John Blacking and the Development of Dance Anthropology in the United Kingdom

Abstract

The study of dance, let alone “dance anthropology,” is still barely accepted by academia in the schools and universities of the United Kingdom. On the whole, Farnell's 1981 discussion of dance and dance education in England is still relevant. There is, however, a growing awareness among British anthropologists of the critical relevance of dance within the field of anthropology and among dance scholars of the relevance of anthropology to dance studies. In the last decade or so a number of studies that look at the state of the art within the field of “dance” anthropology have been published in the United States and in Europe (see, for example, Giurschescu and Torp [1991], Kaeppler [1991], Lange [1980], Sklar [1991], and Williams [1986]). It would be more accurate to talk about the anthropology of human movement, as do a number of the writers mentioned above, since the concept “dance,” as known in English and other cognate languages, may not be appropriate cross culturally. I find the term “anthropology of human movement,” however, rather cumbersome, and since it is “dance”—rather than martial arts or signing systems, for instance—that is usually looked at by the authors I will be referring to later, I consider the use of the term “dance anthropology” justifiable.

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