It might be claimed that there is in fact only one cultural rule of any significance: the rule of metaphor (Christopher Tilley, Metaphor and Material Culture).
Disciplinary encounters
To think archaeologically about dance or to think about archaeology from a dance view point is to place oneself in an in-between position where boundaries are fluid and ever changing. The disciplinary relationship between dance (and more broadly, performance) and archaeology is underpinned by situated knowledge and different positionalities (Cook, 2005 1-9). A fairly widespread objection to this conjunction goes along the following lines: if archaeology in a dance context means thinking about the dance past, surely this is already covered by dance history (a well established discipline, one might add). Why call it archaeology?
People may have outgrown a naïve perception of archaeologists as eternally searching, Indiana Jones style, for lost treasures left behind by mysterious ancient civilisations wiped off the face of the earth. However, the idea of an archaeology that deals almost exclusively with the remote past (often inhabited by uncivilised humans) and whose main concern is digging underground, in search of the physical traces of this past, still holds sway in the popular imagination. Thus if archaeology is all about digging, the very idea of digging up dance, almost by definition ephemeral and intangible, sounds quite preposterous and laughable.
On the other hand, one also has to admit that when archaeologists show an interest in dance, their talk is principally of dance as a ‘ritual’ activity at some site, as might be suggested by specific iconographic evidence, the form and function of which would be dwelled upon. It seems that when archaeologists encounter dance, they tend to dispense with the dance itself, after dealing with it in a cursory manner, in order to concentrate on context. In more recent years, work has been done, for example, on prehistoric dance and analyses have begun to be published in archaeological journals (Garfinkel 1998; 2001). But visual representations of dancers tend to be discussed by archaeologists with a rather impressionistic analysis of the dance actions and little reflection on the body. It is often other elements, such as the clothing and ornaments, that may be emphasised, even though ostensibly the focus is on dance.
Archaeology, especially classical archaeology, has always embraced the archaeology of ‘entertainment’ as a respectable research area , but it remains a rather marginal one compared to more weighty research about economic and political structures. It is an archaeology which concerns itself with the physical space entertainment occupied, the buildings that housed it, rather than the form or forms it took - which would include dance - as the study of theatre, amphitheatres and stadia exemplifies (Humphrey 1986; Golvin 1988). Now, in the 21st century, this has turned into a technologically sophisticated type of archaeological research, with 3D visualisations leading to virtual reality re-enactments (1).
The radical way in which archaeological praxis was conceptualised throughout the 1980s and the 1990s has encouraged archaeologists to engage, to a greater or lesser extent, with theory, considering issues of performativity and developing more phenomenological approaches to ‘doing’ archaeology (2). Simultaneously, performance studies has established itself securely as an interdisciplinary domain within the university, with some intermittent reflection on how to regard and engage with past performances - what Diana Taylor has discussed as the relationship of the archive and the repertoire (Taylor 2003). This has had some impact on how the archaeology of performance began to be perceived (and was, therefore, re-conceptualised) and on the conjunction of dance and archaeology, reconfiguring itself as separate – though clearly interlinked - from a broader performance archaeology.
To the post-1990s archaeology, the focus on dance is as good as the focus on any other human behaviour. The specificity of the dance experience has not been adequately explored, but these problems can, presumably, be worked upon. Interpretive archaeology welcomes dance to the club, in principle. But the practical details of this membership need to be sorted. Interestingly, interpretive archaeology has appropriated the concept of choreography. Archaeologists talk of ‘monumental choreography’ with reference to the use of monuments and the ritual movement of people around them (3).
But what is to be gained by this disciplinary conjunction? In what way can dance and dance studies be part of an archaeological enquiry and how can archaeology assist dancers and dance scholars in their creative and research focused endeavours? This collection of essays constitutes an attempt to answer this question. The next sections will sketch out the main argument(s) of this book.
Dance for archaeology
Let’s begin with ‘dance for archaeology’. I will use an element of fiction, to provide some context. I am basing my fictional narrative on conversations and interaction I have had with archaeologists over a period of some years, through my participation at archaeology conferences and seminars held in archaeology departments (4).
Thus let us pretend that I am before an audience of archaeologists, at an imaginary, all inclusive archaeology conference, with a variety of panels. My audience would be mixed, because archaeologists’ specialisations are diverse, looking at all periods and all regions of the world, often with no clear-cut, dividing line between the domain of historians and that of archaeologists (5). In my presentation, I would attempt to establish the utility of an archaeological perspective on dance, arguing for an archaeology of dance. But first of all I would endeavour to establish what archaeology means in the context of my own archaeological work. This is because there is not a single archaeological perspective, but several. A common ground is assumed by outsiders. But in fact, because archaeologists are such an heterogeneous group, the idea of a common ground is a fiction. The common ground has to be negotiated.
I would begin by arguing that an archaeological interest in the dance of the past and the material culture of dance –its traces and fragments, variously defined - amounts to more than a study of iconography of postures, movement styles and performance practices of the past. This alone would not be sufficient to regard it as archaeological enquiry – were it so, we would be treading heavily on art history territory (6). I would have to clarify my entry point by saying that I am engaging in a social archaeology. This would make it clear to the people in the audience that archaeology to me is not an exact science, that I do not practice middle range theory and do not make assumptions following hypothetico-deductive strategies and intensive sampling. Having stated that an archaeological perspective on dance is not solely about dance as art (though it may encompass it), I would expand on this by arguing that dance informs – thus dance is a legitimate field of enquiry for archaeologists. Why? Because it informs on a variety of subjects such as religion, social order/class/power relations and hegemonic order and last, but not least, entertainment (not necessarily in that order).
I would then discuss dance in the context of contemporary embodiment theory and the archaeology of the body, a relatively new area of archaeological enquiry to which dance can make a significant contribution. Here I would remind my audience that archaeology is the study of the past and we need to understand the human body in the past. Archaeology, everyone knows, deals with bodies in the past, in the form of bones and mummified corpses. Yet these are primarily seen as data leading to something else. As my presentation unfolds, I would point out that despite the potential for a more humanised archaeological account of the body, paradoxically, in the discourse of archaeology, bodies tend to have no materiality as bodies, archaeological narratives are disembodied, so to speak, and when attempting to engage with embodiment, Eurocentric views predominate – especially that of the body as passive object of power, as discussed by Foucault in his account of how humans come to discipline other humans and themselves, in practices of making themselves subjects (Foucault 1982, 1984, 1986a, 1986b) - with insufficient room for alternatives. My focus on dance would remind archaeologists that archaeology needs to deal with living bodies and human beings, people who experience a range of emotions, who think with their bodies and are engaged in performing actions.
I would then introduce a case study. After discussing the specifics of it, I would focus on the recontextualisation of the past in the present. I would point out that archaeology is about the relationship of the present with the past. It is about how the past is lived in the present, about heritage and how this is constructed in the present. One may think here of our ‘temples of knowledge’, the Museums, devoted to the preservation and presentation of cultural heritage. The architecture and appearance of their buildings marks them from their surroundings, and their walls, enclose space and also time. Museum visitors journey through time through the carefully selected narratives displayed about different aspects of ‘cultural heritage’ through the ages. One may also think of institutional heritage bodies and the link that exists between archaeology and political power, of which most archaeologists are aware. Archaeology can be subservient to politics in ways that at times may be rather extreme (7) (Johnson 1999, 167-170; Kohl and Fawcett 1996).
An archaeological perspective on dance, I would conclude, involves the study of its material culture, which includes past and present images and artefacts. It may include a focus on movement reconstruction and replication, and a contemporary re-appropriation of obsolete movement practices but it involves an in-depth contextual study, looking at the complex landscapes of dance and the movements of its practitioners within those landscapes, past and present dance consumption and the tie with heritage and with legitimation of power relationships.
The point of this ‘undelivered’ paper was first to give some sense of what this dance/archaeology disciplinary relationship seems to be about . Second, this ‘undelivered’ paper allowed me to point out how archaeologists would or could view dance and therefore what taking an interest in dance can do for archaeology. A paper such as the one I have outlined, addressed to a heterogeneous group of archaeologists, would alert them to an area of archaeological enquiry which is under-explored. The very heterogeneity of archaeology would ensure that dance could be taken on board. In a way, it already has, though only implicitly. Theatre/archaeology is a new disciplinary concern, a ground breaking collaboration developed by Michael Shanks and Mike Pearson, an archaeological theorist and a theatre artist and specialist (Pearson and Shanks 2001), which they have presented as an integrated approach to recording, writing and illustrating the material past. In the theatre/archaeology project, dance is subsumed under performance.
Dance is, of course, performance, yet it also has some unique qualities which require some fine tuning of the approach conceived by Pearson and Shanks. Their work however opens up new possibilities and is of major interest to anyone involved with dance, particularly in the context of dance education, where documentation and reconstruction of dance works are taught as part of courses for dance studies degrees.
Archaeology for dance
What can archaeology do for dance or, more precisely, for choreology (8)? There is more than one answer to this question. The field of dance/dance studies (and choreology) is also very heterogeneous. Dance is relatively new within the academic arena. Without going into a lengthy digression, one can say that there are those who ‘do’ dance, that is people who practise dance as performers, create – choreograph - dance works, think – theorise - with their body and pass on – teach - their knowledge of dance to others. There are those more traditionally perceived to be the ‘scholars’ of dance – they think about it, talk about it, write about it, theorise about it, teach about it and only very occasionally are involved in the ‘doing’. Finally, there are those who document dance – the notators, the archivists, the reconstructors. This third category is a mixed one, involving dance practitioners and non-practitioners, as documentation and subsequent reconstruction of dance involve embodiment, bodily memory and re-embodiment.
This admittedly somewhat sketchy description of perceived divisions in dance is only to make the point that here too a common ground has to be negotiated. It does not imply, for example, that those who practise dance do not theorise at all, on the contrary - although some find the notion of ‘embodied theory’ difficult to accept. What I am trying to say is that it is all these ‘dance’ people – practitioners and non-practitioners – who create the body of critical writing on dance. The division between practitioners and non-practitioners also foregrounds the existence of a legacy of an imbalanced, hierarchical differentiation that has afflicted (and still lingers on) the dance world : those who, in the past, wrote about dance did not usually dance, those who danced did not usually write, those who taught dance – they taught and got on with it. This has led to incomplete understanding of the dance process as a whole, one which involves choreography, performance, dance technique teaching, dance writing, the documenting and recording of dance works, and which is sustained by critical engagement. Distinctions between those who ‘do’ and those who ‘do not’ but comment and explain, are artificial and are , in a sense, becoming obsolete, but the process of change – and most of all, of change in people’s perception of dance and dancers - is a slow one (9).
I am attempting here to indicate an area of possible controversy in current debates in the field of dance studies – and thus further emphasise the heterogeneity of the field, in a way that mirrors that of archaeology (10). In England, scholarly writing about ballet for example has often been the domain of white, public school educated, non-dancer males who took it upon themselves to explain dance and this contributed, in the public consciousness, to a view of dancers as instinctive people, all feeling and emotion , who had no need (and perhaps no ability) to engage in any kind of rational thinking, their artistic competence setting them apart – other, less talented people would act as intermediary, trying to capture in words their essentially unfathomable creative gifts (11). As Susan Leigh Foster writes,
views of the body as separate (and lesser) from mind have contributed to an unease in understanding the body as more than a mere vehicle for aestheticised expression…To approach the body as capable of generating ideas, as a bodily writing , is to approach it as a choreographer might…Traditional dance studies, replete with the same logocentric values that have informed general scholarship on the body, have seldom allowed the body this agency (Leigh Foster 1995, 15).
Archaeology can do much to help dance shed this logocentrism.
When talking of an archaeology for dance, one needs to draw attention to commonalities. Much effort has been invested in developing a body of theory applicable to dance, borrowing from other disciplines, especially literary theory and the social sciences. This draws dance theory close to archaeological theory, for the sources are often shared. So are concerns, from metaphor to intertextuality (12) to engagement with the past, an engagement which is social and political. Those involved with dance – here meaning the entire dance constituency of scholarly practitioners and non-dancer scholars - talk of dance heritage, dance as cultural heritage, preservation of dance(s), authenticity of dance works, documentation and recording, reconstructing and interpreting dance works and are engaged in relevant activities, connected with the above - the ephemeral quality of dance is perceived as threatening, tantamount to a loss of past and memory. This is also the kind of activities archaeologists are engaged in – preservation, reconstruction, reconstitution, interpretation of heritage - in a parallel way, for archaeology too is concerned with preventing a loss of past and memory and attempts to ‘recover’ the past .
In addition to the concern with the past (and its ownership) and the interpretation of heritage (and its politics), dance and archaeology share a relationship with space and the landscape. Archaeological sites are places which, as Thomas points out, are “reworked, reconstructed, reinterpreted with no essential ground meaning to be uncovered” (Thomas 1994,56). Dance too is engaged with site, in a parallel fashion, as witnessed by the practice of site specific work – often paired up with a dance/architecture exploration, focused on subjectivity and space. In this kind of work, the site is proposed by the dancer as the locus of a dance narrative, suggesting the very process of recontextualisation, reconstitution and representation, which mirrors the archaeological practice.
Thus we come to the idea of a ‘dance work as artefact’ (13). This is not an entirely new notion, although in view of its impermanence, it has been felt that a dance work can only be described as the ‘original ephemeral artefact’ (van Zile 1985-86,42)(14). There may be some resistance to the suggestion of regarding dance works as artefacts because their being ephemeral would somehow prevent them from being perceived as ‘real’ artefacts. This resistance is based on the notion of an artefact (as art work) being “an object from another time which is ‘fixed’” (Schechner, as quoted in van Zile 1985-86,43). This idea may need some revising. When viewing artworks their present context is as important as any past one – real or imagined , recreated in the mind of the viewer. Recognition and identification - perception - of the art work constitute a time-bound social process. The style of an artefact is thus not a fixed expression or an attribute, it is the means by which objects are “constituted as social forms” (Shanks 1999, 18). In this sense, an artwork is as ephemeral as any dance work, it is the solid appearance which conveys an illusion of permanence and ‘sameness’ in time (15).
Dancers/choreographers and all those involved in the field of dance, can effectively explore dance works as artefacts, in other words, explore their materiality (physicality), their history which would include dating, technique, relevant documentary research, their environment (context, landscape and location, on site recording) their significance and the role of the artefact in social organisation , that is, interpretation (16). They can go further and effectively apply these interpretive techniques to the dance body. They can look at their dance works and their bodies as a process of making artefacts and look at the artefact’s use and consumption. Dance tends to be seen as art, rarely, if at all, as craft: perceiving dance works as artefacts may help in rethinking the modernist, hierarchical (and political) division of art and craft.
What can archaeology do for dance? It can offer another way of thinking with and about the body and perceiving space. I am, in other words, suggesting that archaeology can provide more than a powerful metaphor for dance which can allow anyone actively engaged with dance, to make better sense of time and space, physicality and the relationship with the many cultural and physical landscapes in which dance operates.
Documentation and reconstruction: archaeology as a method
The analysis of dance works and of the dance process, in terms of both empirical and theoretical approaches, has much to gain from the adoption of an archaeological perspective and this can have interesting developments in terms of further applications in dance, particularly to the process of analysis/scrutiny a dance work is put under regardless of whether this is geared at a (re)embodiment, in the context of studio work, or at an understanding of the dance composition in all its facets.
It is through archaeology that we can become aware of documentation as inevitably partial, never value free, based on classifications which cannot and do not reflect a definitive order of things. However much we may dream of “ a past desiccated in the sands of time, life caught at a standstill in an earthquake or volcanic eruption” (Pearson and Shanks 2001,56) the reality of archaeology is that there are only fragments of the past.
Similarly, in documenting dance we can only capture fragments of the dance experience. These may range from photographs, video-recordings, notated scores, personal memory, embodied memory, performance publicity, tickets, clothing etc. Documentation can only be fragmentary and so is reconstruction, which is based on reassemblages of fragments and traces and interpretation of these. "Archaeologists excavate an indeterminate mess of flows of things and particles in the ground. They discern categories of evidence and compose these fragments in images, diagrams, inventories, collections, reports and writings, forging links to make sense…These constructions remain as pieces of evidence, stored in museums and libraries, to be reworked, reassembled, recontextualised" (Pearson and Shanks 2001,55)
In the act of documenting and reconstructing dances the rhetoric of preservation and authenticity raises its ugly head (17). A conflict –free dance heritage in constant need of preservation is perennially invoked by self-appointed custodians of the dance past whose refrain seems to be ‘The Nation’s Dance Heritage is in Danger’. One can be seduced by this emotive rhetoric. It is by seeing ourselves as archaeologists engaged in assemblage that we can learn to question existing paradigms and uncover the political in accepted notions of heritage in relation to dance, art and culture (18).
In documenting and reconstructing dance, as in archaeology, the tools and methods employed are varied and they are all equally valid. Multivocality and plurality are a necessity. Privileging one specific method over another – notation over filming or motion capture and computer animation over notation – makes little sense (19). Once again archaeology offers an apt model. This is a discipline that has benefited and continues to benefit from a variety of approaches and procedures which bring together the social and the natural scientist, within a generalised hermeneutic approach. The same can be said for dance documentation and reconstruction, which thus become an archaeological practice.
Dance for archaeology, archaeology for dance, archaeological methods in dance studies: through this introductory essay I have tried to establish the utility of an archaeological perspective on dance, beyond a mere study of iconography for a history of styles/traditions and performance practice . I have also tried to highlight the possibilities that archaeology offers to dance scholarship as a metaphor applicable to analytical work, indicating the nexus between dance and heritage construction and how they share the same discursive praxis.
In earlier research I made use of an archaeological perspective on dance (Iyer 1997). But it is only more recently that I have begun to explore the use of archaeology in dance as a metaphor and have had recourse to archaeological methods for analytical work, as the following chapters will bear out. There is no intention on my part to give guidelines or instructions. I simply hope to stimulate discussion, among archaeologists and among dance scholars (and dance practitioners and educators) – the whole range in both disciplines - for there is much we can learn from each other’s work and which would be relevant to further research and teaching. Dance seems to be a useful metaphor for archaeology and archaeology a useful metaphor for dance.
Forward to: 2. Dancing ancient texts and temple sculptures
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