Hauntingly Beautiful: Embodied Reading, Virginia Woolf, and Woolf Works

Abstract

Abstract: As the last two decades have seen a steady increase of contemporary choreographers drawing on modernist literature, interdisciplinary modernist studies must create new and additional lines of communication not only across disciplines, but also including the public arts sector. In 2017, I attended the Royal Ballet's revival of Woolf Works , a ballet based on the life and works of Virginia Woolf and interviewed choreographer Wayne McGregor and dramaturg Uzma Hameed. I draw on my background as a former dancer to explore how we can use McGregor's choreographic and Hameed's dramaturgic approach to analyze the ballet and the embodied aspects of Woolf's writing. By focusing on the first section of Woolf Works ("I now, I then"), and Woolf's novel Mrs. Dalloway , I consider the ways in which the characters of Clarissa and Septimus embody predominant themes in the novel: memory, trauma versus peace, support, and time.