CONTENTS

Editor's Note Allegra Fuller Snyder:

Levels of event patterns - A theoretical model and its application to the Yaqui Easter ceremonies

Owe Ronström:

The dance event - A terminological and methodological discussion of the concept

Elsie Ivancich Dunin:

Dance events as means to social interchange Anca Giurchescu:

A question of method: contextual analysis of dancing at the Vlachs' "HORA" in Denmark

Grażyna Dąbrowska:

Der Tanz als Einer von Komponenten der traditionellen Kultur. Summary in English

Judy Van Zile:

Japanese Bon dancing in Hawaiʻi: a complex cultural phenomenon

Sheila Barnett: Jonkonnu - Jamaica masquerade as creolizing process

Rosemarie Ehm-Schulz:

New dance and custom events in the GDR as a result of revival. (Summary)

Lisbet Torp:

The dance event and the process of transformation - A case study of the Anastenaria in Langadha, Greece

Placida Staro:

Widespread models for the analysis of folk dance Jolanta Kowalska:

Universal cultural symbols in dance Theresa Buckland:

Family, gender and class in an English ceremonial dance event Anna Starbanova and Todor Zhivkov:

The dance event: a complex cultural phenomenon William C. Reynolds:

Where do we start in describing a dance event? Hannah Laudová:

Die Hanf- und Flachsbrechel-tanzfeste in Böhmen. Flax harvest festivities in Bohemia (Summary in English)

Zhou Bing:

Ecological environment and dance culture Olivera Vasić:

Dance as part of the rites for the deceased in southwestern Serbia

Ted Petrides:

Greek folk dances and change Géza Sebök:

Ethnochoreological research in Switzerland in the eighties Henning Urup:

The Danish Dance History Archives Daily program of the symposium Lisbet Torp and Anca Giurchescu:

ICTM Study Group for Ethnochoreology (report)

Egil Bakka: The Dance Event: a complex cultural phenomenon. Report from the meeting of the ICTM Study Group on Ethnochoreology

WIDESPREAD MODELS FOR THE ANALYSIS OF FOLK DANCE

by Placida Staro

The dance event is a multistructural event, in which a lot of significative codes take part. Our purpose is to describe it in all its elements; the final aim is to find a classificative system concerning with all the implications of the dance event. The classification is a logical process consisting in a systematical placement of objects in categories because of similarities that indicate a common relationship. It requires as necessary conditions the analysis , the comparison, the abstraction of the individual

differences. In logic, the analysis is the resolution of every object into its constituent parts or elements by going backwards to the simplest parts or to the indefinably elements. At the same time, in view of a classification, we need an analytic proceeding highlighting the constituting factors of the dance text.

The classificative toolAt first we have to define what is necessary to construct our classificative tool. If we want a scientific

classification we need a taxonomic analysis of our object. The aim of the classi-classificatory analysis is to discover where, in which category we can put our dance text. A category is a class or group of things people, etc., possessing some qualities in common. So the first step is to isolate the significant traits of our classes. We might do it also leaving out the proper traits of the object. I mean, we could put very different objects by taking as criteria widespread factors in the same class; f.i. in the case of the dance form a couple form or, by selecting traits very far from the main character of the dance, like, for example, the long hair of women. So we can desume that is more useful to take care of the main characteristics of our object. But, how? To submit the dance text to a classification means to consider it like a unit belonging to a class of homogeneous texts. The content of the text is not significant for the tool of classification. The thing to outline is whether the text has or not the discriminating factor of the class. Our text, in fact, has a sense in the classification only if it is related to other texts with the same parameters.

So, in order to define the classificatory tool, the first question is: where do we have to keep out the selecting criteria of ourclassification from? Our choice of parameters does not necessarily depend on objective factors, but more often on our needs. In fact classificatory analysis does not describe the object, but only selects – in a fields of objects – those with the traits adequate to the criteria of classification. Some scholars retains that it's possible to choose those traits – the selecting criteria – directly from the main character of the object, leaving out of consideration the purpose of classification. But it's possible to demonstrate that this opinion does not work in the case of cultural events, particularly the ritual and artistic events, because they have neither scientific nor homogeneous9us characters.

We meet often with problems requiring a classificatory analysis: f.i. the definition of our field-dance event- and of our object-dance. If we think to define a object, like a word, we have only to do a form of concise statement of the meaning. But if we are dealing with a concept, we have to clarify in a few words the extension and the comprehension of the concept. In other words, we have to find the selecting criteria of the class dance, and then to state the selecting criteria of the class dance event. As I said before, it's necessary to consider the traits of our objects – the occurrences of dance and of dance events, but it's necessary to state a definition useful to our field of work. The character, the aim of our disciplinary field has to give the extension of the concepts, because it is difficult to find a comparative, not-hierarchical and universal definition only describing the traits of every dance event -or dance form-. Anyway, an "a priori" statement derived by ethical proposition would give us a prescriptive definition. Only considering the occurrences of dance in human being , and discriminating the specifics traits of them , it's possible to obtain a descriptive definition, because the comparison of the "dance objects" give us the comprehension of the concepts. In the case of the dance anthropology we need a intercultural definition. I could suggest "dunce is a form of structured movement recognized as "dance" by the main acting social context"1, or" dance is an expressive form in which movement is the preference medium". The second one is going into the role of dunce in a society and it's more useful to the study of communicative forms, but the first one does not say anything about the form and content of the dance: the occurrences of the dance are, in fact, strictly related to the social context which produce them. In the field of dance ethnology a more detailed definition would be limited in its value and in its application.2 The principal problem is to find the right discriminating criteria from the dance occurrences. We need an analytical adequate tool to discover the significant traits of the event.

Not only the theoretical, but the practical methodology field too has a lot of examples in which wrong discriminating criteria are used. Very often we use maps to show the diffusion of the folk dance genre and in table 1 there is an example of this kind, about the diffusion of different kinds of folk dance in Italy. The map shows three wide areas and four minority areas, identified through the denomination used by people. But, I used the wrong criterion, because "denomination used" is not adequate to the class "dance genre", even if it is pertinent to the general object "dance". I was looking for information about "genre" and I only obtained news about the people's competence, i.e. "what denomination is the most common in popular use to identify folk dance".

If we use the same criterion for the adequate purpose, we'll obtain more detailed information. In the table 2 and table 3 the trait denomination is researched in a little area, the Valley of Savena (Bologna) to identify what the popular names for folk dance are. Here I obtained the new information needed: in this area there are two names for folk dance, "liscio" and "saltato"3; then there are three sub-denominations for "liscio" – corresponding to different styles; then there are 34 common dance names sometimes used as synecdoche for the whole genre "saltato". With the use of the adequated criterion the classifications obtain the aim to add new information to our knowledge, outlining the existence of different competence levels about dance in a little area.

I think that the purpose of classification is not to find a new hierarchic criterion, but it is to act as a tool for the comparative study and to add new information to our knowledge. The problem we have to resolve now is that if we want to use a scientific to 1, like a taxonomic ordering criterion, we can properly do it only about a scientific object.

Is the dance event a scientific object?Or, if it is not, can we have a metatext, a translation of the dance event in a scientific language?

I can try to outline the problem. The analysis requires "dance" as a methodological exigence, but the dance event in itself istotally absent from our analytical work.

The reason lies in a lot of factors: first of all the dance is an unrepeated event, and for this reason it appears to our eyes or bodies, then goes away from us and it never comes back. The dance event is not an unchanging event, but a dynamic one. So we cannot classify the dance event because it has not the character of the equal repetition. A dance event is not a scientific object. We can say, anyway, that we want to do a classification about documents on dance. Here the second problem begins: we can do a scientific classification of the tools and of the products of documentation but not on the subjects of documents in themselves. The Documents on the dance, in fact, are not scientific documents, but only monuments about dance. The instruments we can use to record dance are not adequate to the object, the dance event.

The results we are now able to obtain are only traces of the real event. that's the reason why I prefer to call them "monuments".

If we go to a practical example, in table 4 , it's possible to see a process of taking data from a document originally made for other purposes: in this case I used an iconography document.4 As it can be seen, the first step is how is it possible to obtain information from the picture (in the upper part of the scheme). Considering the work in itself it is possible to obtain contextualdata, inhering the feature of the work, and textual data, inhering the work in itself. To obtain informative data about the subject of the work -in this case movement or dance- we have to keep out the stylistic norms and the conventions which inform the whole work. Then we have to interpret them, relating the data obtained from the compositional elements to the stylistic norms and conventions. In the second part of the table it can be seen what kind of data it's possible to obtain from the elements of the work. Only at the end of this process you'll have from the painting, or writing, the informative data about some elements of the movement or of the dance.

table 4. 1. HOW TO OBTAIN INFORMATION FROM DOCUMENTS

2. HOW INTERPRETATE INFORMATIVE DATAS FROM DOCUMENTS

The film, the notations too, are reproductions; the real object, when we are examining the document-monument has disappeared. Anyway, even if we suppose that the real event is in front of us through a film, we know that a lot of interpretative codes are lost in the passage from reality to the film (or notation). We have an unfinished document, i.e. , a trace of the event, i.e. a monument. So I prefer to state that our real object of analysis and classification is the dance event monument, and not the dance event in itself.

In table 5 I introduce another problem, that is the border of our field, concerning the complex nature of the dance text. Our classification is possible on documents about the dance event. In the dance event we have a proper dance text related- in its position in space and time and in each of its elements- to the context and to the general happening. To identify the traits of the event needed for the classification, we need a complex description of the whole event. As I said before we have to remember that we'll have to keep out the filter given by the informative document from the document we have. But what kind of analysis can extract the descriptive data needed to state the parameters of classification from our dance document text? It would be a kind of analysis adequated to the nature of the dance event.

The analytical toolA dance event is a complex text in which the content is related to the character of the social event,

while the expressive form is given by the relation among the expressive media – the movement, the sound, the visual traits and so on – the individual inner attitude and the social aim of communication. A dance event is not a unilinear text, but multilinear, it has different interrelated codes and media acting at the same time.

In table 6 I'll try to show the four fields we can identify through a semantic analysis.5 The semantic analysis is a descriptive tool: it tells us about the substance and form of the event; it makes a segmentation in the dance text, looking for its constitutive elements and mechanisms, it looks for what there is in the text. The unique object is the text we have in front of us, it only considers the elements of the text. In the table 6 only the expressive medium of dance is considered, but we can do the same

kind of analysis on other expressive media of the general event in order to do a complex study about the interrelation of different media in the general event.6

In the case of our object, the dance event, semantic analysis evidences the multilinearity and plurilevel structure of the dance text, and considers it like a unique text composed by different elements organized and interrelating on different significant planes. Reading our event, we do a semantic consideration if we look for how the communication plane is organized, what the message is, what the media of the message are, who the agents are, and who the referents are. To this plane. also the consideration about the relative importance of one preeminent medium belongs. When we are questioning about what, how, and why the dance event it's happening, we discuss about the symbolical level of the event. The scheme can be read in every direction, and it's possible to see the interrelationship between the different planes of expression. If we use the adequated analytic process to every code in action, like the morphologic for the idiomatic or the formal for the form and so on, we can go into the constitutive elements. We use to imagine the cultural event like a kind of container of different "boxes", and we sometimes try to do vertical segmentation with the purpose to clarify all the aspects of the event. By this way we obtain static and not dynamic models. But dance and dance events are processes and not states. The semantic model permits to evidentiate the changing nature of the

relationship between the elements of the dance process by using the various kinds of analysis adequated to every different aspect.

But, what the role of this model in the classification can be? First, the semantic analysis can describe us the dance event monuments in scientific terms , and translates all the needed information in a homogeneous language. Obviously we can apply this scheme, or a better one, to every kind of dance event. Then it has the advantage to make evident that information which is implied in the dance text without a hierarchy which could modify the character of the event we should think about the misunderstanding caused by the analytic process based only on formal, or on morphologic, and used for classificative purposes to see the advantage-).

In table 7 I tried a resume of the different processes and results of the two kinds of analysis: semantic and classificatory. The first one, semantic analysis asks for what the object is while the classificatory analysis asks to which class it belongs; the semantic analysis looks into the object, but the classificatory analysis looks in the class of homogeneous objects. The semantic isolates constitutive traits while the classification selects pertinence to the class of objects. So with the semantic we can describe function, relationships, elements, while with the classification we evidence occurrences, categories and data. The first process obtains the translation of the object in a scientific language while the second one obtains the answer to the question we did at the start of the analysis,i.e. a new information. In the first case we obtain a metatext, in the second one we obtain a new text which is adequated to our purpose. But, what the relationship between the two is?

We can use like information on which to base our classificatory criteria the data outlined with the descriptive analysis. Finally we could say that an adequate multistructural analysis is the right way to obtain scientific data from dance documents, and a classification can only be based on scientific data.

The dance is an art form and we could have a classificative system only with a clear aim: to compare the different occurrences of dance, with the purpose to obtain new information about the nature of men and dance. But, in my opinion, it would be better for us to leave the dream to have a total system of dance classification, and we don't need a classifcative system about the main dance event at all, because a dance event is absent when we do these considerations.

NOTES1. From: Staro P. "Documento letterario e danza etnica" 1985:138 "...evento danza (...) forma di movimento ordinata in

un sistema di significazione rispondente ad un codice normativo emesso da un sistema culturale di riferimento. (...) La forma danza diviene quindi semplicemente una forma di movimento organizzata in sistema di significazione autonomo.

2. Anyway, if we want to select the right traits to have a useful definition of dance event I think it's better to modify the statement I wrote in 1985. In that case I indicated the dance event, like the proper happening where movement is the preminent medium. In this conference in Coopenhagen we are discussing on the general event includinq dance. If we mean by that dance event is every event in which dance takes part as an expressive medium.

3. For a study about this area see Cammelli S. 1983.4. The table is taken from the research paper presented at the I.C.T.M. Iconography Study Group meeting in May 1988.

That paper was dealing with how is it possible to use Kinetography as analytical tool to take out movement information from iconography.

5. According here with semiotics and with the "Paperback English Dlctionary", I intend here for semantic a branch of semiotics which "... study the relationships between signs and symbols and what they represent" (see: semantic in the Paperback English Dictionary).

6. In this paper I follow the suggestion offered by Ruffini in his book about the theatrical text (Ruffini 1978).

REFERENCES CITED Cammelli Stefano 1981 Musiche da ballo,balli da festa Bologna, Italy, Alfa.

Ruffini Franco 1978 Semiotica del testo-L'esempio teatro Bologna, Italy, Bulzoni

Staro Placida 1985 "Documento letterario e danza etnica" Culture Musicali 4(7–8):127–146 Milano ,Italy, UNICOPLI.

Staro Placida 1988 "Dance, Iconography and Kinetography" (research paper presented at the ICTM Iconography Study Group meeting Orta S. Giulio -Italy- May)