In 1926: living at the edge of time - Monoskop

68 ARRAYS
is supposed to playa dancer whose nude body awakens the young King
Salomo's desire. But the more gifts she receives from the king, the less
she is willing to yield to his advances. Then, in a final movement, her
young lover appears-in a black tuxedo (460ff.). Baker still ignores this
text, but she feels strongly inspired by an "expressionist" sculpture from
Kessler's art collection: "Then she began to move, strongly and with
grotesque expressions, in front of the grand Maillol sculpture. Clearly
she entered into a dialogue with it. She looked long at it, imitating its
position, unimpressed by the uncanny rigidity and force of its expression.
A childlike priestess imparting movement to her body and her goddess.
One could see Maillol was much more interesting and alive for her than
men such as Max Reinhardt, Vollmiiller, and myself" (461, February
24). For many weeks, Baker is undecided about whether to return to
Paris and fulfill her contract with the Folies Bergeres or to accept Reinhardt's
offer and stay in Germany. What finally persuades her that the
world of cabaret rather than the serious world of German theater offers
the appropriate environment for her dancing is the news that the composer
Irving Berlin has been hired for her show in Paris: "Herr Reinhardt
hadn't mentioned Irving Berlin" (Rose, 89). The project of integrating
Josephine Baker's body into the space of theatrical representation has
failed.
Dancing is a synchronization of the rhythm of music with the rhythm
of body movement. Rhythm is movement as form, form reconciled with
the dimension of temporality, which is inherent in any kind of movement.
At first glance, the temporality of movement seems to resist the
stability of form (Gumbrecht, 717ff.). [see Present vs. Past] But movement
can become form through the repetition of basic sequential patterns.
Repetition makes the recurrence of such sequential patterns predictable,
and it is thus that the form of certain sequential patterns
becomes associated with the movement they are constituting. Their form
makes this movement recognizable among movements that are based on
different patterns, as well as among movements without form. Since
rhythm creates form through recurrence, a given rhythm cannot produce
anything new (although it may allow for variation within certain basic
patterns). As soon as the sequential patterns underlying a rhythm begin
to change, it ceases to exist. This is why rhythm inevitably exists in
tension with the dual-level nature of signification and meaning, where
different forms can stand for the same content (Gumbrecht, 720f£.).