The Poetics of Dance Description

Audience members sometimes make explicit interpretations-"aboutness" statements-of the dance they see. However, in interviews with audience members after performances of choreographer John Jasperse's Canyon, meaning making also surfaced in their straightforward descriptions of the dan...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Dance chronicle 2016-09, Vol.39 (3), p.323-354
Main Author: Stanich, Veronica Dittman
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Audience response
Audiences
dance description
interpretation
John Jasperse
meaning making
Modern dance
postmodern dance
Postmodernism
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Summary:Audience members sometimes make explicit interpretations-"aboutness" statements-of the dance they see. However, in interviews with audience members after performances of choreographer John Jasperse's Canyon, meaning making also surfaced in their straightforward descriptions of the dance. Each audience member's description was unique, and for all the interviewees, the section or aspect of the dance they chose to describe and the way in which they articulated their descriptions inherently spoke to what the work meant for them. These verbal descriptions reveal the ways that individuals make sense of postmodern dance, and indeed how dance's own language "works."
ISSN:0147-2526
1532-4257
DOI:10.1080/01472526.2016.1228348