ABSTRACT
In elaborating these aspects, many concerns derive from the nature of dance, or from what dances are. Like music, dance typically exists “at a perpetual vanishing point” (Siegel 1972: 1): one encounters the art works in the evanescence of performances. But, unlike music, dance is essentially physical: to confront a dance is, minimally, to confront an assemblage of moving bodies, at least in typical cases. So (typically) the relationship between the dance itself and particular performances will both resemble and differ from that between a musical work and its performances. Dance notation (for most philosophers, first seen in Goodman 1968: 125) unites these concerns. Here, again, the discussion of dance assumes positions in general aesthetics: say, the plausibility of Goodman’s constraints on notationality (ibid.: 129-54). Further, acknowledging the essentially interpretative nature of such dance notation reintroduces a contrast fundamental to any discussion of performing art: that between critics’ interpretation and performers’ interpretation (McFee 1992a: 103-4).
