Paper short abstract:

Phenomenology insists that movement is at the same time representative and constitutive of cultural meaning. The paper explores this intertwining in the field of dance experience where it is realized in an exemplary manner.

Paper long abstract:

In my paper I will explore the question how dance is, or under what circumstances it can become a constitutive force in the emergence and transformation of cultural universes of meaning. Based on the works of Monica Langer, Maxine Sheets, Erwin Straus, Bernhard Waldenfels I will sketch an outline of a phenomenology of dance as a specific mode of communication in which interior experience and exterior expressivity are inseparably intertwined with each other. It is this intertwining I will argue that provides the foundation for the cultural efficacy of dance. More particularly, an anthropologically fertile phenomenology of dance has to fulfill at least two requirements: It has to clarify how dance is different from other forms of expressive movement; and it has to make clear how the dancing experience is connected with witnessing the dance. The phenomenology of dance can therefore not be separated from the phenomenology of intersubjectivity. On a more abstract level, I will show how an understanding of the relationships between experience and expression presented by dance contributes to current discussions on ontology and representation in anthropology.