Scoring Dance

This paper examines the traditional view of dance ontology as ephemeral – as existing physically only during performance. Consulting the expanding notion of the score in dance in relation to two recent examples, I examine the ongoing notationality of dance and consider the role and function of scores for current choreographic practices. I suggest that choreography can occur on the page, attributing scores a central role in the work, one of offering access to features of the work without performance. This paper demonstrates that dance works are more than abstract structures of movement and that they can be expressed in a variety of linguistic, diagrammatic, notational and performative forms.