Abstract
The female body as it is presented in contemporary performance not only provides significant insight into the historical lineage preluding it and its position within modern Western culture, but also suggests alternative modes of presentation and representation. In her 2015 National Arts Festival Production Transparent, Ester Van Der Walt employs the principles of clowning to discover, explore and then reject normative and elusive notions of femininity, particularly within the fields of dance and choreography. As the conventional presentation of femininity within such fields has, for centuries, been intensely rigid and standardizing, then it follows that the clown – and her embracing of the playful, the chaotic, the fluid – offers alternative modes of femininity. The ontology of the clown is essentially one that is constructed from failure, from playfulness and from subversion of expectation, and its manifestation in Van Der Walt’s Transparent thus demonstrates the transformative potential of the clown when used to explore and present the female body and notions of femininity.
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