Abstract
As soon as moving cameras were invented, film-makers began to capture dance on film. And yet, 100 years on, the use of visual methods in dance research continues to be neglected in favour of representational systems such as dance notation. Against a background of debates about the contribution of visual methodologies to the development of cross-cultural understanding in social anthropology, this chapter argues for the value of film as a research tool in dance studies. Visual anthropology has a dual aspect. It is both ‘the use of visual material in anthropological research’ and ‘the study of visual systems and visible culture’ (Morphy and Banks, 1997, p. 1). The most lucid writer on anthropology and film is the film-maker David MacDougall who, as far back as 1973, suggested that we think of a film as ‘an arena of inquiry’, rather than as an aesthetic or scientific performance (1995, p. 128). MacDougall’s arguments have contributed to my two film projects on Javanese dance, which have been part of ongoing research over nearly 20 years and which provide the focus of this chapter.1
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Best, D. 1978. Philosophy and Human Movement. London: Allen and Unwin.
Day, A. 1995. In search of Southeast Asian performance. Review of Malaysian and Indonesian Affairs, 29, 1–2, pp. 125–40.
Foster, S.L. (ed.). 1996. Coiporealities: Dancing Knowledge, Culture and Power. London: Routledge.
Hanna, J.L. 1979. Movements towards understanding humans through the anthropological study of dance. Current Anthropology, 20, 2, pp. 313–38.
Hockings, P. (ed.). 1995. Principles of Visual Anthropology (2nd edn). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Hughes-Freeland, F. 1988. The Dancer and the Dance. London: Royal Anthropological Institute. 16mm/VHS, 44 mins; © National Film and Television School/Royal Anthropological Institute.
Hughes-Freeland, F. 1991. Classification and communication in palace performance. Visual Anthropology, 4, 3–4, pp. 345–66.
Hughes-Freeland, F. 1993. Golek menak and tayuban: patronage and professionalism in two spheres of central Javanese culture. In Arps, B. (ed.), Performance in Java and Bali: Studies of Narrative, Theatre, Music, and Dance. London: School of Oriental and African Studies, pp. 88–120.
Hughes-Freeland, F. 1995. Performance and gender in a Javanese palace tradition. In Karim, W. J. (ed.), ‘Male’ and ‘Female’ in Developing Southeast Asia. Oxford: Berg, pp. 181–206.
Hughes-Freeland, F. 1996. Tayuban: Dancing the Spirit in Java. London: Royal Anthropological Institute. VHS, 30 mins; © F. Hughes-Freeland and University of Wales, Swansea.
Hughes-Freeland, F. 1997a. Art and politics: from Javanese court dance to Indonesian art. Man: Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 3, 3, pp. 473–95.
Hughes-Freeland, F. 1997b. Introduction. In Hughes-Freeland, F. (ed.), Ritual, Performance, Media. London: Routledge, pp. 1–28.
Jackson, M. (ed.). 1996. Things as They Are: New Directions in Phenomenological Anthropology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Johnson, M. 1987. The Body in the Mind: the Bodily Basis of Imagination. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Kaeppler, A.L. 1978. Dance in anthropological perspective. Annual Review of Anthropology, 7, pp. 31–49.
Lomax, A. 1995. Audiovisual tools for the analysis of cultural style. In Hockings, P. (ed.), pp. 315–34.
MacDougall, D. 1995. Beyond observational cinema. In Hockings, P. (ed.), pp. 115–32.
MacDougall, D. 1997. The visual in anthropology. In Morphy, H. and Banks, M. (eds), pp. 276–95.
Morphy, H. and Banks, M. 1997. Introduction. In Morphy, H. and Banks, M. (eds), Rethinking Visual Anthropology. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, pp. 1–35.
Ness, S.A. 1992. Body, Movement and Culture: Kinesthetic and Visual Symbolism in a Philippine Community. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Royce, A.P. 1977. The Anthropology of Dance. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Scholte, B. 1972. Towards a reflexive and critical anthropology. In Hymes, D. (ed.), Reinventing Anthropology. New York: Pantheon Books, pp. 430–57.
Spencer, P. (ed.). 1985. Society and the Dance: the Social Anthropology of Process and Performance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Turner, B. 1984. The Body and Society. Oxford: Blackwell.
Turner, V.W. 1982. From Ritual to Theatre: the Human Seriousness of Play. New York: PAJ Publications.
Woodward, S. 1976. Evidence for a grammatical structure in Javanese dance: examination of a passage from Golek Lambangsari. Dance Research Journal, 8, 2, pp. 10–17.
Williams, D. 1982. Semasiology: a semantic anthropological view of human movements and actions. In Parkin, D. (ed.), Semantic Anthropology, ASA Monograph 22. London: Academic Press, pp. 161–81.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 1999 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Hughes-Freeland, F. (1999). Dance on Film: Strategy and Serendipity. In: Buckland, T.J. (eds) Dance in the Field. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230375291_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230375291_9
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-40427-8
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-37529-1
eBook Packages: Palgrave Social & Cultural Studies CollectionSocial Sciences (R0)