In his treatment of ritual, Richard Schechner, in his Performance Studies: An Introduction (3rd edn, London: Routledge, 2013, p. 80), provides a thought-provoking dyad, which reveals a polarity between efficacy/ritual, on one side and entertainment/performing arts, on the other. The two poles present contrasting features: the ritual pole is driven by results and implies collective creativity and  audience participation; in the performing arts one the raisons d’être is fun, the performer is in control (rather than possessed), virtuosity and individual creativity are encouraged and appreciated, and the audience observes and evaluates (rather than believing). They are intended, however, not as binary opposites, but rather the poles of a continuum. Furthermore, efficacy and entertainment are “dancing partners’, each depending on and in continuous active relationship to the other”.

The scheme offers a platform on which historical forms of specific practice can be recorded at various points along the continuum. The question is, who judges the degree of ritual vs of performativity present in any given event or habit? In the perspective of cultural history (see Arcangeli and Buttà 2020) the evaluation of the historical agent (whether performers or audience, if such difference exists) acquires a prominent role. The issue is whether the categories in question (ritual and performing arts) exist in the culture/epoch under investigation and are in any sense comparable to modern/Western scholarship (on the problem of dance definition in the historical context of cultural encounters: Arcangeli 2021). A research question that has been posed is whether, in early modern European identity, otherness was characterised by specific types of posture and demeanour, as well as a  special association with dancing, and how this interacted with mainstream European dance practices. The enquiry questioned the interface between the early modern dance culture and the formation of standards of ethnicity and civility (the savage), social rank and customs (the peasant), religion and ritual (the witch) (Arcangeli 2018 – more synthetically, and in English, 2017).  If ritual is an obvious dimension for the case of the witch (an alien dancing community, as revisited in Charles Zika’s landmark work), it may offer a no less significant key to interpret rural and ethnic forms of practice, as well as the entanglement of their meanings for performers and observers (voyeurs?)/intruders.

References

Alessandro Arcangeli, “The savage, the peasant and the witch”, European Drama and Performance Studies 8, 2017-1 (“Danse et morale, une approche généalogique”), pp. 71-91

Alessandro Arcangeli, L’altro che danza. Il villano, il selvaggio, la strega nell’immaginario della prima età moderna (Milan: Unicopli, 2018)

Alessandro Arcangeli and Licia Buttà, “Research Perspectives on the Cultural and Visual History of Dance in the Middle Ages and Beyond”, Mantichora 10, 2020, pp. 13-17

Alessandro Arcangeli, “La danza delle Scoperte e la scoperta delle danze”, Itineraria 20, 2021