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Working and Dancing: A Response to Monroe Beardsley's “What Is Going On in a Dance?”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 July 2014

Noël Carroll  and
Sally Banes
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Extract

Professor Beardsley's paper is distinguished by his customary clarity. Many of the distinctions he draws will undoubtedly be useful not only for dance theoreticians, but for dance critics as well. Nevertheless, the way that these distinctions are placed in the service of a putative characterization of what constitutes a dance “moving” seems to us problematic. This brief note will be devoted to exploring the adequacy of Professor Beardsley's proposal.

Beardsley appears to conclude his paper by stating a condition requisite for a motion to be counted as a dance “moving.” He writes,

If, in other words, there is more zest, vigor, fluency, expansiveness, or stateliness than appears necessary for its practical purposes, there is an overflow or superfluity of expressiveness to mark it as belonging to its own domain of dance.

We interpret Beardsley's basic point here as the claim that a superfluity of expressiveness (above the requirements of practical exigencies) is a defining feature of a dance “moving.” However, in our opinion, this attribute represents neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition of dance.

Type
Articles on Philosophy and Dance
Information
Dance Research Journal , Volume 15 , Issue 1 , Fall 1982 , pp. 37 - 41
Copyright
Copyright © Congress on Research in Dance 1982

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References

NOTES

This paper was originally an invited response to Monroe Beardsley's paper for the expanded proceedings of the “Illuminating Dance” conference. The authors wish to express their gratitude to Monroe Beardsley, Maxine Sheets-Johnstone, Selma Jeanne Cohen, Adina Armelagos, and Anne Hatfield for their careful readings of this paper.

1. Beardsley, Monroe C., “What Is Going On in a Dance?” (this journal, pp. 31–36)Google Scholar. All mentions of Beardsley refer to this paper, given at a conference entitled “Illuminating Dance: Philosophical Inquiry and Aesthetic Criticism,” co-sponsored by CORD and the Dance Department of Temple University, held at Temple University May 5, 1979.

2. Rainer, Yvonne, “Some retrospective notes on a dance for 10 people and 12 mattresses called Parts of Some Sextets, performed at the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut, and Judson Memorial Church, New York, in March, 1965,” Tulane Drama Review 10 (Winter 1965); 168CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Reprinted in Rainer, Yvonne, Work 1961-73 (Halifax, Nova Scotia: The Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design; New York: New York University Press, 1974), p. 45Google Scholar. In her discussions of Room Service in Work 1961-73 on pp. 45 and 294, Rainer may give the impression that the first performance of the work was the one in Philadelphia in April 1964. However, it was first performed as a choreographic collaboration between Rainer and sculptor Charles Ross at Concert of Dance 13, on November 10-12, 1963, at the Judson Memorial Church in New York City.

3. Quoted from Marcia B. Siegel by Professor Beardsley (this journal, p. 33) in order to show why the movement in Rooms is dance.

4. Trisha Brown's Equipment Pieces are well documented in Sommer, Sally R., “Equipment Dances: Trisha Brown,” The Drama Review 16 (September 1972, T-55): 135–141CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Simone Forti writes about her dance constructions and other works in her Handbook in Motion (Halifax, Nova Scotia: The Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design; New York: New York University Press, 1974)Google Scholar. See also the chapters on Brown, Trisha and Forti, Simone in Banes, Sally, Terpsichore in Sneakers: Post-Modern Dance (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1980)Google Scholar.

5. Crichton, Michael, Jasper Johns (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1977), p. 31Google Scholar.

6. For an analysis of the workly movements of Rainer's Trio A, see “Yvonne Rainer: The Aesthetics of Denial,” in Banes, , Terpsichore in Sneakers, pp. 41–55Google Scholar.

7. Some of these problems are examined in Noël Carroll's “Post-Modern Dance and Expression,” a paper delivered at the American Dance Festival at Duke University in July 1979, published in Philosophical Essays in Dance, ed. Fancher, Gordon and Myers, Gerald (Brooklyn: Dance Horizons, 1981), pp. 95–104Google Scholar.

8. We are indebted to Paul Ziff for the suggestion that concepts like omission, forbearance, and refraining, as used in both legal theory and action theory, would be useful in the description of avant-garde dance.