2.   Goals and primary hypothesis             

               

The goal of my paper is to describe the nature and mechanisms of the two-way connection between parallel units of different semiotic codes, gestures, on the one hand, and languages of the JCS music and libretto, on the other hand. I state that the gestures produced on the stage are not incidental. That means that their appearance in the play as well as the inner structure of any particular gesture is largely defined by the music and the libretto. This is the basic hypothesis I intend to confirm further.

 

3.   The analysis of the body language in a musical drama: general ideas

 

To speak about gestures in a musical drama we must, of course, determine the kinds of gestures that are typical for or frequent in rock operas. In the context of a musical drama we usually observe gestures of the following types. (1) The standard everyday gestures that are used in oral face-to-face dialogs. It is important to notice that there are two addressees of these gestures: the real addressee (the character on the stage) and the audience. This feature determines the peculiarities of performance of these gestures. That is why when we speak about everyday gestures performed in the opera we must keep in mind this necessary correction. The variance of gestures performed in the everyday life situations and on stage should be described thoroughly. (2) The pantomime gestures, theatrical exaggerated facial expressions and theatrical expressive proxemic and stage gestures – they comprise the second kind of gestures in a musical drama. Most of them are generated within an individual creative process and serve for the nonverbal expression of the contents and the ideas of the play. These gestures are not typical for everyday communication [7]. These theatrical gestures can be divided into several classes according to their function and assignment in the play. One class consists of the nonverbal units that depict objects; the majority of these gestures are instrumental. Another class comprises metaphorical gestures of several subtypes. One group of metaphorical gestures is assigned to express the objects that either have no referents in the real world or their referents are partly imaginary (e. g. the gesture of raising hands that hold an imaginary cup; it accompanies the phrase Take this cup away from me). Other metaphorical gestures are more imaginary. They determine the necessary paths and directions, potential combination of movements and directions, time, etc. For example, some metaphorical gestures express the movements of actors in the play, point out to the place where the characters should meet or ways they must go to leave the stage, etc. (3) The gestures which are typical only for the singers. They are usually called singers’ gestures. Some of singers’ gestures just help actors singing, others are much more expressive and help to convey human feelings and emotions, e. g. some types of rising, moving around, running, etc. (4) The gestures performed in a dance, or dancers’ gestures. The example of dancers’ gestures is cyclically repeated pattern of movements that sometimes resembles the sequence of everyday gestures in form, meaning and structure. Thus we distinguish four classes of gestures that are typical for rock-operas (and, perhaps, for musical dramas of other kind): (1) everyday gestures, (2) theatrical gestures, (3) singers’ gestures, and (4) dancers’ gestures. Further I shall deal mainly with the two of them – the classes of everyday gestures and theatrical gestures.

There are three semiotic classes of gestures. The criterion of their distinction is the relationship of nonverbal units with oral speech or with written text [8]. The first class involves emblematic gestures, or emblems. These sign units possess the autonomous lexical meanings and are capable of communicating their meanings irrespective of any verbal context. The second class is the one of illustrative gestures, or illustrators. These gestures outline a specific verbal or nonverbal part of a communicative act or accompany some verbal elements. The last class consists of regulative gestures, or regulators, that may be used either with or without speech. They are distinguished from the emblems and the illustrators by their function, which is to start, to support and to finish the current communicative process.

 

Now I shall address the illustrative gestures, because for JCS performing they are most significant; they are widely represented in both versions of the JCS and have strong relationship with the text (libretto) and the music (songs, dances and musical fill-ins in the JCS opera). The important fact about the illustrators in JCS is that the class of illustrators is not constant. It can be supplemented with certain emblems that can function as illustrators. I imply both that they are used to emphasize certain words and phrases of the lyrics and that their usage is regulated by the same laws and rules. The examples of such emblems are most pointing, or deictic, gestures of JCS or the gesture grabbing somebody’s arm. In JCS this gesture is used to attract the character’s attention to some thing, be it real (object) or imaginary (idea). I shall use the term illustrator to denote gestures of this kind as well.