Aesthetics in Performance: Formations of Symbolic Construction and Experience (review)

Aesthetics as a field of study is, by its very nature, complex and philosophical.In this book, selected aesthetic possibilities of music, dance and dramatic representation in ritual and theatrical situations are examined. However, this is a somewhat eclectic and uneven collection, containing writing styles and subject matter that move between the obscure and the obvious, with rather too much assertion and speculation. It gives the impression of being a very dense book, yet much seems to obfuscate matters, often frustrating rather than supporting the reader along journeys into new territory.

The book opens with a substantial discussion of aesthetics, and is followed by ten chapters, each one dealing with a discrete set of practices: the human voice (Beeman ch. 1); dhrupad singers (Shulman ch. 2); southern Indian musical performance (Kersenboom ch. 3); Hindu temples in Sri Lanka (Bastin ch. 4); trance dancing in West Africa (Friedson, ch. 5); Sinhala demon exorcisms (Kapferer ch. 6); Balinese masked performances (Hobart ch. 7); Brazilian carnival (DaMatta ch. 8); Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance Day in Israel (Handelman ch. 9) and circuses in Britain in 1970s (Carmeli ch.10).

One difficulty for the reader is that most authors give very little background to the practice that they are discussing and presume that the reader already has specialist knowledge. A further problem is that even though embodied practices and activities are the focus of discussion, the practices themselves, as sonic, visual and bodily experiences, are often lost in the density of language and explanation. Perhaps this is the terrain of aesthetics or perhaps this is because the authors are mostly anthropologists discussing performance and ritual. For performance analysts and makers, detailed consideration of a complex network of elementsof a performance event is part of the territory, requiring examination of the organisation of spatial, structural, proxemic, temporal, vestimentary, sonic, bodily, gestural, dramaturgical and choreological elements. Most of the authors in this collection, however, appear to struggle with such an approach to performance. There is also a methodological concern, for it is often not clear whether the data and analysis is emic, and based upon the views of participants, or etic, deriving from the researcher's own observations and experiences.

The most successful chapter is that by Hobart on the Galungan festival in Bali, in which she focuses upon three specific masked performances, examining how the 'diverse aesthetic modes … transform meanings and experiences' (161) rebalancing, recentering and purifying the village community (180). Her clear yet rigorous style, complete with an introduction to the context and practice, and photographs of the masked figures, provides a sense of the power of specific performative elements.

In his chapter on trance dancing in West Africa, Friedson provides a description of context and experience in terms of being sleep-deprived, of eating and drinking state-altering substances, and of under-eating – in fact, a party atmosphere, where dancing generates/enables a state that Friedson describes as 'to be-there and not-there' (110). He also discusses cross-rhythms, yet does not explain why he is asserting that this is what 'causes' or enables the trance dance. One is left with the sense that he has revealed aspects of his own deep-seated 'Western' position and his own preferences and musical understanding (and barriers and inadequacies). He suggests, for example, that 'Western' musicians do not deal in cross-rhythms (119), and excludes forms and contexts in 'Western' countries, such as clubs, raves, festivals, workshops which do in fact provide a 'different way of 'being-in-the-world' through a similar set of conditions.

DaMatta's chapter on Brazilian carnival examines the organisational principles and vestimentary elements. His analysis is premised upon the notion that '… carnival works at decentering and depositioning and thus it is able to embrace and totalise in nonconformity' (19). This seems, however, to ignore the nationalist context. Carnival in Rio was made official in 1934...