114
PARTISAN REVIEW
lined up by a window of Robert Rauschenberg's loft and
encouraged to look down at the unrehearsed reality of the street. A
taped commentary read:
To see this dance the observer must stand by the window at the
south end of the loft and look across the street toward the south
side of Broadway onto the sidewalk extending between 11 th and
12th streets. I am concerned with the area between the Bon
Vivant Delicacies Store and Surplus Materials of Norbert and
Hausknect. I am not concerned with either of these buildings
specifically but I am concerned with the area between .
The tape then provided an excruciatingly detailed description of the
objects-signs, store merchandise, etc.-contained within the ver–
bal "frame." Two performers alternately mingled with passersby or
positioned themselves so as to focus the audience's attention on the
objects described in the commt:ntary.
By making the perceiver preeminent (or at least coequal with
the object of perception), postmodern dance breaks decisively with
the primitivist tendency to exalt the experience of the participant.
Indeed, the primitivists, as we've seen, confuse theatrical and ritual–
istic dance; and this has the effect of turning perception into a mode
of participation (a virtual definition of Levy-Bruhl's "participation
mystique"). In fact, when the primitivists argue that dance is not only
the oldest of the arts, but
older
than the arts-that birds and bees also
"dance" -they deny altogether the significance of the perceiver.
The primitivists tend to ignore the fact that our word
theatrical
is
derived from the Greek word
theatron,
or "seeing place." Ritual, by
contrast, is not a "thing seen" but rather a
dromenon-a
thing done .
Ideally, in the sacred space of ritual, there are no seats for spectators.
Jane Harrison, writing about the transformation from ritual to the–
atre in Greece, says:
We have seen that the orchestra, with its dancing chorus, stands
for ritual, for the state in which all were worshippers, all joined
in a rite of practical intent. We further saw that the theatron, the
place for the spectators stood for art. In the orchestra all is life
and dancing, the marble seats are the very symbol of rest, aloof–
ness from action, contemplation. The seats for the spectators
grow and grow in importance till at last they absorb, as it were,
the whole spirit, and give their name theatron, to the whole
structure; action is swallowed up in contemplation.
