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Philosophical aesthetics and the studyof dance as an academic disciplineBetty RedfernPublished online: 11 Jan 2008.

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Research in Dance Education,Vol. 8, No. 2, December 2007, pp. 187–201

ISSN 1464-7893 (print)/ISSN 1470-1111 (online)/07/020187–15© 2007 Taylor & FrancisDOI: 10.1080/14647890701706313

Philosophical aesthetics and the study of dance as an academic disciplineBetty Redfern*Taylor and FrancisCRID_A_270525.sgm10.1080/14647890701706313Research in Dance Education1464-7893 (print)/1470-1111 (online)Original Article2007Taylor & Francis82000000December 2007

‘The aesthetician’, William Charlton (1970, p. 11) has said, ‘should rather go wherethere is work for him to do, than sit on Parnassus waiting for problems prepared tohis specifications’. Those with a particular interest in the dance, however, might beforgiven for thinking that comparatively few philosophers seem inclined to descendfrom the Parnassian heights to address themselves to the problems spawned by danceactivities. Yet during this century, as members of the Association won’t need to bereminded, there have been significant developments in this country in dance of a vari-ety of kinds, not least in dance as an art form.

The former distinguished theatre critic of The Times, A. V. Coton (1946, p. 11),observed that, in the three decades prior to 1946, theatre dance had undergone moresweeping changes than it had experienced in the previous three centuries; and duringthe last ten or 20 years in particular such changes, as well as changes in public attitudestowards the art of dance, have accelerated even faster. Indeed it has become fashion-able to talk of a dance ‘explosion’—a way of speaking that I prefer, however, to avoid,and not only because it’s a rather tired, over-worked metaphor. In the first place, itdoesn’t strike me as a particularly happy one. For what is an explosion like? Typically,something that doesn’t last very long, that’s horribly noisy and may be blinding, andthat leaves a trail of confusion and disaster in its wake. Secondly, I don’t find it partic-ularly apt. For, rather than a sudden, unexpected eruption of interest in the dance, itseems to me that this phenomenon has probably resulted from a lot of patient, quietlyconducted hard work over a number of years by people in various places, not least insome schools and colleges. Even if what they said they were doing was sometimes ques-tionable, such enthusiasts nevertheless succeeded in preparing a fertile ground thatmade it possible when more opportunities did come along for many individuals to befavourably disposed both to watching and participating in dance as an art.

*Care of Judith Chapman. Email: jachapman@breachdevon.co.uk

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Notwithstanding the changes, however, Western aesthetics tends to maintain itslong-standing preoccupation with the visual arts, music and literature. The dance,along with the arts of radio and television drama, has not yet received the attentionthat would seem commensurate with the cultural importance of these forms and thewidespread influence they undoubtedly exert. To come upon mention of dance, or ofparticular works, even if only by way of illustration, is still relatively rare in the writ-ings of British philosophers, though the situation is a little better on the other side ofthe Atlantic.

It comes about then that people like myself, who are not professional philosophers,and therefore all too inadequately equipped for the task, find themselves exploringthis minefield of aesthetics, tiptoeing or blundering about in it as the case may be, andfrom time to time airing their confusions in public. In the 1960s Eva Schaper (1968,p. 9) declared that aesthetics is ‘often the despair of clear-headed philosophers, andthe delight of fringe practitioners’—its scope for muddled thinking wide indeed. Well,if the situation might be thought to be gradually improving as far as clear-headedphilosophers are concerned, one wonders whether it is not getting rather worse asregards fringe practitioners, not least, perhaps, as a result of developments in HigherEducation.

The title of this paper illustrates the habit of living dangerously which has becomecharacteristic of fringe practitioners such as myself, and the rashness with which, ifnot always delighting in aesthetic enquiry and not exactly rushing in where others(more wisely, no doubt) decline to tread, we embark on highly controversial topics ofimmense scope and complexity.

We could spend a good deal of time this weekend, for instance, simply examiningwhat might count as an academic discipline. I, for one, am not prepared to stretch orbend or twist the term ‘academic’ out of all recognisable shape, and it seems to mevery unwise and to do the cause of dance degrees no good to try to do so.1 Better,I would maintain, to recognise that practical work, as we usually understand the termin this context, is not academic (how, one wonders, would those who do make such aclaim characterise non-academic?). It’s safer, therefore, and far less pretentious, tothink here of academic studies related to dance activities than of dance as an academicdiscipline in its own right comparable with, say, musicology. Such a development,even if it were desirable, seems indeed an impossibility at the present time for reasonsthat I shall discuss later.

Then again, within the context of Higher Education, we could profitably spendfurther time considering what is to come under the heading of dance. Should we, forexample, be concerned principally with dance as a fine art? And how are the bound-aries of that to be delineated? (A philosophical question if ever there was one ….) Asfor what is to be understood by philosophical aesthetics, this is one of those curious butfascinating problems of a self-referential kind, falling to philosophy itself to dealwith—and one, I would suggest, in need of further attention at the present time (somephilosophers, for instance, arguing that philosophy of art should be regarded asdistinct from aesthetics).2 Suffice to say here that, whatever it is, philosophicalaesthetics is logically prior to sociological or psychological aesthetics; for these, as

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empirical studies, have to take for granted just what philosophical enquiry seeks toquestion and to make explicit. Scientific investigations in this realm cannot get off theground at all unless certain assumptions are made about, say, what we mean by ‘art’or ‘aesthetic appreciation’, or what is involved in the evaluation of an artwork.

Clearly then I cannot do anything like justice to the many issues indicated by thishopelessly ambitious title, and far too many points will, I’m afraid, be over-condensedand certain presuppositions that deserve consideration remain unexamined.However, since this is the opening paper at a Joint Conference, it is perhaps prefera-ble, rather than attempting to pursue a single line of argument, that it should rangeover a number of topics in the hope that at least some will be of interest to membersboth of the Society and of the Association.

Perhaps a question uppermost in the minds of some of the former, certainly itsphilosophers, I suspect, is whether undergraduate students of dance (or, for thatmatter, of almost any subject), should be dabbling in aesthetics at all. And let’s makeno mistake here: they are only dabbling. However good they may be, however goodtheir tutors—whether in universities, polytechnics, or any other sort of institution—given the nature of the courses in which, typically, the dance features, the study ofaesthetics cannot but be a surface-scratching business. For most, if not all, under-graduate dance courses involve an element, often a weighty element, of personalparticipation in performing or composing or both. And this, as any dancer, amateuror professional, knows, is a very time-consuming business indeed. For those engagedin composition, the amount of time spent merely in deciding on and preparing a suit-able accompaniment, for example, can reach proportions probably undreamt of byanyone who has never undertaken such a task.3

But even if a generous amount of time were available for aesthetics, there is thequestion of what might be thought to be the relationship between this aspect of theo-retical study and practical work (practical, that is, in the sense just indicated). It isn’t,for example, like that between educational theory and practice—a realm where ques-tions of what ought to be done enter inescapably into both. For the function of theorywithin a dance course can hardly be to help guide or determine practice: no amountof aesthetics is going to assist anyone either to compose or to perform a dance (or apiece of music, a play, or anything else). Conversely, it need hardly be said, noamount of experience or proficiency in composing or performing, nor indeed in crit-ical appreciation, can provide philosophical understanding—though it may well bethat a concern with one of the arts, and perhaps especially with questions of interpre-tation and evaluation, first sparks off an interest in philosophy in general, and inaesthetics in particular.

It might, however, be suggested that if a dance course is regarded as part of a liberaleducation, as distinct from a professional or technical training (and it is clear, even ifit is difficult to know how exactly to characterise the concept of a liberal education,that they can be separated, whether or not it might be thought that in practice theyought to be), the student should be required to examine the nature of his subject andlook at it from a variety of perspectives. That is, he should become acquainted withthe sorts of questions, the sorts of procedures, and the sorts of answers that are

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characteristic of those disciplines thought to have an important bearing on it. Argu-ably it isn’t essential for an artist, qua artist, to consider the nature of the activities inwhich he engages, or to subject to critical scrutiny the beliefs and assumptions under-lying what he does and how he does it. Indeed such enquiries might be thought likelyto inhibit, even perhaps cripple, his creative endeavours. By contrast, for a student tofail to gain some understanding of the conceptual framework within which his activ-ities are situated might seem contrary to the whole enterprise of a liberal education.

We are, of course, touching here on contentious issues of some magnitude to dowith how the character and functions of a university, a polytechnic, or a college ofsome kind are to be conceived, involving in turn highly debatable and many-strandedquestions: political, cultural, social, economic, etc. But it has seemed doubtful tosome, reflecting on these questions, whether any institution orientated primarilytowards academic pursuits could be the ideal environment for would-be artists;4 theydo better, it has often been thought, in studios, conservatories, and the like.

Moreover, what of the alleged tension between the arts and philosophy (the‘ancient quarrel’, of which Plato spoke, between philosophy and poetry)? Of courseby no means everyone who is interested in the dance—or in music or painting orwhatever—finds philosophy uncongenial. Yet I’m inclined to think that there is some-thing in what Professor Ruth Saw (1972, p. 14), a former President of the Society,says when she observes that ‘the people most concerned with the arts are most antag-onistic to the concern of philosophers with the arts’. And although it’s no good reasonto omit a certain type of study from a course merely because some students might findit difficult or distasteful or can’t see the relevance of it (whatever that might amountto), we should nevertheless do well to take account of the very real problems that canarise in such circumstances, especially when time is limited, and especially perhaps inthe early stages. When philosophy is immediately popular, it’s been said, it may notbe very good philosophy (though we might recall that Arnold Schonberg has made asimilarly provocative remark about art). For, by its very nature, philosophy is apt tobe disquieting, subversive, uncomfortable: not for nothing has the philosopher beendubbed a gadfly …. It can also, of course, be refreshingly astringent and wholesomeafter the mushy, saccharine diet so often unfortunately served up by many writers onthe arts.

On the other hand, students—and even pupils in schools—who are interested indancing, in watching dances and perhaps attempting to compose them, often seemmore than a little inclined to embark from time to time on what comes close toaesthetic discussion, even if only casually and incidentally. Long before dance degreeswere instituted it was common for students to be overheard speculating on, say, whata dance is, what makes a good dance, whether there are criteria for good (and bad)dances (or plays, sculptures, etc.), what can be meant by ‘form’ in art, ‘meaning’, andthe like—though usually without much idea that what they were attempting to engagein was a philosophical enterprise. But in this respect dance students are perhaps typicalof the majority of people. As Diffey (1977a, p. 14) has remarked, the question ‘Whatis art?’ is all too often asked with promptitude and enthusiasm, and will set individualsarguing in philosophy far more readily than topics such as causation or identity.

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Like the notion of education, that of art seems fair game for debate by almost every-one. Those who would hesitate to make pronouncements about the nature of scienceor history or mathematics, for example, often readily jump in at the deep end when itcomes to a similar question about art (or education). Alternatively, they may supposethat a question such as ‘What is art?’ or ‘What is a dance?’ is one to be answered bythose most immediately involved with the arts—artists themselves, dancers, art criticsor art historians, and so on.

A choreographer then, adopting a currently fashionable but completely mistakenview, may declare that a dance means just what anyone likes to make of it—in whichcase one is led to ask why he ever bothers to compose more than one, since if he wereright we could make exactly the same of an indefinite number of works; or a dancermay claim to experience aesthetic pleasure merely on the grounds that his movements‘feel right’, or even just ‘feel good’ (and with no suspicion that perhaps there is nodistinctive species of pleasure that can be identified as aesthetic);5 or a dance critic mayexpound on the essence of art or dance, etc., or on its prime function or value, orproclaim that meaning in the non-verbal arts is superior to linguistic meaning. Andjust about everyone, unaware perhaps of the pitfalls of trying to define some terms,seems prepared to offer punchy, epigrammatic definitions of ‘art’, often quotingartists as ‘authorities’, as if that clinched the matter: ‘Art is expression’, ‘… is thespontaneous overflow of powerful feelings’, ‘… is significant form’, ‘… is communi-cation’, ‘… is the objectification of subjectivity’, ‘… is imagination’, and so forth. Butthere is seldom much understanding of the detailed and carefully worked out thesesof which such compact statements are usually merely shorthand summaries; or of thesocial, moral, political or cultural background of, say, a Wordsworth, a Bell, aTolstoy, a Langer, or a Coleridge, against which such views are to be appreciated.(It should perhaps be added that, while a search for necessary and sufficient condi-tions here seems totally misguided, I’m not assuming that the question ‘What is art?’is one never to be asked at all or that has been closed forever. If we imagine that thelast word has been said on such topics, or on, say, the ‘private language’ argument,or on denotation and connotation, we have failed to catch the questing spirit of philo-sophical enquiry.)

The apparent readiness of many people to plunge unknowingly into philosophicaldebate, however, and thereby to risk committing what O’Connor (1957, p. 15) claimsis ‘one of the commonest and most dangerous of intellectual errors—that of talkingphilosophy unawares’, has, I suggest, something to do with the nature of philosophyitself. Of course some of the questions posed in philosophy do seem abstruse, evenperhaps, perverse; and others are the sort that only become genuine questions for uswhen someone with greater experience in the subject forces us to think afresh aboutsome of the things we ordinarily take for granted. But there are a great many othersthat are likely to occur to almost anyone—and not only in deeply reflective moments,but in the course either of dealing with everyday affairs or in connection with somespecial interest: as, for example, ‘What is a dance?’. To borrow again from Diffey(1977b, p. 14): there is a certain artificiality about the question, ‘What is a stone?’,which isn’t the case with, say, ‘What is a poem?’. We have to be argued into

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bewilderment about stones, he suggests, whereas we are immediately perplexed bythe other question (for all its grammatical similarity) about poems (or dances).

Then, again, everyone is already familiar to a considerable extent with philosophi-cal method, since it doesn’t require techniques such as carbon-dating or micro-processing, but involves rather an extension and refinement of our capacity to reason,to think cogently, to analyse and construct arguments. (Indeed there would seem tobe a good case for everyone in Higher Education—and perhaps earlier—having sometraining in philosophy.) But, of course, it is one thing to ask a question that is philo-sophical, quite another to recognise it as such—to distinguish it from one that is, say,psychological, or in need of some other form of empirical enquiry—and to under-stand that not all short, snappy questions can be adequately answered with short,snappy replies. It is yet a further task to wrestle with the problem involved with thesort of skill and doggedness that philosophical investigation demands: to followthe argument, in Socrates’ telling phrase, wherever it leads. Practice here (as in theperforming arts) takes time; and whereas students might manage to read a sociologi-cal or anthropological monograph in a few hours, they often need that amount of timeto get properly to grips with perhaps a page or even a paragraph of a tightly-knitsequence of thought in philosophy. Much easier therefore, having asked a philosoph-ical question, to choose, like Pilate with his ‘What is truth?’, not to wait for an answer;or else to turn to one that’s immediately palatable, reassuring, that contains what onelikes or wants or hopes to hear, but that may be all too facile, lulling one into a falsesense of security.

Take, as a prime example, the parroting of the suggestion that experience of thearts constitutes a special sort of knowledge— ‘acquaintance’ or ‘experiential’ knowl-edge—now apt to be dished out as a fact, though rarely with any argument to supportit, and all too often with little indication of what the problem of knowledge consistsof, let alone how such a claim might be defended, taking into account all the objec-tions (and they are formidable) that it has quite properly to meet. To feel such aproblem, feel it ‘on the pulses’, so to speak, so that it keeps intruding into one’sthoughts while doing the ironing or washing up or while out walking, one has to besoaked in the topic, ideally taught by a good teacher, to learn to engage in dialectic,and to have one’s attempts simply to state the problem, let alone construct a newone, ruthlessly overhauled. I take leave to doubt whether many of those who trot outsuch assertions about dance and acquaintance knowledge, leaving them merely asun-argued propositions, have ever really been genuinely puzzled by the concept ofknowledge (or of perception, imagination, and a host of others related to the problemat issue).

In this connection it might be suggested that what perhaps merits more attentionthan it is apt to receive in aesthetics courses is the concept of belief (belief, that is, asa state of mind, not in the sense of particular beliefs that we might hold). For thereare important logical links not only between belief and knowledge, but also betweenbelief and imagination; and as soon as we move outside the realm of dance as a fineart to that shadowy borderland area of ritual, we come upon tricky questions to dowith this relationship—questions which might nevertheless, if explored more

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thoroughly, illuminate our understanding of art (a problem that interested Colling-wood (1938), for example, but which he would seem to have got only partly right).

No-one then should doubt that when it comes to the philosophy of art and aesthetics,we are inevitably involved at once in issues that are among some of the most profoundand difficult and seemingly intransigent in the whole of philosophy. Questions aboutmeaning in the arts, for example, cannot be understood, much less properly examined,without a grasp of problems to do with meaning in general—which in turn involvecomplex and far-reaching questions about the relationship of language, thought andperception to one another, and to reality. In other words, it can be totally misleadingto think of aesthetics as a branch of philosophy, since this might seem to imply that,as such, it is a discrete area of investigation, capable of being separated off from therest of philosophy. Nothing could be more erroneous; and anyone who supposes thats/he can study philosophical aesthetics in isolation is seriously mistaken. For this isquite impossible without immediately engaging in questions that are central to allphilosophical enquiry: questions of metaphysics, of ethics, of epistemology, of logic(logic not in the narrow sense of rules of inference, but in the broader sense of thestudy of principles of reasoning and valid argument), and, not least, philosophy ofmind. Indeed the term ‘aesthetician’, quite apart from sounding—to my ears at anyrate—a somewhat clumsy word, can be dangerous, suggesting, as it may, a special sortof philosopher, rather than one who applies his insights and expertise to a particulararea of interest.

It has, however, been only during the last 30 years or so that art and the aesthetichave received the kind of rigorous treatment accorded by philosophers to otherfields, and that aesthetics and the philosophy of art have ceased to be regarded (bythe more optimistic) as a form of ‘intellectual slumming’, in a phrase of Charlton(1970, Preface). Indeed, contributors to William Elton’s influential collection ofessays, Aesthetics and Language, published in 1954, spoke variously of ‘the presentstone age of aesthetic enquiry’, of the dreariness, dullness, boringness, and even boguscharacter of the subject up to that time, its woolliness, according to John Passmore,being comparable to writings not only on metaphysics, but (guess what?) educationand sociology ….

Well, some of those essayists themselves sound rather dated now, and it would bea mistake, of course, to suppose that everything published in the name of aestheticsearlier in the century was as rubbishy as they are apt to suggest. Nevertheless, weshould note that Roger Scruton, one of the most distinguished contributors tocontemporary aesthetics, and with an enviable wealth of knowledge about and first-hand experience of a wide range of the arts, has referred to ‘this continuing intellec-tual disaster that is aesthetics’, and to the ‘slight and critically impoverished work’ ofphilosophers not only in the analytical tradition, but in every philosophical tradition(1979, p. 292). That again is perhaps rather extreme. But I mention it to draw atten-tion to the intellectual stringency, the passionate care for the integrity of research inone’s subject, and the energetic prosecution of problems, characteristic of the bestphilosophical enquiry—qualities all too often missing, I think it has to be admitted,in a good deal of dance literature.

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There is also the practical difficulty for any undergraduate who is not also followinga course in formal philosophy of a relative dearth of texts in aesthetics suitable for hisneeds. What may be styled ‘introductions’ are usually not introductory at all in thesense of being intended for beginners in philosophy (an indication, no doubt, that thesubject isn’t generally considered suitable for such individuals); rather, they are intro-ductory in terms of pinpointing fundamental questions in aesthetics and perhapssketching some answers to them. Richard Wollheim’s Art and Its Objects, subtitled AnIntroduction to Aesthetics, is a notable case in point: judging from various reviews itwould appear to have taxed more than one or two who already have a grounding inthe subject.

Furthermore, much of the best work in this field is to be found in philosophicaljournals, conference proceedings and the like, where philosophers are, naturally,addressing other philosophers (only a fraction gets re-published in anthologies, andeven then one is often left wondering at certain omissions or, alternatively, constantreproductions over the years). Hence there is a reliance not only on depth of philo-sophical understanding—as well as, it might be added, on a rich cultural backgroundof artworks and art criticism—but also on familiarity with ideas perhaps dating backto Classical Antiquity. A surprising number of issues still central to aesthetic enquirywere, for example, first given an airing by Plato and Aristotle, and continued, afterthe manner of so many philosophical issues, to be investigated and developed by onegeneration after another—often, moreover, in a way that makes those earlier pioneer-ing achievements not merely of historical, but of philosophical interest and value eventoday (a feature of philosophy that is not always easy for those with no experience ofthe subject to appreciate).

Thus the mere mention of, say, a golden mountain, ‘bundles of experiences’,‘innate ideas’, black swans, an image of Helvellyn, or squirrels going round trees, issufficient for a philosopher to call to mind not just a particular problem, but probablya large chunk of philosophical debate on the problem that has gone on over the years.And certain terms whose exact shade of meaning in a particular context is likely to beperfectly clear to those with such a background may be easily misunderstood byanyone lacking all knowledge of aesthetics prior to this century, and especially of eigh-teenth-century aesthetics and the work of Hume and Kant: terms such as ‘idea’,‘judgement’, ‘intuition’, ‘experience’, ‘representation’, ‘taste’, ‘sensation’, ‘descrip-tion’—not to mention the terms ‘aesthetic’ and ‘aesthetics’ themselves.

In addition, terms such as ‘cognition’ and ‘cognitive’ may raise difficulties. Someof the arguments that go on today in connection with the arts in education, for instance,seem to me to a certain extent unnecessary in so far as ‘cognitive’ in ordinary language,as well as in psychological and educational discourse, is often used interchangeablywith ‘intellectual’, whereas in philosophy its use may be restricted to matters involvingpropositional knowledge and, hence, belief. If, therefore, we want to hold that inaesthetic experience, disbelief is suspended, and that an aesthetic appraisal does notinvolve a truth claim yet may at the same time be considered objective, we can seehow such appraisal may be characterised as non-cognitive, yet nevertheless as an intel-lectual achievement. Some philosophers then (e.g. Hampshire, Sibley, Hungerland)

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could be said to pursue a cognitivist line in aesthetics, others—Kant, Elliott, Meager,Schaper, Scruton, among them—to stand for a non-cognitivist approach.

To come now to the state of aesthetic enquiry relating specifically to the dance. AsI’ve already indicated, the position is, on the whole, depressing.6 Indeed a frequentlyquoted remark of a generation ago of Susanne Langer (Feeling and Form, we mayrecall, was published just before the Elton volume) remains substantially true of thedance, I would maintain, even today:

Its critical literature or worse yet, its uncritical literature, pseudo-ethological, pseudo-aesthetic, makes weary reading. (Langer, 1953, p. 169)

Why then might this be? Is there perhaps some inherent difficulty or set of contingentdifficulties that the dance does not share with most of the other arts? Does the fault,if such it be, lie with philosophers, with critics, with choreographers and dancers, withthe dance-going public, or with all of these? In seeking to answer these questionsI shall stick my neck out and probably prove less than popular with philosophers andmembers of the dance world alike; but I believe that most of the considerations I shallmention have to be examined in some depth before the academic credentials of dancecan be established with any confidence.

To turn to philosophers first. It may be that, despite the generally greater availabil-ity of theatre dance today, there is just a good deal of ignorance about the dance as awhole and about more recent developments in particular; that the range of styles andforms now in evidence is largely outside their experience (a surprising number ofpeople from all walks of life in this country—outside London, at any rate—still seemto think first and foremost of traditional classical ballet when theatre dance ismentioned). Nevertheless no-one can be blamed, I think, for wondering whethersome contemporary forms are dance at all, let alone art.7 Some seem nearer togymnastics or acrobatics or to a games-like or athletic contest, others to some sort ofencounter group—all principally, it might appear, for the benefit (if that’s what it is)of the participants, the audience almost redundant, except as casual onlookers.(It might be added that one cannot help being aware of a certain irony in this connec-tion; for some of those forms of what has recently been seen as avant-garde in thedance world of the USA would seem to be just the sort of thing that in this countrydance educators have sought to replace inasmuch as they might be thought less artthan therapy or socio-recreative dancing.)8

Indeed with all forms of dance there often seems to be something of a preoccupa-tion on the part of dancers with the personal satisfaction of dancing (or perhaps justmoving), or else with bodily skill and technique as ends in themselves rather than asmeans to an end, some apparently more concerned with displaying their own abilitiesthan their understanding of a work. This is not to deny that part of our enjoyment ofthe performing arts, either as members of an audience or as performers, might residein our admiration of, or pride in, skills of presentation. But unless the chief focus ofattention is the work, we cannot be said to enjoy the performance as art; and thedangers of such admiration or pride militating against artistic appreciation areconsiderable.

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Perhaps Marina Vaisey was exaggerating, but there would seem to be an elementof truth in what she said a little while ago when she referred to ‘ballet audiences whichin this country will roar at anything that gets up on two pointes’.9 One is tempted toadd ‘or that somersaults, cartwheels, falls and rolls about, and ties itself (or others)into knots’. Beautiful bodies in motion, especially perhaps performing unusual ordifficult feats, whatever their context, still command enormous popular appeal. Andwhy not? Nothing deplorable about that—though it might make us think twice aboutthe dance ‘explosion’ and wonder whether it necessarily constitutes an upsurge ofinterest in dance as art. For enjoyment of such phenomena as feats of skill does notrequire an interest in the meaning(s) of a dance; hence the possibilities are limited ofvarying responses and interpretations on the part of spectators, of critical appraisaland discussion, and the lively exchange of views characteristic of appreciation ofartworks. Indeed it might be suggested that within a particular culture, perhaps evenacross a certain range of cultures, there is a considerable consensus of opinion aboutmovement that is graceful, elegant, harmonious, etc., as against movement that isugly, awkward, ungainly, and so on.

Now although most philosophers agree that aesthetics is not confined to consider-ations about art, many do proceed as if it were a kind of meta-criticism, i.e. centringon the assumptions and procedures of critical practice in the arts. Thus more oftenthan not the focus is on questions to do with meaning, with the description, interpre-tation and evaluation of works of art, and with the possibility and manner of justifyingsuch interpretations and evaluations. (Philosophy is, after all, sometimes characterisedrather crudely as ‘talk about talk’.) But, in contrast to earlier times—and perhapsregrettably—it seems to have become rather unfashionable to discuss beauty, either inconnection with nature, the arts, or other man-made objects.10 However that may be,questions about the meaning(s) and interpretation of dance works seem, as far as onecan tell, to command much less on the part of choreographers, dancers, critics andaudiences than performances. And what we have to recognise here is that in this respectthe dance is a comparatively young art form, the corpus of works that has come downto us from the past being but meagre compared with the wealth of paintings, sculptures,literary texts, musical scores, etc. One is hard put then to think of examples in the realmof the dance of the complexity and profundity of Shakespeare’s, Mozart’s or Michae-langelo’s masterpieces, which constantly invite new responses and discussion.

Coupled with this, indeed largely responsible for it, is a lack, until our own century,of an adequately developed system of notation—about which, again, there wouldseem to be widespread ignorance among philosophers as well as art historians. HaroldOsborne (1970, p. 169), for instance, states quite categorically that ‘systems for therecording of ballet and dance … are still extremely esoteric and have far less precisionthan literary and musical recordings’. Yet a number of interesting philosophical prob-lems are raised by the enterprise of recording movement and dance, as indeed bysymbol systems in general—as examined in Nelson Goodman’s book, Languages ofArt (which does include consideration of dance notation).

The consequences of a lack for so long of a notation system—or perhaps, oneshould say, of a widespread use of what was available—have, however, amounted to

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more than a poverty-stricken repertoire of recorded dance works. For one thing it hasheld up the development of thinking in specifically kinetic, as distinct from narrativeor musical terms, and of the appraisal of dances by criteria peculiar to an art form inwhich it is movement that is the (physical) medium. For without some way of appro-priately analysing movement, which is what an adequate system of notation has toprovide, the dance has remained limited in its evolution along formalist, rather than,say, representational lines. Secondly, a lack of interest in dance scores is perhaps whatmakes for, or at least reinforces, the tendency to concentrate on performance ratherthan the work; and this absence of a tradition of studying a dance script in the waythat it is imperative for musicians or actors to study their scores or texts means thatrelatively little has been expected or demanded of the dancer in respect of interpreta-tional ability. (A dancer may, of course, study a music score, but it would be courtingabsurdity to suggest that what he was doing in his dancing was interpreting either thisscore or the musical work.)

Thus master classes in the dance are usually very different from those given by greatopera singers, violinists, and the like, where whatever emphasis is put on technique isalways in the service of the aria, sonata, or whatever, and where it is usually clear thatmore than one interpretation is possible, the individual performer being encouragedto bring to the piece his own personal judgement and understanding. Moreover, somechoreographer-dancers have wanted their works to die with them rather than bepreserved; and although the situation is now improving as regards reconstructionsand new renderings of dance works, the idea of the definitive account of certain rolesand works seems to die rather hard in this sphere. Yet the constant possibility of rein-terpretation is one of the main resources of interest in all the arts. A work not onlypermits, but invites, a variety of ‘readings’; and, further, seems to gain in stature as aresult of receiving a great number (one has only to think of Hamlet, for example, orof the fact that as long as Chekhov’s plays remained the preserve of the Moscow ArtTheatre, they were in danger of becoming fossilised).

The tendency to pay more attention to dancers and the activity of dancing than tocompositions is certainly characteristic of much dance criticism, where interpretativeand evaluative comment involving reference to the structure of a work, the handlingof its movement material, and so forth, is often noticeably absent. Now of coursethere may be—and usually are—other features of a dance that are important andinteresting; and I am not suggesting that it may not also be part of a critic’s functionto discuss particular performances and perhaps try to convey something of what itwas like to be ‘there’ on a particular occasion. Nor am I attempting to elevate formalover, say, impressionist or any other kind of criticism;11 in any case, one sort oftencomplements another. Moreover, the importance of learning to observe movement(usually rightly stressed in practical classes), should not lead us to suppose that adance can always be understood by exclusive reference to its observable features, butmay also require information of a variety of kinds that is not available to the senses.Nevertheless, there is apt to be a considerable imbalance in a good deal of dance crit-icism, much of it failing to take account of the kinetic structure of a work. I amaware, of course, that in all the arts, and especially in what has come to be known as

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Post-Modern art, some items are, as it were, for instant consumption, deliberatelyunrepeatable, perhaps involving extemporisation, chance happenings, and the like;but we should be careful here as Wollheim argues, to interpret too narrowly the term‘work’ as it occurs in the phrase ‘work of art’ (Wollheim, 1973). We might also notehis suggestion (1980, p. 185) that in art discourse the word ‘criticism’ is used tomake good a deficiency in the English language: a word for ‘coming to understand aparticular work of art’.

Compared with the achievements of, say, literary, drama, film or music criticism,however, much of what passes for dance criticism is of a shallow, unscholarly kind.We just do not have writers on dance works of the stature of, for instance, an I. A.Richards or a Donald Tovey who can provide detailed analyses and appraisals ofcompositions: the ‘overnight’ reports of journalists, obliged to rush their copy of aprescribed number of words to meet a deadline, simply do not measure up to therequirements of students engaged in academic study of the dance. Moreover, in mostspheres of art the professional critic—and indeed often the educated layman too—hasa wealth of knowledge not only about such things as the historical, sociological, oriconological aspects of particular works, but also of their more technical and formalaspects. Thus we should judge someone a poor specimen of a literary critic who couldnot refer, as appropriate, to assonance, specific rhyming schemes or masculine andfeminine endings in poetry; and we should hardly take seriously a so-called musiccritic who was ignorant of augmented fourths, perfect cadences, changes of key, andso forth.

In other words, we rightly take it for granted in the performing arts that a critic hasthe relevant concepts and vocabulary which enable him to understand the internalrelations and formal structure of certain works. Without these it is difficult to see howhe could hope to discuss a performance or presentation as a particular performanceor presentation—a particular rendering—of the work in question. Is it thereforeunthinkable that such critics should be incapable of studying texts and scores at firsthand, and not in the habit of returning to them constantly? It is indeed doubtfulwhether, in the case of music, either music criticism or music aesthetics or even musicitself would have developed as they have without a widely accepted system of notationand a sophisticated vocabulary; for it is by such means that specifically musicalelements and musical happenings are identifiable.

What is also characteristic of a competent critic is his knowledge and experience ofa range of works and of genres, not just a few, so that he is able to make significantcomparisons and contrasts. He should thus be capable not only of placing a work orits composer within the correct historical perspective, perhaps within a certain socialand political milieu, but also of seeing it as having developed against the backgroundof a particular cultural and artistic tradition, even if—indeed, especially if—the artistconcerned is in revolt against that tradition.

The aesthetics of dance then is likely to remain handicapped unless the standardsof criticism are improved; for as things are (as also with radio and television drama),there is not a great deal for aesthetics to get to grips with that is peculiar to theseforms. The lack of a substantial body of literature in the aesthetics of dance does not

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mean, however, that nothing is to be gained from more general aesthetic discussion.And topics which might at first seem largely irrelevant to the dance, such as that offorgery in art, are on the contrary highly relevant to, for example, the question, ‘Whatis an artwork?’.

It might also be suggested that ordinary lovers of the dance, as distinct from profes-sional critics, could play some part in contributing to a better state of affairs by beingmore prepared than they would seem to have been in the past to enter into detaileddiscussion of dances they know and to share their responses with other people. I amnot, of course, advocating that they should start chattering away after every singleitem they see. Obviously there are many occasions on which it would be inappropriateto say or do anything at all. But always to remain silent, never to be willing to try tocommunicate one’s experiences of a work and to reflect on them searchingly and seri-ously, is not, it may be argued, to participate fully in the enterprise of artistic appre-ciation. Further, to be unconcerned with cultivating one’s capacities fordiscriminating and critical appraisal of artworks, and with examining honestly thecharacter of one’s responses, may be regarded as evading an important moral issue.12

For we are left exposed to the dangers of insincerity and self-deception if thoseresponses are never made public: we cannot know that we are not mistaken as toprecisely what they are or what it is to which we are responding (a consideration thatof course is apt to appear strange at first to anyone who assumes that we always knowexactly what we feel, and that we are the best, or indeed sole, authority on our statesof mind).

One has indeed certain responsibilities both towards oneself and the works of artone loves. For any art form that fails to develop a strong tradition of critical practiceruns the risk of becoming barren and second-rate; and, no matter what the box-officereturns, of failing to command the attention and respect of those who take a seriousinterest in the arts in general but who often seem, perhaps with good reason, toregard the dance as a minor rather than a major art form, and the dance world as awhole as somewhat inward-looking and complacent. (One can hardly fail to bestruck by the frequency with which the dance is not mentioned when the rest of thearts are.) Moreover, we should never take for granted or underrate the importanceand value in a democratic society of the freedom enjoyed both by artists and critics.Indeed, as witness the consequences under totalitarian regimes of the repression ofcriticism and debate about art, without a lively tradition of such practices artists andcritics alike are threatened with obscurity and extinction. And if art were to die out ina particular society, that society would not remain the same, except in that oneparticular: the whole fabric of its customs and its habits of feeling and thinking wouldbe radically altered.

There are, of course, a number of interesting and important questions in philo-sophical aesthetics that arise in respect of dance other than of the theatre variety.Nevertheless, there is perhaps a case to be made out for students on degree coursesto focus first on dance as an art form, and for having a good grounding in criticalappreciation—with writings on dance works possibly supplemented by critical textsin music or literature or drama—before they plunge into the perilous and sometimes

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murky depths of aesthetics. But when that enterprise is attempted, it might be as wellto recall some of the words of Henry V at Agincourt—or, rather, the words Shakes-peare put into his mouth:

… he which hath no stomach to this fight,

Let him depart …

Notes

1. For a thoughtful and thought-provoking paper on the concept of a degree, what counts asacademic study, etc,. see Best (1980).

2. See, for example, Binkley (1976).3. This is not to discount the possibility of accompaniment being provided by an individual or

individuals other than the choreographer alongside the composing of the movement. Never-theless, decisions as to its suitability at every stage do require time on her/his part (and if s/hedoes not take ultimate responsibility, difficult problems must arise here when it comes to eval-uation).

4. See, for example, Griffiths (1965).5. See Schaper (1983).6. The valuable work of David Best in recent years, however, should not go unmentioned.7. This sort of doubt, it might be said, typically assails the ‘man in the street’ confronted by

anything new in the arts. My point here is that even for those accustomed to radical departuresfrom what has previously been accepted as art (or dance, music, etc.) perhaps expecting to besurprised, shocked, disturbed, and so on, new dances sometimes seem retrogressive rather thanprogressive in terms of art; and that this is often confirmed by what choreographers say abouttheir work. See Redfern (1983).

8. See, for example, the chapter on Deborah Hay in Banes (1980).9. In a Radio 4 ‘Kaleidoscope’ programme, July, 1981.

10. See, however, Sircello (1975).11. See Stolnitz (1960).12. See Scruton (1979) and Tanner (1977).

References

Banes, S. (1980) Terpsichore in sneakers: post-modern dance (Boston, Houghton Mifflin).Best, D. (1980) A policy for the study of physical education and human movement, The Journal of

Human Movement Studies, 6, 336–347.Binkley, T. (1976) Deciding about art, in: L. Aagaard-Mogensen (Ed.) Culture and art (Atlantic

Highlands, NJ, Humanities Press).Charlton, W. (1970) Aesthetics (London, Hutchinson).Collingwood, R. G. (1938) The principles of art (Oxford, Clarendon Press).Coton, A. V. (1946) The new ballet: Kurt Jooss and his work (London, Dobson).Diffey, T. J. (1977a) A place for works of art, Ratio, XIX, I. Reprinted in T. J. Diffey (1991) The

republic of art and other essays (New York, Peter Lang).Diffey, T. J. (1977b) The idea of art, British Journal of Aesthetics, 17, 2. Reprinted in T. J. Diffey

(1991) The republic of art and other essays (New York, Peter Lang).Elton, W. (1954) Aesthetics and language (Oxford, Blackwell).Goodman, N. (1968) Languages of art (London, Oxford University Press).Griffiths, A. P. (1965) A deduction of universities, in: R. Archambault (Ed.) Philosophical analysis

and education (London, Routledge and Kegan Paul).

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Langer, S. K. (1953) Feeling and form (London, Routledge and Kegan Paul).O’Connor, D. J. (1957) An introduction to the philosophy of education (London, Routledge and

Kegan Paul).Osborne, H. (1970) The art of appreciation (London, Oxford University Press).Redfern, B. (1983) Dance, art and aesthetics (London, Dance Books Ltd).Saw, R. (1972) Aesthetics: an introduction (London, Macmillan).Schaper, E. (1968) Prelude to aesthetics (London, Allen and Unwin).Schaper, E. (1983) The pleasures of taste, in: E. Schaper (Ed.) Pleasure, preference and value (London,

Cambridge University Press).Scruton, R. (1979) The aesthetics of architecture (London, Methuen).Tanner, M. (1977) Sentimentality, The Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, LXXVII, 127–147.Sircello, G. (1975) A new theory of beauty (Princeton, University Press).Stolnitz, J. (1960) Aesthetics and the philosophy of art criticism (Boston, MA, Houghton Mifflin).Wollheim, R. (1973) Minimal art, in: R. Wollheim (Ed.) On art and the mind: lectures and essays

(London, Allen Lane).Wollheim, R. (1980) Art and its objects (2nd edn) (London, Oxford University Press).

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