Dance is central to any study of performance and, in non-Western cultures, dance’s many manifestations are often inseparable from the theatre. Asian performance forms often integrate text, character and stylised movement, their performers operating as dancers and actors with little distinction discernible between the two. Dance in the West, however, is primarily concerned with movement in space rather than with text or acting. Western dance is usually choreographed or at least follows a structure based on rhythmic patterns, sounds or music. As a phenomenon, dance – like play or ritual – is vast in its potential frameworks and in encompassing a ubiquitous part of human and even animal behaviour, with multiple motivations and functions. But, whereas play can often be solitary, dance mostly has a social dimension. Dance bonds, celebrates, integrates and identifies people, often through a particular affiliation to recognised styles or modes of dancing. This social role recalls dance’s origins in ritual practices, where communal dance accompanied by music would be a primary component of rites that brought a community together for calendrical or celebratory purposes. From such public participation evolved the individualised dances of shamans, for example, the beginnings of dance as performance presented for the aesthetic admiration and appreciation of spectators. While still predominantly using choreographed human movement, many Western dance experimenters have also explored text, character and site-specificity, concepts more familiar to the theatre. Anna Teresa de Keersmaeker’s Rosas Danst Rosas (1983) was performed and later filmed (1997) in a disused factory. The dominance of classical dance has also led many contemporary or modern dancers such as Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham to create their own techniques, focusing their experimentations on form. For Merce Cunningham, for example, movement is about position and space rather than the development of narratives through danced action. From the RCTP
Image: Odin Teatret & CTLS Archives. Performance: Andersen’s Dream. Director: Eugenio Barba. Photo: Jan Rüsz
