Social Compatibility in a Two Gender Society The Waltz as a Technical Medium Mathias Spohr The origin of the waltz is obscured by mystifications, its history uncertain, its reconstructions ideologically motivated. The word waltz, the name of the dance, dates back to the middle of the 18th century. To what extent the waltz is related to other dances such as the Ländler, the irregular Allemande, the so-called Deutscher Tanz, the Contredanse, and the minuet, remains disputed. How far the term ‘waltz’ is connected with turning dance, with pair dance, with quick dance in three-four time, with non-aristocratic dance or German folk dance, is ultimately a question of taste. 1 It is, however, undisputed that the Viennese waltz did not exist previously in the way it has been danced since the Biedermeier period on a ballroom floor. The notorious exuberance of the Langaus ceded to weightless gliding. Dance and its music changed, yet the waltz retained its aura. The waltz replaced the minuet at the Viennese court and determined the new concept of social equality in a representative social sphere. This is precisely what gave the waltz its magical allure. The waltz in Goethe’s Leiden des jungen Werthers (1774) is an important element in establishing the relationship between Werther and Lotte, even though it was still considered vulgar at this stage. 2 Pierre Gardel’s ballet La Dansomanie, set in the French Revolution, introduced the waltz for the very first time at the Paris Opéra in 1800. 3 Originally a folk dance, the waltz rapidly became socially acceptable among the aristocracy. In German-speaking countries it offered a welcome opportunity to break with French Court customs, which the aristocracy often failed to master. Since the Congress of Vienna European society has danced the waltz, irrespective of social or national boundaries - just as nowadays we all use the same cash tills or share the same screens. Just like idealistic social equality, ‘German’ as a distinct cultural emancipation found its symbol in the waltz. 4 Dance characterising a national quality, a tradition dating back to the end of the Middle Ages, is regularly evoked from the late 18th century onwards to assign and differentiate a social framework. Waltz, first mentioned in a Viennese comedy by Kurz-Bernardon in 1754, is indeed a fact related to this aspect of determining national characteristics: “[…] Bald spielen, bald tanzen, / Bald Steyrisch, / Bald Schwäbisch, / Hanackisch, / Slavakisch, / Bald walzen umatum, / […]” as the lyrics go. 5 These distinctions with regard to languages, costumes, effects of stage machinery, musical and dance form, express a compartmentalised way of thinking such as we learn at school: it thus becomes instantly apparent what belongs together yet also what differs socially, as in the case of national anthems or flags. “Frames” of this kind are a civilised mode of perception. K O D I K A S / C O D E Ars Semeiotica Volume 26 (2003) No. 3 - 4 Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen Mathias Spohr 218 The waltz provided an identity, expressing in the 19th century a stability, which maintained the old order. The Viennese waltz arrayed all citizens in a monarchical glamour, substituting for political and economic reforms, beyond and above failed revolutions. It was an empty frame fitting for any member of the multicultural society of the late 19th century Vienna. Yet being a middle-class dance it was tainted and even scorned at the Berlin Court where dated Rococo dance forms were practised. After the First World War Oscar Bie pronounced the waltz dead, 6 probably a fair statement at that time, but premature. However, it can hardly be denied that since the rise of pop music in the sixties, the waltz has to a large extent lost its social function. The waltz’s obvious historicity stands in contrast to a rhetoric transfiguring it into something timeless and universal. In his newly published biography of Johann Strauss junior Franz Endler maintains that the waltz had existed as far back as anyone can remember. 7 In an earlier study by Leonie Dubois the genesis of the waltz is rooted in transports of happiness at being recognised by the beloved, of the male who spontaneously encloses the woman in his arms and turns her on his own axis. 8 In other words, Dubois interprets the waltz as a kind of mating impulse: seeing the waltz as being as old as sexual intercourse is not a particularly reasonable assumption considering the whole history of dance. Nevertheless it is interesting to note what intentions lie behind such remarks. In a recent article Reingard Witzmann compares the turning of couples with the movement of planets. Ideally, the partners’ mutual centre of gravity ‘becomes’ a sine curve. 9 It sounds very fascinating and scientific. Both the couple and the planets adhere to physical laws: media fascination and passion are equated with rigorous discipline. This does not, however, render Reingard Witzmann’s interpretation invalid. Her application of the rhetorical topos is symptomatic of the modern era’s unleashing of the media. Such transfigurations have one feature in common, a technical procedure reproduced again and again, thus imbuing it with the solemnity of a natural process - such is the waltz. The professional dancers I know despise the waltz. Female ‘nature’ as constructed in the 18th century, a combination of devotion, selfsacrifice and grace had less to do with ‘nature’ than with social mores. This so-called ‘nature’ allied all women from Queen to peasant woman, creating a unified framework, at least on the theatrical stage, and in a demi-caractère category. Any differentiation between the sexes thus institutionalised, is nowadays referred to as the ‘two gender society’. It is an arbitrary allocation of roles that has been portrayed as an indispensable truth - is but a norm transfigured to nature, merely because it managed to surmount class barriers. In this respect the waltz and ‘female nature’ can be compared. Both are frames or media, frames allowing social equality, or at any rate the illusion of it, in order to stabilise the legitimate structures behind them. Just as it was once with court dance, this is the case nowadays with the computer. I prefer to use the term ‘frame’, since all technical media have these features in common. In German-speaking countries there has always been a tendency to create a cult around such frames, for a political unity similar to the secretly admired Absolutist State, was lacking. German legal tradition tends towards a strict observance of norms, rather than a differentiation of individual cases, as in the Anglo-Saxon tradition. The aesthetics of autonomy, semiotics and behaviourism have much in common: we establish a sign and declare it to be something that is given naturally, while being fascinated by its apparent immediacy. Any great work of art, the waltz, female nature; all of our sign systems are influenced by this tendency. Relationships appear to be manageable through the application of communication techniques. 10 This is both practical and reassuring. There is no Social Compatibility in a Two Gender Society 219 sign independent of its social frame, which achieves guaranteed “effect”, without a previously fixed convention. Charles Sanders Peirce’s studies in semiotics are closely linked to the conception of the world determined by industrialisation. His assertions are only valid within the context of modern civilised society. There is no such thing as a valid sign in its own right, just as we cannot apply validity to a work of art. Though, we need the illusion. In the seventies Marvin Minsky and Erving Goffman popularised the idea of frame as an explanatory media for psychological and social phenomena. While Minsky understands frames much like signs, 11 Goffman focuses on the social aspect of frames. 12 Both view frames as a constantly applicable principle of assignment and differentiation. Their approaches are compatible. Yet both are still fixed within the behaviouristic tradition and their frames are considered natural, a given within human biology - which is indeed one of the main objections raised by their critics. I would suggest a radical simplification of this principle of framing, connecting it with Marshall McLuhan’s notion of the media, 13 as well as with Niklas Luhmann’s concept of systems. 14 We belong to a tradition that perceives social units as spheres of regular activity, be it the body as an object of medicine or the office as a bureaucratic organisation. We are situated in a world of frames such as TV and computer screens, stages, paintings or technical, social and legal norms. Thus I would maintain that the essential difference between our frames and us is a difference between that which has life and that, which is devoid of life. This distinction requires serious consideration. It is the crux of the problem. Consequently a sign is devoid of life as is a machine. In contrast, social units are living structures (the structure is not living, but people are living). In our culture, these contrasting criteria have been subordinated to the principle of cause and effect. The main point about any so-called ‘natural law’, i. e. until the beginning of the 20th century, is its stability, its validity irrespective of time and space. Furthermore, the concept of a natural law asserts that the inanimate behaves according to social rules within a cosmic order - so strictly that we should consider it exemplary. However naive this may seem from a modern scientific point of view, it is in this tradition of superimposing the living and the dead that our continuous adaptation of rules valid in the organic physical world is related to social phenomena. 15 Dancing couples thus become sine curves, as do the patient’s bodily functions on the monitors of an intensive care unit. Likewise the synthesiser replaces the orchestra, the recording live musicians, the computer an entire department of a firm’s bookkeeping: a synthesis of voices reduced to anonymous functions, as a symbolic social unit. Social frames, defined in our culture over many centuries by technical co-operation, are replaced by purely functional procedures. We are inclined to perceive purely functional systems as actively co-ordinated collective processes, as we separate effects as constant ‘signs’ from changeable elements. Even in printed musical form, quite independent from dance as performance, the waltz became a popular commercial product on lifeless sheets of paper. Similarly written law and its observance, a plan and its realisation as a social event should be seen to correspond as neatly as possible. In our hands we have what seems the deliberate intention to see and show, and we suspect a ‘being’ behind it - a black box to which we can refer safely on the basis of our knowledge of our toolbox of familiar causal connections. And the simpler our interchange of the symbolic with the living, the more likely we are to become victims of our own fascination for the media. Mathias Spohr 220 The role of dance in maintaining power at the court of Louis XIV was based on its effect of producing social transparency. Everybody was forced to dance and at the same time given a chance to compete, using his or her dexterity and judgmental skills, much like sporting events nowadays. The technically produced effect determined a person’s reputation. Selfconscious behaviour, being watched by others, observing others, gave every member of the court a certain influence. Traces of this tradition still remain in current tabloid reporting. The levelling out of social differences, yet the focus on the King meant that the influence of the aristocracy as a counterpart to the ruler was undercut. This notion of bringing every individual into line, of his own accord in front of a frame still exists in innumerable variations. It leads to a continuous distancing effect within representativeness; it produces an overabundance of copies, a most obvious disadvantage. In the 18th century the middle classes resisted this trend by propagating a cult of inwardness, while at the same time they tried to maintain the frame-principle, as it provided a very effective medium for social discipline: that of rule and be ruled at the same time. Formal dance was kept alive, as was military drill with slight adjustments. This contradiction in terms resulted in the unlikely notion of ‘identity’ which has continued to haunt us ever since. The technical and social aspects of frames were still regarded as inseparable. Signs pretend to include social frames - like a musical full score, which seems to contain the social frame of an orchestra, though an anonymous one, adequate for millions of different performances. Reality and appearance were united by means of mechanical coupling, technical synchronisation: a mickey mousing of co-ordinated media to appear as a “natural” synthesis. Analogies remain clumsy attempts at establishing a relationship between elements and beings, which cannot be solved by any technique. The reflex-like combinations of stimuli and response, as arranged in dance, music or military drill, do not constitute acts of communication, though they might appear to be spontaneous and immediate. What happens here is that channelling or frame is provided. When still a child the later Emma Hamilton was sold to a brothel, hardly a good start to a career. Nevertheless, thanks to a new ideal, a common female nature, she was able to grasp the chance to climb the social ladder purely on her own merits. She became Lady Hamilton and granted the freedom to make her own decisions. Skilled in staging living pictures, Emma Hamilton represented female nature in the image of antique prototypes. Antiquity functioned here as the traditional frame for objectivity. Her perfect technique in posing and staging suggested a visualisation of ‘being like that’, similar to the models of our times. This modern unity of nature and art is always in danger, because it has to hide its artificiality. Just like all our civilised ‘identities’ it is technically constructed, presuming that the analogies and laboriously produced symmetries are natural. Hence it becomes important that women are staged by real women, in order to hide the fact of staging itself, in contrast to the tradition of the 17th century where there was no impetus to construct nature with those ‘authentic’ analogies. But in our culture of media the endless reproductions (“fabrications” according to Goffman’s terminology) have to conceal themselves. When gender roles are defined and staged in real life without admitting the character of disguise, the travesties still common on stage up to the end of the 18th century become indecent or immoral. In the waltz, the man leads. At least it has to look like that. Gender-specific behaviour is strictly defined. Women enjoy being waltzed around for hours, men complain about the strain. “Transported by irresistible music, enveloped in the arms of their dance partners” 16 - controlled and guided by powerful media: this was a feminine ideal formulated by an observer at the Congress of Vienna in 1815. As a model of behaviour it allowed exhaustion Social Compatibility in a Two Gender Society 221 in a pretended passiveness, decent re-acting instead of acting, corresponding to the demands of ‘female nature’. Disguised in this way women could enjoy restricted liberty. The waltz stages a symbolic relationship for the dancing couple, not a courteous ‘publication’ of greeting and meeting each other, but a simulation of private intimacy - and Goethe’s Werther longed for a transformation of this symbol into reality. A step on each beat, unlike in the minuet, the waltz produces identity with its music. In the Valse cotillon however, the couples are drawn out into performing various patterns in careful co-ordination. A popular parlour game since the Biedermeier age, this was often staged at the theatres of the Viennese suburbs. 17 Despite its constant circular movement the waltz possesses a static quality. The equilibrium of physics seems to be an equilibrium of souls in harmony, blending within its physical and metaphorical meanings. Similarly within the music: Johann Strauss junior enriched the forms and rhythms inherited from Lanner as well as from his father with subtle rhythmic irregularities, in order to deflect monotony. 18 In the music and the dance, energy and aggressivity are inverted. They are neutralised, not allowed to step outside the borders of intimacy, heightening the prowling of the tiger in the cage, yet accelerating, deepening the technicality and the voluntary aspect to make it appear so simple. The static and dynamic qualities of the waltz are closely entwined. Thus a symbol was provided for the industrialisation, which came late to Austria, the urbanisation and the almost interminable reign of the inflexible Emperor Franz Joseph who designated himself first official. 19 We cannot deny the fading influence of the waltz during the 20th century. The numerous ballrooms of 19th century Vienna are used for other purposes today, if they still exist at all. The interest in the waltz as a dance has become a sporting rather than a social one. The decay of forms in social life is indubitably linked to the development of automation, even if we do not like to admit it. Bytes dance in our computer processors, playing the sounds and pictures we desire. The various versions of techno music illustrate a sharp separation of the living and the dead, an unconstrained social framework to a very strict order of signs issuing from loudspeakers. Automation is situated outside our bodies, though omnipresent, a symbol of our social life, no less important than the 19th century waltz. Once young couples danced, played music, went to theatre performances, read the same romance, albeit supervised by a chaperon. They stared at the same frame, an exercise in identification, the couple constituting a social frame within technically reproduced frames, as interfaces, without direct facing, because this would have contravened the laws of decency. A technical coupling and co-ordination replaces too intimate a contact. Art-lovers will object. Nowadays we are confronted with too many frames, which facilitate this, co-ordination instead of contact, loose couplings leading to isolation. By divesting signs of life, scripting them, denoting them as classical, cloning them, we insist that they live. In reality this is simply absurd. But it works, for in doing so we expand the potential social frame of these signs. If the signs had no effect, their social aspect would not exist at all, and all these signs would remain lifeless, like umpteen musical compositions. Thus we cannot do without signs engendering a natural effect, which guarantees a social frame. This leads me to the following thesis: the inner frame seems to have a physical effect on the outer. So we celebrate a cult of causal connections. The composer creates his work driven by an ‘inner urge’ just like a machine. He inspires the conductor, the conductor inspires the orchestra, the orchestra the audience, and so on. The dancers are spurred on by the music. All the modern media are powerful manipulators. At least we try to perceive it as such, so that we Mathias Spohr 222 can forget that these effects are always simulated, projected from outside inside, instead of proceeding ‘naturally’ from inside outside. It is not the effect of the waltz that transports through its magical power, but the waltz, which provides a plausible pretext to meet and to celebrate, even for us now. We are constructing causes by simulating effects, as any good actor does. Similarly, it is the astounding effect of the decimal system that forces us to celebrate a Johann-Strauss-centenary like the potential millennium bug’s effect on computer systems. Naturally, the dancers are not driven by the music as is a clock by its spring, or as were the dancing figures on the popular music boxes of the 19th century. The ideal of automation is always strongly associated with dance. At the French Royal Court during the Second Empire, a mechanical piano often provided the music accompaniment for the dance, according to Andrew Lamb’s biography of the Waldteufel family. The aristocracy and their guests did not wish to expose themselves to the prying eyes of musicians. 20 The waltz permits a change of partner, in spite of its spatial intimacy. Like any frame it is a relationship without participators. Even in our times when we shy away from the touch of the other, this is daring, for it happens without any strict rule. Our lifeless counterparts such as mobile phones or cameras make it possible to swap partners without physical contact. On the other hand, instead of waltzing we make love. This one night stand is not so different from the dance of previous times. It is a frame in which a personal relationship could be established like in a waltz or in a marriage. The frame does not guarantee success, we cannot escape the frame, while at the same time personal relationships try to circumnavigate causal rules as an omnipotent principle of civilised life, managed as if by machines. Signs are made up of effects isolated from the living world and constrain us to follow their mechanical rules. Since frames have been made more available during the last few centuries, their availability inflicts itself upon us. We have to accept it, differentiating the active social world from the world of signs devoid of life, avoiding clinging to ‘identities’, which retain a technical nature. Notes 1 Rudolf Flotzinger, Gernot Gruber, Musikgeschichte Österreichs, Bd. II: Vom Barock zur Gegenwart, Graz, Wien, Köln: Böhlau 1979, pp. 269 -273 2 Rudolf Braun, David Gugerli, Macht des Tanzes, Tanz der Mächtigen. Hoffeste und Herrschaftszeremoniell 1550 -1914, München: Beck 1993, Die tanzenden Bürger, pp. 166 -274 3 Germaine Prudhommeau, Pierre Gardel: La Dansomanie, in: Carl Dahlhaus, Sieghart Döhring (eds.), Pipers Enzyklopädie des Musiktheaters, Bd. 2, München: Piper 1987, pp. 328 -331 4 Fritz Klingenbeck, Unsterblicher Walzer. Die Geschichte des deutschen Nationaltanzes, Wien: Frick 2 1943 5 Josef Felix von Kurz, Der auf das neue begeisterte und belebte Bernardon, Kärntnertortheater Wien 1754, in: Otto Rommel, Barocktradition im österreichisch-bayrischen Volkstheater, Bd. 1: Die Maschinenkomödie, Leipzig: Reclam 1935, Reprint Darmstadt: Wiss. Buchges. 1974, p. 77 6 “[…] der Walzer. Im Glanze seiner unsterblichen Musik tanzt sich der Gesellschaftstanz ein Ende, nicht unwürdig seiner großen Geschichte.” Oskar Bie, Der Tanz. Zweite erweiterte und um zahlreiche neue Bilder verbesserte Auflage, Berlin: Barel, Marquardt & Co. 1919, p. 236 7 Franz Endler, Johann Strauß. Um die Welt im Dreivierteltakt, Wien: Amalthea 1998, p. 18 8 “[…] der Uranfang dieses Tanzes aber liegt dort, wo der Mann in überschäumender Lebensfreude und im Glückstaumel der Erhörung sein Mädchen gepackt und sich mit ihr um die eigene Achse gedreht hat.”, Leonie Dubois, Der Tanzwalzer, unpublished doctoral thesis, Diss. phil. Wien: Institut für Theaterwissenschaft, 640 9 “[…] Moderne Computeranalysen von Turnierpaaren zeigen, daß dieser gemeinsame Schwerpunkt bei exaktem Bewegungsablauf im Idealfall eine harmonische Sinuskurve ergibt.” Reingard Witzmann, Tanzekstase & Social Compatibility in a Two Gender Society 223 Walzertraum - Gesellschaft und Ballkultur in Wien, in: Johann Strauß. Unter Donner und Blitz. Begleitbuch und Katalog zur 251. Sonderausstellung im Historischen Museum der Stadt Wien, Wien 1999, p. 137 10 See also Gabriele Brandstetter, Körper formen. Konstruktion und Dekonstruktion im Tanz, in: Martin Bergelt, Hortensia Völckers (eds.), Körper formen. Dance 95. Internationales Tanzfestival München, München 1995, pp. 9 -17 11 Marvin Minsky, The Society of Mind. New York: Simon & Schuster 1986 12 Erving Goffman, Frame Analysis, An Essay on the Organization of Experience. New York: Harper & Row 1974 13 Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media. The Extensions of Man, New York: New American 1964 14 Niklas Luhmann, Die Kunst der Gesellschaft, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1995 15 “Eine […] musikalische Idee aber ist […] Selbstzweck […], wenn sie […] gleich in hohem Grad jene symbolische, die großen Weltgesetze wiederspiegelnde Bedeutsamkeit besitzen kann, welche wir in jedem Kunstschönen vorfinden.” Eduard Hanslick, Vom Musikalisch-Schönen. Ein Beitrag zur Revision einer Ästhetik der Tonkunst, Leipzig: Weigel 1854, Reprint Darmstadt: Wiss. Buchges. 1991, p. 32 16 “Man mußte diese hinreißend schönen Frauen sehen, ganz in Blumen und Diamanten durch die unwiderstehliche Musik fortgezogen, hingegossen in den Arm ihrer Tänzer.” cit. after L. Dubois, Der Tanzwalzer (note 8), p. 96 17 M. Spohr, Robert der Teuxel oder: Die Konkurrenz zwischen Hofoper und Vorstadttheatern, in: Gunhild Oberzaucher-Schüller, Hans Moeller (Hrsg.) Meyerbeer und der Tanz, Paderborn/ München: Ricordi 1998, pp. 304 -322 18 “Der Tanzende dürfe nicht maschinenmäßig bewegt werden.” (Strauß father’s opinion on dance music, 1833) cit. after Norbert Linke, Musik erobert die Welt oder Wie die Wiener Familie Strauß die “Unterhaltungsmusik” revolutionierte, Wien: Herold 1987, p. 104 19 M. Spohr, Das “letzte” Volksstück im Theater an der Wien: Nach Egypten von Anton Bittner und Adolf Müller (1869), in: Nestroyana 14: 1994, Heft 3 - 4, pp. 81-90 20 Andrew Lamb, Skater’s Waltz. The Story of the Waldteufels, Croydon: Fullers Wood 1995, p. 77f.