Diverging Ontologies in Music for Dancing

At the heart of this book lie multiple explorations of the interaction and coordinated behaviour of diverse actors involved in the emergence of music for dancing.

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The participation of skilful - in addition to soundful - bodies in action is essential to the interaction of individuals in creating music for dancing. Since cultures, being products of human individuation, exist only in performance (Blacking), the recent awareness in anthropology of varying worlds and worldviews (Heywood) reveals particularities of diverging ontologies as an effective object of research. Exploring music for dancing in this context provides significant insights of inter-individual relations and social context, which do not simply arise from the behaviour of individual agents, but themselves enable and shape the individual agents on which they depend (De Jaegher and Froese). Diverging ontologies in music for dancing may therefore be perceived as an indispensable constituent component of the music-dancing coupling.