Philosophy of the Performing Arts

(Bozica Vekic) #1

132 performance and the classical paradigm
years. See, for example, McFee 2000, Carroll 2003, Sparshott 2004, and
Van Camp 2009.



  1. McFee 1992, 88–111. McFee defended his view in his 2007.

  2. Original formulation in McFee 1992, 97–98.

  3. For concerns about whether a notated “score” can play this kind of role in
    dance, see Rubidge 1996 and Conroy 2006. I draw upon both of these sources
    in the following discussion.

  4. For an overview of the historical development of thinking about dance, see
    Carroll 2003.

  5. For a formalist conception of what a performed work of dance prescribes for
    performances, see Anderson 1975.

  6. Rubidge 1996, 223. These concerns are part of a more general worry about
    the ability of recordings to capture and convey to viewers elements that are
    crucial to the understanding and appreciation of theatrical and dance
    performance.

  7. Cited in Conroy 2007. I draw on references in Conroy’s paper in the discussion
    of dance reconstruction in the following paragraphs.

  8. Stephen Davies raised these points in private communication.

  9. Stephen Davies (private communication) has pointed out a parallel difficulty
    in music relating to the use of the voice. We lack evidence that would allow us
    to determine how medieval singers sang, given the possibility of voicing
    sounds in different places in the throat.

  10. Here, however, we might question whether the sounding is a matter of
    interpretation rather than mere execution. Recall the essentially interpretive
    dimension of performance in the performing arts.

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