Research Perspectives on the Cultural and Visual History of Dance in the Middle Ages and Beyond
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.6092/2240-5380/10.2020.13Keywords:
Cultural history of dance, Dance iconography, Gesture, Social space, Ritual dance.Abstract
We propose to clarify what distinguishes a cultural history from other ways of
approaching the study of dance, as well as the specificity of the approach to dance with respect to that to other objects of inquiry. One of cultural history’s main characteristics is the attention paid to the forms of perception and the processes of signification of reality that connoted the women and men of the past; in our case, in an attempt to restore the significance that dance must have had for those who took part in it, but also for those who witnessed – or for some reason, did not participate, collaborate or assist to – the dance of others. Dance in images manifests the meanings that shaped the perception of the choreographic act, thus providing information on how to interpret the sacred space, and how a sense of community could be built among people who attended these performances. A cultural and visual history of the dance combines an analysis of the layers of meanings that have been deposited and transmitted via a vocabulary, and via a set of gestural schemata or formae.
Downloads
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Articles and conference papers published in Mantichora are distributed under the terms and conditions of a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. Correspondingly, authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).
