Dance critics often use information external to a performance to identify and separately evaluate the creative aspects of dance (composition of music and movement; design of scenery and costumes) and the interpretive aspects (performance by dancers and musicians; execution of scenery and costume designs). Their evaluation may also take into account production factors not directly perceivable in a performance, including the type of floor, rehearsal time, illness, and injury.
These critical practices are problematic for an anti-geneticist theory of aesthetic value, the best-known of which is that of philosopher Monroe Beardsley. As a way of legislating against irresponsible criticism, such as describing Schubert's music as “pathetic” solely because one “sympathizes with his poverty,” Beardsley will “…count as characteristics of an aesthetic object [the proper object of criticism] no characteristics … that depend upon knowledge of their causal conditions, whether physical or psychological.” Even some who consider this position too strict, excluding as illegitimate certain important critical discourse, agree that it contributes to a desirable goal, the exclusion of “clearly irresponsible criticism,” or “‘fantastic’ criticism that finds in the work any property whatever suggested by biographical information.”
The apparent conflict between anti-geneticism and these critical practices in dance can be resolved by distinguishing evaluation of perceivable performances from assessments of the continuing skills of performing and creative artists.