THE ANIMATED SCREENDANCE: CINEMA, BODY, CHOREOGRAPHY, AND DISNEY’S FANTASIA

The animated screendance presents a meaningful experience through the medium of cinema as seen emerging from Mickey Mouse’s early cartoons, Silly Symphony’s experiments, and Fantasia (1940). The core focus of this research investigates the emotional and affective identifications of the audience engendered through the qualities of animation and the screendance. Drawing from the theories of the animated screendance, a term that shows how cinema can construct affective characters across the artistry of their inherent dance, I argue that these films elicit new understandings of the choreographed body. This is derived through the lens of artistic cartoon animation along with the emotional experience of the spectator by examining the critical body, dance, and film practices that form these bonds. Taking a qualitative approach by analyzing the many films in question through robust textual analysis while including theory on mythological narrative and physiognomy brings us to associate the elements of the body and screendance that influence culture and society. The reason for this approach leads us to recognize the importance of the animated dancing body as an imaginative form that can be controlled and manipulated by the pre-conceived ideas of the animators and human labor dictating these images. The screendance also provides additional layers of signification by including the construction of narrative and psychology through the processes of cinematography and editing, which is further placed onto these characters to increase their believability and emotional connection. All the bodies in question have similar elements that refer back to the human referent and focus on the choreographies that create meaning for these beings. The findings indicate that audiences are emotionally connected to the animated dancing characters on the screen through the importance placed on the representation of human form and cinematic structure to create memories and magic.