In this presentation, we will address Lacan’s “Mirror Stage” and how it relates to the dance piece “Zero Degrees” by Akram Khan and Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui. After deeply analyzing both the reading and the dance piece, we have each discovered sections of the reading that we most find interesting and have decided to use this in order to support our ideas.
The idea of the “Mirror Stage” is an important early component in Lacan’s critical reinterpretation of the work of Freud. Drawing on work in physiology and animal psychology, Lacan proposes that human infants pass through a stage in which an external image of the body (reflected in a mirror, or represented to the infant through the mother or primary carer) produces a psychic response that gives rise to the mental representation of an “I”, which refers to the ideal image of one’s self. The infant identifies with the image, which serves as a figure of the emerging perceptions of self-hood.
The four key points of Lacan’s “Mirror Stage” that we have chosen to discuss are
· Gestalt Theory
· The Oedipus Complex
· The Fragmented Body and Ideal Self
· Psychoanalysis
When looking at the dance piece “Zero Degrees” by Akram Khan and Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, there are clear links that can be made to Lacan’s Mirror stage; this is mainly through the pieces’ use of movement content, choreographic devices and props. This presentation will discuss examples from “Zero Degrees” in further detail and relate them to the four key concepts we have devised from the reading of Lacan’s “Mirror Stage”.