Why Dance?

Abstract

Chapter 4 excavates the structures of belief that rationalize and sustain the exchange of dance as either commodity or gift. It considers how the materiality of dance itself along with the ways that it is transmitted contains values that promise well-being, improvement, or success at the same time that they exclude or repress other sets of values. It looks specifically at categories such as the beautiful, the classical, and the natural as making universalist claims regarding the importance of dance, and it connects these values to notions of hard work, showing how for any given form of dance, any of these concepts can imply profoundly different physical actions. The chapter demonstrates how these sets of values permeate the vocabulary and style of a given form of dance, and how they also inform the way that dance is taught, performed, and viewed. It then probes the values inherent in the choreography of three dance artists, Deborah Hay, William Forsythe, and Savion Glover, whose distinctive forms of dance-making have consistently transformed commodified forms of dance exchange into opportunities for gift exchange.