The study is dedicated to the analysis of the artistic image of Danse macabre in the work of playwright and director Alexander Mindadze, whose works represent a consistent artistic statement about the catastrophic state of contemporary society. Mindadze's scriptwriting language evolves from psychological drama and social reflection to metaphysics, with the narrative centered around characters faced with extreme circumstances: from private incidents to large-scale historical cataclysms. Catastrophe in Mindadze's scripts functions as an event that exposes the limits of human existence and the presence of death. The bodily reaction of the characters to the approach of doom takes on particular significance in this artistic system. The material of the study includes the works “Parade of Planets” (1984), “The Servant” (1988), “The Dancer's Time” (1997), “On Saturday” (2011), and “The Floor” (2021), in which this reaction is expressed through scenes of dance. Dance becomes a stable model of behavior for the characters in situations of impending or already occurred catastrophe. This solution allows for a correlation between Mindadze's poetics and the allegorical tradition of Danse macabre, which traces back to the medieval motif of the Dance of Death. The methodological basis of the study consists of a cultural-anthropological approach to the study of the macabre tradition by historian Philippe Aris and art historian Vilya Mirimanov, as well as thanatological concepts by culturalologist Olga Kirillova and philosopher Nikolai Khrenov, who analyze the representation of death in cinematography. The analysis confirms that in the dramaturgy of Alexander Mindadze, dance functions as a stable model of bodily behavior for the hero in an extreme situation. In films created in collaboration with Vadim Abdrashitov, as well as in Mindadze's directorial works, scenes of dance become a way to organize chaotic reality through active bodily movements. The correlation of these scenes with the tradition of Danse macabre allows them to be regarded as a form of implicit presence of death in the bodily expressions of the characters. Dance does not fulfill a salvational function but sublimates the fear of death, fixing the inertia of existence in the aftermath of a catastrophe. The novelty of the study lies in the systematic analysis of the motif of dance in Alexander Mindadze's work as a structural principle rather than an episodic artistic device. The development of Mindadze's scriptwriting language highlights the role of embodiment in the evolution of Russian cinematic dramaturgy over recent decades: from Soviet film prose to new drama.
Dmitrii Aleksandrovich Bol'shakov (Thu,) studied this question.