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Dance and the Question of Fidelity

Two provocative chapters in Francis Sparshott's A Measured Pace are "The Identity of a Dance" and "Recording Dance." Together they raise questions of how a choreographed work can be reproduced and what the criteria are that determine the authenticity of its reproduction. The development of a reliable system of notation, along with recent technological advances, might seem to answer these questions, but actually they have raised further questions. The problems have been considered in some detail in recent years,1 but arguments continue. The matter of fidelity is especially complicated in the case of dance since its medium is the human body, and, as Sparshott has remarked, this makes the situation of its creation very different from that of making a work of art out of clay.2 A few years after a premiere, a choreographer may look aghast at an accurate rendition of his notated score by a dancer whose body differs considerably from that of the original performer. The effect is wrong, and the creator changes the movement so the dancer can produce the intended effect. This may easily happen with respect to a number of sections in the work, resulting in what we might call a "new edition." But when does the choreographer go so far that we have, not just a new edition, but a new work? Graham McFee claims that the notated score limits the possibilities of variation;3 Sparshott is not so sure this is inevitably the case, suggesting that not only different dancers but different kinds of works may require different procedures.4 A basically abstract dance may require quite precise fidelity to the original movements, since they are the core of the work. However, a dance that features virtuosity may present other problems, since what was extraordinary for one generation may be commonplace for the next. A dramatic work demands special attention to expressiveness, which might be better accomplished in rather different ways by different bodies for audiences in different times and different countries. Sometimes