Timedancers

Timedancers

Timedancing

The Big Lie in Dance History: Bodies in the Hall of Mirrors

Enclosure, Extraction, Erasure: The Suppression of Embodied Knowledge in European Dance History, Part II

Russell Patrick Brown, PhD's avatar
Russell Patrick Brown, PhD
Dec 11, 2025
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Wide, empty view down the length of the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles. The polished marble floor, repeating chandeliers, arched mirrors, and gilded ornament create an endless corridor of reflections. The symmetry and multiplied images evoke themes of power, distortion, and the self-replicating architecture of monarchy.
Hall of Mirrors, Palace of Versailles (1682). Photograph © Palace of Versailles / Wikimedia Commons. Used under Creative Commons license.

This is part two of three of a series asking what has been obstructed in our views of our own bodies. Read Part I.

The Man in the Mirror

Most dance classes I’ve attended have demanded attention to the mirrors, or more sp…

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