## 1. Analytic Ontology of Dance as Art



The dance philosophy that is a subset of philosophical aesthetics is
interested in the question, "what is the nature of dance as
art?" Here one set of philosophical problems center on
identifying what the art product of dance is--whether it is an
object or structure of some or a more fluid process or event. Dance
philosophers differ on which features of dance as art should have
primary of place for purposes of ontology. Some philosophers with
commitments to dancework structure and repeatability (notably Nelson
Goodman (1976) and Graham McFee (1992b, 2011b, and 2018)) treat the
art-relevant aspect of dance as its abstract structure, looking to an
actual or in-principle score for guidance even if they deny (as McFee
does) that this is an attempt to find a true definition or
"essence" of dance. It is important to these philosophers
that there be an object of appreciation that can be evaluated
independently of any particular subjective experience or perspective
of it, in this way hoping to identify something "true"
about dance as art that is subject to the sort of rational appraisal,
analysis, and what McFee calls "reconstruction" that
analytic philosophy does well (see McFee 2018).



There are dance works of art that are relatively stable throughout
dance history in terms of historical identification despite variations
(the perennial *Swan Lake*, for example) and McFee points to
these as support for his perspective on dance as a practice that
creates dance works of are that are "performables"
instantiated in repeatable performances. There are dance philosophers,
however, who think that the art-relevant focus of dance might lie
elsewhere than in the structure of the "dancework" treated
as art object. Mark Franko, for example, points out that 



> 
> 
> contemporary thought on dance is frequently split between a concept of
> dance-as-writing and a concept of dance as beyond the grasp of all
> language, especially written language. (2011a: 322; see also Franko
> 2011b) 
> 
> 
> 



(For more on the idea of dance as texts see Franko 1993.) Other dance
philosophers think that dance can be characterized by words and
concepts but that these either apply to features of performance or to
dance practices or events rather than to texts or structures. The
non-structuralist dance philosophers observe that dances usually lack
words or texts and are often developed without the use of a written
plan, script or score of any kind (see Franko 1989 and 2011a; see also
Franko 2017 for a recent anthology of dance and reconstruction, in
particular the essay by Pakes [2017b] within it). They also note that
even when there is a score, this score is not always used as an
essential recipe for the performances but can instead just serve as
the inspiration for a performance that is completely different (see
Franko 1989). In addition, standardized notation forms are
controversial, and no one form is universally accepted (see Franko
2011a and Van Camp 1998). Finally, there are dance philosophers who
think that what makes dance special and worthy of philosophers'
interest lies in dance's bodily, tactile, dynamic, felt,
perceived and intuited aspects (sometimes referred to as its
kinaesthetic or somatic elements). (See this entry's
 Sections 2 and 3
 for more on these latter aspects of dance. See
 Sections 1.1-1.2
 below for more on focus
on dance's structural vs. non-structural features. See also
Pakes 2006 for one account of the "mind-body" problem in
dance.)



For more on the general question, "What is dance?", see D.
Carr 1987; Carroll 2003, Copeland and Cohen 1983; McFee 1998a and
2013a; Pakes 2019; Sparshott 1988; and Van Camp 1981. For more on
meaning, expression, authenticity and communication in dance see D.
Carr 1997; Best 1974; Franko 2014b; Hanna 1983 and 1979 [1987]; Martin
1933a, 1939, and 1946; and Van Camp 1996b.


### 1.1 Problem(s) of Identity and Reconstruction



As mentioned briefly in the section above, there are many problems of
identity for dance that arise in analytic aesthetics (cf. Fraleigh
2004 for an alternative usage of the word "identity" for
dance). One is that the moment that a dance is composed does not
"fix" the dance for all time in that form. Dances are
usually known by the name and date of their first performance but
subsequent performances and casts can change the structural and other
qualitative features that were present in the original performance.
Further, as mentioned earlier, many dances have no notated score and,
if they are preserved via video or other method, subsequent
performances can still deviate from these frameworks in significant
and perhaps identity-changing ways. In addition, even where there is a
score, it may not result in performances from that score that are
experientially identifiable as the "same" work of art. A
dance notation might also function as the jumping-off point from which
to make a radically new kind of dance rather than a limitation on
innovation and changes to which a dance choreographer or set of
performers must adhere. There is also the issue that what a dance
"is" in practice or for appreciation, in its
"essential" features (if there are any), may not be
identical with what a dance "is" for purposes of numerical
identity and historical preservation. In this way dance is not unlike
music (for more on this S. Davies 1991). (See Armelagos and Sirridge
1978; D. Davies 2011b; Goodman 1976; McFee 2011b and 2018 for more on
this particular debate. Cf. S. Davies 1991 for a relevant discussion
in the philosophy of music and Meskin 1999 for an alternative view of
dancework ontology that holds that dance audiences experience
*three* works of art: 1) a choreographic-work, 2) a
production-work, and 3) a performance-interpretation work.)



For more on the question of "What is Dance?" see D. Carr
1997; Cohen 1982; Conroy 2015 (who provides an account of dance as
gestural fiction); McFee 1994 and 1998a; Rubidge 2000; Sparshott 1988
and 1995; Thomas 2018; and Van Camp 1981.


### 1.2 Dance as Ephemeral Art



One of the features of dance as a performing art that has been often
noted is that it moves and it changes, both during the course of any
given performance and over time. A catchall phrase for this sort of
impermanence--reflecting the lack of entirely stable art
"objects" in every case--has been to say that
"dance is an ephemeral art", although there are
alternative versions of what this means (see Conroy 2012; see also
Copeland and Cohen 1983 and Copeland 1993. This does not mean that
dance is insubstantial or unserious. Instead, what it means is that
there is something vital about dance performances and events that
disappears as it is being performed. As noted in
 Section 3,
 above, this may or may not distinguish dance from theater or music,
although dance does seem to rely less on recordings and written
notations in the making and performing of dances overall.



Dance critic Marcia Siegel famously wrote that dance "exists as
a perpetual vanishing point", which means for Siegel that dance
exists in "an event that disappears in the very act of
materializing." (1972: 1). Siegel posits that dance has escaped
the mass marketing of the industrial revolution "precisely
because it doesn't lend itself to any
reproduction..." (1972: 5). Conroy (2012: 158) acknowledges
that the "safest" ontological interpretation of
Siegel's claim would suggest that dance performances are
one-time, transient events. If this is the case it would mean that
there is no enduring "type" that constitutes a dance work
of art that is "tokened" by various instancing
performances. This would mean that the "classical
paradigm" discussed by D. Davies (2011b) and upheld by Goodman
(1976) and by McFee (2011b and 2018) is wrong. If we hold that
*some* dance performances are transient but not others, then
the classical paradigm would still need to account for those
performances that do not fit, much like the ontology of music has had
to deal with the ontology of highly or entirely improvised jazz
performances that seem to be "one-offs" and that are not
preserved via recording. (See Anna Pakes' forthcoming book,
*Choreography Invisible: The Disappearing Work of Dance*, for
more on this issue.)



McFee (2011b; also see 2018) believes that the instability of dance
works of art is a problem that is due to poor preservation and
reconstruction of dances rather than a feature that tells us something
meaningful about the nature of dance. He also thinks that dance
notation might be developed in the future to provide a workable way to
preserve and reconstruct dances, something that Van Camp and Franko
suggest may not be possible (the specifics of their claims here can be
found in
 Section 2
 of this entry, above). We can take this to be the negative view of
the ephemerality of dance.



A positive version of dance as an ephemeral art, however, is one that
holds that we ought to appreciate, rather than decry, dance's
ever-changing and disappearing nature as something that makes a live
performance of a dance that will not happen again the same way into a
vital experience for both the dance performers and the audience. The
positive account celebrates the live nature of the dance performance
and helps to explain why kinesthetic responses to dance performances
are both relevant and powerful. It also suggests that ephemerality is
an aesthetic value for dance that gives dance the ability to provide a
"you had to be there" sort of event. (See Bresnahan 2014a
for an account of improvisational artistry in live dance performance
as a sort of agency that is consistent with this positive view.)
Conroy agrees with McFee that the phrase "dance is an ephemeral
art" does apply to the difficulty of preserving dances, but she
also thinks it should be conceived as a statement of a danceworld
value; as a way of conveying "a communal attitude of tolerance
for change with respect to choreography that has been previously
performed" (2012: 160).


## 2. Dance as Agency and Intentional Action



As mentioned in the introduction to this entry, dance philosophers
vary in terms of where within dance practice and performance they
would like to focus their attention. Many philosophers who focus on
dance as agency and intentional action are looking at the expert
action involved in dance as art, although some consider agency and
intentionality in social or other forms of dance. It is also the case
that when considering dance as a form of expert action (akin to
sports, say) that often technical and athletic prowess as well as
artistic skills like expressivity or grace are the focus on analysis
(see, e.g., Montero 2016). Among these are philosophers of art who are
interested in questions of dance work identity, for purposes of
historical identification and reconstruction among others. These, like
McFee (2018), treat dance-relevant actions as part of what is needed
to create and instantiate a dance work of art (dancework) with the
focus being on the structure created by these actions. (For more on
McFee's account of dance and action see McFee 2011b, 2018 and forthcoming.)



Another traditional way, besides those mentioned in
 Section 1,
 that dance philosophers in analytic aesthetics have considered the
question "what is dance?" is to characterize dance as a
particularly expressive form of art, or one that involves
"action" in a particular way. Dance historian Selma Jean
Cohen (1962) has held that expressiveness is present in all dance, for
example, causing Monroe C. Beardsley (1982) to posit that
expressiveness might be a necessary if not sufficient condition for
dance as art. Borrowing from action theory, Beardsley says that one
bodily action can, under the right circumstances, be sortally
generated into another kind of action. Thus, the act of running, can,
under the right circumstances, be expressive and part of the art of
dance accordingly. We can also infer here that other conditions of
dance as art might also apply (being on a stage in a theater, being
offered for appreciation as a dance, conducted in ways that are part
of a dance vocabulary, etc.). In making this claim, Beardsley rejects
Haig Khatchadourian's view (1978) that dance movements are not
actions, crediting Van Camp's *Philosophical Problems of
Dance Criticism* (1981) for helping him to critique Khatchadourian
in this way. (See Meskin 1999 for more on dances as action sequences
rather than mere movements; See Carroll and Banes 1982 for a critique
of Beardsley's theory of dance as expressive action.)



Susanne K. Langer (1953b) holds that dance is an art that is in
essence a symbol-making endeavor but she does not call this activity
"action." For Langer dance's products are symbols
but these are a sort of coalescence and transforming of real
activities into a virtual ("artistic") form. For Langer,
dance's special symbol or "primary illusion" is what
she calls "virtual power" or gesture rather than virtual
time (the symbol for music), virtual space (the symbol for the plastic
arts) or the illusion of life (the symbol for poetry, when it is in
words and for drama when it is presented in the mode of action). Thus,
her view departs from Beardsley's here significantly. Instead,
it seems more in line with that of Graham McFee (2018), who holds that
dance is "embodied meaning." McFee is presumably following
Arthur C. Danto's 1981 account of art in *The Transfiguration
of the Commonplace* here but since Danto was Langer's
student she may have been the ultimate genesis of this idea. (For
McFee's view of dance as action see
 Section 2
 of this entry.)



Anna Pakes' view of dance as action is in line with that of
Beardsley and Van Camp, against Khatchadourian and Langer. She (2013)
agrees that action is a necessary feature of dance. Both Aaron Meskin
(1999) and Pakes suggest that it is the embodiment of dance in a
physical, intentional event that makes dances better construed as
action-structures than as eternal types. It is for this reason (among
others) that they find dance to be ill-suited for analysis under a
Platonic ontology of art in which the structure of the work of art is
discovered rather than created. Sondra Horton Fraleigh (1996) can be
placed on Pakes and Meskin's side here, since she holds that
dance is necessarily expressive and transitive action.



There are other contemporary dance philosophers, some working within
the analytic tradition and some not, who treat the minded agency and
action involved in either choreography, performing dance, or both, as
primary areas of dance interest as well. Often these are connected to
normative, epistemic and ontological commitments about what dance is
and why it matters (David Davies (2004), for example, treats all art,
including dance art, as performance). Many of these philosophers (such
as Bresnahan 2014a, 2017a, and 2019b; Merritt 2015; and Montero 2016)
use both traditional philosophy, in the forms of analytic philosophy
and phenomenological philosophy, and insights from research in the
cognitive sciences as aids in their analysis. (For more on dance
philosophy and its connections to cognitive science see
 Section 4.
 See also
 Section 3.3 for a discussion of dance
as expertise.)



There is also a great deal of literature on agency and intentional
action in dance philosophy, which focuses on the thinking and embodied
activities that take place in the studio or on the stage or other
performance contexts as well as literature on the agency and
activities of audience members or appreciators who are not also
dancers and dance-makers. (For more dance philosophy literature on
dance agency and intentional action see D. Carr 1987; J. Carr 2013;
Bunker, Pakes and Rowell 2013; Noland 2009; and Sheets-Johnstone 1981,
1999, 2011, and 2012.)


### 2.1 Choreography, Authorship, and Copyright



Van Camp (1980) holds that, for purposes of artistic judgment and
appreciation at least, it is the case that sometimes the dance
performer "creates", and not just performs and interprets,
the dance. The dancer, for example, often supplies structural and
stylistic elements of a dance during the course of rehearsing and
performing the piece that were not specified or provided by the
choreographer. If these contributions are significant then what the
dancer provides might be better understood as "creation"
rather than "interpretation", she maintains.



This view is opposed by McFee (2011b, 2013c and 2018), who believes
that dance works of art are created by choreographers and are
performed by dancers to fulfill the choreographer's intentions.
Chris Challis (1999)'s work supports this account. On
McFee's choreographer-as-dancework-author view the
dancer's role is both instrumental and subsidiary to the
choreographer's vision and their expertise is in dancing, not in
dance-art creation. It follows from this that dancers contribute the
raw material for dance performances but are more like skilled
technicians or artisans than author-artists. This view has been
criticized for neglecting the performers' role in making and
performing dances in art-relevant ways by Lauren Alpert in an American
Society for Aesthetics conference (2016), by Aili Bresnahan (2013 and
at a dance philosophy conference at Texas State and in a
work on interpretation in dance performing), and by Pakes (2019). (For
more on creative decision-making and choreography in dance see
Cvejic 2015a and 2017; Foster 2011; and Melrose 2017. For an
article on video choreography see Salzer and Baer 2015. Cf. S. Davies
1991 for a discussion of whether creative additions to a
"thin" work of art can "thicken" it.)



McFee bolsters this account with his idea that artistic authorship of
dance works of art is and should be attributable only to those who
bear "responsibility" for these works (2018). This comes
close to and yet stops short of equating dance-making credit for
dances with intellectual property rights, where it is by no means the
case (particularly in the U.S.) that those who create art are the ones
taking credit and who are granted legal copyright in them. (For more
on issues of authorship in dance and copyright see Kraut 2010, 2011
and 2016 and Van Camp 1994. For a book on dance, disability and the
law see Whatley et al. 2018.)


### 2.2 Dance Improvisation



"Improvisation" in dance often refers to the intentional
agency and action of dance-makers and performers (who may or may not
be the same people) rather than the result of that activity. Three
types of improvisation in theater dance have been identified by Carter
(2000: 182): 1) embellishments where set choreography persists, 2)
improvisation as spontaneous free movement for use in set choreography
and 3) improvisation for its own sake brought to a high level of
performance. An example of 1) would be the situation in which a dance
performer is allowed to amplify existing movements (doing a triple
pirouette in place of a double, for example), or a stylistic flourish
such as an extra flick of the wrist or tilt of the head. An example of
2) would be the case in which no choreography has been provided for
eight bars of music and the dancer(s) is given the freedom to insert
whatever he or she wishes in the open space. Finally, 3) would cover
the situation that D. Davies (2011b) might call a "work
performance", where a work is choreographed by the dancers while
dancing. It would also include the situation where either the whole
performance or a substantial part of it is improvised from start to
finish. Dances comprised of Steve Paxton's "contact
improvisation", for example, would count as improvisation for
its own sake (see Paxton 1975 and 1981).



Danielle Goldman (2010) provides a critical analysis of the idea of
improvisational "freedom", as represented in
Carter's improvisation type 2, above. She suggests that we
examine social and historical constraints on the possibility of
"freedom", since such freedom cannot exist in oppressive
conditions such as slavery where prohibitive social as well as
physical barriers exist. Goldman thus suggests an alternative form of
improvisation, one that is 



> 
> 
> a rigorous mode of making oneself ready for a range of potential
> situations...an incessant preparation, grounded in the present
> while open to the next moment's possible actions and
> constraints. (2010: 142)
> 
> 
> 



In "Taken by Surprise: Improvisation in Dance and Mind",
Susan Leigh Foster (2003) shares Goldman's view that it is the
moment right before an actual dance movement within a performance that
matters to the special aesthetic experience of dance improvisation.
She says, "it is this suspense-filled plenitude of the
not-quite-known that gives live performance its special
brilliance" (2003: 4). Her essay also contains a
phenomenological account of the agency involved in improvisation,
equating the lived experience of improvisation with a "middle
voice", in which a dancer finds herself in a flow of movement
that takes the middle position between deliberative choices and
passive direction.



Dance philosophers have also identified other forms of dance
improvisation that do not fit within Carter's three categories.
Kent de Spain (2003), for example, brings our attention to a type of
dance improvisation that is practiced by dancers in order to achieve a
movement-based somatic state, what we shall call "somatic
improvisation". Somatic improvisation, or the results of these
improvisational exercises, may be included in a theater performance
for an audience but need not be. Constance Valis Hill (2003) includes
"challenge dance" performances, stemming from the
African-American tradition of dance "battles", where the
purpose is to win an ever-escalating competition of skill and style.
Like somatic improvisation, challenge dance improvisation can be
offered for audience appreciation in a concert context but need not
be--it has taken place in social and street settings, for
entertainment as well as for "artistic" purposes. Aili Bresnahan
(2014a) has made the claim that all live dance performance
involves improvisational artistry to at least some extent and that
this can be seen as a kind of embodied and extended agency under
embodied and extended mind theories, in particular that of Andy Clark
in his book, *Supersizing the Mind: Embodiment, Action, and
Cognitive Extension* (2011).



For more on improvisation in dance, see Albright and Gere 2003;
Clemente 1990; De Spain 1993, 2014, and 2019; Kloppenberg 2010;
Matheson 2005; Novack 1990 and 1988 [2010]; Pallant 2006; Paxton 1975
and 1981; Zaporah 2003; and *The Oxford Handbook of Improvisation
in Dance* (Midgelow 2019). For more on improvisation in the arts,
see the *Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism* special issue
on Improvisation in the Arts, Spring, 2000 [Hagberg 2000]; Alperson
1984, 1998, and 2010; Bresnahan 2015; Brown 1996; Hagberg 1998;
G. Lewis 2014; the *Oxford Handbook of Critical Improvisation
Studies* (2 volumes, Lewis and Piekut 2016/Piekut and Lewis 2016);
and Sawyer 2000. Cf. Symposium, 2010, "Musical
Improvisation" in *The Journal of Aesthetics and Art
Criticism*.


## 3. Dance, Lived Experience and Somatic Awareness



There are fields of philosophy, particularly in the Continental,
pragmatic, and non-Western traditions, that treat art as both activity
and as experiential phenomena. These phenomenological kinds of
philosophy treat lived experience, including bodily and somatic
experience, as something that can provide legitimate descriptive or
causal evidence for philosophic claims. (See, e.g., Dewey 1934;
Merleau-Ponty 1945 and 1964; along with Berleant 1991; Bresnahan
2014b; 
 Foultier and Roos 2013 (Other Internet Resources); 
 Johnson 2007; Katan 2016; Lakoff and
Johnson 1999; and Merritt 2015 for work on dance following Dewey and
Merleau-Ponty. For more on phenomenological approaches to dance see
Albright 2011; Fraleigh 1996 [which also contains quite a lot of
material on the history of dance in aesthetics], 2000, and 2018;
Franko 2011b; and Sheets-Johnstone 1966 and 2015. Cf. Ness 2011 for an
account of a shift in dance away from phenomenology with
Foucault.)



Richard Shusterman has developed his own phenomenological theory,
which he calls "somaesthetics", in order to explain an
embodied engagement with art, including dance, that includes a sort of
kinesthetic awareness of interior, somatic processes (see 2008, 2009,
2011a, 2011b, 2011c and 2012). (For more on dance and somatic
engagement see Eddy 2002; Fraleigh 2015; Weber 2019; and Williamson et
al. 2014. See also LaMothe 2009; Pakes 2003, 2017a, and 2019; and
Parvainen 2002 for work on the related field of dance, the body and
epistemology.)


### 3.1 The Primacy of Practice



Those philosophers, some of whom are mentioned above, who treat lived
experience as legitimate descriptive and explanatory evidence are
firmly committed to the validity of practice in philosophy of dance.
Analytic aesthetics philosophers, however (such as D. Davies and
Montero), often find it necessarily to legitimize their recourse to
practice in an explicit way. D. Davies' view is that ontologies
of art should operate under a "pragmatic constraint" that
tethers their views to what can be demonstrated in practice (2009).
Montero's is that there is empirical evidence to support the
idea that practitioners are experts in their domain of practice (see
2012, 2013, and 2016).



Julie Van Camp and Renee Conroy have argued that analytic dance
aesthetics needs to be more reflective of and responsive to actual
danceworld and artworld practice. Van Camp has proposed 



> 
> 
> that the identity of works of art [including dance] be understood
> pragmatically as ways of talking and acting by the various communities
> of the art world. (2006: 42) 
> 
> 
> 



Conroy (2013b) has instead of a definition provided an argument for
what she calls three "minimal desiderata" for an adequate
account of dancework identity, two of which require that any theory be
responsive to and applicable in danceworld practice, and one that
requires that criteria of metaphysical adequacy be met. (For an
account of practice as dance research see Pakes 2003 and 2017a.)


### 3.2 Bodily (Kinaesthetic) Responses



In dance philosophy there is controversy about how to construe the
felt, bodily responses that the audience can and often does have while
watching a dance performance. These felt, bodily responses are often
called "kinaesthetic", with the alternate spelling of
"kinesthetic" (combining the movement sense of
"kinetic" with a physical sort of sense of the aesthetic
as beautiful, or graceful and the like) and the mechanism by which
these responses occur is one of the things that is debated. Two of the
questions that arise here are the following: 1) What is the causal
process by which kinesthetic responses are felt? and 2) To what
extent, if any, does an understanding of this causal process inform a
proper understanding of dance *qua* dance as art?



To take the first question first: Causal processes that can explain
kinesthetic responses in dance are by no means well understood. It is
not clear, for example, how "empathy", understood in the
broad sense as the ability to feel something based on what we perceive
as someone else's experience, like a dance performer's,
informs our kinaesthetic and other appreciative responses. (For more
on empathy and the kinaesthetic aspect of performance see Foster 2008
and 2011.)



Some contemporary philosophers of dance such as Barbara Montero
(2006a, 2006b, 2012, and 2013) use research in cognitive science and
in neuroscience in order to ascertain the answers to why audience
members report feeling kinesthetic responses such as a quickening
heart rate and certain tensions along with more mysterious feelings in
their muscles and nervous systems. (For more on how dance philosophy
incorporates approaches from cognitive science in these and other
areas see
 Section 4,
 below. See also Bresnahan 2017b; Reason and Reynolds 2010; Sklar
2008; and Smyth 1984 for more on kinaesthetic response to dance.)


### 3.3 Expertise



Montero's view (2012) is that trained dancers have enhanced and
more nuanced kinaesthetic responses than do persons with no dance
training, something that she believes can contribute to a richer
appreciative evaluation of dance (see Bresnahan 2017b for a fuller
discussion of this view). Conroy agrees that Montero's evidence
shows that trained dancers might be able "to identify subtle
discrepancies between multiple performances of canonical movement
types" but denies that this necessarily translates into better
appreciation of dance *qua* dance as art, where what matters is
appreciation of *aesthetic properties* which may or may not
depend on the kind of perception Montero's evidence identifies
in every case (2013: 205). McFee, as mentioned in
 Section 3.2,
 disagrees that dance training is ever relevant to the understanding
of dance as art, which he seems to equate with critical appreciation.
Van Camp (2019) lends support for this view.




Bresnahan has sided with Montero on this point (2017b). This is due to
Bresnahan's pragmatic perspective that the art-determining features of
"art" lie in the experience of art, both as an appreciator
and as a dancer and practitioner. Further, Bresnahan believes that
there are some aspects of the experience of dance that are not
available to the non-dance-trained appreciator or not available to the
same extent. Bresnahan agrees that this is an empirical question but
she sides with Montero, Carroll and Seeley in holding that answers to
empirical questions can aid philosophic understanding. (For more
discussion on the appropriateness of empirical support for philosophic
inquiry in dance see
 Sections 3.2
 and
 4
 of this entry. See He and Ravn 2018; Melrose 2017; Montero 2010,
2012, and 2013; Vass-Rhee 2018; and Washburn et al. 2014 for more on
dance and expertise.)


## 4. Dance and Cognitive Science



The number of dance philosophers who are interested and involved in
using empirical research in the cognitive sciences to help our
understanding of the cognitive-physical components of making dance art
in actions, events and performances is large and growing. These
include Blasing et al. 2012 and Blasing et al. 2019;
Bresnahan 2014a; Cross and Ticini 2012; Hagendoorn 2012; Katan 2016;
Jang and Pollick 2011; He and Ravn 2018; Jola, Ehrenberg, and Reynolds
2012; Legrand and Ravn 2009; McKechnie and Stevens 2009; Merritt 2015;
Montero 2006a, 2006b, 2010, 2012, and 2013; Seeley 2011 and 2013;
Vass-Rhee 2018. Maxine Sheets-Johnstone's body of dance
philosophy work that incorporates research from the cognitive and
other sciences is so extensive that they would require their own entry
to list in full (see the ones in this entry's bibliography for a
start). See Bresnahan 2017a for an account of how dance training
affects our temporal experience and Bresnahan 2019a for the view that
expert dance movements are often experienced and perceived via
subconscious processes before they are fully cognized. For a series of
sustained arguments against the philosophical fruitfulness of using
insights from cognitive science see McFee 2003, 2011a, and 2018.



Montero has written on how proprioception (the capacity that lets a
person know their bodily position in space) might be construed as an
aesthetic sense, how mirror neurons might be part of an audience
experience of this sense, and how trained dancers might make better
aesthetic judges at least in part due to some of these mechanisms.
(See the discussion on expertise that precedes this discussion in
 Section 3.3.)
 Carroll is one philosopher who has followed Montero's research
(see Carroll and Moore 2011) in his thinking about how dance and music
might work together to affect our kinaesthetic responses. He has also
considered (see Carroll and Seeley 2013) how Montero's research
and other research in neuroscience might bolster dance critic John
Martin's theory of "metakinetic transfer" from dance
performers to audience dances. (For more on Martin's theory of
"metakinetic transfer", which he says is due to
"muscular sympathy" and "inner mimicry" see
Martin 1939 and Franko 1996.)



The philosophers who support the use of research on neurological
processing of kinesthetic responses to dance in general hold that it
is relevant to our proper understanding of dance *qua* the art
of dance. Carroll and Seeley (2013) argue, for example, that one of
the central features of understanding dance is to understand the
nature of the experience of dance in all its aspects, cognitive as
well as kinesthetic and *felt*. Thus, connecting this
experience with causal explanations is elucidating and appropriate to
a full and broad understanding of that experience in *all* of
its aspects. This can be called the "moderately optimistic
view", following D. Davies 2013. D. Davies' own answer to
the question of how scientific research can be used in understanding
and appreciating dance is what he calls the "moderately
pessimistic" view (2013). He agrees with McFee that there are
some questions relevant to philosophical dance aesthetics that cannot
be answered by empirical research, no matter how accurate that
research may be for answering certain scientific, causal questions.
There are normative questions, for example, such as "what counts
as proper appreciation of a work of art?" that science cannot
answer. Empirical research, where used by dance and other
philosophers, must, according to D. Davies, be applied carefully to
the relevant questions (see 2011a and 2013; see also 2014).



D. Davies (2013) is only moderately pessimistic about empirical
research, however, because he thinks that philosophy ought not to
partition itself away from science and away from other disciplines
that might inform our thinking. Here he suggests that we ought to
follow the Quinean idea that philosophy ought to respond to and at
least be cognizant of current science so that we know how our
philosophic views fit into our web of other beliefs about the world.
D. Davies (2013) is also sympathetic with the part of Seeley's
view (in Seeley 2011) that holds that empirical research can at least
help us to avoid false assumptions pertaining to the arts that are
tacitly or explicitly based on empirical misunderstandings. (For a
full discussion of the various optimisms and pessimisms regarding how
empirical research can affect our understanding of art here see Bullot
et al. 2017.)



McFee (2011a, 2013b and 2018) denies that causal explanations about
kinesthetic responses are ever relevant to dance appreciation. This
view can be called (following D. Davies 2013) "the extremely
pessimistic view". McFee holds that causal accounts,
particularly from the sciences, of the appreciation and experience of
dance, either in terms of kinesthetic responses or anything else,
are *never* relevant to understanding dance as art. He says
that the idea that "our bodily reactions--our toe-tapping,
sitting up straight, holding our breaths, tensing our legs, and so
on" is relevant to dance appreciation "makes no
sense" (2013b: 189, a view reinforced in 2018). His thought here
is that dance appreciation happens at the level of a *person*
who appreciates, someone with the cultural resources to understand
dance as a form of art, not at the level of neurobiology. Montero,
Carroll and Seeley would probably agree that kinesthetic responses
cannot alone provide an appreciation of dance as art. The difference
is that, unlike McFee, they think that neurobiologic studies can
contribute to our understanding of dance as art in some ways. (For
more on McFee's view here see McFee 2003, 2013b, and 2018. For
another neuroscientific approach to audience engagement with dance see
Seeley 2013.)


## 5. Additional Dance and Philosophy Connections



This section is last and is sparse for the reasons mentioned in the
introduction. The reader is encouraged to seek out sources beyond the
few ones mentioned here and to look in the ancillary locations
recommended within each section for additional information, along with
doing searches in dance and performance studies journals. (See the
entries in the
 Related Entries section
 below.)


### 5.1 Non-Western and Non-Traditional Philosophy and Dance



Here the reader is encouraged to consult sources that may not be
called "philosophy" but something else, such as religious
studies, ethnography, cultural anthropology, oral history, and the
like, particularly in those traditions where philosophy and religious
scholarship combines (as in Islamic philosophy and some forms of East
Asian and Indian philosophy) or where the traditions of thought are
communicated orally rather than in writing (as is often the case in
the philosophy of native and indigenous peoples). There is also much
of philosophy of dance interest to be found in the literature, poetry,
and song of groups and peoples who are not a traditionally
enfranchised part of the Western philosophical canon.



The bibliographic sources provided here on non-Western and
non-traditional philosophy and/or non-Western forms of dance include
S. Davies (2006, 2008, 2012, and 2017) on Balinese Legong, Fraleigh
(2010 and 2015) on the Japanese form of dance known as Butoh,
including asking whether Butoh is a philosophy, Friedman's
forthcoming essay on post-colonial African philosophical frameworks as
applied to dance, Hall 2012 on Fanon's view of dance, Osumare
2007 on Africanist aesthetics and hip-hop, Schroeder 2009 on Nietzsche
and the Kyoto school, Welch 2019 on Native American dance and the
phenomenology of performative knowledge, and Welsh-Asante 1990, who
has published a piece on Cabral, Fanon and dance in Africa. See also
 Section 5.2
 below, particularly for Western non-traditional philosophy, some of
which is critical work that has been placed under the social-political
category.


### 5.2 Dance, Ethics and Social-Political Philosophy



Here the reader is encouraged to consult ethics, social and political
philosophy journals as well as those journals that highlight cultural
and critical studies (such as gender, race, disability, ethnicity,
LGBTQ+ and others), along with dance studies and dance history
journals and books. For a subject-related entry that discusses the
influence of post-structuralism and politics on dance philosophy see
Pakes 2019. (Cf. Cull O Maoilearca 2012 for a Deleuzean account
of the ethics of performance that might apply to dance.)



Additional sources one might consult here include Fiona Bannon's
book (2018) and dance and ethics, which among other things makes use
of Spinoza and Martin Buber's theories of ethics, Karen
Bond's comprehensive and multifaceted book, *Dance and
Quality of Life* (which addresses among other things how dance
contributes to what is good for human beings, which is why this work has been included under the ethics category), Bresnahan and Deckard 2019
and Hall 2018 on disability and dance, DeFrantz's work on black
dance and aesthetics (forthcoming and elsewhere), Eva Kit Wah
Man's new book on bodies, aesthetics and politics in China
(2019) (which is not specifically on dance), Royona Mitra's work
on Akram Khan's style of dance and choreography as a form of
inter-culturalism (2015 and 2018), Eric Mullis' forthcoming
essay on dance and political power, Halifu Osumare's powerful
memoir, *Dancing in Blackness* (2018), and Sherman 2018 on
dancers, soldiers and emotional engagement. See also the three-part
essay on dance as embodied ethics in Bresnahan, Katan-Schmid, and
Houston (2020).


### 5.3 Dance, Film and Digital Technology



Dance is developing in ways that include not just live, bodily
performances on stage but dance that is in digital, filmic and other
technological or technologically-enhanced forms. New dance philosophy
(as philosophy *of* these new dance arts) is emerging
accordingly. Besides the short list of sources mentioned below the
reader is encouraged to conduct dance philosophy research in film and
emerging technology journals.



Dance philosophers who write on dance in film (or on film or filmic
dance) include Brannigan 2014; Carroll 2001; McFee 2018; and Salzer
and Baer 2015. Hetty Blades (2015a and 2015b) has written on dance,
virtual technology and scoring and her work centers on other forms of
dance technology as well. For a piece on dance, ethics and technology
see Mullis 2015. See also the section on dance and technology, with
includes a number of entries on dance, film, and technology, in the
forthcoming Bloomsbury Handbook to Dance and Philosophy edited by Rebecca
Farinas and Julie Van Camp, with consultation by Craig Hanks and Aili Bresnahan.