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Tiwi Dance Aesthetics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 March 2019

Andrée Grau
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Extract

When looking at dance and its aesthetics, I start with the view offered by Ellen Dissayanake that “art” is about “making special” (1988, 1992). Like her, I am unhappy with an elitist notion of art and aesthetics supported by modernism and want to look at aesthetics as being part of a sensitivity that underlies all cultural systems. For me to study aesthetics is a way of entry into different conceptualisations, different ways of making sense of the world, therefore it does not necessarily solely deal with the “arts”. This is why the very broad notion of “making special” is useful as it allows the examination of the connections between the activities that are generally considered “art” and other exploratory, imaginatively structured systems of actions, thus moving away from potential ethnocentrism. In this approach, I am following the footsteps of anthropologist and Tiwi expert Jane Goodale who, in a paper about Tiwi creativity, argued:

Type
Articles
Information
Yearbook for Traditional Music , Volume 35 , 2003 , pp. 173 - 178
Copyright
Copyright © 2003 By The International Council for Traditional Music

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References

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