This essay concerns dance as an exhibition object by examining the permanent exhibition at The Museum of Dance in Stockholm, Dansmuseet. Due to its dependence on the temporality and movement of the lived body, dance does not easily lend itself to being exhibited in a traditional exhibition display; and since the live dance performance itself is ostensibly absent at the exhibition display, other means of representation must be relied upon in order to evoke the exhibition visitors’ experiences of time and movement as well as the feeling of dance. Starting from a phenomenological first-person perspective, as an exhibition visitor, I present three ways in which such experiences may come about. The cross-section of the experience evoked and the means that trigger them are intermedial, spatial, and performative taking their departure in the visitor’s pre-understanding of dance.

This essay examines the final part of the life of former volunteer foreign legionary Sven Blom, and is part of a project which started in 2017 with my first essay: Red Trousers and Watery Mud. : Sven Blom’s Experience of the First World War: a Case-study, which explores the Swedish volunteer Sven Bloms’ experience of the First World War in the French foreign legion. My second essay: Dear Mr. Blom: Swedish Voices from the Western Front (2019), widens the scope to the other Swedish volunteers which served in the French foreign legion through their letters sent to Sven.In this final essay, I examine Sven Bloms life after the war through the source material in his archive. The overarching question posed to the material is: How does Sven Bloms thoughts, literary texts, letters and life compare and connect with the mentality and discourses present in France and Paris after Sven’s involvement in the First World War? Based on the use of Microhistorical theory, several parts of Sven’s life are examined in order to answer the large question through the small life that was Sven’s: How did he lead his life to his death in 1931, and what part did he play in the social circles which he took part in? How did he remember his fallen comrades and the war which claimed their lives? And how does his own writings, letters and diaries reflect on his view on life, and the war? Through the obituaries of Sven Blom, how is he remembered by his friends? And how does previously unexplored source material about Sven Bloms early life and demobilization help explain his agency?Through Sven Bloms eyes we are given a window into a postwar France and Paris torn by war and filled with a desire for life, having experienced want and death. Sven lived through these “Les années folles”, “the roaring twenties” of French society. Through Sven we are given access to the French process of healing, and through his experiences and thoughts, shared by many, he gives an account of a nation, a city and a people moving forward.

This thesis aims to investigate Les Ballet Suédois (1920-1925) and their ambition to create total works of art (Gesamtkunstwerk), a term made famous by the composer Richard Wagner (1813-1883). With regards to modern research into total works of art as expressions of the social or political visions of the avant-garde, this thesis applies theoretical concepts of intermediality and performativity to discern how the company cooperated with members of the Parisian avant-garde. Their joint mission was to regenerate society by uniting the arts and constructing ballets designed as total works of art that conveyed the ideas of the collaborating artists, commonly expressed in written manifestos during this era. In analyzing three works: Dårhuset/Maison de Fous, Världens Skapelse/La Création du Monde, and Relâche, it was revealed that staging total works of art was a common pursuit among artists of the avant-garde. The unique function of the Ballet Suédois was to transgress the ideas of the avant-garde into corporeal, temporal, intermedial manifestations of their radical collaborators. The results showed that Ballet Suédois functioned as enablers that performatized aesthetic, social and political ideas to the stage and, in manifesting the manifestos, had a unique function within the Parisian avant-garde of the early 1920s.

The central role that avant-garde music and dance theatre played in the interplay and synthesis of the arts and media in the 1920s, particularly in Paris, is well known. However, the creative potential of ballet has hardly been recognized in its manifold relationships with film and cinematic-inspired expression. The extent to which especially ballet music interacted with the latest cinematographic principles and techniques and referred to cinematic aesthetics in a variety of ways can instructively be seen regarding the productions of the Ballets Suédois. This is discussed in this article with an exemplary look at Les Mariés de la Tour Eiffel (1921), Within the Quota (1923), Skating Rink (1922) and Relâche (1924). By that it becomes clear that the transmedia inclusion of cinematographic ideas not only inspired the vocabulary of avant-garde dance and modern choreography, but was also distinctively reflected in the conception and composition of film-affected music.