The hysterical body. Madness and discipline in the contemporary dance

Abstract

Disappeared from the medical manuals and hospitals, hysteria has come on stage. That is a natural result for a phenomenon born between the end of the 19^th and the beginning of 20^th century and plainly marked by theatrical characteristics. As from the experiments carried out by Charcot at the Salpêtrière clinic – where the performances of the hysterical patients were shown to an audience made by doctors, intellectuals, artists and curious persons – to the German expressive dance, to Tanztheater and to the recent performances of the European dance-theatre, the hysterical gesture dominates the twentieth-century and contemporary theatre. At the bottom of this phenomenon, it is possible to find reasons and needs between art and life, and the search – never interrupted during the 20^th century – for a theatrical discipline that rules the chaos of Dionysiac impulse.