1

Class 13: Dance

2

Francis Sparshott: “The Future of Dance Aesthetics”Thesis:

Sparshott traces the trends and developments in dance aesthetics from the ancient period to the present. Dance is able to (and, if it is to be successful, must) sustain a wide variety of audience responses corresponding to a wide variety of inputs by the dancer, choreographer, etc., and these contribute to its meaning.

Class 13: Dance

3

Class 13: Dance

The Ancients

- Dances are divided into decent and indecent dance.- Decent dance should be taught to both boys and girls as an

integral part of their education; dancing masters should be provided for the boys and dancing mistresses for the girls.

- Regulations for female and male performances, based on gender differences, state that rhythms and modes of the musical accompaniment must be appropriate to the characteristics of each sex.

• Dance is described as an educational device, as a means of bringing about civic order.

Plato

4

Class 13: Dance

The Ancients (cont’d)- Indecent dance – that of the comic sort – should only be

portrayed as ridiculous: “for the sake of never doing or saying anything ridiculous through ignorance.”

- That said, “we must order slaves and payed foreigners to imitate such things, and never make anything of them at all, nor permit the appearance of any free citizen, whether man or woman, who has learned them, but it should always appear that there is something strange about these representations.”

5

Class 13: Dance

The Ancients (cont’d)

- For Plotinus, dance signified the constant circular motion of matter in harmony, with the silent, unmoving Soul at its center.

• Dance is used as a metaphor for the animated cosmic order: “the coordinated movement of the limbs, he thought, signalling immediacy of the presence of consciousness, typified the vital unity of nature.”

Plotinus

6

Class 13: Dance

The Ancients (cont’d)

- Where music combines both rhythm and harmony, dance uses only the rhythmical movement of the dancers to convey its message.

• Dance steps “imitate” emotion and character, as well as action.

Aristotle

7

Class 13: Dance

The Ancients (cont’d)

- This approach raises three central questions:

• Pantomime as an outgrowth of dance traditions, where nothing is expressed except (at most) a mood or generalized purpose.

Lucian

1) Do abstract dance and mimetic dance belong to the same practice, aesthetically speaking?

2) If they do not, which is the truer form of dance?3) What are the limits of gestural language, and how

much is gestural language free from cultural restrictions?

8

Class 13: Dance

The Ancients (cont’d)- Invoking the practice of dance, we can further ask:

1) How is practice best described?2) In what ways, and how firmly, does that practice

mean what it is said to mean?3) In what ways can social and aesthetic value be placed

on that practice?

9

Class 13: Dance

The 18th Century

- Art and language could only have arisen among humans through the development of significance in undifferentiated body movements: in dance.

- Speech and music are specializations of this original artistic activity.

- However, this very theory places dance outside the fine arts.

• In the 18th Century, aesthetics develops as its own discipline, but discussion of dance aesthetics is noticeably largely absent.

• As Romanticism develops in the late 18th Century, a theory arises:

10

Class 13: Dance

The 19th Century• 19th-Century Europe sees a rise of a physically impoverished

proletariat, and a fascination with the mechanics of movement (in bodies as well as in machines).

• Dance is seen not as enhancing and celebrating social graces, but as exploiting the movement potential of bodies whose beauty comes from health and efficiency.- As a result, dance becomes lumped together with athletics,

gymnastics, and movement education.

11

Class 13: Dance

The Early 20th Century

• Relates dance practice to a wider context of effort and movement training.

Rudolf Laban

• Based on musical notation, Laban’s system of movement notation uses abstract symbols to define:

Labanotation

- The direction of movement (indicated in nine different directions in space)

- The part of the body doing the movement- Level of movement (indicted in shading)- Length of time it takes to perform the movement

12

Class 13: Dance

13

Class 13: Dance

• Duncan develops the ideal of a body-liberating aesthetic, with the body moving in freely expressive health and nakedness.

• The ideals of Duncan are contrasted with the efforts of Laban, illustrating the dichotomy that develops in the 20th Century.

• From this thesis and antithesis rises a synthesis: “The art of dance came to be conceived not as the embodiment of disciplined beauty nor as the expression of the liberated body, but as the resolution of the human body into a system of pure energy.” (228)

The Early 20th Century (cont’d)Isadora Duncan

14

Class 13: Dance

The Mid 20th Century• Since the 1940s, traditional ballet and modern dance

continue to shift in their relations to one another.• Martha Graham argues for a dance aesthetics taking in the

varying forms of dance, rejecting the program focused on human movement and motivation that had historically grounded ballet.

15

Class 13: Dance

The Mid 20th Century (cont’d)

• Given the advancements in dance notation begun with Laban, dance aesthetics forms a crucial position in Goodman’s classification of symbol systems.

• Goodman argues that the preservation of dances had historically depended on tradition, but the growing use of Labanotation may bring it about that dances will come to be identified by the compliance with a score or script (as music and theater had already done).

Nelson Goodman

- This would change the whole nature of dance as a meaningful enterprise.

16

Class 13: Dance

17

Class 13: Dance

The Mid 20th Century (cont’d)• “A dance genre such as ballet, however, is built on sharply

characterized steps and poses which are systematically interrelated.” (229)- Must this level of regimentation, then, be true of any

dance form if it is to be meaningful?- If so, what are the necessities and possibilities of such

systems?• Modern dance forms have developed formalized techniques

of position and movement poses.• What forms can meaningfully be sustained as dance?

18

Class 13: Dance

The Mid 20th Century (cont’d)• Certainly, dance (in all its forms) seems centered on the

movement of human bodies, undertaken for its own interest.• Some philosophers have explored the symbolism of dance

as representation, particularly of “being-in-the-world” but with little success.

19

Class 13: Dance

The Modern Period• Techniques and technology continue to develop for

“recording” dance movements:- Videotaping makes it possible to record dances as they are

created, but may not show what is essential to a dance.- “[T]he increasing familiarity of Labanotation, and

growing sophistication in its use, promises to change the general level of understanding and movement analysis.” (231)

• Awareness continues to grow in the dance community of dance traditions outside the ballet and modern mainstream as artistic realities.

20

Class 13: Dance

21

Class 13: Dance

The Modern Period• Butoh combines dance, theater, mime, and other traditions

prevalent in Japan “to convey the experience of being born, living, and dying as a human being. This way of dancing seems to offer a broadening and deepening of the expressive range of dance.” (231)

22

Class 13: Dance

Theatricality and Corporeality

• The theatrical space is comprised of two elements: the performers and the audience, each interacting in a shared space.

• “In drama, a social relation is enacted and generated; in dance, the expressive power of the movement has been through to generate a sort of field of force. Both of these necessarily involve the audience as more than mere observers.” (232)

Theatricality

23

Class 13: Dance

Theatricality and Corporeality (cont’d)

• However, it is the body and its movement (together, corporeality) that seems of most vital concern in dance aesthetics.

• What do we see in the corporeality of dance?

Corporeality

i. “There are dances in which we simply see bodies in the human version of carnality, young, beautiful and strong, with no thought for anything but their relationship to their bodies—a relation for which, we find to our surprise when we seek to describe it, we have no precise terminology or apt theoretic.” (232)

24

Class 13: Dance

Theatricality and Corporeality (cont’d)ii. “There are dances in which we see the body as the locus

of human expression, gestural in spontaneous or artificially encoded ways, the affective individual without social place or history or strategy but as it were immediately responsive as human to human.” (233)

iii. There are dances in which we see the body almost as plastic material for three-dimensional construction—almost, but not quite, because if heads and arms and legs and torsos lose their functional identities in such constructions that loss is a part of what we significantly see.” (233)

25

Class 13: Dance

Theatricality and Corporeality (cont’d)• Seeing a friend who is a dancer, we may alternately see:

- Our friend going about her business as a dancer.- A dancer as a performer.- The character she that the dancer is portraying in the ballet.- The character reacting to the events of the ballet.

• “In any case, one is unlikely to maintain any one such mind set throughout a performances, nor need it be the case that a simple account could be given of what it is one sees her as at any moment, and of how whatever it is one sees is related to the moving body that (in its many interpretations) is the armature of whatever it is one is seeing.” (233)

26

Class 13: Dance

Conclusion• Where actors typically move and sound in ways that one

might make believe are everyday action, dancers do not. • In dance, the body itself is the proper focus of attention.• “Dances are constructed, not around modes of social

interaction, but around ways in which bodies can be visibly meaningful.” (233)

• A perceived dancer can be seen meaningfully in many ways – as an athlete, a substance, a performer, etc. – and it is essential to the successful public presentation of a dance that the presentation be meaningful in these different “codes.”

27

Class 13: Dance

Conclusion• “In principle, at least, a dance (as a choreography with its

compliance class of performances) must, if it is to hold its place in the world of productions and performances, be robust, able to sustain a wide variety of responses, just as it must embody in fact a variety of inputs and aspects from its variously human originators.” (234)

28

Questions & Problems(1) How would a movement in dance from dependence on

tradition to dependence on notation change the way that we view the discipline/medium?

(2) Considering Walton’s notion of standard, contra-standard, and variable features, and recalling the example of “guernicas”, would it make more sense to see Butoh a form of dance or a medium unto itself?

(3) How important is it to see dance – indeed, any artistic medium – as a medium independent from all others?

(4) Is the meaning of a dance composed of its various “codes” or does a dance have various individual meanings?

Class 13: Dance

29

Monroe C. Beardsley: “What Is Going on in a Dance?”Thesis:

When a motion, or sequence of motions, does not generate practical actions, and is intended to give pleasure through perception of rhythmic order, it is dance.

Class 13: Dance

Background• Beardsley’s theory fits neatly into his larger functionalist

program, in which he argues that art, in general, is defined by its function – i.e., the bringing about of an aesthetic experience.

30

Class 13: Dance

Dance and Action Theory

- We can analyze and come to understand certain actions by examining their generating conditions – the conditions under which act A will generate act B.

• What are the “goings-on” that constitute dance?Central Question

• One of the discoveries of philosophical action theory is that actions build upon, or grow out of, each other in certain definable ways.

Generating Conditions

31

Class 13: Dance

In or by swinging the hammer, the carpenter drives the nail.

32

Class 13: Dance

Dance and Action Theory (cont’d)

- Since the swinging of the hammer causes the nail to penetrate the wood, the swinging of the hammer generates the (act of) driving the nail into the wood.

• There are two fundamental categories of generating conditions:

1) Causal Generation – one action generates a second action that is numerically distinct from it.

33

Class 13: Dance

Dance and Action Theory (cont’d)2) Sortal Generation – the act-generation that occurs when

an action of one sort becomes also an action of another sort (yet without ceasing to be an action of the first sort as well).

- Believing my divorce to be final, I marry another woman. However, as my divorce is not final, I thereby commit bigamy. My marriage (the first action) becomes an act of bigamy (the second act) without thereby ceasing to be an act of marriage.

34

Class 13: Dance

Dance and Action Theory (cont’d)• “[A] dance is not composed of, does not have as its parts

or elements, bodily motions, but rather is in some way sortally generated by those motions: under certain conditions, the motion “takes on the character” […] of a dance-movement.” (37)

- Consider Dickie, Margolis, Levinson, etc. on the difference between the composite materials and the artwork.

• Movings – bodily actions that have the character of a dance.

35

Class 13: Dance

Definition (first pass)

“In a dance, movings are sortally generated by bodily motions.” (37)

• Pausings – bodily pauses that have the character of a dance.

• There are rests and pauses in dance as well as movements that are part and parcel of what is happening.

Problem

- Muscular contractions may be needed to maintain a position as well as to change one.

36

Class 13: Dance

Definition (second pass)

“[D]ancing is sortally generating movings by bodily motions and posings by bodily pauses.” (38)

• Khatchadourian: “Dancing consists of movements and not, or not also, of actions of some kind or other.” (38)

• But dancing consists not in the movements, themselves, but in actions generated by them.

• And it seems a mistake to divide bodily motions from actions: they are actions.

• The trick is distinguishing one type of action from the other.

37

Class 13: Dance

Movings and Motions• Movings are more than just motions:

1) Not every motion is dancing – we move all the time – so there must be some difference between the motions that generate movings, and those that do not.

2) There seems nothing in the nature of the motions, themselves, that marks off those that can be dance from those that cannot.

38

Class 13: Dance

Movings and Motions (cont’d)• “Of two motions, abstractly classified as, say, “raising an

arm,” one may be a dance and the other not, depending on some distinguishing feature contributed by the choreographer—so that, more concretely described, they may be somewhat different motions, though they belong to the same shared type.” (39)

39

Class 13: Dance

Movings and Motions (cont’d)

40

Class 13: Dance

Movings and Motions (cont’d)• “One motion generates moving, in my sense of the term,

and the other doesn’t.” (39)• The very distinction between motion and moving seems

embedded in a large technical vocabulary used to talk about dancing.

41

Class 13: Dance

Movings and Motions (cont’d)

42

Class 13: Dance

Movings and Motions (cont’d)• “A turning of a certain sort generated a pirouetting, and

they were the same event; yet if we first describe the event as a rapid turning on the toe we are adding something to this description when we say that it was also a pirouette, for that is to say it was dancing.” (40)- The same is true for numerous other terms: jeté ,

glissade, demi-plié , sissone fermé , pas de bourrée.- Some terms are borrowed from ordinary speech, which

take on a second sense in the context of dance description: leap, lope, skip, run.

43

Class 13: Dance

Movings and Motions (cont’d)

44

Class 13: Dance

Movings and Motions (cont’d)• What makes a particular motion a moving is that it is

somehow expressive. - To be expressive, a motion has “an air of

momentousness or mystery or majesty; it is abrupt, loose, heavy, decisive, or languid.” (40)

45

Class 13: Dance

Definition (third pass)

“When a motion or sequence of motions is expressive, it is dance.” (38)

• Not a necessary condition.Problems

- If a dance fails to be expressive, we do not think of it a not a dance, but perhaps as a bad dance.

• Not a sufficient condition.- An actress might make the same expressive motion as

a great dancer, but would not thereby be dancing.

46

Class 13: Dance

Volition• All of the forms and characters of voluntary motion are

encouraged to allow the emergence of the new qualities (the movings). - This is most obviously the case with forceful,

energetic, and powerful actions.- But this also applies to qualities like droopy exhaustion

and mechanical compulsion.

47

Class 13: Dance

Definition (fourth pass)

“When a motion or sequence of motions is expressive in virtue of its fairly intense volitional qualities, it is dance.” (41)

• Not a sufficient condition.Problem

- This definition seems to describe sports as much as dance [not to mention throwing a fit].

48

Class 13: Dance

Intention & Representation

• St. Augustine suggests that what transforms motions into dance is a particular intention that accompanies them – the intention to perform the motions for the sake of pleasure (either of the performer or of the audience).

• Augustine further suggests there is also the absence of practical intent that distinguishes dance from other actions.

Intention

49

Class 13: Dance

Intention & Representation (cont’d)

• One can represent one action type by another: Representation

1) Playacting – as in drama, this sort of representation may involve verbal utterance and props, like a shovel or artificial snow.

2) Miming – dispenses with props and verbal utterance, allowing room for exaggeration.

3) Suggesting – merely alludes to the original action-type, borrowing a motion or two, sketching or outlining, and mingling these motions with others.

50

Class 13: Dance

Intention & Representation (cont’d)• “Playacting, taken quite narrowly, must be

comparatively rare in dance, miming much more common, though in short stretches, I should think. Suggesting, on the other hand, is pervasive; it appears in many of the most striking and cogent movings.” (43)

51

Class 13: Dance

Definition (fifth pass)

“When a motion, or sequence of motions, represents actions of other types in the mode of suggestion, it is dance.” (43)

• Neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition.Problem

- There are many cases of dance that represent nothing, as well as many cases of using motions to represent action of other types that are not dancing (miming, for instance).

52

Class 13: Dance

What Sorts of Actions?• Workings – a causally-generated class of actions in

which we effect physical change in the world. • Illocutionary Actions – a causally-generated class of

actions utilizing verbal utterances in which we (indirectly) make changes in the mental states of others (e.g. asserting, greeting, insisting, refusing, etc.).- We can perform many of these same types of actions

gesturally rather than verbally: “Nodding, shrugging, winking, bowing, kneeling might be called “para-illocutionary actions” when they are done with this sort of significance. […] With or without words, such actions can be called signallings or sayings.” (44)

53

Class 13: Dance

What Sorts of Actions? (cont’d)• “Sayings, like workings, are representable: in waving his

or her hand, the dancer is representing someone saying good-bye. And, like working-representations, saying-representations can contribute much to the expressiveness of motions in dance.” (44)

• Sayings involve a form of sortal generation, very broadly called “conventional generation.”

• “It might even be argued that representations of para-illocutionary actions can hardly help but be para-illocutionary actions themselves, since by selecting the suggestive elements and giving them a different context we may seem to comment on the sayings we quote.” (45)

54

Class 13: Dance

What Sorts of Actions? (cont’d)• Strivings – a causally-generated class of actions through

which we seek to actualize goals.- Of course, strivings, too, can be represented.

• Workings, sayings, and strivings all have practical functions.

55

Class 13: Dance

Definition (sixth pass)

“When a motion, or sequence of motions, does not generate practical actions, and is intended to give pleasure through perception of rhythmic order, it is dance.” (43)

• Too restrictive?Problem

- What are we to make of corn dances, rain dances, and the like, which have practical bases? Should these be excluded from the category of “dance”?

56

Class 13: Dance

Definition (sixth pass)

• Critical Mass? “If […] there is more zest, vigor, fluency, expansiveness, or stateliness than appears necessary for practical purposes, there is an overflow or superfluity of expressiveness to mark it as belonging to its own domain of dance.” (46)

Solution

57

Questions & Problems(1) On what basis does one judge whether there is an

“overflow of expressiveness” in an action?(2) If an action can have more than one function, it make

more sense to speak of an action’s primary or central function?

(3) Doesn’t bringing about an aesthetic experience qualify as a practical function?

(4) Sparshott notes that ballet “is built on sharply characterized steps and poses which are systematically interrelated.” How does this mesh with Beardsley’s argument that one can only tell a dance moving from an ordinary movement by its expressiveness?

Class 13: Dance

58

Class 13: Dance