Dancing around Meaning (and the Meaning around Dance)

Abstract

I want to begin this chapter with a statement from a recently published text on the ‘philosophy of dance’. This statement is included here because it alerts us to a significant feature of dance and urban life that informs much of this chapter. We are told that when walking

through the City, indoors or outdoors, one is everywhere confronted with the worn-down forms of distinctively artistic activity. There is architecture all over the place, of course. But also there is music everywhere, a background privately or publicly generated; there are sculptural and graphic forms, and literary language. One is surrounded, not indeed by artistic masterpieces, but by signs and symbols used in ways that could not be what they are without the direct influence of self-consciously artistic practice. But there is no sign of dance anywhere, other than in actual dances which have to be located and sought out. (Sparshott, 1995, p. 6)