Commodifying and Giving

Abstract

Chapter 2 examines how dance might be exchanged either as commodity or as gift within the contexts of dance instruction and dance performance. It compares the ways that dance’s resource-fullness becomes utilized within either system of exchange. Within commodity exchange, dance’s ability to convene people produces an interactivity that is based in the autonomy of each individual; these individuals become connected but as isolated and independent entities within a network. Commodification of dance’s energy, presumed to be precious and somewhat scarce, entails the careful monitoring of bodily energy followed by strategic expenditure in order to achieve the maximum effect. The third of dance’s resources, its malleability of form and adaptability to place, is tapped in commodification so as to facilitate dance’s easy transport from place to place. To generate economic profit, dance must be quickly and cheaply manufactured, delivered efficiently, and disseminated as widely as possible. In contrast, within gift exchange dance’s capacity to summon people into relation becomes a way of creating mutual indebtedness among all involved. Circulating gifts connects people not as isolated agents but instead as mutually defining and dependent beings. Dance’s energy, considered to be abundant and always available, is widely given and reciprocated. And finally, dance’s adaptability, its protean form and function, is cultivated as a way to engage with and commemorate particular times, places, and people. Dance as gift is not transportable, and instead, binds itself to and operates within specific communities, connecting itself with and devising unique responses to their ecologies.