Philosophers writing on aesthetics used to preface their essays by deploring the low standard of thought prevailing in that subject. Since they never tried to show that dullness and folly were less rampant in other fields, one had to recognize in this practice a mere ritual. But one can always speculate on what social purpose rituals had once served. Similarly, philosophers who nowadays write on the aesthetics of dance preface their papers by deploring the tendency of philosophers to neglect the topic. Since they produce no hard evidence of such neglect, this practice too has to be seen as a ritual, and this ritual also calls for explanation. It reflects some unease about the place of dance in the philosophy of art, but the reasons for that unease are not obvious. This paper suggests ways in which the theory of dance might not fit easily into the theory of art in general, or why it might be felt not to do so.

I

Writing on dance certainly has a low intellectual profile. I had supposed that among the data to be reckoned with were a failure on the part of Hellenistic writers to write dance histories comparable to those histories of painting, sculpture, and music that were so widely read and quoted in the Renaissance, and a corresponding failure in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to write handbooks and treatises on the practice of dance comparable to the well-known treatises on the other fine arts from that encyclopedia-ridden age.

I begin these rather tentative and exploratory reflections by calling upon some provocative remarks by George Beiswanger, from an essay written some years ago and later reprinted:

Though this passage summarizes a view that I shall try to defend and articulate, the attempt to apply the concept of metaphor troubles me: it seems a strained extension of an otherwise reasonably clear and useful term. So instead of Beiswanger's rather mysterious “operation of a metaphor” I shall suggest we employ some concepts and principles borrowed from the philosophical theory of action. But I still like his favored expression for what we are all trying to understand better—those special “goings-on” that constitute dance.

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,

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.

Like Bojangles, by 1958 the Savoy had become an institution in the world of entertainment, and like Bojangles, it caught the imagination of thousands upon thousands of people during its 32-year history. The Savoy was a building, a geographic place, a ballroom, and the “soul” of a neighborhood. It personified a community and an era, and became a monument to the music and dance of “swing.” On its huge and shiny mahogany floor, the Lindy Hop was born, a dance that took the world by storm and would become as seminal as the waltz in the history of social dance. The Lindy Hop, together with countless other dances like the Flying Charleston, the Stomp, the Shim Sham Shimmy, Rhumboogie, Suzie-Q, Big Apple, Black Bottom and the Scrontch, were taken to an extraordinary level of performing perfection at the Savoy. Within its inner circle, great dancers and musicians set trends and styles in dance and music that ricocheted throughout the world. There were other ballrooms and clubs—Connie's Inn, Small's Paradise, The Cotton Club, The Lenox Club, The Kentucky Club, and the downtown clubs on 52nd Street—but there was only one Savoy.

From 1933 until 1946-47 Margot Webb and Harold Norton performed on the Afro-American vaudeville circuits of night clubs and theatres in the Northeast and the Midwest. Known professionally as “Norton and Margot,” they were one of the few Afro-American ballroom teams in history. Their career was emblematic of the frustrations, paradoxes, and double standards which existed for Afro-American artists in the United States. As a ballroom team, they faced the same obstacles as a Dean Dixon or a Marian Anderson: they were traveling on a white road posted with “No Trespassing” signs for the Afro-American. They followed on the heels of the 1920s, which was the golden era of Afro-American vaudeville, of the Cotton-Club-type, posh nightclub, and of “Black Broadway.” They preceded by two decades the civil rights era of the 1960s, when more opportunities became available to Afro-Americans in mainstream (or white) show business. Norton and Webb belonged to the swing era of the 1930s and the 1940s. However, due to the nature of their performance style and the racial tenor of their times, they were either too early or too late for success. It is in this sense that they existed between two eras.

Most scholarly work on Afro-American social dance has been concerned with its structural aspects, primarily the question of African retentions. The work of Melville Herskovits, Joann Kealiinohomoku, Linda Wharton and Jack L. Daniel, Chadwick Hansen, Robert Farris Thompson, John Q. Anderson, Gertrude P. Kurath, Jan Hertzberg, Lydia Parrish, and others has touched on this issue.

Though this approach to the study of Afro-American vernacular dance is far from exhausted, it ignores certain significant aspects of black dance culture. Once it is established that the structural aspects of Afro-American dance are in fact African-derived, the researcher is free to raise questions concerning the function, meanings, and uses of the dance.

The anthropologist-dancer Katherine Dunham has stated that dance has greater tenacity than any other cultural form and that it is the most permanent cultural link with the past. Certainly the dance of Afro-Americans is identifiable on the basis of its continuity with both traditional and contemporary African movement. Until recently, most Afro-Americans conducted their lives in relative isolation from whites. Isolation rather than inherent tenacity may explain the similarity between their dance forms and those of contemporary Africans.

“Disco” summons a variety of images to the minds of urban dwellers in the United States today. Many people think of teenagers carrying portable stereo tape players, sometimes called “ghetto blasters,” and recall how their loud and pulsating presence unceremoniously overwhelms all human life along their path. Some think of chic, glittering couples dancing the night away in dark discotheques. Whatever the image, disco is perceived as a style—of dancing, music, clothes. Disco is a social scene, a fad, a craze.

Disco is also, undeniably, a multi-media phenomenon, depending not only on the direct contact of social relationships but information and services transmitted by different forms of mass media. The movie Saturday Night Fever (1977) was possibly the single most important mass media event in heightening public awareness of disco dancing in the last several years. But every day, networks of media and entertainment industry ideas are negotiated and guided out to the public at large. These negotiations involve interplay between national and local television, the recording industry and local radio, local radio and the public, and then several levels of inter- and intra-community relationships. Popular images of disco are a conglomerate of data from these myriad sources.