| Although the dance literature is experiencing a rapid growth in theory that addresses the need for cogent approaches to analysis and scholarly criticism, the current state of dance analysis is one that continues to be marked by the near balkanization of methods that tend to engage one or possibly two dimensions of dance significance. While discreet approaches have enjoyed various levels of sophistication and maturation, the fact that none of the methods systematically integrate formal, historical, phenomenological, and referential levels of significance continues to characterize the field and locates the fundamental problem to which this study speaks.;Creation of a methodology that bridges multiple levels of significance in dance is this study's response to the problem of balkanization of methods. A theoretical framework for dance analysis based on the eclectic method of Lawrence Ferrara was developed, applied to the analysis of a modern dance work, and assessed.;In addition to a review of extant methodologies within the analytic traditions of formalism, historical inquiry, and phenomenology, the elaboration of an eclectic method for dance analysis required explication of issues such as expressionist approaches to dance, the difference between referential meaning and expression, foundations of hermeneutic inquiry, and Heidegger's conception of truth in art. |
