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Method and Theory in Dance Research: An Anthropological Approach

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 February 2019

Suzanne Youngerman
Suzanne Youngerman*
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, Columbia University, New York 10027
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Extract

Dance research is a rapidly expanding field. Because a detailed overview and categorization of dance studies has been published recently, I will not dwell on the historical background of dance research here. My aim rather is to emphasize some areas that have not been adequately discussed in other papers, and to offer some positive suggestions for future research.

Type
Articles
Information
Yearbook of the International Folk Music Council , Volume 7 , 1975 , pp. 116 - 133
Copyright
Copyright © 1976 By the International Folk Music Council 

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References

Notes

1. This paper is a revised version of the key paper presented at the roundtable “Developments in Dance Research” at the Twenty-Third Conference of the I.F.M.C., Regensburg, Bavaria, German Federal Republic, August 14-21, 1975, and published as Working Papers of the Twenty-Third Conference, No. 2, ed. Dieter Christensen and Adelaida Reyes-Schramm, 1975. I wish to thank Dieter Christensen, Adelaida Reyes-Schramm, and Alexander Alland, Jr., for their valuable criticisms and suggestions in the preparation of this paper.Google Scholar

2. Royce, Anya Peterson, “Choreology Today: A Review of the Field,” in New Dimensions in Dance Research: Anthropology and Dance — The American Indian, ed. Tamara Comstock, CORD [Committee on Research in Dance] Annual VI, The Proceedings of the Third Conference on Research in Dance, March 26 - April 2, 1972 (New York: CORD, 1974), pp. 47–84. See also Gertrude Kurath, “Panorama of Dance Ethnology,” Current Anthropology, 1 (1960), 233-54.Google Scholar

3. Merriam, Alan P., “Anthropology and the Dance,” in Comstock, New Dimensions, pp. 9–27.Google Scholar

4. Merriam, Alan P., “Ethnomusicology Revisited,” Ethnomusicology, 13 (1969), 213-29.Google Scholar

5. Blacking, John, “Deep and Surface Structures in Venda Music,” 1971 Yearbook of the I.F.M.C. (1972), pp. 93, 96.Google Scholar

6. See, e.g., references in n. 2 and 3, and also Joann Kealiinohomoku, “Field Guides,” in Comstock, New Directions, pp. 245–60; Judith Lynne Hanna, “Anthropology and the Study of the Dance” and “Ethnic Dance Research Guide: Relevant Data Categories,” CORD News, 6, no. 1 (1973), 37-41, 42-44; Peggy Harper, “Dance Studies,” African Notes, 4, no. 3 (1968), 5-28; Carl Wolz, “The Pragmatic Approach to Field Work in Dance Ethnology,” in Comstock, New Directions, pp. 235-43.Google Scholar

7. For representative studies and further bibliography, see the articles in Comstock, New Directions. Google Scholar

8. See, e.g., I. L. Child, “Esthetics,” in Handbook of Social Psychology, ed. G. Lindzey and E. Aronson, 2nd ed., Vol. III (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1969), pp. 857–59, on types of meaning.Google Scholar

9. Laban, Rudolf, Principles of Dance and Movement Notation (London: Macdonald and Evans, 1956); Ann Hutchinson, Labanotation, rev. and enl. ed. (New York: Theatre Arts Books, 1970); Albrecht Knust, Handbook of Kinetography Laban, 2 vols. (Hamburg: Das Tanzarchiv, 1958).Google Scholar

10. I.F.M.C. Study Group for Folk Dance Terminology, “Structure and Form of Folk Dance: A Syllabus,” 1974 Yearbook of the International Folk Music Council, 6 (1975), 115–35; György Martin and Ernö Pesovár, “A Structural Analysis of the Hungarian Folk Dance,” Acta Ethnografica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, 10, no. 1-2 (1961), 1-40, and “Determination of Motive Types in Dance Folklore,” Acta Ethnografica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, 12, no. 3-4 (1963), 295-332; Vera Proca-Ciortea, “On Rhythm in Rumanian Folk Dance,” 1969 Yearbook of the International Folk Music Council, 1 (1971), 176-99, and “Kinetic Language and Vocabulary,” 1970 Yearbook of the International Folk Music Council, 2 (1972), 133-41; Anca Giurchescu, “La danse comme objet sémiotique,” 1973 Yearbook of the International Folk Music Council, 5 (1974), 175-78; Roderyk Lange, “On Differences between the Rural and the Urban: Traditional Polish Peasant Dancing,” 1974 Yearbook of the International Folk Music Council, 6 (1975), 44-51, and “Kinetography Laban (Movement Notation) and the Folk Dance Research in Poland,” Lud, 50 (1966), 378-91.Google Scholar

11. Kaeppler, Adrienne L., “Method and Theory in Analyzing Dance Structure with an Analysis of Tongan Dance,” Ethnomusicology, 16 (1972), 173-217.Google Scholar

12. Singer, Alice, “The Metrical Structure of Macedonian Dance,” Ethnomusicology, 18 (1974), 379-404.Google Scholar

13. See Judith Lynne Hanna, “Toward a Cross-Cultural Conceptualization of Dance and Some Correlate Considerations,” in The Performing Arts: Music, Dance, Theater, ed. John Blacking (The Hague: Mouton, forthcoming) (originally prepared for a pre-Congress session of the IX International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences, 1973.)Google Scholar

14. See, e.g., Maquet, Jacques, Introduction to Aesthetic Anthropology, A McCaleb Module in Anthropology (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1971), and Warren L. d'Azevedo, “A Structural Approach to Esthetics: Toward a Definition of Art in Anthropology,” American Anthropologist, 60 (1958), 702–14.Google Scholar

15. Belo, Jane, “The Balinese Temper,” Character and Personality, 4 (1935), 120-46.Google Scholar

16. Laban, Rudolf, Modern Educational Dance, rev. by Lisa Ullman (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1968); idem, The Mastery of Movement, rev. and enl. by Lisa Ullman, 3rd ed. (Boston: Plays, 1971); Rudolf Laban and F. C. Lawrence, Effort: Economy in Body Movement, 2nd ed. (Boston: Plays, 1974). For a practical summary of effort-shape, see Cecily Dell, A Primer for Movement Description (New York: Dance Notation Bureau, 1970).Google Scholar

17. Laban, Rudolf, The Language of Movement: A Guidebook to Choreutics, annotated and edited by Lisa Ullman (Boston: Plays, 1974).Google Scholar

18. Research in this area has been undertaken by Irmgard Bartenieff of the Center for Movement Research and Analysis (Dance Notation Bureau, New York).Google Scholar

19. Claude Lévi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology, trans. Claire Jacobson and Brooke Grundfest Schoepf (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Company, Anchor Books, 1967).Google Scholar

20. Robert Farris Thompson makes a similar point in “Aesthetics in Traditional Africa,” in Art and Aesthetics in Primitive Societies, ed. Carol F. Jopling (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1971), p. 379: “ … the notion of ugliness in Yoruba art is one way of proving the positive aesthetic. … A broken rule implies the rule intact.”Google Scholar

21. See n. 6. In addition, Alan P. Merriam's The Anthropology of Music (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1964) covers many issues which are applicable to dance research.Google Scholar

22. Davis, Martha, “The Potential of Nonverbal Communication Research for Research in Dance,” ed. Lois Andreasen, CORD News, 6, no. 1 (1973), 10.Google Scholar

23. Arnheim, Rudolf, Art and Visual Perception, 2nd ed. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1974).Google Scholar

24. Humphrey, Doris, The Art of Making Dances (New York: Grove Press, 1959), pp. 72–90.Google Scholar

25. There is a huge literature on the philosophy, psychology, and anthropology of symbolism; only the most basic distinctions are discussed here. See the following for an overview and more detailed discussion of this complex topic: Susanne K. Langer, Philosophy in a New Key, 3rd ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1957); Raymond Firth, Symbols: Public and Private (Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press, 1973). For specific applications to dance, see Judith Hendin, “A Look at Rock - The Potentials of Anthropological Studies of Dance,” York Dance Review, 4 (Spring, 1975), 24–33; Drid Williams, “Signs, Symptoms and Symbols,” Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford, 3 (1972), 24-32.Google Scholar

26. Claude Lévi-Strauss, “The Structural Study of Myth,” in Lévi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology, pp. 202–28.Google Scholar

27. Kreitler, Hans and Kreitler, Shulamith, Psychology of the Arts (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1972), pp. 157–85.Google Scholar

28. Lamb, Warren and Turner, David, Management Behavior (New York: International Universities Press, 1969).Google Scholar

29. Douglas, Mary, Natural Symbols (New York: Random House, 1973) and Purity and Danger (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1966).Google Scholar

30. This discussion derives from Maquet, Introduction, pp. 27–30. He makes the distinction between conditioning and consistency relationships. The former includes instances of noncausal conditioning, cause/effect conditioning, and antecedent/consequent conditioning. He explains that conditioning “stresses the priority of the condition. … Whereas consistency does not imply that one phenomenon precedes the other, neither does it exclude it, as a matter of fact. … It [the consistency relationship] may appear as a logical coherence. … It may be an equivalence of forms or of structures. It may be a parallelism of substance or of any other ‘part’ or quality of the phenomena” (pp. 27-28).Google Scholar

31. Sachs, Curt, World History of the Dance, trans. Bessie Schönberg (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, The Norton Library, 1963). For a critical review of Sachs's book, originally published as Eine Weltgeschichte des Tanzes in 1933, see Suzanne Youngerman, “Curt Sachs and His Heritage: A Critical Review of World History of the Dance with a Survey of Recent Studies that Perpetuate His Ideas,” CORD News, 6, no. 2 (1974), 6–19.Google Scholar

32. Lomax, Alan et. al., Folk Song Style and Culture, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Publication No. 88 (Washington, D.C.: AAAS, 1968). For reviews of the choreometrics section of this book, see Joann W. Kealiinohomoku, “Review Number One: Caveat on Causes and Correlations,” and Drid Williams, “Review Number Two,” CORD News, 6 no. 2 (1974), pp. 20–24, 25-29; and Youngerman, “Curt Sachs,” pp. 16-17.Google Scholar

33. Armstrong's, Robert Plant The Affecting Presence: An Essay in Humanistic Anthropology (Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1971) is an attempt to illustrate this type of correspondence.Google Scholar

34. Lévi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology. Google Scholar

35. John Blacking, How Musical Is Man? (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1973), pp. 24–25, 26.Google Scholar

36. Maquet, Introduction, p. 29.Google Scholar

37. Feld, Steven, “Linguistic Models in Ethnomusicology,” Ethnomusicology, 18 (1974), 197-217.Google Scholar

38. Royce, “Choreology Today,” pp. 62, 76, n. 6.Google Scholar