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The negotiation of significance in dance performance: a model for human interaction in the context of difference

  • Jane Carr
Research Output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding Chapter Peer-review

Open access

Abstract

This chapter explores how dance may be appreciated in a contemporary context in which it can no longer be assumed that performers and audience make sense of dancing with reference to a shared culture. Writing from my position as a former dancer and now dance academic, I draw upon my experiences of dancing, researching and teaching dance with the aim of proposing some avenues ripe for philosophical investigation. Emphasizing that dancing is a communicative phenomenon, I argue that the philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty provides welcome recognition of the human capacity for intersubjective, embodied experience which is of key importance to engagement with dancing as meaningful. I propose how the significance of dance performance might be understood through a process of negotiation grounded in intercorporeal experience. However, I recognize the challenge of difference – in relation to gender, sexualities, and/or cultures and abilities - to the self-other relationships which sustain such negotiations. Finally, I situate these reflections within the broader field of philosophical aesthetics to consider the potential of such encounters to contribute to aesthetic values attributed to dance.

Publication Information

Output type

Research Output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding Chapter Peer-review

Original language

English

Publication milestones

  • Published - 29/11/2020

Publication status

Published - 29/11/2020

Place of publication

New York

Publisher

Boomsbury

ISBN (Print)

9781350103474

External Publication IDs

  • handle.net: 10547/624691

Host publication title

The Bloomsbury Handbook of Dance and Philosophy

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