Danser la maladie, contaminer la beauté: a viral approach to the (choreo)graphed body

This work brings together three different disciplines (literature, medicine, and dance) across three periods (the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty‐first centuries) in order to investigate the figure of the dancer as the emblem of a new aesthetic in both nineteenth‐century literature (Emile Zola, Théophile Gautier and Charles de Boigne) and contemporary dance (Maurice Béjart, Alain Buffard, Bill T. Jones and Thomas Lebrun). As argued here, the figure of the sickly but visually spectacular dancer troubles modern medical ideals of bodily perfection and challenges the exclusion of disgust (dégoût) from the realm of taste (goût). First, this dissertation explores the “naturalist dancer” as an emblem of the fin de siècle literary tradition that reunites its fascination with the visual beauty of the female body and its preoccupation with the invisibility of disease. The naturalist novel, as demonstrated through an analysis of nineteenth‐century dance criticism read through Zola’s Nana, takes up dance and its bodies in order to work out the prevailing tensions between medicine and art, or more specifically, diseased bodies and the image of beauty they may nonetheless transmit. ❧ Tragically, at the end of the twentieth century, the dance world was once again ravaged by another viral epidemic: AIDS. In this case, the male rather than the female dancer became the body at risk. Even though AIDS eventually devastates both dancers’ and non-dancers’ bodies, performers, at least in the early stages of the disease, can remain without physical marks of illness. Unlike Nana and other naturalist dancers, who met their (fictional) demise in terrifyingly ugly ways, male dancers at the end of twentieth century came to embody the fantasy of a younger generation that was sick or dying while still remaining beautiful. Here again, this dissertation contends that dance becomes the scene for grappling with the relationship between aesthetic production and pathology, even as the dancing body is politicized through activism and social movements. The final chapter turns to contemporary representations of illness on stage in order to investigate the creation of a post‐AIDS aesthetic. The analysis focuses on one particular contemporary ballet, Three Decades of Fenced‐in Love (2013), choreographed by Thomas Lebrun, here read through the lens of post‐AIDS literature. In this context, the analysis points out the shift from physical symptoms to a psychical, “emotional immunodeficiency.” In our reading of Lebrun’s work, we interrogate the double stigma illustrated in Three Decades of Fenced‐in Love: a physical mark that punctures the skin, and a symbolic trace that reckons with the generation’s trauma and as such, comes to redefine the “health” of twenty‐first‐century bodies. Ultimately, this work identifies in dance—and the performing arts associated with it—the dancer’s positive viral effect that, like a parasite, penetrates not just the realms of literature and performance, but the core of modern society.本研究横跨19、20、21三个世纪，整合文学、医学与舞蹈三大学科，旨在探讨舞者形象如何作为一种新美学的象征，分别在19世纪文学（埃米尔·左拉、泰奥菲尔·戈蒂耶、夏尔·德布瓦涅）与当代舞蹈（莫里斯·贝雅尔、阿兰·巴法尔、比尔·T·琼斯、托马斯·勒布伦）领域中得以呈现。正如本研究所论证的，体弱多病却视觉表现力惊人的舞者形象，动摇了现代医学对于身体完美的理想范式，并挑战了将厌恶（dégoût）从审美品味（goût）范畴中排除的固有认知。 首先，本论文将‘自然主义舞者’视为世纪末文学传统的象征——该传统既痴迷于女性身体的视觉美感，又始终关注疾病的隐秘性。通过结合左拉小说《娜娜》对19世纪舞蹈评论的分析，本研究探讨自然主义小说如何以舞蹈及其身体为载体，剖析医学与艺术之间，更确切地说是患病身体与该身体仍可传递的美感形象之间的普遍张力。 令人扼腕的是，20世纪末，舞蹈界再次遭遇另一场病毒性流行病的重创：艾滋病。在此语境下，处于风险中的身体不再是女性舞者，而是男性舞者。尽管艾滋病最终会摧毁舞者与非舞者的身体，但至少在疾病早期阶段，患者可能不会显现任何身体病症痕迹。与以可怖丑陋的方式（虚构的）走向消亡的《娜娜》及其他自然主义舞者不同，20世纪末的男性舞者成为了一代年轻群体的幻想载体——这群人身患疾病或濒临死亡，却仍能保有美感。本论文再次提出，舞蹈成为人们探讨审美创作与病理之间关系的场域，与此同时，舞蹈身体也通过行动主义与社会运动被赋予了政治属性。 最后一章转向当代舞台上的疾病表征，旨在探讨后艾滋病美学的建构路径。本分析以托马斯·勒布伦编舞的当代芭蕾舞剧《禁锢的爱三十年》（2013）为核心案例，并借助后艾滋病文学的视角展开解读。在此语境下，本研究指出了一种转向：从生理病症转向心理层面的‘情感免疫缺陷’。在对勒布伦这部作品的解读中，我们剖析了《禁锢的爱三十年》中呈现的双重污名：一是刺破皮肤的物理痕迹，二是承载了一代人创伤的符号印记，二者共同重新定义了21世纪身体的‘健康’内涵。 最终，本研究在舞蹈及其关联的表演艺术中，揭示了舞者所产生的积极病毒效应：如同寄生虫一般，这种效应不仅渗透至文学与表演领域，更直击现代社会的核心。