to the end of life.
        The strict indoctrination of the necessity of saving one’s soul, imposed on societies where death
by war, plague, and great famines was commonplace, activated the iconographic operative in visual
and literary media in such a way that, since the Modern Age, the Dances of Death were recognized as
the trans-genre through which a “culture of death” was documented over the course of three centuries.



Problem Presentation

        A great deal of research has been done on the phenomenon of the Dances of Death, the To-


    1. «Ya la muerte encomiença a hordenar una dança esquiva, de que non podedes por cosa ninguna que sea escapar»
(Anonymous, Dança general de la muerte, in Andrés Roselló, La “Dança general de la muerte”: texto y contextos, tesis de grado,
Universitat de Illes Baliars, Palma de Mallorca 2015-2016, p. 19).
    2. See André Leroi-Gourhan, Gesture and Speech, MIT Press, Cambridge 1993 (orig. ed. Le geste et la parole, Albin Mi-
chel, Paris 1964).




                           «Danza e ricerca. Laboratorio di studi, scritture, visioni», anno XIII, numero 13, 2021
                                                                                            danzaericerca.unibo.it
                                                                              DOI: 10.6092/issn.2036-1599/14132
194                                                                                                      Susana Temperley




tentanz, or Danses Macabres. Such are the names that point to the establishment of the genre across
regions of Europe, where it thrived during the Middle Ages.
        However, within the copious arsenal of studies and comments that have emerged in academic
and artistic treatments of the Dances of Death, most of this work, in addition to accounting for the
pre-iconographic and iconographic aspects that make this phenomenon a popular genre, addresses is-
sues related to and inferring clues about the Dances’ origins. This approach ultimately leads effort and
erudite persistence to a dead end, since the search for hermeneutic clues ends at the moment when
reliable archival documentation runs out. At this point, these retrospectively focused investigations
come to a fork in the road: one detaches itself from the scientific method and jumps to the realm of
speculative opinion for which there is no proof, while the other simply limits itself to organizing the
conjectures of the first group, as if they themselves constituted the phenomenon of the Dances.
        The fact is, these reconstructive efforts trace a possible beginning of the genre to folkloric beliefs
about the Zurückkommen, or revenants, in liturgical speeches and sermons by mendicant monks, in
the mysterious and isolated dance epidemics, attributed to cases of intoxication or poisoning (ergot-
ism and tarantism). Bordering on methodological disorientation, a culture of death, generalized and
held through three centuries, is even considered a foundation for the Dances.
        The following discussion serves a different purpose. Far from choosing from either of these two
paths, the intent here is to account for the interest generated by the Dances in the framework of semi-
otic studies, focusing on the social life of speech genres and of “long-term” mediatization. That is to
say, we will consider this phenomenon as constitutive of human beings as a biological species3. There-
fore, we will embark on the prospective path of exploring the phenomenon and the prevalence of the
Dances from their consolidation as a trans-genre in the Middle Ages. Then, considering the form’s
rebirth as an object of study in the present, we will focus on cases that summon this genre through
two forms of expression that are typical of contemporary art: cinema and videodance.
        On this path, we will try to elucidate the role of dance in the resulting web of meaning. One
of the questions we will try to answer at the end of the analysis is this: Why is the interjection from
Death to the Living an invitation specifically to dance and not some other action? And, regarding this
performative dialogue, what are its modes of thematization and of prevalence in formats, mediums,
and languages through the centuries?



Dances of Death: The Trans-genre


    3. The presentation of this perspective is found in Eliseo Verón, La Semiosis Social, 2. Ideas, momentos, interpretantes,
Paidós, Buenos Aires 2013.
Dances of Death                                                                                                           195




        From a semiotic point of view, the Dances Macabre have acquired a trans-genre form that has
persisted fundamentally in two languages: pictorial and literary. In their communicational function,
the Dances Macabre consist of an adaptation of the Ars moriendi treatises4, which proliferated in the
field of art in the early 15th century. Their distinctive feature is that the written text is accompanied
by illustrations.
        In their figurative versions, the Dances are presented in frescoes, panel paintings, engravings,
and even relief sculptures on walls, bells, and columns. The textual aspect responds to not just one
pattern; it ranges like Infantes say, from a brief footnote to a poetic composition of an indeterminate
number of verses and rhymes, going through the legend, the Latin couplet as a motto, the comento in
prose or the biting epigram5.
        A copious number of studies on the origins of the Dances address the phenomenon of multi-
plication of visual genres that were characteristic of medieval art and that would represent the pro-
duction conditions of the trans-genre. Specifically, these studies mention the pious representations of
the Virgin and of Jesus Christ on the Cross, the Three Living and the Three Dead, and the Triumphs
of Death.
        The Dances’ nature as genre6 lies in the fact that it is a category of discourses, that is to say, a
bundle of texts that share common properties and which are held together by accompanying meta-
texts. Both aspects make stable appearances, to the point of highlighting intrinsic regularities. In this
way, this category makes up a system simultaneously with other figurative and literary genres and
identifies itself as social satire by presenting elements that reveal a moralizing intent, but subsumed in
a tone of mockery. As Infantes notes:

            By Dance of Death, I understand a succession of text and images dominated by Death as a
        central character (generally represented by a skeleton, a corpse or a living person in decay) and
        that, via a dancing attitude, converses with and drags, one by one, a row of characters, typically
        representative of social classes most diverse7.


        The first Dance of Death that critics refer to as such is the Danse Macabre du Chernier from Par-
is, which dates to the year 1424. It is a fresco painting on the walls of the porch of the charnel house
of the Holy Innocents’ Cemetery. In 1669, during the reign of Louis XIV, the wall on which it was




    4. The purpose of these texts was to comfort the dying at the moment of feeling death’s arrival, to help them go in peace
and with their earthly matters resolved.
    5. See Víctor Infantes, Las Danzas de la Muerte: Génesis y desarrollo de un género medieval (siglos XIII-XVII), Universidad
de Salamanca, Salamanca 1997.
    6. In relation to this, see Oscar Steimberg, Proposiciones sobre el género, in Id., Semiótica de los medios masivos, Atuel,
Buenos Aires 1993.
    7. Víctor Infantes, Las Danzas de la Muerte: Génesis y desarrollo de un género medieval (siglos XIII-XVII), cit.,
p. 21.
196                                                                                                             Susana Temperley




found was taken down. Nonetheless, the painting was not completely lost. It was transposed to paper
by the book printer Guyot Marchand, along with a very reliable copy of the original fresco. To it he
added a lyrical text composed by Jean Gerson, which also has survived, thanks to its reproduction
(printing was already a part of discursive life) in 1485.
        Other Dances considered to be seminal are as follows:
        The Dança general de la muerte is preserved in the Library of El Escorial8. It is a codex in four
parts, in a box measuring 198 by 140 mm, in which two types of writing stand out: Gothic and curs-
ive, both characteristic of 15th-century Spanish. The poem, composed of a very brief prologue in prose
and 632 versos de arte mayor, grouped in 79 coplas de arte mayor9, is associated through this structure
with the Danse Macabre of the Holy Innocents’ Cemetery and Lübeck’s Totentanz.
        Lübeck’s Totentanz was painted on wood by Bernt Notke and has been dated to 1476. Here,
too, the original work was not preserved because of the bombing of St. Mary’s Church in Lübeck in
1942, where it was displayed (paintings of the Dance in Lübeck made up the decoration of seven walls
that could be observed while walking around the chapel). Today we know this Dance through engrav-
ings and photographs. In them we can see the following scene: the Pope and the Emperor are being
dragged by skeletons to dance with Death, while at the foot of every character a dialogue between
both parts can be read, following the same structure presented by La Dança General de la Muerte. To
the left, Death can be seen playing the flute while wearing a wide hat, calling on mortals. Facing the
gravity of the living, characterized by their archetypical attributes, Death adopts postures that recall
the motive of the Dance.


Figuration of Body and Dance in the Dances Macabre

        What understanding of body does this genre refer to? To answer this question, it is useful to
broaden our gaze to two forms of body representation that were at their peak in the 15th and 16th cen-
turies: the coat of arms and the portrait painting. According to Belting10, both function as body media
in the sense that they stand in its place through time and space. Nonetheless, each of them operates
on the basis of a different understanding of body.
        In the case of the coat of arms, it is a heraldic abstraction characterizing the bearer of family or




     8. While presently the original work is not available and the author’s name is not known, we do have a piece of inform-
ation claiming that Hernando de Briviesca, royal jewel keeper, gave the work to El Escorial in 1575.
     9. In Spanish poetry, verso de arte mayor (literally, “major verse of art” or “verse of higher art”) is a verse with nine or more
syllables, while copla de arte mayor is a poetic form consisting of eight verses.
     10. See Hans Belting, An Anthropology of Images: Picture, Medium, Body, Princeton University Press, Princeton 2011
(orig. ed. Bild-Anthropologie: Entwürfe für eine Bildwissenschaft, Fink, Munich 2001).
Dances of Death                                                                                        197




territorial genealogy, meaning that it defined a body with rank, not a person (fig. 1). This subject is the
“model” of a social body, and, in this sense, the shield functions by contiguity as a physical medium
of manifestation of genealogy.
       The portrait painting (unlike the coat of arms) bears the physical aspect of the person portrayed
(fig. 2). Yet it also owes its functioning to genealogical and legal situations, not the individual. For
instance, Phillip the Good, according to the description of chronicler Georges Chastellain, carried le
visage des ses péres as inherited facial physiognomy.
       In terms of the communicational device, both share a similar quality: the portrait relates to
the viewer by displaying the portrayed figure frontally (and, later, also its gaze), and, equivalently, the
en-face disposition of the shield before a subject indicates that they, with only a gaze, must confirm
their loyalty to the object bearer.




                     Fig. 1: Count Ekkhard and his Wife (13th century), Naumburg Cathedral.


       In summary, in these two genres (which also operate as media) the represented body is expan-
ded toward the institutional via an analogue-based form in the case of the portrait (that is, established
on the physiognomic features of the subject) and via an indexical means in the case of the coat of
arms. It is only in this framework that it acquires meaning.
       Now, what is the figuration of the body in the Dances of Death?
       The macabre aspect of the Dances, which certainly implies favoring the bodily and the material
over the spiritual, guides the exploration of new paths for representing death, not as the beginning
of a possible life in Glory (as is portrayed by other medieval genres), but rather as the end of earthly
pleasures.
198                                                                                                         Susana Temperley




                            Fig. 2: Jan Van Eyck, Portrait of a Jeweler (1436), Museum of Vienna.



        In this way, according to Rosselló, from the variety of death-oriented topics that character-
ized discursive productions from these centuries (Tempus irreparabile fugit, Ubi sunt?, the Contemptu
mundi, the Homo viator by Saint Augustine, De putredine cadaverum, the Vanitas vanitatum, and the
Memento mori) and that operated on a thematic level in the Dances, we can say that De putredine ca-
daverum is the theme anchored in the body physiognomy that characterizes the Dances, especially in
its poetic form. It recreates aspects of death on the “matter decay” axis, which goes from the decline
of physical appearance and vital capacities to the rotting of the flesh. In Dança general de la muerte:

            …’tis worse, my friends, that without tongue I die:
        death has encompassed me, I cannot speak
        I have from her [Death] a disturbed brain; now my limbs are all crooked,
        I’ve lost my sight and cannot hear; I see in the scales
        my life shortened and my senses lost; without tongue I die; I shall fall; my perception
        is completely lost with great affliction; truthfully I tell thee that, when the rooster crows,
        thine appearance shall turn:
        thou will lose thine beauty11.

         In Figurative works, there is also a prevalence of decomposed flesh, laughing skeletons, and, in
the background, skulls and bones all around, whose macabre movement contrasts with the rigidness
of the body of the living.
        Another aspect worth noting regarding the Figuration of the body is that in both the Danses
Macabres and in the Lübeck Dances, Death, shaped as a skeleton, leads the procession, in which all




     11. A rough translation from the original text in Ancient Spanish: «…peor es, amigos, que sin lengua m uero: / abar-
cóme la muerte, non puedo fablar / ya tengo della todo el seso turbado; agora mis mienbros son todos torvados, / que pierdo
la vista e non puedo oir; veo en balança / acortarse mi vida e perder los sentidos; sin lengua muero; vome a caer; mi entendi-
miento / se pierde del todo con grand afliçión / mas verdad vos digo que, al cantar el gallo, / seredes tornado de otra figura: /
allí perderedes vuestra fermosura» (Andrés Roselló, La “Dança general de la muerte”: texto y contextos, cit., p. 119).
Dances of Death                                                                                                    199




characters are presented arranged from higher to lower levels of social hierarchy. In this way, by fo-
cusing on the aspect of the living in these works, it is possible to identify each and every one of them
according to where they stand in the feudal social system.
       Thus, the Dance of Death makes up a system in sync with the portrait panel painting and
the coat of arms in terms of the Figuration of a body that, far from representing a subject, acquires
meaning only as part of a system whose logic is found in the validity of the sign as unit of value and
understanding the latter attribute as a “differential” value.
       Now, regarding dance and the mortuary, there are various theories explaining such movement
action. One of these theories, however, seems to be the most plausible one: it is a dance with its roots
in folklore, especially in the territories of Central Europe.
       «The oldest mention of a “dance of the dead” is found in a Dutch imitation of the Maugis d’Ai-
gremont (Madelghis Kintsheit [Madelghis’ Childhood])», from the mid-14th century12.
       The view here is that dance related to death is first a popular belief: the medieval superstition of
late-night revelry in the cemeteries. Nonetheless, Infantes tries to put geographic borders around this
folkloric thinking: «This superstition is not valid in Spain, where Death entices the living in its dance,
and is meant as allegorical, while, in Germany, it is more a Dance of the Dead»13. This refers to the
idea that the bodies of the dead crawl out of their graves at night and dance festively, as is observed in
the wood engraving The Dance of Death by Michael Wolgemut (from the early 16th century) (fig. 3).
As such, the dance would have a German origin.




                                 Fig. 3: Dance of Death by Michael Wolgemut (1493).

    12. Maximilian Kerkhof, Notas sobre las danzas de la muerte, in «Dicenda. Cuadernos de filología hispánica», n. 13,
1995, pp. 175-200: p. 185.
    13. Víctor Infantes, Las Danzas de la Muerte: Génesis y desarrollo de un género medieval (siglos XIII-XVII), cit.,
p. 41.
200                                                                                                          Susana Temperley




          Other weaker theories associate the trans-genre of the Dances with the ergotism and tarantism
epidemics that occurred in an isolated way in this period, and whose impact consisted not only in
their causes being unknown but also in the fact that victims would execute movements similar to
those in an endless dance, which led to their death by dehydration or heart attack.
          In La Dança general de la muerte, dance is declared for the first time by the figure of the preach-
er, to exhort a hasty confession. The appeal to the immediacy of the dance is expressed through the
adverb ya (now) and the paraphrase encomiença a ordenar (begins to order). In the dance, Death plays
a dominant role as its orchestrator. The preacher refers to it as a dança esquiva (elusive dance), a rough
and cruel dance whose first sign is the music of the charanbela.
          Thus, the poem’s reference to the dancers’ disposition in a corro14 is completed by the idea of a
“game”. The corro implies a circle within which the living are slowly incorporated, and, as they pass
before Death, they are made equal (given that the circle has no beginning or end). Thus they lose their
distinctions of hierarchy that they enjoyed in life.
          In terms of the configuration of the dance scene, the corro also appears in fresco paintings in
such a way that, in terms of its expository configuration, it is presented as a surrounding spectacle,
including in itself anyone who contemplates it. This is how it was presented in Saint Mary’s Church
in Berlin, and in the Kermaria Chapel, in Côtes-du-Nord, Brittany.
          Another variant is the processional dance, in which characters appear in order of hierarchy led
by Death or by its specular double, simulating a procession in which each of the dead seizes one of
the living by the hand. This model was developed in the paintings of the Innocents’ Cemetery in Paris
and is common in miniatures and picture cards. The third variant is the chain dance. In it there are
two modalities: either the living, holding hands, are led by the embodiment of Death, or they dance
around a transi tomb, as occurs in paintings in Morella, Castellón (fig. 4).




                   Fig. 4: Dance of Death in Convento de San Francisco – Morella, Castellón (XV Century).

      14. In Spanish, corro refers to a circle formation specifically used in children’s singing games and circle dances.
Dances of Death                                                                                          201




       Regarding the latter pre-iconographic aspect, we can observe a specific disposition of the bod-
ies, where a living body is alternated with a skeleton or forms a duo. In this way, the contrast and
mirror-like contiguity relate to the viewer through the equivalent of the literary motif «as you see me
you shall see yourself, and as you see yourself I once saw myself». To this we can add the motifs of
movement and vitality characteristic of dance. It is, nonetheless, a dance whose invitation is met with
resistance since, in literary as well as in Figurative works, only the dead are gifted with movement.
The living, by contrast, are represented in a static fashion, as if they were already suffering rigor mortis.
       In the contrast between the figuration of the living and of the skeletons (in the case of paintings
and engravings, and in the call to dance by Death in poems), the irony is found in the humorous
consequence brought about by the progressive distancing between the constitutive elements of fiction
(a festive scene) and the ongoing discovery of the conflict (the moment of death of the human being).
The search for harmonizing opposite elements, dance (vitality) and death (annihilation of vitality), is
then presented as a base rhetorical operation.
       In effect, in La Dança General de la Muerte, the untimely arrival of the dance is one of the most
frequent complaints made to Death by the different participants. For example, the duke says that it is
not a good time, since he had thought of going into battle; the abbot does not consent to participate
in the dance because of his attachment to the earthly, the tasty delicacies he had in his cell; the canon
rejects going to the dance for living in comfort on Earth; and the sacristan begs Death for mercy: «For
I am a lad of few days», since the dance comes too soon. The same occurs in pictorial cases, where the
moment of the dance is figured, and the summoned living are bodies that, far from dancing, resist
being dragged by the movement, while those who dance are the skeletons.
       At this point, having suggested pleasant festiveness and enabling mocking effects, it is worth
pointing out the role played by music and singing. Death and the skeletons are represented bearing
some musical instrument, an aspect related by many authors to the genre of ars morendi. This can be
seen with the presence of the trumpet in La muerte [Death] by Gil de Ronza, the flute in Lübeck’s
Dance of Death, or Death’s bell in Holbein’s Engraving XXII. And, as is presented in the strophe where
Death addresses the usurer in La Dança General de la Muerte, he rejects the dance and the song equally
(«I don’t want your dance, nor your black song»).
       The varied descriptions that accompany the term dance in the poem emphasize the rejection
that each character holds toward it, especially in the central coplas. The King is the first to provide
a minimal description: «I would not attend such poor dance»; the Cardinal, «O, Mother of God, I
never thought to see such a dance as this which they are making me go to!»; the Patriarch speaks of
a dance so unmerciful; and the Constable of «the dance they say die». The Count laments, «O, what
bad news is this, without failure, that now it brings to me, to go to such game!» and the Knight calls
it «black dance, full of tears».
202                                                                                                Susana Temperley




          In summary, it is possible to observe that the dance serves as a rite of passage. This positioning,
observed from a narrative perspective, indicates that the act of dancing will operate as a transforma-
tion point, as the place of manifestation of a change of state.
From this point on, the dance, whether in a circle or procession, where death contrasts with the li-
ving and dances festively while the living resist being dragged into the ritual, appears as an effect of
meaning to be reconstructed by the receiver of each work as the nucleus of a confrontation of forces
where, of course, Death will always come out triumphant, in three articulated modalities:
          1. As an act of communion, it is a group dance, and it only bears meaning in this fashion.
Nonetheless, the participants are each called individually.
          2. As an equalizing social mechanism, in the sense that all, irrespective their lineage, are or will
be invited to dance. In any case, in the case of the procession arrangement, the most powerful are the
first to be summoned.
          3. As an inevitable scenario, since nobody can escape from it, and, nonetheless, each and every
one of the characters will try to resist.

The Symbolic Density in the Dances Macabre

          Based on his studies on the cultural aspect of Homo sapiens as a species (and the absence of
an “exceptional quality” of it, in relation to other pluralities of living beings), Jean-Marie Schaeffer15
states that the possibility of diffusion of all cultural property in a human group depends on aspects of
content and on certain cognitive and emotional biases that work as selectors. He also refers to the fact
that the universalization of this property can be viable, in effect, as a result of analogue causes that act
in different communities:

              Thus, if all populations of the same species living in related ecosystems, can develop equival-
          ent behaviors without this universality being due to a geographical spread or a genetic heritage.
          The same social and existential problem, for example, that of the mortal nature of humans, could
          very well motivate beliefs of the same kind (in this example, the belief in a form of survival after
          death) in different cultures, without these cultures being in contact with each other and without
          these representations being genetically coercive. After all, if one admits that all men share the
          same mortal destiny, and that, on the other hand, their cognitive and emotional architecture is
          the same beyond the society in which they live, the mental solutions to the anguish of death...
          are not numerous16.


          Ultimately, in the context of this thesis, the researcher notes that denying mortality, and, as
a consequence, postulating a sort of afterlife following the death of the body, was and is a universal
solution, given that it is a belief that takes shape in practically every culture.


      15. See Jean-Marie Schaeffer, La fin de l’exception humaine, Gallimard, Paris 2007.
      16. Ivi, p. 179.
Dances of Death                                                                                                     203




       In relation to these thoughts, the question regarding the symbolic in the trans-genre of the
Dances of Death in a way emphasizes aspects of human identity in not just a cultural sense but also in
a biological one.
       The engravings printed by Guyot Marchant in 1485 that reproduce the Danses Macabres of
the Holly Innocents’ Cemetery in Paris account for the disposition of thirty characters, alternating
between one from the religious series and another from the secular series. The complete index of
characters is as follows:

           …le pape, l’empereur, le cardinal, le roi, le patriarche, le connétable, l’archevêque, le che-
       valier, l’évêque, l’écuyer, l’abbé, le bailly, l’astrologie, le bourgeois, le chanoine, le marchand, le
       chartreux, le sergent, le moine, l’usurier, le médecin, l’amoureux, l’avocat, le ménétrier, le curé, le
       laboureur, le cordelier, le petit enfant, le clerc et l’ermite17.


       Thus we find ourselves before one of the constitutive characteristics of the genre of the Dances
of Death: the participation in the dance of a group of mortals as individuals, representatives of all
social orders.
       As in the Vado mori, members of any social origin have a place in the Dances. The idea behind
this is the Memento mori and the universalizing power of Death. Thus, an ordering is presented based
on two criteria: social and economic hierarchy on one hand, and alternation between the religious and
the secular on the other. The progression of characters obeys the social scale of feudalism: the char-
acters who appear first are usually the ones found in the pyramid’s apex, and as it goes forward, the
Dance descends, until arriving (in works with a most rigid structure) at the lower strata: the outcasts
and the classless, including the lunatic and the hermit.
       However, it has been noted that the hierarchy criterion is not pure in some Dances. While the
Pope, representing God on Earth, initiates the characters’ procession before Death, other characters
who are difficult to order on the basis of this logic also appear in this chain. For example, the petit
enfant and the amoureux, or the dos donzellas that appear in La Dança General de la Muerte, and the
Jüngling, the Jungfrau, and the Kind in Lübeck’s Totentanz are characters who are typified not by the
labors they execute, nor by the position they occupy within society (fig. 5). Their function in the
Dances is to point out that death comes at the wrong time, even in situations of plenitude, happiness,
and youth.




    17. Joël Saugnieux, Les Danses Macabres de France et d’Espagne et leurs prolongements littéraires, Vitte, Lyon 1972,
p. 20.
204                                                                                                Susana Temperley




                              Fig. 5: Lübeck’s Totentanz (copy 1701, original 1463).


       Another detail of the variations in bodies can be seen in the fact that only men appeared in
the primitive Dance of Death. The design that connects with warning about the end and vanity of
all earthly things and with the lesson of social equality before death was naturally aimed toward
men first, keepers of social functions and dignity. However, Guyot Marchant himself published, as a
continuation of his previous edition, a macabre dance of women. In it the sensual element appears,
which had already impregnated the theme of lamentations on beauty, as part of vanitas vanitatum. As
Huizinga notes:

           Now it was impossible to enumerate forty dignities and professions of women. After the
       queen, the abbess, the nun, the saleswoman, the nurse, and a few others, it was necessary to fall
       back on the different states of feminine life: the virgin, the beloved, the bride, the woman newly
       married, the woman with child. And here the sensual note reappears, to which we referred above.
       In lamenting the frailty of the lives of women, it is still the briefness of joy that is deplored, and
       with the grave tone of the memento mori is mixed the regret for lost beauty18.


       David Le Breton points out that the body molded by the social and cultural context in
which the actor is submerged is the semantic vector by which the evidence of the relationship with
the world is constructed: «perceptive activities, but also the expressing of feelings, the conventions of
interactional, gestural and expressive rites, the staging of appearance... the relation with suffering and
pain, etc.»19. In other words, existence is, first, of the body. From the body, the traits that constitute
the foundation of individual and collective existence are born and spread.



    18. Johan Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages, Edward Arnold & Co, London 1924, p. 131 (orig. ed. Frankrijk en
de Nederlanden, Tjeenk Willink, Haarlem 1919).
    19. David Le Breton, La sociologie du corps, Presses Universitaires de France, Paris 1992, p. 9.
Dances of Death                                                                                             205




         The body, surface and vector of medieval thinking, is yet far from being placed in a Cartesian
mind/body division. With no distinction between person and flesh, the body bears the image of a uni-
fied whole, as happens in most traditional societies with a communal component. In them, a person’s
status is completely subordinate to the human group as a collective. In this sense, the only individual
hallmark of man is a body understood as a frontier, a limit that distinguishes him from the others.
Considering Le Breton’s assertions:

            Through the body, man appropriates the substance of his life and translates it towards others
         by means of the symbolic systems he shares with the other members of his community. Within
         one social community, all the bodily manifestations of an actor are virtually significant to its
         members. They only bear meaning in relation to the symbolical data of the social group. There is
         nothing natural about a gesture or a sensation20.


         We can conclude that the bodies manifested in the Dances of Death bear meaning by leaning on
neighboring elements. As we have seen, the objects, clothing, and actions that identify each character
are noted (by the character of Death, in the case of poems, and carried by the living bodies, in the
case of figurative works) in the exact moment when, by order of Death, they must be abandoned by
their bearers.
   Thus Death orders the Pope to «undress thine cape», and adds, «thine auburn mantle will serve
thee not». To the Patriarch Death says, «keep thine golden cross»; to the Constable, «at ease, constable,
leave thine horse»; to the Archdeacon, «take off thine cap»; to the Lawyer, «dance, lawyer, leave thine
digest»; to the Canon «you, canon, leave thine breviary»; and to the Usurer, «dance, usurer, leave thine
post».
         The achieved effect of an invitation to dance and, as consequence, to die, appears as an equal-
izing element, removing the object-symbol and its semiotic charge from the scene. Like Leroi-Gourhan
said,

             human beings are only human to the extent that they are in the midst of others and clothed
         in symbols that give purpose to their existence. Naked and immobile, the high priest and the
         vagabond are no longer the vehicles of a symbolically human system, but mere bodies of higher
         mammals set in a time and a space without significance21.


         Following this perspective, the figurative distinction of each character in the Dance Macabre
– the pope and the emperor’s clothing, along with the objects they handle and that are distinctive of
their lineage and function – implies a double question. In addition to obeying the class logic of the
call to dance, from which activation of a dogmatic discourse is possible, it represents the last bastion



   20. Ibidem.
   21. André Leroi-Gourhan, Gesture and Speech, cit., p. 313.
206                                                                                                     Susana Temperley




of the individual’s dance. Forced to leave behind their distinctive elements before entering the dance,
each of the social types portrayed is, in effect, about to make its first step toward the irreversible loss
of their identity.


Macabre Dances as a Media Phenomenon

        In this discussion, we have seen that the Dances of Death possess trans-semiotic characteristics,
an aspect that gives them a particular trait (given that crossing between languages, formats, and media
is not typical of the discursive classifications that social life calls genres)22. This means that it will be
present in more than one location. Concretely, this aspect will be found in paintings (mainly fresco
paintings in cathedral and monastery walls, and also in the environment of nobility architecture), in
verse poems and inscriptions, accompanying these paintings or in autonomous form, on paper, fit to
be recited in church pulpits, and represented in that same context as autos sacramentales23, as well as
in mendicant pilgrimages.
        While conjectures have been made about the life of this trans-genre also in theatrical manifest-
ations outside of a religious context, historical data only account for the episode in which «the duke
of Burgundy had it performed in his mansion at Bruges in 1449»24 and for a certain representation in
Saint-Jean de Besançon Cathedral, in 145325. In any case, no archival information that could be used
for the analysis of these cases has surfaced.
        Added to this (if we consider the strength of the Dances as a kind of discourse that is based
on a wide field of art production from specific and persistent rhetorical, thematic, and enunciative
features) is the way it operates in relation to the coat of arms and the panel portrait. In this sense, as
we have seen, it is possible to return to the question of the Dances when observing them as part of a
consolidated synchronic system of genres.
        Now, the phenomenon of the Dances of Death does not stop in the prevalence and dialogue
involving languages, materialities, media, and even other genres that characterized the Middle Ages;
rather, its trans-semiotic force also takes place in the temporal axis.
        When considering the phenomenon of the Dances diachronically, we could pause at the de-
scription of its multiple forms of existence centuries later, since they were especially prolific from the




    22. Genres are types of discourse that are limited to a specific field of work. On this aspect, see Oscar Steimberg, Se-
miótica de los medios masivos. El pasaje a los medios de los géneros populares, Atuel, Buenos Aires 1993.
    23. From Spanish, literally meaning “sacramental act”, it is a form of religious play that originated in Spain.
    24. Johan Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages, cit., p. 130.
    25. See Víctor Infantes, Las Danzas de la Muerte: Génesis y desarrollo de un género medieval (siglos XIII-XVII), cit.,
p. 38.
Dances of Death                                                                                                  207




Modern Age on:

            The neo-medievalisms of the 19th century revitalized the theme, a brilliant example being Ca-
       mille Saint-Saëns’ Danse Macabre, opus 40, composed in 1874, inspired by a Henri Cazalis poem,
       and premiered in Paris on January 14, 1875. The posters, graphic humor and the great warlike
       convulsions of the 19th and 20th centuries explain a late revival of the theme, particularly in
       the inter-war period. Photography and cinema have also revived the macabre dance: in George
       Méliès’ The Magic Lantern, from 1898, in an animated short film by Walt Disney from 1929
       (The Skeleton Dance), and in Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal, from 1957. In contemporary
       literature, Danza de la muerte by Federico García Lorca is worth mentioning, from his Poeta en
       Nueva York, from 192926.


       Based on this exhaustive breakdown of the path of the Dances, observed from the point of view
of mediatization, we can fast-forward in time and go directly to the question: How do the Dances of
Death reach us in the contemporary world? And what are the implications of their updating in the life
of social discourses, five centuries after their emergence?
       In this direction, it is important to take into account Schaeffer’s point on the centrality of
modes of transmission when describing a culture: «Although culture, as such, is a collective reality, the
fact that the human being is a biological being makes the process of cultural reproduction dependent
on the existence of individual acts of mental incorporation of information that circulates publicly»27.
There are many references that justify the origin of the Dances in a historical moment characterized by
the abundance of plagues, wars, and great famines. Such references define this framework as a gener-
ator of a culture of death, and it is this culture that would have given the Dances Macabre the possibility
of becoming one of the most popular genres in medieval artistic production.
       Now, if we return to Schaeffer’s position, the question that arises is as follows: How can we
identify the individual acts of mental incorporation of information necessary to understand the cause
and development of a culture of death? If we pay attention to this question, it is important to be clear
that we are asking something that will lead us in the opposite direction, to the most popularized an-
swer about the existence of a culture of death as the basis of discursive phenomena such as the Dances
Macabre. And, if our interest persists in consideration of the Dances and, especially, of the role they
assume in these modes of transmission of a culture of death, it seems more appropriate to bring up
Eliseo Verón’s thesis about the processes of mediatization:

           Mediatization, from an anthropological point of view, is an operational result of a funda-
       mental dimension of our biological species, which is the capacity for semiosis. This capacity has
       been progressively activated, for different reasons, in a variety of historical contexts and, there-
       fore, has taken many forms. But some of its consequences were present from the very beginning
       of our evolutionary history and affected the social organization of Western societies long before



    26. Herbert González Zymla, La danza macabra, in «Revista Digital de Iconografía Medieval», vol. VI, n. 11, 2014,
pp. 23-51: p. 41.
    27. Jean-Marie Schaeffer, La fin de l’exception humaine, cit., p. 221.
208                                                                                                         Susana Temperley




        Modernity28.


          This perspective will not only allow us to deepen the observation of the trans-genre in its
social life in synchrony, that is to say, in that movement which encompasses the possible instances
of mediated reception, characteristic of its period of origin (a wall in a chapel, an act of prayer of a
mendicant procession, etc.). It will also allow us to advance in the response to the ways in which the
trans-genre is summoned from time to time, even in the present.
        In this sense, it is worth mentioning the work of Oscar Traversa, who was in charge of re-
constructing the path and who gave an account of the multiple ways in which Salomé’s dance of
seduction and its consequence, the decapitation of John the Baptist, are presented in the long road of
mediatization. This persistence of the biblical story allows the researcher to ask why, after thousands
of years, certain insistences are perpetuated, and proposes the following approach to an answer:

            Like any other process of textual transformation, be it that of Don Quixote, Carmen or Ulysses,
        it will always be subject to a tension: at one pole, the conservation of the properties that define
        the identity of the text (whether Don Quixote, Carmen or Ulysses are, in some way, such) and, at
        the other end, the unlimited diversity of the resources provided by time to make those distinctive
        qualities present29.


        It seems, then, that one of the keys lies in time, or rather in the production of semiosis in a
timeline. And yet, in order to understand the complexity of this consideration, it is necessary to add
Verón’s reference to media phenomena30, since the radial and transversal “effects” of media phenom-
ena would be the result of their systemic nature, which implies an enormous network of feedback
relationships.
        We can now, together with both researchers, investigate the way in which the Dances of Death
are presented in current works, corresponding to the audiovisual language, for example, The Seventh
Seal by Ingmar Bergman from 1957, and the videodance series Danses Macabres31.
        Although Bergman’s film obviously exceeds the allusion to the Medieval genre that we are
working on, while it builds upon a series of multiple and heterogeneous operations of iconographic
quote (characteristic that has elevated it into one of the most recognisable stamps of the world’s cine-



    28. Eliseo Verón, Teoría de la mediatización: una perspectiva semio-antropológica, in «Cuadernos de Información y Comu-
nicación», vol. XX, 2015, pp. 173-182: p. 174.
    29. Oscar Traversa, El espectador inexperto, in Silvina Szperling – Susana Temperley (edited by), Terpsícore en ceros y unos,
Guadalquivir, Buenos Aires 2010, pp. 19-25: p. 23.
    30. The definition of media phenomenon is that of the product of the semiotic capacity of our species as an exterioriza-
tion of mental processes in the form of a given material device. On the notion of the media phenomenon, see Eliseo Verón,
La Semiosis Social, 2, cit., pp. 171-184.
    31. Curated by Marisa Hayes and Franck Boulègue, Centre de Vidéo Danse de Bourgogne, 2016 (available online at:
https://www.numeridanse.tv/en/dance-videotheque, u.v. 29/7/2021).
Dances of Death                                                                                                           209




matography32), we’ll set foot on just two of the many moments of allusion to the Dances of Death in
The Seventh Seal.
        Directly addressing the operations of allusion to the Dances of Death in The Seventh Seal33. One
of the intertextual operations refers to the production mode of the stage device of the trans-genre in
its figurative aspect. Thus, the filmic story presents (the scene operates as a catalytic function) a painter
intervening on the wall of a chapel. We can observe in close ups some uncomplete dancing figures
who already form a chain while the very own artisan creator comments the evocative power that his
work will equally impose to the eyes of both innocent and sinners, as well as a verbal description in
which the character exposes features of his work in progress, such as the aspects that led him to dia-
gram the disposition of the living bodies with the dead in a circle and the effect of fear that he seeks to
achieve on the group of faithful attendees of the sermons at the moment of contemplating it. In this
way, one of the specimens that would define the Dances of Death as a genre in visual art takes form in
the diegesis, at the very moment of its materizalization.




                      Fig. 6: The Seventh Seal (final scene). Director: Ingmar Bergman (1957).

        Toward the end of the story, the minstrel (beneficiary of supra-terrestrial visions) can see on the
horizon how Death drags the group of characters he was traveling with just days before. It is a wide
shot that shows the diagonal line that divides the slope of a hill between heaven and earth, and, in a



     32. To mention only one of the numerous critics that reopen the permanent comeback to analyzing The Seventh Seal
since its premiere to the current day, we can mention Norman Holland’s The Seven Seals. The Film as Iconography, in «The
Hudson Review», vol. XII, n. 2, 1959, pp. 266-270.
     33. Bergman’s film presents intertextual operations that encompass other territories of the discursive universe character-
istic of the Middle Ages, and especially the textual universe of the Ars Moriendi (e.g., the allusion to the fresco painting by
Albertus Pictor in the Täby Church, in Stockholm. The fresco, located in the half-light of the choir, represents a nobleman
playing a game of chess with death).
210                                                                                                  Susana Temperley




row, the silhouettes in a chain slowly advancing on that line (fig. 6). At the same time, the little man
describes, almost in a prayer:

            I see them! Over there against the stormy sky. They are all there. The smith and Lisa, the kni-
        ght, Raval, Jöns, and Skat. And the strict master Death bids them dance. He wants them to hold
        hands and to tread the dance in a long line. At the head goes the strict master with the scythe and
        hourglass. They move away from the dawn in a solemn dance away towards the dark lands while
        the rain cleanses their cheeks of the salt from their bitter tears.


        This last intertextual operation, unlike the one involving the explanation of the fresco painting
in the chapel, is manifested in the form of an allegory. This rhetorical aspect, together with the situat-
ing of this scene as closure, gives it value as an epilogue, in such a way that this second allusion to the
Dances operates as a conveyance of the ideological-critical organization and the evocative power of
narrative.
        Now, when we observe this scene from an iconologic perspective (inaugurated by Panofsky34
and traveled, as well as transmuted, by several to this day) we contemplate the piece not only as a ma-
terial object but as support of a complex network of meanings, ruled by an intricate confluence of in-
ternal and external relations. In this sense, the chain dance or dance in a circle is presented in this film
as an available image, or as a motif that we could catalogue as one of double way: outwards because it
addresses a cultural model, an identifiable historical perception. And also inwards, because any kind
of interpretation obliges us to overtake the mimetic capacity of cinema and acquire consciousness of
the mechanisms of the cinematographic language in all its complexity and polysemy.
        For their part, the videodance cases are inscribed in the generality and simplicity of the title
Danses Macabres, and in the transcription of the preface awarded to the Parisian 1424 fresco. These are
five series of works gathered from Franz Liszt’s 1874 symphonic composition Danses Macabres (fig. 7).




           Fig. 7: Image from Danses Macabres Videodance Cicle (2016), Centre de Vidéo Danse de Bourgogne.




    34. See Erwin Panofsky, Style and Medium in the Motion Pictures, in «Critique: A Review of Contemporary Art», vol. I,
n. 3, 1947, pp. 5-28.
Dances of Death                                                                                              211




       The perceptual element given by the combination of sound, along with the predominance of
gray and black in the visual plane, as well as the configuration of the spaces drawn by diagonal lines
of an expressionist nature, establish the idea of the macabre as the seminal motif. Moreover, to the
frequency of the diagonal axis we can add the set of symmetries as a mirror, of splitting. Or, on the
contrary, that of polarities of a formal and even conceptual type (living and dead matter, movement
and stillness, joy and despair, etc.).
       Regarding the scenarios or backgrounds, they vary between the naturalism of a desert land-
scape, of a forest, or of the enveloping and historical effect of a medieval church in ruins. From re-
sources such as the flattening of the background, the display of technical features that exert the effect
of seams on the texture of the image, and the exhibition of a non-place in the search for an effect of
vertigo and oppression, a meta-enunciative proposal is made.




             Fig. 8: Digital Afterlives – Directors: Richard J. Allen and Karen Perelman; Danses Macabres,
                     edited and curated by Marisa Hayes and Franck Boulege (2016), Centre de Vidéo
                     Danse de Bourgogne.



       In most of the works, the theme of the dance of death and life (driven by various dance and
performance techniques that include, in addition to the often contemporary style, pantomime and
butoh) is highlighted in the operational approach of an “expanded” corporeality. Thus, in these Dan-
ses, the body is presented not only as the performer’s flesh identity, but also as a plastic element and
malleable material, in pieces woven from a logic that relates to the technological material itself. The
use of this possibility, which we can refer to as a grammar of the language of videodance, enables, in
some of the works observed, the use of the very texture of the skin as an inscription surface.
       Meanwhile, Death can appear personified by a dancer dressed in a black garment or tunic if it
is a duo, or as an abstract element achieved by visual and sound coercion effects, as an invisible force
that falls on the living body. In other cases that propose a collage of genres and bet on including a
212                                                                                                   Susana Temperley




humorous tone to the piece, Death is presented as a skeleton-like doll that dances as manipulated by
the dancer.
        Thus, from the implementation of this hybrid language built on the relationship between
camera and body, and the exploration of a wide range of possibilities, the production of intertextual
operations also occurs in multiple variants:

            Graphic forms and rhetorical resources of digital animation, legends, dialogues, and mono-
        logues of the performers, ad hoc instructions aimed at immersion of the viewer in the work or
        from themes completely alien to the artistic universe […]. These diverse operations that call for
        a multiplicity of discourses of heterogeneous universes relay to us the absence of a formal syntax
        of videodance, and its expressive freedom. In other words, it is to conceive of the intertextual
        nature of the work of videodance determined by its combinatory and at the same time expansive
        character in which corporality as matter occupies a central place35.


        Among these folds of quotations and references to medieval dances, and references to an im-
possible corporality fully inserted in the contemporary taste, the effect sought as a curatorial strategy
takes shape, which we can outline as that which proposes an aesthetic enjoyment based on the way in
which videodance, as a language characteristic of a “culture of experimentation”, takes on the material
feature of a culture of death.




      Fig. 9: Vivre et Mourir – Director: Adianna Apodaca; Danses Macabres, edited and curated by Marisa Hayes and
              Franck Boulege (2016), Centre de Vidéo Danse de Bourgogne.


        In summary, from what has been observed in the Dances of Death in their videodance format



    35. Susana Temperley, Cuerpo e intertexto. La corporeidad como manifestación abierta en la obra de videodanza, in Id.,
Videodanza. Complejidad y Periferia, RGC, Buenos Aires 2017, pp. 69-80: p. 77.
Dances of Death                                                                                        213




and in the film The Seventh Seal, it is possible to conclude that, in this area of contemporary art char-
acterized by its inclusion in an audiovisual base, the updating of the trans-genre is carried out in a
predominantly meta-discursive life. In other words, the works take on the original medieval genre
(frescoes and poems) so that both film and videodance are able to take the trans-genre and make it
their subject, and, in this same movement, they resort to it to give evidence and reflect on their own
functioning as languages and surfaces of aesthetic inscription.
       However, it is also possible to visualize another aspect: both the film and the videodance pieces
are cases of activation of a double operation characteristic of media phenomena. It is a double exercise
of transformation at a quantitative and substantial level: the rupture and the change of scale. In these
two audiovisual cases studied, the rupture of scale operates by establishing differences with respect
to their pictorial and literary origins. Representing the way in which the living are dragged into the
dance from the multiple image of celluloid cinema and the technique of digital video results in the
construction of a technical and diegetic reality which is very different from that caused by its original
medium (the fresco complemented by a reference in the form of poetry).
       The change of scale, on the other hand, manifests itself as a historiographic phenomenon,
clearly visible in the factual plan. The difference between the receptive situation of a (more or less
reduced) group of parishioners in a chapel and the one offered by the cinema of great masses is evid-
ent. This change is implied at the level of reception by the diversification of the audience and, con-
sequently, by the multiplication of both discursive variants and constitutive possibilities. This is what
video does as a medium (and digital platforms as a field of location) with the multiple possibilities of
individual consumption that it generates.


Conclusion

       Observing the phenomenon of the Dances Macabre in their original field of performance (fres-
coes, engravings, and poems), and then, five centuries after their birth, in the semiotic unfolding
of new formats such as cinema and digital image, allows us to give an account of some interesting
aspects.
       1. In its trajectory, the genre shows very distinct modifications with respect to the modalities
of figuration of the body, in terms of the body of death but even more so with respect to the living
body. The latter, in its medieval location, is a body whose differential value lies in its clothing appear-
ance and in the objects that surround it and point out its social hierarchy. Whereas in its location in
the new technologies, it is going to acquire a type of functioning, rather than a figuration. Here the
body operates as a surface, as a materiality enabled to sustain an enunciative invitation of aesthetic
consumption. It is curious how the diachronic observation of the body of the Dances highlights, more
214                                                                                                Susana Temperley




than the contour and the carnality of an individual, a corporality that expands beyond this contour
and this carnality. One inscribes itself in its collective and social location, and the other disaggregates
itself as a malleable and artifiable visual and sound element.
          2. The genre of the Dances of Death, seen as a media phenomenon, manifests a triple density. It
operates in the axis of mediatization as a cascade, involving at least three levels:
          a) First meta-level, or the level of the medieval formats. The literary and visual pieces, as they
work in an autonomous and permanent way, are enabled for their media functioning.
          b) The discourse-object level. These phenomena of a first meta-discursive level in turn them-
atize a media phenomenon. The dance ritual (in a corro, procession, or chain) is in itself a primordial
media phenomenon and functions here as an object discourse.
          c) Second meta-level. The contemporary discourse manifestations of cinema and videodance
thematize, quote, and allude to the two previous levels in such a way that, under the name of Macabre
Dances, the recurrence of the unlimited semiosis is brought together.
          3. In this density also lies the meta-allegory, since the fact of the thematization of the ritual
device, that in turn is rhetorized as metallogism, as an operation in the logical order, subverts the
Dances of Death in the spectacularization of a spectacle, as is possible to observe in the final scene of
The Seventh Seal. According to Huizinga:

               Symbolism expresses connection between two ideas, allegory gives a visible form to the con-
          ception of such a connection. It aids symbolic thought to express itself, but endangers it at the
          same time by substituting a figure for a living idea. The force of the symbol is easily lost in the
          allegory. So, allegory in itself implies from the outset normalizing, projecting on a surface, crys-
          tallizing36.


          The ironic and satirical also play their part in this process of mediatization that originated in the
Middle Ages, although these types of humor do not manifest transformations according to a break-
down into levels, but rather in the shifting of an axis that we can call “of spaces”. In medieval life,
the ironic and satirical component is oriented as mockery directed at the receiver of the works, and
with this it seeks to mobilize him or her from fear and provocation, in equal measure. Centuries later,
however, satire and irony will be reworked and thematized in the field of aesthetic distancing. Thus,
the macabre humor, an effect of constitutive sense of the Dances of Death, will be subtracted from the
religious instructive context to be transferred to the profane and be patented there, as the enjoyment
suggested to the massive spectator and his or her alter ego, the hyper-individualized receiver of the
digital era.
          To conclude, all that remains is to emphasize that the operations and densities that could be



      36. Johan Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages, cit., p. 291.
Dances of Death                                                                                                     215




glimpsed throughout this analysis account for one case among many possible ones, of what, in Le-
roi-Gourhan’s terms, involves the ways in which time, space, and symbolic systems bring together our
societies and, in short, our species. Likewise, these detected functions ratify what Traversa pointed out
in his sixth letter: «Mediatization cannot be measured for the past with today’s standards, since each
moment in history is traced by a particular communicational configuration»37.
       Thus, today’s Dances Macabre will never be comparable to those of yesteryear, and yet, ironic-
ally, as we experience their reception, an echo reminds us that we are all invited to the dance of death.




    37. Oscar Traversa, Carta VI – Cuerpo, danza, medios: reproches por Salomé, in «Loïe. Magazine of Dance, Performance
and New Media», n. 6, 2020, online: https://loie.com.ar/loie-06/cartas-desde-mi-ventana/carta-vi-cuerpo-danza-medios-re-
proches-por-salome/ (u.v. 24/8/2021).
