The Physical Consequence to Knowing: A speculative report (original) (raw)
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Course outline, Dance/Theatre practice Thinking Through the Body: Investigating Movement for Performance While movement is an essential component of every performance form, we usually fail to notice its complexity-even dancers are often oblivious to the social, cultural, and physiological contexts of the movement vocabularies we embrace. This course seeks to develop a broad practical and theoretical understanding of movement that will enrich and enhance embodied performance in any area of dance or theatre practice. We will examine different approaches to creating, analyzing, and interpreting both pedestrian and highly stylized movement drawn from anthropology, sociology, somatics, performance studies, dance, and theatre. The course is divided into five two--to--three week units, each examining a different aspect of movement experience and training. Most of the work of the course is physical, supplemented by readings, discussion, observation, and video viewing. Students are encouraged to use movement phrases, monologues, or other performance "texts" that they are working on elsewhere as test cases for this course. Our goal is to find ways to become more conscious of the ways movement creates meaning and to expand our range of movement choices as dancers and actors. Assignments: Weekly readings; participation; group or individual final project, which can take many forms-an original performance piece, an interpretation of an existing piece, a workshop, a documentary film, a presentation, etc. Prerequisites: one introductory level dance or theatre course.
The creative process of dance and performance artists. On the relevance of bodily experience.
This work is written in German and English for both languages offer my writing very distinct qualities which I find productive in my own scientific and creative process of engaging with this topic. Just as performance and bodily experience are the subject matter of the paper at hand, giving space for these instances to find expression as subjects enriches my ability to encounter this topic. German is my mother tongue which -as I have realized -propels an aspiration to articulate myself as poet. English being a foreign language allows a certain distance to words and their meanings and thereby a playfulness that is mirrored not only in my thinking and acting. More so, the playful quality curves back upon my use of the German language. The twisted, colorful, elaborate patterns of words, spoken and unspoken, veiled and unveiled will hopefully reveal the dance of words, gestures, and emotions that 'performing' this paper has been for me. "Gnädige! Vielleicht entzieht sich nichts dermaßen dem Wort, wie der Tanz. … Ich sehe nur ein Mittel, hier im Richtigen zu bleiben. Eine Sprache, die sich ganz dem Sichtbaren nähert, deren Klang wiederum zum Dank den Körper bewegt; aber dies ist der Dichter, der über seiner inneren Schönheit, über seinen Worten sich unterfinge, Ihren Tanz zu einer neunen -uns hier gleichgültig -zu umsingen. Wir aber wollen nicht vom Dichter entzaubert werden, sondern im Kreis Ihrer Bewegung gefangen bleiben. ... Gesten, beschlossen von der Klugheit Ihres Körpers, das Wissen Ihrer Glieder. Linien, die den Raum durchschmeicheln, Kurven, die unvergeßlich in dem leeren Theater Nächte lang wirbeln. Es ist Ihnen alles einheitliche Bewegung voller Form. … Wir sehen Ihren Tanz, gleichsam wie Sie ihn erfinden, wir belauschen ihn im Entstehen. Welche Ökonomie der Geste. Wir begreifen bei Ihnen, wie je Dinge erfunden wurden, und ist dies nicht die erlauchte Mitteilung eines schöpferischen Körpers?" (Carl Einstein, Brief an die Tänzerin Napierkowska, in: Brandstetter 1993: 186-189) Content
2010
Abstract To explore the question of physical thinking–using the body as an instrument of cognition–we collected extensive video and interview data on the creative process of a noted choreographer and his company as they made a new dance. A striking case of physical thinking is found in the phenomenon of marking. Marking refers to dancing a phrase in a less than complete manner. Dancers mark to save energy.
Reimagining the Body Attunement of Intentionality and Bodily Feelings
Tanzpraxis in der Forschung - Tanz als Forschungspraxis, 2016
The tragedy of the first position 1 is a video that went viral and gained more than 6.5 million views on youtube. This video demonstrates one of the common challenges in learning a technique. Acquiring new physical knowledge, which lies beyond one's existing patterns of movements, is not a self-evident task. In the video a little girl, approximately 4 years old, is confused by the request to perform a first position in a ballet class. First position seems to be a very basic task to perform for dancers. Thus, when dancers watch this video they know how to achieve what the girl in the video is trying to realize. Nevertheless, the video became viral among some professionals, not as a target for mocking the girl, but rather as a source for empathy. The movements the little girl performs demonstrate her determination in comprehending the request of the teacher. Alongside with her misunderstanding, the girl's movements express her natural intelligence, her cognitive effort, and her ambition. When she touches her legs and opens her wrists her cognitive effort becomes apparent. It is noticeable that she conceptually understands the requested task of the first position. However, she does not comprehend how to conduct her body accordingly. The girl changes her strategy, and as the teacher corrected her position beforehand by replacing her feet, she reaches her legs with her hands and tries to open them. Focusing on the position as a requested result, the girl relates to her feet as if they were an external object to her own consciousness and spirit. After the attempt to move the feet with her hands, the girl loses balance. Losing balance becomes a sudden moment of grace. It seems that her feeling of almost falling induces an inner recognition, which directs the immediate catch up that she, as a sovereign agent, 2 successfully originates. 1 | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdylQeg5B9I (last access: 14.06.2016). 2 | Aili Bresnahan defines agency as the control and intention of dance performers. The act of catching balance reviles that the girl is able to take hold on physical control. For that reason, it testifies her existing agency.
Dancers as experts of body consciousness – in search of optimal methodologies
Body consciousness research is a multidisciplinary field including various conceptualizations of its subject. Usually research frames are based on comparisons between bodily experts, such as dancers, or psychiatric groups with bodily aberrations (e.g. eating disorders) and control participants. Methods of body consciousness research include behavioural and self-report measures as well as brain imaging. Some methods have been used to study bodily experts, but not psychiatric groups, and vice versa. In this study, dancers, amateur and professional athletes, and control participants were studied using four behavioural methods (aperture task, endpoint matching, rubber hand illusion, posture copying) and two self-report measures PBCS (Private Body Consciousness Scale of the Body Consciousness Questionnaire) and BAQ (Body Awareness Questionnaire). Because many methods of studying body consciousness focus on the use of hands, a new method called posture copying, involving the whole body, was developed in this study. Dancers succeeded better than controls in the aperture task, and better than athletes and controls in the posture copying task. In the posture copying task, group differences were present in copying all other body parts but hands. Both dancers and athletes scored higher in the BAQ than controls. There was an almost significant difference between athletes and controls in the endpoint matching task. No group differences were found in the rubber hand illusion or PBCS. The results were considered as proof that dancing has a special connection with body consciousness, but that some aspects of body consciousness are similar in dancers and athletes. Methods measuring the same quality of body consciousness produced contradictory evidence, which questions their validity. This study offers useful knowledge for the future of body consciousness research, with regards to choice of participants, methodology, and study design, as well as treatment plans of clinical groups with disorders in their body consciousness (e.g. eating disorders).
AGAINST EPISTEMOLOGICAL HIERARCHIES: ON THE VALUE OF FORMING BODILY KNOWLEDGE
Education & Pedagogy Journal, 2021
The article reveals such concepts as "metis", "body techniques", "practical skill", "kinesthetic intelligence", and "movement skill". These concepts are united by the fact that the accumulation of knowledge is presented as a largely unconscious process in which muscles play the same role as the brain. The essence of these concepts can be expressed in the term "bodily knowledge", which contrasts itself in the epistemological sense with codified practical knowledge, instructions, and rules-techne. Bodily knowledge is based on movements and muscle sensations. Russian physiologist I.M. Sechenov called this sensation "dark", pointing out that such sensations are almost impossible to comprehend, describe, and analyze. However, such feelings cannot be entirely opposed to thought. This "clever skill", as poet and writer Varlam Shalamov called it, can be considered a separate type of cognition. This article is an attempt to comprehensively discuss the concept of "body knowledge".
Ways of Knowing the Body, Bodily Ways of Knowing
Music Theory Online
The central role of the body in producing music is hardly debatable. Likewise, the body has always played at least an implicit role in music theory, but has only been raised as a factor in music analysis relatively recently. In this essay I present a brief update of the body in music analysis via case studies, situated in the disciplines of music theory and music cognition, broadly construed. This current trajectory is part of a broader shift away from the musical score as the sole focus for analysis, which admittedly—though, in my view, delightfully—raises a host of challenging epistemological questions surrounding the interaction of performer (production) and listener (perception). While the concomitant research methodologies and technologies may be unfamiliar to scholars trained in humanities disciplines, I advocate for a full embrace of these approaches, either by individual researchers or in the form of cross-disciplinary collaboration.