Dance History and Method A Return to Meaning Lynn M. Brooks

RESUMEN: In conclusion, I will refer again to Jacques Barzun, who wrote that many of the histories done in his time as psycho-history or socio-history, for example (and we could add Marxist history or feminist history) are in fact works of psychology, sociology, or anthropology, but not of history - although they might have value for the historian. Yet they are not, he is emphatic, "a history of anything" (Barzun 1974, 20). And, he writes, this matter of how something is named is important, because if such works "are taken as histories in the literal sense, the substitution will deprive the public (including students) of a product for which there is no substitute". This argument sounds remarkably like that advanced, over twenty years later, by Richard Ralph in his article on dance historiography. With the academic recognition that dance studies have achieved in the several decades, and with our combined intellectual and artistic powers brought to bear on the subject, I urge that we continue our focus on the history of dance, of dancers, and of dance makers, whose voices deserve hearing, just as those of our current age will, years hence.