ABSTRACT

The semiotic analysis of most art forms can fairly easily distinguish form from content. However, it has been acknowledged that this distinction is generally problematic on account of equating content with meaning and, therefore, implying ‘that form is not in itself meaningful’ (Chandler, 2007, p. 56). In regard to dance, especially contemporary dance, it is almost impossible to separate form or the signifier (the dancers’ dance) from content or the signified (the meaning of a dance ‘text’ or of the dance’s formal structure) without ignoring the depth of somatic and psychic content experienced by dancers. A central argument in this chapter is that in the case of dance, the content can be identified both as meaning established through using a formal repertoire where, in the extreme, every gesture is coded and intended to evoke certain social positions, rituals, or ‘manners of being emotional’, and as the somatic and psychological experiences enabled in the dancers’ dancing. Modern and contemporary dance generally values the latter at the expense of the former so that dancers and viewers may become aware of the fact that, as pioneer choreographer Margaret H’Doubler (1889–1982) put it, dance ‘is coexistent with life’ (H’Doubler, 1988, p. 3). For that reason, an analysis of dance expression should benefit from using a semiotic theory that takes into account, to a greater extent, the signifying potential of materiality and the human content in which it is rooted, both of which are defined in the present study as inextricable from nature-culture and human-nonhuman hybridity.