Towards an hypothesis of a critical edition of the dance performance starting from the choreographic scores of Hanya Holm and City Nocturne

Abstract

There are no models of a critical edition of the dance performance, nor manuals of philology that address the problems inherent in their fulfillment, contrary to what is observed in literature or music. Consequently, every time that one wants to reperform a play of the past that has no video-records and that has not already been reconstructed according to philological intentions, studies must start from scratch, or nearly so. Margherita Pirotto offers here a first experiment of a possible model, taking City Nocturne by Hanya Holm (1936) as a sample, which will hopefully serve to set up a more articulated and elastic structure of a critical edition of the dance performance in the future.