post positivist and no problems
i’ve been thinking about a list of unsolved problems in ‘dance’. but so much of our theory and practice (praxis) is undefined, the ‘problems’ become unwieldily. complexity aside my list would include:
- what is dance & performance technologies?
- what is screendance?
- what is contemporary dance?
- what is bodily knowledge?
the ‘solve’ would require a general consensus and ‘proof’. in each case, the broader questions should also be answered. e.g., where is bodily knowledge located, how is it acquired, is it inductive/deductive (or something else). apart from defining screendance (in general), what are the subsets/genres.
i’d like to see a large, multi-day conference that attempted to reach a majority consensus on one of these problems.
- having a few problem with comments, so adding doug’s comments directly:
Matt, I think this is academic version of my complaint that nobody has really explored how to write about dance, movement and the body for the general public. Many dance companies work on assumption that dance critics are the ultimate authority. But dance reviewers represent only a small sliver of how one can go about communicating information about dance.
Outside of dance world, nobody has a clue what an embodied experience is — except if it has to do with being abducted by a martian.
It doesn’t really seem that there is much interest in addressing basic questions and challenges related to dance.