ABSTRACT
When we go to the theatre as spectators to see a dance performance, a number of very interesting things are happening simultaneously. We watch a dance that has been made by a choreographer, sometimes in collaboration with dancers or with other artists such as composers and designers. The dance has been worked out on the bodies of dancers who also contribute to its interpretation and meaning. These dancers perform the dance; we sit in the audience, ‘reading’ the dance, responding to what we see, bringing our own senses, interpretations and translations. And typically, each member of the audience may well have a personal response to what has been seen, depending on elements like age, gender, class, culture and experience of watching dances. For the lay person, the idea that, in Dance Studies, we learn to ‘appreciate’ dance will probably be taken to mean that we respond to a performance of a choreographic work favourably, dependent upon our own likes, tendencies and aesthetic preferences. Often this means that dance aficionados will only go to see the works that they enjoy, know something about, and have a taste for: for example, people who support various ballet companies around the world as patrons or ‘friends’; or those who prefer commercial dance of the genre found in musical theatre or television variety shows. Others respond to the marketing strategies of theatres or visiting companies, attracted by the imagery of the photographs or the written descriptions of the dances to be performed. But those who choose to be students of Dance in higher education will be introduced to all kinds of new works that challenge their perceptions – including dances with no music, dances with no
theme, and dances with no dance steps. For the advantage of studying the subject in depth is to engage with a wide range of dance works, from both well-established and new companies, from inside our own culture and from way beyond it, to become knowledgeable and to develop expertise of theories and practical application of the discipline. In doing so, we usually open up new territory, develop intellectual autonomy – or the ability to think for ourselves – and are able to appreciate, analyse and evaluate in more rational ways. In addition, far more resources are now available to support the quest. The work of many choreographers is available on video, DVD, youtube, and the websites of most major dance companies in the world. In addition, recent developments in technology on digital archiving allow us to view and analyse a whole range of choreographic approaches; two good examples are the work of William Forsythe on the Synchronous Objects website, and the Siobhan Davies Archive, Replay (see References, pp. 203-4). Students studying Dance at college and university level will be involved in practical and theoretical sessions which introduce them to various methods of analysing the making, performing and appreciating of the art form of dance in a number of contexts. This chapter details how students begin to develop their conceptual understandings and their skills of verbalizing, discussing, writing and presenting in several ways. Not only do we investigate the history and aesthetics of our own discipline, but increasingly we have recognized the need to investigate dance in its socio-cultural context. Just as we cannot fully understand the baroque dance forms of Versailles in the reign of Louis XIV without knowledge of the national and political beliefs of the period, neither should we study contemporary dance works without developing an awareness of a range of different theoretical perspectives which can help us to illuminate meaning-making. These include ideas from classicism, modernism and post-modernism, and theories from other disciplines like theatre studies, anthropology, ethnography, semiotics, phenomenology, cultural studies, feminism/gender studies, race/ ethnicity, politics and inter-culturalism. Often, these fields overlap and interact. The best way to describe this idea of looking at a dance from different perspectives is to imagine that you wear a different pair of glasses, perhaps with a different colour of lens, each time you approach a different perspective.
