Dance criticism: Two models in conflict? Modern and postmodern perspectives when judging

Abstract

During modernity aesthetic reception in critical discourse was thought in terms of observation. It was necessary to keep a certain dis­tance with what was observed in order to objectivize the critic’s opinion through different discursive mechanisms. Today’s media scenario, since the relatively recent development of web supported devices, appears to show a displacement towards other ways of understanding the critical process. Here we will carry out a comparative study of the critical cons­truction of contemporary dance reviews in the printed and web media, considering each set as a different device (Traversa, 2001; Meunier, 1999) and from a perspective which combines two complementary but diffe­rentiable levels: the actually discursive level (dance reviews) and the ex­tra-discursive level (the social circulation in the media).