Dancing (1993) and the Dilemma of Representing Dance on Television

Abstract

This essay investigates the schism between the ambitious intentions behind the production of Dancing (1993, Thirteen/WNET) and the lukewarm reception of the television series. I focus on the problem of representing dance on television as a particular form of mass media that operates within certain conventions, which I conceptualize as a matrix with aesthetics versus anthropology operating along one dimension and entertainment versus education operating along the other. Although I defend the anthropological stance of Dancing, I also argue that the series inherited agendas from two different scholarly discourses—dance advocacy and cultural critique—resulting in a dual perspective that inevitably confused viewers with its incongruities.

Notes

The whole project received funding from the Lila Wallace–Reader's Digest Fund, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Public Broadcasting Service, the Ford Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation.

¹Press release for “America Dancing,” Rhoda Grauer Clippings file, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

²Ellen Cohn, “… 5 and 6 and 7 and 8!,” Village Voice, April 27, 1993, 100; K. C. Patrick, “Television Takes the Stage,” Dance Teacher Now, vol. 14, no. 9 (September 1992): 46.

³John Elson, “Rituals and Rhythms,” Time, May 3, 1993, 72; Tobi Tobias, “Peripheral Vision,” New York, May 10, 1993, 71–72.

⁴David Gere, “PBS Series Explores the Power of Dance,” Oakland Tribune, May 2, 1993, C7.

⁵Rhoda Grauer, quoted in Jody Leader, “‘Dancing’: Public TV Keeps on Its Toes,” San Pedro Daily, May 3, 1993, n.p.

⁶Rhoda Grauer, interview with the author, New York City, November 18, 2008.

⁷Ibid.

Although originally seven filmmakers joined the production team, some dropped out of the project.

The core advisors included Joann Keali’inohomoku, Elizabeth Aldrich, Brenda Dixon-Gottschild, Adrienne Kaeppler, Elizabeth Kendall, Judy Mitoma, Cynthia Novack, Allegra Fuller Snyder, and Diane Apostolos-Cappadona.

⁸Gilberto Perez, Material Ghost: Films and Their Medium (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), 21–22.

⁹Atholie Bays, “The Seeker Finds,” American Dancer, vol. 13, no. 10 (October 1939): 10.

The column ran from March 1953 to January 1970, when it was discontinued without explanation.

¹⁰Brian G. Rose, Television and the Performing Arts: A Handbook and Reference Guide to American Cultural Programming (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1986), 36.

¹¹Ibid.

¹²Jac Venza, “Dance as Television: A Continuing Challenge,” in Envisioning Dance: On Film and Video, ed. Judy Mitoma (New York: Routledge, 2002), 4–5.

¹³Jack Anderson, “Danny Daniels Says ‘Grumble,’” Dance Magazine, vol. 39, no. 12 (December 1965): 123.

¹⁴Ann Barzel, “Looking at Television,” Dance Magazine, vol. 29, no. 9 (September 1955): 9.

¹⁵Ibid.

¹⁶Doris Hering, “Conversation with Max Liebman,” Dance Magazine, vol. 29, no. 3 (March 1955): 28.

¹⁷Ibid.

¹⁸“In the News,” Dance Magazine, vol. 41, no. 9 (September 1967): 46–7.

In this live, hour-long series on Sunday afternoons, anthropologist Dr. Harry Shapiro and choreographer John Butler discussed types of dance common to various parts of the world and illustrated natural history with dance for more than one-third of the shows. Yet, neither of these techniques can be called a thorough anthropological inspection of dance, because the producers sometimes featured dance footage of other cultures just because they had acquired it, while illustrative dances were imaginatively choreographed by Butler and danced by three modern dancers from the Martha Graham Company: Glen Tetley, Mary Hinkson, and Yuriko.

Another case in point is Africa (ABC), a four-hour program focusing on the history, art, and economics of the continent. While it showed a large amount of dance footage, one could hardly call it a dance program.

André Singer explains their differences as follows: first, while traditional ethnographic film aims at a small circle of specialists, television targets a nonspecialist mass audience. Second, while ethnographic film tends to be viewed over and over, and in many cases read with accompanying texts, TV programs are transitory and mostly have a one-time viewership. Third, while ethnographic film is primarily for academic use, TV programs, no matter how educational in orientation, consider entertainment values first. Fourth, because realistic TV programs are expensive and because realistic anthropological programs are even more so, market forces weigh more than personal choices. See “Anthropology in Broadcasting,” in Film as Ethnography, ed. Peter Ian Crawford and David Turton (New York: Manchester University Press), 264–73.

¹⁹Grauer, interview with the author; Bruce Fleming, “Do Real Men Watch Dance?,” Dance View, vol. 9, no. 1 (Spring 1993): 45.

²⁰Robert A. Levin and Laurie Moses Hines, “Educational Television, Fred Rogers, and the History of Education,” History of Education Quarterly, vol. 43, no. 2 (2003): 264.

Barry Dornfield, Producing Public Television (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998), 95. Dornfield credits this format to Kenneth Clark, the writer, producer, and presenter of the BBC television series Civilization (1969).

²¹“Thirteen/WNET Advertising Strategy,” acquired from Rhoda Grauer.

During my interview with her in 2008, Rhoda Grauer allowed me to borrow and duplicate the contents of two thick binders: the reading materials and the press clippings. In a sense, these two binders represent the intention behind and the reception of Dancing. In addition to these invaluable resources, I also analyzed other materials, such as the accompanying book written by Gerald Jonas and the VHS tapes of the entire series of programs.

²²Grauer, interview with the author.

²³Rhoda Grauer, Preface to Dancing: The Pleasure, Power, and Art of Movement, Gerald Jonas (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, in association with Thirteen/WNET, 1992), 9–11.

²⁴“In the Beginning, There Was… Dancing,” Promo Six, vol. 15, no. 5 (May 1993): 1–2.

²⁵Barry Dornfield, Producing Public Television, Producing Public Culture (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998), 10.

“The Family of Man” is the title of a 1955 photography exhibit assembled by Edward Steichen, then director of photography at the Museum of Modern Art. Showing universal human experience (birth, love, joy, illness, and death) in diverse cultures, the show and the accompanying catalogue of the same title were highly popular. In an essay devoted to this exhibition in Mythologies, Roland Barthes criticized the “lyricism” of the humanism prevalent in it. See “The Great Family of Man,” in Mythologies, trans. Annette Lavers (1957; repr., New York: Hill and Wang, 1972), 100–102.

²⁶Catherine A. Lutz and Jane L. Collins, Reading National Geographic (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1993).

²⁷George E. Marcus and Michael M. J. Fischer, Anthropology as Cultural Critique: An Experimental Moment in the Human Sciences, 2nd ed. (1986; repr. Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 111.

²⁸Ibid.

The production staff's reading materials included a few newspaper articles about the revisionist movement in anthropology, such as one citing George E. Marcus and Michael M. J. Fischer: John Noble Wilford, “Anthropology Seen as Father of Maori Lore,” New York Times, February 20, 1990, C1.

²⁹Terence Turner, “Anthropology and Multiculturalism: What Is Anthropology that Multiculturalist Should be Mindful of It?,” Cultural Anthropology, vol. 8, no. 4 (1993): 411.

³⁰Robin J. Ely, Debra E. Meyerson, and Martin N. Davidson, “Rethinking Political Correctness,” Harvard Business Review, vol. 84, no. 9 (September 2006): 80.

³¹Grauer, interview with the author.

³²“Thirteen/WNET Advertising Strategy,” acquired from Rhoda Grauer.

Indeed, Dancing's reading list included Lincoln Kirstein's introduction to Robert Garfias's book Dances of the Japanese Imperial Household (New York: Theatre Arts Book, 1959). Having invited Japanese court dancers to perform gagaku for the General Assembly of the United Nations, Kirstein wrote in depth about the characteristics, functions, and significance of gagaku specifically for the eyes of the American public, for whom the dance might look slow, plain, and foreign.

³³Grauer, interview with the author.

³⁴Ibid.

³⁵Fleming, “Do Real Men Watch Dance?,” 45.

Tribe (2005–07), also known as Going Tribal in the United States, is a documentary television series co-produced by the BBC and the Discovery Channel, and hosted by Bruce Parry. In each series, Parry visits a number of remote tribes in such locales as the Himalayas, Ethiopia, West Papua, Gabon, and Mongolia, spending a month living and interacting with each society.

³⁶Pat Caplan, “In Search of the Exotic: A Discussion of the BBC Series Tribe,” Anthropology Today, vol. 22, no. 1 (2005): 3–7; Felicia Hughes-Freeland, “Tribe and Tribulation: A Response to Pat Caplan,” Anthropology Today, vol. 22, no. 2 (2006): 22–23; Adam Fish and Sarah Evershed, “Anthropologists Responding to Anthropological Television: A Response to Caplan, Hughes-Freeland, and Singer,” Anthropology Today, vol. 22, no. 4 (2006): 22–24.

³⁷Dornfield, Producing Public Television, Producing Public Culture, 184.

³⁸Nancy Goldner, “Gotta Dance: A Global Imperative,” Philadelphia Inquirer, May 2, 1993, F12.

³⁹Ken LaFave, “PBS Dance Series Flirts, Finally Turns to Art Core,” Phoenix Gazette, May 24, 1993, E6.

⁴⁰Elson, “Rituals and Rhythms”; Tobias, “Peripheral Vision.”

⁴¹Anne Marie Welsh, “Dancing's Underlying Message is a Misstep,” San Diego Union Tribune, May 2, 1993, E1.

⁴²Ibid, 25.

⁴³Judy Mitoma, quoted in David Gere, “PBS Series Explores the Power of Dance.”

⁴⁴Ellen Cohn, “Significant Other?”; Robert Greskovic, “Dancing and ‘Dancing,’” DanceView, vol. 9, no. 2 (Summer 1993): 34; LaFave, “PBS Dance Series Flirts”; Anne Marie Welsh, “Dance Shows Limp and Leap Across Home Screens,” Union Tribune, May 2, 1993, E4.

⁴⁵Cohn, “Significant Other?”

Charles Sanders Peirce identifies three kinds of signs according to their relationship with the object: icon (pictorial), symbol (arbitrary), and index (causal). Whereas an icon and a symbol do not depend on the existence of subjects, an index testifies to the existence of the subject. For example, identifying Rhett Butler as the male protagonist of Gone with the Wind involves reading this part as an icon, while identifying Clark Gable as the protagonist involves reading the part as an index. See The Essential Peirce, vol. 1, ed. Nathan Houser and Christian Kloesel (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992).

⁴⁶Grauer, interview with the author.

⁴⁷Laura Shapiro, “Makes Me Feel like Watching TV,” Newsweek, May 10, 1993, 61.

⁴⁸André Singer, “Anthropology in Broadcasting,” Film as Ethnography, ed. Peter Ian Crawford and David Turton (New York: Manchester University Press, 1992), 269.

⁴⁹Lewis Segal, “‘Dancing’ is Full of Talking,” Los Angeles Times, May 3, 1993, 1.

⁵⁰Goldner, “Gotta Dance”; Elson, “Rituals and Rhythms”; Tobias, “Peripheral Vision.”

⁵¹Rhoda Grauer, quoted in Valerie Sudol, “A Global Look at Its Cultural Role,” The Star-Ledger, May 2, 1993, 1.

⁵²Mary Cargill, “Why We Dance,” DanceView, vol. 9, no. 1 (Spring 1993), 28.

⁵³Singer, “Anthropology in Broadcasting.”

⁵⁴Peter Loizos, “Admissible Evidence? in Film in Anthropology,” in Film as Ethnography, 54.

Peter Ian Crawford, “Film as Discourse,” in Film as Ethnography, 70. The complementary relationship between words and images often results in the highly visual aspect of ethnographic writing and the overloaded narrative aspect of documentary films in anthropology.

⁵⁵Peter Ian Crawford, “Film as discourse,” in Film as Ethnography, 75–76.

⁵⁶Richard Nilsen, “‘To Dance Is to Breathe,’ and PBS Series Brings Fresh Air to Television,” The Arizona Republic, May 3, 1993.

⁵⁷Havelock Ellis, The Dance of Life (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1923).

⁵⁸Judith B. Alter, “Havelock Ellis's Essay ‘The Art of Dancing’: A Reconsideration,” Dance Research Journal, vol. 24, no.1 (Spring 1992): 27–35.

⁵⁹Jonas, Dancing, 12, 33.

⁶⁰Andrée Grau, “Myths of Origin,” in The Routledge Dance Studies Reader, Alexandra Carter, ed. (London: Routledge, 1998), 198.

Although Jonas included Ellis's book among the general references, he neither cited it within the body of Chapter One nor listed it at the end of the book among the sources for the chapter.

⁶¹Jonas, Dancing, 35.

⁶²Ibid.

⁶³Alexandra Carter, “Contemplating the Universe,” Dance Now (Spring 1993), 61; Andrée Grau and Moe Dodson, review of Dancing, British Journal of Ethnomusicology, vol. 2 (1993), 167.

⁶⁴Anya Peterson Royce, review of “Dancing: The Pleasure, Power, and Art of Movement by Gerald Jonas” and “Dancing by Rhoda Grauer,” Dance Research Journal, vol. 27, no. 1 (Spring 1995): 44.

⁶⁵Ellis, The Dance of Life, xi.

⁶⁶Suzanne Youngerman, “Curt Sachs and His Heritage: A Critical Review of World History of the Dance with a Survey of Recent Studies that Perpetuate His Ideas,” CORD News, vol. 6, no. 2 (July 1974): 6–19; Alter, “Havelock Ellis's Essay ‘The Art of Dancing’: A Reconsideration.”

⁶⁷Stuart Alan Shorenstein and Lorna Veraldi, “Does Public Television Have a Future?,” in American Media: The Wilson Quarterly Reader, ed. Philip S. Cook (Washington, D.C.: Wilson Center Press, 1988), 236.

⁶⁸Dornfield, Producing Public Television, 164.

⁶⁹Andrée Grau, review of Dancing, 166.

⁷⁰Sudol, “A Global Look at Its Cultural Role.”

⁷¹Rhoda Grauer, quoted in Sunil Kothari, “An Ambitious Project,” The Hindustan Times (New Delhi), May 15, 1993, 5.

⁷²Tobias, “Peripheral Vision.”

⁷³Carter, “Contemplating the Universe,” 63.

⁷⁴Laurie Ouellette and Susan Murray, Reality TV: Remaking Television Culture (New York: New York University Press, 2009), 4.

⁷⁵Mark A. Broomfield, “Policing Masculinity and Dance Reality Television: What Gender Nonconformity Can Teach Us in the Classroom,” Journal of Dance Education, vol. 11, no. 4 (2011): 124–28; Abbey Planer, “Dance Revolution? Waltzing around the Issue of Queer Visibility on TV,” Bitch Magazine, no. 55 (Summer 2012): 66–69.

⁷⁶Rasinah: The Enchanted Mask, dir. Rhoda Grauer, prod. Shanty Harmayn, distrib. Filmmakers’ Archive, 2004, 57 min.