Unread pantomime: Evgenii Kharitonov's dissertation in the context of his artistic creativity and Soviet theories of dance

Abstract

This articles focuses on Evgenii Kharitonov's Ph.D. dissertation, “Pantomime in Instruction of Film Actors”, which he defended in 1972. Kharitonov (1941–1981) is now known as a poet, playwright, and prose writer, and as the founder of contemporary Russian gay literature. We discuss the meanings of his dissertation in some different contexts: Soviet studies of theater pantomime from the 1960s–1980s, represented by monographs and textbooks by Alexander Rumnev, Elena Markova and Ilya Rutberg; as well as Kharitonov's own works. Unlike most authors of Soviet studies of pantomime, Kharitonov implemented the structural-semiotic method in his work. However, his consideration of pantomime as a representation of “natural”, “non-restricted” human movements covertly contradicts the culture-centrism common to the Soviet structuralists of the 1960s. We show that Kharitonov's theory of pantomime and his prose and poetry were united by the author's interest in the “non-normativity” of human gestures, behavior and consciousness. Apparently, Kharitonov inherited this interest from the well-known dancer and director Alexander Rumnev, one of his mentors. Rumnev was active in the 1920s and 1960s.