Are Dance Works Real?
The chapter considers whether dance works, if they are norm-types, are creatable given that types are conventionally understood to be eternally existing abstracta. It explores whether an account of dance creation as discovery is plausible, critically examining the adaptability to dance of Julian Dodd’s defence of a Platonist ontology of musical works. Problems Dodd raises concerning the putative creatability of indicated types prompts discussion of alternative views, including Amie Thomasson’s arguments that multiple works are abstract artefacts. The chapter critically considers also a simple nominalist view of dance works as sets of performances, and sketches a fictionalist ontology of dance works (following Andrew Kania’s similar discussion of musical works). The fictionalist leanings of some dance discourse critical of the idea of the work is highlighted, and a claim made for the reality of dance works as social objects.