Dance is Research

We can define science as the systematic study of the natural world through observation and experiment, yielding an organized body of knowledge on a particular subject. The human [body] is undeniably a suitable subject for scientific study, and one purpose of [dance] is careful observation of one’s own [body]. This observation reveals consistent patterns that [dancers] share with one another and with teachers who direct their practice. Master [dancers] weigh these observations against their own experience and knowledge passed down from previous generations of [dance] masters, thereby generating models of the [body]. Over thousands of years, [dancers] have tested, refined, and reworked their models of the [body] based on new insights as later generations developed new [dance] techniques. Thus, over time, an organized body of knowledge has accumulated describing the nature and behavior of the [body] at a very fine level of resolution. This is one sense in which certain forms of [dance] qualify as science.

excerpted and altered from https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/your-brain-as-laboratory-the-science-of-meditation/

Ryle was never hugged

People can see, hear and jolt one another’s bodies, but they are irremediably blind and deaf to the workings of one another’s minds and inoperative upon them (Ryle, 2009, p.3)

Aristotle and Improvisation

It is absurd to suppose that purpose is not present because we do not observe the agent deliberating. Art does not deliberate.

– Aristotle, Physics II.8, The Complete Works of Aristotle Vol. I. The Revised Oxford Translation, ed. Jonathan Barnes).

If Art does not deliberate and choreography can be seen as a form of deliberation, is, then, choreographed dance not art?

Is the art that choreography generates, then, the un-deliberated performance of its execution?

Does this mean, then, that the purest artistic form of dance is the least deliberated, i.e., absolute improvisation, when the phases of exploration, experimentation, and execution collapse into a singular event, when the artist is deliberating in the moment?

 

Foundation

To say that ballet is the foundation of dance is like saying that French Cuisine is the foundation of food.