Sara Regina Fonseca

AUDIENCES IN A POST-AUTONOMOUS DANCE HISTORY WRITING

I. INTRODUCTION

1. Motivation

The subject of this essay is motivated by the following questions: What have the
audiences of different epochs thought and felt about theatrical dance? How have dance
audiences changed their perception of the same works over the years? Is there a gap between
the perception of choreographers, critics and audiences? What is the significance of these
gaps? How do dance historians represent audiences in their writings? How would an
audience-centered dance history look like?

2. Purpose

The general purpose of this paper is to call attention towards dance audiences’
reactions, opinions and interpretations of dance works during the past. Rather than rendering a
historical dance audience research, this essay will focus on two main things: Analyzing how
some outstanding dance scholars have referred- implicitly or explicitly- to audiences during
the last twenty years; and introducing some aspects which might be important to consider
when writing dance history from an audience perspective. From now on, it should be clear
that I will be using the general term of dance in order to refer to Western theatrical dance.

3. Argumentation

I will be basing my analysis and discussions on the following arguments: That being
audiences an essential element in Western theatrical dance, too little attention is given to them
in dance history. This is shown by the way in which several scholars write dance history
focusing on the artists’ intentions or, in the best of the cases, on his/her cultural and socio-
political contexts. Furthermore, it is not uncommon to find traces of modernistic assumptions
in dance history writings from the last twenty years. Notions like geniuses, masterworks,

1
 Sara Regina Fonseca

authorship and autonomous Art persist; where the subjectivity of the artist continues to be
paramount and the subjectivity of the audience continues to be rejected. Finally, I would like
to argue that despite of the availability of substantial theoretical work on audience response,
dance history makes almost no use of it. This apparent lack of interest prevent dance scholars
from taking measurements that can facilitate the enterprise of writing an audience-centered
dance history in the future.

4. Methodologies and Sources

Given my deliberate purpose of looking for the absent voices of the audiences in
dance history texts, my approach to history should fall under the label of postmodernism and
post-structuralism. This means that my aim will not be to determine historical truths but to
scrutinize already existing historical accounts from what it seems to me to be an unusual
perspective: the perspective of the audience. I will try to identify the presence and absence of
the spectators in dance history writings, and suggest a shift of focus which might help leading
towards an audience-centered dance history. I have decided to use the work of some Western
dance scholars writing about Western theatrical dance during the last twenty years. These
writers have been chosen on the basis of their approval by recognized publishers, and the easy
access to their books and articles. In order to shift the focus towards audiences, I will make
use of literature about audience reception applied to theatre performances. I have noticed that
there is much more work written about audiences within the field of theatre than within the
field of dance. This is one of the reasons why I am using literature from theatre research, and
one of the reasons why I find the topic of my essay to be relevant.

5. Disposition

In the first section of the chapter Dance History: Approaches and Paradigms, I will
comment upon the implicit role of the audience within Romantic, Modernist and Post-
modernist conceptions of Art. In the second section of the same chapter I will analyze some
extracts written by a few dance scholars during the last fifteen years, focusing on the ways in
which they look at the participation of dance audiences in the process of making meaning. In
the fourth and fifth sections of the same chapter I will analyze some texts written by authors
who have more contextual approaches to history, in order to consider the implications that
2
 Sara Regina Fonseca

these approaches have for the role of audiences. The second chapter of this essay, Audience
Research: Aspects and Problems, deals with certain issues that can be relevant to consider in
an audience-centered approach to dance history. Some of these issues are: the characteristics
of the dance works, the dialogical nature of performance, the outcast spectator, the
transformation of perception over time, the phenomenological experience of dance spectators,
the inadequacy of verbal language to describe experience, and the intersection between the
horizons of the audiences and the dance works.

II. DANCE HISTORY: APPROACHES AND PARADIGMS

1. Aesthetic Paradigms, History and Audiences

Borrowing Michael Foucault’s notion of episteme, I will present some notions which, as
I understand them, are part of the general perception of Art and dance in the Romantic,
Modern and Postmodern paradigms. I will do this with the purpose of identifying some
characteristics of the role of the audience within these paradigms.

Art, in a Romantic conception, is usually seen as the divine creation of the individual
artist inspired by his/her internal world. Artists cannot avoid creation, and their Art is a
sincere expression of themselves as much as an emblem of universal expressions of the
human soul. Martha Graham and Isadora Duncan speak in these terms when describing their
lives and Art in their autobiographies. Thus, writings responding to this paradigm are not
uniquely addressed to artists from the Romantic historical period. As I will show later, the
figure of the artist as an inspired genius continues to be used by some dance scholars in order
to talk about works and artists in the Modern and Post-modern historical periods. This focus
tends to limit the response of the audiences to that of adoration or shock, where either of these
reactions signals the unquestionable success of the relevant artist.

The Modernist understanding of Art is known for taking further a concept of aesthetic
autonomy. Dance scholars writing within this paradigm tend to concentrate on the intrinsic
qualities of the dance works. The concept of autonomous Art is underlined by the belief that
the value of Art (with capital ‘A’) is totally independent from any references to external
contexts. Masterworks are so because of their aesthetic qualities, approved by some experts as

3
 Sara Regina Fonseca

being universal and unquestionable. In the same vein, spectators are either taken for granted
or ignored. They are assumed to be moved by the transcendental experience of watching Art,
and often addressed pedagogically: dance experts explain the greatness or poorness of
different dance works. The responses of spectators are rarely researched, for the audience’s
understanding or misunderstanding of Art has no influence in the significance of the worksi.

Finally, we could say that the Post-modernist paradigm we experience nowadays

accounts for a different episteme, which sees art - without a capital ‘A’- as a product and a
constitutive part of the dynamic complex of discourses that conform culture and society.
Artworks are not autonomous, but interactive, inter-textualii and vulnerable to multiple,
diverse and equally correct interpretations. As it should be, dance scholars and artists have not
been immune to this postmodern conception of art, culture and society. Participative dance
forms- like contact improvisation- and performances charged with evident references to social
and political issues –like the works by DV8 Physical Theatre- seem to proliferate. Similarly,
dance scholars offer critical views of dance with socio-cultural and political perspectives.
Some examples are the feministic accounts of Judith Butler and Carol Brown, or the
discursive approaches provided by Susan L. Foster. Far from autonomous or independent
from society, dance is set here within a context of power structures, contending desires, and
cultural codes. Seemingly, audiences have a more participative role in these kinds of
approaches, but as I will argue later on, they might run the risk of being assumed as a
homogenous body determined by its social class, gender, ethnicity and the prevailing political
structures which surround it.

2. Choreographers, dance works and viewers competing for meaning

I will now present some examples where I see traces of Romantic and Modernist
notions of Art, with the implications that these notions have for the role of audiences. In her
article ‘Expression and expressionism in American modern dance’ iii, Deborah Jowitt argues
for the now broadly accepted idea among critics that:

‘..the body as a medium, automatically evokes human action and feeling, no matter how
abstract the choreographer wishes to be.’iv

4
 Sara Regina Fonseca

This inherent expressiveness of the dancing body is a common belief among dance scholars
who analyze the works of choreographers who attempt to break free from the modern
understanding of ‘expression’. Regarding the evolution of the notion of ‘expression’, Jowitt
argues that:

Between 1927, when Martha Graham made her first ‘modern’ works and Doris Humphrey
developed her ideas of group choreography, and 1992, choreographer’s ideas about the
role and nature o expression in dance have swung in several directions v

The history of ‘expression’ told by Jowitt continues to develop until the 1950’s, when a group
of choreographers, of whom Merce Cunningham is representative, went far into their search
for ‘pure movement’. These artists claimed that movement could be expressive by itself,
without having to rely on external references, stories or the commandments of the
choreographer.

Whilst we are told the history of the choreographers’ ideas –with an emphasis on
Cunningham’s ideas- about ‘expression’, we are never told the history of audience’s ideas on
the same subject. Certainly, not every single spectator has followed the evolution of the
pioneers’ ideas about expression, or the advanced explanations of the expert spectators, the
dance scholars. The different understandings of the non-expert spectators make the
communicative process of performance much more complex than what it sounds when it is
described from the choreographer’s point of view.

Commenting on Graham’s Lamentation (1930) and Humphrey’s Two Ecstatic Themes

(1931), Jowitt quotes Marcia B. Siegel: ‘the dance is a perfectly fused meeting of passion and
will’ and she further reasserts Siegel’s comment adding that:

‘In both of these groundbreaking solos the forms themselves embodied the feelings and,
intense as the performances were, neither woman mimed emotion’vi

The fact that several critics contemporary to Jowitt talk in similar tones about the
inherent expressivity of pure movement suggests that there is a common language –and a
similar perception- between dance experts with similar backgroundsvii. However, this common
language among critics does not guarantee us that non-expert audiences share their

5
 Sara Regina Fonseca

perceptions. When did the historical late modern and early postmodern attention to pure
movement start for different audiences? A dance historian interested in visualizing the voice
of the spectators might need to re-historicize central aesthetic notions like ‘expression’, even
if this might mean to displace the perspective of critics and choreographers.

Indeed, there are many cases in which dance critics and historians mention oppositions
between the ‘real’ significance of a dance work -according to the intentions of the
choreographers-, and the ‘wrong’ readings of audiences or of other dance scholars. These
oppositions are rarely analyzed as a dynamic dialogue. Instead, alleged disagreements
between choreographer/dance work and spectators remind us of the Romantic and Modern
notions of ‘the genius’. More often than not, Cunningham is referred to as one of those great
artists who have been misunderstood by audiences and critics. Jowitt herself is one of those
blaming others for not understanding Cunningham (as she presumably does):

Merce Cunningham’s influential ideas, often quoted, often misunderstood, can be seen as
a counterstatement to the dominant emotionalism, narrative and role-playing that had
developed in the work of Martha Graham.viii

Similarly, Roger Copeland argues in his article ‘Beyond Expressionism’ (1994) that:

…one would expect a large, flourishing scholarly industry to centre on the aesthetic
sensibility that Cunningham shares with the other members of …(his) illustrious circle.
But the plain, sad truth of the matter is that the dance community has always been a bit
embarrassed by, impatient with and ultimately condescending towards the sorts of sound
scores and décor that Cunningham commissions from advanced composers and visual
artists. ix

Some of the critics to whom Copeland refers are Marcia Siegel from whom he quotes a
critic from 1977, and Arlene Croce from whom he quotes a critic from 1982. About the latter,
Copeland argues that:

Croce proceeds on the assumption that every production element exists in order to
support or better illuminate the movement. Apparently, it never occurs to her that
Cunningham’s approach to collaboration might be about the nature of interference,
static, white noise, audio/visual discontinuity and about the habits of attention one needs
to cultivate in an urban environment of unceasing sensory overloadx.

6
 Sara Regina Fonseca

It is obvious that whilst Copeland and other contemporary dance scholarsxi have given
up early modern notions of unity and coherence, they still seem to function within the modern
paradigm of absolute truths and origins. This is reflected in the way some critics refer to
incoherencies between the ‘real’ significance of the works and the diverse –wrong?-
interpretation of the viewers. Commenting on Yvonne Rainer’s Dialogues, Jowitt claims that:

The effect was to debunk emotional pas de deux that implied the sexual act, but
disguised it by glamour and virtuosic dancing. That the duet also ‘expressed’ to some
viewers a contemporary detachment of spirit and flesh was not, I think, any part of
Rainer’s intentxii

Notice the non-coincidence between Rainer’s intentions -lay bare the mundane issue
which the ‘emotional pas de deux’ is actually about? -, and what ‘some viewers’ saw in her
work –‘detachment of spirit and flesh’-. Notice as well that Jowitt does not mention the word
‘interpretation’, or any other word which suggests that there is a viewer who actively
participates in the creation of meaning. Instead, she talks about the ‘effect’ of the duet, and
what the duet -despite of that ‘effect’ and of Rainer’s intentions-, ‘also expressed to some
viewers’. Jowitt seems to see the construction of meaning as totally depending on the dance
work, assigning it an unproblematic capacity to express different things to different –passive?-
viewers.

Similarly, dance historian Joan Acocella finds a non-coincidence between Rainer’s Trio
A, and his own perception of the work:

Even dance that aims to be emotionless is filled with emotion. When I watch Yvonne
Rainer’s Trio A, which Rainer created with the intent of making a dance devoid of all
hierarchy, repetition, accent or any other form of emphasis that might create a human
drama, what holds my attention is the human drama of that intent: its sheer futility and
the touching upright, girls-college seriousness with which it is pursued. I like Rainer for
trying to do this; the world needs these anti-sentimental campaigns. She fails nobly, and
this makes an interesting dance. xiii

By evidencing his role as an active viewer, Acocella seems to give the audience more
agency than Jowitt does. This agency is strengthened by the fact that the viewer- the writer
himself- seems to know better about the work than the artist does. On the one hand, we have
the authority with which Acocella speaks: he knows what the ‘dance aims to be’ and what
Rainer is ‘trying to do’. On the other hand, the writer exposes his opinions and subjective
experiences as a viewer. This is evident in expressions like: ‘When I watch Yvonee Rainer’,
’what holds my attention’, ‘I like Rainer’, ’the world needs’. In this case, the non-coincidence
7
 Sara Regina Fonseca

between Rainer’s intention and the perception of the viewer is seen as a failure–although a
‘fortunate’ one- of the choreographer. As a contrast to Jowitt, Acocella does not suggest that
the dance work owns its meaning by ‘expressing’ this or that. Instead, Acocella seems to
suggest that it is the capable viewer – the writer himself- who creates the actual significance
of the dance whilst he or she ‘watches’ it.

Despite of the differences exposed above, we could argue that neither Acocella, nor
Copeland or Jowitt go further into the analysis of the non-coincidences that they identify
between the choreographer’s and the viewer’s perception or understanding of the works. In all
the cases mentioned above, the fact that viewers and choreographers see different things in the
work is accompanied by an implicit or explicit assumption that one of the two groups is
wrong. The assumption that there is only one ‘right’ interpretation and one ‘real’ significance
of a particular dance work seems to me to say much about the metaphysical understanding
that these writers have of the processes of communication and meaning making. There is a
truth that is portrayed or embedded in the dance works. Viewers and choreographers strive to
understand it, sometimes succeeding, sometimes failing. There is not a participative and
dialogic process of meaning making, but a hierarchical process, in which either
choreographer, dance work or expert viewer owns the truth. Furthermore, the common, non-
expert viewer is sometimes ignored and sometimes represented as a homogeneous mass –with
the exception of Jowitt’s mention of ‘some viewers’- who either follows unequivocally the
plan of the choreographer or completely misses the point of his/her work.

3. Audiences contextualized

Historical accounts which focus on socio-cultural and political contexts challenge the
notions of geniuses and masterpieces as the centre of history. Let me present some examples
of this approach and look at the role played by the audience in them.

In her article ‘Considering Causation and Conditions of Possibility’ (2004), dance

historian Linda J. Tomko adheres to the Foucauldian concept of ‘episteme’, analyzing the
significance of Isadora Duncan, St. Denis and Loie Fuller within a social frame which
provided ‘conditions of possibility’ for the innovations of these artists. Tomko tells us that a
separate spheres ideology in North America of the late 19th century limited women’s
participation to their homes and families, commanding them to be ‘pious, pure, domestic, and

8
 Sara Regina Fonseca

submissive’. However, Tomko explains that the special assignation of spiritual matters to
women gave them an exit to the public sphere, where women created associations that
eventually fostered the formation of women’s rights groups. In this way, Tomko presents a
dynamic negotiation between traditional social structures and female agency.

In a similar tone of negotiation, Tomko presents Fuller’s, St. Denis’ and Duncan’s
success as somehow depending on the support of these women’s organizations; at the same
time as she gives credit to the innovative character of the artists’ work:

…The rationales for and social action by female voluntary society organizations provided
the dance innovators with much-needed platforms for launching a performing career…xiv

About Duncan Tomko says that:

The competitions played out by hostesses through dinner stylings and salon
engagements, and their related sponsorship of matinee and recital events, created
conditions of possibility for innovation by the emerging dancer at a key point in her
career…(She) danced Nymphs and Ophelia before an audience “well-filled with
fashionable people”xv

Clearly, the purpose of Tomko’s article is to locate these three great female artists
within a social context that is otherwise ignored by historians who see them as isolated
individuals. This contextual awareness grants a visible place to the audiences, which are
defined by their social identity in terms of ethnicity, class and gender. In this case, the
audiences referred to by Tomko are primarily white, middle-upper class American women
who share a common ideology and an ambiguous position in society that is at the same time
compromising and rebellious. Identifying the ‘conditions of possibility’ enables Tomko to
deduce that the three artists had a sympathizing response from the circle of women she is
referring to. Nevertheless, towards the end of the article Tomko gives prove of her awareness
that there existed groups of women who were excluded from this sphere of cultural life, and
who might not have sympathized with the performances if they had been given the
opportunity to see them:

It must be acknowledged that these two types of activism won gains primarily for white,
middle-and upper-class women. St Denis’s refashioning of orientalist source materials
certainly furthered the “othering” –the reifying and derogation of other cultures
accomplished by western representations of Indian and Egyptian cultures that Edwards
9
 Sara Regina Fonseca

Said so cogently identified in connection with the Middle East. As well, the women’s act of
recasting failed to bridge American racial divides or the era and secure presentation or
reception for women of colorxvi

We do not know if non-white-middle-upper-class women ever saw Duncan, Fuller and

Saint Denis; nor do we know what these women might have thought about their work.
Finally, the reference to Edward Said indicates the value that postcolonial theories can have
for critical studies of early American modern dance’s audience response.

In a similar contextual vein, Andrée Grau and Stephanie Jordan have compiled several
essays, analyzing the developments of dance in different European countries. The criteria for
this compilation are expressed in the editors’ argument that:

The arts, including dance, can reflect, reinforce, prompt, challenge as well as be
appropriated in the quest for identity. They are never politically innocent: they operate in
dialogue with both exclusive and inclusive ideologies.xvii

Thus, we have that the focus shifts from the artist as an autonomous creator to artists as
functioning within state apparatuses and politics of national identity. Within this context,
artists accept, negotiate or contradict prevailing cultural politics in order to get through their
artistic careers. Artistic development and politics are in constant dialogue and
interdependence. The shift of focus is significant but, in my opinion, the articles tend to
reduce the role of the audiences to that of passive witnesses of the negotiations between state
apparatuses and individual artists. Looking for possibilities, I have extracted two of the few
paragraphs in which the writers do mention the audience.

In their article ‘Effervescence and tradition in French dance’, Georgiana Gore,

Laurence Louppe and Wilfride Piollet claim that:

French culture and society were not, however, able to come to terms with modern dance
until after 1968. In order for unconventional bodies to be accepted, for individuals artists,
freed from a legitimation presence beyond themselves, to be condoned, it had taken this
immense revolution of structures of the imagination, of the hierarchy of values which had
overthrown traditional society, a process so well described by Barthes in Mythologies. xviii

10
 Sara Regina Fonseca

This condensed commentary touches upon some interesting issues. French audiences before
1968 represent a traditional ‘French cultural identity’, whose social values crashed with the
values signified by the’ unconventional’ dancing bodies of modern dance. What were the
prevailing conventions about the body before 1968, and how did these conventions
determined the audience’s expectations of dance? The writers also point out that it took a
while, indeed an ‘immense revolution of structures of the imagination’, for society to be able
to sympathize with the ‘new’ kind of bodies performing on stage. It is the transformation of
the audience’s perception that which is interesting for a dance history centered on audience
perspective. The reference to Roland Barthes’s Mythologies may suggest that reading the
products of certain society –including dance- as signs of its ideology might give us clues
about the way in such society- including dance audiences- might have perceived a certain
dance work or style.

In the last paragraph of the article ‘Between Institutions and Aesthetics:

Choreographing Germanness? ‘, Claudia Jeschke and Gabi Vetterman conclude that:

Even where incipient political reflection and action did begin to form -that is, in West
German Tanztheater-, hardly any of the groundbreaking spirit of the 1968 pioneers
survives today. Nor is it adequate to ascribe this attitude to the creators alone: German
audiences too are not trained in conceiving the critical potential of dance as a cultural
and national practice.xix

The writers recognize that the audiences are as important determinants of the meaning
of dance as creators are. Regardless of how much choreographers might strive to enact critical
discourses in their dances, audiences might fail to see that if they are not trained to do so.
From this follows that a dance history which focuses on audiences should look at the ways in
which audiences of the past related to specific dance works, according to the tendencies in
their readings or interpretations. In this case we could ask: How was audiences’ conception of
dance and the world in 1968, and how did this conception help the visibility of the dance
‘pioneers’ of that year? What changed in the audiences’ perception so that they are incapable
of reading dance as a cultural and national practice today?

11
 Sara Regina Fonseca

4. Audiences as part of the puzzle

I have chosen to present a brief overview of the way in which Susan L. Foster structures
her writing in her book Choreography and Narrative (1996)xx. The reason for this is that the
role played by the audiences seems to be more significant in Foster’s discursive approach than
in other contextual approaches to dance history. The book deals with theatrical dance in
France during the 18th and 19th centuries, and the way in which the changing socio-cultural
context of this time provided the conditions for the development of the narrative ballet or
ballet d’action. Foster introduces the book and her methodology by showing how three
versions of the ballet Pygmalion –Marie Sallé’s version in 1734, Louis Milon’s version in
1789 and Arthur’s Saint-León’s version in 1847- gesture the emergence, development and
solidification of the notions of individuality and society that characterized the modern and
capitalistic France of the middle of the 19th century. One could say that Foster’s discursive
approach looks for relationships instead of causes, for networks instead of origins –being
these origins the artists, audiences or political structures- .

Foster presents the artistic environment of theatrical dance at the time, including the
existing stages, the kinds of audiences attending different spectacles, the possible connections
between different art forms , and the popularity –or unpopularity- of the specific works she is
talking about. When she mentions ‘Marie Sallé’s adoring Parisian audience’, for example, she
is probably relying on data about ticket sales and reviews written at the time. Foster explains
the expectations of the audience –a generalized one-, concerning its tastes, its prejudices about
social behavior and its conceptions of Art. On these bases, Foster explains how a specific
dance work might have fulfilled or challenged the audience’s expectations in a way that
determined the work’s success or its failure. About Sallé’s Pygmalion, Foster claims that:
‘Her scandalously realistic choreographic choices achieved instant acclaim’xxi, and later that:

Sallé ‘simultaneously transgressed boundaries in the hierarchical systems of professional

status, class and genre.xxii

Foster enters the dance works, by focusing on their narratives and the relationship
between their characters, identifying the kind of discourse which is embodied by the dancers.
The dance works might ‘gesture’ prevailing social values as well as they might gesture
notions that are just starting to emerge. In relation to Sallé’s Pygmalion, the notion of the
individual was gestured by the performing body as well as it was the foundation for the
political ideals of the French Revolution which was to come.

12
 Sara Regina Fonseca

By comparing social discourses enacted in several dance works at different historical

times –like the three versions of Pygmalion-, Foster proceeds to explain how these works
enact different conceptions of the world – of the individual, society, art, women, men,
emotions, body, etc-. Thus, we have that Sallé’s Pygmalion character is emblematic of the
‘inseparability of self and society’, whilst Saint-León’s Pygmalion emphasizes the ‘mental
and emotional life’ of the male individual, and Milon’s Pygmalion is emblematic of an
‘interiorized subjectivity and also a new conception of art as the sublimation of desire’xxiii.
According to Foster, the great visibility that this ballet gives to the male individual and its
subjectivity echoes the ideals of citizenship that underlined the French Revolution. Moreover,
the new role of the female character in the same ballet resembles the new ‘new power
structures’ of the French Revolution, where the agency and subjectivity of the male sculpture
is maximized, but the female agency is abolished by making her a mute statue. Departing
from this analysis, Foster argues that ‘ballets privileged the heterosexual male as the ideal
spectator’xxiv.

Social, political and aesthetic discourses interact in relationships with different degrees
of correspondence and opposition –like when an artist like Sallé challenges aesthetic
conventions by being ‘too realistic’-. The comparison of different prevailing discourses brings
light to the function and conception of Art in certain society, as well as to the audiences’
attitude towards theatrical dance in the same society. Thus, Foster explains that at the time of
Sallé’s Pygmalion, social and aesthetic discourses interwove in the dance. Thus, the dance
that people saw in the theatres in the first half of the 18th century was a dance that they could
imagine doing themselves –alas in a less sophisticated manner-, since dance was then a
central part of social life and a concrete manifestation of social ideals. However, times were
changing and by the 19th century the dancing body of theatrical dance was permeated and
shaped by scientific advances in anatomy and medicine, becoming a body whose
extraordinary appearance broke away from the social body and its ideals of decorum. As I
understand it, Foster claims that society and Art embodied different discourses and their
relationship became one of sublimation rather than one of allegory: Society –and the
audience- did no longer see its own ideal realization exquisitely performed by the dancers on
stage; but it rather witnessed the sublimation of its desires in the objectified dancing body. As
the conception and function of Art changes, so does the contract between artists and audiences
and, accordingly, the skills required by both artists and audiences to produce and interpret the
dance works. In this respect, Foster explains how the cult to reason materialized in the French

13
 Sara Regina Fonseca

modern society of the 19th century manifested itself in the realist paintings, the modern novel
and the narrative ballet of the epoch. The emergence and development of these art forms
required particular skills for artistic production and reception. Foster discusses the way in
which choreographers resolved the tension between virtuosity and narrative, as well as the
way in which audiences became competent to understand the plots:

Succesful ballets, both ancient and modern, certainly relied on the viewer’s prior
knowledge of the narrative‘s plot, character, and settingsxxv

Interesting enough, Foster quotes the opinion of one viewer, Monsieur le Baron,
regarding the realistic approach of the 18t century narrative ballets:

“It would be therefore quite ridiculous, in my opinion, to see Terpsichore expressing her
pain by dancing and pirouetting sadly around a tomb. The dance, emblematic of lighter,
more joyous emotions, should be restricted in its choice of topics to the levity of love, the
delight and festivity of celebration”xxvi

Even if Monsieur le Baron seems to have been well informed about the prevailing
discourses of dance, he is not presented by Foster as a critic or choreographer, but as ‘one
viewer’, an individual spectator giving his particular vision. In this case, Foster’s source is the
publication of Monsieur le Baron’s correspondence with other personalities. However, finding
opinions of less prestigious viewers might require historians to dig into sources like diaries
and non published personal letters instead of public documents like programs, reviews or
critiques.

What we can see from this brief overview, is that Foster does not offer an original
motivator for the creation of a dance work, but she offers a complex of relationships between
political, social and aesthetic discourses functioning during a certain epistemic epoch. Within
this frame, audiences are a dynamic piece in the puzzle, instead of a passive receiver or
witness. They belong to ‘society’ where different discourses contend, refer and correspond to
each other. Audiences are consumers and producers of social, political and aesthetic
discourses as much as artists are. It is evident that Foster does not aim to write an audience
centered dance history in her book, but her approach could be very useful in other to give the
audiences a more equalitarian place in dance history. Her sporadic use of personal opinions of
individual viewers points towards an aspect which would be of great importance for an
audience centered dance history writing: audiences need to be considered not only as a
homogeneous social body immersed in the dynamic flow of discourses, but also as individual
spectators with individual subjectivities. Arguably, we have inherited the notions of
individuality and subjectivity that, according to Foster, emerged with French –and other
14
 Sara Regina Fonseca

European- modern societies of the 18th and 19th centuries. Consequently, it should not be
surprising that Western scholars tend to present and understand artists as subjective
individuals. However, it would be just as consequent, in my opinion, that spectators were
more often understood as subjective individuals as well.

III. AUDIENCE RESEARCH: ASPECTS AND PROBLEMS

An apparent scarcity of audience perspectives in dance history does not imply a scarcity
or lack of audience research in dance. It is the inclusion and use of such researches in
historical accounts of dance, which I claim to be rare. Next, I will present some of the issues
dealt with in audience research, and the implications they might have for dance historians
writing from an audience perspective.

1. Conditions given by the Artwork:

Analyzing certain aesthetic aspects of performance which can determine the role of
spectators is a common procedure in audience research. Some of the aspects considered might
be: the eyes’ focus of performers in relation to the audience, the realistic or abstract character
of scenery and the spatial proximity between performers and audience, just to name a few.
These aspects are often analyzed in terms of their potential to affect the response of the
audiences and create different kinds of relationships or ‘effects’ like: Aesthetic distance: a
psychical detachment which allows the audience to perceive performances as self-contained
worlds with no relation to personal issues or to any laws governing reality outside the scenic
space. This effect tends to encourage an attitude of contemplation. Make-belief: the effect by
which audiences are invited to believe that what happens on stage is real. This effect tends to
provoke reactions like personal identification with the characters or voyeurism. It is often
connected to entertainment of easy consumption, where a minimum of creativity is demanded
from the audience. De-familiarization: a represented alteration of ‘reality’, which renders a
world which is both recognizable and awkward. This effect is thought to encourage curiosity
and a creative construction of meaning from the part of the audience. Alienation: the artwork
15
 Sara Regina Fonseca

is presented so that the audience is aware of it as a construction, a humanly manufactured

fiction. Here the audience is motivated to assume a critical and distanced position towards the
reality presented on stage.

Structural and stylistic analyses of dance often include descriptions of some of the
aspects mentioned abovexxvii, providing the conditions of possibility that the dance works
provide for spectators. What might be much more complicated, though, is to establish the
conditions of possibility provided by the audiences; as well as their actual experiences during
performances. We will come back to this later, but for now, I would like to place some
questions which can help shifting the focus towards the audiences: What does the spectator
bring with him/her in order to encounter the dance work? How do spectators in interaction
with the elements provided by the work determine the nature and significance of a
performance event?

2. The dialogical nature of performance events

Treating the spectator as a ‘reader’ and the dance work as ‘a text’ allows us to use
theories which fed the field of reader-response in Europe during the 1960s. According to such
theories, it is readers in interaction with the texts, as opposed to authors, those who construct
the meanings of texts. In our context, ‘authors’ would be equivalent to choreographers and
‘readers’ to spectators. One of the pioneers and most influential texts dealing with this matter
is Roland Barthes’ essay ‘The Death of the Author’ (1967), in which he argues against critics
and readers who try to understand the meaning of a text by scrutinizing into the intentions,
identity and socio-political context of the author. Some of Barthes’ famous quotations are that

"The essential meaning of a work depends on the impressions of the reader, rather than
the "passions" or "tastes" of the writer; "a text's unity lies not in its origins," or its creator,
"but in its destination," or its audience…And the “origin” of meaning lies exclusively in
“language itself” and its impressions on the reader. xxviii

Literary criticism which looks for meaning in the ‘text’ as opposite to looking for
meaning in the author’s identity or social context could partly be related to dance history and
dance criticism focusing on the formal qualities of the dance works. Even though they seem to
resist giving the audience responsibility for ‘the essential meaning of a work’, we could argue
that writers like Deborah Jowitt and Joan Acocella share with Barthes an emphasis on ‘the
16
 Sara Regina Fonseca

origin of meaning in language itself’. In this vein, the meaning of a dance should be found in
the dance itself, since dance is inherently expressive. Indeed, post-structural conceptions
which placed meaning in language were well in vogue within academic discourse during the
1960’s and 1970’s. Dance scholars writing during these years, like Jowitt or Acocella, must
have been influenced by these conceptions.

Certain shift of emphasis seems to have taken place in audience research as well as
dance scholarship later in the 20th century. Sally Banes gives account of this transformation
when she states that:

Influenced not only by Johnston’s experiments in critical writing but also by Susan
Sontag’s essay “Against Interpretation” –a sacred text for my generation-as a critic and
historian I initially staked out an aggressively descriptive, anti-interpretive stance… But
by the early 1980, like many of my generation, I found myself gravitating towards other,
more analytical, interpretive, and contextual approaches to writing culturexxix.

This renewed interest in analysis and interpretation will rely neither on the artist, nor on
the dance work as the only veritable sources of meaning. The text –the dance work- will not
contain hermetic meanings, but will contain dense signs permeated by multiple intertextual
references. In this way, disclosing the meaning of a dance work will entail to disclose
networks of discourses, at the middle of which audiences strive for semiotic interpretation.

As we know, Susan Foster’s Choreography and Narrative would be published in 1996,

giving a comprehensive account of theatrical dance in Paris during the 18th and 19th
centuries. Her strong focus on context places dance production and reception as actively
participating in the construction of socio-cultural and political discourses. Published six years
earlier, Susan Bennett’s contextual strategy in Theatre Audiences is comparable to Foster’s.
Needless to say, Bennett’s book is deliberately centered on the audiences, whilst Foster is not.
Attempting to give a historical account of audience’s participation in theatre events, Bennett
shows how socio-economical contexts and cultural institutions determine the composition and
reception of audiences. At the same time, Bennett acknowledges audiences’ capability to
disturb social and theatrical norms. In this way, each part provides conditions and restrictions
for each other, making a dynamic history of audiences who follow and audiences who resist:

Medieval and sixteenth-century audiences did not enjoy the power of the Greek
audiences, but nevertheless still functioned between stage and audience worlds which
afforded, in different ways, the participation of those audiences as actors in the drama.
With the establishment of private theatres in the seventeenth century, however, there is
the beginning of a separation of fictional stage world and audience. Higher admission
17
 Sara Regina Fonseca

prices probably limited the social composition of the audience, and with the beginning of
passivity and more elitist audiences came codes and conventions of behavior. In terms of
English theatre, audiences became increasingly passive and increasingly bourgeois. With
the exception of the first forty years of the nineteenth century – when the working-class
audience created noisy disturbances and occasional riots in the pits- this is a steady
progression to a pick in the second half of the nineteenth century. After the 1850, with
the pits replaced by stalls, theatre design ensured the more sedate behavior of
audiences, and the footlights first installed in the 17th century private houses had become
a literal barrier which separated the audience and the stage. In the last hundred years, of
course, there have been many challenges and disruptions of the codes and conventions
which demand passivity. These have led to the productive and emancipated spectator
who is at the centre of this text.xxx

Imagining a similar account of dance audiences does not seem too difficult. After all,
we see similarities between dance historian’s approaches (like Foster’s or Tomko’s) and
Bennett’s approach. However, I would like to argue that an audience-centered dance history
should not only focus on ‘emancipated spectators’ or on works which encourage the active
participation of audiences. Doing this would mean to ignore millions of perceptions that have
taken place in theatres with a proscenium stage, fictive characters, light effects, and all the
other aspects which are said to encourage distance and passivity from the part of the
audiences. Indeed, the job of a writer re-interpreting dance history from an audience
perspective could well be that of giving voice to the, otherwise, silenced audiences sitting in
the back seats of the Operas.

3. The Outcast Spectator

Let me now introduce what I would like to call ‘two types of outcast spectators’. The
first type is the spectator who ‘does not manage to understand the real significance’ –or the
lack of significance- of dance works’. Critics’ resistance to validate the common responses of
audiences is observed by Una Chaudhuri (1984), when she identifies a phenomenon she calls
‘the schizophrenic contemporary response (hated by critics, loved by the audience) ’xxxi. The
inversion of this phenomenon could work just as well for our first type of outcast spectator:
‘loved by the critics, hated by the audience’, even when the audience might not have the
chance to say so. What does the incomprehension or de displeasure of dance audiences
actually mean? What do their reactions tell us about the values and about the perception and
interpretation skills of certain society? The shift of focus that I am proposing here is
succinctly expressed by I Chaundhuri in her campaign for a ‘spectator-oriented criticism’:

18
 Sara Regina Fonseca

‘the description of how a play works on a spectator –rather than of what it means- can
supply the terms our criticism needs in order to erase the gap between theory and its
object’xxxii

Now, as we have seen, not all of the spectators constituting the audience are part of the
mainstream or ‘ideal spectators’ mentioned at times by Foster and Tomko. Spectators who
belong to historically segregated social groups and have a critical position towards society can
be our second type of outcast spectators. Feminist writers are good examples of this type of
spectators, and they can provide theoretical tools to give voice to ‘non-ideal spectators’. In
The Feminist Spectator as Critic (1988), Jill Dolans considers feminists to be outcast
spectators:

The feministic spectator might find that her gender-and/or her race, class, or sexual
preference-as well as her ideology and politics make the representation alien and even
offensive. It seems that as a spectator she is far from ideal. Determined to draw larger
conclusions from this experience, she leaves the theatre while the audience applauds at
the curtain call and goes off to develop a theory of feminist performance criticismxxxiii.

A postcolonial critic might be a similar kind of spectator, whose awareness of

colonialist representations of non-Westerners can make him or her feel excluded or offended
by certain dance works. Feminist and Postcolonial theories have indeed been used by dance
scholars in order to make critical revisions of dance history. Feminist accounts of Romantic
Ballet and postcolonial criticisms of American Modern Dance are not uncommon.xxxiv In this
case, the dance historian and the feminist or postcolonial critic are the same person. She or he
offers analyses of the dance works from her or his critical perspective. Using the same
theoretical tools, an audience-centered dance history would need, however, to perform a slight
change of focus: How have the perceptions of women and non-Western spectators changed
over time? Or in a double shift, how has the reading of different audiences turned more or less
patriarchal and more or less colonialist at different times? Detecting outcast spectators would
require the search for unusual sources that can give account of the unpublished and unpopular
opinions of segregated spectators. This might become a complication for researchers.
However, I believe that the attempt is worth in the sense that it might help problematizing the
audience as a homogeneous entity, as well as it might lead to reconsider the reactions of
indifference and misunderstanding as meaningful responses.

4. Historicizing Perception

19
 Sara Regina Fonseca

Even when new sources might become interesting and important for an audience-
centered dance history, old sources might be equally useful if they are looked from new
perspectives. I will try to illustrate this with two examples.

The first example is the significant change of status that Rudolf Laban suffered in Nazi
Germany. Various historians have suggested that Rudolf Laban’s performances were
appreciated by Nazi Party members and sympathizers during the 1920’s and until 1936, when
the Nazis started seeing a threat in his work and forced him to leave for England in 1938.
Supposing that these facts are right, we could ask: What made the perception of Nazi
sympathizers change during this decade? Did they see elements they had not seen before in
Laban’s works? What were they? How did their reading of Germaness become a reading of
universality or subjective individuality that shocked with the Nazi’s principles?

I have taken the other example from Lena Hammergren’s article ‘Many Sources, Many
Voices’, in which she suggests that comparing first and second sources can tell us about when
and why and individual artist becomes part of the dance cannon. Hammergren makes her
point by using the example of German historian Oskar Bie, whose opinion of Isadora Duncan
changed radically over time. In 1906, explains Hammergren, Bie denies Isadora Duncan’s
influence in modern dance, whilst in 1919 Bie gives her credit for leading ‘dance into a new
phase’. In the face of this kind of contradictions, Hammergren suggests that:

...because we lack enough information on exactly why Bie changed his mind (was he
influenced by other critics opinions, had the audiences reception changed, or had he
simply watched more performances by Duncan?), we might, instead of deeming him
wrong in 1906, look at the two editions as equally ‘true’. xxxv

By shifting the focus of enquiry, Hammergren historicizes perception – how and why does
perception of dance change over time? -, and we can get an idea of how a history of dance
reception could be written.

5. The embodied spectator

As I mentioned earlier, reception studies have benefited from seeing performance as

systems of signification which are interpreted by spectators. The ways in which performance
works as a meaningful ‘text’ constituted by several layers of signification is one of the main
subjects within the field of semiotics of performance. Given the scope of this essay, I will

20
 Sara Regina Fonseca

content myself with having mentioned it shortly and I will proceed to mention what could be
understood as another dimension of dance. One that is experiential rather than textual.

In such a dimension, dance unfolds to the audience not so much as symbols to be read,
but as bodies moving purposefully in time and space. This kind of perception focuses on the
way our bodies are affected when we watch other bodies moving, instead of the ways in
which we construct meanings by decoding symbolic elements of the performance. The
phenomenological researches of Maurice Merlau-Ponty have been of great influence in this
kind of approach to perception. Staton B. Garner explains the aim of phenomenology as
follows:

To redirect attention from the world as it is conceived by the abstracting, “scientific” gaze
(the objective world) to the world as it appears or discloses itself to the perceiving subject
(the phenomenal world); to pursue the thing as it is given to consciousness in direct
experience; to return perception to the fullness of its encounter with its environment. xxxvi

The implications of a phenomenological approach to dance perception have been examined

by Sondra Horton Fraleigh, who claims that:

The audience perceives her dance, through her movement as it conveys intentions. In
short, they see what she does and see the thought in it –not behind it or before it. If she
moves softly, they see softness; if she moves sharply, that is what they see… xxxvii

Indeed, phenomenological approaches to perception imply a criticism to cultural

analyses of dance which deny the direct experience of subjectivity –the sense of being in the
world- and kinesthetic sympathy –the way bodies are affected by the movement of other
bodies-. According to this criticism, such analyses tend to reduce perception to a textual
reading made a priori – for example that audiences would identify themselves with the
notions of individual freedom portrayed in dance at the midst of the French Revolution-.
Nevertheless, a nuanced understanding of phenomenology recognizes the ‘impact of historical
contingency’, showing the possibility of a phenomenological approach to history. As
phenomenologist Don Ihde (1990) put it:

The histories of perception teach us that every version of microperception is already

situated within and never separated from the human and already cultural
macroperception which contains itxxxviii.

Avoiding the fallacy of a purely sensual encounter between subject and object, and at
the same time acknowledging the embodied and non-textual experience of watching dance
might prove to be a fair way of approaching the complex phenomenon of perception. Garner
explains phenomenology’s contribution to historical inquiry in the following way:

21
 Sara Regina Fonseca

Phenomenological analysis may value the registers of consciousness over external

operations of historical causality and constitution, but it can provide a perspective denied
to retrospective forms of historical analysis: a description of history as it is experienced,
as its forces and outlines are perceived (or not). It can explore the particular modes of
attention engaged by history, the way in which history is both manifested and constituted
in personal and intersubjective fields. In this way, phenomenology can offer the cultural
or materialist critic access to the individual and social life-worlds within which history
arises and manifests itself, and save contemporary theory form the irony of a materialism
that has surrendered contact with experience in its actual materiality xxxix

Using this phenomenological approach can help us finding alternatives to predominant

class, gender and ethnic classifications used in cultural and materialistic approaches to dance
history. Thanks to historians like Tomko, we know that modern dance audiences in America
of the 1920s were mainly constituted by women who started being active in the public sphere.
Thanks to her, we also know that giving credit to female artists was a way of giving credit to
women’s agency in general. A phenomenological approach to these audiences would
complement this vision by questioning the way in which these embodied women perceived
the rhythms, qualities and spaces created by, let us say, Duncan’s dancing body. Indeed, such
personal experiences might be very difficult to access either because of the lack of sources
like personal letter, diaries and the like; or because of the very inadequacy of verbal language
to express experience. I will comment on this last issue in the next section.

6. Language versus subjective experience

Arguably, verbal language is often incompetent to describe or express what we call

personal or subjective experiences. When the audience being researched is still alive, further
dialogue might help clarifying the faults of language; but when the audiences under research
belong to other historical epochs, this is of course not possible. Notwithstanding, historians
with post-structural approaches to language would assume that the experiences of audiences
emerge with –and not before or after- the linguistic articulation of them. In any case,
historians dealing with audience response have to rely on verbal sources, making the
relationships between verbal language and audience’s experiences a relevant issue.

In his essay ‘Audiences and Perceptions of Liveness in Performance’, Matthew Reason

argues that the explorations of the relationships between language and the articulation of the
experiences of theatre performances have been under-researched. As Reason explains, most of
the significant research on this subject has been done within the field of music, where writers
like Theodore Adorno, George Steiner and Roland Barthes have recognized the difficult

22
 Sara Regina Fonseca

relationship between music and language. When researching dance audiences, discussions
about the perception of non-referential language (like abstract painting or music) and more
referential language (like theatre or literature) are equally interesting, for dance performances
are, in different degrees, charged with both kinds of signs. Reason explains that Adorno
comes up with two conclusions in his reflections on the relationship between the introspective
experience of music and its description in language:

First, Adorno places particular emphasis on ‘technical terminology’, suggesting that the
difficultly of responding to music is lessened for experts sharing a developed technical
vocabulary. Similar points are frequently made in relation to other performing arts: for
example, both Martin Esslin, in Anatomy of Drama (1976:55-66), and Janet Adshead, in
Dance Analysis (1988), suggest that the solution to the difficulty of articulating
experiences of theatre and dance is the development of a strong technical vocabulary

Interesting enough, Reason refers to Janet Adshead giving us the connection between
Adorno’s reflections on music and dance perception. The ‘technical vocabulary’ required by
Esslin and Adshead can be said to belong to the critics, whose job is in some way to
systematize and articulate the experience of perceiving performances. However, as we have
mentioned before, the well trained and informed eye of the critic is not always –not to say that
it is seldom- representative of the non-expert, common viewer. Furthermore, as Reason puts
it, rephrasing and quoting Frank Sibley:

..Technical vocabulary may articulate the character and qualities of music, but does ‘little
to explain why music may engage us as appreciative listeners’ (Frank Sibley 1993)xl…

Moreover, the possibility of a language which is more expressive of the engaging experience
of ‘appreciative listeners’ or viewers is shadowed by Adorno’s observation that:

Expressions are pre-filtered, mediated by consciousness, by wider social structures and

by language itselfxli

In this light, it would be impossible to use verbal sources –technical or non-technical- in

order to access the instantaneous perception of dance works by audiences of the present and
the past. Given that this way of thinking gives us no solutions for the moment, it might be
appropriate to adopt a post-structural approach to language, where language is thought to be
‘constitutive of experience rather that representational or reflective’xlii. Such an approach
encourages us to analyze the way in which language actually shapes experience. Perhaps there
is something like an immediate experience which might remain inaccessible through

23
 Sara Regina Fonseca

language; but perception which is articulated in language can also be considered to be an

experience. One which is as mediated as well as it is valid.

In my opinion, that which is called ‘immediate experience’ of a dance performance is

actually already ‘mediated’ by our previous expectations, as well as by the particular state of
our bodies and our emotional moods. We will experience dance with our learnt tastes and
moral values, with our tired, alert, sick or healthy bodies; and with our sad, anxious, excited,
hopeful, reflective or critical moods. It is also my belief that perception is not fixed but
historical, this is, our perception changes with particular time and spatial situations. From here
that audience’s perception at any point –during or after the performance- can be an interesting
subject of historical research. Whilst first hand perception might be impossible to access, a
second hand perception is accessible in diaries, letters or audience after talks; telling us about
another stage of reception of equal significance. In this way, I agree with Hammergren’s
argument that the question is not which perception is right and which is wrong, but rather why
and how perceptions change through time. I would even go on to claim that viewers are able
to articulate in language certain transformations of perception over time, and even give
explanations for such transformations.

At this point, I would like to give an example from my own experience as a spectator.
It was in Stockholm 2005 that I saw the company Ultima Vez performing the work Puur by
Belgian choreographer and film maker Wim Vandekeybus. As anyone familiar with his work
knows, Vandekeybus’ performances are characterized by their physical explosiveness, where
athleticism and emotion seem to go hand in hand. When watching the performance, I reached
a point I usually reach when a work moves me strongly. I wanted it to finish in order to burst
into applaud and express my excitement. I felt captured and restless at the same time. I
wanted to continue feeling the emotional rush, and still felt the need for the performance to
finish so that I could release my tension. Why did I get so excited? I believe that I and the
great number of Vandekeybus’ fans have similar reasons to respond in such a way. The
explosive energy of beautiful people challenging the limits of their bodies, and their display of
strength and vulnerability at the same time, are irremediably seductive. Our kinesthetic
sympathy makes us want to join them, and perhaps our repressed desires make us love the
brutality and the fragility displayed on stage. Now they run powerfully, now they hang from
steaks as if tortured. I could finally applaud very loud, supported by the enthusiastic crowd in
the audience. However, one person standing beside me showed a decisive skepticism. This
person is my brother, who I admire and love all the most. Why was he not responding like
24
 Sara Regina Fonseca

me? I thought immediately when I noticed his attitude. From that moment, my response
started changing, and it would continue to change to the point that I would end up hating the
performance later on during the very same day. What happened? My brother did not deny the
impressive physicality of the performers, nor did he deny the seductive energy of the
performance in general. However, he was in a reflective and ethical mood, and this took over
his pleasure in kinesthetic experience. He thought that there was not justifiable reason to use
such a morbid story –a story about an infanticide- in a performance, apart from that its
sensationalism works great for commercial purposes. He was shocked by the extremely
positive reaction of the audience –my own reaction among others-. Why did people want to
see more violence and decadence on stage? There is, my brother thought, not need to
denounce that human beings can be brutal. This has been done lot of times and it starts being
pointless. Was Vandekeybus using the easy formula of provocation in order to gain the love
of audiences craving for morbid spectacles? Should not the role of the artist be to create
alternatives to destruction instead? Well, we had a long discussion, and then we decided never
to pay again to see a performance by Wim Vandekeybus. For my brother this was perhaps a
logical thing to do, for he seems not to have enjoyed the performance at all. For me it was a
challenge. I had enjoyed the performance, but my ethical being came into play and confronted
my pleasure in watching it. The pleasure started to turn into displeasure as I thought more and
more about it, and as I started to agree with my brother’s arguments. This happened in 2005.
Nowadays I would think of reconsidering my self-imposed censorship. I am intrigued by the
complexity of the process of perception, and all that it puts at work. Perhaps I have not yet
come to terms with the contradiction between my ethical being and the being which
responded with excitement at the time I was a spectator.

From the point of view of dance audience research, the articulation of my brother’s and
my own response to Puur might be interesting to analyze. The reaction of my brother is not
surprising if one takes into consideration his personal tendency towards ethical awareness and
strong opinions. Moreover, the fact that he had recently become a father makes it all the most
logical that he would denigrate a dance piece that deals with a story about a mass killing of
children. For me, my brother’s arguments are too difficult to disagree with, but somewhere in
my being I still feel moved by the memory of these women and men showing their fragility
and power in the transparency of an extreme physicality. I could probably never give a
perfect verbal description of what I felt whilst the performance unfolded in front of me,
moment by moment. However, this impossibility does not only respond to the fact that

25
 Sara Regina Fonseca

language is not good enough for the task. It also responds to the fact that my experience of
perception was juxtaposed or immediately followed by a filtering operation through which my
memory somehow decided what to remember and what to forget. Hopefully, my memory has
made sure that I remember that which was most significant about the whole experience,
including the reflections of my brother. In a way, the anxiety I usually feel when watching
something that moves me strongly responds to a need to articulate experience before it
disappears. In my example, the applause is the beginning of this articulation and, therefore,
the beginning of an endless process of perception where only that which seems more
important for me survives. It is because of the way perception changes through time that a
history of dance reception –and therefore audiences- can be relevant. Perception is
reconstructed in language over and over again and this transformation talks a lot about
societies, including the way in which they value their artworks.

7. Intersection of horizons

We have talked about the frames provided by the dance works and about the social and
personal baggage of spectators as being equally determinants of audiences’ experiences. We
have also talked about a performance as an encounter between dance work and audiences,
where communication is a complex interweaving of phenomenological perceptions and
semiological readings. Such an encounter presupposes that at some point, the frame provided
by the dance work and the baggage of the spectators will meet in intersection, crash, or
coincidence, just to name few possibilities.

Departing from phenomenological concerns with subjective perception, Wolfgang Iser

suggests that an analysis of reading should consider the text, the reader and the ‘conditions of
interaction between the two’. For our subject, such an analysis would require the
identification of ‘horizons of expectations’ in terms of what a dance work is expected to be
like in certain social context, and the extent to which these expectations are fulfilled or
transgressed by the performance in question. In this way, prevailing horizon of expectations
might be transformed during performance. As we have seen before, this strategy is used in
Susan L. Foster’s Choreography and Narrative, even when her approach seems to be more
discursive than phenomenological.

26
 Sara Regina Fonseca

Following Iser’s ideas, Hans Robert Jauss suggests a methodological procedure to historicize
audience reception:

The aesthetic distance between a given horizon of expectations and a new work ‘can be
objectified historically along the spectrum of the audience’s reactions and criticism
judgment (spontaneous success, rejection or shock, scattered approval, gradual or
belated understanding)xliii

Arguably, ‘spontaneous success’, and ‘rejection and shock’ are much more common
descriptions of audiences’ response that ‘scattered approval’ and ‘gradual or belated
understanding’. The reason for this might be that the first two reactions indicate the greatness
of innovative artists or artworks, which suits history writings within Romantic and Modern
paradigms. However, the latter reactions might be more interesting for our purpose. ‘Scattered
approval’ indicates diversity in the audience. ‘Gradual or belated understanding’ indicates the
process through which audiences need to go through in order to come to terms with aesthetic
innovations; this is, the slow transformation of the ‘structures of the imagination’.

IV. CONCLUSION

Despite of the fact that post-autonomous conceptions of Art are manifested in a great
deal of contemporary dance production and scholarship, the role of audiences as active
creators of meaning is rarely taken into consideration in dance history writings during the last
twenty years. In articles published during the 1994, recognized dance scholars like Deborah
Jowitt and Roger Copeland show a tendency to conceive the significance of dance works as
totally independent on their social context, including the audiences. Discursive and contextual
approaches of scholars like Susan L. Foster in the 1996s and Linda J. Tomko in 2004 tend to
give more agency to audiences, usually describing them in terms of social classes, gender and
socio-political context. However, these authors comment mostly on what they describe as
‘ideal spectators’, indirectly indicating that there exist non-ideal audiences which could be
researched as well. A decisive shift of dance history focus towards the perception of
audiences would imply the use of sources like personal letters or diaries, as well as the
reconsideration of concepts like ‘expression’, ‘experience’ and ‘meaning’ from the audience’s
perspective. Furthermore, a historical approach to reception would need to look at the
transformation of audience’s perception over time, even to the reception of the same dance

27
 Sara Regina Fonseca

works in different historical moments. This means to recognize audiences as complex

subjective spectators who are in constant processes of transformation.

Researches done within the fields of Audience Response could be of great use for
the shift of focus I am proposing here. These researches are usually based on the idea that the
meaning or significance of a work depends on the audience as much as it depends on the work
itself. From this believe, the subjective experience of various spectators become crucial,
including the experience of those spectators who are not experts in dance, or those who
belong to historically segregated groups like non-white people and women. Dealing with the
issue of perception, audience research makes use of semiological and phenomenological
studies. Thus, they look at the ways in which audiences read the elements of performance as
signs or symbols, as well as to the ways in which audiences get sensually affected by the
physical experience of watching other bodies moving in time and space. The application of
audience response to dance history requires from scholars to deduce possible reactions of past
audiences. One methodological suggestion is to determine ‘conditions of probability provided
by the dance works and by a certain group of spectators. Indentifying different ways in which
these historically situated conditions or ‘horizons’ might have coincided, crashed or met, can
help enlarging the discussion on audience response as well as considering more nuanced
reactions like ‘scattered approval’ or ‘belated understanding’. Finally, assuming that
audiences can become more and more interesting for dance history, historians should benefit
from providing more conditions for the documentation of opinions, interpretations and
experiences of audiences; as well as from becoming more familiar with reception theories and
audience research.

28
i
A good example of this kind of approach is Clive Barnes’ review of Paul Taylor’s Arden Court,
quoted by Sally Banes in her Writing Dancing in the Age of Postmodernism (Hanover and
London, 1994) p.p. 26-27. Pointing out the highly ‘evaluative’ character of this review, Banes
brings attention to some expressions like: “a work of genius”, “one of the seminal works of our
time”, “great ballets”, and “something extraordinary in the history of dance”.
ii
‘The term ‘Intertextuality’ was coined by poststructuralist writer Julia Kristeva in 1966.
Intertextuality refers to the condition under which the understanding of any text is mediated by
the codes that writer and readers have assimilated from other texts. In this context, ’text’ is
understood as any linguistic or non-linguistic object embedded with meaning.
iii
Deborah Jowitt, ‘Expression and expressionism in American modern dance’ in Janet Adshead-
Landsdale and June Layson (ed.), Dance History An Introduction (London, 1994), pp.168-181

iv
Ibid,p.172

v
Ibid, p. 170
vi
Deborah Jowitt, ‘Expression and expressionism in American modern dance’ in Janet Adshead-
Landsdale and June Layson (ed.), Dance History An Introduction (London, 1994), p. 172

vii
Observe that the book quoted here was edited in 1994. Deborah Jowitt has been writing since
the 60s and other American critics contemporary to her are Joan Acocella, Clive Barnes and
Arlene Croce.

viii
Deborah Jowitt, ‘Expression and expressionism in American modern dance’ in Janet Adshead-
Landsdale and June Layson (ed.), Dance History An Introduction (London, 1994) p. 174
ix
Roger Copeland, ‘Beyond Expressionism Merce Cunningham’s critique of ‘the natural’’ in
Janet Adshead-Landsdale and June Layson (ed.), Dance History An Introduction (London, 1994),
p.184

x
Ibid, p.185
xi
It is important to mention that the critics I am referring to were published in 1994. Nearly
fifteen years later, critics are surely writing in different ways.

xii
Deborah Jowitt, ‘Expression and expressionism in American modern dance’ in Janet Adshead-
Landsdale and June Layson (ed.), Dance History An Introduction (London, 1994), P.176
xiii
Joan Acocella, ‘Imagining Dance’ in Ann Dils and Ann Cooper Albright (ed.), Moving
history/dancing cultures A Dance History Reader (New York, Wesleyan University Press, 2001),
p.13

xiv
Linda J. Tomko, ‘Considering Causation and Conditions of Possibility: Practitioners and
Patrons of New Dance in Progressive-era America’, in Alexandra Carter (ed.), Rethinking Dance
History A Reader ( London, 2004), p.p.82-83

xv
Linda J. Tomko, ‘Considering Causation and Conditions of Possibility: Practitioners and
Patrons of New Dance in Progressive-era America’, in Alexandra Carter (ed.), Rethinking Dance
History A Reader ( London, 2004), p.p.-88-89
xvi
Ibid,p.89

xvii
Andrée Grau and Stephanie Jordan (ed.), Europe Dancing Perspectives on Theatre Dance
and Cultural Identity (London, 2000), p.4
xviii
Ibid, p.32
xix
Ibid, p.69
xx
Susan Leigh Foster, Choreography and Narrative (Bloomington, 1996)
xxi
Ibid, p.1
xxii
Ibid, p.2
xxiii
Ibid, P.4
xxiv
Ibid, p.10
xxv
Ibid, p.119
xxvi
Monsieur le Baron quoted by Susan Foster in Choreography and Narrative (Bloomington,
1996), p.116

xxvii
Some examples of analyses that include formal aspects related to the interaction between
dance performers and audiences can be found in books like Janet Adshead’s Dance Analysis:
Theory and Practice (1988), Lena Hammergren’s thesis Form och mening I dansen (1991) and
in Ana Sánchez-Colberg’s thesis Traditions and Contradictions: A Choreological Documentation
of Tanztheater (1992)

xxviii
Wikipedia, key word The Death of the Author,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_the_author

xxix
Sally Banes, Writing Dancing in the Age of Postmodernism (London, Wesleyan University
Press, 1994), p. xii-xiii

xxx
Susanne Bennet in Theatre Audiences A Theory of Production and Reception (London,
Routledge, 1990), p.p.3,4.

xxxi
Una Chaundhuri quoted by Susanne Bennet in Theatre Audiences A Theory of Production
and Reception (London, Routledge, 1990) p. 15

xxxii
Susan Bennet in Theatre Audiences A Theory of Production and Reception (London, 1990) p.
15

xxxiii
Jill Dolan, The Feminist Spectator as Critic (Michigan, 1988) p.2

xxxiv
Read for example Evan Alderson, ‘Ballet as Ideology: Giselle, ACT 2’ and Amy Koritz
‘Dancing the Orient for England: Maud Allan’s The Vision of Salome’ in Jane C. Desmond (ed.)
Meaning in Motion New Cultural Studies of Dance (Durham and London), 1997.
xxxv
Lena Hammergren ‘Many Sources, Many Voices’, in Alexandra Carter (ed.), Rethinking
Dance History A Reader ( London, 2004), p.21
xxxvi
Staton B. Garner, Jr. Bodied Spaces Phenomenology and Performance in Contemporary
Drama (New York, 1994), p.2

xxxvii
Sondra Horton Fraleigh, Dance and the Lived Body A Descriptive Aesthetics (Pittsburg,
1987), p.p. 169, 170

xxxviii
Don Idhe quoted by Staton B. Garner, Jr. in Bodied Spaces Phenomenology and
Performance in Contemporary Drama (New York, 1994), p.9

xxxix
Staton B. Garner, Jr. Bodied Spaces Phenomenology and Performance in Contemporary
Drama (New York, 1994), p.10

xl
Frank Sibley quoted in Matthew Reason, “Theatre Audiences and Perceptions of 'Liveness' in
Performance” in Particip@tions Volume 1, Issue 2 (May 2004)

Matthew Reason, “Theatre Audiences and Perceptions of 'Liveness' in

Performance” in Particip@tions Volume 1, Issue 2 (May 2004)

xli

xlii
Carla Willig quoted in Matthew Reason, “Theatre Audiences and Perceptions of 'Liveness' in
Performance” in Particip@tions Volume 1, Issue 2 (May 2004)

xliii
Hans Robert Jauss quoted by Susan Bennet in Audiences A Theory of Production and
Reception (London, 1990) p. 52

SOURCES

PRINTED BOOKS

-Adshead Janet (ed.) Dance Analysis Theory and Practice: London, 1988

-Adshead-Landsdale, Janet and Layson, June (ed.) Dance History An

Introduction: London, 1994

-Banes, Sally. Writing Dancing in the Age of Postmodernism: Hanover,

1994

-Bennett, Susan. Theatre Audiences: A Theory of Production and

Reception: London, 1990

- Carter, Alexandra (ed.) Rethinking Dance History: London, 2004

-Chadwick, Whitney. Women, Art, and Society: London, 2002

-Deleuze, Gillez and Guattari, Félix. A Thousands Plateaus: London, 1987

- Desmond, Jane C. (ed.) Meaning in Motion New Cultural Studies on

Dance: Durham, 1997
 - Dils, Ann and Albright, Ann Cooper (ed.) Moving history/dancing cultures
A Dance History Reader: New York, 2001

- Dolan, Jill. The Feministic Spectator as Critic: Michigan, 1988

- Foster, Susan L. Choreography and Narrative: Bloomington, 1996

- Fraleigh, Sondra Horton. Dance and the Lived Body A Descriptive

Aesthetics: Pittsburg, 1987

-Garner, Staton B. Jr. Bodied Spaces Phenomenology and Performance in

Contemporary Drama: Ithaca, 1997

-Grau, Andrée and Jordan, Stephanie (ed.) Europe Dancing Perspectives on

Theatre Dance and Cultural Identity: London, 2000

-Hammergren, Lena. Mening och Form i Dansen: Stockholm, 1991

-Munslow, Alun. Deconstructing History: London, 1997

VIRTUAL MAGAZINES

-Particip@tions:

Austin, Thomas (2005) ‘Seeing, Feeling, Knowing: A Case Study of

Audience Perspectives on Screen Documentary’, Particip@tions Volume 2, Issue 1
(August 2005) http://www.participations.org/volume%202/issue%201/2_01_austin.htm

Axelson, Tomas (2008)'Movies and Meaning: Studying Audience, Fiction

Film and Existential Matters' Particip@tions Volume 5, Issue 1 Special Edition (May
2008), http://www.participations.org/volume%203/issue%202%20-
%20special/3_02_seamon.htm

Egan, Kate & Martin Barker (2006) 'Rings around the World: Notes on the
Challenges, Problems & Possibilities of International Audience Projects', Particip@tions
Volume 3, Issue 2 Special Edition (November 2006)
http://www.participations.org/volume%203/issue%202%20-
%20special/3_02_eganbarker.htm

Harindranath, Rawaswami (2006)‘ Audiences, public knowledge and

citizenship in democratic states: preliminary thoughts on a conceptual framework’,
Particip@tions Volume 3, Issue 2 Special Edition (November 2006),
http://www.participations.org/volume%203/issue%202%20-
%20special/3_02_harindranath.htm

Horton, Donald & R. Richard, Wohl (2006) ‘Mass Communication and Para-
Social Interaction: Observations on Intimacy at a Distance’, Particip@tions Volume 3,
Issue 1 (May 2006) http://www.participations.org/volume%203/issue
%201/3_01_hortonwohl.htm

Levine, Elana (2007) 'Television, Sexual Difference and Everyday Life in

the 1970s: American Youth as Historical Audience', Particip@tions Volume 4, Issue 1
(May 2007) http://www.participations.org/Volume%204/Issue%201/4_01_levine.htm
 Lewcock, Dawn (2006) 'Converse with the Audience in Restoration
Theatre', Particip@tions Volume 3, Issue 1 (May 2006),
http://www.participations.org/volume%203/issue%201/3_01_lewcock.htm

Moores, Shaun (2006) ‘Media Uses & Everyday Environmental

Experiences: A Positive Critique of Phenomenological Geography, Particip@tions
Volume 3, Issue 2 Special Edition (November 2006)
http://www.participations.org/volume%203/issue%202%20-
%20special/3_02_moores.htm

Reason, Mathew (2004) ‘Theatre Audiences and Perceptions of ‘Liveness’

in Performance’, (Particip@tions Volume 1, Issue 2 (May 2004):
http://www.participations.org/volume%201/issue%202/1_02_reason_article.htm

Seamon, David (2006) ‘A Geography of Lifeworld in Retrospect: A

Response to Shaun Moores’, Particip@tions Volume 3, Issue 2 Special Edition
(November 2006) http://www.participations.org/volume%203/issue%202%20-
%20special/3_02_seamon.htm