Working and Dancing: A Response to Monroe Beardsley's "What Is Going on in a Dance?

"
Author(s): Noël Carroll and Sally Banes
Source: Dance Research Journal, Vol. 15, No. 1 (Autumn, 1982), pp. 37-41
Published by: Congress on Research in Dance
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1477693
Accessed: 02-08-2017 20:54 UTC

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
http://about.jstor.org/terms

Congress on Research in Dance is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend
access to Dance Research Journal

This content downloaded from 200.3.149.5 on Wed, 02 Aug 2017 20:54:12 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 I I _

WORKING AND DANCING: A RESPONSE TO MONROE

BEARDSLEY'S "WHAT IS GOING ON IN A DANCE?"

Noel Carroll and Sally Banes

Professor Beardsley's paper is distinguished by his customary dramatic tantrums of an adolescent. If a dance critic were to
clarity. Many of the distinctions he draws will undoubtedly review these events, we would be very surprised.
be useful not only for dance theoreticians, but for danceUndoubtedly, a choreographer could take our truckload of
critics as well. Nevertheless, the way that these distinctionsharvesters, place them on a proscenium stage, and transform
are placed in the service of a putative characterization of their enthusiasm into a dance. But in such a case, it seems to
what constitutes a dance "moving" seems to us problematic. us that it is the choreographer's act of framing, or recontex-
This brief note will be devoted to exploring the adequacy oftualizing, rather than an intrinsic quality of the movement,
Professor Beardsley's proposal. that is decisive. In general, whether one is speaking about art
Beardsley appears to conclude his paper by stating a condi- dance or social dance, the context of the event in which the
tion requisite for a motion to be counted as a dance "moving." movement is situated is more salient than the nature of the
He writes, movement itself in determining whether the action is dance.
Professor Beardsley's definition not only fails to be exclusive
If, in other words, there is more zest, vigor, fluency,
enough, but also falters in inclusiveness. There are, we believe,
expansiveness, or stateliness than appears necessary for
its practical purposes, there is an overflow or superfluity incontestable examples of dance in which there is no super-
of expressiveness to mark it as belonging to its own fluity of expressiveness in the movement. One example is
domain of dance.' Room Service by Yvonne Rainer, which was first performed
at the Judson Church in 1963 and again the next year at the
We interpret Beardsley's basic point here as the claim that aInstitute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia. Rainer de-
superfluity of expressiveness (above the requirements of prac-
scribes it as "a big sprawling piece with three teams of people
tical exigencies) is a defining feature of a dance "moving." playing follow-the-leader thru an assortment of paraphernalia
However, in our opinion, this attribute represents neither a which is arranged and rearranged by a guy and his two assis-
necessary nor a sufficient condition of dance. tants."2 Part of the dance includes climbing up a ladder to a
First of all, "superfluity of expressiveness" is not exclusiveplatform and jumping off. A central segment of the Philadel-
enough to define a dance moving. We often hear of the fervor phia performance (and of particular interest for this paper)
of socialist volunteers, urbanites, who travel to rural areas to
was the activity of two dancers carrying a mattress up an aisle
help with a harvest and boost productivity. Imagine a truck-in the theater, out one exit, and back in through another.
load of such patriotic workers arriving at a cane field some- Although Room Service may appear similar to a dance
where in Cuba. Some of them may even be professionalBeardsley discusses-Anna Sokolow's Rooms-it differs from
dancers. They raise their machetes much higher than neces- it in important ways. The ordinary movement in Room Ser-
sary, use more force than is required by their task, and per-
vice is not marked by "the intensified way"3 in which it is
haps their swinging becomes rhythmic. Their activity is carried out. The point of the dance is to make ordinary move-
expressive of patriotic zest and revolutionary zeal, but it is notment qua ordinary movement perceptible. The audience
dance. Here we have an overflow of expressiveness, and it is observes the performers navigating a cumbersome object,
not related to the practical purpose of the event, which is noting how the working bodies adjust their muscles, weights,
aimed at increasing productivity, not at displaying class soli-and angles. If the dance is performed correctly, there can be
darity. Of course, a journalist might describe the harvest as ano question of superfluity of expression over the requirements
dance, but we would have to understand this as poetic short-of practical purposes, because the raison d'etre of the piece is
hand, meaning "dance-like." To take the term "dance" liter-
to display the practical intelligence of the body in pursuit of a
ally in referring to such an event would commit us to such mundane, goal-oriented type of action-moving a mattress.
unlikely ballets as some sweeping infantry maneuvers and the That is, the subject of the dance is the functional economy of

Dance Research Journal 15/1 (Fall 1982) 37

This content downloaded from 200.3.149.5 on Wed, 02 Aug 2017 20:54:12 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 Room Service by Yvonne Rainer and Charles Ross, in its first performance at Concert of Dance #13, Judson Memorial
Church, November 20, 1963. ? 1963 by Peter Moore.
a movement in the performance of bodies involved in what
Beardsley calls a working. Room Service is not a representa-
tion of a working; it is a working. But it is also a dance-
partially because through its aesthetic context it transforms an
ordinary working (the sort of thing whose kinetic intricacies
usually go unnoticed or ignored) into an object for close
scrutiny. Rainer immediately went on to make another dance,
Parts of Some Sextets, comprising a variety of activities in-
volving ten dancers, twelve mattresses, and gears, string,
rope, and buffers. Again, the emphasis in the dance is on the
working human body.
Room Service is not an atypical dance. It is an example of a
genre of avant-garde performance that might loosely be
referred to as task dances, which have been made continuous-
ly since the Sixties. The roster of task dances includes other
works by Rainer, Trisha Brown's Equipment Pieces and her
Rulegame 5 (1964), and Simone Forti's "dance construction"
Slant Board (1961), in which three or four people move con-
stantly across a wooden ramp slanted against a wall at a 45?
angle to the floor, by means of knotted ropes.4 The existence
of this genre is an important motive in writing this reply to
Professor Beardsley, because we fear that his definition is
unwittingly conservative, operating to exclude prescriptively
some of the most exciting work of contemporary choreog-
raphers.
Of course, Beardsley may wish to defend his definition by
arguing that Room Service, and works like it, are not dances.
This seems ill-advised for several reasons. First, the dance
shares a set of recognized aesthetic preoccupations with con-
temporary fine art. For example, it is what has been called
"anti-illusionist." That is, it attempts to close the conceptual
gap between artworks and real things-a major theme of
modernist sculpture and painting. In this vein, Jasper Johns
38 Dance Research Journal 15/1 (Fall 1982)
This content downloaded from 200.3.149.5 on Wed, 02 Aug 2017 20:54:12 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
reportedly has said that "people should be able to look at a
painting 'the same way you look at a radiator.'"5 Johns's flag
paintings, especially Flag (1955, Museum of Modern Art),
ingeniously implement this "demystifying" attitude toward
artworks, since in certain pertinent respects the painting is a
flag (or one side of one), rather than a representation (or
"illusion") of one; schoolchildren could pledge to it with no
loss of allegiance. Johns's bronzed beer cans or his Savarin can
with paint brushes are sculptures that likewise attempt to
narrow the categorical distinction between mundane objects
and works of art.
The choice of ordinary working movement as the subject of
Room Service is on a par with the "demythologizing" tendency
toward fine art that one finds in many of Jasper Johns's pieces.
Stated formulaically, we might say that "ordinary object" in
art is equivalent to "ordinary movement" in dance. Now,
Johns's work is (rightfully, we believe) considered among the
major accomplishments of the art of the Fifties, Sixties, and
early Seventies. There can be little doubt that it is art or that
his patterned canvases are paintings. Why? One answer is
that his works are the intelligible products of a century of
animated interplay between art making and art theorizing.
Since the rise of photography, anti-illusionist arguments for
the role and destiny of painting abound. Part of the rhetoric
of this theorizing is that a painting is essentially an object (a
"real" object), like any other (e.g., a radiator or beer can),
rather than a cypher (a virtual object) standing for real ob-
jects. The Johns examples, as well as Warhol's Brillo boxes,
attempt to literalize this type of theory by proposing master-
pieces that in terms of certain relevant features are indis-
tinguishable from everyday objects. Room Service bears a
strict genetic resemblance to the above cases of modernist
painting and sculpture. If they are full-blooded examples of
 Jasper Johns, Flag (1955)

painting and sculpture, as we believe their position in the Beardsley's characterization of dance, it is important to iter
history of twentieth-century art establishes, then Room Ser- ate that these dances are able to articulate the modernist
vice is a dance. theme of anti-illusionism precisely because their movements
are completely practical-a literal performance of a task-
Specifically, it is an art dance, since the tradition it directly
emerges from is that of the artworld rather than custom, with no superfluity of expressiveness.
ritual, or popular culture. Indeed, it is an art dance in a tripleA related, though less persuasive reason to believe that
sense. First, it is presented to the spectator as an object of Room Service is a dance (specifically, an art dance) is that it
aesthetic contemplation and not as a social or ritual activity. performs a major (though not essential) function of art in
Second, and more importantly, it mimes (or, less metaphor- general and art dancing in particular. Namely, it symbolical-
ically, transposes) the theoretical donnees of fine art in the ly reflects major values and preoccupations of the culture
medium of dance. And third, in doing this it is also in the from which it emerged. In other words, it behaves the way
domain of art dancing proper, since both the balletic and we expect dances to behave. Its anti-illusionist stance and its
modern traditions of dance have always made a practice of disavowal of representation, formal decorativeness, and the
exploring other arts for inspiration and invention. kinds of expressiveness found in most modern dance (e.g.,
In making this argument, we hasten to add that we do not Graham, Humphrey, and Limon) evince a reductive bias, a
believe that it is necessary for the anti-illusionist theories that
quest to get down to basics, to eschew the layers of conven-
form the conceptual background of Johns, of Warhol, ortion, of coded symbolism, and elaborate structure that "ob-
Rainer to be true or even compelling philosophically in order struct" the spectator's perception of movement. This search
that the putative paintings, sculptures, and dances be classi- for fundamentals is in many respects utopian. Nevertheless, i
fied as paintings, sculptures, and dances. It is enough that thedoes reflect a particular post-war mood-a positivist search
theories have currency in their appropriate communities for of the hard facts of dance, bereft of illusionist "nonsense."
discourse and that the works in question can be seen as their Again, whether there are such hard facts is beside the point; i
consequences. We are assuming this on the grounds that a
is the quest implied by this dance that reflects the temper o
genetic link between an evolving artistic tradition (including the times. And, to return to Beardsley's definition, Room Ser-
theory, practice, and the cross-fertilization between the two) vice reflects the values and prejudices of its cultural context be-
and a candidate for inclusion in that tradition is a prima faciecause of the sheer practicality of its movement. (Interestingly
reason for classifying the candidate as part of the tradition. a Labananalysis of Rainer's non-task dances of this period
Room Service is both art and art dance because of such genetic shows a striking similarity between the efficient motions used
links. Indeed, insofar as it is even less ambiguously an ordi- in work and those used in the dances: a somewhat narrow and
nary working than painting the design of the Stars and Stripes medium level stance, an even flow of energy, and sagittal ges-
is a flag, it is perhaps a more effective implementation of tures-in two planes, forward and backward plus up and
modernist concerns than the Johns example. In terms of our down-rather than the three-dimensional shaping, gathering,
use of Room Service, and dances like it, as counterexamplesand to scattering movements of much modern dance.)6

Dance Research Journal 15/1 (Fall 1982) 39

This content downloaded from 200.3.149.5 on Wed, 02 Aug 2017 20:54:12 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 Admittedly, Room Service is an extremely complex dance,
with several levels of symbolic import. It is not our intention
to argue that it is not expressive. For example, it communi-
cates a conception of dance, albeit a reductive one, and, as
the previous paragraph argues, it espouses identifiable values.
However, this sense of expression is different from Beardsley's.
It is not a matter of the movement having intensified, non-
practical qualities, but of the movement implying certain
polemical commitments, easily statable in propositions, due
to the art-historical and cultural contexts in which the dance
was produced. Here the propositional import of the dance
hinges on the practicality of the movement; this level of
expression, in other words, cannot be mapped in terms of an
overflow of intensified qualities, above and beyond the func-
tional. Though Room Service has propositional meaning, it is
not what Beardsley calls a saying, nor is it a representation of
a saying. Professor Beardsley's sayings are highly convention-
alized signals, e.g., a wave of the hand is regularly associated
with "hello." However, we do not "read" the significance of
the movement in Room Service, but infer it as the best expla-
nation of Rainer's choreographic choices within a specific
historical context.
Room Service might also be called expressive in the sense
that the choreography metaphorically possesses certain
anthropomorphic qualities; we have already called it "posi-
tivist." It might also be called factual or objective. But each of
these labels fits the dance specifically because of the theoret-
ically "hard-minded," anti-illusionist position it promotes.
That the subject is work in the context of a culture that often
identifies art and dance with play also has expressive reper-
cussions: the choreography is "serious" rather than "senti-
mental" or "frivolous" (in the idiom of the Protestant ethic).
Again, it is the choice of unadorned workings as its subject
that is the basis of its expressive effect as well as the basis, as
previously argued, of its being recognizable as an art dance.
Given this, Professor Beardsley's stipulation, identifying
dance with a superfluity of expressiveness above practical
purposes, does not seem to fit the facts of a major work of
post-modern dance and, by extension, a genre of which it is a
primary example.
Professor Beardsley's paper also raises issues relevant to
post-modern choreography in the section where he argues
that the basic constituents of dance are not bodily motions as
such. Instead, Beardsley holds that dances are composed of
actions that he calls "movings" and "posings." It is interesting
to note that in certain post-modern dances and dance theoriz-
ing it is presupposed that dance is fundamentally bodily
motion and that the function of a dance is to make the spec-
tator see bodily motions as such. The motive behind this
enterprise derives from the modernist bias outlined earlier. In
brief, in contemporary theoretical discussions of fine art, the
40 Dance Research Journal 15/1 (Fall 1982)
This content downloaded from 200.3.149.5 on Wed, 02 Aug 2017 20:54:12 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
conception of a painting as an ordinary object easily becomes
associated with the idea that it is an object as such. It is a
surface. Thus, the role of an artist like Jules Olitski is seen as
acknowledging the flat surface of the painting. Painters are
cast in a role akin to nuclear physicists, exploring the basic
physical constituents of their medium, as if plumbing the
mysteries of the atom. The result is paintings "about" paint
or, to change media, films "about" celluloid. This anti-illu-
sionist move is also in evidence in post-modern dance. Dances
like Trisha Brown's Accumulation identify dance as a concat-
enation of physical motions without any ostensible formal,
conventional, expressive, or representational unity. Accumu-
lation is a list of abstract gestures-simple rotations, bends,
and swings of the joints and limbs-that are accumulated by
repeating the first gesture several times, adding the second
gesture and repeating gestures one and two several times, and
so on. There are no transitions between gestures. Accumula-
tion suggests a position about the nature of the basic elements
of dance, a position which holds that dance consists of bodily
motions.
The philosophical problems raised by dances like Accumu-
lation can be quite vexing.7 But in our opinion, such dances
are not counter-examples to Beardsley's claim that dances are
made up of actions and never mere bodily motions. Our
reasons for believing this are, for the most part, contained in
our gloss of Room Service. We have admitted that the search
for the fundamentals of dance by post-modern choreographers
is utopian. Making dances like Accumulation, which are
designed to imply that dance essentially consists of bodily
motions, requires that the basic movements chosen for the
dance be purposively made so that a) they are not straightfor-
wardly classifiable in terms of traditional categories of dance
actions (e.g., Beardsley's "suggestings") and b) they are intel-
ligible, due to their historical context, as rejections of the
traditional categories. In meeting the first requirement, each
movement is a type of action-namely, a refraining. Speci-
fically, each movement is a studied omission of the movement
qualities found in ballet and modern dance.8 In the context of
the Sixties, this sort of refraining implied a commitment to the
idea that dance consists primarily of bodily motions. How-
ever, the movements used to articulate that position were
actually anything but mere bodily motions. They were
actions, refrainings whose implicit disavowal of the traditional
qualities of dance movements enabled them to be understood
as polemical. Thus, though we feel that certain developments
in post-modern dance, specifically task dances, threaten
Professor Beardsley's concept of dance, we do not believe that
the existence of dances like Accumulation challenge Beards-
ley's point that dances consist of actions rather than mere
bodily motions.
 NOTES

3. Quoted from Marcia B. Siegel by Professor Beardsley (this jour-

This paper was originally an invited response to Monroe Beardsley's
paper for the expanded proceedings of the "Illuminating nal, p. 33) in order to show why the movement in Rooms is dance.
Dance"
conference. The authors wish to express their gratitude to Monroe
4. Trisha Brown's Equipment Pieces are well documented in Sally
Beardsley, Maxine Sheets-Johnstone, Selma Jeanne Cohen, R. Adina
Sommer, "Equipment Dances: Trisha Brown," The Drama Re-
Armelagos, and Anne Hatfield for their careful readings view
of this
16 (September 1972, T-55): 135-141. Simone Forti writes about
paper. her dance constructions and other works in her Handbook in Motion
(Halifax, Nova Scotia: The Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art
1. Monroe C. Beardsley, "What Is Going On in a Dance?" (this jour-
and Design; New York: New York University Press, 1974). See also
nal. pp. 31-36). All mentions of Beardsley refer to this paper, given at
the chapters on Trisha Brown and Simone Forti in Sally Banes, Terp-
a conference entitled "Illuminating Dance: Philosophical Inquiry
sichore in Sneakers: Post-Modern Dance (Boston: Houghton Mifflin,
and Aesthetic Criticism," co-sponsored by CORD and the Dance 1980).
Department of Temple University, held at Temple University May 5,
1979. 5. Michael Crichton, Jasper Johns (New York: Harry N. Abrams,
1977), p. 31.
2. Yvonne Rainer, "Some retrospective notes on a dance for 10 peo- 6. For an analysis of the workly movements of Rainer's Trio A, see
ple and 12 mattresses called Parts of Some Sextets, performed at the "Yvonne Rainer: The Aesthetics of Denial," in Banes, Terpsichore in
Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut, andJudson Memorial Sneakers, pp. 41-55.
Chqrch, New York, in March, 1965," Tulane Drama Review 10
(Winter 1965): 168. Reprinted in Yvonne Rainer, Work 1961-73 7. Some of these problems are examined in Noel Carroll's "Post-
(Halifax, Nova Scotia: The Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art Modern Dance and Expression," a paper delivered at the American
and Design; New York: New York University Press, 1974), p. 45. In Dance Festival at Duke University in July 1979, published in Philo-
her discussions of Room Service in Work 1961-73 on pp. 45 and 294, sophical Essays in Dance, ed. Gordon Fancher and Gerald Myers
Rainer may give the impression that the first performance of the (Brooklyn: Dance Horizons, 1981), pp. 95-104.
work was the one in Philadelphia in April 1964. However, it was first 8. We are indebted to Paul Ziff for the suggestion that concepts like
performed as a choreographic collaboration between Rainer and omission, forbearance, and refraining, as used in both legal theory
sculptor Charles Ross at Concert of Dance 13, on November 10-12, and action theory, would be useful in the description of avant-garde
1963, at the Judson Memorial Church in New York City. dance.

Dance Research Journal 15/1 (Fall 1982) 41

This content downloaded from 200.3.149.5 on Wed, 02 Aug 2017 20:54:12 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms