Dancing the Score: Dance Notation and Différance

Abstract

This article moves towards an explanation of the kinds of meaning captured in dance notation, towards a critical reflection on linguistic accounts of meaning in dance, and towards a model of analysis that slips free from the dichotomy of theory versus practice, and its correlate of text versus experience. In following Derrida's argument about speech and writing, and through a re-reading of his account of the myth of Theuth, I suggest that dance notation sensuously illustrates the kind of binary-destabilising matter and movement that Derrida theorises variously as trace, différance, and arche-writing. Further, I propose that dance notation, in its relationship to theatrical dance, provides an exemplary, rather than a unique, textual practice: one which necessarily annihilates the old mind/body and speech/writing dualisms. While Derrida achieves this through elaborate, often mischievous, wordplay in his deconstructions, I reflect upon the etymology of choreography and choreology, upon the process of reading and writing a dance score, and upon the marginal status of notation within the dance field.