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Where He Danced: Cocteau's Barbette and Ohno's Water Lilies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Mark Franko
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Abstract

While some recent gay scholarship attempts to appropriate a naturalized position within the patriarchal tradition that apparently excludes it, this essay aims to situate the gay within an expanded concept of maleness. The critical response to homophobia does not overcome the binary-opposition codes that form the basis of conventional sexual difference. Jean Cocteau's 1926 essay on transvestism, “Une leçon de théâtre: Le numéro Barbette,” shows those binary codes in operation as the female impersonator Barbette moves across gender boundaries only in a death-defying high-wire act. The Butoh dancer Kazuo Ohno's 1988 performance piece Suiren ‘Water Lilies’ offers an alternative to the traditional sexual polarities asserted by Barbette's cross-dressing. Embodying “through-dressing” in a model of mutual inclusion, Ohno suggests the unconventional sexuality of a middle voice that preserves the ability of sensation or inner experience to fashion appearance.

Type
3. Rewriting Performance: Masquerade, Parody, Translation
Information
PMLA , Volume 107 , Issue 3: Special Topic: On Poetry , May 1992 , pp. 594 - 607
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1992

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