Ch. 1. Why the Aesthetics of Dance Has Been Neglected

Ch. 2. Dance as Metaphor: World as Dance

Ch. 3. Contexts for Dance Theory

A. Philosophical Work on Dance: Why So Little Has Been Done

B. Philosophical Problems of Dance Criticism

Ch. 4. Some Dimensions of Dance Meaning

Ch. 5. On What Is and What Is Not Dance

[including Necessary and Sufficient Conditions]

Ch. 6. On What Is and What Is Not the Art of Dance

Ch. 7. Dance and Its Neighbors

[Dance and Labor, Ritual, Disciplines of Meditation, Sport, Athletics, Parades and Spectacles, Theater and Drama]

Ch. 8. What Dance Is

Ch. 9. Conclusion

A. Necessary and Sufficient Conditions

B. Distinguishing Dance from Other Human Phenomena [gymnastics, acrobatics, figure skating, circus, Broadway shows, religious ritual]

C. Distinguishing Dance from Other Performing Arts

[opera, theater, mime]

2. The Problem of Classification

3. Classification by Context

4. Mimesis

5. Expression

6. Formal Principles of Movement

7. Anatomy

8. Units and Systems

9. Rhythm

10. One and Many

11. Modes of Dance Organization

12. Dance and Music

13. Dance and Language

14. Dance and Theatre

[opera, theater, mime]

Ch. III. The Multiple Media of Dance

A. The Media of Dance

B. Evaluation of the Mixed Media of Dance

15. Dance Values

16. Dance and Spectator

17. Learning to Dance

18. Dance and Choreography

19. The Identity of a Dance

20. Recording Dance

21. Conclusion

A. Actual Practices in Establishing Identity of Dance Works

B. Philosophical Theories of Identity in Dance

C. The Lay Observer Test of Substantial Similarity in Copyright Infringement

Ch. V .The Proper Object of Criticism, Skills, and Production Factors

A. Evaluation of the Creative and Interpretive Aspects of Dance performances

B. Production Factors and the Evaluation of Performances

All references are to this dissertation, unless noted specifically following the quotation

The philosophical issues of dance addressed in this dissertation concern the object of criticism and are basic to further philosophical analysis, especially because they involve unusual features of dance which might render philosophical work regarding other artforms suspect or less than obviously valid when applied to dance. (p. 10)

RELATIONSHIP OF DEFINITION AND CRITICISM

A third reason for defining "dance" is that it lays important groundwork for specifying what critics are, or should be, evaluating. (pp. 20-21)

Understanding the phenomenon of dance from a descriptive perspective should assist in those normative inquiries, especially for an artform about which so little is understood. (p. 21)

A fourth reason why definitions of dance are of philosophical interest is that in much extant writing on dance, "mere" definition is really a statement of normative critical principles. . . (p. 21)

The bedrock principle applied throughout in this dissertation is that philosophical problems must be addressed in terms of the artform as it is actually practiced, appreciated, and evaluated. (p. 257)

. . . the key factors are the extent to which human movement is central in the performance, the full potential of that movement is developed, and dance is recognized as an independent artform. (p. 136)

The more comprehensively a movement phenomenon addresses the complexity and universality of the human condition, both mental and physical, the more nearly is it an artform. (p. 66)

One fundamental principle according to which critical trends have evolved is that dance uses, above all, human movement, and thus, that anything which lessens the potential of that movement, or is used as a crutch to develop that potential, detracts from the value of the performance. (p. 77-78)

Generally, critics who approve of such physical assistance [as toe shoes or wires] usually claim it enhances the artistic or dramatic potential of dance, while critics who disapprove often claim such measures reduce dance to athletics. (pp. 234-235)

Interest in choreography per se has also increased steadily in classical ballet, due in part to the choreographic genius of Fokine, Balanchine, and others. Critics and audiences now view the choreography itself with great interest, even when not particularly well-performed. Some difference in emphasis remains. Balanchine's New York city Ballet emphasizes choreography above everything, while others, such as American Ballet Theatre, stress the performing ability of individual dancers. Still, choreography is of overwhelming interest today in dance, especially in contrast with music and opera, where interest is mainly with the performing aspects. (p. 230)

The dance may come first and the music follow on, or both may be worked out together. The relationships are probably symmetrical. If a dance can be danced in any named relationship to a music piece, it seems likely that a musical piece could be composed or performed in the same named relation to a dance. . . . I see no reason why the differences should be of any great interest. (p. 224)

Tchaikovsky's music for the ballets of Marius Petipa . . . was written after the choreography had been completed . . . . George Balanchine used this method . . . although he is most noted for choreography using previously-written music. (p. 239). . . Beaumont. . . accepts without question the composition of music either before or after the choreography is created. . . . Critics today rarely discuss and do not seem very interested in the manner in which music was composed. (p. 240)

If you are a real choreographer, someone who makes dances as other artists make things in their own arts, then, if you make a dance that seems to you (as a dance-maker) in your best judgment right for the music you are setting it to, it is bound to have a rightness, the rightness you with your trained experience and sharpened sensitivity see and feel in it. (pp. 228-9)

The standard of "appropriateness" between the media, and the use of different standards resulting in different overall judgments thus also has a special importance in view of the multi-media character of dance. (p. 259

. . . critics fulfil the needed function of intermediary. They tell us about the tradition a work belongs to, about the ideologies that go with the tradition, how it relates to other traditions. They tell us what to look for, so that we can see the design in the work and discern the relation between work and performance. They tell us how a work relates to its own tradition, exemplifying, advancing, or denying. They may discern for us what in the work is part of the design, what is unconsciously betrayed as subtext, what is accident; they may tell us things about the background which explain how it came to be the way it is. All of these things do help. They help us to appreciate the work as we experience it. (p. 339)

There are three main elements in good criticism. First, the work must be described. This provides a common experience for all readers, whether or not they have seen the work. . . . Second, good criticism should put a work into context. This includes both historic and stylistic contexts, . . . the purpose of this contextual analysis is to help educate the audience. It should learn how a work fits into the broad landscape of dance in its many varieties in order to better appreciate it. Performances do not exist in isolation, but emerge from a long history of many genres. The well-informed critic should be able to make these categorizations easily. The contextual analysis also provides a basis for evaluation of the work . . . Third, and by far the most difficult aspect of criticism, is the evaluation or judgment of a work. . . . An evaluation builds upon the elements of description and context . . . ("The Humanities and Dance Criticism," Federation Review 9/1, 1986, p. 15-16)

Critics try to help that audience focus on things worth thinking about in dance. The critic should crystallize gut reactions and intuitions that audience members form about a performance. The critic should educate an audience about what to look at and provide a historic and stylistic context enhancing the appreciation and understanding of a particular performance. ("The Humanities and Dance Criticism," Federation Review 9/1, 1986, p. 15)

Like other masters of her craft, Croce uses words to capture a sense of what it was like to be in the audience. She places works within an historical and social context -- their relationship to earlier works in similar genres, the influences of other art forms, the expression of generational attitudes. (essay-review of Denby, Croce, Siegel, DRJ 24/2, Fall 1992, p. 42)

Criticism also provides an historical and social

The difficulty results from the dance world's tolerance of considerable variation from the original choreographic design, the lack of completely standardized dance vocabularies, and the blurred "division of labor" or responsibility between creation and interpretation. Especially because human physical limitations and variations are uniquely important to dance among the arts, it is often acceptable for dancers to show off individual strengths by substituting different movements or adding major variations on the original materials, or for an injured dancer to simplify the choreography to perform even a semblance of it. Aspects usually regarded as interpretive (a certain turn of the head, facial expression, or phrasing of the arms) could (p. 220) have been planned by the choreographer or an unseen coach.

Another physical performance factor is the nature and quality of the stage. An untreated oak floor with a bit of spring is a favorite of dancers, and is an important form of physical assistance, while slippery, hard surfaces can present serious problems. (p. 235)

Beardsley's view that perceptibility is a necessary though not sufficient condition for specifying the aesthetic object, the project object of criticism, eliminates much of the information needed to make these distinctions (p. 225)

The contemporary dance groups that visit my town often insert in their programmes statements about the deep human or cosmic meaning of their work. The statements are invariably jejune and banal, but the dances are often brilliant and original. One wants to say, 'Shut up and dance!' (p. 477 n. 15)

Among quasi-performance factors, the third category, the program notes typically provided at dance performances are of most interest. As program notes are such a well-established practice, and since the audience is expected to read them prior to the performance on stage, it could be argued that they are an integral part of the performance itself, and thus relevant to the overall assessment of the performance. Most critics do not subscribe to this extreme (p. 240) view, but they occasionally refer to program notes, for additional justification of a negative assessment of a performance. Critics also use program notes as a source of information about a choreographer's aspirations, especially when they do not seem to have been met. These limited uses can best be understood as ways of assessing a choreographer's skill at realizing his ambitions, but not for evaluating the performance itself. References to program notes are infrequent, perhaps because the printed word seems so clearly a crutch for explaining or making sense of the performance on stage, instead of a legitimate way of enhancing its quality. (p. 241)

Clive Barnes seems to argue, in a generally favorable review of John Neumeier's Trilogy, that the program notes detract from the overall quality of the ballet. . . . (p. 255, n. 54)

[examples quoted from Anna Kisselgoff, Clive Barnes, and Jack Anderson]. . . In each of these examples, it seems that the criticism of the ballet rests solely on the inadequacies of the perceivable performance; the program notes provided confirmation that a goal was not met, but they were not themselves used as evidence justifying the assessment of the value of the perceivable performances. (p. 255, n. 55)

An example of a choreographer who has recognized this distinction is Judith Snyder Jaffe who, writing under the supervision of Rudolf Arnheim, said: "The audience should be able to understand the dance without realizing what I was specifically thinking of."

On this basis the creative choreographer devises the dances, specifying (or completing the specification of) what is to be danced. The essential specification, as given to the dancers, may be a demand for movements of a certain scale and character; may specify steps or expression (or both); may call for movements of a certain formal sort; or may call for danced actions (on the part of the dancer, or on the part of the character whom the dancer is dancing . . .). (p. 374)

In whatever form and at whatever level of specificity the instructions are given, the dancers will have to supply any missing parts or specifications -- expressive character, stylistic shape, formal realization, mimetic significance -- in the light of the scenario, or in the light of the known stylistic parameters shared by those engaged in the enterprise as participants or as public. In whatever system of choices prevails, each dancer has at every moment to do something definite, if only default, because choice and failure to choose will alike be construed as choice within the actual dance context. (p. 374)

And in ballet, as in other dance styles, choreographies may be tight, specifying every least movement, or loose, allowing much leeway in details, or quite open, leaving extensive areas open to the decision of the dancer, or even in places randomizing; and this may be just a matter of how the choreographer happens to go about things, or it may answer to deeply thought ideas about the choreographic process itself. A choreography may permit, or may require, ornamentation; may permit, or require, variation; may permit, or require

The choreographer can provide more or less of the design details through individual coaching. Every dancer necessarily "creates" when he adds details not designed in advance by the choreographer. (p. 223)

No system of notation or fixation can record every movement of every muscle, so the dancer must supply remaining details (whether from conscious deliberation or the reflex of previous training) to perform the design at all. Even if the choreographer does not indicate placement of the head or the fingers or the mouth, the dancer must choose their placement consciously or unreflectively. When a dancer substitutes his own complete movement design for a certain passage instead of just adding details to the choreographer's design, the dancer is even more clearly creating as the creator of the movement, though this still misleadingly might be considered interpretation. (p. 223)

. . . the criteria for distinguishing between "creative" and "interpretive" aspects are not clear. Creative aspects might be defined as designs in advance of performance by someone other than the performer, while interpretive aspects are contributions by the performer during performance, but this distinction is unsatisfactory. Facial expressions, for example, are usually contributed by the dancers and considered "interpretation," but they might in fact be planned by choreographer (or the dancer or his coach) in advance of his performance. Changes in the original movement designs could have been planned by a (p. 222) choreographer or the dancer in advance of performance or could be changed spontaneous because of an emergency during performance. A critic who recognizes the changes might still be uncertain who to credit -- the choreographer, the dancer, or the coach. (p. 223)More fundamentally, the criteria for distinguishing between "creative" and

Specifically, in the case of an artistic dance, two radically different interests are involved. On the one side, there is the proprietary interest of those who invent, mount, and perform the dance, the moral and legal interest of copyright. Like other property rights, these are a necessary condition of the production of goods and services; those who undertake the labour and expense of producing works of art must have their expenses defrayed somehow or other. On the other side, there are the interests people take in various aspects of the experience of the dance (p. 418) once created. These two sets of interests are obviously both legitimate, but they do not coincide, and no one way of harmonizing them imposes itself. (p. 419)

Chapter 19 mentioned another factor that calls for a complete and precise system of notation, adequate to specify a dance and distinguish it from any other. This is the introduction and spreading recognition of international copyright. In a thoroughly organized international economy, property rights have to be systematically established, and that includes rights in artistic property. However highminded we like to be about it, so long as art takes work to produce and present and so long as there is property, art is going to be property. So property rights must be estab (p. 434) lished, and that means that criteria of identity for all forms of art must be set up. To the extent that the criteria of identity for dance are choreographic, that

Legal determinations of identity directly involve the issues of philosophical identity, and illustrate the viability of a two-pronged test of identity using both notation (or fixation) to set an ideal for absolute identity and a lay observer test to apply that ideal and specify actual identity of specific performances. How much and what sort of compliance with that fixation and how this compliance is determined is an important question in infringement theory, but one not addressed clearly in the context of philosophical identity. (p. 171)

The ultimate issue in copyright law is copying, not similarity. (p. 177)

The philosophical problem of definition arises in copyright considerations. (p. 172)

In summary, infringement and identity theories share several important characteristics. In both, the aesthetic, economic, or other value of a work is irrelevant in determinations of similarity. . . Both involve a search for tests of sameness. In both, the choreographer makes decisions about what constitutes the work. For example, in copyright, the choreographer must decide what notation and/or film is submitted to the copyright office. For performances, he or she must decide what work is presented, initially and often in reconstructions of the work. In both spheres, the reconstructions of others might also be found similar to the choreographer's intended versions. (p. 186)

Infringement and identity theories also differ in significant ways. Only in infringement theory is actual copying and access relevant. Even so, this does not affect a finding of substantial similarity, but only the degree of similarity which must be proven. That is, the history of production (whether or not there was access) is not relevant to the finding of substantial similarity by a jury. In contrast, some identity

If a film cannot be authoritative, that is because, like a recording of an opera, it is prima facie a 'historical record of what was then done, and nothing more. The score constitutes the real work and every artist will wish to go back to it' (Benesh and Benesh 1977, 121) what you see on the film is a performance, and even a perfect performance cannot be authoritative. But the score enshrines the work that is antecedent to any performance of it. However, neither musical score nor dance notation is inherently authoritative, unless it is similarly antecedent; otherwise it, too, merely records the performances on which it was based . . . I suppose a dance-maker could compose a dance in notation, or make a film of a dance, and in either case could assign authoritative status (for authorial, rather than critical, purposes) to the product. In a sense, it would be possible to say definitely that a notated score had or had not been complied with, whereas with a pictorial record it would always be a matter of judgment whether a performance was 'sufficiently' like the paradigm in all 'relevant' respects; but realistically, it would equally be a matter for judgment whether a performance had complied with the score in an artistically responsible manner. (p. 422)

Another problem resulting from the possibility of multiple fixation is determination of what constitutes the choreographic work protected by copyright when there are discrepancies between the visual recording and written notation, when both fixations have been deposited with the Copyright Office. Should the protected work consist only of those elements shared by both forms of fixation? Should the film be seen as a supplement to the more skeletal written notation? The distinctive elements captured on film might be precisely the characteristics best showing substantial similarity or originality in an infringement suit. It could be argued, however, that the discrepancies constitute, prima facie, the interpretive and unprotected elements of the work, that is, the nonessential characteristics for the purpose of identity. (p. 185)

In both [infringement and identity], the choreographer makes decisions about what constitutes the work. For example, in copyright, the choreographer must decide what notation and/or film is submitted to the copyright office. For performances, he or she must decide what work is presented, initially and often in reconstructions of the work. (p. 186)

It is still true that a dance cannot be fully reconstructed from a single film, and the compilation of a comprehensive filmed record is seldom practicable. (p. 440)

A choreographer can provide for it in the dance movements and stillnesses devised. . . . (p. 384)

All proper parts of action can be broken down into smaller actions. If I am changing a car tire, that action can be broken down into smaller actions: jacking up the car, unscrewing the bolts, taking the wheel off, and so on. But the movements of the muscles in my fingers as I unscrew the bolts are not the things I do, and are not parts of the action as such. (p. 134)

Similarly, as I perform a dance, the parts of my action will all be things I do in dancing: my turns, lifts, and so forth, and not the ways my limbs move as I perform these actions. . . (p. 134)

And there is nothing in my dancing but the way my body moves; the movements of the body are the medium of the dance. Analyses of dance movements are, in a sense, not about dance; but they are about what we see happening in a dance. (p. 134)

. . . dancing consists not in . . . movements -- that is motions -- but in actions generated by them. (p. 637)

. . . actions build upon, or grow out of, each other in certain definable ways. The wielding of a hammer, say, can become, in capable hands, the driving of a nail, and that in turn a step in the building of a house. One action, in a technical sense, is said to "generate" another action that is it fruition or even its aim. (p. 636)

My thesis is that all these terms [jete, glissade, demi-plie, sissone ferme, pas de bourree] refer to movings as such, not to the motions that generate them. (p. 638)

I think it is a mistake . . . to divide bodily motions from actions: they are actions of a certain kind, though in themselves generally not as interesting as the actions they generate. (pp 637) [end of Beardsley source]