Abstract
Dancers sometimes speak of adopting the perspective of not-knowing in the context of their dancing. This attitude has two aspects: one the subjectivity of the dancer (which adopts a mode of not-knowing), and two, the body that creates. According to these artists, the subject-dancer needs to make room for the body by getting out of the way. The idea that subjectivity is no longer central and that the body holds the key is not new. Nietzsche is renowned for preferring the body to consciousness, and for looking towards corporeal becoming as the means by which life can be affirmed. His notion of (self) overcoming could be thought of in relation to the subject-dancer’s being in the dark. But it is Spinoza who takes these components into an explicitly ethical domain.
Spinoza’s famous dictum that “we don’t know what a body can do” identifies the twin elements discussed above: the subject who doesn’t know, in relation to a body which acts. However, it is one thing to acknowledge that dimming the lights on subjectivity can be aesthetically fruitful, another to call it good. This chapter explores the sense in which Spinoza’s understanding of goodness is able to introduce an ethical perspective on dance. It elucidates the good in terms of the body’s increasing corporeal power, thought through the notion of active and passive affections. It draws on Deleuze’s work on Spinoza in order to explore the ways in which we might conceive of dance practice as a form of the good.
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Notes
- 1.
For my review of In the Dark, see [13].
- 2.
Personal communication, 1998.
- 3.
Drew Leder offers a characterization of the typical sovereign subject who experiences his/her body mostly as an absence [8]. The idea that the dancer reverses this position through ‘backgrounding’ subjectivity is reflected in Leder’s exemption of dancing from his general claim that the body is liminal to our lived experience. In other words, the dancer’s body enjoys a corporeal prominence not usually felt.
- 4.
Deborah Hay’s book, My Body, The Buddhist looks to the body as the source [5].
- 5.
This is where Spinozan ethics differs from moral principles that depend upon universal notions of the good.
- 6.
Notice also that, for Spinoza, changes in the body also produce shifting modes of thought. Spinoza resisted Descartes’ mind/body distinction through arguing for one substance. The two qualities of substance, thought and extension, are two attributes of a single ontology. Thus, the enhancement of the one quality implies a correlative enhancement of the other.
- 7.
Deleuze underscores the importance of the new by arguing that activity is the only “real, positive and affirmative form of our capacity to be affected” [3, p. 225].
- 8.
This example is taken from the work of Russell Dumas (see Artist Profiles).
- 9.
Erin Manning writes of preacceleration in a related manner, as the space of creative possibility opened up within the dancing [9].
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Acknowledgements
The discussion of dance in this paper is informed by the understanding and generosity of those artists and practitioners with whom I have worked over many years. This is difficult to make visible according to the conventions of academic acknowledgement but is key to my having anything to say about dance. In the context of this discussion, I would therefore like to acknowledge Margaret Lasica, Russell Dumas, Shona Innes, Sally Gardner, Julia Scoglio and Anneke Hansen; also Eva Karczag, Pam Matt, Lisa Nelson, Deborah Hay and Joan Skinner.
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Artists’ Profiles
Russell Dumas is the Artistic Director of Dance Exchange, Australia. He has performed with many European Ballet companies, including the Royal Ballet (UK). He also danced with Trisha Brown Company and Twyla Tharp and Dancers in the USA. Dumas’ choreography is highly complex and original, requiring a great variety of skills on the part of his dancers.
Deborah Hay is Director of Deborah Hay Dance Company. She has over the years, developed a distinctive choreographic style which is perceptually focussed, score-based yet does not predetermine how a dancer will physically look when following the choreography.
Anneke Hansen has been creating dance works in New York City since 2002. Her work is concerned with dancing and dancers and strives to create meaning through evocative, sensuous, and sophisticated movement. Questions of what the body and mind are capable of, in terms of coordination, texture, and timing, are central to the studio explorations that serve as the source for performance works.
Eva Karczag has performed as a member of Trisha Brown and Dancers. Her performance work and her teaching are informed by dance improvisation and mindful body practices (including T’ai Chi Ch’uan and Qi Gong), the Alexander Technique (certified teacher), Ideokinesis, and Yoga.
Steve Paxton emerged from the Judson Dance Theatre in New York to become one of the founders of Contact Improvisation, a collective mode of improvisation which has spread throughout the world.
Susan Rethorst is a New York based choreographer. Her work has been presented at the Museum of Modern Art, The Kitchen Center, Dance Theater Workshop, Danspace Saint Marks, The Downtown Whitney Museum, among others, as well as at various dance theatres, universities, and festivals throughout the U.S.
Sara Rudner is one of the leading figures in American postmodern dance. She was a principal dancer in Twyla Tharp and Dancers, and has been choreographing, teaching and showing her own work for a number of years.
Kim Sargent-Wishart has trained in Body Mind Centering with Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen. She is completing a PhD exploring relationships between embodiment, emptiness and creative acts through the lenses and practices of Body-Mind Centering® and Tibetan Buddhism.
Nancy Stark Smith is a founding member of Contact Improvisation and a co-editor of Contact Quarterly. She works extensively with Steve Paxton.
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Rothfield, P. (2014). Embracing the Unknown, Ethics and Dance. In: Macneill, P. (eds) Ethics and the Arts. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-8816-8_9
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