The appreciation of dance cannot be reduced to a matter of personal taste or aesthetic pleasure; rather, it emerges as a complex, situated experience that intertwines perceptual immediacy with reflective interpretation. Reductive approaches in experimental psychology, which isolate clips of movement and equate liking with artistic value, risk obscuring what makes dance an art form. By stripping works from their contexts, they confuse the aesthetic with the artistic, thereby sacrificing both interpretative richness and ecological validity (Fernández Cotarelo, 2022). A more nuanced account distinguishes between three levels: movement, action and artistic interpretation. Dance is not merely motion but becomes meaningful when framed by intentionality and contextual understanding. This definition allows us to include both canonical and non-traditional practices—from ballet to postmodern fragments or choreographic readymades—within the same analytical horizon (Fernández Cotarelo, 2022). Equally, the experience of the spectator is structured in two intertwined layers. The reactive comprises sensory-motor resonance, arousal and affective pleasure. The reflexive layer, however, demands intellectual labour: the search for sense, the adoption of an interrogative stance, the mobilisation of conceptual knowledge and the categorisation of what is seen. Together, these processes generate an encounter that is both embodied and interpretative (Fernández Cotarelo, 2022). Empirical studies support this duality. Dimensions such as engagement, arousal and unity describe how audiences respond to contemporary performances, while “fluency” in dance knowledge does not automatically predict higher appreciation. Instead, perceived comprehensibility appears as a decisive factor, demonstrating that mediation and contextual framing are not secondary but constitutive of the aesthetic act (Fernández Cotarelo, 2022). In critical terms, the implication is clear: to curate or teach dance is not simply to present or transmit, but to construct conditions where meaning can emerge. Engagement depends less on the accumulation of facts and more on enabling spectators to enter the reflexive dimension without foreclosing indeterminacy. Dance appreciation thus becomes an active negotiation between sensation, knowledge and interpretation.
