This is an investigation into the aesthetic concepts and strategies used by judges at the Dancing England Rapper Tournament to evaluate rapper sword dancing. Using a form of video-assisted interview inspired I am working to create temporal-aesthetic “maps” of competition dances, through which I am able to identify and discuss the marked, “aesthetically dense” moments of dance in contrast to relatively unmarked space surrounding them.
I am interested in the layers of intersubjective discourse that allow adjudicators to transform an aesthetic experience into a primarily quantitative evaluation. I follow this discourse from the official competition rules and guidelines, to openly discussed “common sense,” personal opinion, and finally unconscious bias. Using the maps of aesthetic importance as my guide, I investigate the shared and individual techniques of judging. I deal with the cognitive construction of the dance; whether as a sum of parts adding up to a score, or as a conceptualized ideal dance from which points may be deducted. I explore major points of divergence between different judges’ preferences and judging techniques as a result of personal dance history. Finally I will investigate the effect of my research on the structure of the competition itself and potential future investigation.