ABSTRACT
In the debate over high and low culture, it is well known that modernist critics were antagonistic to low culture, especially in its form as a burgeoning mass culture industry. Conversely, postmodern theorists have maintained that mass culture is not as detrimental to the public psyche as previously thought. Long after postmodern concepts made inroads into other fields, dance critics and scholars continued to take their cues from a modernist point of view, considering only “serious” choreography as their subject. Until recently, dance criticism and scholarship have been theoretically and historically inscribed within the narrow purview of late modernism’s formalist concerns. This position translated into critical verification of what many modern and even postmodern choreographers were claiming-that movement was the sole determiner of meaning. All else could be ignored.
