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Review: 'The Philosophical Aesthetics Of Dance: Identity, Performance, And Understanding', Aili W. Bresnahan

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Graham McFee is one of the few philosophers who can be credited with helping to pioneer and forge a path for dance as a fine art in the field of analytic aesthetics. His 1992 book, Understanding Dance, following Francis Sparshott’s 1988 book Off the Ground: First Steps to a Philosophical Consideration of the Dance, was a significant introductory step toward situating dance in a field that has traditionally focused primarily and nearly exclusively on painting, sculpture, literature, and (more recently) music.

In general dance has not been taken seriously as a legitimate art form by the philosophic academy; indeed, it …