Corporal Transcodification(s): Mark Morris’ Dance Adaption of Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas

My goal in this essay is to look at the Mark Morris Dance Group’s adaptation of Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas. Mark Morris’ ballet creates an alternative grammar, acting out a series of trans-codifications on various levels, through a heroine, Dido, who already embodies strong resistance to the normative construction of reality. All of these aspects will demonstrate how this multilayered adaptation is able to rebuild Dido and Aeneas through extensive trans-codification(s), resulting in the production of a corporal language that defies normative categories and rewrites both the opera and Dido’s story. In order to explain this, I have divided this essay into three parts: a conceptual clarification on the transcoding of corporalities, contextualized in relation to Dance Studies and contemporary philosophical currents with respect to Morris’ production; a brief introduction on Purcell-Tate’s work and on the Mark Morris Dance Group, followed by an examination of the trans-codification(s) implemented in the ballet of the American choreographer; and finally, a problematization of the political and aesthetic implications of this choreography, which does not simply “reinterpret” the myth but radically reconfigures its dramaturgical and affective structure through the body.