Bali, the Camera, and Dance

Performance Studies and The Lost Legacy of the Mead/Bateson Collaboration

Datos Bibliográficos

ID3607500
AutoresSally Ann Ne, Sally Ann Ness (University of California, Riverside, autor de correspondencia)
Año2008
Volumen67
Número04
Páginas1251
Fecha de publicación2008-11-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaThe Journal of Asian Studies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0021-9118 • E-ISSN: 1752-0401
EditorialDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1017/s0021911808001770
OpenAlexW2121407266
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas5
Referencias citadas34

Working in Bali in the late 1930s, anthropologists Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead made an extraordinary advance in the understanding of human performance. They observed bodily practices constituting processes of signification that resembled linguistic communication far more closely than had ever been suspected. The Mead/Bateson theory of human performance prefigured research in performance studies that has only recently begun to challenge poststructural convictions regarding the ephemerality of symbolic action. Essential to Mead and Bateson's achievement was their pioneering use of film. Equally vital, however, was their construction of Bali as a place, phenomenologically speaking. The Bali in which Mead and Bateson lived and worked was a cosmopolitan yet excessively localized product of their own design, to an extent contemporary perspectives find highly problematic. Nonetheless, the actual complexities of Balinese history and culture can be seen to have intervened into their collaborative process in ways that enabled pathbreaking insights

Art Education and Development · Diversity and Impact of Dance · Theatre and Performance Studies