1. “What is Going On in a Dance,” Aesthetics: A Critical Anthology, ed. Dickie, George, Sclafani, R., and Roblin, R., 2nd edition (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1989), 635–643.Google Scholar Originally published in Dance Research Journal 15/1 (1982): 31–37. All citations will be from the 1989 work.

2. Also included in Dickie et al. (1989), 644–650. Originally published in Dance Research Journal 15/1 (1982): 37–42. All citations will be from the 1989 work.

3. See Banes, Sally, Terpsichore in Sneakers, rev. ed. (Middletown, Connecticut, 1987), 42–43Google Scholar; originally published 1980, Houghton Mifflin Co.

4. Suffice it to say here that one value of Beardsley's paper stems from the emphasis it places on an intent to give pleasure through rhythm, probably the most salient feature of dance since ancient times, and this emphasis is wholly ignored by Banes and Carroll. Personally, while keeping “the intent to give pleasure through rhythm” and defending it against the common and uncommon objections, I would not only leave aside a “superfluity of expressiveness” but would even seriously consider dropping the condition of “(some) expressiveness.” In addition, I would allow what I call “chorody” (which is to dance as melody is to music) to be disjunctively an essential component. Alternatively, or as a complement to this formalist approach, a functionalist account could be developed.

5. Khatchadourian, Haig says, “I agree with Carroll and Banes in rejecting Beardsley's claim that ‘superfluity’ or excess of expressiveness is a defining property of dance” (“Dance Revisited,” Primum Philosophari, ed. Brach-Czaina, Jolanta [Warsaw: Oficyna Naukowa, 1993], 123, note. 12).Google ScholarSparshott, Francis says, “Beardsley… argues that what is distinctive of dance is ‘an overflow or superfluity of expressiveness’…. He was taken to task by Carroll and Banes (1989), who pointed out that this is untrue of much artistic dance” (A Measured Pace [Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995], 468–469).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

For a rigorous treatment of dance in general, see Sparshott's, Off the Ground: First Steps to a Philosophical Consideration of the Dance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989)Google Scholar and A Measured Pace. For his theory of rhythm, which includes ancient views, see especially the latter, Chapter 9; for another account of ancient views, see Williams, C.F.A., The Aristoxenian Theory of Musical Rhythm, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1911).Google Scholar

6. This notion, which Beardsley attributes to Augustine, goes back to ancient Greece, if not further. For example, in Aristotle's Politics VIII 5–7, contemplation for direct pleasure is said to be one of the functions of music. Presumably, what was recognized for music was easily recognized for dance. Also, see Poetics 1 and Plato's Laws II (664e), where dance is tied to rhythm.

7. “Superfluity of expression” may be thought to be a quantitative phrase for Beardsley. Equally, or at least in part, the phrase may be qualitative, implying a certain kind of motivation. In other words, it may be for him that “superfluity of expressiveness” need not mean that there is greater expressiveness, only that there is a peculiar kind of non-practical expressiveness.

8. A charitable way of reading Beardsley's article is the following. Take the ultimate statement that a superfluity of expression marks a certain ritual as dance to have the stress on “marks.” The statement then means something like this: If one finds in an event more zest (or fluency or stateliness) than is necessary, then one would begin legitimately to decide that (part of) it belongs to dance. Just as one “marks” political candidates without committing oneself to ultimately picking any of them, so one “marks” the work as being a candidate for dance. In a way, this reflects Stoic epistemology: “illusory presentations can be distinguished from those that are veridical by deliberation, which consists in checking any given presentation against a fund of common notions, i.e., families of remembered presentations” (Gould, Josiah Jr., “Chrysippus,” The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edwards, Paul, 8 volumes [New York: Macmillan Co. & The Free Press, 1967], vol. 2, 109Google Scholar). Alternatively, Beardsley's ultimate statement could be taken as an example of synecdoche or metonymy—treating a particular (like zest or stateliness) for the general (namely, the condition that there is an intent to give pleasure based on expressiveness or on rhythm). Indeed, this reading seems to be supported by Beardsley's phrase “in other words,” which indicates that the ultimate statement is a reformulation of the previous sentence. This statement had stressed that, if there is movement with no practical function, then we have evidence that a dance (section) is being included. Hence, on either of the two charitable readings, “superfluity of expression” is not really a new condition in the definition, but fulfills a literary function, whatever it may be.

9. Conference commentary by Sally Banes, American Society for Aesthetics, October, 1993, Santa Barbara, CA. Hereafter cited as “Conference, 1993.”

10. It is odd that Carroll and Banes highlight an artist, Jasper Johns, who may be questionable from the Dantoesque or institutional point of view. George Dickie, perhaps the most renowned defender of the latter approach, interprets Arthur Danto, whose theory is often claimed to be an institutional theory, as denying that Johns even makes art because Johns collapses the distinction between reality and the artworld (The Art Circle [New York: Haven Publications, 1984], 24). Others claim that in fact Johns is upheld by Danto as a paradigmatic figure. I stay apart from this debate.

11. RoseLee Goldberg says:

The history of performance art in the twentieth century is the history of a permissive, openended medium with endless variables, executed by artists impatient with the limitations of more established art forms…. By its very nature, performance art defies precise or easy definition beyond the simple declaration that it is live art by artists” (Performance Art: From Futurism to the Present [New York: Harry Abrams Publisher, 1988], 9).

12. Indeed, the theory of anti-illusionism invoked here by Johns et al. is in some ways just a re-introduction of classical mimeticism, which itself sometimes caused choreographers to motivate dance sequences in dancedramas like Swan Lake and The Lesson with betrothal ceremonies and ballet lessons, events which in reality, of course, incorporate real-life dancing. The Lesson, choreographed by Flemming Flindt of the Royal Danish Ballet in the 1970s, merges stage dancing and real-life dancing in a self-referential display: The dramatic scenario concerns a sadistic ballet master and one of his charges and the on-stage movement is itself the movement found in a typical ballet studio.

13. See Danto, Arthur, The Transfiguration of the Commonplace (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2nd repr. 1983), 39–51, esp. 40 and 44.Google Scholar

14. Banes and Carroll accept that Danto's theory is relevant to dance, even though Danto only focusses on art in general. I will not quibble here about the extrapolation.

15. I ignore here, as Banes and Carroll also do, theories of art that locate the art only in the mental experience. Croce and Collingwood have been interpreted to maintain a mentalism of this sort.

16. Although Danto's views may help one determine that Room Service is art, even this is not the case if Richard Wollheim or George Dickie is right (as I think they are in this regard). In Art and Its Objects (Cambridge University Press, 1980), 157 ff, Wollheim argues against the viability of the institutional theory of art, which appears to include Danto's version. As mentioned, George Dickie himself analyzes Danto's theory [see endnote 10], and concludes that the fundamental claims of Danto are false (Art Circle, esp. 17–27).

17. For instance, Joseph Mazo says, in speaking of Taylor, Paul, that “Taylor's work, like [Merce] Cunningham's, is delineated in clear, rhythmic phrasing, one of the hallmarks of ballet…. One aspect of his style is the use of a limited number of steps which are repeated and rearranged to produce a defined visual and rhythmic effect, and this, too, is a technique of classical ballet” (Prime Movers: The Makers of Modern Dance in America [New York: William Morrow & Co., 1977], 258).Google Scholar

18. Castle, Frederick, “Occurrences,” Art News, Summer 1968.Google Scholar Another example which indirectly gives evidence that experienced theatre-goers have not seen Rainer's work as dance is this: Allen Hughes states, in a review of Rainer and company in the New York Times, March 18, 1964, entitled “Dance Programs Have Premiere: Diversions and What-Nots Also in Monday Series,” that “the program did not specify whether a given work was a dance, a diversion or a what-not, [and thus] each member of the audience was at liberty to make his own classification. This was probably a good idea, for when these avant-gardists state categorically that what they are doing is dancing, they sometimes reap dismay or scorn or both from literal-minded beholders.”

19. Dickie (Art Circle, pp. 77–83) rather stunningly embraces a circularity for his institutional definition (allowing art to be defined in terms of an artist or in terms of an art world). But this strikes me as ad hoc and unacceptable, and is ultimately why I and many others think that his theory fails as a truly satisfactory attempt to define art.

20. Conference, 1993.

21. The core of Weitz's view, and Mandelbaum's response, can be found in Weitz, Morris, Problems in Aesthetics, 2nd ed. (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1970), 169–198.Google Scholar Weitz offers a rebuttal in the Dickie anthology already cited, 152–159, which is taken from his The Opening Mind.

22. As Georges Mélies may, or may not, have thought at one time (cf. Mast, Gerald and Cohen, Marshall, Film Theory and Criticism, 2nd ed. [New York: Oxford University Press, 1979], 15Google Scholar).

23. Croce, Arlene, “Discussing the Undiscussable,” The New Yorker (Dec. 26, 1994): 58Google Scholar and Kramer, Hilton, “Notes and Comments,” New Criterion 13/6 (Feb. 1995): 2.Google Scholar Another, more reasoned view on the matter is offered by Sparshott. In “The Future of Dance Aesthetics,” he says that:

In the heady 1960s, advanced practitioners of dance tested all the possibilities they could think of, with results as interesting and as debatable as avant-garde démarches elsewhere. The difficulty is that as soon as one internalizes the perspective from which everything is equally admissible, it is hard to maintain a perspective from which any particular thing can be interesting. More importantly, from our viewpoint here, the testing of the limits of the arts in the early 1960s tended to dissolve the distinctions among the arts; to that extent, what emerged and survived could not contribute in any special way to the aesthetics of any one particular art, such as dance. (Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 51/2 [1993]: 230).

24. See endnote 16.

25. See endnote 19.

26. It may be worth noting as an aside that the image of the woman on the cross probably was inspired in me by the beginning of the recent and intriguing Strange Fish, of the British company DV8 Dance Theatre. However, the woman in that work does move and that work is undoubtedly dance, or dance-theatre.

27. Paul Taylor in 1957 stood still in one part of a performance for the whole duration between the curtain raising and lowering. But neither was that “piece” a dance, in spite of his often wonderful work; it was merely a Duchampian posing, joke, tease, rest between two dances, or something similar (cf. Mazo, , Prime Movers, 256 and 260Google Scholar).

28. We can easily accept—indeed, we must accept—that every artist works with materials that are to some extent already ready-made (by nature). We can also easily accept that no minimal amount of work need be done on something to allow it to be art (in the neutral sense, not in any evaluative sense suggesting inherent merit), although a certain placing of the work or a special intent on the part of the artist or a distinctive gaze on the part of at least one “viewer” may be required to distinguish it from natural objects. Yet, these issues are tangential to our concerns.

29. Conference, 1993.

30. Carroll, Noël, “Art, Practice and Narrative,” The Monist 71, (1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and “Historical Narratives and the Philosophy of Art,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 51/3 (1993).

31. Both are connected because a definition of dance must be communicable, and because a historical understanding, insofar as it is communicable, requires a (historical) narrative of some sort. Thus, if I exhibit the weakness of the historical narrative view, I assume I will have given prima facie grounds for undercutting the claim that a historical understanding is an effective means of defining dance. Actually, even if that assumption is not accepted, the upcoming arguments against historical narratives can easily be adapted to the issue of historical understanding.

32. Teeth and fingers seem especially popular, at least in certain collections. See, e.g., the monstrances with the tooth of St. John the Baptist, and the fingers of St. Christina and St. Valerius, as pictured in The Guelph Treasure: The Sacred Relics of Brunswick Cathedral, ed. von Falke, O., Schmidt, R., and Swarzenski, G. (Frankfurt/Main: Frankfurter Verlags-Austalt, 1930), 189, 193, and 195.Google Scholar

33. As Paul Ableman says:

Some of the more primitive types of body modification involve an “ordeal.” Both men and woman may be subjected to circumcision, scarification or deformation…. While deep scarification is undoubtedly a test of endurance, tattooing—at least in its modern manifestations—is hardly an “ordeal,” although it can still prove painful and even dangerous. It is found in all parts of the world and appears to be of great antiquity. (Anatomy of Nakedness [London: Orbis Publishers, 1982], 32f and 32i).

Another discussion of using deformation to accomplish aesthetic ends can be found in Rudofsky, Bernard, The Unfashionable Human Body (New York, Doubleday & Co., 1971), esp. 11–12, 95, and 133.Google Scholar One notable remark that is especially pertinent to the discussion of van Gogh is that head-shaping by French provincials lasted until the nineteenth century.

Carroll might reply that these practices were not art in the European sense of the word, and thus that van Gogh was not following an artworld system of presentation. But given the various criteria that Carroll offers for determining whether something is art, e.g., genetic links, it would be ironic for him to deny that a concern for beautifying the body is different in sort from a concern for producing a beautiful dance or sculpture. The former concern may be linked psychologically to the latter concern. The same holds with respect to expressing either dissatisfaction or another state: body mutilation could be a new form of intra-personal tragedy on Carroll's own criteria.

34. Recent medical research suggests that van Gogh may have mutilated his ear because of Menière's disease, which causes pressure, vertigo, severe head pain, and possible vomiting. The theoretical point that Carroll and I are discussing, though, is independent of van Gogh's real motive.

35. Even leaving aside van Gogh, a new condition—the Establishment Requirement—has been added by Carroll, and Rainer's work itself must satisfy it. Room Service must occur inside a “recognized framework” or within a danceworld system of presentation known to both Rainer and the public. Moreover, it must occur within the danceworld system as dance, because, for example, the corps de ballet resting during intermission or the audience buying tickets at New York State Theatre for Swan Lake occurs within a danceworld system and neither activity is dance. Yet there was no “recognized framework” in any meaningful sense for calling nothing but pure pedestrian movement dance before 1964, and indeed, there still is not. At the least, some kind of design or rhythm was, or is, expected even if all the movements were pedestrian, and once those movements arc couched within a design or rhythm they arguably acquire the special expressiveness that Beardsley requires.

Goldberg reports that by 1950 Merce Cunningham had “proposed that walking, standing, leaping and the full range of natural movement possibilities could be considered as dance” (p. 124). This might be thought to provide the sought-for antecedent to Banes and Carroll's general claims. But if Cunningham only means that some of the dance movements can be natural, then there is no inconsistency with Beardsley's position, and indeed, ballets have incorporated some natural movements in productions for centuries. If, on the other hand, Cunningham means that all of the movements are pedestrian, then (a) the problem of justifying Room Service is merely pushed back one step, to justifying Cunningham's own statement. Of course, Cunningham often works in a style that is remarkably close to ballet, but the relevant issue here is that, in 1950, Carroll's Establishment Requirement would not have been in place to allow Cunningham's attempts to be considered dance even in Carroll's own view. Or, (b) as mentioned with respect to Rainer, it may be that there would still be a special ordering or cultural contextualization of the whole choreography which effects the special expressiveness. Carroll might try to resolve all of this by calling Rainer's friends and sympathizers the “public” in order to cover the Establishment Requirement, but then it appears that there should be on his account reasons why some “publics” count while others do not, and it is hard to see how he could accomplish this without begging crucial questions.

Another problem infects Carroll's approach, whether or not he could resolve these last issues. The Establishment Requirement (that the new work must follow an art form known to both the artist and public) might well rule out Gauguin's work in the South Pacific as art—if he were working as a loner, away from Westerners familiar with Western painting—and would seem to rule out the work of solitary, avant-garde artists working away from publics. Or, the Establishment Requirement would seem to prevent innovative genres of art from ever getting established, for how does an innovative art form originate when it must be in a recognized framework of its own kind, known to the public? If Carroll drops the condition that it be recognized by the public, he removes his own restriction for allowing van Gogh's action to be art, and his theory becomes extremely permissive and arguably worthless by his own admission. If, to stave off this consequence, he says that the avant-garde work at least has to follow a similar practice, the problem is still unresolved, because this new proviso is ineffectual as it stands: any new genre has similarities with any other genre of human production (e.g., they are made by humans, they are made after 50,000 BC, and so forth). And if he restricts the antecedent genres to those which share relevant features, or relevantly similar features, we are back to using traditional definitory approaches and not to using historical narrative. Carroll, then, either excludes the possibility of much, if not all, of the avant-garde art that he avowedly defends or bases definition by historical narrative on the kind of definition he wishes to repudiate.

36. Carroll suggests that his procedure is an epistemological one, or that epistemic concerns will determine the value of “identifying narratives” (“Historical Narratives,” p. 325). But epistemology is as confused or as open as aesthetics nowadays: views ranging from pure scepticism to pure dogmatism are accepted. So, he cannot appeal to epistemological practices as a way of shoring his doctrine of identifying narratives (nor does he explicitly do so, although there is a suggestion that a concern with epistemology substantiates his view).

37. I borrow this notion from Sparshott, who states in A Measured Pace (p. 487):

The history of art in this century shows that anything can be a dance that is presented and accepted in a dance context. But the significance of acceptance varies, as do the authority and efficacy of accepting groups. Avant-garde works that can be effectively “seen as dance” only in the light of an experience of dance built up through other dances, viewed as normal, are parasitic: either they cannot themselves form part of the body of practice through which dance is carried on and understood, or they do so only by serving as constant counterfoils. Not everything that is presented and accepted as dance within a coterie can sustain itself as a part of dance practice. This theme is tellingly developed by Wollheim, Richard [in “Danto's Gallery of Indiscernibles,” Danto and His Critics, ed. Rollins, Mark (Oxford: Blackwell Press, 1993), 28–38].Google Scholar

38. This article, which was originally presented in significantly different form at the American Society for Aesthetics, Santa Barbara, California, October, 1993, is dedicated to Gloria Fokine. It has benefitted greatly from a commentary and remarks by Sally Banes and Noël Carroll, by comments from anonymous reviewers of DRJ and from Barbara Montero. I am grateful to them all.