28 :: ? interpreting. The interpretation itself is a symptom of certain physiological conditions, likewise of a certain spiritual level of ruling judgements: Who interprets? – Our affects. (WP 254) So, seen through a Nietzschean lens, there is no “essential self,” no independent rational mind or soul that can be freed from bodily desires and forces. We are, for him, simply a plurality of moods and instincts held together by a will (GS 354, WP 492)3 . Nietzsche’s views on the nature of human being as bodily, which I have very briefly outlined here, allow for a view of dance as an integral part of human existence. What is notable is that this view has been developed from various other theoretical perspectives, including that of Horst Hutter (2006), Kimerer LaMothe (2011), and Richard Shusterman (2000). As Shusterman puts it: A long dominant Platonist tradition, intensified by recent centuries of Cartesianism and idealism, has blinded us to a crucial fact that was evident to much ancient and non- Western thought: since we live, think, and act through our bodies, their study, care, and improvement should be at the core of philosophy, especially when philosophy is conceived (as it used to be) as a special way of life, a critical, disciplined care of the self. (Shusterman 2000: 530) Dance, in this view, can be a part of the practice of the art of living, the attempt to turn one’s life into a work of art, as Nietzsche (and later Michel Foucault) would advocate. In addition, thinking is no longer restricted to the “life of the mind”, divorced from the body, but is rather affirmed as a bodily practice. To put it differently, the boundaries between the cerebral and the physical are collapsed, since dancing and thinking, two realms of human endeavour that were considered to be on opposite sides of an unbridgeable divide, are shown to share a common history – that of the body. What is striking to me is how, with the burgeoning interest in the philosophy of dance, that not only have dancers and choreographers taken an interest in philosophy, but philosophers have also become increasingly interested in dance. Maxine Sheets-Johnstone’s phenomenological approach, Sandra Horton Fraleigh’s existentialist position, and Susan Foster’s postmodernist contributions are just three examples of the many theorists whose work has contributed to developing approaches that address the role of the body in the process of thinking, as well as developing approaches that acknowledge the dancing body. Dance is increasingly being acknowledged as a form of active bodily engagement that opens up the world in a new way to its practitioner. As such, dance, as a form of perception, can be seen as a way of knowing the world – as a kind of thinking. The challenge that thinking about dance poses to philosophers is what really ignited my interest in it, but the challenges it poses are not limited to collapsing the traditional binaries between the cerebral and the physical. As an art form, dance has been used to expose and challenge other aspects of our being human – in the areas of morality or politics, for example. As I discuss in another paper4 , one recent example of a dance work that illustrates entrenched ideas regarding power and the ideal body is Dada Masilo’s parody of Swan Lake. In this 2010 work, the audience is challenged to think about “which cultures belong to which bodies,” (Dils and Cooper-Albright 2001: 371), since the swans are black South African women of diverse heights and body shapes. In addition, the dance work challenges entrenched ideas about homophobia, domestic violence and arranged marriage. Odette, in Masilo’s parody, is married off to Siegfried, who is in love with Odile (who is a male). The classical ballet classes that I offer at UJ are conceived of in this sense – as a means to challenge our entrenched ideas about which dance belongs to which bodies. Classical ballet is stereotypically relegated to the realm of the thin, white, able-bodied female. This stereotype was enforced by South Africa’s apartheid government, where generally, only privileged white females were given access to classical ballet training as part of their middle or upper 3. I won’t rehearse this here, but it is important to note that in my view, although Nietzsche replaces the traditional notion of the subject with the physiological notion of the subject as a plurality of interpreting “affects”, it is only in the writings of Martin Heidegger that we find a philosophically satisfying solution to the mind-body/ subject-object duality. 4. My forthcoming “The Dancing Body and the Transmission of Collective Memory in South Africa” that will appear in the Routledge Companion to Dance Studies.