What is dance?: readings in theory and criticism

[Part] I : What is dance?

From Letters on dancing and ballets / Jean-Georges Noverre

Dance as an art of imitation / Selma Jeanne Cohen

Dance as a means of communication : from The dance / John Martin

Metakinesis ; Extension of range ; Form and metakinesis : from The modern Dance / J. Martin

Virtual powers ; The magic circle : from Feeling and form / Susanne K. Langer

The idea of dance : from Aristotle to Mallarmé / André Levinson

Philosophy of the dance / Paul Valéry

Modes of symbolization ; Afterword, an illustration : from Languages of art / Nelson Goodman

Philosophers and the dance / David Michael Levin

Why philosophy neglects the dance / Francis Sparshott.

[Part] II : The dance medium

Ballets / Stéphane Mallarmé

Le sacre du printemps / Jacques Rivière

Balanchine's formalism / David Michael Levin

Poet and dancer before Diaghilev / Frank Kermode

Primitivism, modernism, and dance theory / Marshall Cohen

Puppet theatre / Heinrich von Kleist.

[Part] III : Dance and the other arts

From The art-work of the future / Richard Wagner

Martha Graham's journey / Eric Bentley

Music and action / Constant Lambert

The purisim of Étienne Decroux / Eric Bentley

from Music in London 1890-94 / Bernard Shaw

Edgar Degas and the dance / Theodore Reff.

[Part] IV : Genre and style

Ballet. Classic ballet : Aria of the aeriel / Lincoln Kirstein ; The classic ballet : from Tonight the ballet / Adrian Stokes ; The vertical : the fundamental principle of classical dance : from The book of exultation / A.K. Volinksy

Letter to "The Times," July 6th, 1914 / Michel Fokine

Modern dance. The dance of the future ; I see America dancing ; Richard Wagner / Isadora Duncan ; The sexual idiom : from Apology for dancing / Rayner Heppenstall ; Mind and medium in the modern dance / Katharine Gilbert ; My teacher Laban ; The philosophy of the modern dance / Mary Wigman ; Merce Cunningham and the politics of perception / Roger Copeland

Post-modern dance. A quasi survey of some minimalist tendencies / Yvonne Rainer ; Running out of breath / Tom Johnson ; Notes on music and dance / Steve Reich

Style. Problems of definition : from Next week, Swan Lake / Selma Jeanne Cohen ; The swan in Zurich / R.P. Blackmur ; There is nothing "national" about ballet style / Anna Kisselgoff ; Classic and romantic ballet : from Ballet alphabet / Lincoln Kirstein.

[Part] V : Language, notation, and identity

Language and languages : from The principles of art / Robin G. Collingwood

Art as language / Joseph Margolis

Dance notation and choreology / Fernau Hall

The role of notation : from Languages of art / Nelson Goodman

Idealists, materialists, and the thirty-two fouettés / Jack Anderson.

[Part] VI : Dance criticism

Fanny Elssler in "La Tempête" ; Revival of "La Sylphide" / Théophile Gautier

The art and meaning of Isadora Duncan / André Levinson

Anna Pavlowa, 1920 / Carl van Vechten

Three sides of Agon ; A Balanchine masterpiece (Concerto barocco) / Edwin Denby

Monumental Martha / Deborah Jowitt

Momentous (The four temperaments) ; Joffrey jazz (Deuce coupe) / Arlene Croce.

[Part] VII

The art of dancing : from The dance of life / Havelock Ellis

The cosmic dance : from The Elizabethan world picture / E.M.W. Tillyard

From Ritual to art : from Ancient art and ritual / Jane Harrison

The whirling dervishes : an emptiness filled with everything / Ross Wetzsteon

Striptease / Roland Barthes

Dance, photography, and the world's body / Roger Copeland

The egalitarian waltz / Ruth Katz

An antrhopologist looks at ballet as a form of ethnic dance / Joann Kealiinohomoku

A possible grace : from Where she danced / Elizabeth Kendall.