The Notion Of Dancing

Some of our most important philosophers believed in—if for different reasons—the importance of dancing. Socrates took dancing lessons from the famous Aspasia, Plato spoke of the uneducated man as danceless, and Nietzsche, who mistrusted gods who did not dance, recommended dancing in the curriculum of an educated man. Even though dancing now flourishes perhaps more than ever, analytical philosophers have not paid sufficient attention to the aesthetics of dancing, and the trickle of articles which have been written have been less helpful than one might have hoped in clarifying our notion of dancing. In what follows I want to set out an analysis of the primary use of the expression "x is dancing." Like many empirical locutions, "x is dancing" probably will turn out not to have a very precise analysis. There will be, for example, several different sorts of cases in which its application will be problematic; yet, there will be a wide range of cases to which every competent speaker of English would apply the term. Nevertheless, if what x is doing has a sufficient number of dancemaking*~features, we are not free to deny that x is dancing. Whatever else, for example, may be in reasonable dispute about Alica Alouso, that she is dancing when she performs Giselle is not open to question.