Dance, Meaning, and Motion: A Study of Embodied Perspective (original) (raw)

Kristian Georgiev "Only in the dance do I know how to tell the parable of the highest things...." --Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra What do we see when we see dance? What do we feel when we dance? Who are we when we are part of an enactment of dance? The phenomenon of dance brings to the fore key ideas about the nature of human meaning--making, the role of our fundamentally corporeal actions in the world, and the foundational aspects of our experiences. Dance, I contend, holds immense promise as an object for study as well as a subject of study -that is, a source of insight in itself, shedding light on life, movement, and meaning. In investigating dance thusly, I hope to show the importance of perspective. One way to understand dance is as a study of perspective -the perspectives of the dancers, of the audience, and of the choreographer; the perspectives of an engaged party and of a detached observer; the perspectives from under the skin and from outside, from within and from without. Specifically, I try to place the insights given in scientific physiological accounts (typically third--person) as well as those of the phenomenological and experiential sort (first--and second-person) in the context of one another, integrating them into a framework based upon the themes of movement, experience, and mind.