Living in the fragments of dreams: analysis of the dual-narrative structure in Kenneth MacMillan’s Winter Dreams from narratological and psychoanalytical perspectives

Abstract

This essay investigates the ways dance narratives are constructed and aims to reconfirm the significance of dance narratives in the creation of meanings within dance practices. It draws on key concepts in narratology and psychoanalysis. These two critical perspectives are applied to the analysis of the narrative in Kenneth MacMillan’s 1991 one-act ballet, Winter Dreams. The analysis is based in two contradictory hypotheses: (1) the narrative represents the sequences of characters’ individual dreams/hopes/fears and (2) it traces a continuous line of the characters’ personal development. Identification of the narrative’s anachronistic structure and the presentation of archetypal characters support the former hypothesis, whereas the observation of the main characters’ interaction with these archetypes proves the latter. In conclusion, by demonstrating these evidences, this essay argues that a simultaneous manifestation of multiple narrative constructions is possible. Finally, the essay closes its argument by suggesting the unique characteristics of dance narratives that prove their capability for generating multiple meanings.

Keywords:

• anachrony
• archetype
• dance narrative
• narratology
• psychoanalysis

Notes

1. Kenneth MacMillan was born in 1929 in Scotland. He began his professional career first as a ballet dancer at Sadler’s Wells Theatre Ballet in 1946, dancing for the works of choreographers such as Frederick Ashton and Ninette de Valois. Then he set out as a ballet choreographer with his first work, Somnambulism (1953). His exceptional talent in choreography eventually led him to be appointed as Director of The Royal Ballet in 1970. Over the course of his career, he produced a number of renowned masterpieces that includes Romeo and Juliet (1965), Manon (1974), Mayerling (1978) and Isadora (1981).

2. This essay also refers to the texts of Mieke Bal (1997), Joseph Campbell (1993), Marie-Louise von Franz (1998), Jolande Jacobi (1999), Ira Progoff (1953) and Anthony Storr (1983).

3. Drama and literary theorist Manfred Pfister (1988) also mentions that the story ‘consists in the purely chronologically arranged succession of events or occurrences’ (197), whereas a narrative’s discourse ‘does not have to present the story in purely chronological fashion’ (Jahn 2005) and can change its order to highlight certain meanings in specific events. This concept is also crucial for understanding the narrative structure of Winter Dreams and therefore it is more closely analysed later in this essay.

4. The notion of dream interpretation and the unconscious was originally discovered by Freud. In his theory, the unconscious contents ‘consist wholly in the activity of conative trend – [personal] desires or wishes’ and dream is ‘the product of a conflict and a compromise between the primary unconscious impulses and the secondary conscious ones’ (Strachey, in Freud 1976, 22). Although Jung was largely influenced by Freudian theory at first, he later elaborated this idea to discover the notion of the collective unconscious and ‘archetypes’. In this essay, perceiving the narrative as the characters’ dreams, hopes and/or fears fundamentally relies on Freudian theory of the dream contents. However, since this essay concerns how these dreams are commonly perceived and then interpreted by viewers, it is more useful to understand Jungian theory and examine archetypal representations in Winter Dreams.

5. Unlike personal dreams, archetypal images that are genuine to the collective unconscious may appear in myths. According to American mythologist Joseph Campbell (1993), ‘dream is the personalized myth, myth the depersonalized dream’ (19).