Abstract

Bodily responses to dance have sparked recent controversy in philosophy. Some people claim that they have no place in dance appreciation. Some use evidence from cognitive science to support the view that bodily responses have an important place in dance appreciation. However, this paper focuses not on whether motor responses to dance are part of dance appreciation but on their role in dance appreciation. It argues that many aesthetic qualities important to dance appreciation, such as gracefulness, are motor-aesthetic qualities, meaning that they require bodily response to appreciate them fully. It thus doubles not just as an analysis of motor response and its place in dance appreciation, but also as an analysis of gracefulness, a central aesthetic property in dance.