Dance as a topic of aesthetic concern first appeared in philosophical literature in Plato's Laws, where it figured as an educational device-a way in which public dance festivals are to celebrate and enhance civic order. The place of dance in education at every level still generates most of the theoretical discourse devoted to dance: reasons are given why this or that sort of body movement should be expected to confer this or that improvement of physique, manners, or morals. Plato's example has also been followed repeatedly through history, by construing ceremonial dances as symbols of civic or cosmic order. History is called on to show how such symbolism is used; semiology is required to show how dance movement can work as a symbol system. The same set of concerns extends into more democratic times in the form of historical, sociological, and philosophical inquiries into how popular dance forms develop, acquire social functions, and have meanings ascribed to them. In the sixteenth century, Menestrier extended this sort of inquiry into the general aesthetics and semiology of parades and festivals, and this option is still sometimes taken up. ' The ideology of Plato's Laws was given a new twist by Plotinus, who used dance as a metaphor for the animated cosmic order: the coordinated movement of the limbs, he thought, signalling immediacy of the presence of consciousness, typified the vital unity of nature.2 This image of a cosmic dance acquired great force in the neoplatonizing Judeo-Christian theologies of the Middle Ages, and was reapplied with redoubled strength to the monarchic courts of the Renaissance. In those courts, ballet performances in which the courtiers took part publicly symbolized the relation of the sovereign to his subjects; it was from such performances at the court of Louis XIV (1643-1714) that ballet developed to become the only artistically prestigious dance form in Europe until the end of the nineteenth century. The metaphorical use of dance as a symbol of cosmic and civic order has had little effect on dance aesthetics as such. Such interpretations of dance remained schematic or literary, with no direct relevance to dance practice or dance criticism. Plotinus's basic idea is continually revived, but remains extraneous to thinking about dance itself. 3 Writing a little later than Plato, Aristotle added a casual sentence to his Poetics observing that dance steps can be used to imitate emotion and character as well as action, and the question how this can be so became a part of the resources of aesthetics through the repeated revivals of his work. Independently of him, the vogue of pantomime in the early Roman empire coincided with the composition of the only history of dance to survive from classical antiquity: Lucian's On Dance, probably second century C.E. Lucian's project required him to present pantomime as an outgrowth of dance traditions in which nothing was expressed except (at most) a mood or generalized purpose. This attempted synthesis raised three questions which are still under debate. First, do abstract dance and mimetic dance belong (aesthetically, in principle) to the same practice? Second, if they do not, which is the truer form of dance? Third, what are the limits of gestural language, and how much is gestural language free from cultural restrictions? Throughout these debates three questions intertwine: How is a practice best described? In what ways and how firmly does that practice mean what it is said to mean? And, in what ways can social and aesthetic value be placed upon that practice?