Bakka Egil & Geminias Karoblis - Writing a Dance, Epistemlogy for Dance Research

International Council for Traditional Music is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Yearbookfor Traditional Music.

http://www.jstor.org

International Council for Traditional Music

WRITING "A DANCE": EPISTEMOLOGY FOR DANCE RESEARCH Author(s): Egil Bakka and Gediminas Karoblis Source: Yearbook for Traditional Music, Vol. 42 (2010), pp. 167-193Published by: {ictm} Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41201384Accessed: 05-03-2015 08:55 UTC

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

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of contentin 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 [email protected].

This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Thu, 05 Mar 2015 08:55:34 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org

http://www.jstor.org/stable/41201384

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


WRITING A DANCE: EPISTEMOLOGY FOR DANCE RESEARCH

by Egil Bakka and Gediminas Karoblis

Introduction

Over several years the authors of this article have had intensive discussions to find common ground in the topic they both specialize in: dance. Egil Bakka is a Norwegian ethnochoreologist, specializing in Nordic traditional dance/folk dance; Gediminas Karoblis is a Lithuanian philosopher, specializing in phenomenology and ballroom dancing. Our starting point was a philosophical question about the notion of dance knowledge and a shared worry about the empirical basis for many academic works on dance that other colleagues have also pointed to (Hoerburger 1959; Lange 1983; Adshead-Lansdale 1994; Grau 1998; Farnell 1999; Fügedi 2003). Bakka then brought up the widespread reservation against the use of film/ video for the documentation and analysis of dance.1 We continued with a wish to clarify to ourselves the epistemological basis for research in dance, and somewhere along the way we started writing this article. We experienced that a dialogue in which methodological issues in dance research were confronted with philosophical scrutiny brought about a number of interesting perspectives. We hope that our exercise may be of interest to a broader audience. The aim is to explore how our different disciplinary points of departure - philosophy and ethnochoreology - can be brought to interact in creating a deeper understanding of our topic, rather than comparing the disciplines or discussing their differences.

Our writing started out with Bakka innocently sketching a description of fieldwork in Numedal, Norway, which was meant to be an illustrative introduction. It was left as a rough draft. When we returned to revise it, we realized that it illustrated a number of epistemological problems that we had dealt with in the mean- time; therefore, we leave it here in its "innocent" form and will return to it in the discussions towards the end of the article.

Ethnochoreological fieldwork in Numedal, November 1985

Egil Bakka's description, based on fieldnotes from 1985, was as follows:

The musicians on the stage are playing the third dance this evening, a reinlender,2 and the dance floor of the little countryside community house in eastern Norway is

1 . As we shall see, a number of influential American anthropologists of dance have pointed to problems in the use of film for such purposes (e.g., Kaeppler 1999; Royce 2002; Youngerman 1975). The anthropologist Howard Morphy (1994:1 19) finds it surprising that "films have been so little used as data" in his discipline. A fuller discussion of this subject appears below.

2. Reinlender is the local name of a couple dance that spread to many European countries Yearbook for Traditional Music 42 (2010)



1 68 20 1 0 YEARBOOK FOR TRADITIONAL MUSIC

filled with dancers, mostly in their sixties and seventies. They are back in the arena where they picked up the art of dancing as teenagers. It was a necessity for them to master social dancing to be part of the social life in the small community, and no teaching of this repertoire was offered. What they picked up has served them well through life, and it still comes in handy at weddings and at dance parties for their age group. The dancers typically know six or seven such dances, called by local names, including vals, springar, Hamburg, rei(n) lender, masurka, fokstrot, and tango?

Numedal is, according to Bakka, one of those places where the fairly square, conventional structure of the reinlender seems to have been broken up and changed into a free flow of elements. The conventional structure has two bars of promenade (four beats - i.e., two step periods of two beats each) and two bars of turning (four beats); these two elements are repeated again and again in strict accordance with the musical periods.4 The free flow of elements can consist of step patterns cover- ing three beats, which immediately breaks up the regularity. The promenade then becomes longer than two bars and often then becomes quite freely improvised, as is also the case for the length of the turning (Bakka et al. 1987:5). In our dance event, most of the dancers do this freely improvised version, but one couple in their nineties do the dance with the conventional square structure (16 mm film, "Nore og Uvdal," 1985, Rff archives). Two couples choose to change to totally different techniques of dancing for a while. One technique has a separate name, steger.5 A "young" couple in their early fifties starts doing some swing or rock-'n'-roll motives as a variation (filming logs 1985, Rff archives) (figure 1).

It is hard to find out whether all the dancing on the floor is conventionally con- sidered a dance or not. The dancers themselves would hardly ask the question, and therefore hardly need any answer. A dance notator, however, may need to deal with such questions or at least needs to clarify how her notation represents the ephem- eral phenomenon of dancing.

Bakka' s fieldwork in Numedal came about, as his fieldwork often did, because younger people from the region with interest in old dances had asked him to come and document the dances. The younger generations had not picked up these dances in the same way as their parents and grandparents did. Most of them preferred

in the middle of the nineteenth century. The most usual English label for this dance and its music is probably schottish.

3. This is what the dancers wrote on Rff questionnaires when we asked them to fill in the names of the dances they knew. Some, of course, knew more dances, if for instance they had attended a folk dance course and learned dances of the typically national repertoire taught there or if they had attended a dancing school and learnt ballroom dancing. "Rff indicates unpublished forms, films, and manuscripts that are part of the archives of the Norsk senter for folkemusikk og folkedans (Norwegian Centre for Traditional Music and Dance), a resource and research centre of the foundation Râdet for folkemusikk og folkedans (Norwegian Council for Traditional Music and Dance).

4. This version of the reinlender is described by the dancing masters of the late nineteenth century (Isachsen 1 886) and is also documented as a standard traditional dance throughout Norway (Bakka 1970).

5. Steger is a technique where the partners are dancing side by side, turned in opposite directions. A similar technique can be used in the waltz, where it is called stegvals.



BAKKA AND KAROBLIS EPISTEMOLOGY FOR DANCE RESEARCH 169

Figure 1. The oldest couple dance of Numedal is the springar, which has had the main focus as a local dance tradition since around 1930 and has been connected with the local,

traditional costume in revitalization efforts. The springar has been filmed many times, here from a recording at Kongsberg in May 1972. Even if newer dances, such as the reinlender, have complex and interesting forms, these were hardly noticed till the mid-1980s (frame

from film recording, Norwegian Centre for Traditional Music and Dance).

newer dances like slow, swing, or perhaps even disco. Some of them, who liked the older dances, had gone to courses arranged by the folk dance movement and had learnt standardized forms of the same dances. Then they realized that their elders did not use the standardized forms and wanted the local dances to be analysed and written down so that they could be taught at courses and not be lost completely - their parents' and grandparents' dances had become heritage.6

The story above is an illustration of a particular kind of ethnochoreology in which academic research is coupled with an institutional agenda of cultural politics. This brings a focus on filming and dance notation, which will be topics underlying most discussions here. An explicit task of the Norwegian Centre for Traditional Music and Dance is to combine documentation, research, and safeguarding meas- ures (Bakka 1981). This results in research methodologies that are somewhat different from those based in more conventional research agendas. The latter may not be so explicitly discussed, but they are perhaps equally influential on methodologies and priorities. An agenda that aims to bring dance research into interaction

6. Here Bakka has taken us back to one of his typical fieldwork situations from the mid- 1980s. He has placed himself in a corner opposite the music, with his 16-mm film camera and synchronized tape recorder documenting the dancing crowd. The local initiators are present, helping out. They will later come to Bakka' s institution to assist in the writing of the documented dances and at the same time learn them (Bakka 1994, 1999, 2001).



1 70 2010 YEARBOOK FOR TRADITIONAL MUSIC

with the most prestigious discourses of humanistic disciplines will probably work in a different manner from research aimed at cultural politics.

Filming and dance notation in anthropology and ethnochoreology

In this article we will address dance research within the disciplines of ethnochoreology and the anthropology of dance,7 without addressing questions about agenda any further; rather, our discussion circles around the epistemological basis for knowledge about dance.

We would like to introduce the discussion by referring to the following statement from anthropologist Howard Morphy:

It is one of the great ironies of anthropology that until recently so little attention has been paid to methods of gathering data, when, in some respects, it is the richness of its data which characterizes the uniqueness of anthropology's contribution to the human and social sciences. Whereas a great deal of attention is paid to the development of anthropological theory, to methods of analysis and to the craft of writing, data gathering remains the poor cousin. (Morphy 1994:1 17)

For Morphy as for us, filming is a particularly efficient tool for collecting data. Already in 1974 Alan Lomax proposed to launch large projects to film folk culture in general: "Film, sound, and videotape records are today an indispensable scientific resource . . . They may contain information for which neither theory nor analytic schemes yet exist" (American Folklore Society 1974:51). Filming was the basis for much of the broad Central and East European documentation and research (Giurchescu and Torp 1991) and was also used in larger projects, such as Peggy Harper's work in Nigeria (Harper 1969). It still is standard procedure in many dance research institutions and for many dance researchers. It is strange then, that methodological discussions on the use of film as a tool for documentation have been rare in the field of dance research, at least since the 1980s.8 We propose that the reasons for this could be attitudes within the anthropology of dance.

The aims of anthropological studies of dance have in general been quite different from the ones underlying the case of the Rff Centre at the Norwegian Centre for Traditional Music and Dance in Trondheim discussed above:

While anthropologists of dance and movement study meaning, intention and cultural evaluation, the activities that generate movement systems, how and by whom they

7 . We do think that our discussion has relevance for academically constructed dance knowledge in general, but we find it too ambitious to claim that we will cover the full range consistently in the format of this article.

8. The Hungarian researcher and notation expert Janos Fügedi is an exception. He has established exciting new methodologies for movement studies based on film and notation (Fügedi 1999, 2003). The borrowing of techniques from hard science is also proposed for learning dance (such as Wiley 1987), but has not drawn much attention from mainstream dance research.




are judged, their aim is to understand how the examination and analysis of movement systems can illuminate the sociocultural system. (Kaeppler 1999:16)9

The American dance anthropologist Adrienne L. Kaeppler has studied dance in Tonga since she went there as a PhD student in the 1960s. With her analysis inspired by linguistics, she has influenced generations of dance researchers. She based her technique upon participatory observation and upon learning dance from local dancers, having them help her identify structure and meanings. For her, video recordings are not a main resource, but

can be used for instant replay for preliminary analysis, for eliciting information about intentions, for clarifying movement motifs and movement sequences and to find out about mistakes and if movements (or whole performances) can or should be evaluated. (Kaeppler 1999:20)

One reason for this position is perhaps expressed by Anya Peterson Royce, who points to a central reservation toward film from many dance analysts: "film provides a record of a particular performance, rather than a record of a particular choreography in its 'pure' state" (Royce 2002:53). This is taken further by Suzanne Youngerman who argues from a practical point of view:

In many cases, however, a society may not have any set dances; improvisation may be the standard of performance, or the same dance may never be repeated. Since one must see a dance several times in order to transcribe it, an arrangement which is rarely possible in a fieldwork situation, one must film or videotape the dance. (Youngerman 1975:119)

This statement seems to underlie her argument that filming is something you bring in, if, for some reason, you are not able to see a dance live a sufficient number of times in order to transcribe it. It also seems to assume that many dances are always repeated the same way, which is in principle problematic, even if it can be more or less true depending upon the level of detail one is considering.

Arguing for the needs of Labanotation in reconstructing ballet works, the pio- neer Labanotator Ann Hutchinson Guest claims that reproduction

would seem an appropriate term for works reproduced from film/video. Can the viewer separate the structure of the piece, the choreographic work, from the performance? The "learner" too readily takes on the mannerisms and expression of the performers seen on screen. There is not the accuracy of the notated score nor the leeway for personal interpretation which the notated form allows. (Guest 2000:65)

9. Kaeppler makes a distinction between anthropologists of dance and other dance researchers: "it seems to me that these researchers [folklorists who study dance and dance ethnolo- gists] are more specifically interested in dances and dancing, and take 'a dance' or 'dances' as their primary unit, while anthropologists are more interested in the larger subject of human movement and the abstract concept of 'dance'" (Kaeppler 1999:15).




As can be seen, there are reservations towards the application of film/video in the documentation and analysis of dance among some notable researchers working in the field of dance.10 We have selected a few examples above that touch on questions of how we can access and document dance. In this article we would like to challenge some of the assumptions that seem to underlie the examples and the reservations. If we ignore the "particular performances," is there a dance that can be accessed "in its 'pure' state"? How can the "mannerisms and expressions of performers" be separated from the choreographic work if not by comparing many realizations? We acknowledge Labanotation as an excellent tool for dance analysis (Van Zile 1985), but if a notation represents a dance and not a single dance realization, we find it problematic in "freezing its form." The aim to labanotate a dance (Van Zile 1999) brings about a number of problems, particularly if the relationship between the notation and the realizations - or other sources that it builds upon - is not transparent.11

It strikes us, however, that new artistic tools may herald change in attitudes to recorded dance. Susan Kozel debates the objections she has been facing when she works with motion-capture techniques and virtual representations of dance: "What is human movement in the absence of the body? . . . Motion capture was referred to as a technology that 'extracts' movement from the performer's body." Kozel responds: "To deny the abstract qualities of the real building or body, like denying the sensuous qualities of a virtual creation, is to ghettoize both the real and the virtual in definitional constructs that are incomplete" (Kozel 2007:236). Some dance critics such as the American Marcia B. Siegel also seem to disregard earlier reservations and claim that film and video "offer a perfect response to the epistemic ephemerality of dance: On tape we can watch a dance again and again, until it has impressed itself firmly upon our retinas and memories" (as summarized in Gere 2004:42).

The realization and the concept: Two dimensions of dance (ethnochoreology)

We suggest that dance has two dimensions: the realization and the concept. The realization is the actual dancing of a dance}2 The concept for the same dance is the

10. There are examples of anthropologists defending film, such as social anthropologist Felicia Hughes-Freeland. She argues for the value of film as a research tool in dance, meaning documentary film-making. She compares editing such a film with writing a book from fieldnotes (Hughes-Freeland 1999:120). It is, in other words, not about accessing movement to be able to analyse it, but a technique to present dance in its context. Morphy draws a distinction between two uses of film: film as ethnography, referring to the use of film in the process of data gathering, and "film" as text, referring to the construction of finished "film" for a viewing audience. The book Dance in the Field (Buckland 1999) has a number of con- tributors (i.e., Felföldi, Giurchescu, Bakka) who consistently use film for data collection, but this is not explicitly discussed in any detail as methodology. 1 1 . The Hungarian folkdance notators Ágoston Lányi and his follower Janos Fügedi solved

this problem by always transcribing realizations, avoiding the problem of "a dance" 1 2 . We do realize that there are examples where the concept represents some kind of general

dancing rather than a dance with a name, as briefly discussed by Gore and Bakka (2007).




potential of skills, understanding, and knowledge that enables an individual or a dance community to dance that particular dance and to recognize and relate to each particular realization of it (Bakka, Aksdal, and Flem 1995:21; Gore and Bakka 2007:93).13 We argue that the approach to dance through its realization is under- estimated in anthropological research and ethnographic work in general (Bakka 2005 :72).14 A realization is the only full and proper way in which a dance becomes available for us. We consider demonstrations, rehearsals, and illustrated explana- tions as secondary and only as hints to a full expression of the dance. Consequently we see the full, normal realization as the primary source to, and the only fully valid form of, dance.15 The realization makes dance available perceptually. The skills and knowledge of the dance concept are invisible, but they are necessary for and integrated in the realization. As we see it, there is interdependence between the realization and the concept. Each realization of a dance can in principle add to the dance concept and this influenced concept will in turn affect the next realization. This will be a continuous process for a dancer: her concept is not fixed, but can be affected by each new realization, whether it is her own or she is experiencing somebody else's realization. The changing concept will in turn affect each new realization. When someone is in the process of learning a dance, these changes are especially evident (figure 2).16

13. These terms are inspired by Ferdinand de Saussure' s langue-parole distinction (Saussure 2006); they also have a similarity to Noam Chomsky's use of "competence" and "performance." It is, however, hardly possible to analyse dance with tools developed for analysing language without making substantial adjustments. For further discussion on these linguistic concepts in dance analysis, see Kaeppler (2001:53). 14. Susan Reed in a summarizing article states that: It is indeed ironic that, despite the

considerable growth of interest in the anthropology of the body . . ., the study of moving bodies remains on the periphery" (Reed 1998:504). Alexandra Carter edited what has become a widely used reader for dance studies. She claims that the reader "demonstrates the range and depth of late twentieth-century scholarship" (Carter 1 998: 1 ). Introducing a later chapter, she states: "It does not remain, however, at the level of movement analysis, but accommodates issues of context, function, meaning and value" (ibid.: 121). Other examples of discussions on movement analysis do not particularly take up the question of the systematic study of realizations (Dils and Crosby 2001; Daly 1988; Sklar 1991). 1 5. In some kinds ot dance, the narrative or conceptual aspects may seem prior, like in me

ballet d'action or sacred dances. In these cases, dance is conceived as means for some other purpose (Karoblis 2007b). 16. I he distinctions ot langue ana parole (Saussure) or competence ana penormance

(Chomsky) do not, as far as we know, take into consideration a level between these two. Wittgenstein (1958:127-28) has argued that language competence is channelled through language games. There is the level of a joke, a fairy tale, a poem, etc., where langue or competence is not used for a free flow of parole or performance, but realizes an established form (Bakka, Aksdal, and Flem 1995). In dance and music, this level is the standard level: most realizations are based on forms that the musician or dancer refers to a certain piece of music or a certain dance (work). The lack of attention to the level of "established forms" can also be seen in performance studies, see, e.g., Bauman and Briggs (1990).




Realization R R RRRRRR

IM Concept c C CCCCCCC

Figure 2. The concept informs the realization and the realization influences the concept. The changes are more evident in a learning process.

The visible and the invisible: Two dimensions of the world (philosophy)

The French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961) has developed a philosophy of art that may contribute to the discussions above. First of all, Merleau- Ponty concentrated on the relevance of the body and perception in our life; this is a point that naturally captures the attention of a dance researcher. In his philosophy, Merleau-Ponty used many dualistic concepts, like abstract and concrete movement in Phenomenology of Perception (1996:111), and speaking and spoken language in The Prose of the World (ibid. 1973:10). But his main aim was to overcome the dominating, epistemological split between the subject and the object. For him this Cartesian split seemed to contradict what his own experience told him. In his later years Merleau-Ponty concentrated on the philosophy of the visible and invisible (ibid. 1968), observing that the visible and the invisible are intertwined so that we are capable of integrating invisible aspects into the visible. Even if we can see only one side of an apple at a time, we have an experience of seeing the whole of it, because we can fill in the invisible part from earlier experience. And even if we see an apple only from one perspective at a time we are capable of exploring other perspectives in succession. Thus each new perspective contributes to the wholeness of our experience.

In the interplay between dance realization and dance concept that we discussed in the previous section, there is obviously an interplay between visibility and invis- ibility of the kind that Merleau-Ponty discussed.



B AKKA AND KAROBLIS EPISTEMOLOG Y FOR DANCE RESEARCH 1 75

The primacy of realization

In his essay "The Primacy of Perception," Merleau-Ponty stresses that "the perceived world is always the presupposed foundation of all rationality, all value and all existence" (Merleau-Ponty 1964:13). Any speculation should be based on the fundamental knowledge we obtain from the perceived world. Moreover, the world of perception for Merleau-Ponty had not only constitutive but regulative value as well. His aim was to move "back to perception." The primacy of perception means that perception is the most authoritative source. He contends that we should always start our interrogation by "allowing" ourselves to perceive what is in front of us; a lot of things are given for us before we start asking questions.

Following Merleau-Ponty' s argument on the primacy of perception, we propose the primacy of dance realization. We propose to follow a phenomenological approach to dance that means concentrating as much as possible on a realization of dance first of all (Levin 1983:92). As much as possible, we propose to approach a realization of dance without any presuppositions, including the presuppositions of the dancers themselves.

This seems to be contrary to attitudes in dance anthropology which often suppose that we cannot be sure of understanding the actions and the interactions of the people we are observing, but always need to learn in dialogue with them. We agree that there is an obvious need for us to orient ourselves if we are in a community we do not know, as is often the case for anthropologists, but this is more a question of getting a reasonable, solid understanding of the society, not so much about approaching dance per se. The dilemma in working with any kind of "concepts" people may have about cultural systems is that norms and ideals may be strong and clear enough for people to talk about them, but they may not be carried through with the same consistency in realization. What people think and say they do, after all, is not always what they actually do. Analysis of realizations can, in our experience, really give very surprising results, far more complex than what people may be able to verbalize about what they do.

A very interesting example can be found in an article by Timothy Rice. As an American professor of ethnomusicology, Rice worked intensively with a Bulgarian master of the traditional instrument called gaida to learn to play traditional Bulgarian music. At a certain point his teacher could not explain and show him any more. Rice went back to the United States and analysed the recordings of his teacher:

When I finally solved the mystery of bagpiper's fingers, I did so in dialogue with Kostadin's tradition of playing, preserved in recordings, after my conversations with him had ended. In the process, I believe I moved to a place untheorized by the insider-outsider distinction so crucial to much ethnomusicological thinking. After talking to a cultural insider, which took me in the direction of an ernie understanding of the tradition but not all the way there, I confronted the tradition directly as a sound form and kinesthetic activity, and made it my own in an act of appropriation that transformed me, my self, into something I hadn't been before, a person capable of playing in this tradition with at least minimal competence. This transformation



176 2010 YEARBOOK FOR TRADITIONAL MUSIC

did not, however, make me into a cultural insider; I was not, at least it seemed to me, a Bulgarian. While Kostadin couldn't explain his ornamentation to me in enough detail to make me understand it, I came to be able to explain it to myself and to others; I now understood the finger movements and other mental processes necessary to produce the gaida's characteristic ornamentation. (Rice 1997: 1 10)

The idea of a dance

When someone is dancing, it is mostly thought about as being the realization of a dance. This means that the dancers, and even other people related to the dancing, will give it a name, but the name is not targeted only at this one instance of dancing. It is supposed to be the name for an action that can be repeated. The relationship between the name and the phenomena it is used to cover is an extremely compli- cated matter. Remembering the dispute between realists and nominalists in the philosophy of the Middle Ages (Copleston 1990), let's also imagine two kinds of dance researchers, the realists and the nominalists.17

The realist, like her colleagues in philosophy, would believe that it is possible to grasp intuitively the idea of a dance (essence of dance realizations) through realizations of dance. She would approach an invariant dance through singular phenomenal variations - realizations of it - and would believe that the basis of her dance knowledge is the real invariant dance, rather than variant phenomenal realizations of it.

The dance-research nominalist would rather think that a dance doesn't exist in reality - it is an abstract of our intellectual activity. According to her, our intellect groups singular dance realizations into the categories of dances either by constructing concepts or by approximating resemblances. The dance-research nominalist would believe that our understanding of a dance is constructed by our categorizations and the concepts we use. The categories are never definitive or absolute, there are always overlaps and exceptions, and each category is a more or less arbitrary construction. Consequently, for the dance realist, the concept of dance would be of primary importance; while for dance nominalist, the realization of dance would be so. We suppose that the prioritization of notation or filming also depends on these basic philosophical presuppositions.

In a Nordic context, a dance could be, for instance, a pariserpolka, and a traditional dancer would probably be a realist seeing mainly his own community. For him, the dance pariserpolka, as a concept is the stable and real part of life, and the realizations do not matter much - this is perhaps true even for many dance notators. A researcher comparing more communities will rapidly get into trou-

17. The discussion of idealist and materialist approaches to dance as proposed by Jack Anderson refers neither to the philosophical terms of idealism and materialism elaborated in the German philosophy of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries nor to the problem of universals that emerged in the philosophy of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Anderson (1983:412) himself also stresses that he did not intend to do this. The following part of our argument is constructed on the basis of the latter epistemological debate (for recent discussions in philosophy, see Armstrong 1978; Gosselin 1990).



BAKKA AND KAROBLIS EPISTEMOLOGY FOR DANCE RESEARCH 1 77

ble with such a position. When we analysed a good number of realizations of a pariserpolka in one dance community, Sauda, we found four motives that were continuously repeated in the same order. These four motives represented one run- through of the dance done to eight bars of music. There were, however, a number of variations to most of the four motives. The pariserpolka was done as a four- motive dance all over western Norway, but different communities could use different variations of the motives. We could ask: are the pariserpolka variants in hun- dreds of communities all over western Norway one dance, or would it make more sense to say that the way pariserpolka is done in Sauda is one dance, "pariserpolka from Sauda." If the latter is the case, then all the different communities would have their own version of pariserpolka. Would it make sense to call the pariserpolka in the neighbouring place of Sand, "pariserpolka from Sand," even if it did not have any other variation elements than what we found in Sauda and, to the contrary, had even fewer? Consequently there is hardly any answer to the question "How many traditional dances are there in Norway," mainly because we cannot tell what a dance is.

As far as I can judge, pure form analyses of all the spoken languages of the world would probably provide the basis for concluding that language as human expression can be seen as one enormous, ranging continuum. We can say the same of dance. It would not seem possible to set absolute, consistent form criteria for division into smaller units, even though there are many sharp, clear boundaries within the large pattern. (Bakka, Aksdal, and Flem 1995:22)

Pariserpolka from Sauda was defined as a dance for the practical purpose of

notating it. Video recordings of some fifteen couples, each couple dancing the dance several times, were transcribed. The transcription was done for one couple's realization of the dance at a time, although, due to the fairly simple patterns used, the transcription was done in shorthand. All the transcriptions were then com-

pared and summarized. In this way the structure of the dance with all the recorded variations could be described (Bakka, Moen, and Sorstronen n.d.). The resulting description could then be seen as a systematic compilation of the dance knowledge realized by the filmed couples. We could probably claim that the description would

represent most of the community's dance concept for the pariserpolka at the time of filming. Such descriptions have become standard teaching material in Norway, where there has been and continues to be a focus on dance as the heritage of local communities (figure 3).

Hungarian approaches represent interesting parallels and contrasts. Hungarian folk dance research and transmission have consistently been based on transcribing individual realizations in Labanotation. On the other hand, in contrast with Norway, the transcriptions of individual realizations have also been used as teaching materi- als. This is probably due to a different structure of the dance material, where geo- graphical variation seems less obvious. In this way, Hungarian dancers do not ex-

plicitly use the idea of the dance concept in their work (László Felföldi, pers. com., December 2008).



178 2010 YEA RBOÜK FOR TRA DITIONA L MUSIC

Figure 3. Pariserpolka at Folkets Hus (the labour union's house) in the small industrial town of Lokken, April 1976. Folkets Hus was the main place for public dance parties in the town in the mid-twentieth century (frame from a film, Norwegian Centre for

Traditional Music and Dance).

In the world of dance criticism, the dance realization instead of a dance (work) (as in a dance concept) is supposed to be the main target. That. is why Arlene Croce's refusal to see the realization of the dance-work "Still/Here" by Bill T. Jones created such a great dissonance (Croce 1994-95). How could a dance critic judge the concept of dance without seeing the dance realization? A choreographer, a dancer, or an audience expects the dance critic to offer an argument or discussion that is based on the experience of a singular dance event. They also expect the dance critic to reveal aspects of the dance work that may not have been intended by the choreographer or dancers, and, perhaps, not even noticed by the audience - all based on her experiences from seeing the dance-work. Thus the importance of the job of a dance critic is this unique opportunity to extend knowledge about the dance-work by relying on the trained eye. It was already suggested that a dance critic should first of all concentrate on experiential similarities and differences of the singular dance-works, being able to grasp them as phenomenally given (Levin 1983:92), compare them, and distinguish peculiarities, improvisations, or, perhaps, shortcomings here and there. Dance criticism is not an act, it is a process: seeing and reviewing the newly created and presented dance-work. A dance critic constantly forms and reforms the concept of the dance-work, continuously consulting her phenomenological analysis of dance realizations. The idea of a dance would be a dangerous path that may lead a dance critic into judgements that were too far from the realized dances. We do not subscribe to the strong claim that criticism is



BAKKA AND KAROBLIS EPISTEMOLOGY FOR DANCE RESEARCH 1 79

a parasitic discourse (Steiner 1989), but we certainly want to promote the idea that the primacy of realization should be the first rule for dance criticism.

The lakalaka, made known through Kaeppler's analysis, has totally different problems when looking at how to distinguish a dance.

Today there are six Tongan dance genres, each of which has a different combination of structural elements. The three "living" Tongan dance genres (within which new dances are still created), although reputedly created or diffused in historic times, are closely related to three traditional dance genres that are still performed but are no longer created. Indeed, the living genres seem to be mainly recombinations of kinemic, morphokinemic, and motif elements of the older dance genres. (Kaeppler 1972:214)

The lakalaka is not a usual participatory dance, but has strong elements of the presentational dimension (Nahachewsky 1995), since, as we understand, a group of dancers and musicians from a specific village may choreograph a new lakalaka to a large formal event, for instance, to celebrate the king. A singular dance could in this context be the preset choreography made by one village. In principle, however, the lakalaka would be the set of elements and rules for composing a lakalaka, and a genre of individually composed dances.

Three epistemic approaches: A philosophical point of view

For better understanding of the epistemic position of a dance researcher, let's construct another part of our argument and differentiate between the first-person, the other-person (or second-person), and the sub-personal (or third-personal)18 epistemic approaches. This differentiation among the epistemic approaches has recently become one of the most relevant methodological topics in the interdis- ciplinary field of consciousness studies (Várela and Shear 1999; Dennett 2001), where the traditions of phenomenology and cognitive science converged (Gallagher and Zahavi 2008). In 1969 the concept "sub-personal" was proposed by philosopher Daniel Dennett (1986) as an attempt to separate personal and sub-personal levels of explanation of human life (e.g., we could try to explain human life by referring to personal intentions and actions or, otherwise, we could try to explain it by referring to neural circuits, physical causation, etc.). Although Dennett has deserted his previous stance, other philosophers still argue for preserving this dif- ference (Hornsby 2000) and support the line of thinking that Dennett himself traces back to Wittgenstein and Ryle (Dennett 1986:95). The differentiation between the first and the other person has been sharpened in the recent methodological debate on "heterophenomenology," a term also proposed by Dennett (2003), but strongly criticized by phenomenologists (Dennett 2007). As a consequence, two

18. We do not use the term "third person" as other researchers do (Overgaard 2004), because it might be misunderstood as implying some kind of personal level, whereas the sub-personal level is meant. For a "personalized" interpretation of this term, see Depraz and Cosmelli (2003).




methodological frames - autophenomenology and heterophenomenology - were contraposited (Marbach 2007; Dennett 2007). We do not claim that it might be possible to reduce one epistemic approach into the other; therefore, the distinctions drawn between the first-person account (autophenomenology) and the other- person account (heterophenomenology), and between personal and sub-personal, in general, are preserved and explicated in the field of dance knowledge.

The first-person approach The first-person approach is most clearly realized by doing autophenomenology (Marbach 2007).19 One of the aims of autophenomenology is description and analysis of phenomenal experiences that were/are accessible only to me as the subject of these experiences (the first person). The most widely used example of an autophenomenological description is the description of a pain that I am suffering from. For example, even a small child saying that she or he feels a headache has an exceptional authority over the truthfulness of this statement. As the phenomenal aspect, a doctor has to take a child's statement for granted, even in the case of the doctor having a clear explanation that a child could not have any idea about. Could a small child get a better grasp of this phenomenon? Perhaps not. But a phe- nomenologist of pain who suffers from a headache would struggle to give a better phenomenological account of what she or he actually experiences.

Autophenomenology does not have standard procedures that automatically increase knowledge like mathematical formulae, nor can it suggest easy, unex- plored ways of doing dance research. It just demands to change the attitude from the natural to the phenomenological.20

Autophenomenology is rigorous in distinguishing an experienced content from a judgement about it, visible from invisible, an experience that is mine from an experience that belongs to others. Autophenomenological descriptions do not necessarily target so-called "inner experiences." In an autophenomenological description all our senses can be involved and consequently a rigorous field log from participatory observation can be a good example of autophenomenology. Let's imagine an anthropologist taking down notes during participatory observation:

I am sitting on a chair in the community house watching a young man21 walking across the floor, asking a girl to dance. She gets up very quickly, smiling, and they embrace each other and start dancing.

1 9. The term "autophenomenology" is used as a synonym for rigorous Husserlian phenomenology. It is important to stress that it differs from the wide and loose usage of the term "phenomenological . " 20. For further descriptions of how this methodology could work in dance research, see

Parviainen (2006) and Karoblis (2007a, 2010). 2 1 . Even the concepts "young" and "old" and the concepts "man" and "girl" contain judge-

ments. There are genetic diseases which can make young individuals look much older than is usual for their age. We judge age from skin surface, movement style, etc. "Young" and "old" might refer to birth date, but it is then a part of a narrative, not of experience. "Man" and "girl" are perhaps mainly based on dressing, and we could get in trouble with, for example, cross-dressing.




If I add to this that they seem to be in love, I am making a judgement that takes me out of strict autophenomenology; but I could make an observation on my impres- sion - that is, empathy on the basis of which I attribute to this couple mental states such as "being in love," etc. We continue the field log:

An individual dressed as is conventional for a man walks over to me and makes a bow. I interpret it as an invitation to dance with him, and get up. I recognize the music as being a reinlender and start doing the dance as I usually do. My partner goes on with the promenade motif, and his steps are clearly different from mine, but he does not seem to mind or notice that I am dancing differently. Then he starts turning at a point I do not expect because it does not coincide with the musical phrases in the way I am used to.

I could easily have made a judgement writing in my field log: "I was invited to dance a reinlender with a man who did not know the dance at all." The background could actually be that the dancer did not know the dance or that I was doing the conventional "square version," whereas he did the "free-flowing" Numedal version. In summary, dance phenomenology is directed toward a perceptual phenomenon of dancing that is: present-for-me or represented-by-me (remembered or imagined); given to me, not only visually but to all senses, as kinaesthetic and tactile senses; given to me, including myself and not-myself dancing (Karoblis 2010). It does not exclude practical details or technical descriptions and does not prioritize intro- spection. Autophenomenology could efficiently work as a method in the analysis of filmed material as it is given to personal observation. Autophenomenological scrutiny makes it very clear that dancing in filmed material is presented not as a dance, but as the movement patterns recorded by a moving or nonmoving camera directed in one or another angle.

The sub-personal approach In contrast to autophenomenology, the sub-personal approach aims at eliminat- ing any subjective aspects from the research and is often defined as the third-person approach (Overgaard 2004:372). The less the sub-personalist researcher is involved in making personal decisions or judgements, the closer she is to the sub-personal ideal, as in The View from Nowhere (Nagel 1986). According to this point of view, data collected with measurement instruments or by recording should always be the starting point and basis for any interpretation. Measurement made with instruments or by recording provides information that extends the limits of knowledge and, quite often, transgresses our limited capabilities of judgement based on pure perceptions. From an extreme sub-personal point of view, the work of adjudicators at a dance competition should ideally be made impersonal by having it done by cameras and computers.

Recordings of dance are data stored in their physical sub-personal mode of being. They are comparable to measurement data in the natural sciences. Data are in themselves sub-personal, but as soon as we get into interpretation we enter the personal level. In any science there is the problem of selecting what you docu-




ment and how you document it, which is not on a sub-personal level. Decisions and dispositions of a documentator - whether in fieldwork or in scientific meas- urements - determine the selection of data and the mode of documentation. Still the data recorded in such ways - for example, on film or other media - remain in themselves sub-personal and are always available for interpretation. Interpretation is always interpretation of something given. An archaeologist would construct a story about an implement she finds by interpreting all traces on it and connected to it. Additionally, she needs perhaps to fill gaps by using other data, such as similar implements found elsewhere. In this sense science is always construction. Nevertheless, normal constructions of science are far away from fabrications of fake material. It is the normal integration of the invisible horizon of understanding into historic or archaeological material. Moreover, modern technologies allow not only inscriptions of static images into materialities, such as rock carvings, but can also inscribe sequences of image and sound into materialities - physical containers of encoded information, such as film. The problem for dance history is precisely the lack of such information. The development of the sub-personal approaches in science and technology - such as the invention of cinematography at the end of nineteenth century - made historic sub-personal data available to us, thus extend- ing our empirical field dramatically. If preserved, the films are present with us and will remain present. Therefore, through film, a researcher of dance history or anthropology can observe events or dances from the point of view of "an extra eye" or "an extra ear" that can not be replaced by any other types of sources. It may seem that the criticism of the superficial and literal interpretation of historical source material tends to contaminate even the evaluation of the sources themselves (Sparti and Adshead-Lansdale 1996).

The other-person approach The other-person approach is based on testimonies and communication from persons other than the researcher and corresponds to the broadly understood, but undifferentiated, second-person approach (Depraz and Cosmelli 2003). This approach originally inspired the hermeneutic turn in phenomenological philosophy (Heidegger 1993; Gadamer 1960). It questioned if a pure subjective phenomenological standpoint - unaffected by intersubjective prejudices and preconceptions - was possible. Although the topic of intersubjectivity (the other-person problem) has already been discussed by Husserl in 193 1 in his "Cartesian meditations "

(Husserl 1991), various criticisms of Husserlian "subjectivism" have been proposed (e.g., Derrida 1973) and rejected (e.g., Zahavi 2001).

Leaving aside this very broad philosophical discussion between hermeneutics and phenomenology, we will concentrate on recent pragmatic methodological reflections in phenomenology that argue for refined other-person approaches and intersubjective validation (Depraz, Vermersch, and Várela 2002). These methodological reflections include the evaluation of multiple second-person methods, ranging from the advice of a spiritual friend to the consensus of the community of researchers (Depraz and Cosmelli 2003:182).The other-person approach is




involved where the researcher is interviewing other persons or benefits from their mediation of knowledge. Anthropology of dance relies strongly on the interviews or testimonies of informants, and there are a multitude of ways to interview people; for example, it may be possible for a researcher to help her informant describe his or her immediate experiences by using the technique of "explicitation interview" (Vermersch 1994). In this way, the interaction between the researcher and the informant is a guiding of the informant into autophenomenology and it should be based on pragmatics - that is, on the teaching of how to disclose experience (Depraz, Vermersch, and Várela 2002). The intersubjective interaction ranges from subjective personal expression to further modes that involve account (individual first-person testimony as directed to the other person), report (detached verbaliza- tion of the experience of a given subject), and description (which should be seen on the level that is the closest to being objective in a broad sense) (Depraz and Cosmelli 2003).

These methodological refinements of the other-person approach are, however, still relatively rare in dance research, even in what could be called dance phenomenology.22 The loose, other-person approaches, which draw upon narratives told by other people from other fields of expertise, dominate. These narratives could have in the background the first-person experience or sub-personal data, quite often mixed in the totality of the narrative. They also often include many value judgements. These narratives are often abstractions of singular cases from various sources of knowledge. For example, one normally constructs the narrative of one's birth by strongly relying on what one's parents say. One may, however, integrate later first-person perceptions of the place of one's birth or material documentation of the fact such as film. Even genetic tests are available on the sub-personal level. But no one has experience from her own birth.

Moreover a multitude of scholars in history, sociology, politics, or anthropology seem to share influential presuppositions that explain away first-person experiences as fatal interiorizations of social values, prejudices, etc., claiming that these experiences are all based in social conventions and linguistic practices (Derrida 1984). Postcolonial theories share a similar critique of the "first-person plural" ethnocentrism that is found entrapped in the cultural biases about the Other (Said 1978). The adherents of other-person approaches also claim that the practices of the natural sciences are equally dependent on decisions, conventions, science poli-

22. An example could be the otherwise inspiring article of Parviainen (2006) that tackles important issues in the application of phenomenological method in dance research, but at the same time, unfortunately, involves some value statements such as "the aerobic mover observes her/his heart rate by reading the indication on his/her hand. The movers prefer to trust the meters of the objective body to the immediately given quality of experience. In the future, are we all followed by little robots which, measuring constantly our objective body condition, tell us what we should do? The little robot as a 'personal trainer' tells us when we should eat, drink, have an exercise, go to bed. If we begin more and more to be faithful to the machines concerning our bodies, what does it mean in the moral sense?" (ibid. : 143- 44). Parviainen misses the point because the aerobic mover actually trusts the instructor or the friend who advises to use measuring devices that could eventually become a "personal trainer," but only in a metaphoric sense.




tics, and the consensus of the scientific community and society in general (Kuhn 1962; Feyerabend 1975; Latour and Woolgar 1979; Bourdieu 1988).

Dance researchers echo these general tendencies in the humanities and the social sciences, criticizing or ignoring first-personal and sub-personal approaches. For example, Philippa Rothfield critiques the phenomenology of dance as developed by Sheets-Johnstone (1979):

Taken corporeally, the point is that experience occurs in a body which is thoroughly marked by history. According to this position, Sheets-Johnstone' s historical "omis- sion" was not a lack of eidetic vision on her part but an indication of the (limited) means by which movement is experienced ... Sheets-Johnstone' s analysis grew out of her own experience of movement which occurred within a particular historical, intellectual and artistic context. (Rothfield 2005:47)

On the other hand, researchers exploring the possibilities of the neuroscientific study of dance wonder

why and how dancers (or artists in general) might consider neuro-scientific study of their disciplines as intrusions, if not sacrilege. An encapsulation of the problems of neuro-science from the dancer's perspective would include: (1) a bias for scientists to choose almost exclusively quantitative over qualitative data, (2) the formulaic tendency of science to reduce the whole to parts, and (3) the related tendency to analyse categorically rather than holistically. These methods of analysis are diametrically opposed to the ways in which our dancers enquire. (Dale, Hyatt, and Hollerman 2007:99)

From our point of view, the critique from the side of other-personal approaches directed at sub-personal and first-personal research overlooks that other-person approaches can supplement, but not substitute, sub-personal or first-personal approaches. These two sources of knowledge are irreducible to any other source of knowledge. They are also inexhaustible within their own limits, in the same way as other-person sources are. The impossibility of achieving the ideal phenomenal transparency in the life of the first person or the impossibility of achieving the ideal objectiveness of sub-personal research does not discredit them per se.

We, as dance researchers, often construct narratives combining our own experiences and knowledge, collected through other-person testimonies, as well as sub- personal data. We would like to test if there is a reason to keep them apart. It seems important to us as researchers to remain aware of what sources of knowledge we use: first-person sources, other-person sources, or sub-personal sources. We suggest that we need to reflect upon how they can be combined, but not confused (Hanna 2002) or confronted.

Philosophy and ethnochoreology in discussion

As a conclusion to this article, we went back to Bakka's "innocent" description of his fieldwork in Numedal at the beginning; and Karoblis asked: "You wrote,



B AKKA AND KAROBLIS EPISTEMOLOG Y FOR DANCE RESEARCH 1 85

'The musicians on the stage are playing.' How high was the stage where the musicians were playing?"

Bakka explained that the draft was meant to be an illustration of fieldwork in general. During his 1985 fieldwork in Numedal, he filmed on four evenings in different localities. For this reason, he was not referring to one singular event while writing, but when he went back over it, planning the referencing he did see the problems. On the one hand, he wanted to write an appealing, condensed story, assembling what he felt were typical traits. On the other hand, he realized that all those typical and perhaps colourful elements of dance evenings, hardly ever hap- pen all together in one event. As for the stage, he was idealizing. Norway does have a large number of community houses, often called youth halls, where a lot of dancing went on from the 1920s till the 1950s and 1960s. Bakka did a lot of documentation in such places, often with the set-up as described, but this was not the case in Numedal, where he mostly filmed at schools. He certainly could have filmed in typical community houses if he would have given priority to that aspect and, in such a case, the stage might have been a bit more than a metre high.

Karoblis had been convinced that Bakka was presenting a singular event in his introductory story. Now he understood that Bakka' s story was a composition of his experiences from various places plus stories told by dancers in various places. It was an abstracted story. Narratives that circulate among us are composed from somebody's experiences, abstracted according to the needs of listeners. Bakka agreed and explained that he composed the story thinking about the people who would read this article, trying to make it appealing and informative at the same time. Most of the anthropological evidence presented in research papers is hardly, so to say, raw data, but rather elaborated, filtered, and abstracted narratives.

Then Karoblis asked: "When you wrote 'They are back in the arena,' could you distinguish how much of it was from your experience and how much did you find out about from other persons?"

Bakka explained that this part was based on his impressions from a large number of interviews with people born between 1910 and 1930 from all over Norway, and that it seemed to be more or less generally valid for most countryside communities where dancing was important. He felt that there was hardly anything from his own experience in this. He could not experience or read anything of this directly in the filming or fieldwork situation. As for his personal background, he grew up after World War II and his learning to dance took place in a folk dance group. He rarely went to the ordinary dance parties in his community, but he could still see the strong importance of knowing how to dance the popular dances among his age- mates in the late 1950s.

Karoblis asked Bakka to explain his basis for writing that "The dancers typically know six or seven . . . dances." Since Bakka was filming, could he combine filming and observation?

Bakka said that of course he would observe in a filming situation, but it would not be his focus, and he would not have time or resources to do any kind of participatory observation with the kind of agenda that was and still is the basis for his work. He does not think that participatory observation and direct learning from




traditional dancers would not have been valuable. Bakka did collect data about each person present, primarily to get basic information from the dancers and musicians. The estimate on the number of dances the dancers knew referred to this kind of information - which he always collected - where the informants gave the names of the dances they knew. Directly after the filming he also wrote short notes about the filming situation, taking down what people said about what they did, and about the mood and the attitude in the situation. Additionally he would tape interviews with a selection of the dancers and musicians as far as time allowed. The main problem was that he was extremely pressed by lack of time.

Karoblis asked Bakka to explain his basis for the analysis of the dance technique in the paragraph beginning "Numedal is ... one of those places." Was it based on the film material, which would then be a source on the sub-personal level?

Bakka confirmed that the analysis was made on the basis of film material. Bakka made several attempts to have local people learn from their elders in a systematic way. It was very difficult for several reasons; his conclusion was that the analysis of filmed material had to be the first step. The contact with the people who knew the dances would be a second step. The procedures were then as described above about pariserpolka: he transcribed singular realizations in cooperation with local people and compared transcriptions to find a basis for learning and teaching. A lot of strategic decisions were made by him and the local people. Such source material has on several occasions been revisited by others to test the interpretations; these are also quite interesting and inspiring.

Karoblis suggested that the most important aspect of hard science is that interpretations compete on the basis of the same data. In 2001 the New Perspectives in fMRI Research Award was announced for the most creative and convinc- ing secondary examination of brain image data. It was established by the fMRI (Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) Data Center (http://www.fmridc.org) and the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. Karoblis thinks that the scientific deci- sion to collect and share raw empirical material is of very great importance. With this, we then have the common basis on which we can develop theories or interpretations; without this, it would be impossible! How could various interpretations be falsified? Without such empirical material, we could only have the claims of one person against the claims of another person.

Bakka suggested that sub-personal data is an eye into another time and space that hardly any other kinds of sources can replace. We admit that without a competent reader it does not make sense, but a competent reader does not necessarily need to have talked with people from the context. Competence can still be developed, as in, for instance, archaeology.

Conclusion

This article may be read as proposing to resituate, re-actualize, and renew methodologies established by early European ethnochoreologists (Grau and Wierre-Gore 2005), particularly as developed in Hungary in the middle of the twentieth cen-




tury (Felföldi 1999) and in Norway and other Nordic countries from the 1970s (Bakka 1981, 1991, 1999). We have tried to do this by looking at the field of dance research from the perspective of philosophy, as well as from the perspective of ethnochoreology. Additional perspectives have been based in the cultural- political agenda as represented by the Norwegian Centre for Traditional Music and Dance and educational developments within the dance studies programme at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. At the beginning of the article we told a story about how traditional dance is becoming heritage. The story also illustrates the intentions of the UNESCO convention for safeguarding intangible cultural heritage (Gore and Bakka 2009; UNESCO 2003). The convention cre- ates a demand for methodologies handling movement and movement analysis for the purposes of documentation and transmission, such as some of those that we advocated in this article. Film/video recording for documentation purposes needs to become a systematic and theoretically grounded tool, and the analysis of such recordings needs renewal and development. This would be decisively aided by an acceptance of and a new exploration into sub-personal methods and perspectives, which could and should be done without getting trapped in positivism. We also argue for a stricter discipline in the application of first-personal methodologies following the way of the philosophical tradition of phenomenology . According to our argument, the other-personal methodologies, such as conventional interviews, have been prioritized at the cost of other methodologies and may have exhausted their potential if they are not renewed and resituated theoretically. A bottom-line in our argument is that, despite all the cumbersome work it takes, generalizations need to be based upon the explorations of singular events, such as realizations of dance. We argue that there is a need in dance research to work systematically with empirical material and to strive for a transparency about how singular events bring us to generalizations.

REFERENCES CITED

Adshead-Lansdale, Janet 1994 "Dance Analysis in Performance." Dance Research: The Journal of the Society

for Dance Research 12/2: 15-20. American Folklore Society

1974 "Proceedings of the Annual Business Meeting of the American Folklore Society." The Journal of American Folklore 87/Supplement: 3-59.

Anderson, Jack 1983 "Idealists, Materialists and the Thirty-two Fouettés." In Copeland and Cohen

1983:410-20. Armstrong, D. M.

1978 Universals and Scientific Realism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bakka, Egil

1970 Danse, danse, leti ut pà foten, folkedansar og songdansar. Oslo: Noregs boklag.

1 98 1 "Folk Dance Research in Norway." Dance Studies 5 : 22-41.




1991 "The Centre of the Norwegian Council for Folk Music and Folk Dance." Dance Research Journal 23/2 (Fall): 54-55.

1994 "Heir, User, or Researcher: Basic Attitudes within the Norwegian Revival Movement." In Proceedings of the 1 7th Symposium of the Study Group on Ethnochoreology: Dance and Its Socio-political Aspects; Dance and Costume, ed. Alexandra Doumas and Irene Loutzaki, 1 17-26. Nafplion: Peloponisiako Laografiko Idrima.

1999 "Or Shortly They Would Be Lost Forever: Documenting for Revival and Research." In Buckland 1999: 71-81.

2001 "Voices of the Revival." In Proceedings, 21st Symposium of the ICTM Study Group on Ethnochoreology, 2000, ed. Elsie Ivancich Dunin and Tvrtko Zebec, 138^2. Korcula: ICTM Study Group Ethnochoreology and Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research.

2005 Dance Paradigms: Movement Analysis and Dance Studies. In Dance and Society: Dancer as a Cultural Performer, ed. Elsie Ivancich Dunin, Anne von Bibra Wharton, and László Felfoldi, 72-80. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó.

Bakka, Egil, Bjorn Aksdal, and Erling Flem 1 995 Springar and Pols; Variation, Dialect and Age: Pilot Project on the

Methodology for Determining Traditions Structures and Historical Layering of Old Norwegian Couple Dances. Trondheim: Rff Center, Râdet for folkemusikk og folkedans.

Bakka, Egil, Liv Jorunn Frogner, Magne Kjorstad, Mâlfrid Blaavarp Bergst0l, Gro Kollandsrud, and Jan Lislien

1 987 "Dansar frâ Numedal: Utkast til nedteikningar." Unpublished manuscript. Râdet for folkemusikk og folkedans, Trondheim.

Bakka, Egil, Ruth A. Moen, and Berta Sorstranen n.d. "Pariserpolka frà Sauda." Unpublished manuscript. The Norwegian Centre for

Traditional Music and Dance, Trondheim. Bauman, Richard, and Charles L. Briggs

1990 "Poetics and Performance as Critical Perspectives on Language and Social Life." Annual Review of Anthropology 19: 59-88.

Bourdieu, Pierre 1988 Homo academicus. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Buckland, Theresa Jill 1999 Ed. Dance in the Field. Theory Methods and Issues in Dance Ethnography.

London and Basingstoke: Macmillan. Carter, Alexandra

1998 Ed. Routledge Dance Studies Reader. London: Routledge. Copeland, Roger, and Marshall Cohen

1 983 Ed. What Is Dance? Readings in Theory and Criticism. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.

(Jopleston, Frederick (J. 1990 A History of Medieval Philosophy. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame

Press. Croce, Arlene

1994-95 "A Critic at Bay, Discussing the Undiscussable." The New Yorker (26 December 1994): 54-56; (2 January 1995): 58-60.



B AKKA AND KAROBLIS EPISTEMOLOGY FOR DANCE RESEARCH 1 89

Dale, J. A., Janyce Hyatt, and Jeff Hollerman 2007 "The Neuroscience of Dance and the Dance of Neuroscience: Defining a Path

of Inquiry." The Journal of Aesthetic Education 41/3: 89-1 10. Daly, Ann

1988 "Movement Analysis: Piecing Together the Puzzle." The Drama Review 32/4: 40-52.

Dennett, Daniel C. 1986 Content and Consciousness. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. (Orig. pub.

1969Ì 2001 "Are We Explaining Consciousness Yet?" Cognition 79: 221-37. 2003 "Who's on First? Heterophenomenology Explained." Journal of Consciousness

Studies 9-10/ '10: 19-30. 2007 "Heterophenomenology Reconsidered." Phenomenology and the Cognitive

Sciences 6/1: 247-70. Depraz, Natalie, and Diego Cosmelli

2003 "Empathy and Openness: Practices of Intersubjectivity at the Core of the Science of Consciousness." Canadian Journal of Philosophy 29: 163-203.

Depraz, Natalie, Pierre Vermersch, and Charles Várela 2002 On Becoming Aware: A Pragmatics of Experiencing. Amsterdam: John

Benjamins. Derrida, Jacques

1 973 Speech and Phenomena: And Other Essays on Husserl 's Theory of Signs. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

1984 OfGrammatology. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Dils, Ann, and Jill F. Crosby

2001 "Dialogue in Dance Studies Research." Dance Research Journal 33/1: 62-81. Farnell, Brenda M.

1999 "Moving Bodies, Acting Selves." Annual Review of Anthropology 28: 341-73. Felfóldi, László

1999 "Folk Dance Research in Hungary: Relation among Theory, Fieldwork, and the Archive." In Buckland 1999: 55-70.

Feyerabend, Paul 1975 Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge. London:

NLB. Fügedi, János

1999 "Springs in Traditional Dance: An Analysis and Classification." Studia Musicologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 40/1-3: 159-88.

2003 "Movement Cognition and Dance Notation." Studia Musicologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 44/3-4: 393-410.

Gadamer, Hans-Georg 1 960 Wahrheit und Methode: Grundzüge einer philosophischen Hermeneutik.

Tübingen: Mohr. Gallagher, Shaun, and Dan Zahavi

2008 The Phenomenological Mind: An Introduction to Philosophy of Mind and Cognitive Science. London: Routledge.

Gere, David 2004 How to Make Dances in an Epidemic: Tracking Choreography in the Age of

AIDS. Madison, USA: University of Wisconsin Press.




Giurchescu, Anca, and Lisbet Torp 1991 "Theory and Methods in Dance Research: A European Approach to the Holistic

Study of Dance." Yearbook for Traditional Music 23: 1-10. Gore, Georgiana, and Egil Bakka

2007 "Constructing Dance Knowledge in the Field: Bridging the Gap between Realisation and Concept." In Re-thinking Practice and Theory; Proceedings Thirtieth Annual Conference, Society for Dance History Scholars, Paris, 21-24 June 2007, comp. Ann Cooper Albright, Dena Davida, and Sarah Davies Cordova. 93-97. Co-sponsored with CORD.

2009 "Intangible Cultural Heritage: Agency and/or Critical Distance." In Transmitting Dance as Cultural Heritage and Dance and Religion; Proceedings of the 25th Symposium of the ICTM Study Group on Ethnochoreology, ed. Mohd Anis Md Nor, Elsie Ivancich Dunin, and Anna von Bibra Wharton, 15-21. Kuala Lumpur: Cultural Centre University of Malaya, ICTM Study Group on Ethnochoreology.

Gosselin, Mia 1 990 Nominalism and Contemporary Nominalism: Ontological and Epistemological

Implications of the Work of W. V. O. Quine and of N. Goodman. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Grau, Andrée 1998 "Myths of Origin." In Carter 1998: 197-202.

Grau, Andrée, and Georgiana Wierre-Gore 2005 Anthropologie de la danse: Genèse et construction d'une discipline. Patin,

France: Centre national de la danse. Guest, Ann Hutchinson

2000 "Is Authenticity to Be Had?" In Preservation Politics: Dance Revived, Reconstructed, Remade; Proceedings from the Conference at the University of Surrey Roehampton, November 8-9, 1997, ed. Stephanie Jordan, 65-71. London: Dance Books.

Hanna, Judith L. 2002 "Lost Dance Research, Found New Hubris." Dance Research Journal 34/1 :

7-10. Harper, Peggy

1969 "Dance in Nigeria." Ethnomusicology 13/2: 280-95. Heidegger, Martin

1993 Sein und Zeit. Tübingen: Niemeyer Verlag. (Orig. pub. 1927) Hoerburger, Felix

1 959 "The Study of Folk Dance and the Need for a Uniform Method of Notation." Journal of the International Folk Music Council 1 1 : 71-73.

Hornsby, Jennifer 2000 "Personal and Sub-personal: A Defence of Dennett's Early Distinction."

Philosophical Explorations: An International Journal for the Philosophy of Mind and Action 3/1: 6-24.

Hughes-Freeland, Felicia 1999 "Dance on Film: Strategy and Serendipity." In Buckland 1999: 1 1 1-22.

Husserl, Edmund 1 99 1 Cartes ianische Meditationen und Pariser Vorträge. 2nd ed. reprint. Dordrecht:

Kluwer Academic Publishers. (Orig. pub. 1950, ed. Stephan Strasser; 2nd ed. 1963)




Isachsen, Janny 1 886 Lommebogfor dansende: Til stette for erindringen ved menuet, française, lan-

ders, fandango med fiere afde mest brugelige nutidsdandse: Samt anvisning til nogle cottillontoure. Kristiania: Cammermeyer.

Kaeppler, Aérienne L. 1972 "Method and Theory in Analyzing Dance Structure with an Analysis of Tongan

Dance ." Ethnomus ico low 16/2: 173-217. 1 999 "The Mystique of Fieldwork." In Buckland 1 999: 1 3-25. 2001 "Dance and the Concept of Style." Yearbook for Traditional Music 33: 49-63.

Karoblis, Gediminas 2007a "Controlling Gaze, Chess Play and Seduction in Dance: Phenomenological

Analysis of the Natural Attitude of the Body in Modern Ballroom Dance." Janus Head 9/2: 329^43. See also http: //www.janushead.org/9-2/Karoblis.pdf (accessed 15 July 2010).

2007b "The Question Concerning Dance Technique." In Phenomenology 2005, Volume 4: Selected Essays from Northern Europe, ed. Hans Rainer Sepp and Ion Copoeru, 363-98. Bucharest: Zeta Books.

20 1 0 Dance. In handbook oj t fenomeno logical Aesthetics, ed. Hans Kainer òepp and Lester Embree, 67-70. Dordrecht: Springer.

Kozel, Susan 2007 Closer: Performance, Technologies, Phenomenology. Cambridge, MA: MIT

Press. Kuhn, Thomas S.

1962 The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lange, Roderyk

1983 "Anthropology and Dance Scholarship." Dance Research: The Journal of the Society for Dance Research 1/1: 108-18.

Latour, Bruno, and Steve Woolgar 1979 Laboratory Life: The Social Construction of Scientific Facts. Beverly Hills:

Sage. Levin, David M.

1 983 "Philosophers and the Dance." In Copeland and Cohen 1 983 : 85-94. Marbach, Eduard

2007 "No Heterophenomenology without Autophenomenology: Variations on a Theme of Mine." Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 6: 75-87.

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 1 964 The Primacy of Perception and Other Essays on Phenomenological

Psychology, the Philosophy of Art, History and Politics. Ed. James M. Edie. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. (Orig. pub. in French)

1968 The Visible and the Invisible, Followed by Working Notes. Ed. Claude Lefort. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. (Orig. pub. in French, 1964)

1973 The Prose of the World. Ed. Claude Lefort. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. (Orig. pub. in French, 1969)

1996 Phenomenology of Perception. New York: Routledge. (Orig. pub. in French, 1945; in English, 1962).

Morphy, Howard 1994 "The Interpretation of Ritual: Reflections from Film on Anthropological

Practice." Man 29/1 : 1 17-46.




Nagel, Thomas 1986 The View from Nowhere. New York: Oxford University Press.

Nahachewsky, Andriy 1995 "Participatory and Presentational Dance as Ethnochoreological Categories."

Dance Research Journal 211 ' : 1-15. Overgaard, Morten

2004 "On the Naturalising of Phenomenology." Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 3/4: 365-79.

Parviainen, Jaana 2006 "Towards a Phenomenological Method in the Body's Movement Analysis."

In Finnish Dance Research at the Crossroads: Practical and Theoretical Challenges, ed. Päivi K. Pakkanen and Aino Sarje, 136-47. Helsinki: Arts Council of Finland.

Reed, Susan A. 1 998 "The Politics and Poetics of Dance." Annual Review of Anthropology 27:

503-32. Rice, Timothy

1997 "Toward a Mediation of Field Methods and Field Experience in Ethnomusicology." In Shadows in the Field: New Perspectives for Fieldwork in Ethnomusicology, ed. Gregory F. Barz and Timothy J. Cooley, 42-61. New York: Oxford University Press.

Rothfield, Philipa 2005 "Differentiating Phenomenology and Dance." Topoi 24/1 : 43-53.

Royce, Any a P. 2002 The Anthropology of Dance. Alton: Dance Books.

Said, Edward 1978 Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books.

Saussure, Ferdinand de 2006 Writings in General Linguistics. Ed. Matthew Pires and Carol Sanders. Oxford:

Oxford University Press. (Orig. pub. in French, 1916) Sheets- Johnstone, Maxine

1979 The Phenomenology of Dance. London: Dance books. Sklar, Deidre

1 99 1 "On Dance Ethnography." Dance Research Journal 23/1 : 6-10. Sparti, Barbara, and Janet Adshead-Lansdale

1 996 "Dance History: Current Methodologies." Dance Research Journal 28/1 : 3-6. Steiner, George

1989 Real Presences: Is There Anything in What We Say? London: Faber and Faber. UNESCO

2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage. Paris: UNESCO. http://www.unesco.org/culture/ich/index.php?pg=00006 (accessed 16 July 2010).

Van Zile, Judy 1985 "What Is the Dance? Implications for Dance Notation." Dance Research

Journal 17 72: 41-47. 1999 "Capturing the Dance: Why and How." In Buckland 1999: 85-99.




Várela, Francisco, and Jonathan Shear 1999 "First-person Methodologies: What, Why, How." In The View from Within:

First-Person Approaches to the Study of Consciousness, ed. Francisco Várela and Jonathan Shear, 1-14. London: Imprint Academic.

Vermersch, Pierre 1994 L 'entretien d'explicitation. Paris: ESF.

Wiley, Hannah C. 1 987 "A New Model for Teaching Saut de Basque" Dance Research Journal 1 9/2:

9-13. Wittgenstein, Ludwig

1958 Philosophical Investigations. Trans. G. E. M. Anscombe. London: Blackwell. Youngerman, Suzanne

1975 "Method and Theory in Dance Research. An Anthropological Approach." Yearbook of the International Folk Music Council 7: 1 16-33.

Zahavi, Dan 2001 Husserl and Transcendental Intersubjectivity: A Response to the Linguistic-

Pragmatic Critique. Trans. Elizabeth A. Behnke. Athens, USA: Ohio University Press.



Bakka Egil & Geminias Karoblis - Writing a Dance, Epistemlogy for Dance Research

Documents

Transcript of Bakka Egil & Geminias Karoblis - Writing a Dance, Epistemlogy for Dance Research