2) Should we then trust supporting evidence in the form of first-person account, visual documentation, text, or notation? The problems generated by witness or documentation are also numerous and have been extensively discussed. Was the viewer knowledgeable, sympathetic, hostile, alert, or even sober for that matter? Was there either benefit or danger in his writing or speaking about the dance? How do we know if a particular performance captured in any visual media was the "correct" version and what would we take to be a "correct" version anyway, particularly if there were multiple performances of a work? To what extent might personal or social aesthetics or mores have affected any representation?
If a notational system was available at the time, how do we decipher it now and, more fundamentally, can any system fully capture the details and the essence, if such a thing exists, of a dance? If a notational system was available should we decide that an older notated version of a work is more accurate than one that the choreographer herself revised but did not notate or record? Notation says one thing, an original performer says another—which or who is correct? These questions just skim the surface of problems facing those who analyze or reconstruct historic works, even works performed in very recent history.
3) In a reconstruction, exactly what is it that we are trying to bring back to life? There is obviously something there ... Edward de Bono, a sort of guru in the field of creative thinking, has described memory as that which "is left when something happens and does not completely unhappen."[note 3] If these dances had completely unhappened, we wouldn't be having this conversation. But what aspect of what happened are we striving to resurrect? The steps? Some recognizable and repeatable set of motional/gestural phrases? Perhaps the work's larger intent? Possibly the feeling of the piece? The images it conjures up? A combination of these elements? What is the essential nature of a particular work that we are trying to recapture, what elements demand notice and restoration, and, of course, since each of us may have different ideas about that, who decides?
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From left to right: Gwendolyn Bye, Mary Anthony, teacher and choreographer Donald McKayle (who was in the original cast of Women of Troy in 1954) and Dancefusion dancer AT Davenport (in mirror).
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Jane Sherman, discussing the reconstruction of Doris Humphrey's earlier works, has said "that to be able to capture the conviction and spirit of these seminal theatrical dances is more important than letter-perfect reconstruction of steps."[note 4] What exists as the choreography may, as Sherman suggests, be more than steps, but exactly how much of the actual step vocabulary is expendable or replaceable before the restaging ceases to be an accurate reflection of the original?
Because the style and intent of dance can vary so much, there can be no hard and fast rule. There may be works that are so formally constructed that, as Sirridge and Armelagos claim in what I take to be a problematic essay, attention to "doing the right thing and staying in line"[note 5] is all that is necessary to fulfill the choreographer's intention (or to re-fulfill it in the case of reconstruction). On the other hand, there are clearly works in which the shading and the shaping of the steps—around an idea, a particular bodiedness, a quality of motion, or an emphasis on the social, cultural, political, etc.—is absolutely essential to the core identity of the piece. In such cases, if too much attention is given to the steps and not to the context, performance quality, or intent, with what are we left? We have all seen reconstructions of work that are highly disappointing because either the reconstructor or the dancer was unable to capture the qualitative or dynamic or emotional or even narrative elements of the piece. Faithfulness to a correct sequence of steps does not necessarily ensure "accuracy."
