Breath of Spring: Characteristic Dance
Although "embodiment" has become a much-used term over the past twenty years in performance studies, scholars have not come to any agreement about its precise meaning. We often associate the term with phenomenology, the philosophic study of experience and consciousness, and with the philosophers Edmund Husserl [] and Maurice Merleau-Ponty among others. Scholars using phenomenology frequently speak of "embodied knowledge" and "embodied practices. We access and comprehend even forms of presumably extra-bodily information storage such as computer databases through bodily interactions S.
While it informs the theoretical backdrop for this project, I have found phenomenology to be less useful than corporeality and embodiment. In order to avoid the inconsistencies inherent to phenomenological embodiment, I echo musicologist Elisabeth Le Guin , in practicing an "empirical embodiment.
As such, this approach develops a practical version of phenomenological embodiment: Additionally, empirical embodiment allows the scholar to avoid the restrictions inherent in assuming that, by being of the body, embodiment cannot therefore also be of the mind. From this perspective, if a theoretical paradigm by virtue of being theoretical is of the mind, it can presumably therefore not be of the body. Although this false dichotomy is impractical and potentially dangerous, it does reveal one useful point. Scholars most often use theory as a tool to answer questions.
Empirical embodiment as a method and paradigm allows one instead to explore the questions, spiraling through the gray areas between the answers Le Guin I take this mode inquiry as my own. Although I attempt conclusions, the process to those conclusions is perhaps more revealing. Empirical embodiment also allows for the realization of what dance scholar Susan Leigh Foster calls a "bodily theoric," or an understanding of the positional relationship between the embodied meanings of the researcher and the researched This kind of approach necessitates that I become a character in this ethnography to address honestly and openly the relationships, power structures, and potent experiences that ethnographers enter into when conducting ethnographic scholarship.
In order to realize successfully S. Foster's bodily theoric, I cannot ignore my own experiences. As such, I speak about and with Pvlvcekolv, but make an effort not to speak for Pvlvcekolv. I do not write this document as Pvlvcekolv representing Pvlvcekolv, but rather from the perspective of an ethnographer and ritual participant who has spent time with Pvlvcekolv during a specific period: Throughout my somatic discussions and analyses, I work to overcome biases inherent in the English language. Cartesian dualism permeates English with its inherent split of mind versus body.
Words like "corporal," "corporeal," "body," etc. This split intrinsically opposes my goal of exploring the simultaneously physical and spiritual experience of busking at Pvlvcekolv. On several occasions, he resorted to the Muskogee language and then spent the following hour of the interview translating, picking apart, and explaining the significance of those few Muskogee sentences.
The same thing often occurs during ceremonial occasions. Subsequently, ritual occasions often become educational, as those present discuss the events of the day, especially actions and concepts that translate from Creek only with great difficulty. They speak English as the lingua franca, even at the Square Grounds. Muskogee functions as a ceremonial language there, not the primary language.
We struggle to escape the conceptual and linguistic biases inherent in English itself. Several members of the Pvlvcekolv community and I have joked over the years that I should write this document in Muskogee, a language wherein one can express these ideas more easily and fully. Creek language and culture feature an underlying monistic animism, a belief in the interconnectedness and oneness of all things. As I discuss in greater detail in the next chapter, the Creek cosmology includes a great many "beings.
Creation I examine respiration in detail in Chapter Nine. This interconnectedness imbues the Muskogee language. For example, there are hvmketicetv, being made into a wholeness from all parts, seen and unseen; and hvmecicetv, to take in everything, all things Loughridge and Hodge These terms exemplify the way in which the physical, the mental, the spiritual—all aspects of experience—twine together in an inseparable whole in Creek culture. Rather than invent new jargon words or use hyphens to create something new like "corpora-spiritual," I hereafter assume the connotation of Muskogee animistic monism inherent in hvmketicetv and hvmecicetv in my use of terms such as "corporeal" and "corporal.
Through its derivation from the Latin spiritus, "spiritual" once referred to breath, breathing, life, and soul. The former three parts of that definition assume the presence of the body if not explicitly stating it. Although this definition of the term undermines the Cartesian split inherent to English, I do not include "spiritual" here to describe Pvlvcekolv religiosity. At the same time, refining these terms allows me to realize a description and analysis of the entirety of a Pvlvcekolv ceremonial experience while recognizing the limitations of language.
Outline of the Dissertation This document explores Pvlvcekolv history and ritual performance practice, and develops and implements a sound and movement-focused analysis. This Introduction and Chapters Two and Three form the conceptual, ethnographic, historical, and cosmological backdrop for Chapters Four through Ten. In these latter chapters, I examine the interconnections between busk performance practice and everyday life. In each, I explore a different ritual or rituals from the busk.
I end each chapter with the "Vnahetv" section, also the title of Chapter Ten. Vnahe is Muskogee for "I am done speaking, I have nothing more to say," and vnahetv translates into a concluding section. The term sometimes functions as a salutation to end conversations. I use the term to sum up the main points of each chapter and, in Chapter Ten, to sum up the main points from the dissertation. Where this Introduction sets up the scholarly background for my study, Chapter Two explicates Pvlvcekolv's historical background so as to make the remainder of the document comprehensible. In this second chapter, I outline Pvlvcekolv's community history as a mixed blood town in the Southeast following the Trail of Tears, and then explore that history in relation to constructions of Indigenous "authenticity," addressing various inaccurate accusations of "inauthenticity" or "ethnic fraud" that have been leveled against Pvlvcekolv.
Pvlvcekolv's Muskogee cosmology contains a single being: From Creator enfolds all of Creation as we know it. This Creation divides into a tripartite structure: We humans live in the Middle World. These Worlds contain beings of order and chaos, respectively. Ritual performance practice largely focuses on maintaining or re- establishing balance among the beings of the Middle World that we might further balance the interactions between the Upper and Other Worlds.
No two Muskogee communities are precisely alike; they more accurately form a related yet distinct network. Because of this, Pvlvcekolv's cosmological understanding cannot be assumed to be accurate for other Creek communities.
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Although they might overlap, minute differences between cosmological expressions and larger differences in performance practice exist between different communities. Following this outline of the Creek cosmology at Pvlvcekolv, I move into an examination of the busk. I explore the busk historically through a copious literature. A surprising number of sources offer perspectives on the busk across written history in the Southeast. These sources not only treat the Creek busk, but also the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Seminole, and Yuchi versions of the cycle.
I treat both historical and more contemporary accounts of the busk by travelers, government agents, and scholars. I then outline a typical busk at Pvlvcekolv, noting several of the larger distinctions between the four rituals that comprise a single busk cycle: I also explain the place in the ceremonial cycle of several smaller, comparatively private rituals, such as Soup Dance and Bug Dance.
Chapter Eight details the Berry and Arbor Dance and the Harvest Dance, and Chapter Nine describes a series of actions that occur in-between other actions such as setting the Fire, Sweeping, and various busk preparations. Chapter Six does not include analysis of a specific dance or dances, but instead focuses on a variety of object persons that play key roles during ceremonial actions, such as axes, turtle shell shakers, and ceramic pots. In addition to these ritual actions, each chapter treats a different set or series of beings at Pvlvcekolv. As I explain in detail in Chapter Three, this Indigenous community recognizes the animistic personhood of a variety of "beings: The category of beings includes humans, animals, birds, insects, plants, and objects.
Chapters Three, Four, and Five focus primarily on human persons, while Chapter Six takes object persons as its topic. Chapter Seven treats animal and insect persons and Chapter Eight explores plant persons. Chapter Nine treats all persons and their interconnections. In Chapter Four, I build the ethnophilosophical analytical foundation upon which the rest of the dissertation rests. Here I explore Muskogee approaches to the body, movement, and music and then apply them to case studies of the fast and the Ribbon Dance.
Dances fall into one of two categories: Those dances that community members enter are on-going since the moment of Creation, similar to a carousel that dancers get on and off during a busk. The community constructs the melodic movement of ritual songs as meaningful. This motion connects to the three World structure of the Creek cosmology. The manner in which the melody line moves through these worlds connotes meaning, for example, of avian flight or bison migration. These two dances tell portions of the Creation Story, perhaps the primary or only story at Pvlvcekolv; all other stories form chapters in this key cultural narrative.
Dancing these rituals retells the Creation Story, maintaining its importance.
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As such, these and other dances form an Indigenous way of remembering, and render the body into an archival repository. Because it, too, maintains cultural memory, the busk also functions as an archive in its own right. I use my analyses of these sung dances to critique Euro-American archival practice, suggesting that this science would be strengthened by an understanding of other archival traditions.
I contrast the lives of ceremonial objects in use in Pvlvcekolv's busk with the lives of cousins of these objects housed in LAMS collections. Removing these objects from the embedded relationships in which they exist in their originating communities removes their life histories, in a sense rendering them into orphans. Understanding objects as autonomous persons with perspectives facilitates a more ethical approach to LAMS sciences and has the potential to improve relationships between LAMS and Indigenous communities.
The animal dances do not comprise imitations of the eponymous animals. The choreography, however, quotes directly from the habits of these eponymous animals. No mere mimicry, these dances place humans in performance with animals and other beings, and result in something that is neither human nor animal, but some combination of the two—what philosopher Gilles Deleuze has called a "becoming-animal.
Over the past few decades, elders have begun to incorporate research from the ecological sciences community discussions and understandings of the beings that surround them. I echo that practice by incorporating pertinent information from the biological sciences, especially regarding the ecological habits of diverse beings. Where Chapter Seven treats animal persons, Chapter Eight focuses on plants and voice.
As animistic persons, plants often speak with and sing to community members. Pvlvcekolv's understanding of plant voices traditionally derives from an episode in the Creek Migration Legend and multi-generational observations and relationships with plants. Plants vocalizing relates to Pvlvcekolv's understanding that voice derives from the ability to breathe.
Because all beings can breathe, all beings can speak or sing, including plants. As such, plant voices constitute communication writ large. Two danced songs, the Berry and Arbor Dance and the Harvest Dance, comprise instances when Pvlvcekolv formally interacts with plants. Braiding together these threads of ceremonial performance practice, and traditional and scientific approaches to voice and plant life, I explore the relationship between plants and humans, proposing that performances of the Berry and Arbor and Harvest Dances constitute intertwinings of human and plant voices.
This chapter takes up where Chapter Eight leaves off regarding voice. Instead of examining only the voices of plants, here I discuss the voices of all beings and focus on breath as the medium that connects all beings together. In Pvlvcekolv's cosmology, Creator is the ultimate building block of creation. As such, the breath of any single being ultimately is the breath of Creator. Creator connects together all beings through this commonality of being and breath. Voice and breath function to wrap up my dissertation, in an analysis that ties together all beings in the Muskogee cosmology.
I draw the document to a close with Chapter Ten.
There I reiterate my conclusions and connect each chapter to the larger dialogues I address in this dissertation. As a whole, this dissertation focuses on the way in which a particular community performatively creates and maintains its world, constructing personhood and humanity in a wider natureculture.
Through ritual enactment, Pvlvcekolv connects to and communicates with a plethora of beings. In the process, they develop their specific construction of humanity. As a multispecies ethnography in the Anthropocene, this study on a southeastern Indigenous community's ceremonial cycle offers a model for ways in which outsiders might conceptualize relationships with others-than-human, focusing on the relationships through which we mutually exist.
Martin concludes an essay on Muskogee religious change with the following hypothesis: Perhaps one day the green corn ceremony will be danced again where it was first performed, near a river in Alabama. If this happens, it may signal the end of a long phase of colonialism and exile, and the beginning of a new chapter in the history of one of the most persistent and dynamic living traditions in the New World.
Woodland, Mississippian, Colonial, and post- Trail of Tears. His concluding statement assumes the busk to no longer be practiced in the geographic Southeast. He therefore proposes that, if the busk should ever again be performed east of the Mississippi, a fifth period of religious change may be added to his list. Martin does not know that at least one Creek community continues to perform the busk in the Southeast, even after the Trail of Tears. During the increasing transition towards religious privacy following Andrew Jackson's defeat of the Creek Redsticks' sacred revolt in , many Muskogee communities removed their ritual activities and paraphernalia from the gaze of non- Creeks, developing a kind of cultural "underground" prior to Removal J.
For the few Creek communities who remained in the Southeast after the Trail of Tears, this cultural underground became a way of life. In order to maintain the busk tradition in the Southeast, Pvlvcekolv has also had to sustain this cultural underground. This situation is not dissimilar to that of the Yuchi people in Oklahoma. In much the same way that a number of scholars have mistakenly written about the Yuchi as a socially extinct group Jackson The presence of these communities demands a more nuanced understanding of Removal and post-Removal history in the Southeast.
To critique narratives of post-Removal "authenticity" in the Southeast, I outline Pvlvcekolv's history and explore constructions of race and authenticity as they relate to the community. Mississippian Pvlvcekolv I compile Pvlvcekolv's history by braiding together the archaeological record, historical and archival sources, and community oral histories to present a picture of tribal town presence and importance in the Southeast throughout that region's history Atalay I begin with the archaeological record to explore Mississippian culture in the Southeast.
Although archaeologists have recently made great strides in this area, the oral nature of Mississippian cultures and significant archaeological methodological issues render it difficult to achieve clear lineages between colonial-era Creek communities and their Mississippian ancestors. After the widespread Removal of southeastern Indigenous peoples to Indian Territory, a number of social scientists documented the Creeks. Combining these perspectives with Pvlvcekolv oral histories, I sketch the community history of this private Muskogee tribal town.
Mississippian cultures arose in a series of river valleys across the Eastern Woodlands region of North America. The first of these cultures, Cahokia, came to prominence in the Mississippi River Valley, hence the designation of these cultures as "Mississippian. Mississippian communities comprised a series of geographically diverse societies with a diverse range of cultural and historic backgrounds B. The variations between them draw from the diversity of their environments and the cultural bases from which they developed Pauketat ; Scarry Archaeologists typically identify distinct Mississippian areas based on differences in form, method of production, and style of pottery.
Despite their differences, these isolated communities connected together in communication and trade networks that also linked them to much of the rest of Indigenous North America. In recent years, archaeological research on Mississippian societies has accelerated. Technological advances, for example in physical and chemical analyses and remote sensing techniques, alter how archaeologists conduct research and expand the data they can recover. Increasingly, scholars of these societies focus on agency, identity, factionalism, ideology, and meaning at the center of cultural change.
Larger scale work on and between individual sites has resulted in new insights into local, regional, and extra-regional Mississippian phenomena Blitz Despite these advances, scholars still have difficulty tracing clear, direct lineages between Mississippian communities and their colonial-era Creek tribal town heirs Hudson Mississippian cultures include the rise of what scholars have called the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex J.
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Brown ; Knight One of the first to explore and propose this Complex, Antonio Waring and Preston Holder's article treats a series of similar imagery found at mound sites across the Southeast. They conclude with the hypothesis that the prehistoric Southeast contained a highly developed cult or cult complex dependent on agriculture. Archaeologists such as James A. Brown have since critiqued the normative assumptions of the concept as it has led to the proliferation of numerous smaller complexes in an effort to account for fuzzy boundaries and artistic differences More recently, Vernon James Knight and others have discarded the concept of a united Complex, calling instead for more nuanced understandings of Mississippian similarities.
Nevertheless, scholars still occasionally refer to the Complex and include under its umbrella the colonial and contemporary heirs to the Mississippians. While tracing specific towns remains difficult, we know quite a lot about Mississippian peoples in specific geographic areas.
Archaeologist Ned Jenkins has posited that the core of what would become the colonial period Creeks developed through a synthesis of Woodland peoples already present and Woodland peoples who migrated to the area between and CE Archaeologists refer to one of the Mississippian regional areas that hosted post-contact Creeks as the Fort Walton area. This area existed broadly at the confluence of present-day Florida, Georgia, and Alabama see Figure 2. Like other Mississippian regional areas, the Fort Walton area consisted of a series of smaller, independent polities or "phases" whose interactions caused them to share a distinct material culture Scarry Although some scholars have posited that the rise of Fort Walton societies derived from outside invasion Caldwell ; Sears , , , ; Willey or diffusion Griffin , others increasingly form the opinion that these societies developed from peoples already present in the area Brose , ; Brose and Percy ; Marrinan and White ; Scarry Pvlvcekolv oral histories state that the 4 The archaeological taxonomic term "phase" refers to a chronological unit within a site or region—usually between fifty to two hundred fifty years Jenkins Pvlvcekolv's understanding suggests that the above hypotheses might all share a grain of truth.
The development of intensive corn agriculture supported larger populations. In addition to permitting craft specialization, larger populations facilitated the communal production of the mounds. Scholars believe the tradition of mound building developed from the Archaic era mortuary practice of building small mounds over the dead Hudson The presence of these mounds has caused some to call Mississippian peoples the "mound builders" Milner ; Swanton ; Knight [] The most famous of these mounds look like truncated pyramids: Some summits housed leaders and other elite, temples, and mortuary buildings for the preparation of the dead.
Many temples contained a continually burning Fire that symbolized the sun, the ancestor of the Fires still maintained by Creek peoples today. The people of these large population centers usually did not make a mound in a single construction event. Rather, they added to their size a little at a time, sometimes over the course of many decades. Different communities built up their mounds at different rates; however, most mounds received a new layer every fifteen to twenty-five years Bowne Although every mound site had a different layout, most shared a series of similarities.
A plaza, a flat, rectangular open space large enough to hold a significant number of people, generally lay adjacent to the mound. At some of the larger sites, smaller mounds ringed the plaza. A number of community elites built their homes on top of these smaller earthworks. If not on mounds, elites of the smaller mound communities still built their homes close to the plaza Lewis and Stout Mound sites existed in a series of bubbles: Although Mississippian cultures have changed in the past thousand years, hundreds of the mounds still exist today. Not all Mississippian peoples lived in places like Cahokia, the biggest period population center north of Mexico located at the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers.
Others lived on isolated farmsteads, in small villages, and within chiefdoms, in addition to the several "paramount chiefdoms" like Cahokia J. The nature of these chiefdoms comprises a methodological issue for archaeologists Pauketat Smith notes that as a concept, "chiefdom" encompasses a useful label for the middle ground between egalitarian tribes and formal states b: Foster finds the designation "chiefdom" problematic, however Working backwards from the colonial era, he draws attention to the communal and corporate nature of colonial Creek communities.
For example, Creek people could voluntarily participate in centralized food storage and excess redistribution systems. The mekko or tribal leader oversaw the redistribution, but could not compel participation Harper The assumption that Indigenous culture altered so drastically as to transform supposed Mississippian autocrats into colonial mekkos seems highly improbable. Foster calls instead for the simpler explanation that Creek political organization did not change so radically and that, like colonial Creek culture, Mississippian political organization was corporate and communitarian.
Given the comparative scarcity of detail, however, we do not know which of these competing models is historically accurate. Mississippian cultures went into a steep population decline when European explorers and colonists arrived on North American shores during the Age of Discovery. The large population centers of the mound builders began decreasing rapidly. By the sixteenth century, their populations dwindled below the quorum necessary to maintain or continue building the mounds for which they have become so famous. By the seventeenth century, the relationships between large and small polities broke down, forcing the remaining populations to evacuate mound sites they could no longer maintain Hudson Into this drastically altered world, the colonists arrived, seeking their fortunes in the New World.
Colonial Pvlvcekolv With the fall of the Mississippian cultures, Southeastern peoples were forced to account for colonial Europe. Pvlvcekolv and the Creeks at large traded with, married with, fought with, and were often pitted against, colonial powers. Spain claimed and missionized a portion of the Southeast beginning in the sixteenth century, as did France. These and other long-term frictions between Indigenous and colonial European populations and politics eventually gave rise to what scholars have called the Creek Confederacy, an alliance between the Upper and Lower Creeks.
The term "Confederacy," however, fails to capture the complexity of loosely organized tribal peoples. Hahn argues for the eventual rise of a new, ambiguous political concept: At first a loosely organized alliance of independent and autonomous tribes, this new entity began to assert the powers of nationhood by the late eighteenth century Green Whether called a Nation or a Confederacy, Creek populations included fragments of Koasati, Shawnee, Natchez, Alabama, Yuchi, and other tribes around a core of people from the area Jenkins The colonial era brought an influx of literate peoples into the Southeast.
The journals, letters, maps, and other documents of European travelers, explorers, and government agents paint a different picture of southeastern communities, including Pvlvcekolv. These documents name the community variously as "Apalachicola," "Palachicola," "Parachucles," "Apalachicoly," and others. Foster and others have attempted to pin down Pvlvcekolv's precise location After using one cropland for a number of years, the community would allow it to lie fallow for a time by moving to another location.
This form of horticulture appears to have been typical among Muskogee peoples H. For this reason, the written record correctly reveals Pvlvcekolv in diverse locations across the Southeast. The earliest written record to locate the town, French cartographer Nicholas Sanson's map, places it southwest of the Chattahoochee River near Choctawhatchee Bay in the Florida panhandle Sanson Pvlvcekolv continued to migrate during the s. Three maps by cartographer Guillaume Del'isle position Pvlvcekolv in three different locations in the early s: Swanton tracks the community to the lower Chattahoochee River and the forks of the Apalachicola River at "Apalachicola Fort" following the Yamasee War Swanton This designation places the town by or around the Flint, Apalachicola, and Chattahoochee Rivers.
Between the mid and late s, most records position Pvlvcekolv on the Chattahoochee River between the Point and the Florida state line; the Bowen map is the first source to do so Bowen ; Wright Combining a variety of data, H. Foster attempts to align archaeological sites in this area with historical records that describe Pvlvcekolv's location Defining the distance he might have covered in fifteen minutes paints a vague picture at best Hawkins During the colonial era, the British maintained a trading house at Old Apalachicola and permanent "Scottish" garrison.
This influx of Scots resulted in many Gaelic family names entering the community through marriage. Because of the British presence, many prominent members of Pvlvcekolv spoke English and some adopted English names in addition to Scottish surnames. Most, if not all, Muskogee communities laid their towns out similarly: A Square Grounds, rotunda or town house see Figure 2. The square contained four three-sided buildings aligned with the cardinal directions; the Fire lived at the center of the square.
During the summer months, the community hosted town governance, ritual, and celebratory occasions in the square. Outside the northwest corner of the square, the rotunda or town house functioned as the cold-weather equivalent of the square. This yard hosted games and dances; townsmen would also torture captives there Waselkov and Braund Creek agriculture was changing during the colonial period.
In addition to small gardens located next to their houses, each town had an unfenced, common plantation nearby Waselkov In these common areas, cultivating domestic plants had been an activity that bound community members together.
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While aspects of social organization, including the clan and family, were important, plant-based agriculture depended on the town unit. With the colonists came cattle, however, a new form of agriculture in the New World. Raising livestock increasingly developed new patterns of land use and interpersonal relationships. As they built more fences and moved further apart to ensure sufficient grazing, townspeople increasingly questioned their fundamental relationships, values, and identities Piker Beyond agriculture, the presence of missionaries formed another change during the s.
In August , Moravian missionaries from Savannah, GA, collaborated with mekko Tomochichi and Pvlvcekolv to build a schoolhouse for the "Indian children" not far outside Savannah Fries The Moravians had recently received a land grant from the Georgia Trustees and fled persecution in Saxony in what is now Germany Kohnova After the carpenters completed the building in late September, the missionaries moved in and began teaching both male and female offspring of Pvlvcekolv to read and write.
Political machinations between the Spanish colonists further south and the English of Georgia soon resulted in the dissolution of the mission and the removal of the Moravians to present-day Nazareth, PA, and Bethlehem, PA, in Fries The influence of the Moravians lasted longer than their mission: Pvlvcekolv and other Creek communities continued to use the Moravian orthography.
This system uses "v" for "uh" sounds, like the letter u in "but;" "c" for "ch" sounds, like the ch in "chunk;" and "r" for a lateral fricative, like the "thl" in "athletic" or "Bethlehem. Parsing Pvlvcekolv's position in the Creek Nation remains difficult. As a loosely knit organization, it seems unlikely that any one headman or community would hold a position of power over the remainder of the Nation. Despite this unlikelihood, community oral histories and historical accounts both point to Pvlvcekolv's sometime prominence within the Creek Nation.
For example, trader Thomas Nairne increased the power of Pvlvcekolv's mekko, Brim, in the eyes of European officials by calling him Emperor and bestowing similar titles on other mekkos in the early s. The English went so far as to name Brim's successor S. Multiple sources tell of the community's prominence. Although sometimes at odds with archaeological findings, historical evidence and several "mythistories" see Chapter Eight assert that Pvlvcekolv represented the original inhabitants of the Chattahoochee River valley Hann As far back as the early s, Spanish sources use "Apalachicoli" to refer to what the English called the Lower Creeks, the nine or ten towns in the region of present-day Columbus, GA, and the principal town among these southern towns.
In the s, the Apalachicoli mekko acted as spokesperson for all but the four northern-most towns when interacting with the Spanish Hann Swanton references a Spanish document stating that the Oconee Tribal Town was "under Apalachicolo," and another stating that the Pvlvcekolv mekko spoke for all at a conference at San Marcos Ten years later, John Stuart, a British agent present at that meeting, stated that the town "'is considered as the Mother and Governing Town of the whole Nation'" Swanton These reports likely contain politically motivated exaggerations.
Nor was Pvlvcekolv the only town said to have a larger voice or more power in the Creek Nation. Cowetv tribal town might also have played a larger role in the Nation as a whole; its chiefs were attributed with offering the vision of a unified Creek unit with Cowetv's right to exercise authority over it S.
The precise results of these various machinations remain tangled between European and Indigenous political interests. Around , Indian agent Benjamin Hawkins writes of his earlier visit to Pvlvcekolv, describing a community in decline formerly first among the Creeks This decline, a community losing its "former consequence," relates to what Pvlvcekolv still calls "The Great Humiliation" Hawkins The community tells the story of the Humiliation at every Harvest Busk as part of the ritual that removes the War Post from the grounds.
William Bartram's Travels remains one of the few secondary sources to document the story [] The tale relates a tragedy dating to or, according to Pvlvcekolv oral history, Noting the discrepancy in dates, Pvlvcekolv elders state that the events carry greater importance than their precise time A Letter Regarding the Great Humiliation…, PAP8.
Enraged by colonial European machinations, warriors involved in nearby conflicts trapped and burned alive the British traders and their Indian families then taking refuge from the hostilities at Pvlvcekolv. Dance historian Selma Jean Cohen has held that expressiveness is present in all dance, causing Monroe C. Beardsley to posit that expressiveness might be a necessary if not sufficient condition for dance as art. Borrowing from action theory, Beardsley says that one causal bodily action can, under the right circumstances, be sortally generated into another kind of action.
Thus, the act of marrying can, under the right circumstances, also be bigamy. Following Beardsley here, we can thus say that an act of running, for example, can, under the right circumstances, also be dance. The right circumstances, he maintains, might be expressiveness, as described above. We can also infer here that other conditions of dance might also apply being on a stage in a theater, being offered for appreciation as a dance, conducted in ways that are part of a dance vocabulary, etc. See Meskin for more on dances as action sequences rather than mere movements.
In short, Khatchadourian says that a dance consists of movements that are not actions because they are not intentional in the traditional sense, that of being directed towards making something change in the real world rather than in the imagined world of a theatrical performance. Khatchadourian follows Susanne K. Langer b in his claim that dance movements are not actions. Neither Beardsley nor Khatchadourian agree with Langer: Langer b would presumably agree with Khatchadourian that dance movement is not action but agree with Beardsley that the kind of movement dance creates differs in kind from movement simpliciter.
Langer b explicitly includes dance as art into her system of the arts when she holds that all of the arts are in essence symbol-making endeavors. She agrees that action is a necessary feature of dance. Both Aaron Meskin , and Pakes suggest that it is the embodiment of dance in a physical, intentional event that makes dances better construed as action-structures rather than eternal types.
It is for this reason among others that they find dance to be ill-suited for analysis under a Platonic ontology of art in which the structure of the work of art is discovered rather than created. They deny that expressiveness, in the sense of either intensity or non-practicality, could be either a necessary or sufficient condition for dance.
There are many problems of identity for dance. Dances are usually known by the name and date of their first performance but subsequent performances and casts can change the structural and other qualitative features that were present in the original performance. Further, as mentioned earlier, many dances have no notated score and, if they are preserved via video or other method, subsequent performances can still deviate from these frameworks in significant and perhaps identity-changing ways. A dance notation might also function as the jumping-off point from which to make a radically new kind of dance rather than a limitation on innovation and changes to which a dance choreographer or set of performers must adhere.
In this way dance is not unlike music for more on this see Section 3, below, and S. A defining feature of allographic artforms, according to Goodman, is that their works can, in identification-relevant form, be notated. This is true in principle, even in those cases where there is no actual score. He also says that this can be done and that in fact it is done in a broad and benchmark sort of way in practice: A further problem they point out is that a dance score does not function the way a musical score or theater script typically does — it does not in practice always provide the essential features of a work or provide a recipe for subsequent performances to follow see Franko and a.
For more on the differences of dance with music and theater see Section 3, below. Whether or not Armelagos and Sirridge are right about musical scores and theater scripts here is something the reader is encouraged to consider. One might ask whether this is a relevant criticism if Goodman never sought to address dance practice.
For a different account of how Goodman construes the work of art see S. For more on dance notation in general see Guest , , and On this point against Goodman see also Levinson and Margolis Both agree, however, that a work of art is a re-performable object tied to a constitutive abstract structure. The dancer, for example, often supplies structural and stylistic elements of a dance during the course of rehearsing and performing the piece that were not specified or provided by the choreographer. Both Van Camp and Renee Conroy have argued that the ontology of dance needs to be more reflective of and responsive to actual danceworld and artworld practice.
She thus follows pragmatic methodology in its claim that it eschews essentialism, construed as a method of identifying fixed and unchanging features of a given concept, practice or entity. She also follows pragmatism in upholding pluralism, and in holding that the ongoing deliberative and decision-making practices of dance world constituents such as performers, choreographers, audiences, historians, and critics should be considered in an important way when developing an account of dance work identity. Van Camp also includes the art law community as part of this art world, suggesting that dance philosophers consider which features of a dance are given copyright protection in legal contexts.
For an additional account of why dance practice should be relevant when considering the ontology of art see D. The problem that Davies identifies is that dance-making and performing does not always stay within guidelines that would allow dance philosophers to say that this is true in all cases. This has led D. This diverges somewhat from Van Camp , who holds that the history and practice of dance allows a wide degree of variation among performances of dance works without loss of work identity.
For more on the difference between works, versions, and interpretations see S. Research by Franko on dance reconstruction provides an additional argument against the classical paradigm, the idea that a dance is repeatable, which he says is a myth that is not supported by dance practice. Even reconstruction of past dances from scores and recordings has been relatively rare among contemporary choreographers Franko Franko points out that most choreographers who seek to reconstruct past dances do not so for the purposes of repeating or performing a past structure in order to preserve it.
Instead they seek to comment upon, rethink or theorize about the earlier dance in something new. This may be true of music and of theater as well and it is something upon which the dance philosopher should reflect before assuming that this is a distinguishing feature of dance. For more on comparisons with music and theater see Section 3 below; see also S. Davies , —5, for a discussion of reconstructions of works of Shakespeare.
Meskin has perhaps the most complicated and comprehensive ontology of dance of all, holding that when an audience experiences a dance performance we are experiencing three works of art: He further notes that a solo performance by an individual dancer may also be its own artwork if that performance comprises the whole work. In short, by including productions and performances to the type-level of artworks Meskin provides one way to understand why the classical paradigm may be open to the objection that the dance work of art understood only as one kind of type is unstable.
Differences in individual performance events, for example, may be due to differences in production- and performance interpretation-works that demonstrate or that create functional instabilities in the choreographic-work. For more on the question of What is Dance? The art of dance is closest in form to music and theater, since in many salient instances it involves a performance setting in which performers and audience members share a physical and temporal space during the course of a live performance event.
For an overview of the philosophy of music see Bicknell , S. Davies , Kania , Gracyk and Kania and; for an overview of philosophy of theater see J. Hamilton , Osipovich and Woodruff For performance in music and theater see D. Davies b, Thom and Godlovitch Unfortunately, there has been little work in philosophy of dance that addresses music and theater so the survey below will be somewhat speculative as to directions additional work in this area might take.
One of the difficulties for developing the philosophy of dance is that the methodology of philosophical analysis encourages separating out each art form in order to say what makes it distinct from every other form of art. For more on hybrid artforms see Levinson Thus that dance is most often performed to music, and that the music might in some cases be a constituting feature of the dance work of art, as in the case where a dance is created by a choreographer in conjunction with a composer, has so far eluded any sustained treatment by dance philosophers.
Igor Stravinsky, for example, composed the music for ballets either at the behest of or in conjuction with a dance company director such as with Sergei Diaghilev for The Rite of Spring and with George Balanchine for Apollo and in these cases it might be argued that the music is a constitutive feature of the dance works of art that emerged from these collaborations see S. For a history of dance as a theater art see Cohen Music and theater may be discussed in terms of general similarities and differences, as I shall do below, but this is not the same as discussing a philosophy of art that considers dance-music or dance-theater works of art.
One way that the philosophy of dance is similar to the philosophies of music and of theater is that in all three areas of inquiry there are debates about the location and nature of the work of art that is produced by these fields when they are practiced as art. Is the work of art an abstract structure and if so what kind? Is it constituted by performance? What is the role and importance of the performer or performance in connection to work ontology? There are ongoing debates about the answers to these questions in the philosophy of music and the philosopher of theater, just as there are in the philosophy of dance.
In addition close analogues to dance in theater can be found in bodily enhanced comedy such as the kind of slapstick routines to be found in vaudeville and then popularized by such performers as Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Red Skelton and Lucille Ball, and all forms of mime. Dance is also used to a large degree in musical theater — a hybrid form of dance, music, and theater. A third similarity between the philosophy of dance and the philosophies of music and of theater is that they are all dealing with an art form that is often experienced live in front of an audience.
This leads to philosophical questions in each field about the extent to which dance, music and theater are: For more on dance improvisation see Section 6, below. Since dance, music and theater share the honor of being considered among the most expressive arts, perhaps because of the typical proximity of human performers to the way these artforms are experienced, the philosophies of these arts acknowledge this. All three also lend themselves to the philosophy of performance, including philosophies of identity and how features such as race, class, gender, sexual orientation, disability and other components of human identity are performed by a human performer who may have an identity in non-artistic life that differs from one they inhabit during the course of an artistic performance.
Rhythm is a common feature of both dance and music and thus shows up in the philosophical literature on both. In addition, both dance and theater use physical gesture as a way of communicating with audiences, creating a point of connection for the philosophies of dance and theater. For dance, this is particularly true in the case of story ballets. Philosophical discussions of dance and theater are also likely to incorporate the importance of movement through space or spatiality. For more on dance and theater see Carroll All three also manipulate temporality, the way that the performance unfolds through time, as part of the intentional experience of these arts in a way that is more pronounced and more variable than is the typical experience of appreciating a visual art like painting or sculpture.
For specific differences in temporality in the arts see Levinson and Alperson One overall difference between the philosophies of dance, music and theater has to do with the importance of notations and recordings. There is no general consensus on this in any of the three fields but in general Western art music and theater typically have compositions that are in a form that can be accessed by the performers and by the directors of the performance events.
As mentioned in Section 2, above, not all dances have notated documents or videos that are used to provide a plan or recipe for performances. Even where notations and recordings exist, they are not always used in ways that are similar to how they are used in music and theater contexts.
Dance performers, for example, are not usually sent home with anything tangible to study and practice.
Breath of Spring (Weidt, Albert John)
Instead, dancers typically learn a dance in a rehearsal studio with either a director or choreographer, or with one person functioning as both, in ways that communicate the dance both verbally and bodily. Another difference is that dance performances are more often produced for live performance than for a recording. In the case of rock music and in jazz, for example, performances might be primarily for recorded music, with listening to the recording serving as a primary way for the appreciator to access the performance see Gracyk and A. For an article on dance in film see Brannigan What this means is that dance aesthetics places a high premium on the live performance event setting, with whatever features attach to live performance ephemerality, difficulties of preservation, visceral and kinaesthetic experiences, etc.
Joseph Margolis locates the difference between dance, music and theater in the constraints of a common keyboard in the case of music and the constraints of a common language in the case of drama where no similar constraints exist in dance Tanz vermittelt — Tanz vermitteln, There must be an approach to dance that feels more natural, more accessible, a way of approaching teaching which promotes people feeling graceful and enlivened, while still enhancing the range of their movement invention and their basic creative impulses.
This paper, and the focus of my work in the past years, has been in service to this questioning. The pathway of my interest moves increasingly towards a movement approach and style that is accessible to anyone and that engages the intrinsic curiosity and motivation of the participant. Further section titles in the first half of the article which addresses teaching methodology: Directing rather than Collapsing.
The Right Problems to Solve. The second half of the article proposes specific principles for teaching contemporary movement technique. Included are explanations of the principles: Extending your landing gear. The conscious modulation of tone.
Working with complex structures rather than simple ones to promote ease. Outside the Comfort Zone: Employing the practice of shifting between student, artist and teacher minds, we examine a variety of entrances to the creative process. What helps us to feel creative, nurtured, stimulated?
What causes us to feel frustrated, shut down, blocked? We practice changing roles in the service of building up a broader repertory of methods for engaging others in the learning process. We will also actively explore ways in which the areas of technique, improvisation and composition can be combined as complementary components of creative movement studies in dance. We will research how these different phases of the research are mutually supportive, and how they can happily co-exist within a single lesson plan.
What are the discrepancies between what dancers today are studying, and what skills are asked of them in the creation process? Additionally we might ask: Later published as an article in book for by TanzPlan Deutschland. This lecture explores using the hands to model complex behavior, not only as a tool of demonstration, but also as a means of imparting experiential knowledge to students as they perform these behaviors. Audience members were guided through a wide variety of these learning experiences themselves. On Considering a Comparative Approach: