Modernism's Moving Bodies

Abstract

This article explores the movements of modernist bodies across Europe and the Americas in the early twentieth century. Arguing that scholarship is still insufficiently attuned to the diversity and porousness of art-forms and languages that actually characterized the period, the essay tracks the movement of dancers through an expansive Western circuit, showcasing their involvement in unsuspected forms of circulation, collaboration, and cultural exchange. Focusing in particular on Tórtola Valencia, Vaslav Nijinsky, and Charlie Chaplin, the article demonstrates the cross-cultural movements implied in their own performances and tours; but it balances this interest in the modernist traveler with a focus on the figure designated by Mary Louise Pratt as the ‘travelee’, the one who is visited. Collecting responses in multiple languages and art-forms from ‘travelees’ in the spaces through which these performers passed, it is argued, allows scholars to configure new maps of cultural modernity.