Mirror dance
The mirror dance is a common motif in ballet , ballroom dancing , mime , slapstick and figuratively in the literature used.
definition
At its core, a mirror dance consists of mirror-like movements by a couple or a group facing each other. The mirror dance shows the art of synchronous movement as if one dancer were a mirror image of the other. Mirror dances are often associated with an action in which a character thinks he is seeing her reflection. A break with this synchronicity acts as a comical effect (or also as a horror effect) because then the mirror image becomes “alive”.
Mirror dances with real mirrors that resemble shadow boxing are rarer. In folk dance there are dance games with mirrors. In a figurative sense, the mirror dance can be a symbol of addiction, hopelessness (like mirror fencing ), vanity or naivety.
Examples
Mirror dances are already documented on ancient Egyptian pictorial representations. In sonnets of the Renaissance , the mirror is often discussed in connection with the topos of vanitas as opposed to courtly representativeness. In Spiegler sonnet Georg Rodolf Weckherlin in this context is a mirror dance appears. In the history of theater, the mirror dance is one of the lazzi of the Commedia dell'arte and often appears in pantomime and ballet of the 18th and 19th centuries. The main character from the opera Silvana (1810) by Carl Maria von Weber performs a mirror dance popular on the stages of the 19th century.
Vaudeville
The principle of the mirror dance was also adopted by vaudeville comedians at the end of the 19th century for the famous gag routine in which an actor imitates another while the latter thinks he is seeing his reflection. Often responsible for this fallacy is a broken mirror, in front of or behind which the two actors do their "dance".
This routine was e.g. B. Part of a French play by HA du Souchet published in 1894. There was also an American version of it under the title My Friend from India in 1896, which premiered on Broadway that same year. In 1897 the farce by Justin Huntley McCarthy was revised for the London stages, where it ran under the title My Friend the Prince .
From 1899 the American Lyman Twins toured with their comedy A Merry Chase , which also included a mirror routine. In Germany in the early 1910s, the Schwartz brothers performed their 15-minute skit of the same kind, The Broken Mirror (which was seen by Max Linder in Berlin's winter garden in December 1912 ).
Movie
Soon after, the gag was also used in film comedies; the most famous of numerous versions is found in The Marx Brothers at War (1933). There were other examples u. a. in the following films:
- 1912: His Double (short film by Alice Guy-Blaché )
- 1913: Le duel de Max (feature film with Max Linder - according to contemporary reviews, the "mirror scene" took up a large part of the film; due to copyright problems with the Schwartz brothers regarding the same scene, the film was significantly shortened in some countries)
- 1913: Kri Kri domestico (short film with Raymond Frau alias Kri Kri; the scene here is much more sophisticated and gaggy than with Guy-Blaché, which is probably due to the Linder film)
- 1914: My Friend from India (short film based on the play)
- 1916: The Floorwalker (short film with Charlie Chaplin - the scene in question with Lloyd Bacon as a double does not need a mirror)
- 1919: Rolling Stone (short film by Charley Chase with Chaplin impersonator Billy West and Leo White - no mirror here either)
- 1919: The Marathon (short film with Harold Lloyd )
- 1921: Seven Years Bad Luck (feature film with Max Linder)
- 1924: Sittin 'Pretty (short film with brothers Charley Chase and James Parrott )
- 1927: My Friend from India (feature remake of the short film of the same title, with Franklin Pangborn )
- 1933: Duck Soup (Groucho and Harpo Marx; director Leo McCarey had previously directed Chase's Sittin 'Pretty )
- 1937: Lodge Night (short film with Andy Clyde )
- 1940: Seven years of bad luck ( Wolf Albach-Retty and Theo Lingen )
- 1944: Idle Roomers (short film with the Three Stooges - Curly Howard here faces a wolf man)
- 1944: Lost in a Harem ( Abbott and Costello )
- 1944: The Princess and the Pirate ( Bob Hope )
- 1946: Never Say Goodbye ( Errol Flynn )
- 1958: The Square Peg ( Norman Wisdom )
- 1988: Big Business ( Bette Midler )
- 2010: Otto's Eleven ( Otto Waalkes and Olli Dittrich )
The gag also found its way into cartoons and television, well-known examples are Goofy in Lonesome Ghosts (1937) and Lucille Ball and Harpo Marx in an episode of the television series I Love Lucy .
Others
A science fiction novel by Lois McMaster Bujold published in 1994 is called Mirror Dance .