Abstract
Dance can be looked at from two distant positions; from an economic stand or from a communicative, efficient and transcendental stand. Dance is an art form whose value, in terms of economics, relays on the trade or sales generated around the performance event. This is, however, somewhat a myopic view of dance unless seen as a healing art. It ignores the relationship between dance’s use value, dance’s exchange value, and dance’s inherent value, which are all contained within its healing power. It blurs definitions of artistic individuality and artistic nonconformity, as opposed to an ever-increasing and alienating systematization of information. As energy and information become our most exchangeable modern resources, dance, as a healing art form, needs to find a relevant position within the newly emerging economic structures. Without resigning from its role as a container of freedom, aesthetic, intellectual vision and pursuit, dance has to be embodied as a generalized healing practice. I argue that dance production has to be conceptualized as a model for sustaining cultural ecology as it prevents a highly automated society from contaminating and at times erasing people’s perceptual environments. Although dance is not a standard concept in economics, there are some elements such as investment value and rates of return, which, once compared to more tangible art forms contribute to the understanding of dance beyond the quantitative impositions of formulaic art markets. It is healing, precisely, because it escapes the constrains of tangible and disembodied art as traded through purely market driven economies.
Presenters
Jorge Morejon BenitezLecturer, Department of Vocal Performance, University of Miami, Florida, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
Economic, Social, and Cultural Context
KEYWORDS
Sustainability, Sense Ecology, Knowledge Formation, Metacultural Heritage
