The Artist as Critic: Dance Training, Neuroscience, and Aesthetic Evaluation

Abstract

The dance critic Clive Barnes claimed to “doubt whether the critics should come from the normal ranks of professional dancers.” 1 And Oscar Wilde, in his dialogue, “The Critic as Artist,” goes one step further, expressing the view that critics have keen insight into the world about which they write precisely because they can only observe it from the outside. In contrast, I shall argue that an insider’s view of dance is in some ways advantageous, in particular, that there are certain aspects of dance—aspects that have to do with the way in which watching dance movements produce an “internal resonance” of these movements in an observer’s body—that tend to be missed, or not fully appreciated, by those who cannot, or at least have never danced themselves.