1. Introduction

For MacIntyre (1985), a form of human activity only constitutes a practice if:

“goods internal to that activity are realised in the course of trying to achieve those standards of excellence which are appropriate to, and partly definitive of, that activity, with the result that human powers to achieve excellence, and human conceptions of the ends and goods involved, are systematically extended” (p. 187).

Is contemporary dance a practice?*  Can it still be described as having any standards of excellence definitive of its nature and any shared internal goods to realise, or have competing values within the dance community destroyed its coherence?  What are the implications of these competing values for vocational dance training? Can contemporary dance training restore itself to the status of initiation into a practice and what might the values of that practice be?

Whether shifting values undermine the shared internal goods or even the defining standards of excellence in dance practice is clearly of importance to dance practitioners and dance educators, but this paper will reveal that the unravelling of these issues reverberates far beyond the narrow confines of a marginal art form.  By drawing parallels between what will be revealed to be a crisis in values within contemporary dance practice and the alleged crisis in values often perceived in liberal pluralist societies, concerns of wider significance come to the fore.   The paper will examine what the process of initiation into a practice involves and in doing so will explore whether or not the process of acquiring virtues, so embedded in MacIntyre’s notion of a practice, makes the fragmentation of contemporary dance practice inevitable. The paper will argue that it does not, that it is possible for virtue to operate within a concept of shared values that extends across diverse traditions, and that this offers the practice a way to find coherence.

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(*The term contemporary dance practice as used in the title of this paper, refers to the genre of contemporary dance (rather than to the idea of all forms of possible dance activity that may currently exist – social, recreational or professional). The discussion throughout, therefore, refers to the genre rather than to the latter wider interpretation of the phrase “contemporary dance” )

Published: 21 May 2007