Philosophy of the Performing Arts

theater, dance, and literature 121
the way in which we often talk about classical dance. We say that we saw a
performance of Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker , for example. But we might also
say that we saw a performance of Balanchine’s The Nutcracker , meaning that
we saw a performance of the version of Tchaikovsky’s work choreographed
by George Balanchine for the New York City Ballet in 1954. Indeed, given
the place that Balanchine’s production has assumed in American cultural life,
an American balletomane might be more likely to speak in the second way
than in the first. This might seem analogous to saying that one saw a per-
formance of Peter Brook’s King Lear. As we saw in the previous section, we
can distinguish, in theater, between works, productions, and performances,
although theorists differ as to the kinds of dependence relations holding
between these entities. However, as we shall see, the relationships between
dance works, dance productions, and dance performances prove to be even
more tangled.^10 Additionally, some writers have raised more fundamental
questions about the applicability of the classical paradigm to dance perform-
ances. Interestingly, as we shall see, the reasons for this skepticism differ
from those that have led us to prefer alternative models for at least some
musical and theatrical performances.
If dance performances are to be rightly subsumed under the classical para-
digm in its standard form, then our best explanation of what is going on in
these performances must construe them as attempts to provide interpre-
tive realizations of the prescriptions of particular performable works. These
prescriptions must exist independently of particular performances and must
allow of multiple realizations. We shall also need a viable notion of what it is
for a dance performance to be a correct rendering of the work performed,
and a serviceable means for determining at least in principle which perform-
ance events are performances of which works. While a performable work’s
defining prescriptions can be orally transmitted, they are conveyed, in the
musical and theatrical cases with which we are most familiar, by a score or
a script respectively. The simplest way to extend the classical paradigm to
dance, then, would involve an analogous means of making explicit what a
given performable work of dance prescribes.
Theorists who apply the classical paradigm to musical and theatrical per-
formances generally take a similar approach to dance. Wollheim and Carroll,
for example, take dance works to be types and dance performances to be
their tokens. A performer produces a token of a dance work, qua type,
by interpreting the “recipe” provided by the creator of the work. Graham
McFee has provided the most detailed defense of such a view. “With dance,
as with music,” he maintains, “there are at least two ‘objects of apprecia-
tion’: the work itself and tonight’s performance of it” (McFee 2000, 546).
Dance performances are tokens of an abstract type, although, in addition
to the work, we must acknowledge, as an intermediate type, a performer’s