The Routledge Dance Studies Reader (review)

The Routledge Dance Studies Reader. Edited by Alexandra Carter. London: Routledge, 1998; pp. xix + 293. $75.00 cloth, $24.99 paper.

Due to the Victorian moral backlash against dancing, the focus in dance on the body rather than the mind, the ephemerality of dance in performance, and its relegation to the sphere of women, dance has been one of the least theorized performing arts. The Routledge Dance Studies Reader seeks to redress this dearth in dance scholarship. The book is organized into six parts, each of which includes a short introduction and bibliography.

According to the back cover copy, The Routledge Dance Studies Reader is designed as an introduction to the field of dance studies "for the student, the practitioner, and all those interested in enhancing their experience of dance." In her introduction to the book, editor Alexandra Carter traces the development of dance studies internationally and outlines current debates surrounding the methodologies appropriate to the study of dance. Though the book makes no claim to be a comprehensive collection, the bibliographies and suggestions for future reading alone offer a great resource to students in dance.

Grouped chronologically, Part I, "Making Dance," reveals the creative strategies and the "mechanics" used by various choreographers. A key point of discussion centers on the degree of control which choreographers exert over their creations (and their dancers). One dancer, Annabel Farjeon, reminisces about how Ninette de Valois used her dancers as "puppets" in her preconceived works, whereas Frederick Ashton treated dancers as shapes with which to work out his choreographic ideas. Merce Cunningham, known for his deployment of chance procedures (advocated most famously by John Cage) in his choreography, tells an interviewer how he nonetheless controls the creation, selection, and rejection of movement. Critic Norbert Servos discusses how Pina Bausch, in her "theatre of experience," relies on the experience of her dancers in her postmodern, expressionistic, montage-like works, while Shobana Jeyasingh draws from her own multicultural background as a choreographer working in Britain using the idioms of a South Asian dance form (Bharata Natyam). Yvonne Rainer's experimental style can best be described with a line from her brief manifesto: "No to spectacle no to virtuosity no to transformations and magic and make-believe" (35).

Part II, "Performing Dance," features the voices of dancers and dancer-choreographers discussing their approaches to performance, explaining what they do to inhabit a role. Nora Kaye tells how, even though she prepares extensively for her roles, she could never understand Giselle whom she saw as a "silly girl" (58), while Alicia Alonzo enthuses over the romantic possibilities in playing Giselle. Martha Graham takes a philosophic approach to dance, which for her "reveals the inner landscape, which is the soul of man" (66). In contrast, Rebecca Hilton, who performed with Stephen Petronio, calls herself a realist and prefers body work that is initiated in movement rather than image. The section ends with a fascinating recounting of a virtual performance, called "telepresence," in which Susan Kozel's naked body was projected onto a screen in a room where visitors were encouraged to interact with her projected image.

The third part, "Reviewing Dance," tackles two debates in reviewing dance and reprints two exemplary reviews. Marcia Siegel explains that dance reviewers cannot be anthropologists and so must find a way of reviewing works outside their cultural experience. Roger Copeland argues for a review "between description and deconstruction," descrying the frequent lack of ideas in the former and the excess of them in the latter. The two reviews included in this section exemplify the best of dance criticism, that is, criticism that describes the performance yet ties it to a discursive line or idea.

Less cohesive than the other sections, Part IV, "Studying Dance," addresses the conceptual concerns underlying the study of dance and raises epistemological questions about its frameworks. Betty Redfern jump-starts the conversation with the age-old question, "What is art?," and defines it as (1) public, (2) an object within a social and historical context...