ABSTRACT
In her book, Reading Dancing: Bodies and Subjects in Contemporary American Dance, Susan Leigh Foster writes against the grain of a theoretical tradition which, like some of the theories of acting discussed in the first two chapters, sees the performing body as an originary presence, foundation for an autonomous physical language. Foster describes the theory of twentieth-century American concert dance as deriving from the belief that dance is
the most appropriate medium of expression for primal, emotional, and libidinal dimensions of human experience. Dance is seen as an outlet for intuitive or unconscious feelings inaccessible to verbal (intellectual) expression. Based on this model, dancers often cultivate a sanctimonious mutism, denying what is verbal, logical and discursive in order to champion the physical and the sensate.
