Physical and Aesthetic Properties in Dance

Dance as art has been philosophically characterized as involving the natural expressiveness of human movements. But while some authors find the defense of expressiveness essential, others claim that it is not relevant to the understanding of dance and favour instead a focus on style, a supposedly more significant artistic feature. This paper is an attempt to provide an alternative account to both these positions, with the first (namely, that the dancers are supposed to convey emotions to us by their naturally expressive movements) seeming too naturalistic and the second (that dance only consists in the performance of complicated gestures of a certain style) overly stylistic.