Dancing Identity: Metaphysics in Motion (review)

Sondra Fraleigh is probably best known for her phenomenology of dance (Dance and the Lived Body: A Descriptive Aesthetics, 1987) and her work on Butoh (Dancinginto Darkness: Butoh, Zen and Japan, 1999). This new publication revisits both but integrates their discussion with cultural history, reflections on somatic practice and feminist critique. The emphasis here is very much on issues of personal identity: how the self is conditioned, defined and developed in an on-going project that, for Fraleigh, centrally involves dance. It is in this sense that the term 'metaphysics' in the subtitle is to be understood. This is not a dispassionate philosophical enquiry into the nature of dance or reality more generally, but a 'journey toward self-definition' (1). The author draws on disparate sources – philosophical, theoretical, creative and biographical – in the attempt to devise a susbstantive metaphysic which uncovers her existential freedom, authenticity and integrity as a woman and as a human being.

In the process, Fraleigh touches on a number of interesting themes. Chap-ter 1, for example, examines what gets encoded in the body through dance class and rehearsal, critiquing Western tendencies to privilege transcendent mastery of the physical over holistic engagement (also a key topic in Chapter 5). Chapter 3 re-asserts the connections between self and environment, tracing how the integrity of body-mind maps onto the mutual imbrication of humanity and the wider world. There is much emphasis on the feminist projects of resisting patriarchal stereotyping (Chapter 2), biological reductivism (Chapter 4) and institutional practice that quells female agency (Chapters 4 and 7). Fraleighalso seeks to reaffirm the value of wholeness, integrity and the organic in the face of postmodernism's fragmentations (Chapters 6 and 8). Reflections on these themes are more or less closely intertwined with accounts of figures or moments in modern and postmodern dance history (e.g. Wigman, Laban, Bausch) and descriptions of particular works (by, for example, Twyla Tharp, Bill T. Jones, Natsu Nakajima and Fraleigh herself). The author also weaves in episodes from her personal history, including her childhood in Utah, her modern dance education and experience as a university professor in the American system. The book becomes, like dance, a 'struggle to find voice through one's storied self' (2) and Fraleigh's reflections on dances an attempt 'to uncover [their] will and conscience […] and see the body politic submerged therein' (3).

As in previous books, Fraleigh's theoretical approach and style of writing are idiosyncratic, and this is both a strength and a weakness of the volume. The interweaving of disparate sources enables wide-ranging discussion but sacrifices deep engagement with the ideas concerned: Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, de Beauvoir, Foucault, Derrida, Lefort, Butler and Bordo are all brought into play but as they fit the point Fraleigh wants to make, rather than through detailed exegesis and critique. Sometimes, rather than examining in expository vein the content of theorists' ideas, she turns them into personae in imagined scenarios, as in the 'anti-essentialist trio' between de Beauvoir, Merleau-Ponty and Butler in Chapter 4. There are also moments when, instead of developing a discursive analysis, the author breaks into free verse in response to a philosophical idea or particular dance work. This contributes to a lively, playful and sometimes engagingly vulnerable tone, but it also compromises clarity of exposition. If, as Fraleigh states in the introduction, she '[does] not expect that readers will have read all of the philosophers [she] engage[s] here' (7), this text seems to present a partial, fragmented, not to say confusing introductory picture of these complex thinkers. Meanwhile those familiar with their perspectives may be frustrated at a lack of depth of argument. A similar problem is evident in the presentation of modern/postmodern dance history: the effort to provide an overview for the uninitiated is laudable, but it remains highly selective and the discussion sometimes lacks detail and rigour in presenting historical material. For example, the response in Chapter 2 to...