Dance is often considered an ephemeral art, one that disappears nearly as soon as it materializes, leaving no physical object behind. Yet some dance practice involves people trying to embody something that exists before - and survives beyond - their particular acts of dancing. What exactly is that thing? And (how) do dances continue to exist when not performed? Anna Pakes seeks to answer these and related questions in this book, drawing on analytic philosophy of art to explore the metaphysics of dance making, performance and disappearance. Focusing on Western theater dance, Pakes also traces the different ways dances have been conceptualized across time, and what those historical shifts imply for the ontology of dance works.

Anna Pakes is Reader in Dance Studies at University of Roehampton, where she specializes in philosophy of dance, especially analytic philosophical approaches and themes. She is a former dancer and choreographer, co-editor of the anthology Thinking through Dance, English translator of Frédéric Pouillaude's Unworking Choreography (OUP, 2017), and winner of the Selma Jeanne Cohen Prize in Dance Aesthetics (2018).

List of illustrations Acknowledgements Introduction Part 1: Historicizing dance works Chapter 1: Early dances and ballets Chapter 2: Action-ballet and ballet-pantomime Chapter 3: Modern(ist) dances and modern work-concepts Chapter 4: Post-modern works Part 2: Creation Chapter 5: Works, actions and structures Chapter 6: Are dance works real? Part 3: Repeatability Chapter 7: Dance identity Chapter 8: Drowning in Swan Lakes Part 4: Persistence Chapter 9: Changing dance works Chapter 10: Films, recordings and screendance works Part 5: Loss and Recuperation Chapter 11: The problem of lost works Chapter 12: Recuperating loss? Reconstruction, reenactment and work-performance Conclusion Notes References and bibliography