Anna Pakes - Original Embodied Knowledge

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Research in Dance Education
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Original Embodied Knowledge: the epistemology of the new in dance practice as research
Anna Pakes a a School of the Arts (Dance Department), Roehampton University of Surrey, Roehampton Lane, London SW15 5PJ, UK (e-mail: A.Pakes@roehampton.ac.uk).
To cite this Article Pakes, Anna(2003) 'Original Embodied Knowledge: the epistemology of the new in dance practice as
research', Research in Dance Education, 4: 2, 127 149 To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/1464789032000130354 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1464789032000130354
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Research in Dance Education Vol. 4, No. 2, December 2003
Original Embodied Knowledge: the epistemology of the new in dance practice as research
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ANNA PAKES, School of the Arts (Dance Department), Roehampton University of Surrey, Roehampton Lane, London SW15 5PJ, UK (e-mail: A.Pakes@roehampton.ac.uk)
ABSTRACT
Many UK universities now recognise that artistic practice can constitute a form of research in its own right; increasingly, practising artists are sponsored or employed to work creatively within the academy, whilst the regulatory frameworks of research degree programmes have evolved to enable practical doctoral submissions. These developments have raised a number of complex epistemological issues, including the problem of what constitutes original investigation in an art domain. This article explores this issue in relation to dance practice presented as doctoral research. It explores what originality means in this context and how it is or can be assessed. The article also examines whether, in an emerging discipline like dance, there is sufciently broad consensus about the existing knowledge-base to furnish a background for judging the new. Aesthetic theory and the philosophy of education are discussed in the attempt to unravel and clarify key issues. An analysis of existing institutional discourse seeks to identify the logical parameters and conceptual grounding of current practice, and to open a dialogue between philosophical perspectives and those involved in practice as research.
As performing arts departments in UK universities have developed over the last few decades, the scope of the research activities they house has widened. The creation and performance of dance, theatre or music have increasingly come to be recognised as forms of research in their own right. [1] Growing numbers of practising artists have joined university departments to continue their creative work within the academys walls. [2] And the regulatory frameworks of research degree programmes have evolved to enable practical, or at least part-practical, doctoral submissions. [3] This implies many universities acceptance in principle of the equivalence between artistic practice as research and other, more traditional (scientic or humanities-based) research models of the idea that successful examples of each conform to existing denitions or normative conceptions of what research should be. [4] Such denitions invariably turn on the idea of research as an original contribution to knowledge within the particular subject domain. A survey conducted by the UK Council
ISSN 1464-7893 (print)/ISSN 1470-1111 (online)/03/02012723 DOI: 10.1080/1464789032000130354 2003 Taylor & Francis Ltd
128 A. Pakes for Graduate Education (UKCGE) identied a broad consensus amongst higher education institutions offering practice-based degrees that doctoral submissions should furnish new knowledge and/or a new perspective on existing knowledge (UKCGE, 1997a, p. 14). This expectation is enshrined in PhD regulations across the country, which broadly concur with UKCGEs own, more detailed characterisation of what constitutes doctoral level work: doctorateness involves mastery of the existing techniques and knowledgebase of the subject, a critical and analytical attitude towards them, an ability to apply them with a view to originating new knowledge and/or understanding and an abilitybased on the aboveto originate in the form of a contribution which is judged to be valid and signicant. (UKCGE, 1997a, p. 14) According to this denition, newness is assessed against the background of a elds established knowledge-base and judged in relation to the disciplines methodological standards (that is, offset against the requirement for methodological rigour). Originality also features as a prominent theme within the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) descriptors for postgraduate qualications, indeed is identied as a feature even of Masters-level work. According to the QAA guidelines, Masters-level students are expected to have shown originality in the application of knowledge and in tackling problems. The stakes are further raised for doctoral-level candidates, who are expected to be involved in the creation and interpretation of knowledge, which extends the forefront of a discipline, usually through original research; they should be able to carry through, from design to completion, projects for the generation of signicant new knowledge and/or understanding; and they should show innovation in tackling and solving problems (QAA, 2001). Guidelines attaching to the 1996 and 2001 Research Assessment Exercises (RAE) also emphasise originality as a key factor, suggesting that qualifying submissions will include: the invention and generation of ideas, images, performances and artefacts, including design, where these lead to new or substantially improved insights or the experimental use of existing knowledge to produce new or substantially improved materials, devices, products and processes (RAE, 2001, my italics). The originality requirement clearly cuts across the institutional contexts of both doctoral and university staff research. To qualify for institutional recognition (and funding) as research, then, dance practice must be original and innovative. But what is an original investigation within choreography or performance, assuming that both might qualify as forms of research? What constitutes new knowledge in these elds? The UKCGE and QAA denitions suggest that any purportedly new contribution be offset against what the discipline already knows. But is there sufciently broad consensus about the knowledge-base peculiar to dance for this to furnish a background against which to judge the new? And is there disciplinary agreement over not just what is known, but how it is known, i.e. concerning the viability and rigour of particular methods of investigation? The originality requirement seems likely to be contentious within any academic discipline, given that interpretations as to what is new or ground-breaking might vary dramatically from one group of scholars to the next. But it is perhaps particularly controversial within an emerging
Original Embodied Knowledge 129 academic discipline like dance, where the epistemological ground is still contested and shifting. What is more, the dual nature of dance as both academic discipline and artistic practice seems to complicate the originality issue. It raises questions as to whether originality is the same thing from both artistic and research perspectives, and whether the research-based investigation or its product is supposed to be original. What, indeed, is the product of an enquiry conducted through practicean artwork or the knowledge it makes available? Are these distinguishable from one another? There are, then, a number of complex problems raised by the framing of practice as research. Some of these issues are already the subject of lively debate within communities of artists, academics and researcher-practitioners. In the visual arts, where there are longer-standing precedents for recognising practice as a form of research, a body of literature exists charting a range of positions on the relation between knowledge and artistic creation (see, for example, Alison 1994; Newbury 1996; Painter, 1996; Candlin, 2000, 2001). In the performing arts, the Practice as Research in Performance (PARIP) project and journals such as Studies in Theatre and Performance have hosted and published extensive discussions within this still developing eld (see, for example, Piccini, 2002; Thomson, 2003). Such discussions have highlighted a need for epistemological enquiry which explores the validity, methods and scope of performative knowledge (Adams, in Thomson, 2003, p. 175; see also Piccini, in Thomson, 2003, p. 161; Piccini, 2002). As yet, however, there is little sustained philosophical investigation of practice as research in the public domain. There is also a paucity of reection on the problems specic to dance practice as research, critical debates within the performing arts to date usually centring on other types of performance practice. My aim in this article is to begin to explore epistemological issues surrounding dance practice presented as research. This article draws on aesthetic theory and the philosophy of education in the effort to unravel and clarify, even if I cannot resolve, some of the problems. The discussion focuses in particular on the philosophical implications of the originality requirement, that is, on the expectation that practical research furnish an original contribution to knowledge. I have restricted the articles focus mainly to PhD research for a number of reasons. Firstly, this makes sense with regard to my particular focus: within the UKs qualications framework, it is at doctoral level that the originality requirement really begins to be articulated and upheld as a criterion of value and validity which distinguishes higher-level research from undergraduate and Masterslevel work. Secondly, the critical debates referred to above have tended to date to focus largely on general issues not always directly relevant to the doctoral context; [5] there is thus scope for developing a reection particularly pertinent to practice as research at PhD level. Finally, in comparison with university staff research, PhD programmes generally have tighter assessment structures and regulatory frameworks. This means that the discourses establishing such structures have to articulate how practice as research stands up against the xed set of paradigms of traditional research (Piccini, 2002) in a way that is not always necessary in post-doctoral contexts. Analysing this institutional discourse exposes the logic of these structures and the extent of the consensual understanding underpinning them. The article takes this kind of analytical epistemological, rather than an empirical, approach. I am not proposing to survey existing practice and draw theoretical conclusions from it so much as to explore existing
130 A. Pakes discourse about practice as research in terms of its logical parameters and conceptual grounding. Originality in Art and Research It may be useful as a starting point to examine some of the different senses of the term originality as it is used in relation to art. This will establish a basis from which to compare and contrast originality in artistic practice as research. Bailey (1992) conrms that the word has a range of meanings and designates a complex concept. His discussion suggests that an artwork may be original in a number of ways. It may be:
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5)
the the the the the
rst rst rst rst rst
token of a design type; object to contain specic artistic properties; in a set of objects created in a style specic to an individual artist.; object to show known content in the way that it does; object to present previously unknown information. [6]
In cases (1), (2) and (3), originality is a question of the objects relationship with the wider artworld or art historical context. [7] One would need to set the object against the background of other artworks to judge if it is the rst token of a design/artistic type, manifestation of particular artistic properties or work in a particular style. Dance practice as research might, it seems, be original in any of these rst three senses. For example, a choreographer completing a PhD might: propose a new type of multimedia performance as in (1); he/she might submit choreography which develops movement material of unprecedented complexity, which has a highly unusual effect on the audience (2); or he/she might present a work which establishes an idiosyncratic movement language which stands alongside those of other established practitioners as a distinctive and signicant style (3). In each of these examples, the judgement that the submission was original would rest on comparisons with other works in the dance tradition and on the current dance scene. The object in categories (1), (2) and (3) is adjudged original in terms of its relation to the eld of art, or (more specically) dance art. Objects that are original in senses (4) and (5) are rather different. These categories highlight the newness of the objects cognitive content rather than its artistic originality per se: either the object is the rst to show known content in the way it does, or it presents previously unknown information. An original object in sense (4) might be one in a series of artistic representations of the content concerned: perhaps there are paintings, sculptures, poems or digital animations which explore similar issues to those examined in or through the new dance work. In this case, one would judge whether the dance is original by comparing it with those other artistic representations, and so again in terms of an art history or artworld context. But equally an object in sense (4) might be exploring issues that have not been examined in any artwork to date: perhaps the issue the choreographer is tackling has been discussed at length in philosophical texts but never through art or dance. In this case, the framework against which the objects originality is judged seems broader, since it also incorporates the other media of representation or discussion: the dance works manifestation of the content is compared
Original Embodied Knowledge 131 with the way, say, philosophers discuss the issue in order to see what is different or interesting about the way dance handles these ideas. A broader framework also seems to be involved in judging a category (5) object, that is, an object which presents previously unknown information. The value of some dance practice as research, for example, might be the new knowledge it makes available about human experience, the body or proprioceptive awareness, rather than the innovations it effects in artistic terms. Here, the objects value as original seems to derive from the relation between its cognitive content and the existing stock of knowledge in general, rather than only or necessarily artistic knowledgealthough it might also convey new information that belongs specically to the art domain. [8] So objects in categories (1), (2) and (3) seem to display specically artistic originality; those in (4) and (5) may be artistically original, but might equally be original in a different sense. As suggested above, it seems that dance practice as research might fall into any of these ve categories of original object. But does the discourse surrounding practice as research accept this, or are some kinds of originality privileged over others as appropriate to the PhD or post-doctoral situations? UKCGE denes a practice-based doctorate as one that includes an original creative work, itself held to demonstrate originality, mastery and contribution to the eld (1997b, p. 3). Originality here could be interpreted as emphasising either artistic innovation or innovation in presenting a particular cognitive content. The idea that the work contributes to a eld is similarly ambiguous. Initially, it seems to privilege those objects which make available a new cognitive content or frame existing knowledge in a new way; it is easier to conceptualise that content as an addition to the stock of knowledge in the domain, in the way the term contribution suggests. But one might argue that the eld of dance as an academic discipline, like its artworld context, is actually constituted by knowledge of the art forms history and current directions as well as understanding of its core medium or media (see also below). Any new work judged original against this backdrop would be both artistically original and generative of new ideas. From this perspective, a dance works originality as research and its originality as art amount to the same thing. Yet it also seems problematic to treat originality in art and in research as equivalent. This has been recognised in the debate over practice as research in the performing arts. Kershaw (2001), for example, highlights the need to dene carefully [t]he differences between aesthetic innovation, and the uses of such innovation placed at the service of explicit research agendas designed to produce new knowledge or insights (p. 146), although he does not explicitly rule out artistic originality as a quality of practice as research. Discussions at the Practice as Research in Performance (PARIP) symposium at Bristol University in November 2001 were more emphatic on this issue. Piccini (2002) reports one groups concern to uphold the distinction between practice as research and artistic practice per se. Whereas artists might remain unaware or only dimly cognisant of their works relation to the wider context, it was considered paramount that practitioner-researchers explicitly identify and justify their contribution to knowledge. The group argued that practice as research should obey the norms of scholarly research practice, in which the claim to new knowledge is made explicit in a commentary or abstract, supported by the academic apparatus of bibliography, abstract, literature review, citations, etc. (Piccini, 2002). The group also maintained the need for research
132 A. Pakes to produce a set of separable, demonstrable, research ndings that are abstractable, not simply locked into the experience of performing. This indicates that the cognitive content of the creative work was considered by the PARIP group to be crucial to its status as research rather than its artistry per se. Or at least, that the onus is on the researcher to develop a self-conscious awareness of what the cognitive content of their work is. Even if the knowledge produced belongs to the art or dance domain, originality is not simply a question of pushing forward the boundaries of the art form but of treating the intervention as contributing to our understanding of art or dance. The UKCGE report (1997a) similarly suggests that artwork must be explicitly intended as research by the creator in order to qualify; the artist needs an academic research perspective if he/she wishes to present the outcome of his/her process as part of a PhD submission. Again, the suggestion is that the artist-researcher needs to be self-consciously engaged in generating knowledge rather than just innovating artistically. As Kleiman (in Thomson, 2003) suggests, the academic context is one in which any claim that the work carries serious intellectual and theoretical weight, and makes a valuable contribution to the furtherance of knowledge, etc., needs to be evidenced and veried (p. 172). UKCGE (1997a) seems to support this view but alsoproblematicallygoes on to suggest that the creative work must itself be valid and original [] and of high quality as art (p. 14). This ambiguity about whether practice as research has to demonstrate artistic innovation or originality in cognitive terms is yet to be resolved. [9] There are other conceptual problems with the originality requirement beyond the kind of innovation expected of practice as research. As Bailey (1992) points out, the term original has an honoric rather than simply classicatory sense. However the term is understood, it is assumed to enhance an objects artistic value. But how original does an artwork or a piece of practice as research need to be in order to be valued as a signicant contribution? One (extreme) answer would be to claim that only works representing turning points in art history are truly original: that something is art only if it has a unique place in art history, a place something has only if it constitutes a turning point in art history (Bailey, 1992, p. 315). As Bailey points out, this is clearly a problematic claim with respect to artworks since not all objects currently recognised as such represent turning points in art history. To argue that they should would be to consider only works like Duchamps Fountain (1917), Picassos Guernica (1937) or Nijinskis LApre ` s-Midi dun Faune (1912) true art, and relegate other less innovative creations to a kind of sub-art status. This seems to push the criterion of originality too far. If one extends the parallel with practice as research, the requirement appears even more extreme. It is unreasonable to expect all artwork to have the original force or impact of Guernica, let alone all practice as research submissions. In the research context, this would be like expecting all PhDs in philosophy to be as signicant for the eld as Descartes Meditations (16411642), Wittgensteins Philosophical Investigations (1958) or Derridas Of Grammatology (French original, 1967). Presumably artistic knowledge, like knowledge in other elds, can develop through people taking small steps as well as great leaps. If overestimating how far an artistic intervention must advance beyond its predecessors results in absurdity, the other extreme of the same scale seems equally implausible:
Original Embodied Knowledge 133 namely, the view that every act must be at least in part original because it is impossible to replicate exactly what has gone before. In the case of dance, any spell in the studio seems likely to generate new movement material or ideas in this sense since dancers will never perform the same movement material in exactly the same order or with the same qualities as they did last time. Moreover, the uniqueness of individual dancers bodies arguably makes each performance by a different cast an original work, or each process involving different performers signicantly distinct from its predecessors. [10] This view renders the term originality vacant, since if everything is original, nothing is. Maintaining this view would imply that it is impossible to distinguish levels of achievement, at least in terms of the criterion of originality. A dance work made by an A level student would be original just like one submitted in fullment of the requirements for the award of PhD. The problem is, however, that recognising the absurdity of the two extreme poles of the artistic originality continuum does not seem to help much in locating the point in between at which artistic originality might have positive content as a valuable property. How far must a researchers dance depart from existing work in order to be considered new? There is also a problem concerning the point at which comparisons between the practitioner-researchers creative work and its surrounding artistic context become possible. Assessing an artworks originality involves contrasting the work with others; as well as knowledge of the past history of art, the judge would also seem to need an awareness of current directions of artistic exploration. The object in question must be identiable both as the rst of its kind and as uniquely innovative in relation to its contemporaries, or otherwise it would lose its distinctiveness as the originator of a species. [11] Arguably, knowledge of what came after would also be necessary to verify this, and to be certain that the object was indeed rst of a kind, rather than simply an aberration. Certainly, intuition suggests that it is easier to judge with hindsight whether or not an object was rst of a kind. But this is impossible in the PhD situation. The practitioner-researcher has to have a sense of the originality of her work even to be accepted onto a PhD programme. The claim to originality is made already at the proposalor at least the upgradingstage. That claim has to be articulated before the product is complete and certainly without the distance characteristic of the judgement of posterity. Again, this indicates the problem of treating originality in art and in research as equivalent even though presenting practice as research might seem to collapse the distinction. One way in which that distinction can be and has been formulated is by insisting that research is necessarily governed by research questions, whereas artistic practice as such need not be. This is the position articulated in the Arts & Humanities Research Boards (AHRB) guidelines to its Fellowships in the Creative and Performing Arts Scheme (AHRB, 2002). There, a denition of research is offered that centres on the idea of clear formulation of questions: these questions must be articulated, placed in a context and explicitly linked to the methods whereby they will be answered or addressed, in order for applications to be eligible. What is distinctive about the AHRBs approach here is the deliberate emphasis on research processes, rather than outcomes (AHRB, 2002) presumably in order not to predetermine the form that practice as research will take. This approach also reects the particular perspective from which AHRB enters the
134 A. Pakes debate. The Board has to decide who or what to fund, not whether the outcomes of the chosen projects ultimately do constitute a contribution to the eld. This is rather different to the situation in which the validity of a PhD is being assessed, although not necessarily to the activity of processing a PhD or upgrading application. [12] It is difcult to see how a PhDs claim to originality could be made at the proposal stage except through the clear articulation of questions rather than denite outcomes. In any other discipline, it would not be expected of a PhD candidate that they predetermine the ndings but that they clarify the hypotheses. Similarly, it would be unreasonable to expect the dance practitioner-researcher to give a clear indication of the shape of the work when the process is still in its initial stages; they can, however, say what they are investigating and why. But this does shift the emphasis of the originality requirement; it suggests that the questions or investigation as such should be original rather than necessarily (or in addition to) the outcome. Creative Processes and Original Products Indeed, UKCGE (1997a) argues that even the nal assessment of a practice-based PhD must take into account the process of investigation and creation involved. Citing a University of Central England document on research in art and design, the UKCGE report distinguishes between the artist-researcher and the artist as such on this basis: [w]hereas an artist or designer can simply present his or her end-product, and refuse further explanation, the academic art and design researcher is obliged also to map for his or her peers the route by which they arrived at that product (1997a, p. 13). This obligation is reiterated and further explicated a few pages later: The processthe programme of research and the research methods followedcan be distinguished from the productthe outcome of the researchalthough the product is a signicant indicator of the process. The determination of doctorateness depends on the exposition of both [] no matter how valuable or well received in artistic terms the product is, this is not, in itself, indicative of the process. (UKCGE, 1997a, p. 21) The report goes on to argue for the pivotal role played by a verbal, written commentary on the work in providing a record of the process, essential to assessing the attainment of a doctoral award (p. 22). Again, it is clear that creating artistically original artwork is not considered sufcient to meet the criteria of validity for practicebased doctorates. Access also needs to be provided to the route whereby that work was generated, to the process of which it is the outcome. UKCGE (1997a) makes an exception in the case of music, where, in a long established tradition of compositional doctorates, a consensus has been reached among the academics that the product (namely the composition) embodies and, in consequence, is indicative of the research process and [] this is clearly understood by the academic community (p. 23). In musical composition, there is an established notation system generally and consensually regarded as an essentially accurate record of the composers work. This gives the latter a permanence (and hence allows for close analysis and repeated re-readings) that works in the other performing arts do not have. The script of
Original Embodied Knowledge 135 a text-based drama production might provide comparable access to one aspect of that work, but not to the performance as such, and lm and video records cannot necessarily make up the shortfall. Dance relies on lm, video and notation systems for its documentation, but there is little consensus over the extent to which any of these media embody the works essentials. Moreover, choreographers do not generally make dance work by writing a score (in the way composers might create musical works) which is then performed; rather, works are developed in the studio, then performed and only subsequently notated (if at all), usually by someone other than the artists themselves. The score, then, does not relate to the artists process in the same way as the musical notation to the composers work. Whilst UKCGE (1997a) does not explicate these differences between art forms, they are some of the considerations which seem to underwrite the requirement for a written commentary in the arts other than music. [13] Within the other arts disciplines, claims about the need to provide a verbal commentary to evidence the validity of practice as research remain very contentiousalthough less so, perhaps, in the PhD than in the university staff research context. [14] Rye (2001), for example, voices concerns that any such mediation may actually distort or alter the character of the knowledge generated by the project: the researcher may be engaged with the production of embodied knowledge which can not, by denition, be embedded, reproduced or demonstrated in any recorded document. Candlin (2000) argues emphatically against requiring that a written document accompany the submission of PhD-level creative work in the visual arts, whereas Trimingham (2002) suggests that such writing is absolutely necessary if the submission is to be appropriately analytic, justiable and useful in disseminating research ndings. Piccini (2002) notes that the questions of documentation and of the status of text-based as opposed to other forms of knowledge production need much further discussion within the PARIP project, although it may well be decided that such material accrual around practice is deemed necessary for the academy. Hockey and Allen-Collinson (2000) highlight some of the problems experienced by visual arts students and supervisors with regard to accompanying verbal commentaries. There is insufcient space to tackle the issue of the status of verbal or other forms of mediation here. [15] What is important in the context of this articles concerns, however, is the question of whether it is viable to require the process rather than the product of practice as research to be original, or whether the originality of research is assessed via product or process. In this regard, debates within aesthetics about the concept of creativity seem relevant. Indeed the concepts of creativity and originality are closely linked. As Tomas (1970) [16] suggests: we do not judge a painting, poem, or other work to be a work of creative art unless we believe it to be original [] To create is to originate (p. 376). Tomas is concerned to give an account of what creativity in art is, to highlight its distinctiveness as a form of activity. He begins by offering a negative characterisation, contrasting creativity with goal-oriented purposive activity. [17] A creative artist is, in Tomas view, radically unlike the rieman trying to hit a pre-ordained target. The artist is not simply following rules and using his skills to produce a desired end result. Rather, the artist is recognised and congratulated as creative because he embodied in colors or in language something the like of which did not exist before, and because he was the originator of the rules he implicitly followed while he was painting or writing (pp. 374375). Tomas
136 A. Pakes argues that the creative artist does not begin with a clear image or plan of the nal result of his work. But there is a sense of the activity as directed, as heading somewhere: even if the artist cannot say precisely which way he/she is going, he/she can adjudge certain directions not to be the right ones. It is this exercise of critical judgement [that] sets creative activity apart from activity that is acquiescent to the leadership of revery (p. 376). The process of artistic creation is not controlled teleologically in terms of a preconceived end, but it is regulated by the rigorous critical scrutiny operating at each stage in the production. Tomas account of the creative process is convincing in that it seems to strike an appropriate balance between the intuitive, imaginative dimension of creative activity and its elements of technical, rational and critical control (c.f. Best, 1985, 1987b). Does Tomas characterisation also help elucidate the process of dance practitioner-researcher engaged in original research? According to the perspectives outlined above, a practitioner-researcher does or should have a clear sense of the purpose or goal of the investigation. UKCGE (1997a) argues that the academic research perspective will be embedded in the makers intentions, which suggests at least a negative denition of what the outcome will be: not simply a dance work, to be assessed on its own terms, in relation to its aesthetic and/or artistic merit. Also, AHRB (2002) states and UKCGE (1997a) implies that the practitioners research questions must be clearly dened at the outset, which seems to work against Tomas idea that the artistic process has no clear goal in sight. But then can a question function as a preconceived end in any very denite sense? Not, one suspects, as long as it remains the question rather than also the ndings that are formulated in advance. Both artistic practice and research practice seem radically different to the kind of technical process which produces an outcome in exact accordance with a predetermined specication. Artistic and research processes would appear much more aleatory and much less predictable than their technical counterparts, even if a focus for the investigation is identied at the beginning. UKCGE (1997a) elaborates this point in justifying its claims about the importance of assessing process as well as product. The report argues that qualitative methods are far more likely to be prevalent than their quantitative counterparts within research in the arts disciplines. This, the report claims (in contrast to the AHRBs injunction that artists clearly identify research questions), is because arts research does not, typically, begin with a predetermined set of questions or assumptions but arises from particular situations or contexts (p. 22). The emphasis is on situations in their particularity rather than the universality or generalisability of either hypotheses or conclusions. And this chimes with Tomas idea that artists may change the direction of their exploration at any point, in response to the particular circumstances that have arisen at this stage in the making processor in other words (and in a non-pejorative sense) make up the rules as they go along. The parallel thus seems to hold between the rule-generating artist and the researcher generating new insight through original investigation; these gures contrast respectively with the rule-following, goal-oriented agent and the student rehearsing existing knowledge. The problem with extending that parallel in this respect, however, is that the possibility of making up the rules as one goes along seems in tension with the requirement for methodological rigour. Researchersparticularly PhD candidatesare expected to know about and employ methods recognised as valid in their
Original Embodied Knowledge 137 eld. Indeed, as the UKCGE (1997a) discussion continues, it becomes clear that the record of the process is considered important not so much because it gives insight into the originality of the investigation, as because it ensures that the work is valued, understood and assessed as an outcome of a rigorous and intellectually demanding programme of study, which would otherwise be difcult to determine (p. 22). The document, then, proves that the methods are viable and that the process of investigation has been systematic. One could, of course, argue that the artists exercise of critical judgement is itself the mechanism for ensuring rigour in the kind of process Tomas describes. Subjecting ones creative work to critical scrutiny implies the imposition of distance between maker and object, which allows the work as it is progressing to be tested against received ideas and artistic and/or cognitive criteria at each signicant stage. The exercise of critical judgement appears similar to the process whereby the ndings of scientic researchincluding both the data generated and the inductive generalisations proceeding from themare rigorously and continuously scrutinised. Tomas idea that the artist (and by extension the practitioner-researcher) can say what is not right even if he/she does not know what is, seems reminiscent of the principle of falsiability in scientic research, as formulated by Popper (1980). [18] The traditional view of scientic knowledge is that experience gradually accumulates until a general principle can be derived that the experience veries. Popper, meanwhile, argues that science abounds in hypotheses which precede and are tested against experience; those that withstand the test constitute scientic knowledge, although there is always the possibility that they may be falsied by a particular eventuality arising in the future. [19] Thus: what characterises the empirical method is its manner of exposing to falsication, in every conceivable way, the system to be tested. Its aim is not to save the lives of untenable systems but, on the contrary, to select the one which is by comparison the ttest, by exposing them all to the ercest struggle for survival. (Popper, 1980, p. 42) The process is parallel to the creative process described by Tomas: the evolving artwork is exposed to rigorous critical scrutiny and particular directions rejected if they fail this test. The work that emerges at the end of the process is that which has withstood the critical gaze of the artist-researcher. [20] Suggestive as Tomas account of the creative process is, however, it has been criticised by other aestheticians working on the topic of creativity. In fact, his position (and that of other philosophers who develop comparable forms of Creative-Process Theory) is vigorously refuted by Glickman (1978). Glickman points out that there is nothing distinctive about the kind of process Tomas considers peculiar to the creative artist, indeed that Tomas crucial error lies in the assumption that creativity consists in some distinctive pattern of thought and/or activity (p. 146). In assessing whether or not an artist is creative, Glickman maintains, we do not trace the artists process of making and point to the moments where he/she appears also to be creating. We look at the product he/she has produced and assess it in relation to other works in the canon. Thus, the verb create does not designate a specic, isolable form of activity. Rather, it operates as (using Gilbert Ryles terminology) an achievement verb. The measure of the achieve-
138 A. Pakes ment is in the relationship between this work and a broader context of such practice, not in the link between the particular artistic process and its product. Glickmans position here is similar to that argued by Best (1987a): [t]he product, not some [] inner process is what gives sense to the notion of creative choreography (p. 33). Best also points out the tension, if not contradiction, between the very notion of creativity and the idea of an identiable set of steps, principles or rules characteristic of creative processes: to be creative is to do something original which in some sense transcends or even changes the rules (p. 30). Tomas perhaps escapes this charge of self-contradiction by offering only a negative characterisation of the creative processs rules or principles. Tomas is not trying to suggest that there is a series of steps that the theorist can identify and the artist follow in order to produce creative work. Rather, he is identifying a critical logic which comes into play in assessing each stage of the developing artistic product. In this respect, Tomas perspective may be relevant to the practitioner-researcher because it explicates one way in which methodical rigour can be assured without compromising the intuitive development of a creative work: namely, precisely through that critical judgement which is an integral part of the creative process anyway. Dening methodical constraints negatively in this way has the advantage of not imposing from outside a set of parameters which, in their externality, destroy the coherence of the creative process. As concerns the question of judging the arts originality, however, Glickmans and Bests position seems intuitively right. Otherwise there is too much focus on what the artist-researcher aimed to do and how he/she went about it rather than what he/she actually did. But what this discussion does highlight is the need to recognise the different kinds of claims to originality that must be made by the researcher at different stages in their process. At the proposal stage, original questions need dening that have the scope to lead to new knowledge or understanding. And yet these must not determine in advance the precise nature of the outcome: if they did, the research itself would be superuous. The accompanying documentation of the nal submission then focuses (at least in part) on the research outcome in relation to the artworld context and/or other eld of knowledge, to demonstrate the originality of the outcome. The examiners assess that claim to originality against their own understanding of artistic and knowledge contexts, with the viva voce providing an opportunity to justify apparent omissions and to resolve differences between competing judgements. Where questions, investigation and outcome are all original in the examiners view, there seems to be no problem. But what of situations where the questions and processes were original but the artwork produced is not, even though it is a valid response to the questions? [21] Can such a project still be awarded a PhD? Again, the answer would partly depend on whether artistic originality or innovation in knowledge is expected from the candidate. It is possible to imagine a researcher asking new questions and formulating relevant answers, but through a work that does not actually look original in any signicant sense. UKCGE seems to argue against awarding the qualication in such cases, by including the suggestion that the artwork as such must be original as well as any knowledge it makes available (UKCGE 1997a, p. 5; see above, p. 128). But this opens the door to all the problems with artistic originality as a criterion of value identied in the discussion above (pp. 128129). On this basis one might be tempted to
Original Embodied Knowledge 139 narrow down the originality requirement in PhD contexts at least, to a requirement for new knowledge rather than artistic originality. Unfortunately, as suggested in the introduction, this too creates difculties, especially in the case of a relatively young discipline like dance. The epistemological ground here is still contested and shifting, a phenomenon compounded by the trend within the arts and humanities towards increasing interdisciplinaritylike the rug being pulled from under those only just beginning to nd their feet. And yet how can new knowledge be identied without a clear sense of what the eld already knows? Dance Knowledges: knowing how, practical wisdom & dance understanding So what is the knowledge-base specic to the dance eld and what kinds of new knowledge might practice as research contribute to it? A number of philosophers of education have addressed the rst of these questions. Best (1974, 1985), McFee (1992, 1994) and Carr (1978, 1986, 1999) have all explored the epistemological distinctiveness of dance in order to argue its academic validity and importance within school and university curricula. Their work is primarily focused on legitimising the place of dance in primary, secondary and undergraduate educational contexts, and so does not address explicitly or in detail the question of dance research. [22] But the ideas of Best, Carr and McFee offer one route whereby the knowledges embodied in dance practice can begin to be identied and explored. They may therefore help esh out the background against which the originality of the new contributions to the eld furnished by practice-based research can be measured. Clearly dance practice conceived as artistic practice is not primarily geared towards the generation of factual knowledge in the way that, for example, scientic as well as historical research can be. [23] So, if the originality of dance practice as research is not (or not primarily) in its discovery of new facts, where does it lie? Carr (e.g. 1978, 1987b), Best (1985) and McFee (1994) all assert the status of dance as rational human action. Indeed, their argument for the educational legitimacy of dance rests on their claim for its rationality. Carr (1999) explains this focus as a response to the liberal traditionalism dominating post-war analytic philosophy of education: if education was conceived as a matter of initiation into rational modes of human enquiry and activity, the educational value of practical activities would need to be justied by showing how reason is implicated no less in skilled conduct than in theoretical or academic enquiry (p. 124). But Carr and his colleagues are also concerned with how other forms of reason than the purely theoretical are embedded in the practice and appreciation of dance. Their work thus poses a challenge (sometimes implicitly, sometimes explicitly) to the tradition of Western epistemology, which has typically focused on a conception of knowledge as justied true belief (Alcoff, 1998, p. viii). The idea that knowledge is essentially factual and/or theoretical leaves other ways of knowing out of account. Carr, Best and McFee work in an alternative tradition, reaching back at least as far as Aristotle, which rejects the narrowness of this traditional conception. Carrs early work (1978, 1984), for example, explores the relevance to dance of the distinction between knowing how and knowing that. [24] Most famously explicated by
140 A. Pakes Gilbert Ryle (1949), knowing how is a question of being able to perform tasks intelligentlya form of knowledge that epistemological philosophy has neglected because of its focus on knowledge that. Carr (1978) recognises Ryles contribution, but draws more from Aristotle, Von Wright, Kenny and Anscombe in elaborating the idea of practical reasoning or practical inference as the logic of knowing how (1978, p. 5). [25] Carrs early work maintains that this logic is clearly manifest in the skills acquired by pupils in dance education. According to this argument, if I learn how to perform a ballet encha nement, my performance demonstrates the knowledge how I have acquired. This includes the ability to execute the relevant steps in the right order with a feeling for their dynamic qualities and coherence as a sequence. The intelligence of my performance consists in the practical understanding and reasoning that are part and parcel of actually dancing the encha nement well. That intelligence is not a function of a logically antecedent theoretical understanding that I then put into practice, or that practice then effectsit is embedded in the action itself. But, for Carr, knowing how is also to be distinguished from simply being able to do. As a teacher, I might no longer be able to perform the sequence, but I can still know how to do it. Equally, someone who has not been trained in the relevant skills might happen to perform the sequence effectively but without any understanding of what he/she was actually doing; in this case, one would not say they know how to perform this encha nement even though they have shown an ability to do it. It seems possible, and potentially fruitful, to extend this argument to incorporate practice as research as a way of developing knowledge how. The crucially relevant and, from the practitioner-researchers point of view, appealinginsight is the idea that practice itself embodies and develops a form of knowledge, rather than simply offering a physical demonstration of a pre-theorised intellectual position (c.f. Rye, 2001). But there are also problems with the idea of knowledge how in relation to practice as research. Firstly, if there is a distinction between knowing how and being able to do, then the assessment of practice as research would need to be able to distinguish cases of intelligent from other kinds of performance. One would have to look at the reasoning embedded in performance rather than just performance itself; and so this reasoning would have to be articulated in some way other than through the action, since performance of the action need not be intelligent. Again, then, there seems to be a need for a commentary or reection of some kind on the practice. This is not necessarily a problem, but would be if one considers that such commentary will be bound to distort and alter the character of the knowledge embedded in the performance itself (Rye, 2001). Equally, the question arises as to whether it is unreasonable to expect students to disseminate their knowledge through two different routes (c.f. Hockey & AllenCollinson, 2000). The second issue relates to the fact that knowledge how is heavily dependent on the existence of established norms of action: one reasons practically about how to perform a pre-dened action in terms of norms which suggest how best that goal can be achieved (Kenny, 1966). So knowledge how appears equivalent to the technical knowledge which can produce a desired outcome in accordance with a predetermined specication (see above, pp. 131132). There seems little room in this account for innovation or originality. The idea of knowing how might explain the kind of reasoning embodied in the intelligent performance of a pirouette or the creation of a dance work
Original Embodied Knowledge 141 that obeys predened compositional principles. Neither of these activities would qualify as practice-based research under any of the denitions explored so far. Carr himself recognises the normative bias of knowledge how as a problem with his early position. The latter can only account for the acquisition of fairly routine or habitual techniquesstaying well clear of the less predictable creative and imaginative aspects of dance practice (1999, p. 126). Carrs (1987a) essay tries to rectify early omissions by arguing that dancers and artists would need two other kinds of knowledge in addition to procedural knowledge of dance technique: rst, a knowledge of the conventions of a particular artistic genre; second, a grasp of more objective naturalistically grounded rules of aesthetic-affective association (1999, p. 128). This is similar to the idea examined above (p. 5) that the knowledge-base of dance involves understanding of the art forms history, of the current state of artistic exploration and of the core medium (including the range and potential of that mediums aesthetic impact on the audience). But Carr subsequently critiques also this idea, arguing that this way of explaining what students and dance artists do creatively places a quite bizarre rationalist or technicist construction on the rationality of dance performance (1999, p. 128). It suggests that in creating a choreography, one begins with an idea [], one interprets the idea within the terms of a particular set of conventions [], one checks the performance against a list of general aesthetic criteria []nally devising a repertoire of movement appropriately expressive of the theme (p. 128). This, Carr argues, smuggles back in the notion of there necessarily being a pre-existing theoretical basis for practical action, a myth that he and Ryle were trying to explode. And it thereby also destroys the potential of the knowledge how idea to explain how practice itself can be valued as developing original insight. It suggests that the practitioner-researcher has the idea, draws on the methods considered viable in the eld of dance art and produces a work which is tested against accepted aesthetic/artistic criteria. Neither the practical nature nor the originality of practice as research is really foregrounded in such a schema. And yet this conception seems in some ways very close to what is advocated in the documentation on practice as research examined earlier. Again, there is a tension between the requirements of originality and rigour. It seems that dance practice has to justify itself, its questions and the directions of its processes in terms of the elds already constituted knowledge-base. It does this by reecting on its place in relation to the history and current preoccupations of the dance scene. But the danger is that this reection compromises the distinctiveness of the knowledge such practice itself develops, transforming knowledge how into a species of theoretical understanding. Carrs most recent solution to this dilemma (although he is discussing dance in general not practice as research) is to explore Aristotles concept of phronesis, or practical wisdom, to identify a form of knowledge that is neither simply theoretical nor exclusively technical. [26] Developed through the experience of art, phronetic insight emphasises the rich interplay of the social, the cognitive and the affective, culture, reason and sensibility linked to the deliverances of experience in its ne-grained particularity (1999, p. 138). A proper discussion of this potentially very fruitful idea is beyond the scope of this article; but it is worth noting that any argument that practice-based research generates phronesis would need to investigate whether this mode of knowledge
142 A. Pakes can be accommodated within a framework that still emphasises the traditional requirements on research to be original, rigorous and disseminable. [27] And the question of the appropriate balance between conformity to pre-established standards and originality would still need to be addressed. McFees (1994) justication of the role of dance in education also offers suggestions as to the knowledge embodied in dance works. He aims to show how dance is unique in order to argue its irreplaceability in the curriculum, and so his strategy is to show how dance is distinctive, rstly as a form of human action and secondly as an object of aesthetic and artistic interest. According to McFee, dance is a form of intentional human action, governed by reason, in which we take aesthetic rather than purposive interest; that is, we look at dance for its own sake, in terms of its intrinsic aims and values, not because it is the means to achieving an externally dened goal. Like other art forms, dance also embodies a reection on (and hence the possibility of an emotional education in) what Best (1985, p. 159) and McFee (1994, p. 18) call life issues. Dance explores the range of possible responses to life situations and allows us to experience the ner shades of feeling, [] rening [] those concepts under which those feelings are experienced, and under which those experiences are characterised (McFee, 1994, p. 40). This is not an external goal imposed on dance from the outside, but an internal dynamic characteristic of art as such. Like the other arts, then, dance can refresh the way we experience the world, renewing perceptions by altering the concepts by which they are oriented and shaped. Dance is also distinctive as an art form, being both a performing art and essentially physical. And, McFee argues, each individual dance work offers something unique in terms of knowledge, because it can neither be paraphrased into another medium nor interchanged with any other work without losing its particular impact. Much of McFees (1994) argument focuses on the centrality of understanding dance to dance education. What is important, he suggests, is that pupils develop their understanding of dance, an educational goal which can be achieved via initiation into dance appreciation, dance criticism and also dance practice. Practical involvement in dance, according to McFees perspective, is not valuable for its own sake but in terms of its pedagogical function in enhancing dance understanding: It is well established that ones appreciation of technique, etc., in all art forms (including dance) is typically sharpened by the sorts of insights that practical involvement offers. Thus practical involvement in dance might well be justied on such a conception; however, if it is, it is justied in terms of its contributions to the understanding of dance (and hence, indirectly, of life), as one possible method (amongst many). (McFee, 1994, p. 60) Where does this view locate the value of practice as research? As suggested above, McFee does not tackle this question explicitly other than to indicate that he does not consider the creation of dances to be a form of research. But, by extension, his argument would seem to suggest that the value of original investigation in dance is that it contributes something new to specically dance understanding and, indirectly, to our understanding of the life issues dance tackles. The originality of dance practice as
Original Embodied Knowledge 143 research on this view would be measured against our existing knowledge about and understanding of dance. Is this framework able to accommodate a sense of both the originality and the distinctiveness of the knowledge that can be developed through dance practice? Yes and no. It allows us to characterise the epistemological value of practice-based research in dance as contributing something new to our understanding of, primarily, dance and, secondarily, the life issues that the dance work tackles. Thus practitioner-researchers do not have to choose between developing dance knowledge or answering broader questions (c.f. the discussion above); both kinds of information are aspects of the intrinsic structure of the dance. But the emphasis on dance practice as primarily a means to understand dance seems somewhat solipsistic and inward-lookinga self-perpetuating endeavour which has no need to look outside of itself or address its broader relevance to the development of human understanding. The problem of the extent to which a work would need to be original to qualify for PhD status also remains. McFee argues for the irreplaceability of each dance work, suggesting that each has a unique cognitive value, in other words, that each is original in the knowledge it embodies. How, then, does one distinguish between levels of originality in order to discriminate between an undergraduate student piece and a practice-based PhD project in terms of their respective cognitive value? [28] Most signicantly, though, McFees ideas do not seem to provide the framework for a convincing argument that practice as such makes a distinctive contribution to dance understanding. Within McFees discussion, practical involvement is simply one way amongst others of developing that understanding. But perhaps the emergence of practice as research itself suggests that a makers knowledge of her creation is of a particular, if not a privileged kind. In fact, Hintikka (1975) discusses a tradition in Western thought (which incorporates such diverse writers as Maimonides, Bacon, Hobbes, Vico and Anscombe) about the distinctiveness of makers knowledge as the cause of what it understands (p. 89). [29] Arguing that making necessarily involves practical knowledge how, Hintikka is also concerned to stress that this is inseparable from theoretical understanding: the underlying idea of this tradition may be said to be the idea that we can obtain and possess certain especially valuable kinds of theoretical knowledge only of what we ourselves have brought about, are bringing about, or can bring about (p. 84). As in Carrs later work, then there is a recognition of the need to emphasise the rich interplay of different forms of knowledge within the particularities of artistic experience. Makers knowledge, as discussed by Hintikka, is also a rich interplay of practical and theoretical forms of reasoning, held to be ultimately inseparable. [30] Only by investigating that interplay in its complexity will we begin to assess the scope of the contribution to knowledge that practice-based research in dance can make. Towards a Conclusion The different knowledges that dance practice embodies warrant much more detailed, epistemological exploration. More sustained critical comparisons with the knowledges developed in other disciplines would also be necessary in order to interrogate further the cognitive validity of dance practice as research. Cross-discipline comparisons would
144 A. Pakes also, no doubt, point up how what is meant by original research has hardly been interrogated in other domains. Part of the value of practice as research is its challenge to some of the academys deep-rooted assumptions: it forces a reappraisal of the basis and viability of expectations previously taken for granted. This has led commentators such as Candlin (2000), deeply critical of the assumptions underlying reports like UKCGE (1997a, b), to suggest that instead of trying to make art practice t academic regulations it would be more productive to use the practice-based PhD as a way of re-thinking academic conventions and scholarly requirements (p. 96). Assumptions about the nature of knowledge are similarly problematised by practice as research in ways that this article has sought to begin to explore. There is, however, a certain tension between the desire to recognise the force of this challenge and the necessity of coming to terms with existing frameworks and the epistemologies they imply. For all the radical potential of practice as research, PhD students and supervisors are currently having to negotiate those frameworks and their assumptions, whether these are justied or not. It is not just within the wider contexts of national bodies such as HEFCE, QAA and the RAE that the battle for practice as research is fought, but also at the local level of particular institutions and particular projects. Hockey and Allen-Collinson (2000) cite interviews with a number of supervisors on the problem of steering proposals and upgrading applications through university research committees. At these levels, a projects claim to originality in knowledge has to be clearly and adequately justied in terms that the broader university community can understand and accept. Philosophical, and more specically epistemological, investigation may be useful in helping to establish a workable consensus about the value and limits of practice as research both within and beyond the community of those directly involved. [31] By working through the problems and drawing on resources from a variety of philosophical traditions, it can suggest ways to ground the claim to knowledge and particular methodologies of practice as research. A rst stage in this process is to open up the problems, exploring their nature and scope in the way I hope this article as begun to do. Philosophy can never hope to offerlet alone seek to imposedenitive solutions or rigid criteria for what is acceptable as new knowledge developed through dance. The claim to originality has to be made on a case-by-case basis, and (as suggested above) in different ways at different stages of a practice-based project. Ultimately, the researcher, supervisor and examiners are those who will decide on how to articulate and whether to uphold a PhDs claim to doctorateness (and arguably a process of practical reasoning is already embedded in their intelligent performance of these tasks). Philosophical perspectives do, however, offer a range of resources which can contribute to, as well as reect on and unpack, this decision-making process. Philosophical discourse also provides a critical perspective on the conceptual parameters of institutional discourse, which can furnish a check on the viability and reasonableness of institutional expectations of research, useful from the point of view of research students, their supervisors and examiners. Moreover, in a political climate where pragmatic and instrumental approaches to academic issues are increasingly dominant, philosophical discussion offers a valuable opportunity to reect on the principles underwriting higher-level studyto think seriously about what, as researchers, we are really about.
Original Embodied Knowledge 145 NOTES

[1] For the purposes of this discussion, I use the terms practice as research and practice-based research synonymously to designate creative work presented as research. Kershaw (2001) distinguishes between the two, although, as Piccini (2002) points out, this distinction is by no means uncontested. For Kershaws denitions, see note 8. For a historical overview of the institutional fortunes of practice as research in the performing arts in the last decade, see Piccini (2002). Candlin (2001) outlines the history of practice-based research in the visual arts and design. See UKCGE (1997a), (1997b) and (2001). On practice-based doctorates in the visual arts, see Painter (1996) and Candlin (2001). For further contextual information about the British higher education system, see Appendix.. It implies an acceptance in principle; in practice, supervisors and students often still encounter difculties trying to convince research committees composed of academics from other elds of the validity and viability of their research proposals. Hockey and Allen-Collinsons (2000) empirical survey of supervisors includes some typical examples (pp. 347350). This point is well made by Susan Melrose in Thomson (2003), whose interventions (alongside those of research students engaged in or having completed practice-based PhDs) are notable exceptions to this trend. The numbering and order of this list is not intended to indicate the relative importance of these different meanings. Indeed Bailey (1992) lists them in a different sequence. I have presented the list in this way in an effort to ensure clarity in the exposition that follows. The term artworld is adopted from Danto (1964) to signify the complex of art history and theory which contexts and constitutes works of art as such. The distinction drawn by Kershaw (2001) between practice-based research and practice as research is relevant here: I take practice-based research to refer to research through live performance practice, to determine how and what it maybe contributing in the way of new knowledge or insights in elds other than performance. Hence, practice-based research may be pursued for many purposeshistorical, political, aesthetic, etc.and so researchers may not need to be theatre scholars to pursue it. By practice-as-research I refer to research into performance practice, to determine how that practice may be developing new insights into or knowledge about the forms, genres, uses, etc. of performance itself, for example with regard to their relevance to broader social and/or cultural processes (2001, p. 138). UKCGE (2001), which reports on the ndings of the working group on research training for practice-based doctorates, notes that there is no clear consensus on how explicitly a piece of works claim to originality has to be made; the report also recognises that there is still debate over the extent to which artistic quality itself might be an essential measure in the assessment of a successful research degree in practice (p. 17). On this issue in relation to music, see also Samuels in UKCGE (1997b). On this issue, see Margolis (1981), who argues against Goodman (1976) that dance is an autographic rather than an allographic art form since it depends for its identity and aesthetic impact on the natural expressiveness of individual human bodies. UKCGE (2001) describes a problematic case in which a PhD examiner was an expert on the historical context of the project but had no experience of the contemporary creative context although this was where much of the rigour and all of the originality of the research lay (p. 42); this suggests the importance, at least in relation to some projects, of awareness of the current directions of artistic practice as well as past history. And, indeed, the AHRBs denition has been used also in the doctoral context: UKCGE (2001) notes that the AHRB denition provided a focus for much of the 2001 working groups debate (p. 12). For further discussion of the PhD in composition and some of the debates about the appropriateness or otherwise of an accompanying verbal commentary, see Rhian Samuels paper in UKCGE (1997b). The role of the verbal commentary in arts other than music is
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discussed further below. It would be interesting to explore in more detail the possibility of adopting in dance a similar practice to the PhD in composition, but this is beyond the scope of this article. Melrose (in Thomson, 2003) notes that, partly in response to its consultation exercise with the performing arts sector, the QAA articulates within its qualications framework the expectation that PhD submissions be mixed mode (i.e. include a written thesis): just the doing itself has not been entertained in the sector with regard to higher degree submissions (p. 178). UKCGE (2001), however, does discuss the written component of practice-based doctorates in a rather different way and notes that the 2001 working group held a variety of views on the verbal commentarys role. The report suggests that the written element should be more than a factual report, that it should dene some critical and intellectual perspective and that it should not merely justify the practice (pp. 1617). Although the need for a verbal document may be less contentious in the PhD research context, then, there is still debate over these issues. Many of these issues as they relate to performance practice as research are debated in Thomson (2003). Reprinted from his (1958) article Creativity in Art, The Philosophical Review, 67, pp. 115. In this and in other respects, Tomas account remains very close to the more celebrated discussion of art, and the art/craft contrast, in Collingwoods aesthetics: see Collingwood (1970). It may also chime with some practice-based PhD supervisors experience, as Melroses comment about student participants in practice as research discussion groups suggests: Some participants have indicated that they aspire, not only to new insights but also to rigour and depth in performing-arts practices. They have suggested that their supervisors themselves seem to be unable to indicate precisely what might constitute PhD-worthy rigour or depth (although they claim to be able to recognize it when they see it) (in Thomson, 2003, p. 163). Poppers claim that it must be possible for an empirical scientic system to be refuted by experience (p. 41) is (in spite of the two philosophers differences in other respects) similar to Wittgensteins insight that it is impossible to speak of knowledge where there is no possibility of being wrong (1958). A related point is made by Anscombe (1963, p. 14): there is point in speaking of knowledge only where a contrast exists between he knows and he (merely) thinks he knows . On these issues, see also UKCGE (2001) which argues for a fundamental contrast between practice-based arts research and scientic research: it is claimed that in practice as research hypotheses may emerge only late in the process (whereas they govern scientic work from the outset) and analysis takes place within iterative cycles of creative work rather than as a separate post-hoc activity (p. 43) (as in scientic research). The parallels and contrasts between these different models of research warrant further investigation, unfortunately beyond the scope of this article. For a discussion of different methodologies which might be appropriate within practice-based performing arts disciplines, see Trimingham (2002) and Freeman (2002). Presumably, a candidate whose questions were not original (or likely to lead to the generation of new knowledge) would not have been accepted as a PhD candidate in the rst place, so there is no need to consider the converse scenario. McFee (1994) includes a chapter (pp. 181192) on Reective practice and dance research, which emphasises the need for a disciplinarily distinctive form of dance research and the importance of dance education research. McFee is explicit, however, that in his sense dance research does not involve the creation of dances; [s]tudents of dance may, for some purposes, be creators of dances, but that activity should be seen as importantly different from the activities of dance scholars (p. 182). Dance may, of course, be the object of a scientic or historical enquiry, and new facts about dance discovered. Equally, dance might be studied in terms of what it reveals about the culture or society in which it is practised. But the basis of these forms of empirical or anthropological research is quite distinct from the idea that dance practice itself generates knowledge.
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[24] [25] This distinction is evoked but not developed in Franc Chamberlains interventions in the discussion in Thomson (2003); see pp. 171178. See also Zarrilli (2001). The distinction between practical and theoretical reasoning is explored in Aristotles Nichomachean Ethics (Aristotle, 2000), especially Book VI. See also Anscombe (1963) and Kenny (1966). See Aristotle (2000), especially Book VI, for a discussion of the distinctions between these forms of knowledge. My presentation at the National Practice as Research Conference, organised by PARIP, in Bristol, September 2003 will examine these questions in more detail. According to McFees argument, each work has unique cognitive value provided it is an art work. According to the kind of pragmatic institutionalism adopted by McFees (1992) text, a dance work is art if it has been accepted as such by the broader danceworld context (or Republic of dance). One might argue that an undergraduate students work is not art under this rubric, although this argument would then seem to be in tension with the idea of the artistic account of dance as the basis for dance education. This idea is taken from Anscombe (1963, p. 87), who is in turn citing Aquinass Summa Theologica. Candlin (2001) highlights the long history of [visual] artists engaging with intellectual issues, concepts and philosophies and of making work which is thoroughly engaged at critical level (p. 100). Indeed, her article relates the emergence of the practice-based PhD in art and design to the theoretical revolution in art practice in the wake of the evolution of feminism, postcolonialism, poststructuralism and postmodernism. Much dance practice seems much less explicitly theoretically informed, however, although it would be interesting to trace a similarly detailed archaeology of the practice-based PhD in dance. Susan Melrose (in Thomson, 2003) suggests that the absence of such a consensus in the PhD context is a problem that the debate about practice as research has not sufciently recognised: It is not simply a matter of practice problematizing practice, but of whether or not there is some kind of national agreement as to the quality of the enquiry and of the outcomes submitted for examination. PhD examinations may well always involve a degree of compromise between institutions but, at least where a wholly written dissertation is at issue, many institutions have undertaken to make the bases for judgement transparent and all participants accountable in terms that are widely accepted. It is not clear that a similar claim can be made for the criteria for assessment of practices which constitute a component of a mixed-mode dissertation (pp. 164165).
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REFERENCES
ALCOFF, L. M. (Ed.) (1988) Epistemology: the big questions (Oxford, Blackwell). ALISON, B. (1994) Research in art and design in the United Kingdom, Higher Education Review, 26, pp. 4964. ANSCOMBE, G. E. M. (1963) Intention (2nd edn) (Oxford, Basil Blackwell). ARISTOTLE (2000) Nichomachean Ethics, translated & edited by R. CRISP (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press). ARTS & HUMANITIES RESEARCH BOARD (2002) Guide to the Fellowships in the Creative and Performing Arts Scheme (London, AHRB). BAILEY, G. (1992) Originality, in: D. COOPER (Ed.) A Companion to Aesthetics (Oxford, Blackwell). BEST, D. (1974) Expression in Movement and the Arts (London, Lepus Books). BEST, D. (1985) Feeling and Reason in the Arts (London, Allen & Unwin). BEST, D. (1987a) Creativity, in: J. ADSHEAD (Ed.) Choreography: principles and practice (Guildford, NRCD). BEST, D. (1987b) Feeling and reason in choreography and criticism, in: J. ADSHEAD (Ed.) Choreography: principles and practice (Guildford, NRCD).
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CANDLIN, F. (2000) Practice-based doctorates and questions of academic legitimacy, Journal of Art and Design Education, 19, pp. 96101. CANDLIN, F. (2001) A dual inheritance: the politics of educational reform and PhDs in art and design, Journal of Art and Design Education, 20, pp. 302310. CARR, D. (1978) Practical reasoning and knowing how, Journal of Human Movement Studies, 4, pp. 320. CARR, D. (1984) Dance education, skill and behavioural objectives, Journal of Aesthetic Education, 18, pp. 6776. CARR, D. (1986) Reason and inspiration in dance and choreography, in: J. ADSHEAD (Ed.) Choreography: principles and practice (Guildford, NRCD). CARR, D. (1987a) Reason and inspiration in dance and choreography, in: J. ADSHEAD (Ed.) Choreography: principles and practice (Guildford, NRCD). CARR, D. (1987b) Thought and action in the art of dance, British Journal of Aesthetics, 27, pp. 345357. CARR, D. (1999) Further reections on practical knowledge and dance a decade on, in: G. MCFEE (Ed.) Dance, Education and Philosophy (Oxford, Meyer & Meyer Sport). COLLINGWOOD, R. G. (1970) The Principles of Art (Oxford, Oxford University Press). DANTO, A. C. (1964) The Artworld, Journal of Philosophy, 61, pp. 571584. FREEMAN, J. (2002) Writing the self: the heuristic documentation of performance, Studies in Theatre and Performance, 22, pp. 95106. GLICKMAN, J. (1978) Creativity in the arts, in: J. MARGOLIS (Ed.) Philosophy Looks at the Arts, Revised Edition (Philadelphia, Temple University Press). GOODMAN, N. (1976) Languages of Art (Indianapolis, IN, Hackett). RNER (Ed.) HINTIKKA, J. (1975) Practical versus theoretical reasonan ambiguous legacy, in: S. KO Practical Reason (Oxford, Blackwell). HOCKEY, J. & ALLEN-COLLINSON, J. (2000) The supervision of practice-based research degrees in art and design, Journal of Art and Design Education, 19, pp. 345355. KENNY, A. (1966) Practical inference, Analysis, 26, pp. 6575. KERSHAW, B. (2001) Performance, memory, heritage, history, spectacleThe Iron Ship, Studies in Theatre and Performance, 21, pp. 132149. MCFEE, G. (1992) Understanding Dance (London, Routledge). MCFEE, G. (1994) The Concept of Dance Education (London, Routledge). MARGOLIS, J. (1981) The autographic nature of dance, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 39, pp. 419427. NEWBURY, D. (1996) Knowledge and research in art and design, Design Studies, 17, pp. 215219. PAINTER, C. (1996) Research degree regulations and the recognition of art and design practice: a survey report, POINT: art & design research journal, 3, pp. 26. PICCINI, A. (2002) An Historiographic Perspective on Practice as Research. [online] http:// www.bris.ac.uk/parip/t ap.doc; accessed 09/01/2003. POPPER, K. R. (1980) The Logic of Scientic Discovery (London, Hutchinson). QUALITY ASSURANCE AGENCY (2001) The Framework for Higher Education Qualications in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. [online] http://www.qaa.ac.uk/crntwork/nqf/ewni2001/contents.htm; accessed 31/03/2003. RESEARCH ASSESSMENT EXERCISE (2001) A Guide to the 2001 Research Assessment Exercise. [online] http://www.hero.ac.uk/rae/Pubs/other/raeguide.pdf; accessed 31/03/2003. RYE, C. (2001) Incorporating Practice: a multi-view point approach to documentation. [online] http://www.bris.ac.uk/parip/s cr.doc; accessed 09/01/2003. RYLE, G. (1949) The Concept of Mind (London, Hutchinson). THOMSON, P. (Ed.) (2003) Notes and queries: practice as research, Studies in Theatre and Performance, 22, pp. 159180. TOMAS, V. (1970) Creativity in art, in: M. WEITZ (Ed.) Problems in Aesthetics: an introductory book of readings (London, Macmillan).
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TRIMINGHAM, M. (2002) A methodology for practice as research, Studies in Theatre and Performance, 22, pp. 5460. UK COUNCIL FOR GRADUATE EDUCATION (UKCGE) (1997a) Practice-based Doctorates in the Creative and Performing Arts and Design (Coventry, UKCGE). UK COUNCIL FOR GRADUATE EDUCATION (UKCGE) (1997b) Practice-based Doctorates in the Creative and Performing Arts and Design Workshop (Coventry, UKCGE). UK COUNCIL FOR GRADUATE EDUCATION (UKCGE) (2001) Research Training in the Creative and Performing Arts and Design (Dudley, UKCGE). WITTGENSTEIN, L. (1958) Philosophical Investigations, translated by G.E.M. ANSCOMBE (Oxford, Blackwell). ZARRILLI, P. (2001) Negotiating performance epistemologies: knowledges about, in and for, Studies in Theatre and Performance, 21, pp. 3146.
APPENDIX The higher education system in England and Wales within the Arts and Humanities is built around three levels of academic qualications: at undergraduate level, the Bachelor of Arts (Honours) degree generally takes three years to complete, with awards at Certicate (after one years study) and Diploma (after two years study) also available; at postgraduate level, Masters degrees (Master of Arts or taught Master of Philosophy) generally take one years full-time or two to three years part-time study to complete, and usually require submission of an independent project or Dissertation towards the end of the course; at postgraduate research level, students can spend two to seven years working towards a Master of Philosophy (MPhil by research) or Doctor of Philosophy (PhD or DPhil) qualication. Professional doctoral qualications, which often include an element of practice as well as a taught component, are also available in some disciplines and institutions. PhDs, meanwhile, are independent research projects, usually resulting in a written thesis of 70,000 to 100,000 words. Normally, a new research student registers for an MPhil degree on the basis of a research proposal; s/he can then upgrade to PhD after one or two years by submitting a developed proposal and sample work, and passing a viva voce examination. The English higher education system is partly funded by the Higher Education Funding Council of England (HEFCE) a quasi-autonomous body which receives its grant from the government. The Quality Assurance Agency or QAA (which is linked to HEFCE) is responsible for ensuring that teaching standards and the integrity of the qualications framework are maintained. HEFCE funding for research by staff within university departments is linked to the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) which takes place every ve to seven years and is designed to assess the quality of research produced by individual institutions. Only published work rather than work towards a research qualication is counted in the RAE.

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