Elena Malysheva: The Representation of Gesture, Movement, Corporeality, and Dance in the Art of Alexandra Exter
Dissertationsprojekt
The project explores how the physics and movement vocabulary of modernist dance shaped Alexandra Exter’s visual language, and how her own experiments influenced choreographic practices in the first half of the 20th century. It offers a new understanding of Exter as an artist of movement, for whom the body becomes a key structuring principle of artistic thought.
Despite the significance of these processes, Exter’s contribution to the development of the visual language of movement and her collaborations with dancers remain understudied. It also remains unclear how modernist dance influenced her artistic decisions and to what extent her own experiments affected the evolution of stage movement and choreography.
The project addresses this gap by situating Alexandra Exter’s art within the broader context of the synthesis of dance, theatre, and visual art, and by analysing the formation of her language of corporeality and movement. This approach makes it possible to reconsider Exter’s role in the history of the avant-garde and to expand our understanding of the interaction between visual and performing arts in the first half of the 20th century.
The study offers a comprehensive reading of Alexandra Exter as an artist engaged not only with form, colour, and stage space, but also with movement, the body, and dance. It positions her as an active participant in the cultural transformations of the 20th century, and reveals her contribution to the formation of a visual language of movement and dance - one that remains relevant to contemporary research on performativity, corporeality, and interdisciplinary artistic practices.