Kinaesthesia and Visual Self-Reflection in Contemporary Dance (Cognitive Studies in Literature and Performance) 3030734021, 9783030734022

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COGNITIVE STUDIES IN LITERATURE AND PERFORMANCE

Kinaesthesia and Visual Self-Reflection in Contemporary Dance Shantel Ehrenberg

Cognitive Studies in Literature and Performance

Series Editors Bruce McConachie, Department of Theatre Arts, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA Blakey Vermeule, Department of English, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

This series offers cognitive approaches to understanding perception, emotions, imagination, meaning-making, and the many other activities that constitute both the production and reception of literary texts and embodied performances.

More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14903

Shantel Ehrenberg

Kinaesthesia and Visual Self-Reflection in Contemporary Dance

Shantel Ehrenberg University of Surrey London, UK

Cognitive Studies in Literature and Performance ISBN 978-3-030-73402-2 ISBN 978-3-030-73403-9 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73403-9 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover credit: Britta Knappmann/EyeEm (Photographer); Swane Küpper and Jonathan Reimann (Dancers) This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Acknowledgments

There are a number of people I want to acknowledge in the production of this book, which is not the work of me alone, though I take full responsibility for any errors made. My sincerest gratitude to the dancers who agreed to participate in the research project that informs this book. I am indebted to you for sharing your time and experience and I hope that by sharing some of the richness of our time together here, it moves with others. Thank you to Professor Dee Reynolds, whose support and guidance through my Ph.D. made this book possible. In addition, thank you for the co-supervisory and advisory support of Professor Nick Crossley, Professor Amelia Jones, and Dr. Joel Smith. Special thanks to Professor Jennifer Fisher, whose supervision during my MFA marks a critical turning point for my passion for dance studies, and the initial sparks of research which led to this book. I want to express my thanks to Palgrave Macmillan for faith in this project, in particular Series Editors Bruce McConachie and Blakey Vermeule. Thank you to the blind reviewers who provided generous feedback through two rounds of reviews of Chapters 1–4. Thanks also to Jack Heeney, Tomas René, Vicky Bates, Uma Vinesh, Eileen Srebernik, Shukkanthy Siva for correspondence and guidance throughout the publication process.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

There are a wealth of colleagues, peers, and friends that inform, challenge, and inspire my moving and thinking. I would like to especially thank the following people in relation to this work: University of Surrey colleagues from 2013 to 2020, in particular, Adam Alston, Stuart Andrews, Chloé Déchery, Patrick Duggan, Rachel Hann, Andy Lavender, Laura Cull O’ Maoilearca, Sabine Sörgel, and Matt Wagner, working with you and your intelligence, kindness, criticality, and fierce ethics is inspiring and a privilege I am extremely grateful for; Stefanie Sachsenmaier, for your camaraderie as zoom-writing-buddy, invaluable feedback on Chapters 5 & 6, and much-appreciated cheerleading in the especially challenging final months; Gill Clarke, Marina Collard, Susanne Ravn, Emma Redding, Edel Quin, and Karen Wood, for your precious critical feedback to earlier research informing this work. Thanks to the B.A. (Hons) Dance and M.A. Dance & Culture students at the University of Surrey from 2013 to 2020 and Ph.D. candidates Gemma Connell and Jonas Schnor—you have informed my thinking and moving in many ways over these years. I am grateful to the University of Surrey for granting me a sabbatical from October-December 2017 which was critical to obtaining the book contract. I extend deep appreciation for all those that have informed me in and through dance, theatre, and performance studies, many of whom I engage with in the following pages, but so many more I am not able to include or engage with in this work. Sherrill Dodds (2019) writes my thoughts in this respect all too well: ‘[…] how to capture its complexity, how to honour its history, how to ensure nothing is overlooked, how to avoid a well-worn narrative, how to be inventive in approach, how to avoid any biases and how to please its readers’ (1)? ‘[…] as I attempt to pin down the discipline, I imagine how dance/studies will quickly expose my limitations, prove me wrong and invite me to rethink my position’ (2). Yet, I dance, move, and open myself up to these vulnerabilities as I also set out to share a perspective on the rich terrain of contemporary dance discourse. Parts of the research informing this book is from my Ph.D. at the University of Manchester; I would like to acknowledge the support of a School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures Award and an Overseas Research Studentship (ORS) Award. I am grateful for the discussion and feedback as part of the Ph.D. viva examination with Professor Sarah Whatley and Professor Graeme Kirkpatrick. Thanks also to those who were of aid during fieldwork: Moira McCormack, Mark

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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Taylor, David Waring, Dawn Crandell, Breakin’ Convention, One Dance UK, Greenwich Dance Agency, King’s College London Student Union (London Bridge), DanceWorks, Pineapple, Royal Ballet, Siobhan Davies Dance/Independent Dance, Trinity Laban. Finally, I want to acknowledge critical friends Catherine Long, Antje Hildebrandt, and Maria Poulaki in relation to this work. Heartfelt gratitude, always, to my immediate family; without your unconditional love and support I could not achieve this book. Thank you, Mom, Dad, Darin, Kristi, Marcy, Mike, Kelsie, Nathan, and Kye.

Praise for Kinaesthesia and Visual Self-Reflection in Contemporary Dance

“Sparse are the dance scholarly works that explicitly focus on kinesthesia - our feeling of movement. Kinesthesia and Visual Self-Reflection in Contemporary Dance is one of these relatively rare books. In this book Shantel Ehrenberg not only qualifies the concept of kinesthesia, she also places the use of the concept in a historical context as well as describes it phenomenologically. This book is without doubt a great resource for anyone interested in the moving body.” —Professor Susanne Ravn, University of Southern Denmark

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Contents

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Introducing, Situating, Positioning(s)

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Illuminating Dancers’ Kinaesthetic Experiences

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A Kinaesthetic Mode of Attention

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Practices and Values Which Develop and Nurture a Kinaesthetic Mode of Attention

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Kinaesthesia and Video Self-Image(s): Foregrounding the Imagination

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Concluding Diffractions | Diffracting Conclusions

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Index

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CHAPTER 1

Introducing, Situating, Positioning(s)

In 1992, when I began a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) in Dance at Rutgers University, there was little that excited me about dance studies. I perceived dance studies at that time to be predominantly engaged with dance history, aesthetics, and/or criticism. Although I appreciated the quality and ideas learned through these perspectives, I did not find an affinity with them as fields of study. There was not a clear link for me, at that time, between the study of these ‘theoretical perspectives’ related to dance and my experiences of dancing, in the studio and on the stage. A decade or so later, however, around 2002, I began postgraduate study in dance. The literature I began engaging with around kinaesthetic, somatic, psychological, and experiential perspectives piqued a new and unexpected passion for dance studies. In particular the works of dance studies’ scholars, such as Susan Foster, Deidre Sklar, Sondra Fraleigh, Maxine Sheets-Johnstone, Jaana Parviainen, Jennifer Fisher, and Cynthia Novack, who write about dancer experience in ways that try to understand, situate, place value on, and/or problematise what it ‘feels like’ to be a dancer, excited me. During my initial foray into this territory of writing about dancing experience, I also found myself repeatedly in the philosophy section of the library, drawn to the works of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Jean-Paul Sartre, also writing about bodily experience in ways I had not been exposed to in the same way before. At the time it felt as if the ideas I was encountering in dance studies were not new to others—they © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 S. Ehrenberg, Kinaesthesia and Visual Self-Reflection in Contemporary Dance, Cognitive Studies in Literature and Performance, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73403-9_1

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were published, some of them already for a decade or more. In many ways what I felt was right—what I was encountering in 2002 was not necessarily ‘new’. But in other ways, as hindsight now allows me to understand, the material I was encountering was still a relatively small area of dance studies at the time. The above personal history in dance studies first introduces you to how I came to the material informing this book project, over a decade ago. However, it is also to make the point of how my experience in this subject matter is situated within the history of dance studies. André Lepecki (2012) provides evidence to how my above personal experience relates to a broader issue for dance studies in the 1980s–1990s, for instance. Lepecki points out that in 1993, as part of a dance study seminar, they noticed that the only ‘permissible model for writing’ on contemporary dance was descriptive press reviews and, ‘The only disciplines deemed capable of theorizing dance were either dance history or dance anthropology’ (98). In addition, he argues that these approaches created a ‘literal distance (graphical, cultural, temporal) between the writer and the dance being theorised’ (98). He goes on in this review article to urge dance studies to address this ‘literal distance’ and to expose contemporary dance’s political ontology. He states in this article what he believes is necessary to address the literal distance between writer and dancer, or theory and practice, this way: I believe critical theory also provides tools for a synchronous-critical practice of writing in dance studies that in no way represents a formalist project. It is a matter of developing epistemologies of proximity, mobilized theorizations of the contemporary, and critical-kinetic theories (and not formalist reviews) tuned to dancing practices taking place in the present. (99)

Given Lepecki is stating this in 2012, we can understand that critical theoretical perspectives on contemporary dance is a relatively young field and again, substantiates how my personal history in dance studies is historically situated. As Susanne Franco and Marina Nordera (2007) argue, ‘The epistemological revolution provoked by the advance of critical theory has had a decisive impact on dance research’ (2).1 1 I understand ‘contemporary dance’ to be a widely used, though complex, term (e.g. Kwan 2017; Rothfield 2021). I use the term in this work principally as it is used in the UK

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The above history and Lepecki’s perspective on it lead me back to this current project. The links between philosophy and dance practice/experience/performance have grown considerably in dance studies, as well as in other fields. Our changing relationships to technology and how these are significantly impacting on bodily experience has impacted on this growth. My interest and engagement, within the rich territory of researching and writing about dancer experience, comes at a time of an increasing interest across many fields about bodily experience and embodiment. My interest in bridging that divide between the dancer and what is ‘known’ (as knowledge, as a form of intellectual activity) about dancer experience in and with dance studies led me to the following more specific questions: What are kinaesthetic sensations and imaginative experiences like for contemporary dancers in dance-specific contexts, such as rehearsal and training? What experiences inform and/or shape contemporary dancers’ kinaesthetic sensations and perceptions? How do seemingly external elements intertwine (or not) with seemingly internal kinaesthetic experiences for professional-level contemporary dancers in particular? Pursuing these questions has led to fruitful understandings and points of view about the multi-dimensional, specialised, and, in part, constructed nature of dancers’ experiences in dance contexts, of which I aim to share through this book.

Experience is Always Situated Above I put forward how my interest in dance studies is historically situated. Likewise, the arguments in this book about dancer experiences are grounded in the point of view that experiencing bodies are always contextual; they are affected by and affect others. The material in this book demonstrates Thomas Csordas’ (1993) concept of ‘somatic modes of attention’, which is the idea that ‘to attend to a bodily sensation is not to attend to the body as an isolated object, but to attend to the body’s situation in the world’ (138). In other words, dancers’ subjectivities are implicated in the cultural codes and practices of the style in which they train and work. It also reinforces what scholar Gail Weiss (1999) and other parts of Europe, referring to the wide range of current modern/contemporary dance performance and practices, however, throughout the text, I try to acknowledge the challenge of isolating this form.

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describes as ‘the experience of being embodied’, in the preface to her book body images : the experience of being embodied is never a private affair, but is always already mediated by our continual interactions with other human and nonhuman bodies...addressing the multiple corporeal exchanges that continually take place...demands a corresponding recognition of the ongoing construction and reconstruction of our bodies and body images. (5)

Weiss’ perspective can be linked to Donna Haraway’s (1988) seminal essay which offers critical feminist reflection on ‘objectivity’ and situated knowledges. Haraway traces and supports the argument for, feminist questioning of scientific objectivity without abandoning the complexity for ‘rational knowledge’. She calls for accounts which address, simultaneously, ‘radical historical contingency for all knowledge claims and knowing subjects’ (which she also refers to as ‘a critical practice for recognizing our own “semiotic technologies” for making meanings’) and ‘a no-nonsense commitment to faithful accounts of a “real” world’ (579). ‘Feminist objectivity’, Haraway (1988) argues, ‘is about limited location and situated knowledge, not about transcendence and splitting of subject and object. It allows us to become answerable for what we learn how to see’ (583). She calls on feminists to notice ‘knowledge potent for constructing worlds less organized by axes of domination’ (Haraway 1988, 585). On the one hand, unravelling a group of dancers’ kinaesthetic experiences in contemporary dance contributes to challenging some of the dominant understandings as what counts as knowledge, as a performing arts practice often marginalised in considerations of embodiment, at least within the academy. However, within dance studies and practice as a field, there remain questions about how contemporary dance often prides itself on a kind of ‘rebel’ status within Western theatre dance, such as repeatedly working against its own patterns of institutionalisation (e.g. George 2014, 2020).2 In this way, there are also reasons 2 I understand ‘Western theatre dance’ to be a contentious term, at the same time I am

trying to specify a particular domain of dance practice. I want to acknowledge the highly complex history of the term which I do not address at length here. For more detail on the complex history I am referring to, see, for instance: Brenda Dixon Gottschild (1998), Susan Manning (2004), Priya Srinivasan (2007), Jacqueline Shea Murphy (2007), Andrée Grau (2007), and Raquel L. Monroe (2011), and Sherrill Dodds (2019).

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to de-construct contemporary dancer experience in ways that might go unnoticed in light of contemporary dance’s claims of being such an open style, investigating where the imaginary and the rational hover close together (Haraway 1988, 585). ‘I am arguing for the view from a body, always a complex, contradictory, structuring, and structured body, versus the view from above, from nowhere, from simplicity’ (Haraway 1988, 589). It is towards this principle of situatedness that this book is grounded in. The point is to argue the position that this book sits alongside existing works that elaborate on the body as a subject-object-world relation. It is beyond the scope of this introduction to be able to include and discuss the many works that take up this perspective, but I want to engage with a few more below to provide an overview of the thinking that underpins and works through this book. I return to the more specific problem of situated knowledges and this book again in Chapter 6.

Increasing Interest in Embodiment The concern of situated knowledges (e.g. Haraway 1988) is part of an increasing interest to ‘bring in the body’ across many disciplines, including sociology, psychology, neuroscience, and architecture, to name only a few. For instance, arguments from psychology and philosophy regarding self-knowledge have not always included kinaesthesia as a contributor (Cassam 1995; Crossley 1995, 133; Bermúdez et al. 1995, 1; Parviainen 2002). It is only relatively recently that there has been such a wealth of literature, outside of dance studies, about how awareness of the body affects self-knowledge and meaning.3 Most of this is set to overturn Cartesian dualism and the mind/body split of which Descartes is often accused (Albright, 2011, 8). This shift is evident in the increase of sensory methodologies being used in social science research: ...the emergent focus on the social life of the senses is rapidly supplanting older paradigms of cultural interpretation (e.g., cultures as ‘texts’ or

3 See also, for instance, a number of presentations at the 2018 conference Time, the Body and the Other: Phenomenological and Psychopathological Approaches, an event which aimed to explore and discuss ‘the intertwinement of temporality, embodiment and intersubjectivity from phenomenological and psychopathological approaches’ (FEST Heidelberg e.V. 2018, np). I thank a reviewer for alerting me to this reference.

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‘discourses’, as ‘worldviews’ or ‘pictures’), and challenging conventional theories of representation. The senses mediate the relationship between self and society, mind and body, idea and object. (Bull et al., 2006, as cited in Mason and Davies, 2009)

Markula (2014) evidences this shift in relation to the literature from discursive and critical psychology on exercising bodies. She reports on an increase in psychology studies about the exercising body from the 1980s to a rapid increase across the 1990s, 2000’s, and the present. Carrie Noland (2009) evidences this shift in her discussion of kinesthesia, embodiment, agency, and gesture, aiming to ‘study the ways culture is both embodied and challenged through corporeal performance’ (2). She further argues, ‘[…] despite the central role kinesthetic sensation plays, it is rarely treated as vital to the development of forms assumed by either culture or the self’ (4). Indeed, Noland explicitly supports many of her insights with dance scholarship and practice and notes that arguments from dance are ‘less familiar than they ought to be’ (5). Noland later reiterates this area of neglect in relation to gender, class, and race, arguing that ‘far more critical attention should be paid’ to phenomenological dance scholarships that proposes the ways that ‘culturally framed interoceptive experience constitute a type of knowledge – and engender a variety of agency’ (6).

The Richness of Dance Studies on Contemporary Dancer Experience(s) Since at least the 1980’s dance studies have seen an increasing development of more explicit arguments about how dancers are constructed and situated as trained and disciplined subjects. Dance scholar Ted Warburton sums up this perspective, arguing that dancer’s bodily knowledge is a specific way of approaching and experiencing the world and is a way of being which holds social and cultural significance (Warburton 2011, 67). Writing specifically about dancer experience, philosopher Jaana Parviainen (2002), argues likewise, echoing the position cited above from Csordas, Haraway, and Weiss, that all knowers are situated: historically, culturally, socially, spatially, temporally, kinaesthetically – all dimensions of situation become a part of the epistemological context. Each

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being has its own life history and perception, its own pattern of structurally coupled interaction with the world. (12)

Indeed, professional-level dancers’ experiences in dance practice are rich material for examining ways in which kinaesthesia is conceptualised within a practice. One key reason is because dancers’ practice depends upon the body and as such, dancers develop a particular kind of kinaesthetic intelligence worth studying (Warburton 2011). Or as Daly (1992) puts it, ‘The dancing body provides a kind of living laboratory for examining the production of the body: its training, its image, its story, and its ways of creating the world around it’ (257). This book explores aspects of the ‘living laboratory’ of the professional-level contemporary dancer. The research in this book is indebted to existing scholarship about specialised, in contrast to universalised, dancer experiences in Western theatre dance forms. For instance, Susanne Ravn (2009, 2010, 2017) writes about the experiences of contemporary dancers, as well as ballet, Butoh, tango, competitive sport dancers, from in-depth phenomenological and sociological perspectives, offering complex understandings of dancer experience and knowledge, such as the signifying property of weightedness and gravity for a group of contemporary dancers. Markula and Clark (2018) offer a number of perspectives on ballet dancer experience from phenomenological, poststructuralist and sociological perspectives that move beyond conceiving of the ballet dancer as simply constructed by a relatively set codified movement style and as disciplined docile bodies. Jennifer Roche (2015) puts forward a rich experiential-theoretical perspective about what it is like as a dancer working with a series of contemporary dance choreographers, again, engaging across disciplinary perspectives such as phenomenology, sociology, and poststructuralism. This book compliments these, and other texts found throughout, as it takes a similar interdisciplinary position— phenomenological, sociological, and poststructuralist approaches—and puts forth parallel arguments about some of the specific ways that contemporary dancers’ experiences are situated. This book, read alongside the existing discourse, aims to add to the diversity of perspectives of some of the predominant Western theatre dance styles, particularly contemporary dance, and the complexity of our understanding of what being a professional-level dancer is like, from dancers’ perspectives. As Roche (2015) states, it’s about investigating the space where ‘new possibilities for defining how dancing subjects might

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be produced’ and for contemporary dance that is in a way that moves ‘beyond the codified signification of established dance styles’ (15). Overlaps with existing scholarship are useful when put together collectively to add to our understanding of the complexity that is dancers’ experiences. For instance, most of these texts utilise rich description and focus on the experience of one or a few dancers versus a large number of dancers to generalise experiences; thus, as they accumulate, we begin to see patterns across studies and thus establish patterns for the field more broadly based on a matrix of individualised and contextually specific material. I hope that taken together they address what Andrée Grau (2007) calls for, I would argue that it is crucial to carry out more empirical research and listen to what dancers have to say about their experiences so as to better understand, through rigorous documentation and analysis, how they find their place in the world and how their experiences of gender, race, identity, or other, are, or are not, invoked in their artistic practices. (203)

This book is differentiated by its specific interrogation and conceptualisation of a kinaesthetic mode of attention for contemporary dance, from the perspective of a group of professional-level dancers in the contexts of training and rehearsal, and the problematising of kinaesthetic experience in contemporary dance with visual self-reflection, and thus problematising tropes about kinaesthesia from the dancer’s perspective when performing for an audience and being watched. In addition, despite the aforementioned increase in writing on dancer experience, there is still much more to be explored. As Roche (2015) argues, ‘there is limited analysis of the choreographic process by practising contemporary dancers written from the first-person position’ (16).

Ontological and Epistemological Positionings Methodological and paradigmatic choices support ontological and epistemological positions about subject matter and this book is no exception in that regard. As Markula and Silk (2011) write in relation to paradigms and qualitative research: ‘Paradigms provide the orientations towards how researchers see the world (ontology), and the various judgements about knowledge and how to gain it (epistemology)’ (24). Broadly this book is informed by multiple methodologies (e.g. interviews, observations, desk-based analysis), voices (e.g. dancers, writers,

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my own) and practices (e.g. contemporary, ballet, hip hop, video selfreflection, describing movement) and does not aim to prove a hypothesis, but to find what asking questions about a phenomenon brings up. The research crosses several paradigmatic approaches, but generally it follows the parameters of the qualitative, interpretive, critical, and subjective ends of the methodological spectrum. Below I address in more depth the critical methodological aspects of the research that informs this book to address the ontological and epistemological positioning of it.4 Phenomenological and Sociological Approaches Phenomenological and sociological perspectives are critical to the research, fieldwork and analysis presented throughout the book. More specifically, the work is phenomenological in that it is informed by Maurice Merleau-Ponty ’s (1945, 1968) phenomenology and investigates dancers’ ‘lived experiences’ as defined and discussed in phenomenological philosophy. As Albright (2011) describes: ‘Generally speaking, phenomenology is the study of how the world is perceived…It is a way of describing the world as we live it – a philosophical approach that positions the body as a central aspect of the lived experience’ (8). The interviews, for instance, included dancing and talking about dancing, as these are experiences central to the dancers in practice and thus their ‘lifeworlds’ in dance. Phenomenology provides new ways of thinking about dancers’ experiences and dance practice, serving as a bridge between the practice and the theory. However, as Depraz et al. (2002) point out, the contemporary use of the term phenomenology comes with it a certain ‘terminological blurriness’ between traditional philosophical texts and trying to capture first-person ‘concrete’ experience. I want to acknowledge this text works between a ‘still-lively’ phenomenological philosophy, and yet also engages with the meaning making processes of individuals. Depraz et al. (2002) define the phenomenological approach that is relevant here: centred on its concrete singularity, and with reference to its effective workings, its praxis, and to its procedural description (8). 4 For additional detail, please see also Ehrenberg (2013). Please note that pseudonym are used for dancer-participant interviews. Additional participant details are omitted in respect of anonymity as agreed with Informed Consent procedures under Institutional Ethics Review Approval (University of Manchester).

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However, none of this is to claim access to a universality of experience from a phenomenological perspective, rather it is to acknowledge the relation between kinaesthetic experience and a number of contextual factors. It means this book is working in the position of what Depraz et al. (2002) call ‘a prudent but daring middle ground’. This middle ground includes exploring first-person accounts fully, with the tools available, and yet not claiming that such an access to first-person accounts is method-free or ‘natural’ in any privileged sense (10). No methodological approach, as they point out, gives us ‘neutral’ access to experience, hence my expansion below on issues of language, triangulation, interpretation, and intersubjectivity. This is also to acknowledge that while writing about experience might at times seem to fix experience and embodied identities, embodied experiences and identities are understood to be changing, changeable and fluid as well (Depraz et al. 2002, 9). A sociological position underpins the above premise on meaning making related to embodied experiences and in relation to areas discussed further below around language, rich description, triangulation, and interpretation. However, another principal of the sociological perspective that underpins this work is that contemporary, ballet, hip hop, and breaking5 dance styles are investigated as types of cultures within the broader culture of dance, and the dancer as a participant in their culture (Crossley 2001). These dance styles are conceived as culture in the way Chiseri-Strater and Sunstein (1997) describe: ‘An invisible web of behaviours, patterns, rules, and rituals of a group of people who have contact with one another and share common languages’ (3). It is a view which Cynthia Novack6 (1990) adopts to argue that contact improvisation is a shared practice with ‘core movement values’ that distinguish it and in turn impact on those who train, rehearse, teach, and perform in the style. Language and the Non-Verbal The above positions coincide with the use of interviews to explore dancers’ kinaesthetic experiences. That is that both phenomenological and 5 While hip hop and breaking are not always the terms used in dance studies and practice, I choose to use these two terms because this is how the participants predominantly referred to their practices in the fieldwork and for consistency throughout. 6 Cynthia Novack is also published under the name Cynthia Jean Cohen Bull. Citations will adhere to name used for publication.

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sociological approaches are interested in how embodied experiences are described. They are based on the premise that thinking, talking about experience, and experience itself are intertwined. Some might argue that dance experience and language need to remain separate. While I understand the point that not all dance experience needs to be put into language, I want to declare upfront that separating dance experience from language creates a false impression of the complexity that is contemporary dance and dancers’ experiences in the practice. It also goes against some fundamental thinking of how language and embodied experience relate. Depraz et al. (2002) address some of the critiques of descriptive approaches, such as that ‘first-person approaches are embroiled from the start in pre-theorizing’ (92), which helps to address why separating language, or more specifically description of experience, and dancing experience is problematic. One problem with the critique, they argue, is that it is premised on the position that there is actually authentic access to any experience, thus it disregards the impact of culture; it is based on a belief in a transparency of language which is not proclaimed (e.g. I am going to take everything you say at face value) or that there is some means in which we are able to access experience without any ‘contamination by the medium employed’. A second problem is the assumption that one might only be putting forward a sole isolated and un-checked and tested account of experience (or ‘fantasizing an ideally descriptive language’), whereas Depraz et al. (and myself) are interested in a critical engagement with a number of verbal descriptions of experience, including the author’s own experience and others’ experiences in other forms (e.g. existing literature). This is thus working on the axis of description-interpretation and not a simply self-oriented poetic description of dancer experience(s). Looking more specifically to dance studies, Deidre Sklar (1994) argues a symbiotic relationship of movement and language this way—that movement is thinking in itself, and thus so too can thinking (and talking) about movement relate back to that movement that is thinking: Rather than underline the fact that thinking can be abstracted and separated from corporeality, I am underlining the fact that thinking depends upon it. Wilhelm Dilthey has suggested that to understand other people’s experience-“erlebnis, or what has been ‘lived through’” (Dilthey 1976, as cited in Bruner 1986:3)-one must interpret their cultural expressions, which are the ways that people communicate their experiences. For Dilthey,

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expressions would comprise performances, representations, and objectifications, including texts and, I would add, bodily attitudes, movements, and gestures. (14)

Thinking, reflecting, describing, and writing about one’s own and others’ movement experiences are a representation of what happens in the moment of moving; thinking and discussing movement fold into and also project into the dancing which then intertwines them. This means there is a connection between what one says about one’s own movement, and what one experiences when moving, and ‘thinking’ with the body. Dancers oscillate between the corporeal and the verbal all the time, particularly contemporary dancers (Grau 2007). For instance, in dance training, the teacher might explain verbally how a movement should feel and the dancer tries to embody this description. I follow the argument expressed by Rouhiainen (2007) for dance artists’ practice: I do not believe in a sharp opposition between language and experience. In short, following the Merleau-Pontyan and Gadamerian viewpoints, I understand that “To be expressed in language does not mean that a second being is acquired. The way in which a thing represents itself [in language] is part of its own being” (Gadamer 1988/1975, 432). Therefore, I consider language to be something in which being becomes realized. Language is not simply externally imposed upon our experiences. (116)

The above positions are akin to arguments in social science, such as that of Csordas (1994, 2008), in which he argues that language is not conceived as separate to embodied experience in social domains: ‘One can instead argue that language gives access to a world of experience in so far as experience comes to, or is brought to, language’ (Csordas 1994, 11). Or as Crossley (2001) writes about language and learning bodily movement, ‘to acquire language is to acquire a new way of using one’s body’ (80). He also argues that ‘Individuals must acquire or incorporate the structures and schemas of their society, such as language, in order to become the agents we know them to be...’ (Crossley 2001, 4). Sklar (2000) states: Words remain permeable to their somatic reverberations. It is possible to see, for example, “She rushed to the grocery store” as a visual image; however, it is also possible to feel the kinetic sensation that informs the word “rushing.” One can use words to evoke their somatic references.

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Considered this way, there is no conflict between somatic and verbal experience because they are mutually generative, part of the same epistemological process. The process constitutes meaning-making, and body-making. (74)

Thus, an underlying assumption of this book is that professional-level dancers, in particular, simultaneously incorporate a discourse that is of words (or a way of thinking) and a movement style that is non-verbal. Movement and language, from the perspective of the trained dancer in contemporary, ballet, and hip hop styles, are intimately intertwined in practice. The issue of interpretation related to language is discussed further below and the relationship of language to dancing experience is further borne out throughout this book. However, it is important to state upfront that the research is based on the presumption that language, and how dancers talk about kinaesthetic experience in practice, reflects and represents how dancers attend to movement in-the-moment and that language is a key part of dancers’ subjectivity, and thus kinaesthetic experience, in dance practice. However, this is not to claim that there are not ephemeral and indescribable aspects to dance experience as well.7 It is important to note, despite this point about the intertwinement of movement and language, that interpretations in this book are also informed by what is not put into words in a set of interviews with a group of dancers.8 For example, many interviews included a host of non-verbal communication, such as long pauses, sighs, facial expressions, and, often,

7 This is highly complex territory. For instance, Sheets-Johnstone (2018) writes that the body ‘is full of soul’ indicating how we cannot capture all ephemeral aspects of experiencing, which I agree. However, the statement in the same article, ‘[…] no one speaks or writes of embodied feelings. This is undoubtedly because feelings do not need packaging’ (13), disregards the problem that feelings can be better understood for how they are implicated in different contexts, such as Sara Ahmed (2014) argues in The Cultural Politics of Emotion. 8 The dancer quotes in this book have been edited for clarity of reading. Meaning, some words or phrases that make sense in conversation have been edited slightly for better communication in the written form. Legrand and Ravn (2009) refer to this as a ‘phase of reduction where irrelevant material [is] taken out’: ‘Certain characteristics of spoken language, such as confusing repetition and unfinished sentences, [are] removed or transformed into a readable written language, formulated as closely as possible to the language and descriptions characteristic of the dancer’ (395). For instance, I edited out repeated use of the word ‘like’, which is commonly used in speech, but can complicate reading.

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movement. These are brought in from notes taken during or immediately after the interview or from memory when doing the transcriptions. These instances from the interviews (and as quoted in the preceding chapters) are marked, such as with ellipses for pauses (the number of ellipses indicating the length of pause). Sighs and related non-verbal sounds are written phonetically or in [brackets]. I have also tried to make explicit those moments when the dancers got up and moved, often redoing the movement phrase they were talking about, such as in an interview with Emil in Chapter 3, where Emil struggles to find the right words for describing his movement and so does the movement again. However, there is a limitation to the non-verbal discussed here. I do not study my own gestures and responses to the interviews in detail as others argue for (e.g. Noland 2009; Roberts 2013b), or enter into the important critique about the decolonisation of ethnographic practices (e.g. Roberts 2013a, b). I acknowledge also that, as Ochs (1979) argues, ‘The physical constraints on notetaking reduce the quality and quantity of nonverbal context capture’ (52). In addition, subtle abstraction via memory impacts on the recordings of non-verbal behaviour that were noted from memory. However, this is also, as Ochs (1979) argues, a basis for making the non-verbal context an aid to interpretation of verbal behaviour, rather than a central feature (52, my emphasis). I also hope that the attention to the non-verbal in the following chapters, related to the transcripts, will help address how the non-verbal and verbal behaviours ‘interoccur’ for dancers and show the relations between them to better understand professional-level dancers communicative processes (58). Triangulation The material in this book emerges from a triangulated ‘conversation’ between 1) original fieldwork, 2) my own experience as a trained contemporary dancer, and 3) theory and practice from available sources. I adopt the metaphor of conversation to specify that the research sits at the juncture of theory and practice and that practice and theory ‘talk’ to each other in this research, particularly in my attempts not to privilege theory over practice or vice versa. Purser (2008) clearly articulates the use of the metaphor of conversation with dance practice and theory: Neither party in the conversation is held to hold intellectual priority over the other. The project is therefore neither theory(philosophy)-driven nor

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data(practice)-driven, but is rather driven by the desire to open up a space where the connections and interaction between the two interlocutors can generate new depth and possibilities for our understanding of embodiment. (8)

The dancers’ interviews serve as the primary fieldwork. Reflections on my own experience in practice (i.e. written reflections about my kinaesthetic experiences dancing and reflections after viewing my own video self-images) and engagement with ideas in the literature (e.g. detailed discussion in Chapter 2) serve as interlocutors, as Purser (2008) calls them, and offer opportunities to further reflect (and diffract) on the dancers’ interviews and offer ‘new possibilities for our understanding of [dancers’] embodiment’ (8). Triangulation of theory, practice and experience ensures ‘texture, depth, and multiple insights’ to analysis and can ‘enhance the validity or credibility of the results’ for qualitative research by linking several sources and perspectives (TESOL 2009, 18). That is, themes I raise in the following chapters, such as a kinaesthetic mode of attention, are brought about not solely because I have experience of this as a contemporary dancer, or because I have philosophically reflected on this experience alone to build a philosophical argument, but it emerges in engagement with a matrix of experiences, descriptions, practices, and ideas, that comes to show a pattern or set of themes. From another perspective, the arguments offer intersubjective validity because they come about in relation to other subjects’ contextualisation of their dancing experiences, and through this I am led to surprises and questions about dancers’ experiences that I could not have come to on my own. As Depraz et al. (2002) state about the principal of intersubjective validity for their study: ‘Here we find ourselves going so far as to take into account the descriptive horizons opened by others, something which contributes to enlarging our own experience, to enriching it by opening up unsuspected dimensions and thereby questioning our own limits’ (95). I interweave descriptions from dancers in practice and discussions from theory to express the point of view that theory can inform dancer practice and vice versa. I also aim to further dance knowledge through this inquiry, by supporting the call of dance scholars, such as Sklar (1994), to take ‘seriously the ontological status of immediate bodily experience in the production of knowledge and epistemologies’ (12). I have put the dancers’ descriptions, and reflections on my own practice, in dialogue

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with theoretical concepts to interrogate dancers’ described experiences and the meaning made of these experiences by the dancers (see below on the interpretive paradigm). I do not question the validity of philosophical and theoretical concepts in themselves, rather I use philosophical and theoretical concepts as conversational partners with which to reflect on, rethink and re-conceive of dancers’ practice. Or as Purser (2008) puts it: I am [not] seeking to use the experience of dancers to prove, test or falsify (aspects of) Merleau-Ponty’s theory. Neither do I wish to use dance for merely illustrative purposes, nor to use philosophical concepts to encase the experience of dance within a rigid theoretical framework. There are, of course, elements of these interrogative, illustrative and reductive processes going on in the thesis, but the aim is not to set up the voices of philosophy and practice in opposition to each other, nor to reduce one to the other. (9)

Analysis of dancers’ described experiences in conjunction with my own experiences (discussed further below) and theory and practice from other sources will contribute to the developing discourse about dancers’ experiences in practice, in line with existing dance scholarship which aims to integrate theory and practice without prioritising one over the other. Like Markula (2014), I aim to elaborate on the layered complexities of dancer experience and thus ‘[…] to contest conceptual binaries between society and individual, structure and agency, and the (textual) representations and everyday lived physical experiences in […] sociocultural body and exercise research’ (140). Interpretive This book is interested in elaborating on the multi-dimensional and complex meanings that dancers make of their experiences principally in contemporary dance contexts. As Green and Stinson (1999) put it, the research aims to address broader questions, such as: What is going on here, from the perspective of the persons having this experience? What does it mean to them? How does it come to have that meaning? What do their experiences, their meanings, mean to me as researcher? How do they come to have this meaning? (94)

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As stated earlier in this chapter about experience being situated, I am interested in exploring the various ways that dancers interpret, understand, experience, produce, or constitute their dance worlds (Mason 2002, 3). Hanne De Jaegher’s (2020) ‘participatory sense making’ is a complimentary conceptual framework, informed by phenomenology and sociology on the complexity of social interpersonal relations addressing the ‘intricate, multi-layered complexity of daily life intersubjectivity’ (np). ‘Participatory sense making’ notably focuses on the in-between and interaction in social situations, aiming to investigate ‘what happens between people when they interact’; whereas, De Jaegher argues in a psychological conference lecture, ‘we are used to looking at individuals processing something in front of them’ (FEST Heidelberg e.V. 2018).9 De Jaegher also asks through this framework: Why does something mean something for someone? What is at stake for this sense-maker? But I conceive of doing this following a particular ethical position to the research, such as described with ‘participatory methodology’, which is centred on the premise of ‘…[seeking] to conduct research with individuals rather than on them, recognising and responding to the ethical and social responsibilities of conducting research involving people’ (Heron 1996, 19–35). For instance, the interviews with the dancers were designed with the idea of interviews as inter-changes and as co-constructed, ‘[...]where knowledge is constructed in the inter-action between the interviewer and the interviewee […] an inter-change of views between two persons conversing about a theme of mutual interest’ (Kvale and Brinkmann 2009, 2). This attempt to try to democratise my position as ‘interviewer’ is also to respect the expertise of the dancers I interview. As performance studies scholar Matthew Reason (2010) points out, I want to highlight and place value on the knowledge of the dancers and dancing, foregrounding the participants’ expertise. Rather than passive dupes within the process, [participants] are perceived as active interpreters of the world and of their own experiences. Through the use of the mediating, creative process – and the time that this process takes – the research is able to access the participant’s reflective and engaged thoughts and responses…. (6)

9 For more on participatory sense making and dance, please see Merritt (2013/2015).

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Reason (2010) asserts that this is the ‘value of working with people as engaged and informed individuals’, a value that was important to me for this research (4). Like Reason, I see knowledge as rooted in encounter and experience, and I wanted to encourage this point of view in the interviews (5). To clarify further, this book serves to map a set of dancers’ experiences on a set of themes, rather than come to any affirmative conclusion about what dancers’ experiences are like. Markula and Silk (2011) offer useful description on mapping when researching physical culture (8). In mapping, they argue, the researcher provides a general topography of a phenomenon of physical culture. They create a map of this landscape to show the different facets of the phenomenon under investigation, which can be explicating who is currently involved, why these particular types of people participate, and draw lines that connect ‘new’ aspects of the phenomenon with ‘old’ ones. Critique of the phenomenon or illustrating a need for change might need to come after this is done because of the work involved to diffract the phenomena. A large part of the research informing this book is about reflecting on the dance experience after the experience, or descriptions that are recollections of dancing experiences while watching video self-reflections. The research is designed to explore reflections about one’s own dancing, as they come about in dance practice, from the dancer’s perspective, and to gather some possible themes from dancers’ reflections/descriptions as they are constructed in the interviews. The dancers did not talk about their experiences while they were dancing, except on rare occasions when the dancers got up and re-did the movement while discussing it. Thus, the dancers are interpreting and re-interpreting experience in a new way every time. Or as Lawler (2002) describes: ‘As the past is remembered, it is interpreted and reinterpreted in the light of the person’s knowledge and understanding’ (249). As discussed above in terms of situated experience, I do not proclaim an ‘unmediated access to the “facts of the matter”, nor to a straightforward and unmediated “experience”, either for the researcher, or indeed for the research subject’ (Lawler 2002, 249). The interviews are conceived as conversations about experience that are always unfolding, in the moment of the interview (as discussed above) as well as through my multiple interpretations of the transcripts and further interpretations of my interpretations (see also below on ‘Becoming diffraction’).

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However, just because this research is an ‘account of subjective experience’—phenomenological, recollective, and reflective—it does not follow that the book content is purely constructed and unrelated to ‘actual’ dancer experiences in practice. Depraz et al. (2002) argue that an interview method which includes discussing experience can be thought of as a reliving that includes a re-creational element; it is a ‘genuine act of recalling’ (67). This reliving includes concrete memories, which might ‘let surge forth a detailed episodic memory anchored in the sensory mode of lived experience’ (67). In addition, dance practice in itself does not always allow for the type of reflection and discussion about the practice as is done here. There is a suspension of experience, Depraz et al. (2002) write, that this research allows, which can help us understand the complexities of that expertise, but only because we also approach the experience from another analytical and temporal perspective. I have established above how the research is triangulated and intersubjective to account for issues of validity. However, I want to also clarify that the fieldwork informing the interviews addressed in this book are done explicitly in practice spaces—they emulate a dance context and investigates a material aspect of the lifeworld of this group of dancers. For instance, at least one, if not all three, of the interviews with each dancer took place in a dance studio and included a number of elements that are also found in dance practice. Multiple interviews were conducted with each dancer to give dancers time to reflect between interviews. My own experiences in practice linked the research to first-person experience in yet another way (discussed in more detail below). In addition, I designed interviews to be open-ended rather than asking participants to speak only on what I think is important. I tried to gain distance also from the research and material so that it does not simply report on what I believe in, but contributes to new ideas for me and in turn, the discourse. This is an acknowledged problem with research into and about embodied and reflective experiences, as Depraz et al. (2002) write regarding ‘guided introspection methods’, ‘The main difficulty for interviewers is to avoid having people reflect in such a way that they can only say what they already know and thus stay stuck with what they believe about the way they go about things’ (28). Triangulation, discussed above, likewise helps avoid using discussions about experience and what dancing experience is like simply to reiterate something I think to be true.

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The issue of research validity here follows Depraz et al.’s (2002) discussion of the complexity of a ‘second-person stance’ and ‘empathic resonance’. They distinguish a second-person position, distinct from first and third-person positions, as ‘an exchange between situated individuals focusing on a specific experiential content developed from a first-person position’ (81, italics original). The second-person position is trying to expose something about a certain domain and invoked in the traditions they work in, such as phenomenology. The second-person position, they argue, means adopting an intentional stance (i.e. the participants are agents who harbour beliefs and desires and other mental states that exhibit intentionality) and the interpretation it involves explicitly, consciously and methodologically (84). It also means supporting the rejection of a ‘strict opposition’ between public and private, or objective and subjective, ‘in favour of a continuum of positions in a social network’ (82). When we become or are ‘part of the tribe’, the context under investigation, this shifts the second-person position slightly in the interests of validity. This brings forward an ‘empathic resonance’ with the experiences of the community we investigate, based in our ability to resonate with others having the experience, with ‘a modicum critical distance’ (84). Depraz et al. (2002) refer to this further as being a ‘sensitive empathic mediator’ where the researcher is ‘looking for more or less explicit indices which can serve as inroads into a common experiential ground’ (84). As such, the second-person stance can take the first-person stance seriously without having to be completely removed from what that experience is like, as some objective truth finder, or, indeed, by taking everything a participant says at face value. Transcription Analysis There are a few additional ‘internal issues’ to acknowledge in relation to the analysis of the transcriptions, which principally inform interpretation of three dominant themes discussed across Chapters 3–5 (Ochs 1979). The discussion below, about the interpretive analysis according to Markula and Silk (2011), addresses what Ochs (1979) states of ‘being conscious of the filtering process’ in transcribing and analysing interview data (44). In addition, I hope that this section on methodologies shows that I understand the material I engage with, such as the transcripts that inform this book, ‘reflect the particular [research] interests [and goals] […] of the researcher’ (44). It is beyond the scope of this work to

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go into detail about the transcription procedures as Ochs (1979) does, however I do want to acknowledge my understanding that ‘What is on the transcript will influence and constrain what generalizations emerge’ (45). For instance, I knew in advance of the interviews that I wanted to explore, via description, what the dancers’ dancing experiences felt like; this was informed by previous research, such as literature offering sociological approaches to dancer experience, such as Deirdre Sklar, and from reading phenomenological philosophy, such as Merleau-Ponty. Thus, in the interview data offered in this book, it is evident that my questioning is shaping our discussion around kinaesthetic experience. The transcribed excerpts of the interviews throughout the book are also in the form of what Ochs (1979) calls a ‘biased spatial organization’, which also ‘influences the interpretation process carried out by the reader/researcher’ (e.g. the interviews are written top to bottom; previous utterances affect adjacent ones; 46–47). I want to acknowledge awareness of the biases and implications to the transcriptional act, as Ochs calls it, and that this impacts on my analysis. I have tried to incorporate notes on non-verbal behaviour to address this problem, as discussed above, but future research will address this issue further. The analysis of the transcriptions is aligned with a number of paradigmatic perspectives; however, it most closely follows the interpretive paradigm discussed by Markula and Silk (2011). Analysis is underpinned with the aim, also expressed above related to the research approach and design, to seek how the dancers of this social world, who are highly complex, express and define their own meanings about their experiences (31). The interpretative paradigm sets out to understand ‘individuals behaviours, meanings and experiences within particular social settings’ (31). It is analysis based on individuals and collective reconstructions of knowledge (33), hence my discussion of co-construction in the interviews above. And following from the discussion of the linearity of the interviews discussed by Ochs (1979), it is the understanding that the interviews are ‘an intersubjective and circumstantial dialogue in which it is acknowledged that the research participants affect the researcher and the researcher has an impact on the participants’ (34). Complexity and detail are important, rather than narrowing experience down to a common denominator. Interview material was analysed for key themes that came up across participants. The interviews were returned to again and again to try to understand these themes in more nuanced ways and to confirm initial interpretations. They were read and re-read to try to check

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meaning was appropriately being designated to the expression. Although there may be similarities and themes across participants, contexts and groups, from the interview material shared in this book, again, the aim is not to make universal claims for, in this case, all dancers, nor for all aspects of the context being studied, i.e., dance practice. Instead, the point is to report on and contribute to multiple realities (Mason 2002, 18). And, as noted above, phenomenology is often an important approach to interpretive research and phenomenological perspectives from people such as Merleau-Ponty impact on what is ‘seen’ in the transcriptions. It becomes a particular kind of lens through which to understand a phenomenon. However, I do not generalise, as some phenomenologists do, to all dancers to put forward a generalised philosophical claim on dancer experience, but rather to map a reality to which participants’ multiple experiences point (Markula and Silk 2011, 38). Despite this contextualisation, as will be seen in the resulting chapters, issues of power and situatedness are also addressed and so poststructuralism/postmodernist paradigms do come into play in the analysis. Analysis of the interview material is done in tandem with observations and notes in the field, such as reflections on my own experience in practice (i.e. written reflections about my kinaesthetic experiences in dance classes and reflections after viewing my own dancing video self-reflections) and from engaging with ideas from theory, such as Bourdieu’s (1980/1990) habitus, Merleau-Ponty’s (1968) chiasm and Barad’s (2007) agential realism, to name only a few. In other words, themes emerge not only by identifying what was shared among the dancers’ descriptions, including my own, but also, critically, themes emerge and are continually re-thought in dialogue with ideas in the available sources. Me as Researcher I acknowledge above some of the ways that the work offered here is ‘inductive, emerging, and shaped by [my] experience in collecting and analyzing the data’ (Creswell 2007, 19). As mentioned, my experiences as a dancer unquestionably impacts on my analysis. It has been crucial for me to explore problems in the research by experiencing them myself, further grounding the research in dance practice. However, throughout the research and writing offered here, there are times when I explicitly take critical distance from the field and the material, such as not taking dance classes for months at a time or concentrating

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the interview period or re-reflecting on interpretations after several years. Particularly when researching experience of which one is also a ‘participant’ of, it is important to continually ‘actively report [my] values and biases’ and ‘position [myself]’ as interpreter of this research (Creswell 2007, 18). Critical distance allows me to gain a new perspective on the material (Sklar 1994, 19). I try to challenge my own concepts about dance experience and lift a veil on those aspects of my practice that might have become ingrained and unnoticed. Van Manen (1990) discusses seeking distance with a phenomenological approach as ‘interrogating assumptions’: ‘We try to come to terms with our assumptions, not in order to forget them again, but rather to hold them deliberately at bay and even to turn this knowledge against itself, as it were, thereby exposing its shallow or concealing character’ (47).10 The interviews and my participation, for the research informing this book, have remained separate, in the literal sense, however. I did not, as Ravn (2009) and Wacquant (2004) do, regularly and systematically participate in rehearsals, workshops, and training alongside the dancers I interviewed as a part of my fieldwork. Instead, I explored concepts at other times, on my own or in class or group settings, which did not intentionally include the interviewed dancers, except on very rare occasions (e.g. dancers Erdem, Jiles and I occasionally ended up in the same contemporary technique classes during fieldwork, but I did not explicitly observe these dancers on those occasions). For instance, at different times across the project, I filmed myself doing movement and watched it back. I took field notes as part of this, reflecting about what this experience was like for me and where this experience sat within my own practice. In addition, filming movement and watching it back helped to explore how my experiences were similar or different to what the dancers were saying in their interviews. Field notes aided reflection about my own experiences with video self-reflection, which could serve to complement or contrast with the other dancers’ descriptions and relevant theory, as the analysis for the project progressed. In addition, I participated in a number of contemporary, ballet, and hip hop classes throughout the fieldwork. My participation in these classes provided a number of opportunities to reflect 10 There are a number of ways that taking this distance on experience is theorised in the literature, see also Ehrenberg (2020) on affective dissonance or Karreman’s (2017) discussion of Rosas dancer Rumiyo Ikeda’s experience related to Michael Polanyi’s (1958) ‘tacit knowledge’.

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experientially on issues about the culture(s) of dance and the distinctions between the styles. Field notes were also recorded after classes so that I could utilise these reflections about my own dancing experiences for the development of key themes. In many ways being a contemporary dancer is beneficial because it gives me an informed knowledge of the field. For instance, my experience meant the dancer and I share ‘the language’ of contemporary dance (Kvale and Brinkmann 2009). In addition, during the fieldwork, I was able to engage experientially with the research problems, such as reflecting on them while taking dance classes. However, being a contemporary dancer is a limitation in that it is more difficult to see ‘outside’ of the research and field, as a non-dancer might. Therefore, I continually try to be aware of biases during design, fieldwork, and analysis. I also explicitly acknowledge that I offer one interpretation among many possible ones (Green and Stinson 1999). While the research informing this book aims for intersubjective validity in its triangulation of interview material, author experience(s), and existing literature, the work does not explicitly interrogate many other important issues related to dancing experience, such as of race, dis/ability, sexuality, and the socio-economic positions of myself and the dancers’ interviewed. It is important to acknowledge that my position as a white able-bodied cis-gender female working, at the time of writing, in an academic position in the UK, impacts on the research informing this book as well.11 There are arguments and analysis in this book that deals with issues of difference, such as contemporary dancer experience and visual self-image related to issues of power discussed in dance studies and feminist philosophy. However, as noted above and discussed again in Chapter 6, future research will aim to address issues of difference further, aiming to better contribute to the discourse as to how a range of issues of difference impact on seemingly personal and private experiences, such as kinaesthetic awareness in contemporary dance contexts.

11 I find recognition with what Harmony Bench (2020) writes in Perpetual Motion: that the book is ‘[…] positioned within a Western, specifically white, English-languagedominant, U.S. worldview, which manifests clearly in the examples I have included’ (11).

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Becoming Diffraction: Re-reflections on Reflected on Reflections This book includes reflections on reflections and re-reflections on reflections, leading to concluding diffractions|diffracting conclusions. As reflections on reflections and re-reflections, this book is a culmination of returning to interviews and analysis related to this project, which began in 2008, again and again, through the writing of this and other publications, presentations, and through discussions with friends, colleagues, and students. For this particular book, I return to dancer interview material and re-reflect on these discussions. I re-reflect on analysis previously made on these interviews. I weave in new experiences and literature to this existing text. Similar to arguments about the position of the self, as always shifting and moving, so too does this research. That said, many of the key themes and arguments have sustained the test of time, which has helped to strengthen my convictions about earlier reflections. The reflections in this book include several years’ experience as an academic working full-time in a university dance programme as well—teaching, programme leading, and conducting further research. Many of the arguments and text here are re-reflections that have been shared and tested out in this setting, for instance in choreography modules addressing the link (or not) of thinking critically about kinaesthetic experience and video self-reflection. This has included adapting to rapid changes in technology (e.g. video) use and access by dancers and dancers’ in training. In addition, I engage with the wider dance community at conferences, symposia, and less formal research gatherings, which further impact on my convictions of previous interpretations and re-reflections, either through new writings, thinking, or the maintaining of arguments. I knowingly offer this work for the consideration of others and other contexts (Green and Stinson 1999, 104). As Ryle (1949) describes for ‘thick’ description: ‘if the descriptions are sufficiently “thick”, others will be able to evaluate the extent to which the conclusions are transferable to different contexts’ (see also Jola et al. 2011, 26). However, concluding diffractions|diffracting conclusions aims to open up the research to questions that persist, particularly as the feeling of ‘fixing’ arises as the book project enters production. Conversing with the work and points of view of Karen Barad (2007) and Rosi Braidotti (2013, 2019), and concepts they discuss under the fields of new materialism and posthumanism, aims to move towards what Haraway (1992) distinguishes as a mapping of interference, questioning the replicating and reproductive potential of reflection (300).

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Video Video recording and thus visual self-images and self-reflection are important parts of the research informing this book, particularly Chapters 5 and 6. Video is sometimes used as a reflective tool in dance practice in an attempt to re-present what the audience sees; to see one’s own dancing from the audience’s point of view. Thus, video is useful here, specifically to investigate one of the ways dancers deal with being performers and being looked at. Though this is not the only way video is used in the practice. Sometimes it is used by dancers to self-correct, as part of the creative process, or during performance. For instance, one of the dancers (Mads) showed footage in his interview of video he recorded during his BA degree, in which he used it to help improve his ‘tutting’ technique. Another dancer (Jiles) talked about working with a choreographer who videoed his improvisations and then asked him to watch the video back and re-learn certain parts of the videoed improvisation. One of the ballet dancers (Emil) said that when he is videoed for Royal Ballet performances, he has to perform simultaneously for the live audience in the theatre and the camera, which is recording for a distributable video of the performance. He said that during the videoed performances he has to imagine how his dancing is being recorded by the camera ‘close up’, as well as imagine how the live audience ‘from afar’ perceives his dancing. Thus, video is a means to explore how the dancer and technology interact, in experience and how a dancer might have an intersubjective relationship with a virtual (or imagined) video image. The need for research into the part video self-reflection plays in dancers’ experiences is now greater than ever because of the everincreasing access and affordability of video, as the above examples attest. Hamish MacPherson (2016) indeed argues ‘[…] I only have to look around at my peers and see they are already making short films and putting them online, and these are part of their practice and their work as much as dancing and writing and talking and all kinds of things’ (180, also cited in Bench and Ellis 2019, np).12 Despite the increasing

12 Bench and Ellis (2019) also argue: ‘Ten volumes into [screendance] journal, we think we are only just starting to peer into the thickness of the world of screendance: its practices, ideas, writing, reflection, curiosities and concerns’ (np).

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frequency of use, Kozel (2007) notes that performers’ interactions with ‘digital devices’, such as dancers’ interactions with video, is an underresearched area of study and offers a wealth of perspectives on changing embodied experiences in performance. She states, ‘What remains underexplored is the extent to which performative acts of sharing the body through our digital devices may allow us to construct collaboratively new physical states or states of conscious awareness’ (306). Bleeker (2017), a decade after Kozel, continues to argue for how new technologies, such as interactive gaming technology and ‘twenty-first-century media’, leave ‘many questions concerning their implications and potential […] still to be researched’, particularly as the new technologies ‘are rapidly becoming the standard in a wide variety of fields’, not least dance (xx). Or as Haraway (1988) argues: ‘I want a feminist writing of the body that metaphorically emphasizes vision again, because we need to reclaim that sense to find our way through all the visualizing tricks and powers of modern sciences and technologies […]’ (582). Video was useful as a methodological tool to elicit conversation around the dancing experience and to help explore dancing verbally, while still acknowledging the non-verbal aspects of the dance experience, as touched on above. As Mason (2002) advocates: Using non- (or semi-) verbal techniques...photography or video recording, which consciously and conscientiously move beyond a pre-occupation with talk or with text, is clearly an important way in which we might explore non-verbal elements of the social. (238)

The video, as a re-presentation of the dancers’ dancing, helped focus discussions with the dancers around their dancing experiences. A similar approach has been advocated in other ethnographic-style studies. For instance, Mason and Davies (2009) utilised family photos in their interviews to elicit conversation around family resemblances. Similar to their study, video self-reflection in this project elicited animated discussions around the previous dance experience and offered another way to explore the sensory. As Mason and Davies (2009) report: Sometimes, it is because photographs only capture an instantaneous and flat visual image, without all of the other sensory stimuli, that people may feel frustrated and want to tell us about what the ‘live’ resemblances are

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like, thus moving beyond the photograph, and indeed beyond the visual. (8)

The limitation of video, such as only capturing a durationally fixed two-dimensional image of the dancers’ dancing, sometimes elicited unexpected and useful discussion. For instance, sometimes what was not seen on the video became a talking point for what the dancer kinaesthetically felt when s/he did the movement.13

Chapter by Chapter Summary In the chapters that follow, I take up the above positions in relation to professional-level UK-based contemporary, ballet, breaking, and hip hop dancers’ private and personal bodily experiences, my experience as a contemporary dancer, and the existing literature. In Chapter 2, I first provide a theoretical, historical, and chronological overview of the different discursive ways dancers’ experiences have been conceived, principally in dance studies, to-date. This groundwork leads to dig more deeply into the question what are the ‘[systems] of cognitive and motivating structures’ and ‘procedures to follow’ in the social context of contemporary dance (Bourdieu 1980/1990, 53) for a group of dancers? In responding to this question, Chapter 3 addresses ways that the contemporary dancers interviewed, in relation to my own experience as a contemporary dancer and the discourse, indicate a particular type of kinaesthetic sensitivity, knowledge, and curiosity, what I refer to as a ‘kinaesthetic mode of attention’. This chapter addresses how it is not only because these movement styles are different, but, because the styles the dancers’ train and work in have differing types of habitus, and ‘structuring structures’ (Crossley 2001) that make up each style, they therefore impact differently on the seemingly private and personal experiences (i.e. kinaesthesia) of individual dancers. I discuss how this position challenges an assumption and value, historically upheld in contemporary dance, that kinaesthetic awareness is ideologically ‘natural’ and ‘pure’ (e.g. SheetsJohnstone 1966; Fraleigh 1987) and, instead, expresses ways that it is, in part, constructed and contextual (Rouhiainen 2003; Järvinen 2006; Ginot 2010; George 2014, 2020). Based on this premise, Chapter 4 13 Please note that gender pronouns are used to the best of my knowledge at the time of writing; in cases where I am trying to not specify gender(s), I use ‘s/he’ or ‘their’.

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goes on to identify and discuss key practices and values that develop and nurture the contemporary dancers’ kinaesthetic mode of attention. However, the dancers’ descriptions suggest a critique of Bourdieu’s (1980/1990) habitus as well, which is that one can exhibit a sense of agency even after making movement habitual, such as mastering a dance technique which is highly structured, and this in turn means that the dancers are actively creative within their practice, even though they are also highly disciplined. I contend that the dancers’ kinaesthetic experiences are only in part constructed. The contemporary dancers indicate that they balance between a kind of passivity, such as by being trained and disciplined in a dance style, which has shared practices and values (which dancers incorporate), and a sense of agency, such as continually making choreographic decisions or, more broadly, imagining themselves into the dancer they want to be. Conceiving of contemporary dance, and discussing dancers’ work and experiences within this style, in this thinking of cultural codes and inscriptions is difficult because of the multiple and various kinds of techniques, choreography, and performance that occur within the style of contemporary dance in training, rehearsal, and performance. Roche (2015) provides a concise historical brief on this point of how contemporary dance has evolved from dancers working more stably for companies to the precarious independent contemporary dancer of today. She traces the concepts of Foster’s (1997) the hired body, Davida’s (1992) body eclectic, Louppe’s (1996) hybrid bodies, and others to support the argument for the multiplicity that contemporary dancers embody today. Despite the wide ranging and nearly impossible quantification of contemporary dance as a dance style, the positioning of this style is nonetheless still a concern— that is, how are contemporary dancers shaped by the dancing practices of the style, even with the (or precisely because of) multiplicity of movement vocabularies that exist within it? With this research I am trying to address, on a series of micro-levels, what this dancing subjectivity might be like, in addition to raising questions about the ‘culture’ of contemporary dance. After addressing the issue of how seemingly external cultural codes and inscriptions impact on seemingly private and internal kinaesthetic experiences, in Chapters 5 and 6 I aim to map the various ways that the contemporary dancers’ kinaesthetic descriptions have a visual facet to them, particularly in performance-related contexts. The contemporary dancers indicate that perceived visual self-images and/or imaginations intertwine with their kinaesthetic experiences and evoke other ways of

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imagining their dancing, thereby challenging a predominant value in contemporary dance history and practice which positions kinaesthetic experience in opposition to visual self-reflection. Thinking about how movement looks or using self-reflective devices (i.e. mirror or video) is historically considered bad practice for contemporary dancers (Green 1999, 2003; Erkert 2003; Kimmerle and Côté-Laurence 2003; Montero 2006; Ehrenberg 2010; Radell 2013). It is only relatively recently that the complex and contradictory relationships dancers have with visual selfreflection, such as mirrors and video, is being explored in more depth (e.g. Ehrenberg 2010; Dania et al. 2011; Purser 2011; Radell et al. 2011; Roche 2013; Yan et al. 2015; Ravn 2017). There are a number of legitimate reasons why visual self-reflection, such as through mirrors and video, has come to be seen as suspect in contemporary dance practice. In part, it comes out of a wealth of feminist scholarship (e.g. Bartky 1990; Butler 1990; Copeland 1993; Grosz 1994; Weiss 1999) about the problematic ways in which women can be objectified by idealised images of femininity; wrongly prioritising how they look, privileging the visual sense, instead of how they feel, subordinating the kinaesthetic sense. The problem is expressed by Iris Marion Young (2005) this way: An essential part of being a woman is that of living the ever present possibility that one will be gazed upon as a mere body, as shape and flesh that presents itself as the potential object of another subject’s intentions and manifestations, rather than as living manifestation of action and intention. (as cited in Aalten 2004, 269)

This argument has been one of the reasons to question spectacle and objectification of the dancer (e.g. Ehrenberg 2019). The problem, in this case, is that the suspicion summarised above has contributed to a neglect of further critical discussion about contemporary dancers’ engagement with visual self-reflection, or more precisely, how professional-level contemporary dancers handle the pressures of being performers, and deal with the requirement to project movement to an audience in a particular aesthetic way. Irrespective of dance style values, thinking about how movement looks does arise for performing contemporary dancers and is a part of their dance experience. Contemporary dance is a performing art in which dancers project dancing to an audience and thus they must to some extent acquire a specific intertwining of kinaesthetic and visual

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sensations and perceptions. Sociologist Aimee Purser (2011), for instance, analyses a group of dancer interviews which reveal how the mirror image and mirroring more generally, such as with other dancers, indicates how movement appears and looks as important to a group of dancers. She argues for the paradoxical aspect of dance experience as dynamic and affective (e.g. Massumi 2002; Sheets-Johnstone 2009) and intersubjective and intercorporeal (e.g. Merleau-Ponty 1945; Weiss 1999). However, while there is growing interrogation about how contemporary dancers deal with this aspect of being performers, a great deal more is warranted. Specifically, how a large part of being a dancer includes the co-construction of kinaesthetically feeling movement and imagining what movement looks like, and ways that a dancer’s first-person kinaesthetic experiences must work in tandem with third-person reflections of their dancing, despite greater value being placed on the kinaesthetic in the style. I bring up the issue of performance because of its implicit role for professional-level contemporary dancers’ practice. Issues specific to performance contexts are beyond the scope of this work. Instead, I focus on the processes in practice towards performance contexts, in the studio, in training and rehearsal, before the curtain rises (although it is understood that there will be crossovers to performance, studio, training, and rehearsal contexts). The problems addressed are considered underexplored aspects of dance practice in which dancers gain a sense of becoming and being professional-level, which implicitly includes performance as a goal. My intention in this work is not to undermine the value kinaesthesia holds for contemporary dance, but to question what is missing by uncritically adopting a position about kinaesthesia that might ideologically exclude visual self-reflection and context, and thus propose re-conceptions of professional-level dancers’ kinaesthetic engagements. Dance studies are now better placed to explore the visual in dancer experience in particular. As Bleeker (2002) writes: ‘A new or renewed focus on questions of vision in a wide variety of fields, however, has begun to open our eyes to the complexity of what is easily but mistakenly taken for granted as “just looking”’ (131–132). Bleeker points to Martin Jay’s (1993) work as a ‘paradigm shift in the cultural imagination of our age’ (132). She calls for a more complicated account of the ways viewing and reading are intertwined. For the dancer, this can mean that ‘the look’ of the movement is more complicated than just ‘what I look like’—their kinaesthetic

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experience can be an intertwined part of the felt and imagined dancing self-image, or it can reflect style values. Bleeker (2017) states in the Introduction for Transmission in Motion, of contemporary technogenesis that we think through, with, and alongside media; addressing this call, Chapters 5 and 6 explore what this might mean for a kinaesthetic mode of attention in the context of contemporary dance from the dancers’ perspective (xix).

Key Terms It is important to clarify a few terms used throughout this book at the outset, mainly because these terms are not always used consistently in dance scholarship and practice. When using the term ‘the kinaesthetic’ I am referring primarily to those aspects of dance practice which emphasise the sensation and perception of one’s body and movement, or simply one’s feeling of one’s body. The kinaesthetic refers to the dancers’ bodily experiences of their dancing, also referred to as kinaesthetic awareness, intelligence, or sensitivity (e.g. Sklar 1994; Parviainen 1998; Rouhiainen 2003; Potter 2008; Ravn 2009, 2010; Roche 2015; Purser 2018a, b; Rothfield 2021). However, in this work, particularly Chapter 3, I aim to question precisely how the kinaesthetic and kinaesthesia as part of that are conceived in different Western theatre dance styles, namely contemporary dance. I also address distinctions between kinaesthesia and proprioception in Chapter 5.14 Foster (2008, 2011) provides an important summary of the term kinaesthesia (and proprioception), which helps illustrate how the term has come to be used in only fairly recent history and that there is still ambiguity to its meaning inside and outside dance. Generally, the term kinaesthesia first came about in the nineteenth century related to physiological studies and was derived from the Greek terms kine (movement) and aesthesis (sensation). Sir Charles Bell, around the 1820–1830s, is said to have first identified kinaesthesia as ‘muscle sense’, after examining patients’ experience of sensations, such as pain, fatigue, weight, and resistance. Later kinaesthesia was clarified to relate to muscular receptors, all with specific neural properties. The term proprioception was coined in the early 1900s by C.S. Sherrington (and kinaesthesia fell out of use for a time) as a result of his identification that motor 14 I maintain here that kinaesthesia and proprioceptionare separate terms, as summarised in a previous publication (Jola et al. 2011, 21).

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neurons had afferent (receiving information from the environment) and efferent (sending commands to muscles) properties. Sherrington claimed an unconscious aspect to proprioception, particularly in physical activities, such as balancing and/or movement learning. Gibson (1966) returned to the term kinaesthesia and argued that our body also extracts information from the environment, for instance gravity is a generalised sense of bodily disposition (e.g. tension or relaxation). More recently, neuroscientists and cognitive scientists, such as Berthoz (2000), included cultural and gendered differences, which may impact on kinaesthetic perceptions. In addition, Berthoz aligned kinaesthetic perceptions with an anticipatory quality of attention (feedforward mechanisms) and the simulation of action. Foster also points out ways that modern and contemporary dance developed in parallel to evolving definitions of kinaesthesia, further supporting the argument for how the term is historically implicated. For instance, she aligns the emergence and thinking of Gibson’s (1979) theory of perception with the aesthetic of Cunningham in the way that they both view bodily experience and kinaesthesia related to moving through the environment, rather than only as passive perception (as it was conceived previous to this), ‘Like Cunningham’s ideal viewers, [Gibson] envisions his subjects as active and wilful perceivers’ (Foster 2008, 52). Using the term ‘the visual’, I am referring to the externally visually perceived and performative aspects of dance and dancing, or simply those experiences in which the visual is emphasised. More specifically, for the purposes of this work, the visual refers to the visual projected image(s) of the dancer dancing, which can also be the visual imagined image(s) of the dancer’s own dancing, the dancing imagined to have been seen by an audience or the dancing seen on a video. I use this term in line with what Bleeker (2002) calls ‘visuality’, which she identifies as: ‘an object of study…[which] requires that we focus on the relationship between the one seeing and the one being seen’, except that my focus is principally from ‘the one being seen’ (2). My use of the term is likewise indebted to visual cultural studies, which include key texts, such as John Berger’s (1972) Ways of Seeing and Laura Mulvey’s (1975/1999) Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema and the study of visual imagery and its meanings from political, feminist, or psychological perspectives, which in turn have made ‘the visual’ a subject of study (Jones 2010, 2). For instance, ‘the visual’ is precisely the subject matter of Martin Jay’s (1993) Downcast Eyes: the denigration of vision in twentieth-century French thought, in

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which he states the visible is not only conceived as a perceptual experience but also as a cultural trope (587).

Who Is This Book for? The issues addressed in this work are important because they can help dancers consider how their seemingly private kinaesthetic experiences might be situated in relation to a larger social construct and, more specifically, according to assumed and prevailing values about visual self-reflection. Although this has been done relatively comprehensively for ballet in dance studies, it has yet to be fully explored in relation to contemporary dance. In addition, theoretical perspectives, such as discussed in Chapter 6 related to new materialism and the posthuman, are shifting how we conceive of ‘objectivity’ via technology, such as video self-images. The arguments posed provide a perspective from which dancers can re-conceive of their dancing experience or use as a point of resistance to think/move in other ways. Critical reflection is one tool that dancers can potentially use to handle the challenges which being a dancer can bring. As dance scholars Sally Doughty and Jayne Stevens (2002) proclaim, reporting on their study of reflexive processes by dance students in HE and FE in the UK: ‘Reflective thought and judgment are central to the artistic process and established features of arts pedagogy’ (1). The arguments address ‘the importance of Randy Martin’s [1998] call to continuously revisit the labelling and politics of dancing’ (Quinlan 2017, 38). The problems raised encourage us to consider where dancers feel a sense of agency in their practice and to question their processes of becoming and being professional-level dancers, such as through critically reviewing the role played by style-specific values in their practice. To offer some elaboration on the application and relevance of this book for specific populations, this work is more broadly a deconstruction of an aspect of contemporary dance practice for which being in the practice and being a practitioner does not always allow. This includes many roles found in dance practice, in being a dancer, dance performer, choreographer, and teacher. As touched on above, this book is able to offer thinking about dance experience because, as Depraz et al. (2002) discuss, it suspends aspects of dance experience and in doing so provides different understandings of it. Researching micro-properties of experiencing specifically allows us to begin to question the ‘intermediate’ aspects of expert experience in an embodied activity. This suspension is one way we can understand

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the many complexities of experiencing as well. In this case, it means breaking down the experience of a dancer dancing and/or recording and then watching that recording on video; this ‘breaking down’ then shines different light on aspects of that experience, but aspects that are only available because the breaking down, or suspension, has allowed a change in the temporal perspective(s) on that experience. In the everyday life of the dancer, this process might go on without any particular notice, without noting any of the implicit, or intermediate, processes, perspectives, histories, etc. that might be a part of this seemingly simple and ‘everyday’ experience in the practice. This book tries to respond to, illuminate, and allow for further critical engagement with, some of the intermediate processes for professional-level dancers. Dancers reading about this here can then reflect on, or diffract, those ideas and experiences when they return to dancing and or in their own writing about their dancing experiences when they too suspend them. The book raises questions for dancers’ professional life and how the structure of a dance style can impact on private and personal kinaesthetic experience. Professional-level contemporary dancers are more often than not left to their own devices to work between being a body that is the product of, performed and archived work of dance and a feeling kinaesthetic subject involved with the work of dance—so continually being between being the object and subject of dance. While many (already) professional dancers encountering this text will have found their own way(s) through these negotiations of internal/external, feeling, and being watched, this text explicitly deals with that part of being and becoming contemporary dancer, and putting these negotiations in a concrete and distributable written form. It is thus a potential means of reflection and diffraction for existing professional-level dancers about others’ means of dealing with the internal/external negotiations of being a dance performer and/or a means of critical engagement with these ideas to further understanding. The material can be something with which a professional-level practitioner agrees and/or disagrees and builds on the arguments and perspectives presented through their own practice (e.g. choreographic works, pedagogy) or in the various talks, discussions, symposiums, and events that practitioners engage in. It is a means to offer my perspective on ‘conversation’ above and ask professional-level dancers to also reflect on my reflecting on reflections (which conclude in diffractions); that is, the book is meant to open up further to the dance reader and welcome ongoing conversations on the issues presented, such as the

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development and nurturing of kinaesthetic experience in contemporary dance practice, or the values and structuring structures of contemporary dance as a dance style, or the engagement with visual self-reflection in the practice. I welcome these follow-up conversations and reflections with this work directly and otherwise, in classrooms and studios where dancers move, dialogue, challenge, teach, and/or in future work performed and published. Teaching and learning in, and about, dance in higher education today values a balance between practice and theory. This book reflects this value for balance and adds another example to others being produced (e.g. Roche 2015; Ravn 2017; Markula and Clark 2018; Rothfield 2021) and in specific relationship to contemporary dance and certain philosophical and theoretical perspectives, such as phenomenology and sociology. This book raises questions about teaching dance in higher education. In questioning the value of kinaesthetic experience in this style, as well as questioning the practices that nurture and delineate this dance style, this book is indirectly bringing into question what we are delivering and developing in dance programmes around the world that feature contemporary dance. In posing for the reader a selection of practices and values that shape and inform contemporary dance, for instance, I am offering material that educators, students (UG and PG), and graduates can grapple with directly—do we agree that these practices inform contemporary dance? If so, what needs further elaboration? What do we want to maintain, build on, make more of? How can what we do be shared and valued more broadly across higher education institutions to increase the value of dance as a form of knowledge and intelligence in the academy? If not, what is missing? Is a different perspective useful and if so what is that? What might be at risk by creating these categories? In another, more straightforward way, this text can be utilised across a number of modules on existing and future dance and performance studies programmes. For example, students might find the chapter on a kinaesthetic mode of attention a useful reading in conjunction with contemporary dance technique class as a means of placing some of their physical practice within a wider historical and cultural frame. Or the chapters on video and visual self-reflection might be useful in relation to coursework interrogating the increasing use of digital technologies in training, choreographic, and performance practices and the effects this might have from the performers’ perspective. I hope that this text will move beyond dance and be used by theatre and performance studies as

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well, since the issue of embodiment and bodily practices is more prescient today than ever before, as mentioned above. The increasing development of ‘dance theatre’ as a field is only one example of this point on change found across dance, theatre, and performance studies (e.g. Sörgel 2015). This book will aid those at all levels pursuing research on the topics of kinaesthesia and visual self-reflection. In addition, it can provide an example and framework for conducting research in the studio and the field.

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Kvale, Steiner, and Svend Brinkmann. 2009. InterViews. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Kwan, SanSan. 2017. When Is Contemporary Dance? Dance Research Journal 49 (3): 38–52. Lawler, Steph. 2002. Narrative Social Research. In Qualitative Research in Action, ed. T. May, 242–258. London: Sage. Legrand, Dorothée, and Susanne Ravn. 2009. Perceiving Subjectivity in Bodily Movement: The Case of Dancers. Phenomenology and Cognitive Science 8: 389–408. Lepecki, André. 2012. Review Essay: Dance Discourses: Keywords in Dance Research. Dance Research Journal 44: 93–99. Louppe, Laurence. 1996. Hybrid Bodies. Writings on Dance 15: 63–67. MacPherson, Hamish. 2016. What Are Screendance Competitions Even for? A Response to the 2015 Leeds International Film Festival Screendance Competition. The International Journal of Screendance 6: 178–181. Manning, Susan. 2004. Modern Dance, Negro Dance: Race in Motion. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Markula, Pirkko. 2014. The Moving Body and Social Change. Cultural Studies— Critical Methodologies 14 (5): 483–495. Markula, Pirkko, and M. Silk. 2011. Qualitative Research for Physical Culture. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Markula, Pirkko, and Marianne I. Clark. 2018. The Evolving Feminine Ballet Body. Edmonton, AB: U of Alberta Press. Mason, Jennifer. 2002. Qualitative Researching, 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Mason, Jennifer, and Katherine Davies. 2009. Coming to Our Senses? A Critical Approach to Sensory Methodology. In Realities. Manchester: University of Manchester. Massumi, Brian. 2002. Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation. Durham: Duke University Press. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 1945. Phenomenology of Perception, trans. C. Smith. London and New York: Routledge. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 1968. The Visible and the Invisible, trans. A. Lingis and ed. C. Lefort. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Merritt, Michele. 2013/2015. Thinking-Is-Moving: Dance, Agency, and a Radically Enactive Mind. Phenomenology and Cognitive Science 14: 95–110. Monroe, Raquel L. 2011. “I Don’t Want to Do African … What About My Technique?”: Transforming Dancing Places into Spaces in the Academy. The Journal of Pan African Studies 4 (6): 38–55. Montero, Barbara. 2006. Proprioception as an Aesthetic Sense. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 64 (2): 231–242.

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Mulvey, Laura. 1975/1999. Visual Pleasure and Narratic Cinema. In Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings, ed. L. Braudy and M. Cohen, 833–844. New York: Oxford University Press. Noland, Carrie. 2009. Agency and Embodiment Performing Gestures/Producing Culture. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Novack, Cynthia J. 1990. Sharing the Dance: Contact Improvisation and American Culture. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press. Ochs, Elinor. 1979. Transcription as Theory. In In Developmental Pragmatics, ed. E. Ochs and B. Schieffelin. New York, NY: Academic Press. Parviainen, Jaana. 1998. Bodies Moving and Moved. Tampere: Tampere University Press. Parviainen, Jaana. 2002. Bodily Knowledge: Epistemological Reflections on Dance. Dance Research Journal 34 (1): 11–26. Polanyi, Michael. 1958. Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-critical Philosophy. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Potter, Caroline. 2008. Sense of Motion, Senses of Self: Becoming a Dancer. Ethnos 73 (4): 444–465. Purser, Aimie. 2008. Exploring the Embodied Bases of Being Through MerleauPonty And Dance: A Conversation Between Philosophy and Practice. PhD diss., University of Nottingham, Nottingham. Purser, Aimie. 2011. The Dancing Body-Subject: Merleau-Ponty’s Mirror Stage in the Dance Studio. Subjectivity 4 (2): 183–203. Purser, Aimie. 2018a. ‘Being in Your Body’ and ‘Being in the Moment’: The Dancing Body-Subject and Inhabited Transcendence. Journal of the Philosophy of Sport 45 (1): 37–52. Purser, Aimie. 2018b. ‘Getting It into the Body’: Understanding Skill Acquisition Through Merleau-Ponty and the Embodied Practice of Dance. Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health 10 (3): 318–332. Quinlan, Meghan. 2017. Gaga as Metatechnique: Negotiating Choreography, Improvisation, and Technique in a Neoliberal Dance Market. Dance Research Journal 49 (2): 26–43. Radell, Sally. 2013. Mirrors in the Dance Class: Help or Hindrance? IADMS Resource Paper. Accessed 3 December 2018. https://www.iadms.org/pag e/400. Radell, Sally A., Daniel D. Adame, Steven P. Cole, and Nicole J. Blumenkehl. 2011. The Impact of Mirrors on Body Image and Performance in High and Low Performing Female Ballet Students. Journal of Dance Medicine & Science 15 (3): 108–115. Ravn, Susanne. 2009. Sensing Movement, Living Spaces: An Investigation of Movement Based on the Lived Experience of 13 Professional Dancers. Saarbrücken, Germany: VDM Verlag.

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Ravn, Susanne. 2010. Sensing Weight in Movement. Journal of Dance & Somatic Practices 2 (1): 21–34. Ravn, Susanne. 2017. Dancing Practices: Seeing and Sensing the Moving Body. Body and Society 23 (2): 57–82. Reason, Matthew. 2010. The Young Audience: Exploring and Enhancing Children’s Experiences of Theatre. Staffordshire: Trentham Books. Roberts, Rosemarie A. 2013a. Dancing with Social Ghosts: Performing Embodiments, Analyzing Critically. Transforming Anthropology 21 (1): 4–14. Roberts, Rosemarie A. 2013b. How Do We Quote Black and Brown Bodies? Critical Reflections on Theorizing and Analyzing Embodiments. Qualitative Inquiry 19 (4): 280–287. Roche, Jennifer. 2013. Mapping the Unmappable. In Digital Resources for the Humanities and Arts. University of Winchester. Accessed 15 September 2020. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/78350/. Roche, Jennifer. 2015. Multiplicity, Embodiment and the Contemporary Dancer: Moving Identities. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Rothfield, Philipa. 2021. Dance and the Corporeal Uncanny: Philosophy in Motion. London: Routledge. Rouhiainen, Leena. 2003. Living Transformative Lives: Finnish Freelance Dance Artists Brought into Dialogue with Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology. Helsinki: Acta Scenica, Theatre Academy. Rouhiainen, Leena, ed. 2007. Ways of Knowing in Dance and Art. Helsinki: Acta Scenica. Ryle, Gilbert. 1949. Concept of the Mind. London: Hutchinson. Shea Murphy, Jacqueline. 2007. The People Have Never Stopped Dancing Native American Modern Dance Histories. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Sheets-Johnstone, Maxine. 1966. The Phenomenology of Dance, 1980th ed. London: Dance Books. Sheets-Johnstone, Maxine. 2009. The Corporeal Turn: An Interdisciplinary Reader. Exeter: Imprint Academics. Sheets-Johnstone, Maxine. 2018. Why Kinesthesia, Tactility and Affectivity Matter: Critical and Constructive Perspectives. Body & Society 24 (4): 3–31. Sklar, Deidre. 1994. Can Bodylore Be Brought to Its Senses? The Journal of American Folklore 107 (423): 9–22. Sklar, Deidre. 2000. Reprise: On Dance Ethnography. Dance Research Journal 32 (1): 70–77. Sörgel, Sabine. 2015. Dance and the Body in Western Theatre: 1948 to the Present. London: Palgrave. Srinivasan, Priya. 2007. The Bodies beneath the Smoke or What’s Behind the Cigarette Poster: Unearthing Kinesthetic Connections in American Dance History. Discourses in Dance 4 (1): 7–48.

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CHAPTER 2

Illuminating Dancers’ Kinaesthetic Experiences

This chapter primarily provides a chronological account of the evolving discourse regarding dancers’ embodied experience and places the work within a spectrum of existing dance studies scholarship. I first discuss the polarisation of the kinaesthetic and the visual in contemporary dance, which has shaped assumptions about dancers’ experiences in the practice. I then contend that this polarisation can be found in early phenomenological accounts about dancers’ experiences, many of which conceive of dancer experiences according to ideologies of wholeness and in-themoment, or ‘non-reflective’, consciousness. I move on to discuss the way in which poststructuralist and sociological approaches were adopted in dance studies, in part as a response to the problems of universalism with these previous accounts. Finally, I summarise recent sources that represent a growing discourse about the multiplicity and complexity of dancers’ experience in contemporary dance practice.1

1 This chapter should be read alongside other histories and anthologies of dance studies, many coming out around the same time I complete this manuscript, such as The Bloomsbury Companion to Dance Studies (2019), The Routledge Companion to Dance Studies (2020) and a number of Oxford Handbooks related to dance; the scope of this chapter cannot encapsulate all of the rich and complex history available, though it aims to provide an informed perspective as is relevant to the material informing this research, particularly the kinaesthetic and the visual, and other sources provided to aid further reading.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 S. Ehrenberg, Kinaesthesia and Visual Self-Reflection in Contemporary Dance, Cognitive Studies in Literature and Performance, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73403-9_2

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A Historical Polarisation of the Kinaesthetic and the Visual The value of the kinaesthetic has been constructed in opposition to the visual in contemporary dance discourse and practice. This constructing of values about kinaesthesia in opposition to visual image has contributed to a polarisation between them across modern and contemporary dance history. From the early days of modern dance, pioneers are keen to distinguish themselves from ballet, in part by focusing on the kinaesthetic instead of the visual in the way they created, presented, and spoke about their work. As Copeland (1993) writes about modern dance at the turn of the century: ‘One can easily imagine the early modern dance choreographers nodding in agreement as they sing the praises of tactile kinaesthetic experience in opposition to the purely “visual” impact of ballet’ (141). Ballet was considered by modern dance pioneers, such as Isadora Duncan, to focus too much on visual display—emphasising the perfect technique, line, and virtuosity displayed on a proscenium stage (Daly 1995). As a direct statement against the visual display of ballet, modern dance pioneers emphasised kinaesthesia and emotions in their choreography. As Dempster (2010) states, modern dance, more specifically choreographic output and the training systems of Mary Wigman, Doris Humphrey, and Martha Graham, was based on emotional and psychological imperatives— the governing logic was not pictorial, but affective (229–230). Or as Daly (1992) puts it, there was a ‘…tension between an elitist ideology of the sacrifice of the self to tradition (ballet) and a democratic ideology of the expression of self through an original form (modern dance)…’ (242). In other words, modern dance is argued to have focused on the kinaesthetic to feed an ideology of an ‘original self’, which was internally and emotionally directed, whereas ballet focused on the visual to feed an ‘elitist ideology’, which sacrifices the self to external display and tradition. This emphasis on the kinaesthetic in modern dance has an impact on dancers’ experience in different ways. For instance, Isadora Duncan asked dancers to embrace a particular kind of synthesis with ‘the natural’, which emphasised that dancers should feel how their bodies respond to the environment, the sun and sky, rather than focusing on projecting a specific line or pose according to a codified movement vocabulary (Daly 1995; Foster 1997). The metaphors Duncan used were purposefully oriented in terms of an ideology about nature and the natural (Daly 1995). For example,

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Duncan had dancers wear flowing tunics in which they could move ‘freely’ and feel the wind on their bodies as they danced—freeing the body from the confining, image-oriented corsets of Victorian times and returning the dancers to move in the way ‘nature’ intended (Copeland 1993). As another example, which also evidences continuing transmission of these values (discussed further below), while taking a class in the Duncan tradition from Jeanne Bresciani (protégée of Maria Theresa Duncan, Isadora’s adopted daughter) during my BA at New York University, I was often directed to orient my sternum to the sky and ground the weight into the earth, despite dancing in a studio on the 2nd floor of a New York City high-rise. As Foster (1997) describes, Duncan believed that, ‘When students are asked to… “fall to the earth, lie quietly and then rise to greet the sun,” they are participating, body and soul, in primordial human situations’ (245). A dominant value of the kinaesthetic, such as with Duncan’s work in early modern dance, is a mainstay across dance history, although its emphasis shifts subtly in nuance across the years and across a variety of modern and contemporary dance artists (Foster 2011). For instance, although Martha Graham professed to work actively against an inner awareness related to nature, as Duncan had done, she ‘did not want to be a tree, a flower, or a wave’ (Graham 1980, 45 as cited in Reynolds 2007, 111); she oriented her work towards expressing internal emotions, such as lust, greed, and love, as they were represented in Greek mythology (Reynolds 2007). Graham also prioritised self-interrogation for her dancers according to emerging concepts from psychology at the time (e.g. Freud), encouraging a kinaesthetic focus oriented towards scrutiny of the psychological ‘self’ and thinking of the body as a set of systems, i.e. the nervous system (Foster 1997; Reynolds 2007). As Foster (1997) describes: For Martha Graham…the goal of dance, [was] to represent in archetypal form the deep conflicts of the human psyche…the self is too dark and repressed, the act of expression too tortured for movement to be light and free-flowing [as in Duncan]. (246)

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Graham’s technique, which became routine by the 1950s, was about expressing the inner psychological landscape and the struggle with it, through movement (Foster 1997, 246).2 In the 1960s and 1970s, abstracted and ‘task-based’ choreographic method changed the emphasis on kinaesthesia in contemporary dance (sometimes also referred to as postmodern dance), particularly in contrast to the natural and inner-psyche imperatives of Duncan and Graham (Banes 1977). Foster (1997) writes that, for some choreographers at this time, such as Cunningham3 the internal focus of contemporary dancers was geared towards a ‘body as instrument’ notion and emphasis began to be more explicitly on ‘kinaesthetic awareness’, according to the way it was expressed in other bodily practices (i.e. somatics). This particular emphasis on the kinaesthetic, in contrast to the visual, had a topical political purpose. For instance, the feminist movement and the suspicion and resentment of what became known as ‘the male gaze’ were important. Emphasis on the kinaesthetic represented a value for the subjective and individual bodily experience of the dancer, in contrast to the ‘external’ and objectifying images of the dancer’s body (Copeland 1993, 142). In other words, during the 1960s and 1970s (although it may have been implied earlier in modern dance), the polarisation between the kinaesthetic and the visual served to work against the dancer feeling and/or being treated as an object, or an objectified image. The focus on the internal became one way to help reclaim the subjectivity and agency of the dancer in contrast to the dancer being conceived as an image, or at worst, a spectacle. Yvonne Rainer’s Trio A (1966) is often heralded as representative of postmodern dance at this time, and expressing notions of the non-spectacle and the emphasis on pedestrian-oriented kinaesthetic experiences of the dancer (Copeland 1993). For instance, the choreographic direction for Trio A does not include projecting an emotion or ‘beautiful’ aesthetic to an audience; instead, the direction for the dancer is to focus on executing a set of ordered sequences of pedestrian movements. This piece is considered exemplary of non-spectacle in that Rainer’s choreography is not directed towards visual display; rather, Rainer focuses on 2 For more on the complexity of this dance history, see, for instance, Gottschild (1998), Franko (1990–1991), Manning (2004). 3 Banes (1977) argues Cunningham is ‘on the border between modern and postmodern dance’ (p. xvi).

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executing movement tasks in a pedestrian way that she, or anyone, would do ‘every day’ or ‘on the street’. As Novack (1990) states, with postmodern dance, such as Trio A, the aim became to present ‘a real, or authentic’ way of moving (135). Banes (1977) likewise reports: ‘[Postmodern] choreographers deliberately used untrained performers in their search for the “natural” body’, implying that the value of what was ‘natural’ at this time (in contrast to Duncan) was the pedestrian (xviii). Or as Michael Kirby put it in The Drama Review in 1975: In the theory of post-modern dance, the choreographer does not apply visual standards to the work. The view is an interior one: movement is not pre-selected for its characteristics but results from certain decisions, goals, plans, schemes, rules, concepts, or problems. (as cited in Banes 1977, xiv)

In contrast to the interior emphasis required of modern dance, such as from Duncan and Graham, the postmodern dancers’ interior revolved primarily around logic and problem-solving ideas. Or as George (2014) summarises, the next generation of contemporary dance aimed for a ‘gender-neutral’ body. ‘Where Graham envisions gender as a natural and inevitable aspect of the human, […] [Trisha] Brown establishes a neutral body onto which gender can be placed’ (Foster 2009/2018, 48). The above partial history of contemporary dance’s emphasis on the kinaesthetic, often in opposition to visual display, aims to begin to establish the position for how this history informs the nuance of the kinaesthetic for contemporary dancers today.

The Kinaesthetic in Contemporary Dance It is important to address briefly the kinaesthetic in contemporary dance today here, although practices and values particular to the kinaesthetic in contemporary dance will be visited again and in more detail in Chapter 4. In general, kinaesthetic awareness in contemporary dance is often aligned with its definition in somatic practices, following the lineage of Cunningham and his contemporaries, as noted above.4 George (2014) likewise argues in their genealogy of Somatics and contemporary dance, 4 Eddy’s (2009) ‘brief history of somatic practices and dance’ specifies that the somatic practices of the ‘first generation’ which were important to contemporary dance were Alexander, Feldenkrais, Gindler, Laban, Mensendieck, Middendorf, Mézières, Rolf, Todd,

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‘The term “release technique” emerged when contemporary dance, informed by ideas that came to be known as Somatics, achieved success on large concert stages with choreography that demonstrated the qualities [of letting go and flowing]’ (272). Somatics is a term ‘created by Thomas Hanna in 1976 to name the approaches to mind/body integration’ (Spohn and Prettyman 2012, 49). Hanna (1988) describes somatics as: ‘a way of perceiving oneself “from the inside out, where one is aware of feelings, movements and intentions, rather than looking objectively from the outside in”’ (as cited in Spohn and Prettyman 2012, 49). Although it can be argued that somatic practices and modern dance have a connection that goes back much further—both practices developed around the early 1900s in line with changing conceptions of body, attention, and movement—it is only within the last 30–40 years that somatics and dance have become so intertwined, at least writing from the UK and US perspectives (Eddy 2009). In turn, kinaesthesia in contemporary dance has become conceived primarily as internally-directed awareness of the body’s movements and unique way of moving, often in the same way that kinaesthetic experience in somatic practices is described (Järvinen 2006; George 2014, 2020). For instance, Eddy (2009) defines somatics as: ‘Discovery through internalised and conscious exploration of a physical or emotional challenge…diving inward’ (16). Fortin et al. (2002) advocate the use of somatics in dance education because it helps dancers ‘…[learn] to direct attention to movement on an incrementally fine level’, implicitly supporting a value for kinaesthetic attention in contemporary dance similar to the way Eddy describes (166). George’s (2014, 2020) genealogy further substantiates the historicised connection of these practices and the kinaesthetic. George (2014) writes, for instance, how somatics worked against the look of movement and that ‘somatic studios had no mirrors in order to focus on sensation, and teachers believed they facilitated a connection with authentic bodily experience rather than teaching kinetic forms’ (104). The value and ideology of ‘the natural’ have a particular currency across somatics and contemporary dance which alludes to both forms as defying categorisation and thus, being accessible and necessary for every body. George (2014) astutely argues ‘[…] Somatics continued to cultivate a canonical body as an invisible category of nature, which purportedly accounted for ontology, yet marked and Trager (and their protégés Bartenieff, Rosen, Selver, Speads, and Sweigard) and also gives a special mention to the practice of yoga.

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difference and enacted exclusion from its supposedly universal purview’ (iv). The relationship to contemporary dance and attention-focus relevant to somatics is again supported by the description for a research event at Trinity Laban, one of the preeminent contemporary dance conservatoires in the UK (Trinity Laban 2018; see also Lefebvre Sell 2020). The event title and descriptive material give some insight to the event: Moving as a thought process: studio development and creative encounters, and ‘Through investigative practice involving stillness processes and relational moving, this artistic research, conducted […] over an eleven year period, has fostered a methodology where a refinement of the “felt sense” (Gendlin, 2003) was embodied, articulated and documented’ (n.p.). The description aligns mindfulness meditation and contemporary dance practice(s), suggesting participants notice, or listen to, what happens in the moment while moving and/or in stillness, noticing how they react physically to environmental changes, and refining kinaesthetic awareness throughout the practice. The description indicates this aligned approach has had currency for some time, given the eleven-year research trajectory. Within the domain of release technique, teachers are said to emphasise ‘profound exploration of kinaesthetic awareness’ (Jordan 1988 as cited in Figuerola 2009, 8). Release technique, sometimes referred to as ‘new dance’, began to take shape in the 1970s and 1980s (Claid 2006, 80) and is a style that developed from and is argued to be indebted to postmodern dance, such as the Judson Church group. For instance, George (2014) argues for how Trisha Brown, as her career accelerated, began describing her vocabulary using the term ‘release technique’ (p. 23). Release is argued to come from the desire to develop more explicitly a form that encourages dancers’ subjectivity and sense of agency, yet again (Foster 1997; Figuerola 2009; Goddard 2011; Buckwalter 2012). One predominant way in which ‘release’ tries to do this is by emphasising the dancers’ kinaesthetic awareness. Another is by aiming to be a democratic technique, which teaches ‘movement principles’ rather than distinct choreography beholden to only one choreographer, such as is the case for the Graham and Cunningham techniques. Release encompasses a number of different choreographers working independently with their own idiosyncratic movement style. As George (2014) summarises, ‘By the next decade [1980s], […] many dancers […] [pursued] individual goals in classes that still proffered kinesthetic awareness of functional imperatives

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as foundation; but entailed reproducing novel, complex, set choreography’ (159). Release technique serves dancers’ pursuit of what Foster (1997) calls ‘the hired body’, in that it aims to ‘[homogenise] all styles and vocabularies beneath a sleek, impenetrable surface’ (255). However, Foster (1997) further argues that in proclaiming to be ‘neutral’ and ‘unbiased’ current contemporary dance ends up ‘[masking] the process through which dance technique constructs the body’ (256).5 Indeed, the ongoing ideology of the natural, and authenticity, continues in release, but in a slightly different nuance and form. As George (2014) points out, Leslie Kaminoff declares on the front page of Movement Research Performance Journal in New York City in 1999, ‘You can’t fake release’, which supports the argument that the training could not be copied because of its ‘ability to restore innate natural capacity’; nevertheless, Kaminoff also paradoxically establishes that by this time there is a style that one could distinguish and had established prominence (57). There are a few distinguishing features of release technique, despite the critique of an attempt to teach ‘movement principles’ and claim to be a relatively homogenous dance style. For instance, release technique can be identified in the commonality of suspension and release in the movement (Ravn 2009, 101). The movement in release has a distinct weightiness and swing to it, and teachers of the technique often emphasise a quality of flow (Jordan 1988, as cited in Figuerola 2009, 8). The movement shares many of the same releasing properties found in contact improvisation and certain somatic practices, such as Bartenieff fundamentals and Skinner Releasing Technique.6 Buckwalter (2012) describes release initially as a ‘new type of dance technique’, ‘Where limbs had once moved as a whole, they were now made of pieces – wrist, knee, elbow, shoulder, hip – and could initiate movement as easily as the torso once had,’ but clarifies that it evolved to be, later, ‘[…] a style of moving, loose jointed and relaxed’ (n.p.). Vida Midgelow (2018), writing about Skinner Releasing Technique, argues that ‘releasing is a complex notion’, which ‘incorporates “letting go” in physical, emotional, and perceptual terms’ (68). Clarifying 5 As discussed in Chapter 1, see also Roche (2015, 9–15) on this issue regarding contemporary dancers’ encapsulation of many styles, versus one codified style, and similar terms from around the same time. 6 See George (2014) for more on the relationship between ‘release technique’ and Skinner and Klein (149–150) and Buckwalter (2012) on Topf and further references for ‘confusion on the term’ release.

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further: ‘The release of tension is, in effect, a release of perceptions, of preconceived ideas, which are manifested in habits’ (Midgelow 2018, 68). The idea and impetus of release are crucial to the way dancers ‘release’ into the floor or ‘release’ tension in order to try to obtain a more relaxed and seemingly more efficient way of moving (Ravn 2009, 101; Figuerola 2009, 8–9).

Early Phenomenological Accounts of Dance Experience I have discussed above that a polarisation of the kinaesthetic and the visual has been constructed across contemporary dance history and have indicated how this polarisation affects contemporary dance and dancers’ experience in it. The constructed polarisation of the kinaesthetic and the visual can also be identified from some of the early phenomenological accounts of dance. Although none of these texts explicitly specifies they are about contemporary dance, they are framed in a way, particularly regarding dancer experience and what it is like, which indicates the practice of contemporary dance. Maxine Sheets-Johnstone’s (1966) text The Phenomenology of Dance is one of the first phenomenological analyses of dance. The text covers a number of angles on dance experience from a phenomenological perspective, such as what it is like to watch dance. However, my focus is on the way the writing conceives of ‘dancer consciousness’ and dancers’ kinaesthetic experiences in practice. The text provides one example of the above-historicised polarisation of the kinaesthetic and the visual, which in some ways still permeate contemporary dance practice and thus, in part, still represent values upheld in contemporary dance today. Sheets-Johnstone (1966) writes about a unified, whole, and continuous dancing consciousness, and the descriptions implicitly often polarise the pre-reflective/reflective and internal/external. For example: ‘Virtual force…is either internally related by a pre-reflective consciousness or externally related by a reflective consciousness’ (44). In the descriptions surrounding this quote, there is preference given to the pre-reflective and internal. Another section of the text presents two types of dancing consciousness, as a comparison, and, again, the (albeit simplified) implication is that one is better than the other. For instance, Sheets-Johnstone (1966) writes about how one ‘dancer sustains the primary illusion so long as she never separates herself from the spatial unity and temporal

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continuity of the form’, whereas the other dancer ‘reflects upon herself apart from the dance [and then] she is no longer one with it, and in consequence, destroys the illusion’ (39). Implicit value judgements are in this comparison because the first dancer achieves a ‘unity and continuity’ which is often complimented in the text, whereas the second dancer ‘destroys’ the illusion and, as described a bit later in the text, becomes ‘separate’ from the dance, which is undesirable for the dance(r). The descriptions in The Phenomenology of Dance (1966) hold for a type of dancing consciousness. However, I want to emphasise a historicised ideology implied with some of the descriptions and argue that they indicate prevailing judgements about types of reflection in dance practice. For instance, despite being a trained and experienced dancer, the experience of an audience watching me often brings on reflection about what I look like, even though I might not want it to. Dancing consciousness is highly nuanced, complex, and dependent on context and a myriad of other factors. However, the above is not to claim that Sheets-Johnstone’s (1966) text offers a simple phenomenology of dance. Sheets-Johnstone also writes about the unity and ‘diasporatic nature’ with dancer experience; she also argues for how dance experience is ‘form-in-the-making’ and is ‘both a dispersed unity and a coherent multiplicity’ (38). However, unity is often favoured over multiplicity, rather than equal weight being given to both. For instance: ‘So long as the dancer is one with the dance, what is created and presented is a complete and unified phenomenon…’ (38). However, when the dancer reflects upon bodily experience, the body is argued to be experienced in parts, not as unified and coherent (which, as discussed above, is ‘undesirable’ dance experience). As another example: The reflected-upon body is always an externally related system of parts and never a totality, which is lived. As an objective system of parts, the body is often regarded as an instrument of consciousness, an instrument explicitly recognized as carrying out whatever consciousness intends. (27)

The descriptions of the dancer’s ‘lived body’ in this way express romanticised notions of wholeness and an ideal of trying to continually achieve in-the-moment subjective dancing. Descriptions of the ‘reflected upon body’ are polarised as undesirable because reflection makes the body an object and thus, ‘explicit awareness’ when dancing is ‘unsuccessful reflection’ (Sheets-Johnstone 1966, 44–45).

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If pre-reflective/reflective and internal/external are polarised according to these phenomenological descriptions of dancer experience, then it can be inferred that if the dancer, while dancing, reflects upon what her movement looks like—the visual—then she is explicitly reflecting and thus, breaking the in-the-moment unity of her dancing. Put in another way, the dancer is taken out of the kinaesthetic in-the-moment experience of dancing and in these moments is judging the body as a visual object. The ‘body-subject’, which is primarily experienced kinaesthetically, is broken by these ‘body-object’ moments of consciousness. This is one of the many interpretations of the early phenomenological accounts of dancer experience, which I argue polarises the kinaesthetic and the visual (e.g. Pakes 2019; Bresnahan 2019). The descriptions above are discussing dancing consciousness in the moment of dancing. However, the same thinking also applies to reflection after dancing because reflection and pre-reflection are related. This conclusion is supported by parts of the final chapter of the book, in the discussion of teaching dance composition, in which Sheets-Johnstone (1966) advises teaching dance students the idea that reflection on one’s own dancing, ‘the reflected-upon body’, breaks ‘the pre-reflective dynamic totality of movement of the body’ in creating movement. ‘One must only stop reflecting – analyzing, interpreting, judging – long enough to grasp [the pre-reflective awareness of the body in motion]’ (137). The emphasis on wholeness and being in-the-moment in the above examples can be viewed historically in that, at the time of its writing, the text brings dance studies back to the ‘lived experience’ of dancing, or as Sheets-Johnstone (1966) writes, helps recognise ‘dance as dance’ (xii). The ideology interpreted above can be viewed in alignment with the importance of in-the-moment experiencing in somatic practices, which were also gaining use at the same time, as discussed above. Indeed, Sheets-Johnstone reflects that at the time of the book’s first publication: with the exception of Susanne Langer’s book, Feeling and Form, there were no serious attempts at a philosophical illumination of dance…there were no dance scholars at the doctoral level who had the opportunity to look at dance from other than an educational perspective. (x)

However, the text attempts to ‘philosophically [illuminate] dance experience’ without fully representing the multiple, contextual, and contradictory aspects of dancers’ experiences.

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The ideology of unity and wholeness for a dancer’s dancing consciousness is reflected in other early descriptions of dance experience, which also imply a similar dialectic regarding kinaesthetic experience and visual selfreflection. For instance, Poet Paul Valéry (1927/1983) describes dancing in his text ‘Philosophy of Dance’ as having ‘no outward aim’. He similarly implies that the subjective dancing experience is ideal in contrast to the reflective and judging experience: For the dancer is in another world; no longer the world that takes color from our gaze, but one that she weaves with her steps and builds with her gestures. And in that world acts have no outward aim; there is no object to grasp, to attain, to repulse or run away from, no object which puts a precise end to an action and gives movements first an outward direction and co-ordination, then a clear and definite conclusion. (61)

According to Valéry’s description, the dancer is swept away by the movement with no outward aim but to dance. The dancer does not attend to the gaze, but the moment-to-moment experiencing and kinaesthesia of movement. Because the dancer does not have an object to grasp, as does a pianist or a painter, dancers’ experiences have a less precise end and beginning, and instead are ephemeral and mystical. Sondra Fraleigh (1987), explicitly building on Sheets-Johnstone, likewise contrasts ‘body-object’ with ‘body-subject’ for dance experience in Dance and the Lived Body: ‘The body-object can be known, in the sense that the body itself can become the object of our attention, but the bodysubject can only be lived’ (15).7 Body-object is ‘a conscious, intentional position taken toward the body as an object of attention’ (14). The text states that, in dance, this is when the dancer focuses on their body and the body becomes the object of their attention (14). It is claimed that, when the dancer does this, their ‘preflective (before-noticing) stream of being is interrupted’, indicating that this interruption is a negative aspect of dancing experience (14). The distinction in this text (Fraleigh 1987) is that body-object implies that the dancer can experience their body like other objects; body-object is used as a ‘neutral concept’, similar to the perspective used in art when

7 In another publication, Fraleigh (2018) situates her research, particularly in relation to phenomenological philosophy. She clarifies that Dance and the Lived Body specifically takes an existential phenomenological position (36).

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one ‘[stands] back to observe and learn’ (14). Body-subject, on the other hand, ‘eludes our full knowledge’ and is the ‘prereflective’ self, which can be more readily experienced when dancing and when the dancer is ‘unified in action’ and ‘living the present-centred moment’ (13). In this body-subject state, it is argued that the dancer is not noticing, looking back upon, anticipating, or imagining the body, but is experiencing ‘lived and complete wholeness’ (14). This is indeed one type of dance experience. However, there is a value implicit in these descriptions, particularly when it is claimed that ‘good’ dancers are those dancers who do not reflect too much when dancing and, thus, do not enter a body-object state. ‘Good dancers’ are ‘present centred’ and ‘know that the dancing self dies when it looks back either to visualise or to admire itself’ (23). It is suggested in these descriptions that the dancer is successful when the kinaesthetic remains primary and their self and body merge with the dance; this is ‘worthily representing the aesthetic’. These descriptions imply superiority to kinaesthetic experience, in opposition to the visual, such as reflecting on how one’s movement appears (23). As with Sheets-Johnstone, Fraleigh is predominantly writing about inthe-moment dance experience. Likewise, Fraleigh’s descriptions apply to a type of dance experience. However, what remain to be described are other nuances, complexities, and multiplicities of dancers’ experiences. As above, what Fraleigh proposes for what happens during the dance experience also raises problems for reflecting upon it later; that is, a dancer should ideally try to remain focused in the moment and on the kinaesthetic experience of movement. Emilyn Claid’s (2006) book Yes? No! Maybe…: Seductive ambiguity in dance illustrates how the above valuing of the kinaesthetic in these early phenomenological accounts is partially reflected in what was important in contemporary dance in the 1960s and 1970s. For instance, ‘new dance’ in Britain in the 1970s was, according to Claid, a shift in ‘rethinking how the body moves at a deeply embodied level’ in comparison with her experiences in ballet, which she describes as primarily object driven, or driven primarily towards the image presented (80). Claid writes that in ‘new dance’, dance technique was deconstructed, interrogated, reappraised, and re-constructed particularly in reference to other body techniques, such as Body-Mind Centering (BMC), Aikido, and the Alexander technique (80). The focus of dance technique shifted from the

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external idealised image in ballet to ‘the anatomical framework and directional pathways of the body’ valued in ‘new dance’ (82). Claid and her colleagues actively challenged balletic ideals, which she identifies as: the need for outside approval and criticism; pain as a measure of correctness and articulation; formal designs and fronted shapes; the hierarchical structures embodied in the techniques themselves and the emphasis on state pose and two-dimensional fronted movement. (Claid 2006, 81)

There is at this time a distinct emphasis on process over product, she reports. Mirrors were absent from the studios and explicit value placed on a kind of ‘moving intelligence’ and movement between poses, focusing on kinaesthetic awareness (82). The emphasis for dancers at this time was about becoming a ‘new thinking dancer’ who rejected ‘fixed conventions of space/time forms’ and worked within ‘non-forms’ (85). As Claid (2006) states, ‘Letting go of the mirror we became real people, with back, front and sides, thinking dance movement from the inside out’, proposing the position that the visual reflection of the mirror worked against the ‘realness’ of their dancing bodies (83). To be clear, I am not arguing that the above accounts are incorrect as descriptions of dancer experience. On the contrary, I find these descriptions ring true for some kinds of dancing experience. Instead, I highlight a concern, which is the potential for these descriptions to be interpreted in their historical moment that was further built on as the practice evolves. Other accounts and experiences related to kinaesthetic experience in contemporary dance practice are only recently gaining attention, which I will discuss further below. The descriptions above inform a historical backdrop that is part of the perspective of contemporary dancer experience today, but they do not represent the variety and breadth of dancers’ experiences, and the many different contexts of dance and how dancers’ experiences vary within them, particularly in relation to visual self-reflection. What happens with the above attempts to articulate ephemeral aspects of dance experience is that an idealised notion of ecstatic dancing is expressed. Only one type of ‘dancing consciousness’, to borrow SheetsJohnstone’s term, is foregrounded, which is kinaesthetically whole and it should not, ultimately, include reflection on what one’s movement looks like. There is a strong tone of ‘rightness’ in these descriptions for dancing experience in which attention is inwardly, or kinaesthetically, directed. In

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particular, the dancer who dances without reflecting about the appearance of their dancing is the ‘good’ dancer. These writings inspire questions such as: how does this way of conceiving of dancer consciousness without reflection avoid the problems for the performer who confronts being watched often and, thus, encounters reflecting on what their movement looks like, whether s/he wants to or not? Or, how do dancers’ experiences shift in different contexts, such as from the beginner to the professional, from the class to the stage, or from contact improvisation to performed contemporary dance and does this impact on the ability to be kinaesthetically aware in the way the authors above describe? Indeed, I am not alone in asking these questions. There has been an increase in publications addressing connections between dance practice and performance related to phenomenology, e.g. Bleeker et al. (2015) and those contributing to more complex phenomenological conceptions of consciousness related to embodiment, e.g. Depraz et al. (2002), Koch et al. (2013), Fuchs and Koch (2014), as well as the texts I discuss further below. Nevertheless, the publication of The Phenomenology of Dance 50th Anniversary Edition in 2015 evidences that the aboveexpressed way of thinking and conceptualising dance experience is still a part of the discourse. Indeed, one review by Jiesamfoek (2017) declares that even after fifty years the text is still ‘fresh and applicable’ and significant for dance education (89). The reviewer does also note, as I do above however, that Sheets-Johnstone does not specify the kind of dance she is writing about and questions the declaration of ‘dancers’ intuition’ in dancing experience as absolute and one-dimensional (90).8

8 See also a more recent publication (Sheets-Johnstone 2018), even though not specifically about the dance context; there is implicit valuing of bodily experience that might return to a ‘beginning’, implying that technologies (such as language) had an impact on bodily experience at some point in history, e.g. ‘[…] in the beginning, language did not name things, but related the meaning of a sound to its articulation […] the meaning of the original sound elements of primordial languages […] was thus the analogue of the articulatory gestures composing the sound’ (7). It is presumably complex to pin down when this ‘beginning’ occurs, however. I am not questioning the arguments being made in the publication as a whole, indeed I am sympathetic to the claim that we need to be aware of the impact power has on being bodily aware; but the implicit reference to a primordial ‘original’ human bodily experience is a view which seems to still persist in some studio contexts. Put in another way, the analysis of Aristotle, Jung, and Foster in this article is not at issue here, rather it is the support of a universality of experience and the implication this has on wider concerns, such as of difference and innovations in technologies (again, which include thinking technologies) that change how we experience

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Before returning to more recent phenomenological perspectives on dancer experience, I want to continue with the historicised account of the evolving discourse regarding dancers’ embodied experience.

Poststructuralist Approaches to Dancer Experience Dance studies scholars (Foster 1986; Briginshaw 2001) have tried to address problems with the above phenomenological accounts (SheetsJohnstone 1966; Fraleigh 1987) of dancer experience by using a poststructuralist approach. Phenomenology fell out of fashion for a time in dance studies, as it did in other domains (Crossley 1993, 399), mainly because phenomenology became criticised as being universalist, neglecting difference, and only conceiving of bodily experience from a male point of view (Rothfield 2005). Following academic trends and moving away from phenomenology, dance scholars, such as Susan Foster (1986), argue for how dancer experience is historically and culturally situated. Dance studies utilised ideas from poststructuralist and critical theory (Ness 2011, 20). Dance scholars working with poststructuralist positions historically argue that dance knowledge and discourse are produced, disciplined, and regulated. Susan Leigh Foster’s (1986, 1996, 1997) work is an important contribution to a historicised shift in dance studies. Her work in the 1980s and 1990s, in particular, using semiological analysis and theories of representation, addresses the universalist problems with previous phenomenological accounts of dance experience. In Reading Dancing (1986), for instance, the aim is stated: to ‘articulate a theory of representation in dance that can encompass a variety of approaches to dance composition’ (3). The book supports the argument that theories of representation get around some of the problems of ‘the ideal and transcendental’—terms often relegated to critiques of early phenomenological accounts (Foster 1986, 3). The above text is just one example of work denaturalising the notions of the self in dance practice and to look at dance practices in terms of discourse. Or as Cveji´c (2015b) puts it, in relation to Foster’s (1986) work: the world. For instance, in the article it states, ‘The ties that bind us in a common humanity are furthermore evident in the fact that we are all bipedal’ (12). Yet, we are not all bipedal. See also Pakes (2019) and Rothfield (2021).

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marks the beginning of a wholesale translation of methods of culturalist analysis and poststructuralist criticism, as well as of a set of particular concerns and topics mirroring the agendas of feminism, gender and queer theory, postcolonial theory and the politics of racial, ethnic and other kinds of identitarian difference, which shaped Dance Studies in the 1990s. (n.p.)

Dancer experience is here framed in Foucauldian terms of discipline, value, and representation (Foucault 1975/1988), in particular. Reading Dancing (1986) specifically argues that a dancing subject is cultivated by the values and practices of each choreographer (43). The text identifies assumptions that each choreographer expresses about the body and argues how this shapes a dancer’s subjectivity (Foster 1986, 43). The major modern dance traditions of Duncan, Graham, Humphrey, and Wigman place importance on certain principles in their different approaches. For instance, the principles of Graham are contract and release, spiralling of the spine; Humphrey’s are the fall, rebound, and sequential use of major body joints; Wigman’s are adaptation of space, time, and force from Laban’s movement analysis (Foster 1986, 90–91). All of these ways of moving impact differently on the dancer. A predominant argument in this text is that dancers might execute specific vocabulary in a unique way but they will all be shaped according to the principles of the choreographer with whom they train and/or work. In the essay Dancing Bodies, Foster (1997) more explicitly argues that dancers are shaped by the styles they train in, again utilising the idea of discipline from Foucault (1975/1988). In this essay, a selection of different dance techniques is unpacked, such as ballet, Cunningham, and contact improvisation, breaking down the values of different dance styles upheld in their methods of training, rather than in terms of the choreographic aesthetic of certain artists (although in many cases this can be the same thing). In contrast to the above phenomenological descriptions, dancer experience is conceived in this essay in a way that explicitly addresses reflection or reflective aspects of dancer experience. For instance, Foster (1997) writes about ‘dancing bodily consciousness’ being made up of three components: ‘the perceived body’, which can be ‘the dancer’s felt body’; ‘the ideal body’, which can be ‘images of other dancers’ bodies’; and ‘the demonstrative body’, which can be the image in the mirror (as summarised by Gardner 2007, 44). It is via different dance techniques, and each style’s ideal body, that the dancer’s self and their experiences in dance become moulded and shaped. For example, a

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Graham dance student explores the ‘principal metaphor’ of contraction and release, which ‘promotes a connection between physical and psychological functioning…[delving] into the interior body as they contract and relate internal to external space through various pathways of release’ (Foster 1997, 246), whereas a Cunningham dancer is subject ‘to the craft like task of preparing and presenting movement’ (Foster 1997, 248). Jill Green (2003), from principally a Foucauldian perspective as well, argues that dancers are subject to abide by norms according to the technique in which they train and are disciplined in a bodily discourse that moulds them to be ‘docile bodies’. …dance training is another example of a practice that moves from repressive control to the implementation of a system that requires subjects to be observed and corrected through the ritual of dance technique classes. In the conservatory-style system student dancers’ bodies are docile bodies created to produce efficiency, not only of movement, but also, a normalization and standardization of behaviour in dance classes. (100)

The dancer anecdotes in Green’s (2003) essay elucidate the problems in ‘Western’ theatre dance of authority and power (by teachers), selfsurveillance, emphasis on an ‘ideal body’, dualist perception of body as separate from mind, and desires for body modification and regulation through training and going to the gym.9 As significant as the above analyses, particularly Susan Foster’s work, have been to dance and dance studies, for re-conceiving dancer experience in terms of discipline, values, and discourse, the emphasis on the dancers’ body as constructed has not been wholly satisfactory for all. Sally Gardner (2007), for instance, similar to others (Aalten 2004; Jackson 2005; Fisher 2007), argues that the use of semiotic analysis ‘disciplines modern dance’, and thus puts dance at the same level of Foucault’s other modes of production, which may not be accurate in all cases of dance making, and indeed all dancer experience (43). What is ‘most problematic’, Gardner (2007) states, is previous conceptualising of the dancing subject (p. 44). Because the dancer is ‘isolated in relation to herself’, the interpersonal aspects of the dancing self are missing. Gardner (2007) argues that this approach ‘[subsumes] the body to the operations of consciousness’ and 9 For another example of the discussion of discipline in relation to the mirror in the ballet context, see Davies (2018, 15).

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centres the ‘(universalised) dancer’ in the ‘dance technique’ (44). Wainwright et al. (2005) contend a similar position: ‘contemporary writings in the discipline of dance studies are dominated by disembodied postmodern readings of “dance as texts”’ (50). Markula (2014a) also writes about the critique of these conceptualisations, in respect of the ballet body, as a ‘disempowering narrative’. She addresses a complex range of ballet representations that advocate for the ballet body as a ‘meeting ground for the masculine and feminine where the female can also have access to male power’ (Markula 2014a, xxiv). Gardner (2007) argues that what is lacking in the discourse is ‘to specify the modern dancer as one who is de-centred with respect to located and specific others’ (44). She argues that the intersubjective and interpersonal relationships in the processes of a dancing body need to be considered. For instance, she states that, ‘There is no place here for an affective relation with the choreographer or her body in “making” the dancer’ (45). Instead of an ‘abstract and generalised other, the “dance technique”’, Gardner (2007) calls for thinking about the ‘proclamations’ a choreographer and dancer make when dancing and/or creating work together (44). Thus, Gardner calls for other kinds of dancers’ experiences in the discourse and, generally, argues that more views and analyses are needed. Likewise, dance scholars Gay Morris (2001) and Anna Aalten (2004) criticise the use of Foucault’s discursive body and its neglect of the materiality of the dancer’s body. Aalten (2004) calls for ‘attention to the actual material bodies of dancers and their physical sensations and experiences’ (264). Morris (2001) argues that Bourdieu’s concept of habitus can be used to ‘grasp the materiality of the body in bodily theory’ (53). Habitus, she states, helps explain how technique training and choreography can order dance experience without neglecting its materiality. She writes: In terms of dance, this view of bodily practice offers the possibility of dance ordering thoughts and feelings not just through choreography but in the basic techniques and comportment that present the body to the world in a particular way. (57)

Morris claims that the dancer’s body is socialised and that the dancer’s ideas, through the concept of habitus, can be viewed as socially constructed and limited (58). Aalten similarly takes a sociological approach and writes about the practice and lives of a group of ballet

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dancers, foregrounding their physical sensations and experiences in practice; she writes about ballet experiences as they are lived by the dancers working in the practice.

Sociological Approaches to Dancer Experience A number of sociological-based dance studies (Novack 1990; Sklar 1994; Ness 1996; Thomas 1996; Banes and Lepecki 2007), or what Markula and Clark (2018) refer to as ‘ethnographies’ (xxv), have been equally important to scholarship which addresses dancer experience from inside the practice and from a kinaesthetic perspective (many contemporaneous to works discussed above). These perspectives also draw on postmodernist and feminist insights. However, they take a different approach to a strictly postmodernist view, principally interested in ideas of representation and discipline (Thomas 2003, 66). The works I am distinguishing here are using a primarily sociological approach and write more explicitly about what dancing is like, in practice, from the dancer’s point of view. As Buckland (2010) claims, ‘Since the 1990s, there has been a plethora of publications on dance that use ethnographic methodology’ (335). Sklar (2000) likewise reports that a radical shift occurred from 1991, at least in American dance scholarship, when more dance scholars began turning to sociocultural issues and ‘the cultural situatedness of dance and movement [was addressed]…reflected in the names applied to the subject: “dance ethnology”, “cultural studies in dance”, “ethnochoreology”, “performance studies”, “anthropology of dance”…’ (70).10 Dance studies, because the body is central to the field of dance, were in the best position to challenge classical anthropology, which had previously ‘followed the convention of the five senses’ (Sklar 2000, 70). Cynthia Novack’s (1990) text Sharing the Dance: Contact Improvisation and American Culture is grounded in the idea that each dance style is a type of culture and systematically delineates the shared practices, language, and behaviour of contact improvisation. Sklar (2000) argues that this book ‘brought to public attention how ethnographic studies might incorporate felt kinetic knowledge to address the cultural meanings 10 Sklar (1994) also reports, in another essay, that during the late 1980s and early 1990s there were ‘several…calls for a “corporeal turn” in anthropological method’ more broadly, such as by Paul Stoller (1989), Michael Jackson (1989), Thomas Csordas (1990), Maxine Sheets-Johnstone (1990), and Sally Ann Ness (1992) (21).

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inherent in movement’ (70). Novack encapsulates how contact improvisation reflected and/or represented larger socio-political issues and argues that participants of contact improvisation incorporate ways of moving as much as ways of thinking about their lives and the world. She illustrates that ‘contact improvisation was a way of moving that embodied the “touchy-feely, group encounter” ambiance of the era’ (Sklar 2000, 70). Novack (Bull 1988/2001) herself states about the book: ‘This study illustrates some ways of looking at movement as culture…evoking the way a group of people move [to] call up the ambiance of a cultural time and place with clarity and immediacy’ (407). Deirdre Sklar (1994) builds on Novack’s work, but writes more directly about her own participation and embodied exploration of different dance styles, relying on her ‘body and bodily intelligence as a point of access for the study of cultural practice as corporeal knowledge’ (9). She argues that ‘movement is a corporeal way of knowing’, citing Bourdieu’s (1972/1977) contention that ‘one knows oneself and is known by others as much through the accumulated habits of the body as through the verbalizations that people exchange’ (Sklar 1994, 11). In her essay Can Bodylore Be Brought to Its Senses? she writes about her experiences of learning two unfamiliar dance styles (for her, in experience): the Danzante of the Tortugas fiesta in honour of Our Lady of Guadalupe in New Mexico, USA, and Bobover Purimspiel of Boro Park in Brooklyn, NY. What is significant about this essay is the methodology, in particular, and writing from a first-person perspective, by contrast to the secondor third-person perspectives of some of the above writings (though it is important to note that Sheets-Johnston, Fraleigh, and Foster all declare that their dance experience informs their writing but they do not foreground it in a first-person account in the above-cited texts). For this essay, Sklar (1994) employs what she calls ‘embodying method’: Moving from distanced visual observation to close corporeal imitation can provide clues to experiences that are usually considered to be inaccessible. It can open avenues toward understanding the way cultural knowledge is corporeally constituted. (14)

Critically, it is contended that the ‘technique’ of kinaesthetic empathy and movement analysis is crucial to ‘embodying method’ and to how one learns to embody other dance styles and come to understand how an

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‘other’ moves, so that one might move in a similar way (14). Kinaesthetic empathy is then defined in the article as: …the capacity to participate with another’s movement or another’s sensory experience of movement…It is a matter of re-cognizing kinaesthetically what is perceived visually, aurally, or tactilely. As Stern has shown, it is a translation capacity that we all inherently possess. (15)11

Sklar contends that kinaesthetic empathy is key to her learning these other dance styles. Sklar’s (1994) essay, like Novack’s book, represents an increasing shift in the discourse to describe dancer experience from the first-person perspective. It signals a move towards ways of thinking and writing from ‘inside’ the practice and provides a model for ways one can write about, and conceive of, dancers’ (or one’s own) embodied experiences in a discursive context. These latter sources from sociological and poststructuralist approaches are also informed by significant work by dance studies scholars who expand dance history and notions about who a dancer is or who has access to dance. Seminal work by dance studies scholars such as Brenda Dixon Gottschild (1998), Susan Manning (2004), Jacqueline Shea Murphy (2007), Priya Srinivasan (2007), to name only a few, address, around the same time as the above sources, issues of appropriation of various diasporic, and/or marginalised dance forms. Joann Kealiinohomoku’s (1970/2001) essay ‘An Anthropologist Looks at Ballet as a Form of Ethnic Dance’ is one of the first to distinguish ballet as a cultural and ethnic form (see also Fisher 2016). As Prichard (2019) summarises: [Kealiinohomoku points] out that the term ethnic was developed to separate “self” from “other” to elevate White European forms and deride lower, “cultural” forms’ (p 172). This article therefore confronts the White privilege among dance forms and made a point that ballet is as much an expression of culture and tradition as other dance forms that tend to be labelled as “ethnic”. (172)

11 Sklar is not the first to use the term kinaesthetic empathy. Reason and Reynolds (2010) note that ‘the concept of kinesthetic empathy as it figures in dance studies [was] constructed largely through the writings of dance critic John Martin from the 1930s through the 1960s’ (53).

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Increasingly works addressing inclusivity, dis/ability, and dance, such as from Sho Shibata (2018), Ann Cooper Albright (1998), Petra Kuppers (2003), and Doran George (2014, 2020), again, to only name a few, likewise begin to address complex issues of norms and contemporary dancer perspectives.

Growing Interest in Dancers’ Experiences From the early to mid-2000s, interest grows considerably in exploring, understanding, and problematising the bodily expertise of professionally trained dancers and dancer knowledge, particularly within contemporary and ballet, including across other disciplines. Cognitive Science and Affect Cognitive Science studies are testament to ways in which the interest in dancer experience spread across disciplines. A study by Calvo-Merino et al. (2005) is a prime example of this. This seminal study by neuroscientists Calvo-Merino et al. (2005) interpreted Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI)12 of a group of ballet and capoeira dancers and found that the mirror neuron network (Rizzolatti et al. 1996) fires more strongly when expert dancers watch movement with which they are experientially familiar compared with movement they are not.13 What 12 fMRI is a technology used in neuroscience studies primarily to indicate what is happening in the brain when a participant perceives a stimulus. Neuroscientists on the AHRC-funded Watching Dance Project summarise the technology this way, ‘Functional MRI is a recently developed state-of-the-art brain imaging technique that works on the principle of the “BOLD (blood-oxygen-level dependent) effect” to measure local magnetic changes caused by increases in blood oxygenation that accompany neuronal activity.... fMRI is a non-invasive practice that has rapidly become one of the most extensively used techniques in neuroimaging due to its ability to yield statistically robust maps of cerebral activity in single subject after a one hour session. This enables accuracy in comparisons between individuals’ neural responses to stimuli to an extent that was not possible before’ (Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) 2012). 13 So-called mirror neurons were first identified in macaque monkeys by Gallese et al. (1996). These researchers found that when a monkey observed a motor action conducted by an experimenter, i.e. grasping food on a tray, that the movement was also represented in the monkey’s motor repertoire even though the monkey did not perform the action and had no muscular activation related to the action (e.g. EMG recordings; Rizzolatti et al. 1996, 132). Basically, the monkey had a motor simulation of a movement from purely visual input. This was an important finding for cognitive neuroscience because

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was significant with this study was that the researchers found that the dancers’ movement familiarity was incrementally fine and that the ‘mirror neuron system is sensitive to much more abstract levels of action organisation, such as those that differentiate dance styles’ (Calvo-Merino et al. 2005, 4). To put it simply, they found that the ballet dancers had more brain activity, within the mirror neuron network, when they watched ballet rather than capoeira movements, and that the capoeira dancers had more brain activity within the mirror neuron network when they watched capoeira rather than ballet movements. This was the case even when differences in body shape and kinematics were controlled (i.e. videos shown were made very similar) and video clips were very short (i.e. 3 second clips force an almost implicit choice because of the minimum amount of visual information). Hence, the researchers conclude the dancers’ physical experience impacts on how they perceived the videos. They contend by these findings that it is not simply being a dancer that changes how dancers perceive the world but even the detail of the style of dance studied impacts on how dancers perceive the world (i.e. a capoeira dancer perceives movement slightly differently than a ballet dancer because of their different bodily expertise). The Calvo-Merino et al.’s (2005) study stands as a precursor to several cognitive science and dance collaborations and publications (e.g. CalvoMerino et al. 2009; Bläsing et al. 2010; Reynolds et al. 2011; Jola et al. 2011; Siobhan Davies Dance 2016; Burzynska et al. 2017). It further raises the point, and the extent to which, the interest in dancer experience has grown and impacted on interests, not only in neuroscience but also in several other disciplines, including dance studies itself (Pakes 2006; Reason and Reynolds 2010; Warburton 2011). Part of the attraction of the Calvo-Merino et al.’s (2005) study, and others (Cross et al. 2006), is that they corroborate findings from some of the sociologicallybased dance studies, such as those summarised above (Novack 1990; Sklar 1994). That is, they convey the argument that bodily experience impacts of its implications regarding humans’ action recognition system (Jacob and Jeannerod 2005, 1). In fact, researchers (Rizzolatti et al. 1996) soon confirmed that a similar motor action simulation occurred with humans—the human brain also fired in a similar way when watching a movement as when doing a movement. Mirror neurons suggest that humans simulate others’ motor events by visual information and give humans ‘the capacity…to recognize the presence of another individual performing an action, to differentiate the observed action from other actions, and to use this information in order to act appropriately’ (137). See also Ehrenberg (2006, 6–7).

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on how we see and experience the world. This is what Csordas (1993) similarly claims with the concept of ‘somatic modes of attention’, in which he argues that ‘to attend to a bodily sensation [or perception] is not to attend to the body as an isolated object, but to attend to the body’s situation in the world’ (138). These neuroscientific studies have been particularly convincing because they serve as evidence of physiological and ‘pre-conscious’, or automatic, processes, which complement subjective, descriptive, and reflective writings. Put another way, fMRI data provides information about brain processes that happen in the moment of perception, or aspects of perception, which are not always accessible in conscious ways, as is the case with interviews or questionnaires—two well-used methodologies in sociological research. fMRI data provides information about brain activity which, thanks to many years of research on the brain, indicates what aspects of cognition are active at the same time as a person does a particular task. Neuroscientific research distinctly gives an indication of implicit and ‘in-the-moment’ perception and behaviour during a task, in ways that a person may not be able to consciously reflect on, or articulate verbally (Jola et al. 2011). For instance, the Calvo-Merino et al.’s (2005) study used fMRI data (i.e. brain scans) which indicates what the dancers ‘see’ in the moment of watching, beyond the conscious and reflective ways in which the dancers, during an interview afterwards, might describe what they saw. Watching Dance: Kinesthetic Empathy, an AHRC-funded study using audience and neuroscience research to explore audiences’ responses to watching dance, is a significant interdisciplinary project that is part of the increasing interest in dancer expertise growing out of the mirror neuron research summarised above (Reason and Reynolds 2010; Reynolds and Reason 2012). Although this study focused on audiences’ experiences and not those of the dancers’, the interrogation of the idea of kinaesthetic empathy and dance is fundamental to re-thinking dancers’ engagement with performance, music, audience, and other dancers (e.g. Sklar 1994). The research outputs, and my experience working on the project, have been critical in thinking further about how the concepts of kinaesthetic empathy and affect are relevant to dancers’ experiences and expertise in dance. Chapters 3–5 include further discussion about how kinaesthetic empathy came up for the present research. In addition, the Watching Dance project evidences a shift to approaching dance studies in a particular interdisciplinary way; the

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research team of this project included neuroscientists, dance, and performance studies’ researchers and is not alone in this kind of approach. For instance, a 2018 symposium launched a fictitious ‘Institute of Neurochoreography’ at Sadler’s Wells, London, UK. The ‘institute’ is described on its Facebook page as: […] a place that plays an important role in leading to breakthroughs in the understanding of the relationship between body and mind, by creating conditions in which artists, scientists and scholars from multiple disciplines work together on investigating this area in their own ways.

Choreographer and performer Matthias Sperling led the symposium. Sperling invited Neuroscientist Guido Orgs, Theatre and Performance Studies scholar Dr Kélina Gotman, dancer and choreographer Colette Sadler, and ‘Dance Doctor’ Choy Ka Fai to the principal presentation panel. Though the description above does not specify the link to neuroscience and/or cognitive science explicitly, the title of the institute— ‘Neurochoreography’—does, and the event mainly centred on neuroscientific and/or cognitive science perspectives, even if critical of them. The link to neuroscience is clearer in another publication related to the launch Sperling (2018): ‘to invite multiple imaginations about how dance and choreography might interact with future developments in everything that we might popularly consider to be linked with the sciences of the brain and mind’ (n.p.). In addition, Sperling and Orgs have published together in neuroscience journals and the dancer-choreographers on the panel seemed open to consider the idea of neurochoreography and/or an institute that focused on a neuroscientific and/or cognitive science approaches to dance and choreography. The event, and the ideas expressed therein, evidence ways that work crossing neuroscience and dance continue to be generated, including, in this latter example, some being led by the artistic perspective more than, or nearly equal to, the scientific one.14 The ‘Conceptual Turn’/‘Choreographing Problems’ Parallel to the above, Cveji´c (2015a, b) reflects on a shift in the history of contemporary dance and performance that ‘upset the sensibility 14 Another set of events of note are the ‘Body of Knowledge: Embodied Cognition and the Arts conferences (e.g. BOK 2016, 2019).

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and knowledge about dance and [exceeds] both the formalist-abstract paradigm of dance with its phenomenological heritage and the poststructuralist readings of dance qua text’ (2015b, n.p.). Cveji´c discusses the work of choreographers Jérôme Bel, Xavier Le Roy, Vera Mantero, Juan Dominguez, Mårten Spångberg, Eszter Salamon, Mette Ingvartsen, BADco, and others across Europe for shifting the focus of performance works to questions as to what dance and choreography are, which has further led to questions about dancers’ experiences, input, and agency in dance. Jérôme Bel’s 2004 piece Véronique Doisneau is a work during this ‘turn’ that supports the argument for a shifting interest in exploring dancers’ experiences in the domain of performance (Burt 2009). In this piece, Véronique Doisneau, a dancer from the corps of the Paris Opéra Ballet, performs on the Paris Opéra stage alone. What is particularly innovative is that Doisneau, usually a silent corps dancer, discusses her individual and personal experiences working in the corps with the audience. This piece implicitly and explicitly addresses assumptions about a corps ballet dancer’s experience with a known piece of ballet repertoire, Swan Lake, and the hierarchical structure that impacts on her and the audience’s experience. For instance, when Doisneau performs the corps choreography of a section of Swan Lake, alone on the stage to music, her stillness stands out in stark contrast to the dominating classical music. The absence of the principal dancer and a full use of Doisneau’s technical skill are accentuated in her performance of the corps part alone. It is an unprecedented glimpse at Doisneau’s perspective as a corps dancer and the piece highlights the problem whereby other voices in dance get ‘lost’ if not given the chance to speak. Around the same time as the conceptual turn is the growth of practice research in performance studies. Practice research contributes further to the shift between theory and practice and what is/how dance is being produced, thus impacting on contemporary dance experience in the practice, although it can be argued contemporary dance has been blurring the distinction between theory and practice for a long time. Robin Nelson’s (2006) seminal article, and subsequent publications (Nelson 2013; Spatz 2015), problematises performance knowledge production and artistic intelligence, complicating modes of ‘doing-knowing’ across a wide range of performance practices, including dance. The development of related groups, events, and publications, such as Performance Philosophy (Cull 2014; Pakes 2019; Performance Philosophy 2020) and Bleeker et. al.

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(2019), to name only a few, mark the impact on these shifts in thinking, making, and doing with(in) Western theatre dance, which likewise impact on contemporary dancer experience(s). The ‘Silent’ Dancer(s) Despite an increasing amount of different disciplinary perspectives and performance over the last few decades centred on the dancer’s perspective, there is still a developing diversity in the representation of dancers’ voices, including in the dance studies literature. The discourse continues to challenge hierarchies in dance about who can write about dance experience and, ultimately, expanding what we know about dancer experience and dance knowledge. There are still more texts about ‘famous’ contemporary choreographers than ones focused on dancer-oriented perspectives. Choreographically oriented work does give an indication of what dancing experiences are like, such as through autobiography, narrative, and critical analysis (e.g. Brown 1979; Foster 1986; Graham 1991; Manning 1993 McKayle 2004; Schwartz and Schwartz 2011; de Keersmaeker 2014; Mitra 2015; Butterworth and Wildschut 2018). However, the same amount of attention has not been paid to the expertise of ‘nonfamous’ dancers (e.g. Grau 2007; Roche 2015), or, more specifically, those dancers who primarily remain in the role of ‘dancer’ and do not cross-over into the role of choreographer (e.g. independent contemporary dancers and dancers in contemporary companies such as Mark Morris, Jasmin Vardimon, and Akram Khan), although the roles of choreographer and dancer are complex, and constantly in the midst of change, as I address below. In many ways, it is not surprising that there is not as much written about dancers’ experiences in comparison with other perspectives since being a dancer means working in a non-verbal form and the ‘voice’ of the dancing body is important in itself.15 On a practical level, it is also difficult to become expert in the skill of writing at the same time as to become expert in dance technique, at least at the level expected of a professional-level contemporary dancer. Hence, few professional-level dancers can publish material about their practice at the same time as practising at the professional level, if they want to. Nevertheless, adhering 15 For more on the ‘voice’ of the dancing body, see Roche’s (2018) discussion of Lepecki’s (2016) angelology.

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to this reasoning without question leaves practising dancers out of the discourse and contributes to the problem of applying the discourse back to the practice. The call by Green and Stinson (1999) for interpretive research which ‘can give a voice to the otherwise silent participants in dance’ and encourage other dance scholars to use ethnographic methodologies to further knowledge about student dancers still continues to be addressed (104).16 Relatively more recent journal publications, such as Theatre, Dance, and Performance Training Journal, Journal of Embodied Research, Brazilian Journal on Presence Studies, and Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices, foreground dancer (and actor) practice and training, further reinforcing a shift of interest to the performers’ perspective in the performance studies literature. In a special issue of Performance Research: On Training, the editors explicitly cite that further writing is needed on the subject of performer experience and that a ‘metalanguage’ will help those training performers think (and discuss) relationships between various trainings and ‘assumed concepts’ and ‘emotional and physical embodiments’ (Gough and Shepherd 2009, 1). Despite this increase of attention in the literature, contemporary dancers tend to go nameless in performance as well (Goddard 2011). ‘Somehow, although expanding at a fantastic rate, I think modern forms of dance are missing a trick by not properly celebrating their most critical asset – the performer. Why is it still so hard to name a dancer?’ (15). Goddard points out that on the one hand, the democracy of contemporary dance makes contemporary dance an ‘egoless’ place to work for the dancer, with an invigorating focus on hard work rather than celebrity and individualism. However, they also note that the downside of this, like the problem of the lack of dancer voices in the literature, is that dancers are left out of the credits and thus the documentation and history of dance; dancers’ dedications are unnecessarily forgotten. Or as Roche (2015) puts it, ‘In spite of increasing creative involvement by dancers in the production of choreography and the increasing acknowledgement of this by the field of dance studies, first-person of the creative practice of dancers remains a peripheral area within dance research’ (3). Ironically, as contemporary dance has become more multiple and fragmented as a style, and moved further away from codification and virtuosity, the dancer 16 As well as important more recent questions about (un)disciplin(ing) contemporary dance discussed again in Chapter 6; see also Brown and Longley (2018).

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has become more invisible to the audience’s gaze, principally in an effort to show the ‘real’ and non-fetishised female dancing body (Claid 2006; Roche 2015).

Phenomenological and Sociological Approaches to Dancer Experience Development of a metalanguage (Gough and Shepherd 2009) and an accumulation of a greater diversity of dancer voices are building in dance studies, particularly with recent phenomenological- and sociologicalbased studies (Parviainen 1998; Gardner 2007; Kozel 2007; Rouhiainen 2007; Legrand and Ravn 2009; Ravn 2009, 2010; Albright 2011; Ravn and Hansen 2013; Roche 2015; Ravn 2017; Fraleigh 2018). These studies consider poststructuralist perspectives, such as Foster’s (1986, 1997), and anthropological or sociological perspectives, such as Sklar’s (1994) and Novack’s (1990), though many of them are also informed by a phenomenological approach. They conceive of the dancer and their experiences in terms of both its material side, as a physical intercorporeal body that dances, and also as a dancer who is historically, socially, and culturally situated. Markula (2014b) writes about a trend in psychological research on the exercising body that has historically brought together poststructuralist and phenomenological perspectives. Her tracing of these disciplinary shifts helps to explore what has happened in dance studies related to phenomenology and writing about dancer experience. She summarises the trend in psychology and the exercising body in relation to Burkitt (2008): ‘[…] crucial examinations of ideology need to be joined with a phenomenological understanding that “is able to see individuals as not only the subjects of relations of control and dependence, but also as selves who can be reconstituted within and through their social relations”’ (as cited in Markula 2014b, 146). A primary reason for this shift, she argues, is to bring in the active role individuals have in their subjectivity, as well as the intercorporeal and intersubjective perspective of these relations. Markula notes, in particular, this means being careful of looking beyond discourse and working as if phenomenology ‘cures all the ills of discursive determinism’ (146). Thomas Fuchs and Sabine Koch (2014) likewise, in their writings about emotion and memory from the perspectives of phenomenology, psychology, and cognitive science, articulate ways that experience is variable according to the context a subject is in. For instance,

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they write about ‘processes of embodied interaffectivity’ to illuminate how our emotional embodied experiences do not happen in a vacuum but in relation to others and objects in the environment (9). Carrie Noland (2009) also writes at length about kinaesthesia from phenomenological, sociological, and a wide range of other disciplinary perspectives, as mentioned above, basing much of her book on dance studies perspectives and dance experience such as Deidre Sklar’s. Noland notes the significance of Kathryn Linn Geurts’ (2002) Culture and the Senses: Bodily Ways of Knowing in an African Community as well on the discourse and further discussion of terms such as seselelame in predominantly Ghanian contexts related to Csordas’ somatic modes of attention. I will return to these perspectives more below; however, first, I want to return to some of the relatively recent phenomenological and sociological studies related to contemporary dancer experience(s). One of the earliest books to take this onto-epistemological position of phenomenology and sociology, foregrounding dancer experience, is Jaana Parviainen’s (1998) Bodies Moving and Moved. Parviainen writes about dancer’s bodily knowledge and what she calls ‘the ethics of the body’. Like several of the authors above, she states that she comes to questions about dance experience from curiosities about her own dancing body. She looks mainly to phenomenology, primarily Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger, to ‘evolve a philosophical dance discourse’, which in the late 1990s was yet to be developed fully in dance studies (Parviainen 1998, 10). However, she is not strictly phenomenological because she also uses Bourdieu’s critique of art and cultural field theory and Foucault’s discourse of the ethical subject to support her arguments. Parviainen focuses on the complexity of the internal-external interchange in dancer experience and foregrounds the dancer perspective, including talking specifically about body image and schema. She presents the dancer’s experience in a way that addresses multiple, contextualised accounts of dancer experience, adding on to previous phenomenological accounts (SheetsJohnstone 1966; Fraleigh 1987; Valéry 1927/1983), which have been critiqued for their universality (Foster 1986; Rouhiainen 2003; Rothfield 2005; Ravn 2009). She presents dancers as active agents in their dance experience, addressing critiques related to materiality of the dancing body in some poststructuralist accounts (Foster 1997; Gardner 2007). However, in some ways, Parviainen (1998) retains the ephemeral and romantic descriptions of dance experience found in some of the above texts, such as Sheets-Johnstone (1966).

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Leena Rouhiainen (2003), in her text Living Transformative Lives, primarily utilises a phenomenological approach, namely through the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. She also refers to work from sociology throughout, such as Bourdieu. Using this dual phenomenological and sociological perspective, Rouhiainen (2003) ‘illuminate[s] the life-world of freelance dance artists’ in Finland (9). In this study, she ‘provides both an analysis of some of the premises upon which being a [Finnish] freelance dance artist is based as well as [depicting] the concrete nature of such an artist’s life’ (425). Rouhiainen (2003) interweaves dialogue with the dancers, from one-to-one interviews with phenomenological and sociological theory, focusing on some of the key aspects of their experiences as independent freelance dance artists. Rouhiainen likewise argues for conceiving of dancers’ experiences in practice according to their multiplicity and complexity. She argues that dancers’ experiences are in part constructed and tied to larger social issues. For instance, she writes about Bourdieu’s idea of cultural capital and how the dancers’ choreography and work choices are related to broader cultural, social, and economic shifts. However, she also argues that the dancers are constructing themselves in other ways and are proactive and unique in their approaches to their careers. For instance, she writes about how the unique physiology of each dancer’s body (i.e. flexibility, strength, height) impacts on their choreography (e.g. if the dancer is particularly muscular and taut, the movement reflects this physique). The balance between agency and construction is particularly evident in a quote from one of her concluding sections, ‘On Being a Freelance Dance Artist’: …even if we have the freedom to choose things and construct our lives according to our voluntary acts, we do this in relation to the social groups, institutions, historical conditions, cultural atmospheres, material environments and bodies we live in and possess. (Rohiainen 2003, 375)

Even though in some ways the dancers exhibit agency and individuality in their practice, in other ways it is evident that the dancers are also immersed within larger social conditions, such as the Finnish dance community they train and work within. Susanne Ravn (2009), in Sensing Movement, Living Spaces, as well as subsequent publications (Ravn and Hansen 2013; Ravn 2017; Ravn and Høffding 2017), similarly utilises phenomenology and ethnography to explore the experiences of a group of professional-level dancers. Ravn

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(2009) interviews dancers across the styles of ballet, contemporary, and Butoh dance. She too reveals insights into movement experience based on dancers’ descriptions from practice. She starts with a frame that is similarly balanced between the phenomenological and the sociological: On the one hand I understand movement as a fundamental condition for being a body-subject acting and interacting in the world – a condition that can be described phenomenologically. On the other hand movement is shaped and directed as certain techniques of our body. (13)

She states that her project aims ‘to explore and describe how professional dancers, as expert movers, deal with and structure their lived experience in movement and in doing so evolve enriching insights into bodily movement’ (Ravn 2009, 13). She combines the perspectives of phenomenology and sociology to show how the dancers are constructed by the dance practices they are engaged in; for instance, Butoh dancers attend to their practices in distinctly different ways to dancers in the Royal Danish Ballet. She argues for how the dancers exhibit agency in their practice and that dancers have a particular skill worthy of further investigation, such as the ways contemporary dancers engage with and embody space. Another important text to include with these works is an essay by Caroline Potter (2008), titled ‘Sense of Motion, Sense of Self: Becoming a Dancer’, which describes Potter’s and her classmates’ experiences training in a one-year programme at a contemporary dance conservatoire. Although this essay is more sociological in scope than phenomenological, it is in the same vein as the above studies, in that it is based on descriptions about what her and her classmates’ experiences in dance practice were like. Potter, more directly than the other studies, specifies a ‘heightened sense of kinaesthesia’ in contemporary dance practice and what it is like. She explicitly states the point of view that ‘developing a heightened sense of kinaesthesia (felt bodily movement) is a means of becoming socialized into the professional [contemporary] dance community’ (Potter 2008, 444). However, the essay does not explore how this experience is differentiated according to approaches in training in other dance styles (e.g. ballet), which Ravn does, or how it might be for dancers at different levels, for instance, the professional-level dancer versus the dancer in a one-year programme. Dance Research Journal dedicates a special issue to the topic of phenomenology and dance in 2011. Editor Mark Franko (2011) writes

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that this issue, ‘…takes the temperature of a moment in which the kinesthetic-visual pact of phenomenological description is under considerable pressure from new concepts of the subject, new theories of cognition, and new technologies in the performance field that alter the terms of the observer’s perception of movement’ (1). In this issue, Ann Cooper Albright (2011) writes about the intersections between her personal experiences as a dancer and her interests in phenomenology as a dance scholar over three decades. As she describes: ‘This essay is…an attempt to situate and reflect on the various intersections of phenomenology and dance that have captured my curiosity…It maps out both a personal journey and a disciplinary trajectory’ (7). Albright traces her experiences in dance practice in parallel to developments in dance studies, namely in terms of the disciplines of phenomenology (i.e. Merleau-Ponty) and feminist studies (i.e. Iris Marion Young). She gives evidence of how phenomenology has become prominent in dance studies over the last thirty years according to her changing values in her practice. She provides an example for how developments in dance studies impacted on her technical (i.e. bodily) training and interest in contact improvisation; how theory and practice intersected for her and impacted on her interests and explorations in dance. For example, she states: ‘In retrospect, I realize that the movement form I was beginning to incorporate as an essential part of my physical identity [contact improvisation] helped me to make sense of Merleau-Ponty’s analyses of spatiality, motility, and intersubjectivity’ (Albright 2011, 10). The essay is, as she states, ‘quixotic’ and more idiosyncratic than the others summarised above, particularly because she only discusses her experiences in dance. However, similar to the above works, Albright supports the argument for a shift in dance studies toward phenomenological and sociological approaches to dance experience. Although she proclaims a primarily phenomenological stance, she places herself among a small group of dance scholars in the 1980s and 1990s who were ‘producing interesting hybrids of feminist theory and culture and performance studies’ (10). The nod to authors of dance studies, such as Sklar and Novack, and the principal argument for how she is historically situated in the discourse (both intellectually and physically) distinguish the essay’s relationship to a sociological position, in part. Albright’s (2011) article reinforces this argument directly when she argues about the ways her bodily knowledge and her phenomenological and sociological-based knowledge(s) are intertwined. She reinforces this argument indirectly by publishing an article, which is primarily an account

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of her personal dance history, in terms of choice, agency, and broader social changes, in a highly regarded peer-reviewed dance studies journal. Several edited collections (e.g. Bleeker et al. 2015; Fraleigh 2018; Grant et al. 2019) dedicated to the topic of phenomenology and performance, including dance, also mentioned above, are further evidence of this burgeoning interest in aligning phenomenology with situated, contextual, and specified perspectives on performance, as Franko (2011) states. But as Fraleigh (2018) points out, ‘Several [phenomenological] methods have developed with adaptive frameworks to guide distinct strands of qualitative study and research’ (27). Bleeker et al. (2015) argue that Performance and Phenomenology: Traditions and Transformations ‘offers a timely discussion about the interventions and tensions between two contested and contentious fields, performance and phenomenology, with international case studies that map an emerging twenty-first century terrain of critical and performance practice’ (i). The collection builds and expands on the traditions of phenomenology and performance to address ‘the established performativity of perception and cognition’ and embodied experience as the foundation of being and meaning. In the introduction, the authors highlight how the terms and notions of performance and bodily experience have permeated across disciplines, such as Erving Goffman’s work which spurred the use of theatrical concepts of performance to understand rituals, and how the perspectives of social rituals were used by performance studies scholars such as Phelan and Schechner to understand performance (5). Kozel, for instance, writes briefly about process phenomenology from ‘a [choreographer/dancer] performer’s perspective’ and ‘a [dancer] ethnographer’s perspective’ and also perspectives from an improvisational dance workshop which led participants through a series of exercises that emphasise sensing between bodies and ‘deepening the sense of space around bodies’; however, these are only brief parts of the overall book (67). Despite not a great deal of focus on the contemporary dancers’ perspective in the collection per se, there are overlaps in the exploration of ideas from Merleau-Ponty and Deleuze that are important to mention alongside the other work featured here. Sociologist Aimee Purser is another contributor to this growing body of work crossing phenomenology and sociology on dancer experience. In two separate but related articles, Purser (2018a, b) utilises ideas from Merleau-Ponty ‘[…] to elucidate through a nondualist framework for

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understanding skill acquisition and bodily knowledge in sport and movement cultures’ specifically looking at dance expertise (2018b, 318). In one article, she puts in conversation Merleau-Ponty’s ideas about the sedimentation of habit through his concept of body schema with qualitative interview data from contemporary dancers. She places emphasis on ‘dancers’ accounts of learning, remembering and performing patterns of movement and, in particular, with the dancers’ notions of having or getting a movement “in/into the body”’ (318). In the other article, Purser explores the interview data from another phenomenological angle and explores ‘[…] the conceptualisation of immanence and transcendence in relation to the embodied practice of dance, engaging with MerleauPonty’s important insight that the body can be a source of transcendence’ (2018a, 37). She argues in this article that ‘[…] dancers experience a third mode of being that is somehow in-between [the binary terms of transcendence and immanence]’, what she calls ‘inhabited transcendence’ (37). Purser’s explorations and arguments in these articles resonate with some of the material in this book and are discussed in more detail in subsequent chapters. The main point here is that Purser is approaching dance experience crossing the perspectives of phenomenology, sociology, and psychology that is similar to the approach I employ here and, again, amongst a growing community of scholars aiming to contribute to rich description about dancer experience and intelligence. Pirkku Markula (2006, 2014a, 2018) writes about dance (and other physical) experience, crossing sociology, philosophy, and psychology. Markula (e.g. 2014b; Markula and Silk 2011) repeatedly addresses the paradigmatic struggles of conducting research about physical movement experiences, such as dance, and argues that one of the prime issues is the way that research about physical experience is connected to a historical conceptualising of subjectivity, identity, and power. She aims to push interdisciplinary boundaries of research about bodily experience to push theoretical readings of the physically active body. Similar to sources discussed above, such as Gardner (2007) and Wainwright et. al. (2005), Markula questions, through practice and theory, whether research on identity construction has focused too narrowly, to date, on the ‘social’ and insufficiently locates the (especially female) individual, identity, and self within an ideologically sustained (male) hegemony (142). One of the key questions that Markula addresses is how we are to work between the perspectives of being a subject that is part of a social network of power relations and a subject who has agency and corporeal lived experiences.

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This questioning is evident related to her work on dancer experience, more specifically in Markula and Clark’s (2018) The Evolving Feminine Ballet Body, and Markula’s (2006) article about her experience as a dance performer. In the book introduction, for instance, it states: We […] aim to avoid locating the mediated ballet body in opposition to the lived experiences of dancing ballet. While some authors in our book draw from phenomenology […] we also employ poststructuralist Deleuzian […] and Foucauldian […] frameworks to understand the lived ballet body within the power/discourse nexus defining various contemporary contexts for ballet bodies in Canada. In so doing, we do not install the ballet body as a liberating or resistant body, a mediated or lived body, or an exemplary or failed feminist project. Instead, we are interested in illustrating how the feminine ballet body, as historically produced, is now shaped by the current (dominant) ways of knowing dance and how the dancing selves are then formed within these forces. (xxvii)

Markula is, similar to Albright, Ravn, and Purser discussed above, working to illuminate our understanding of dancer experience, but in this historical moment where both its material aspect, as a physical intercorporeal body that dances, and its historical, social, and cultural situated-ness are important. Jenny Roche (2015), in Multiplicity, Embodiment and the Contemporary Dancer, ‘phenomenologically maps the territories’ of her experiences as an independent contemporary dance artist, based mainly in Ireland, working with a range of choreographers working in Britain, North America, and Australia on the making and performing of a series of solo works. Rosemary Butcher, John Jasperse, Jodi Melnick, and Liz Roche are the choreographers Roche works with. For the project, which informs the book, Roche (2015) considers the embodied self as the research ‘tool’— ‘the one who participates, discovers and records’ (vii). Roche triangulates her own experiences with interviews with other dancers (Sara Rudner, Rebecca Hilton, and Catherine Bennett) as well. Roche utilises this wealth of dancer experiences in a particular set of contemporary dance contexts to argue for the independent contemporary dancer’s identity as multiple, particularly in the sense of making work for performance, although she acknowledges that links can be made with her arguments and in the training of dancers. ‘The central proposition that underscores the book,’ Roche (2015) states, ‘is the notion that the dancer has a moving identity, which is both an individual way of moving and a process of incorporating

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different movement experiences in training and in professional practice’ (p. vii). Roche (2015) underpins this proposition with the works of theorists Deleuze and Guattari, Rosi Braidotti, Elizabeth Grosz, and Brian Massumi, writing about how dancers’ experiences of self-hood are ‘dialogical, porous and multiple’ (17). The proposition is also grounded in the phenomenological position of Merleau-Ponty and extended with Rosi Braidotti and Elizabeth Grosz’s feminist philosophy that account for the ‘material embodiment’ of human subjectivity (17). Roche’s perspectives on dancers’ identities in the practice as multiple and fluid resonate with the ones coming forward in and through the research for this book.

Returning to the Problem of the Kinaesthetic and the Visual I began this chapter by discussing the problem of a historical polarisation of the kinaesthetic and the visual in contemporary dance and how this impacts on dancer experience in the practice. I want to conclude the above discussion of key sources that cross phenomenological and sociological approaches and state that these studies allow for other conceptions of dancer experience, particularly as they relate to the kinaesthetic and the visual. More specifically, these accounts allow for reflection in dance experience, including what movement looks like, in ways that represent a breadth and situatedness of professional-level dancer experience today. They offer conceptions of dancer experience which are multi-layered, rather than universal and/or idealised. In addition, they consider how dance experience is in part constructed by training and working in the style, as well as being tied to an individual, unique, physiological, and material body. In other words, as stated in Chapter 1, they communicate the position that dancers maintain a complex balance between being historically, culturally, and socially situated, and yet continue to exhibit a sense of agency and becoming unique individual dancers. This is a position that dance scholar Ann Daly (1995) also sets out in Chapter 1 of her book Done into Dance: Isadora Duncan in America: ‘The body is that curious place where nature and culture – what anthropologist Mary Douglas called the “physical” and “social” bodies – somehow interpenetrate’ (3). However, few have turned the microscope to the problem of an over-arching approach related to kinaesthetic attention in contemporary dance and its relationship to video self-reflection as a performing dancer to the extent that I do in this book.

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Before summarising below the problem of the visual for professionallevel contemporary dancers’ kinaesthetic experiences, I want to bring in a few critical methodological perspectives, from outside dance studies, that likewise expand on conceptualisations of embodied experiences related to phenomenology. As mentioned briefly above, the work of Thomas Fuchs and Sabine Koch on embodiment, emotion, and memory, and Depraz et al. (2002) on becoming aware, offers further thinking on situated ways of experiencing the world in a bodily way. An article by Koch et al. (2013) provides a useful summary of Professor Thomas Fuch’s taxonomy of bodily memory, building on previous phenomenological perspectives, but expanding on particularities of experiencing. Koch et al. (2013) first identify that body memory is a form of ‘know-how’ and knowledge acquired over time: The term body memory refers to all the implicit knowledge, capacities and dispositions that structure and guide our everyday being-in-the-world without the need to deliberately think of how we do something, to explicitly remembering what we did, or to anticipate what we want to do. (82)

They then break down a phenomenology of body memory as a taxonomy that is not fixed, but a means to understand the dimensions of this aspect of consciousness. The parts of the taxonomy most relevant to the discussion here are: – habitual or procedural body memory: skill memory for motor processes; – situational body memory: memory of spatial familiarity (inner and exterior spaces) and atmospheric perception, it makes possible feeling of familiarity and alienation; – inter-corporeal body memory: a bodily knowing of how to deal with others; – incorporative body memory: family and cultural habits, includes body attitudes and assumption of embodied social roles (83). In sum, the taxonomy presents a matrix of possibilities when thinking about consciousness in embodied activity, or more specifically when a dancer reflects on her own dancing. There is not one ideal way of

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reflecting, or judgement about memory impacting on present perceptions, but a complex network of associations that might be understood through this taxonomy. For instance, when I dance a movement phrase, I might employ all of these memory frameworks; however, as a researcher, I might decide to investigate the type of attention I have to my kinaesthetic experience in the style of contemporary dance, which leads me to consider further the particularities of situational and incorporative body memory to further the investigation of the detail of more specific aspects of dancer experience, and thus memory. Koch et al. (2013) go on to clarify further distinctions of explicit and implicit memory to help understand detail within the taxonomy: Explicit memory contains single recollections or information that can be reported and discretely described (knowing that). By contrast, repeated situations or actions have merged in implicit memory, as it were, and can no longer be retrieved as single past events. They have become a tacit know-how difficult to verbalise, such as detailing how to waltz or play an instrument (knowing how). (84)

Explicit memory relates to phenomenological description and those experiences that we consciously reflect on and verbalise. Implicit memory relates more to the pre-reflective of experiences, such as the feeling of my big toe, which is there for my kinaesthetic attention even if I am not always feeling it to be there ‘consciously’. Implicit memory is also relevant to the ability to do a movement phrase ‘without thinking’ because the repetition of the choreography has embedded it into my bodily memory to allow me to not consciously reflect on the movement as I do it. The concept of a kinaesthetic mode of attention, that the dancers indicate in this study, can be linked with both explicit and implicit memory, as discussed further in the next chapter. They have acquired a disposition of attending to movement and reflecting on kinaesthetic experience in the moment that is habitual and yet they explicitly are attending to these experiences to find ‘new’ ways of moving and/or experiencing their movement. The contemporary dancers blur those distinctions between what is explicit and implicit when they are intentionally reflecting on body memories/habits/style and trying to break those memory patterns. On this point, Depraz et al.’s (2002) research on ‘becoming aware’, mainly in relation to mindfulness meditation practice, is useful because

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of the way they write in complex detail about attending to bodily experience itself—in other words, the practice of attending to pre-reflective experience. They discuss problems with putting into description what ‘becoming aware’ is like, i.e. what are its properties, how is it thought of in relation to existing paradigms, philosophies, and discourse, and they elaborate on this general description related to meditation practice. They write about how becoming aware is attending to how the mind thinks/feels and/or how the body thinks/feels; it is attending to what the mind and body are doing. In this way, attending is in part a passive task. There is openness to the attending where the metaphor of listening to what the body is doing is suitable. On the other hand, this becoming aware is not completely passive. For one, it is a skill that takes developing, discipline, and apprenticeship. It is not an arbitrary becoming aware, but becoming aware can be placed within different contexts, and thus, there are different types of becoming aware. And in this latter way then, it is a structured and active experience as much as it a kind of passivity. As with Koch et al. (2013) above, Depraz et al. propose a complexity of experiencing that is situated and also complex enough to allow us to think through the layers of consciousness in embodied skill and action. But also, this particular text on mindfulness is relevant to contemporary dance because of how the practices of mindfulness and ideas around psychological self-reflection are important to the style, as can be evidenced in reference to several sources, such as the 2018 event at Trinity Laban discussed above, Purser’s (2011) claim: ‘[…] professional dance training and practice in fact call for a very high level of awareness of and reflection on pre-reflective embodied phenomena such as practical knowledge’ (186), and a speculation from Philipa Rothfield (2019) about a relationship she perceives between a workshop she did with Buddhist meditation, Feldenkrais technique, and decentring experiences found in postmodern dance practices, such as contact improvisation. In sum, the above works also allow for increasingly complex articulations of consciousness that are useful to this study. It is only now because of where dance studies, performance studies, cognitive science, phenomenology, psychology, sociology, and philosophy are that these kinds of conceptualisations are possible. However, the discourse can still grow in relation to dancer experience and vice versa, although some of the dance studies scholars mentioned above, such as Markula, Purser, Ravn, Roche, and Rothfield, are contributing greatly to this area.

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All of these points of view are important because they help challenge a clear polarisation of the kinaesthetic and the visual for contemporary dancer experience that I take up in this book. In other words, they help address an aspect of contemporary dance experience that relates to prevailing ideologies about kinaesthetic experience—primarily the assumption that contemporary dancers do not, or should not, consider or reflect on the performative or visual result of their dancing. Or, put in another way, there has been less attention in the discourse exactly how contemporary dancers negotiate the above-historicised ideology of the kinaesthetic when dancing for an audience and being watched. A few of the chapter titles of Parviainen’s (1998) book, such as ‘Dancing for pure gaze’ and ‘The dancer’s projection and practice of the self’, infer that she considers the problem of the performative for dancers. Similarly, Legrand and Ravn (2009) summarise a group of contemporary dancers’ described experiences as multi-sensorial versus solely kinaesthetic: In their descriptions, the contemporary dancers thus constantly erode the distinction between sensing from the outside and sensing from the inside of the body. They both externalize inside sensing and internalize the external eye…the interesting point is that the intertwining of e.g. vision and proprioception reveals a fundamental aspect of the visual appearance of the body which cannot be reduced to contingent static body images: Even if one’s representation of one’s body and movements is always more or less distorted (compared to ‘objective’ measures), the visual appearance of movement is not mere contingence, in that it expresses experiential qualities which can also be experienced proprioceptively. (400–401)

Although Potter (2008) states that her essay works against ‘visual hegemony’ and that she focuses solely on the sensorial or the kinaesthetic experiences of herself and the dancers she encounters, her essay implicitly argues for an intertwining of kinaesthesia and visual self-image in dance experience. For instance, she writes: Dance students recognized this tension between internally- and externallydirected ways of knowing the human body; many told me towards the completion of their course that while they were uncertain if they ‘looked’ much different, they ‘felt’ significant changes within their bodies in comparison to the beginning of training. Teachers also recognized this

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inherent tension between directing attention inwards, towards the workings of one’s own body, and outwards, towards an audience with whom one attempts to relate. (453)

Here, Potter addresses the oscillation, or what she calls a tension between the internally and externally directed experiences of the dancers. Even though the students were unsure whether they ‘looked’ much different, their wondering about the look indicates that ‘the look’ does come up and is important to them to an extent. In addition, the ‘look’ of movement is not discussed here in isolation, but posed in relation to what the dancers ‘felt’. It is in this vein of thinking, namely about the ways that kinaesthesia and visual self-reflection oscillate in contemporary dancer experience in practice that the current research is based. This book is working precisely to question when contemporary dancer’s kinaesthetic experiences might be conceived of as internal, whole, and constructed in opposition to the visual (or indeed that the performative aspects of dance are solely kinaesthetic or visual). Instead, this book is based on the argument that kinaesthetic experiences be conceived as specific to the context in which they happen and as part of that, professional-level contemporary dancers’ kinaesthetic experiences conceived in relation to the visual, because of the situatedness of contemporary dance as a performing art. An ideological privileging of the kinaesthetic and ‘wholeness’, in contrast to the visual, which breaks ‘wholeness’, posits a negative connotation for reflecting, analysing, interpreting, and judging ‘external’ aspects of dancer experience for the dancer in certain contexts. This is a problem for a professional-level contemporary dancer who is working to improve their technique and choreography, the appearance of their movement, and perform for a teacher, choreographer, and/or an audience. There is an underexplored contradiction for a contemporary dancer between the values of the style that they incorporate and the regular confrontation of the visual, or the experience of being watched, such as in the mirror (although not confronted as frequently in contemporary dance as in other styles such as ballet), in class, rehearsal, and performance. Rarely is there an in-depth exploration of the many layers of interpreting, playing with and reflecting on the visual aspect of being a contemporary dance performer, and indeed what is distinct to performing in this style. Dance practitioners interested in integrating somatics and contemporary dance are aware of the dangers of privileging kinaesthesia:

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Although full of promises, an emphasis on proprioception is not without risk when carried too far …Feldenkrais [a somatics practice] is like a microscopic dance, unfortunately I got so interested by this internal dancing that I stopped dancing for a while. Instead of travelling into the space I kept discovering my inner landscape. (Fortin et al. 2002, 172)

However, more exploration of this issue is still warranted for contemporary dance and explores whether contemporary dancers risk carrying an ideology of the kinaesthetic ‘too far’. As stated in the previous chapter, it is only relatively recently that the complexity and inconsistencies of dancers’ engagement with visual self-reflection are being acknowledged. In particular, the elucidation of dancers’ kinaesthetic experience, which includes visual self-reflection, is needed because performing and being watched is a crucial part of being a dancer, particularly a professional-level dancer in contemporary dance.

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Schwartz, Peggy, and Murray Schwartz. 2011. The Dance Claimed Me: A Biography of Pearl Primus. New Haven: Yale University Press. Shea Murphy, Jacqueline. 2007. The People Have Never Stopped Dancing Native American Modern Dance Histories. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Sheets-Johnstone, Maxine. 1966. The Phenomenology of Dance, 1980 ed. London: Dance Books. Sheets-Johnstone, Maxine. 1990. The Roots of Thinking. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Sheets-Johnstone, Maxine. 2018. Why Kinesthesia, Tactility and Affectivity Matter: Critical and Constructive Perspectives. Body and Society 24 (4): 3–31. Shibata, Sho. 2018. Inclusive Choreography: Lucy Bennett and Stopgap Dance Company. In Contemporary Choreography, ed. J. Butterworth and L. Wildschut, 444–457. London: Routledge. Siobhan Davies Dance. 2016. Dance v Neuroscience. Discussion Panel Event 27 April, London, UK. Accessed 8 December 2018. https://youtu.be/_DXH xFCpIUA. Sklar, Deidre. 1994. Can Bodylore Be Brought to Its Senses? The Journal of American Folklore 107 (423): 9–22. Sklar, Deidre. 2000. Reprise: On Dance Ethnography. Dance Research Journal 32 (1): 70–77. Spatz, Ben. 2015. What a Body Can Do: Technique as Knowledge, Practice as Research. London: Routledge. Sperling, Matthias. 2018. A Short Introduction to ‘Neurochoreography’. Accessed on 1 December 2018. http://blog.sadlerswells.com/a-short-introd uction-to-neurochoreography-by-matthias-sperling/?fbclid=IwAR2EPlSdbk ZV9LLtr7aZ5yHqQQkb-wwPnaurZsl4bbOVYHTAvnIJj8VYqgU. Spohn, Cydney, and Sandra Spickard Prettyman. 2012. Moving Is Like Making Out: Developing Female University Dancers’ Ballet Technique and Expression Through the Use of Metaphor. Research in Dance Education 13 (1): 47–65. Srinivasan, Priya. 2007. The Bodies Beneath the Smoke or What’s Behind the Cigarette Poster: Unearthing Kinesthetic Connections in American Dance History. Discourses in Dance 4 (1): 7–48. Stoller, Paul. 1989. The Taste of Ethnographic Things: The Senses in Anthropology. Philadelphia: Univeristy of Pennsylvania Press. Thomas, Helen. 1996. Do You Want to Join the Dance? In Moving Words: Rewriting Dance, ed. G. Morris. London and New York: Routledge. Thomas, Helen. 2003. The Body, Dance and Cultural Theory. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Trinity Laban. 2018. Research Seminars & Events: Moving as a Thought Process: Studio Development and Creative Encounters. Accessed on 30 November 2018. https://www.trinitylaban.ac.uk/research/research-seminars-events.

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Valéry, Paul. 1927/1983. Philosophy of the Dance. In What Is Dance?, ed. R. Copeland and M. Cohen. New York: Oxford University Press. Wainwright, Steven P., Clare Williams, and Bryan S. Turner. 2005. Fractured Identities: Injury and the Balletic Body. In Health: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health, Illness and Medicine 9 (1):49–66. Warburton, Edward C. 2011. Of Meanings and Movements: Re-languaging Embodiment in Dance Phenomenology and Cognition. Dance Research Journal 43 (2): 65–83.

CHAPTER 3

A Kinaesthetic Mode of Attention

Introduction In this first of three theme chapters, I address the contemporary dancers’ particular type of kinaesthetic sensitivity, knowledge, and curiosity, what I refer to as a ‘kinaesthetic mode of attention’, in two ways. First, I identify and describe what a kinaesthetic mode of attention is like, in terms of how the contemporary dancers describe it as a lived experience. Second, I argue that this kinaesthetic mode of attention is, in part, a disposition and constructed by the contemporary dance habitus; yet it is also a diffuse and distributed stylistic approach to dancing that is not constructed by repetition and incorporation of movements in the same way that is argued with the concept of habitus and other movement practices. The main premise of the argument presented in this chapter is put forth in another publication (Ehrenberg 2015); however, it is crucial to review the concept of a kinaesthetic mode of attention, in order to refer to the concept in the chapters to follow. In addition, this chapter is able to expand on material that was beyond the scope of the journal article, such as how the concept came about in relation to the methodological positioning with other dance styles, and discuss the issue of habituation further. As the previous chapters address, the historicised centrality of kinaesthesia in contemporary dance discourse is evident in the literature about contemporary dance practice, its lineage, and aesthetic. Existing literature © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 S. Ehrenberg, Kinaesthesia and Visual Self-Reflection in Contemporary Dance, Cognitive Studies in Literature and Performance, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73403-9_3

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regarding kinaesthesia charts an interdisciplinary territory, particularly because kinaesthesia is related to both a physical experience—a private and personal feeling of one’s own body—and a socially constructed concept used within and beyond dance studies, including in cognitive science, philosophy, sociology, and feminist theory. In Chapter 2, I outline the growing number of dance studies scholars, many of who, at some point in their work, describe the type of kinaesthetic awareness utilised in contemporary dance practice. Nevertheless, the nuances of kinaesthetic awareness valued in contemporary dancers practice, from the dancer’s perspective, can still be further addressed to represent the breadth of this way of attending in dance, building on some of the relatively rare, but growing, existing literature. For instance, Rouhiainen (2003) describes a group of independent Finnish contemporary dancers ‘felt-sense of their bodies’ (357) and various ways that they indicate, in their practice, ‘exploring [the] body through sensing’ (331), and ‘concentrating on or centering upon the lived event of their own motion through differing perspectives’ (308). Likewise, Susanne Ravn (2009) contrasts the experiences of a group of professional contemporary dancers with those of ballet and Butoh and as such, identifies the dancers’ different lived experiences in each, indicating that contemporary dancers have a particular kinaesthetically-oriented way of attending to movement. Caroline Potter (2008) more directly specifies a ‘heightened sense of kinaesthesia’ in contemporary dance practice and what it is like, based on her experience with one year of training at a contemporary dance conservatoire in London. She indeed states, ‘developing a heightened sense of kinaesthesia (felt bodily movement) is a means of becoming socialized into the professional [contemporary] dance community’ (444). Jennifer Roche (2015, 2018) discusses the emphasis of in-the-moment experiencing and states of open attention to new movement experiences throughout her working with a group of contemporary choreographers; terms such as embodiment, sensation, and interiority flow throughout her descriptions of, and theoretical reflections on, her experiences. Quinlan (2017) argues that Gaga is a twenty-first-century trend in contemporary dance that aims to teach students skills of ‘internal negotiation’, indicating dancers’ kinaesthetic awareness throughout, but does not use the term kinaesthesia (27). The particular aspects of a ‘heightened sense in kinaesthesia’ by all accounts valued in contemporary dance, dotted across various texts, and discussed in the practice, can still be brought together more explicitly.

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In addition, the previous chapters establish this is a particular time in dance studies when this kind of inquiry is possible, and, indeed, growing. A point in dance studies that Mark Franko (2011) identifies as having a resurgence of phenomenology, after the dominance of Michel Foucault’s concept of post-humanism in the late 1960s. Building on the work of the above authors, and perspectives included across the previous chapters, this chapter provides a descriptive shape to the kinaesthetic mode of attention of a group of contemporary dancers and contrasts the contemporary dance experience with that of dancers working in other styles, namely ballet, hip hop and breaking in the fieldwork. Comprehensive description of this particular mode of attention is used to consider the function of a kinaesthetic mode of attention as part of the style of contemporary dance, in the phenomenological and sociological sense. That is, to think of kinaesthetic attention as a ‘core movement value’ of contemporary dance that distinguishes it and in turn impacts on those who train, rehearse, teach, and perform in the style (Novack 1990, 115). Explicitly describing what a kinaesthetic mode of attention is like, and specifying its uniqueness among other dance styles, will help to consider further how a contemporary dancer’s technique (and disciplining) develops and what purpose a kinaesthetic mode of attention might serve to the style. For clarity, as noted above, I refer to the shared approach of the contemporary dancers as ‘a kinaesthetic mode of attention’. This term generally refers to a mode of attending for contemporary dancers in which they predominantly focus on their kinaesthetic experiences, rather than music or a character. In general, the term refers to a mode of intentionally-directed consciousness, while dancing, which includes a number of elements, such as listening to the body’s movements, problem solving with the body, a curiosity about bodily feelings, and various types of embodied translation processes. However, this chapter precisely elaborates on this term, further describing what a ‘kinaesthetic mode of attention’ ‘is like’. The term is informed by similar terms used in the dance studies literature, such as ‘a heightened sense of kinaesthesia’ (Potter 2008, 444), the ‘pre-reflective performative body’ (Legrand 2007), ‘inhabited transcendence’ (Purser 2018), and ‘kinaesthetic sensitivity’ (Rothfield 2008). As Brandstetter (2013) summarises in writing about somatic practices, contact improvisation, contemporary dance, and kinaesthetic awareness, ‘A key concept that plays a pivotal role in nearly all texts and discourses of the above-mentioned body techniques and contact improvisation is that of attention—the double sense of attention and

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awareness, of directed attention (perception) and “noticing”’ (172). In summary of contact improvisation research, she indicates the centrality of attention which in turn suggests it to be a key part of contemporary dance practice. ‘It is remarkable that all themes and processes that occurred in the workshop were linked with the question of “attention”: attention as a sensory-kinesthetic mode of participation’ (Brandstetter 2013, 174). One term alone does not encapsulate the complexity and breadth of this aspect of contemporary dancers’ experiences when dancing; however, having one term aids clarity for communication for the reading. A kinaesthetic mode of attention is not the only mode about which the contemporary dancers discussed. Instead, it is a way of attending which often arose in the fieldwork, across several dancer interviews, from reflecting on my own practice and reviewing the dance studies literature. A kinaesthetic mode of attention stands out as a predominant mode of awareness in these UK-based contemporary dancers’ practice. Previous authors have focused on other aspects of contemporary dancer attention, such as weight (Potter 2008; Ravn 2009) suspension and release (Potter 2008), and space (Ravn 2017). Technical mastery, picking up choreography quickly, physical fitness and pain (Rouhiainen 2003) are other articulated aspects of dancers’ attention in practice. I cannot encapsulate all aspects of kinaesthetic awareness in contemporary dancer experience in this chapter, but I will expand on an important facet of it. Crucially, there is an inherent intentional problem in my use of ‘kinaesthesia’ and ‘mode of attention’. I am not using these terms together to signify that there is a fixed-mode that one can get into and the ‘secret’ to being a contemporary dancer in a direct physical way. I am not arguing that there is a ‘kinaesthetic mode of attention’ that one can train explicitly in contemporary dance per se, like you might train other dance skills such as spotting with pirouettes. Rather, I am trying to articulate that 1) kinaesthetic experience is always situated and thus my use of the term in this way expresses the kinaesthetic as a historically situated concept in a particular field, and 2) yet, the dancers express an embodied way of attending to kinaesthetic experience in the practice that moves it beyond solely being discussed as a concept or value of the practice. It cannot be kinaesthetic modes of attention, for instance, because that makes the act of attending to kinaesthetic experience the defining feature of the use of this term, whereas ‘kinaesthetic mode’ refers back to my definition of the term ‘the kinaesthetic’ in Chapter 1. The kinaesthetic is a bodily experience and a term within a discourse. Thus, on the one hand, you might

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say that a kinaesthetic mode of attention has persisted throughout modern and contemporary dance, as stated at the start of Chapter 2. However, in this chapter, I elaborate more specifically on what current practices and perspectives make it possible for me to propose something like a kinaesthetic mode of attention in relation to current practices of contemporary dance and across a small group of professional-level UK-based dancers, myself, and existing available sources. This relates to what Depraz et al. (2002) call being in a ‘prudent but daring middle ground’, between two unilateral extremes: ‘1) claiming that experience is standard, raw, pure or ineffable; 2) claiming that all our experience is always already molded or even deformed by the language we use’ (10). Or, put in another way, to address the question Karen Barad (2003) asks: ‘What is it about the materiality of bodies that makes it susceptible to the enactment of biological and historical forces simultaneously’ (809)? Although this particular way of attending foregrounds kinaesthesia, this is not to argue that contemporary dancers have greater kinaesthetic sensitivity than dancers in other styles, such as ballet and hip hop dance, a distinction also supported by Ravn (2009). My argument specifies a difference of nuance and degree of kinaesthetic attention amongst the contemporary dancers, which first came out in contrast to kinaesthetic attention in other dance styles. This chapter discusses exactly what some of those nuanced differences of kinaesthetic attention are according to the fieldwork. It is important to reiterate that I am taking the perspective of the dancer and what approach they utilise in practice, rather than describing an approach used by contemporary choreographers or dance artists, or indeed all dancers. A kinaesthetic mode of attention is conceived here, as one predominant way dancers’ approach movement as contemporary dancers, rather than as choreographers, although there is crossover, as will be addressed more directly in the next chapter. For instance, a dancer might be working with a choreographer who employs other methods, such as improvisation, scoring, Gaga, Flying Low, and Ferus Animi//Terra Nova. These choreographic approaches have their own descriptive qualities. However, the dancer might employ a kinaesthetic mode of attention while engaging with a choreographic approach. In other words, even if a kinaesthetic mode of attention is not the main focus from a choreographic perspective, it might be a part of a dancer’s perspective (which in some cases might overlap). It is one aspect of the technique

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of contemporary dance and learning, rehearsing, and performing in this style. As discussed in Chapter 1, elaboration of a kinaesthetic mode of attention for dancers follows the position that description of experience is not entirely removed from embodied experiences and that language is not conceived as separate to embodied experience in social domains. For instance, as Csordas (1994) argues: ‘language gives access to a world of experience in so far as experience comes to, or is brought to, language’ (11). However, this is not to claim that describing dance experience is entirely the same as the experience of dancing (see also Pakes 2018). But it is to be based on the idea that language and kinaesthetic experience are intricately and complexly related. To add to this, analysis and interpretations offered in this chapter include what is not said in the interviews and non-verbal communication. Writing about the specificities of kinaesthetic awareness from the dancer’s perspective can continue to extend our understanding of dance expertise in order to substantiate dancers’ unique intelligence. Indeed, Jaana Parviainen (2002) argues for more work to be done in the domain of ‘dance knowledge and our means of attaining and communicating it’ (23). Casting a spotlight on dancers’ descriptions of kinaesthetic attention used in particular dance contexts helps validate the cognitive aspects distinct to dance and dancing. Additional descriptions provide evidence for the complexity, variety, and specialised skills that dancers gain and employ in dance, in a parallel way to how other forms of knowledge are (or have been) typically, and historically, validated (Parviainen 2002; Foster 2011; Pakes 2018). This is not to claim, however, that contemporary dancers can return to a more ‘natural’ state of awareness, an ideology that has similarly been warned against for somatics discourses. Isabelle Ginot (2010) is of the persuasion that somatics doxa does ‘not pretend to restore a so-called natural or original body but rather [contributes] to the reorganization of the multiplicity and heterogeneity of that which we call the body’ (25).1 To reiterate, the research informing this chapter indicates a predominant ‘kinaesthetic mode’, on a continuum, in consideration of the style of contemporary dance. This is not to support the argument for an ideology 1 See also George (2014, 2020) who provides a genealogy of somatics and contemporary dance with specific relation to what they discuss as ‘a conceit of the natural body’ and the ‘universal-individual’.

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of wholeness however, or, as Ravn and Hansen (2013) state, that dancers can reach a ‘deeper layer of experience in a phenomenological sense’; rather, it is to ‘present an approach to creating a different experience of what the body might feel like’ in dance contexts (210).

Recruitment: ‘Exploring Kinaesthetic Awareness?’ A kinaesthetic mode of attention as a predominant mode among the contemporary dancers began to emerge during recruitment, principally conducted in London, UK. There was relatively little difficulty recruiting contemporary dancers with the idea of ‘A Dancing Self’ (my early title) and exploring kinaesthetic awareness as it relates to visual self-image; there was little need to explain in detail why this kind of exploration might be of use to the contemporary dancers’ practice.2 The contemporary dancers indicated, by their immediate understanding and interest, that they implicitly knew what I was referring to when I suggested ‘exploring a dancer’s self’ and/or exploring kinaesthetic awareness. However, by contrast, ballet, hip hop, and breaking dancers I encountered generally did not respond with familiarity or interest in my recruitment efforts with the idea of ‘a dancer’s self’ and/or exploring kinaesthetic awareness as it relates to visual self-image. What worked better for recruiting ballet dancers was the idea of ‘exploring ballet virtuosity’. Emphasis on virtuosity was instead useful in recruiting hip hop and breaking dancers, as was emphasising the use of video and the opportunity to ‘investigate

2 This finding in recruitment also supports a key argument explored by André Lepecki (2016) and how I was implicated in the values of contemporary dance from my training in the style. Lepecki argues for how the dancer self gets perpetuated in contemporary Western theatre dance practices and thus a rigorous historical exploration for why this idea of ‘A Dancing Self’ had currency in my recruitment. Lepecki argues for how Yvonne Rainer’s ‘apersonal’ approach, for instance, was an aim to go against what she perceived as a self-centred approach, such as with Cunningham and Cage’s chance method, ‘chance was the expression of a diluted authorial self […] just another version of the same old authorial self-affirmation…’ (41). Though Rainer and others have worked against/with this problem, the currency of the self prevails in contemporary dance, again, hence the currency of ‘A Dancer’s Self’ in my recruitment. As Lepecki (2016) summarises, linking presence with a ‘recrudescence of the Self’: ‘In the tradition of Western theatrical dance’s system of presence, the dancer’s presence has been experientially linked to a “powerful narcissistic capacity” of the dancer (Gil 2009, 89), which has been historically linked to the dancer’s person and to the epideictic mode as main structuring vectors of subjectivation’ (19, italics original).

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your signature style’. Neither ballet nor hip hop and breaking dancers seemed invested in kinaesthetic awareness and the exploration of it per se. However, those who did participate had enough curiosity in these ideas to be motivated to participate (although the dancers were also paid a small fee for participation). Recruitment efforts were the first indication that not all dancers value and engage with kinaesthesia in the same way, particularly at the professional level, and there was something more to untangle in this difference.

Contemporary Dancers’ ‘Kinaesthetic Mode of Attention’ In summary, kinaesthesia emerges as key to a particular way of attending in contemporary dance practice. This way of attending includes, in large part, a directing of intentionality towards one’s bodily sensations and perceptions and maintaining a particular awareness of the ways the body moves and responds to movement; a sort of listening and openness to the body and its movements in a mode of discovery. The contemporary dancers’ descriptions from the interviews, particularly descriptions of their kinaesthetic experiences of dancing, consistently indicate a predominant mode of attention towards reflective and pre-reflective bodily experiences, with attention and awareness of the environment too (e.g. the studio space, another dancer’s touch, the choreography, the music).3 Other descriptive verbs attributed to this mode of attention, evident in more detail below, are navigating, problem solving, experimenting, exploring, enmeshing, and attuning. Erdem is one of the contemporary dancers whose descriptions exemplify a kinaesthetic mode of attention, or processes of kinaesthetic discovery. For example, just after doing a movement phrase, Erdem describes her kinaesthetic experience this way:

3 By pre-reflective, I am referring to bodily experience which usually goes unnoticed, rather than being ‘unconscious’, following the position that pre-reflective experiences ‘are initially like nothing for us, and that they only enter the realm of phenomenality when subjected to a reflective process that allows us to become aware of them’ (Zahavi 2011, 9), discussed further below.

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Shantel: Ok, so can you talk about what that was like to do the first piece…kinaesthetically let’s just focus on… Erdem: To do that phrase… Shantel: The first one, yeah. Erdem: Specifically this time……um……[pause]……I think today, in my body I feel …there is a sense of……fluidity and things bleeding into every- you know…it’s a sense of thing…which is not necessarily always there in that phrase…but I think, coming from a watery feel has an effect on it……[pause]….I feel like…….the phrase… it feels fragmented for me because I haven’t done it for ages…….and so my body feels a bit fragmented at the moment in that kind of tight hips and stuff like that……so…what I’m trying to achieve…kind of doesn’t …follow through my whole body….I feel like there are sticky moments that don’t quite……I don’t quite achieve what I intend to ……….[long pause]…um……….it’s a nice sense of freedom and expansiveness, to just move in space and do whatever with a set structure……and it feels like quite a……I would say privilege, but it’s not quite the right word…. kind of, luxury, to just be able to just….move in the studio……I appreciate that………specifically [more to herself]…………yeah, I feel really….my sense of connection with the space and with the floor is quite fundamental to that phrase……I think because of the way we made it….it was very connected to the space…. but even transferring it to a different space ….this kind of sensation of a slide, a friction…openness or enclosure…within any given space….I have a reaction to that…with the piece…although I think it is quite internal…… (interview 2)

What is distinctive in Erdem’s description, related to the idea of a kinaesthetic mode of attention, is the overall sense of process and exploration expressed of her dancing experience. It is also the way in which she indicates that, while dancing, she maintains a mode of attention on what her body is doing and feeling as much as on the anticipation or imagination of her next movements. Erdem describes her experiences of the movement using exploratory and open-ended phrases, such as, ‘there is a sense of a fluidity…’ or ‘things bleeding into…’, indicating a metaphoric imagining in the moment of dancing. Her descriptions of her kinaesthetic experience suggest constant flux and continual process, both in reflection and as a way she intentionally directs her movement while dancing. Parviainen (1998) describes dance experience as ‘bodily knowledge’ in a way which resonates with Erdem’s description and a kinaesthetic

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mode of attention. Parviainen (1998) writes: ‘Listening to bodily movements and the body’s answers in a movement pattern, various dimensions emerge from the same movement’ (52). Parviainen poses dance experience as having a pattern and structure that the dancer can navigate, explore, and ‘answer’ with the body. Similarly, Erdem indicates a sense of listening to the patterns her body falls into, yet also an imagining of what her body can do in the space and in that moment, a sort of kinaesthetic problem solving which makes up her dancing experience and knowledge. This is particularly evident when Erdem talks about the sensation of ‘tight hips’ and utilising this perception to move towards more smoothness with the phrase. She comments on feeling both the space and her body as part of this—or how her body transfers different feelings into different types of spaces. She indicates an enmeshment of memories of previous spaces/feelings her body has experienced with the present perceptions of current spaces/feelings. Knowledge also implies curiosity and Erdem likewise indicates a curiosity in the moment of her dancing, exploring kinaesthetically what she feels, as well as a curiosity in continually reflecting on that kinaesthetic experience. Gabriele Brandstetter (2013) dedicates a chapter to the idea of listening in contact improvisation. Her discussion echoes Parviainen and Erdem’s expressions. Brandstetter writes, ‘[…] “listening” refers to a field of perception of the sensory that is not just limited to acoustics: it is a synaesthetic network of experiences of the body, of its internal and external states at rest and in movement. It involves awareness […]’ (164). She cites Cheryle Pallant’s (2006) description of listening in contact improvisation which reverberates with Erdem’s description above: Listening, according to contact improvisation’s metaphorical use of the word, refers to paying attention to all sensory occurrences arising from touch, from the play of weight as partners move through space, and from the event of one body encountering the presence of another. Listening refers to noticing stimuli not only within oneself but also from another. (as cited in Brandstetter 2013, 164)

Erdem, however, above suggests she listens not to another body, but ‘listens’ to choreographic imaginings, the space and, as discussed above, the patterns her body falls into. Quinlan (2017) likewise indicates that in Gaga technique students are urged to rely on ‘listening to the body and its sensations’ (32, emphasis mine).

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Descriptions from Potter (2008) add to the resonate voices alongside Erdem’s description as well. Although Potter foregrounds gravity, her descriptions also affirm the idea of a kinaesthetic mode of attention. For example, Potter (2008) writes: Phrases employed by contemporary dance instructors such as ‘melt into the floor’, ‘feel the weight of the head’, and ‘anchor the [heavy] pelvis into the ground’ prompted students to bring the body’s relationship with gravity to explicit attention. (450)

These metaphoric phrases, such as ‘melt into the floor’, are both to be sensed, or attended to kinaesthetically, and enacted by the dancers. Potter likewise provides evidence as to how contemporary dancers are instructed and learn to attend to bodily sensations by directing kinaesthetic awareness in a particular way. However, contemporary dance is not just about sensing gravity. Potter (2008) also notes that she and other students were directed to attend to ‘the centre’ and that ‘a contemporary dancer’s highly developed sense of motion’ entails a keen, yet diffuse, sensing of and enacting the differences between tension and relaxation. What is consistent is that the issue of attention to one’s own movement sensations is continually foregrounded. In different ways, Potter’s (2008) description is similar regarding the metaphors of listening and navigating the body’s movements, whether it’s listening and/or navigating the weight of the body or the centre as impetus. The basic premise is that this heightened kinaesthetic perception is continually moving at the core of contemporary dancers’ experiential dancing knowledge. To be clear, this is not sensing in a solely passive way, but moving through this sensing, as Erdem and Parviainen also support with their descriptions (see also Depraz et al. 2002). As Sklar (2000) puts it, writing about dancer experience: it is a doubled act of moving and feeling oneself moving (72). Or as Susan Klein (2010) puts it, ‘[Kinesthetics] requires a split level of consciousness: one level is doing while the other level is observing what is done. Kinesthetic awareness allows us to keep track of what we are doing with our bodies as well as how we are doing it’ (cited in Brandstetter 2013, 172–173). Rouhiainen (2003) identifies that a group of independent Finnish dancers likewise suggest that at the core of their practice is ‘a bodily knowledge or a kinaesthetic intelligence’ (319). This intelligence is similarly described as being based around the felt experience of dancing and what she refers to as ‘a reflective and imaginative process’ centred around

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kinaesthetic awareness. She refers to this kinaesthetic intelligence as ‘a detailed sense of the motional happening’ and states that the dancers’ ‘rich sense of their bodily motion’ is based on attending to their lived experience of motion (Rouhiainen 2003, 308). She alludes to the dancers’ ‘valuing a certain mode of dancing’ and signals a key part of this mode is a sensitivity to body awarenessss, or what she calls ‘the somatic state of being’ (Rouhiainen 2003, 321). One of the other dancers, Mads, particularly reiterates Rouhainen’s (2003) description of a ‘rich kinaesthetic exploration of motional happening’. He does so in discussion after his dancing experience in the interviews. Shantel: Can you describe what that movement feels like for you, some general terms, nothing right or wrong, just, sort of, how you… Mads: It feels really grounded, in a way…….it feels, when I am doing it, it feels like everything gets stretched out, from some magnetic field or something like that; so it feels like everything is pulling you out from all fours, and gravity pulls you to the floor, and something else is pulling you out from…the space…it makes you pull out through……[sighs; struggling to describe experience]…[it] pulls you into the movement, in a way, so there’s an initiating pull that makes you go…aghhh……bum bum…[he communicates a rhythm and moves at the same time as describing]….yeah…and everything is quite stretched out [stretches at same time]…[laugh]….the movement is open, really, for me, I feel really vulnerable in it, because it’s so ‘out there’….instead of, what I’m used to, which is at the end [of the phrase]…it’s more like movements that sequence close to the body…………… (interview 2)

Like Erdem, Mads expresses a unique imaginative mode of attention in his dancing experience of this phrase that includes a particularly focused sensing and responding to his kinaesthetic awareness, in a complex, highly self-reflective way. For instance, he indicates that he explores his kinaesthetic range with the movements—stretching, pulling, sensing rhythms—and uses kinaesthetic awareness as a central device to survey what he feels and imagines feeling with different aspects of the choreographic phrase. And he uses this sensing to make decisions as he performs the phrase. At another point in our discussion, Mads reinforces the ideas of selfawareness, bodily knowledge, and logic. Like Erdem, Mads’ reflective

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descriptions of his kinaesthetic experiences after dancing indicate an openended and explorative mode of attention to his body, the choreography, and the space—a mode of ‘fresh attention to sensation’, using the terms of Legrand and Ravn (2009). Mads talks also about the oscillating modes of repetition (or habits): Mads: Yeah…it feels like I am actually…not thinking about what’s the next movement or what is the next thing I have to do and how I have to do it, it’s more of….what’s around me…I need to engage with what’s…around me, and there’s so many other issues that comes in because…I’ve already….got it in my body and….trying to interpret it in my way……and then it’s the….area of……how do you engage with…what’s around you?, how do you….like…is there a place where you hit some dynamics or is there another dynamic here and there?….it’s more about the….the intention around the movement instead of the actual movement…. (interview 2)

Mads reiterates that his attention when dancing is predominantly directed to his kinaesthetic sensation and response—he indicates the importance of perceiving/feeling space; again, a type of listening to how his body responds to the space and awarenessss of how the space ‘is’, i.e. ‘what’s around me’. Mads’ description poses kinaesthetic awareness as a type of interpretative mode of translation. That is, he tries to interpret the choreography through his body, which implies a working through the body. Again, in terms of logic and knowledge, actively making kinaesthetic connections between his internal and external sensations and projections, or as he says, between ‘what is around him’ and ‘how the movement is’. However, he also states that it is about listening to the dynamic patterns his body falls into habitually and trying to bring other dynamics into the movement and being aware of those differences and how he can physically enact ‘new’ ways of moving. Mads talks about exploring where he directs his kinaesthetic attention and intentions once he has memorised the choreography. In his reflections, he indicates that while moving, he interrogates kinaesthetically the nuances and flavours of his responses to the movement and actively assesses what he just did, what he is doing, and what he wants to do. Again, there is this sense of a mode of discovery which echoes other contemporary dance-related descriptions, such as Susan Klein, ‘For me the beauty and excitement in kinesthetics is bringing a body-felt understanding of movement to consciousness. It is fine-tuning our ability to feel, on subtle levels. […] Kinesthetics is

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our tool to bring the body into a deep state of balance, to its optimal state of movement potential’ (Klein 2010 as cited in Brandstetter 2013, 171–172). Brandstetter (2013) interprets this description: ‘The associated “process of discovery,” which is able to trigger a periphrasis of fixed blockades, of postures of muscles, bones, and tissue, leads to a kinesthetically informed “internal knowing”’ (172). Dorothée Legrand and Susanne Ravn (2009) write about the idea of listening and problem solving to describe another small group of contemporary dancers’ experiences of dancing in their fieldwork. They describe this aspect of contemporary dance experience as a ‘kinaesthetic logic’, reiterating Parviainen’s (1998) analytically-framed notion of ‘bodily knowledge’, Sklar’s (2000) proposition that ‘bodies become laboratories for experimentation with kinetic details in dance contexts’ (72), and Klein’s (2010) use of the word ‘tool’ in the quote above: ‘In different ways the [contemporary] dancers describe how they “listen” to the “kinaesthetic logic” of the musculoskeletal dimension of the body to perform movement and to use movement to investigate corporeality’ (Legrand and Ravn 2009, 403). Legrand and Ravn also suggest that contemporary dance is not so much about a mastery of steps but a particular way of approaching movement and the body, which foregrounds sensation and perception and thus, proprioception. As they describe from their fieldwork: [The seven contemporary dancers’] sensing of muscles and joints are central to their descriptions of how they guide their movements. Their descriptions are in different ways related to the experience of proprioception, of gravity on body limbs and of the mechanics of the skeleton…The aim of these contemporary dancers is to investigate and develop their experience of the body in movement. They experiment with bodily sensations in order to promote fresh attention to sensations that normally stay unnoticed. The training focuses on such investigations and the repetition of movements and warm-up routines [to move] “toward greater selfawarenessss”, as one of the contemporary dancers describes. (Legrand and Ravn 2009, 398–399)

Legrand and Ravn (2009) echo the ideas of exploration in sensation, investigating a range of kinaesthetic sensations and increasing knowledge of the body by experimenting with what the body does and can do. Awareness and attention are described as central to the dancers’ experience in training and practice as well.

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Jasper, during his interview, describes his dancing experience using the metaphor of conversation between his kinaesthetic experience and the choreography, which highlight the listening and responding notions introduced above to describe a kinaesthetic mode of attention. Jasper further demonstrates Legrand and Ravn’s (2009) discussion of experimentation, particularly because of how he uses the idea of discovery in his descriptions. In the excerpt below, Jasper describes his experience, of the phrase he did in the interviews, by explaining how he helped another dancer execute the same choreographic phrase in a recent rehearsal. Jasper: …just trying to find his spine, and his weight and, just trying to, yeah, discover, like discovery of, ‘oh ok, ok! Push up the floor, ok, reach, that’s nice, ohh, I’ve got weight, gravity, and all that stuff’….really being amazed by all those discoveries… (interview 2)

Jasper mentions weight and gravity, echoing Ravn (2009) and Potter (2008) on this theme, and yet he also supports the argument for a kinaesthetic mode of attention in the way I am discussing here because of the way he encourages another dancer to explore the choreography, with a particular active perceiving of the spine and weight distribution (‘find’ where it is), and also to explore bodily responses when pushing and reaching out from the floor (and trying to be fascinated by the possibilities this acting and perceiving allow). His explanation to the dancer is useful here as he indicates that what he tells another dancer is similar to what he explores and feels when he does the phrase in the interview. Purser (2018) writes about how this ‘being in-the-moment’ is central to contemporary dance technique in her research. Purser (2018) uses the term ‘inhabited transcendence’ and defines this as a third in-between state of awarenessss that is both focused on in-the-moment experiences and future-orientedness to others, such as an audience. Though Purser does not mention kinaesthetic experience explicitly, her discussion implies that kinaesthetic experience is central to the idea of inhabited transcendence. For instance, Purser, in part, argues for the contemporary dancers’ pursuit of a feeling of authenticity with their movements, not a ‘showing off’ in the same way as other more physically virtuosic techniques (e.g. commercial dance) might feature; rather, the dancers in her fieldwork indicate a performative focus on communicating a ‘genuine’ expression of self with movement to the audience. Later, she alludes to the idea

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that this ability to ‘be in the moment’ includes attention to the kinaesthetic: ‘Rather it is the lived experience of immediate bodily presence to the world that characterises [the dancers’] expressive and communicative action on the world, their experience of transcendence’ (Purser 2018, 48). Presumably ‘lived experience of immediate bodily presence’ has kinaesthetic experience at its core for these dancers. In addition, she argues that the experience of transcendence comes out of thinking with Merleau-Ponty: ‘[…] bodily engagement in skilled activity is typically characterised by task-focussed motor-intentionality and the body can thus be a source of transcendence rather than a limitation upon it’ (Purser 2018, 48–49). Purser’s findings of contemporary dancer experience of transcendence thus align with the dancer descriptions above—about openness, a kinaesthetic logic, exploration via sensation. Jennifer Roche (2015), writing about her experience working with UK contemporary choreographer Rosemary Butcher, describes a moment when she is asked to respond to the floor, which echoes Jasper’s experiences above and also this issue of inhabited transcendence expressed by Purser in the phenomenological (Merleau-Pontian) sense. Roche (2015) argues that the challenge for dancers (and choreographers) is to move beyond cliché, habitual movement and generic dance vocabulary and that bodily response is one way of doing this, or one way she did this in her work with Butcher (35). She writes, ‘Butcher asked me to work with a different relationship to the floor […] she talked about not wanting a dance form to emerge—how this is something other than dance. That dance training prepares the body of a kind of response to the floor—a “pushing into” it to rise up from it’ (Roche 2015, 35). Butcher’s reference to dance training supports the thinking that contemporary dance trains dancers to ‘respond’ kinaesthetically, thus again the centrality of kinaesthesia to dancer experience. Roche goes on to discuss the particularities of this kinaesthetic ‘responding’ in the making of the piece. She states that Butcher did not work to set movement in the more typical way one might think of making choreography, but that Butcher ‘produced a process of becoming each time’, allowing Roche (2015) to engage and reengage with the work anew (36, emphasis original). This engaging and re-engaging implicitly reference kinaesthetic experience, because in this instance Roche is working on a solo with her own body, the floor, and choreographic instruction. Roche (2015) goes on to frame her experience with Butcher alongside Erin Manning’s (2009) idea of ‘an emerging present’ and Francisco Varela’s (1992) ‘unfolding present’. The aligning

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with these concepts by Roche (2015) implicitly points to the in-themoment-ness aspect of her dancer experience that the literature and the dancers’ referenced above do, as well: openness via kinaesthetic discovery and listening to what the body is doing (to be a part of its emerging or unfolding). Dorothee Legrand’s (2007) ‘performative pre-reflective body’ concept is useful to further investigate related to the exploration of a specialised way of focusing kinaesthetic attention indicated by the contemporary dancers, but specifically utilising the concepts of reflective and pre-reflective consciousness from phenomenology.4 Indeed, Legrand (2007) states that, with this concept, she tries to clarify, in part, the experiential perspective around a broader phenomenological question, which is: ‘what are the different kinds of experience of one’s own body as one’s own?’ (493). A kinaesthetic mode of attention is likewise interested in this question, but specifically for the case of dancers in dance contexts. In sum, Legrand’s descriptions about self-consciousness are useful to further substantiate the kinaesthetic intelligence that is unique to these dancers’ perspective and practice, even though Legrand is concerned with broader philosophical questions. Legrand’s discussion re-interprets and complicates the relationship between the pre-reflective and reflective for the case of dancers, in contrast to polarising the pre-reflective with the reflective which endorses an ideology of wholeness. Legrand (2007) describes, in part of her essay, ‘one form of bodily pre-reflective consciousness’, which is the ‘performative body’ or the pre-reflective experience of the body (in contrast to the pre-reflective experience of the world in which our body consciousness might be invisible) and uses body-expert dancers as being most concretely concerned with this type of consciousness (500).5 Legrand (2007) does not specify that she is writing about contemporary dance, but her concept resonates most with contemporary dancer descriptions in my research. …body expertise like dance is associated with a particularly sharp prereflective experience of the “performative body”. Normal non-body expert

4 See also Ravn (2008). 5 See also Barbara Montero’s (2016) Thought in Action: Expertise and the Conscious

Mind, and Shawn Gallagher’s (2005) discussion of ‘performative awarenessss’ (as cited in Legrand 2007, 501); it is beyond the scope of this chapter to address the nuances across these philosophical conceptualisations; I find Legrand’s exploration suit the purposes here.

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people do not lack it all together but there is a noticeable difference between dancers’ experience and normal people’s experience: bodily prereflective experience is “at the front” of dancers’ experience, whereas it is mostly “in the world” in normal everyday life. Specifically, dancers mostly experience their body pre-reflectively, whereas normal people in normal circumstances mostly experience the world in a bodily way. The common point between these two forms of experience is that they are both prereflective in the sense that they both imply a specific form of experience where the body is not taken as an object of identification (Legrand 2006). It is also important to underline that these two forms of bodily prereflective experience are not incompatible with each other, since the dancer experiences both. (505)

Legrand argues that expert dancers, in particular (i.e. in contrast to beginning dancers), focus attention on those experiences of the body to which most non-dancers do not attend. For example, consider the case of walking. Contemporary dancers might interrogate, in an exploration of walking in the dance studio, how the foot touches the floor, sense detailed nuances of hip movements, notice the rhythmic pattern of the arm sway as they walk, and then respond to this sensing in their movement. They precisely might interrogate those bodily experiences, sensations, perceptions, and habits that usually go ‘unnoticed’ among non-dancers, and they simultaneously imagine and anticipate other ways of walking as they walk (e.g. Reynolds 2007; Ehrenberg 2013; Bergonzoni 2017). On this issue of interrogating bodily experience, sensations, and habits, one of the dancers’, Jiles’, discussion of ‘crash to create’ is poignant. ‘Crash to create’ is a concept that Jiles introduces, in his interview, to help describe his experience with improvisation in his contemporary dance practice. He states outright that, for him, this concept implies a broader value in contemporary dance for being self-aware of movement ‘habits’ and for utilising kinaesthetic awareness to find ‘new’ ways of moving. In the excerpt below, Jiles talks about how, for him, ‘crash to create’ supports the overarching value, in the practice, of mistakes versus perfection of form. In addition, his discussion of ‘crash to create’ further supports the argument, as part of Legrand’s (2007) ‘performative pre-reflective body’ discussed above, that dancers consciously reflect on bodily habits that might otherwise go unnoticed in the case of non-dancers. Jiles: Well…yeah….I mean, in contemporary dance there is often the phrase ‘crash to create’…you know that phrase? ‘Crash to create’? […] Yeah, so, ‘crash to create’ refers to times when you’re improvising, and whatever,

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and, it’s the mistake, or the time you go off balance, for instance, that is actually the ‘creatively interesting point’, and it is how you resolve that…certainly in a lot of contact improvisation, you know, you find yourself…[pause]…obviously, you have your various habits and stuff, which you try and get away from, but, if you find yourself in a position which is awkward, and you don’t know what to do, then, that’s, sort of, a great place to be…because everything you do from that point on is going to be…creatively ‘new’ for you…and also, probably, unexpected, for the person on top, or wherever they are…or whatever, you know?…so ‘crash to create’ is…its something, you know, the mistakes are, sort of, heralded within contemporary dance, and because there is a freedom, in terms of form, you can do whatever, twitch around and stuff, you know, all that weird stuff… there’s not, you’re not striving for….a perfection of form… (interview 1)6

Jiles discussion of crash to create not only indicates the values of challenging habits and mistakes as part of the practice, but also, that to challenge habits and mistakes a dancer needs to be kinaesthetically aware, open, and ‘listen’, through feeling, to ‘hear’ those habitual and/or surprising moments. Jiles thus supports the argument for another way that pursuit of a particular kinaesthetic sensitivity and intelligence—a kinaesthetic mode of attention—is considered virtuosic in contemporary dance because this ability to listen and be open to the mistakes and surprises of the body while dancing (improvising in this case) is ‘heralded’ as a way to find unexpected ways of moving in contemporary dance versus attending to the mastery of a particular set vocabulary or, as he states, ‘perfection of form’. Jiles’ description recalls what Roche (2015) states about her work as a choreographer and dancer with a number of high-profile contemporary 6 A similar approach was expressed by choreographer William Forsythe, in a pre-show talk at Sadler’s Wells, London, UK, in February 2011, in which he said he has a desire to interrupt and disrupt habits with his dancers when he is making new work. Forsythe said that he does not want the dancers to mimic him when creating a new work, but to originate their own choreography in a way that should surprise even the dancers themselves. For instance, for the piece ‘I don’t believe in outer space’, he said he asked dancers to go home and physically trace the layout of their apartments blindfolded and then bring that material back into the studio. Then, he used the material they generated to reconstruct the piece. The practice of using dancer-generated material is not unique to Forsythe and Jiles’ ‘crash to create’. Several of the dancers, such as Willow, also talked about their experience with this type of choreographic approach (see also Roche 2011, 2018).

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choreographers: ‘The choreographic endeavour to break habitual movement patterns in the creation period of a dance piece, in order to find new movement forms, entails coaxing the dancer through thresholds of conditioned movement’ (53). Roche aligns this breaking of habitual movement patterns with Reynolds’ (2007) term ‘kinaesthetic imagination’, where Reynolds argues that this challenging of habits can be conceived as ‘both a response and an active resistance to constraining patterns’ (1). This attempt to break habits is a means to try to open the dancer up, to move away from logic, ‘thinking’, and habits, to a kind of letting go into the process and trying to catch oneself out of being, as Roche (2015) quotes of choreographer Rebecca Hilton, ‘a slave to the aesthetic’ (53). Or later in relation to her work with choreographer Jodi Melnick, Roche (2015) argues that this value of breaking habits is the value in the process to find new, fresh, original material. Roche (2015) highlights this part of Melnick’s process and choreographing a solo for Roche, ‘I was really concerned […] that Jenny had an experience, that I have had as a performer’ ‘[that] every movement […] is happening to the body for the first time’ (62). Roche references throughout her book the value that breaking habits has for contemporary dance. As another example, Roche (2015) writes about how John Jasperse continually threw at her different stimuli simultaneously to ‘unfix’ her movement and stability, putting her into a ‘new experiential terrain’ (50). Or Roche (2015) discusses Sara Rudner’s development of a teaching ethos ‘that embeds a sense of aliveness and autonomy even with dance students in training’ (77); this sense of aliveness and autonomy aims to keep students focused on developing a ‘dynamic type of engagement with a body-in-fluxbody-in-flux’ and, again, not to repeat habitual movement patterns. In these examples, there is an implicit value of an ever-present-always-surprising-oneself mode of physicality where kinaesthesia is at the centre. Legrand (2007) notes that it is not that dancers interrogate prereflective experience and movement habits all the time—dancers also have the capacity to ‘experience the world in a bodily way’, as she states, and let bodily actions ‘fall to the background’. For instance, a dancer can walk down a street and not have to think about how to walk as well. Also, a dancer can learn choreography so well that attention to the movement becomes less necessary. For instance, a dancer can perform complex choreography and think about a shopping list at the same time. Legrand points out that the dancers’ attention to pre-reflective experience is not completely alien to the non-dancer experience, but is a specialised skill

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that grows out of dance experience. What is most relevant to my discussion of a kinaesthetic mode of attention is Legrand’s suggestion that, in dancing contexts (although possibly at other sporadic times in ‘everyday’ life too), dancers often experience their body pre-reflectively, which means the bodily, kinaesthetic, experience is foregrounded to the dancers’ consciousness, in the way the dancers and authors cited above express. Another important aspect of Legrand’s (2007) analysis, to touch on briefly related to a kinaesthetic mode of attention in contemporary dance, is her point that following Merleau-Ponty’s (1945) discussion of two hands touching is that the touching hand is conceived as representing pre-reflective consciousness and, as such, not about the ‘objective’ hand being touched, but the ‘subjective’ hand which is experiencing touching the other hand. Thus, directing consciousness to pre-reflectively conscious bodily experiences directs attention more towards the subjective end of the consciousness spectrum. She writes, ‘At [the pre-reflective] level, the body is not an object of experience, it is the subject of experience and it is experienced as such’ (Legrand 2007, 499). This argument for directing attention towards the subjective end of the consciousness spectrum, related to a kinaesthetic mode of attention, is problematised in performing situations where the dancer is simultaneously aware of being the object of an audience’s gaze (Bleeker 2008; Ehrenberg 2012, 2013; Purser 2018), as will be discussed in subsequent chapters. Nevertheless, for the purposes here, it is important to emphasise that Legrand’s point supports the potential underlying purpose of directing attention to the pre-reflective for contemporary dancers, which would be to reinforce subjectivity and thus agency for dancers in their experiences in the practice. As stated, a kinaesthetic mode of attention is important to help propose, and further consider, the various modes of conscious awareness that are employed in dance experience. However, how might a kinaesthetic mode of attention vary among different contemporary styles, such as release or Graham, or across dance styles such as ballet and be conceived as a continuum across dance forms? Although speculative, I want to address this question briefly below. Legrand’s (2007) concept of the transparent body is useful to expand on the idea of a kinaesthetic mode of attention on a continuum (504).7

7 With thanks to Susanne Ravn for suggesting this reference.

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Legrand theorises the transparent body as a bodily state of being between sensing and acting in the world. It is bodily consciousness that is between the body being invisible (e.g. I attend to picking up my cup and do not have to think about every move to do so) and the body being opaque, or the object of conscious attention (e.g. I attend to every movement I make as I pick up the cup). The body is transparent in the sense that one looks through it to the world. At this level, pre-reflective bodily experience is precisely the experience of the world as given through the ‘transparent body’. The latter is not perceived as an object but experienced specifically as a subject perceiving and acting, that is, as in the world (Legrand, 2007, 504). For example, the transparent body can refer to those times when dancers have gained a certain capacity to consciously reflect on prereflective experience of very complex choreographic movement and thus be able to attend to elements such as emotion, subtle dynamic variation, individual expression, in addition to ‘simply’ doing the movement and/or perceiving what the body is doing, as Mads indicates in his description above. It is to clarify a spectrum of experiencing and acting, related to a kinaesthetic mode of attention, which refers to times when dancers are in a ‘sharp and physical state’ (Hermans 2003 as cited in Legrand 2007, 501). This discussion also recalls the complexity of attention proposed by Depraz et al. (2002), as mentioned in Chapter 1. They discuss meditation practices wherein a person is reflecting on pre-reflective experience while they might also be trying to ‘let go‘ of whatever they are noticing in that experience. They also argue that a phenomenological approach includes a reflection on the lived experience at the same time as experiencing. Therefore, they distinguish the double-act or unique approach in these instances of lived experience in which reflection is not separate from lived experience in-the-moment. Rather, reflection and/or taking on a kind of ‘otherness’ of in-the-moment experience is one of the ways that lived experience includes reflection, thus complicating pre-reflective consciousness in certain contexts once we begin to investigate lived experiences in more depth. Purser’s (2018) research likewise aligns ‘inhabited transcendence’ with when the contemporary dancers discuss ‘being in your body’ and ‘being in the moment’, particularly relevant to what dancer Willow discusses below. Contemporary dancer Louisa, from Purser’s research, for instance, describes ‘being in your body’ this way: ‘You have to get to a point

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where you, you’re in your own body and you’re, you’re not doing shapes, you’re finding out where it comes from’ (46). As noted above, Purser (2018) finds the contemporary dancers interviewed place great value on inhabited transcendence in their praxis, what she defines as a third in-between state ‘characterised by elements of transcendence, such as feelings of freedom, communicative efficacy and self-determination, and by elements traditionally associated with immanence, such as the subjective experience of a groundedness in and attentional focus on the here-and-now’ (p 48). Willow supports the argument for how the kinaesthetic mode of attention might sit on a continuum, related to Legrand’s (2007) transparent body, Depraz et al.’s (2002) ‘becoming aware’, and Purser’s (2018) inhabited transcendence, in her discussion of ‘inhabiting movement’, ‘filling movement out’, and ‘really living movement’. Willow: Yeah. I guess that’s what I meant when I was referring to something being filled out before, it is that, it’s becoming…threedimensional or more dimensional because it has extra layers. Shantel: It’s almost to me, in your explanation, and our talking about this phrase, and performance, that in performance, you can direct your kinaesthesia; you have some, you know, where you want to expand it, where you want to take it, and then you shift it to another place in your body, and when you are learning, it’s more that you’re being led in some ways…or… Willow: Mmhmm. Yeah, I have a hard time immediately inhabiting something. For instance, I need to know where my body is going before I can fill it out. Before I can…really, ‘live in it’. If, that makes sense? Probably not. But, yeah, I think that has been a part of it, where I am finally starting to feel a little bit comfortable in our technique classes, because I am getting the general flow of the class, and the teachers’ style, and all those things, under my belt, so, now I feel like, ‘ok, I’m kind of getting this way of moving, I can add a little bit there…’; it feels more like, I’m inhabiting that movement, instead of just trying to imitate a movement, if that makes sense? (interview 2)

The point Willow reiterates with her description is that there are varying aspects in which a kinaesthetic mode of attention can be employed and felt as working optimally for Willow ‘as a subject perceiving and acting, that is, as in-the-world’ (Legrand, 2007, 504). In the above description, Willow indicates that she first needs to feel a certain competency with a

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style of moving before feeling more exploratory in her mode of kinaesthetic attention, which then allows her to feel like she can ‘inhabit’ and ‘really live’ movements. In other words, Willow indicates that there is a need for a certain level of feeling of mastery, with the particular kinematic competency of the movement, environment, and/or choreography, for example, which impacts on her employing a kinaesthetic mode of attention to varying degrees. This anecdote from Willow further supports the argument, related also to Jiles above, which is that part of the pursuit of virtuosity for contemporary dancers is not so much a perfection of outward form; rather, there is a kind of feeling of virtuosity, which comes with a certain level of movement familiarity. That is, a certain level of movement competency can allow a feeling of kinaesthetic explorative attention when dancing.8 My use of the term virtuosity is in relation to the dancers’ feeling of competence, since a kinaesthetic mode of attention cannot be conceived in the same way as other types of technical virtuosity seen from the audience perspective (e.g. spectacular flips and jumps). The dancers’ accounts above indicate a repeated kinaesthetic mode of attention, which indicates helping them feel virtuosic in the technique of contemporary dance— for instance, Willow’s description above about her experience of ‘really living’ the movement. There is another kind of feeling of virtuosity a dancer might experience when she executes a difficult technical move or step. However, this is not the same kind of feeling of virtuosity I am suggesting here, though there might be similarities in the feeling of selfcompetency and feeling a kind of ‘mastery’ with a certain way of moving. This is not to suggest this mode of attention is a technique on its own either. As mentioned in the introduction, this chapter aims to elaborate on one important part of dancing intelligence. I am trying to establish how the research suggests a kinaesthetic mode of attention as crucial to the dancers’ experience of this technique and writing about it more explicitly to help better understand what it ‘is like’ to more concretely value and critique this aspect of contemporary dancer knowledge and experience in the practice. Purser (2018) similarly supports this claim from interviews

8 It is interesting to note that Sklar (2000) writes about ‘dropping down into the body’, redirecting, as she says, Csordas’ phrase ‘somatic mode of attention’, which has some resonance with Willow’s descriptions here as well (72). In addition, Purser (2018) discusses how contemporary dancers’ descriptions of ‘being in the body’ relate to levels of competency of the choreography.

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with contemporary dancers. She argues for how dancers describe ‘the importance of staying focussed on or immersed in the immediate context of the movement’ and that failure to sense the movement, instead of ‘making shapes’, ‘detracts from the communicative experience of dance’ (47), indicating how central this way of attending is for the dancers in her research. She argues that the contemporary dancers’ descriptions indicate that ‘[…] the real expertise of dance is in the ability to have an immediate and ‘sincere’ experience of the ‘essence’ of the movement as an end in itself’ (47, emphasis mine). I explore further below the issue of motivating structures with these descriptions. At this point, it is important to distinguish that the dancers indicate a kinaesthetic mode of attention which has a variety of application in the practice, but that is not to then mistaken a kinaesthetic mode of attention as a fixed graspable form of knowing as might be the case for memorising text or, indeed, memorising choreography. At this point, I also hope that a ‘kinaesthetic mode of attention’, which the contemporary dancers indicate, has a descriptive shape. The above excerpts are meant to give a sense of what this mode of kinaesthetic attention, particular to the contemporary dancers interviewed, ‘is like’ and how these UK-based dancers were echoing other descriptions in the discourse. The descriptions below (including descriptions from dancers working predominantly in other dance styles) will continue to give more shape to what a kinaesthetic mode of attention ‘is like’. There is a broader function to this way of attending in contemporary dance, which is related to a particular valuing of the kinaesthetic, as discussed in Chapter 2. I reserve for the next chapter a dissection of contemporary dance practice and values, and how and why dancers might develop and nurture this way of attending.

A Kinaesthetic Mode of Attention by Contrast The kinaesthetic mode of attention indicated by the contemporary dancers did not emerge in isolation; something particular about kinaesthetic awareness in contemporary dance stood out in the interviews with the dancers interviewed working predominantly in ballet, hip hop, and breaking. Emil, a highly skilled ballet dancer with the Royal Ballet in London, UK, is one dancer who provides a prime contrast to the contemporary dancers’ descriptions in the fieldwork. When I ask him in the interviews

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to talk about his kinaesthetic experiences after doing a ballet movement sequence, he responds in a distinctly different way to the contemporary dancers. Shantel: […] can you just describe in your best way, what that movement feels like for you. Emil: Hmmm. Shantel: And if you need to walk through… Emil: Um……this would be like a combination I would do in class…um….so this is the kind of thing I-……sorry out of breath….[…] um…I don’t know how I would….describe it but….it’s a sort of a……um….small jump….you know not too small, not too big….sort of medium…so……it’s kind of not too hard because you’re….using two legs, through most of it…you know you’re not jumping off of….one leg or lunging or….just one leg……um……. the steps I chose are kind of….easy because its stuff that you can help with your body….where you put your weight, will help you jump, up and down, you see…um…….I don’t know, feels nice because there’s a bit that moves…to the side and that’s nice, I need to cover….a bit of ground. (interview 1)

There are a number of unsaid, non-verbal responses from Emil which should be noted because they ‘said’ just as much. For instance, there are long pauses (marked by ellipses), which suggest that what I ask Emil to do is not a practice of describing or thinking about dancing which comes quickly to him or is particularly familiar. In contrast, when I ask Erdem and Mads to talk about what their movement kinaesthetically feels like they do not take much time to consider what I mean, indicating we share assumptions and ways of talking about kinaesthetic experience which Emil and I do not. Emil literally says he does not know how he would describe the movement in the way that I am asking him to and goes on to foreground the description of what he was doing, rather than what he was feeling or attending to kinaesthetically. The point I am highlighting is how the context can, as much as the movement itself, impact on the dancer and their kinaesthetic descriptions. It is a way of thinking beyond the movement itself to the broader social context, or thinking about dancer perception from a different angle, to come to understand the distinction of a kinaesthetic mode of attention that reflects values in the practice. It is important to briefly re-visit the issue of language and how I am implicated in the dancers’ different descriptions in this part of the fieldwork.

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Emil is a highly contemplative and intelligent reflector about feelings and experiences. Emil is likewise a highly technically skilled, articulate, and beautiful ballet dancer. Thus, there is a distinction to Emil’s reply to my question about the context and interrogating kinaesthetic experience related to his described dancing experiences. Emil suggests, as do the other ballet dancers interviewed, that this mode of exploring movement, foregrounding kinaesthetic awareness (in the ways described above), is not a dominant one for him, at least not in the same way it is for the contemporary dancer interviews. While this is not surprising in itself per se, it is interesting to then consider why this is the case, and how the contemporary dancers have come to have the descriptions of kinaesthetic experience that they do. In the interview, I probe a bit further to find out whether different metaphoric language might apply, or if his response changes if I frame the question differently. Shantel: mmm….um….if you give some adjectives to it, what do you think you describe it, you know if you see a painting and you, well that’s looking, but um…..maybe um…I don’t know say I was doing adagio and I feel like its gooey or something like that Emil: uh-huh [long pause; scrunching face] Shantel: does that fit? Emil: Um…….I’d say springy? You know, sort of bounding Shantel: You’re feeling [overlap] Emil: So [does a small jump to show it]. (interview 1)

Emil’s responses to this further questioning, in particular his puzzled look, again, suggest this way of thinking and talking about movement is not ‘normal’ to the way he frames his dancing experience in this context. The style-specific assumptions of my concept of the kinaesthetic and his experience in the same type of discourse are evidently frustrated when he answers by doing the movement again. He seems to be indicating between the lines: ‘it’s in the movement, the movement is enough, it’s a jump, it’s bouncy, and it’s fairly straightforward’!9 9 There are a number of different values in ballet that might be argued to impact on Emil’s response to my questions. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to consider, to the full extent, those values that also impact on ballet dancers’ experiences. However, one can contrast my discussion here with works by Markula and Clark (2018) and Aalten (2004), for instance, which offer comparative value distinctions.

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The hip hop and breaking dancers interviewed also indicate a difference with a kinaesthetic mode of attention. The following interaction with Candace, after doing her chosen movement phrase, is one example: Shantel: […] can you talk about if you were, so you know some of this is about kinaesthetic feeling, like can you try and describe, it’s probably going to take a while, but try and describe how some of the…like the chest popping, and…what that feels like for you… Candace: Feels like….um…………. Shantel: So, if you had to teach me how to do it, say I didn’t really know…how would you start talking to me about how I could do it like you Candace: Ok but now I might do the real teacher talk (interview 2).

Similar to Emil, I sense a difference in asking Candace about kinaesthetic awareness early on in the interviews. As the ellipses indicate, Candace pauses for a long time after my question about ‘what that [movement] feels like for you’. I ask about how she might teach the phrase as a way to try to facilitate description, in thinking that re-approaching the topic might help, although to her ‘teacher talk’ is something quite specific. The point is that Candace indicates, even as ‘teacher talk’, the description of her experience of dancing seems distinctly frustrated from my questioning about what dancing feels like. Candace: Ok…well usually what I explain, to my students, is…you know, it’s about isolating your body, so for example my strength is really this part [indicates her ribs]…you know I can really isolate this in bits Shantel: From your chest to your hips Candace: Yeah…so…I start with doing exercises where you actually split your body in 3 parts, actually 4…you’ve got 1, which is moving shoulders…2, which is moving chest..then there is all of this, that is like your core…and then there is your hips….because otherwise if you move…like if you split your body in 2 parts…if you split it here you can start moving your hips and your chest…so you start doing circle…but if you split it in 3, 1-2-3…you can move all your chest, without moving the rest…if that makes sense?…so we do a lot of exercises around that. … (interview 2)

Candace’s description indicates attention to focus on body sections and breaking the movement into physical parts, with emphasis on how to do the movement, rather than internal and kinaesthetic exploration. Echoing

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Emil, Candace describes her experience of the movement in terms of the physical mastery and execution. In contrast to Erdem and Mads, Candace does not suggest how to kinaesthetically attend to the subtle nuances of how the body responds to splitting one’s body into parts.10 It is important to restate, as discussed in Chapter 1, that dancers’ experiences between different dance styles are complex, particularly because dancers often have experience in multiple styles. For instance, Candace has experience with contemporary dance as well. She provides the following metaphor to describe her movement at another point in her interview, where she describes working with a contemporary choreographer for a time. Candace: Um……ok…I think when I’m dancing what I feel a little bit is, you know those […] balls on a rope […]…and then when you pull one ball, doonkShantel: Oh yeah yeah on a string Candace: Yeah. I think that’s a bit what the body roll feels like. You know like one ball…you swing it, doonk the other ball, does that make sense, so when you’re…[…] one part that moves….it sends like a link to another one and then….does that make sense? (interview 2)

Candace’s teaching experience (and the skill of describing movement) also helps her articulate her experience of a body roll in a particular way. I want to re-emphasise that these two descriptions from Emil and Candace are not evidence that the movement they did was simple or easy, or again that their dancing does not have its own kinaesthetic properties and intelligence. These interview excerpts do not represent all of Emil’s or Candace’s dancing experiences, but one angle on their descriptions and experiences. However, what is noteworthy in this contrast from the fieldwork is how it highlights my assumptions about kinaesthetic attention from a contemporary dance perspective and how reflections on a shared (or not) language revealed this theme in the interviews. What this contrast 10 As above, values within the contexts of hip hop and breaking dance styles also impact on Candace’s descriptions and there is a wealth of scholarship emerging in this area. For instance, Rosemarie A. Roberts (2013) discusses hip hop dance pedagogy, providing focused analysis on this style, including methods of transmission and how one ‘reads’ this dance form. Naomi Bragin (2014) offers another perspective of dancers’ kinaesthetic experience of Waacking/Punking. Thomas DeFrantz (2014) discusses a wide range of hip hop and breaking corporealities, moving with Bourdieu’s writings on habitus.

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in descriptions from the fieldwork, from dancers working predominantly in ballet, hip hop, and breaking styles, indicates is that which is potentially unique to the contemporary dance context and hence, indicates that there are principles and structures in contemporary dance that support the argument for a shared valuing, development, and nurturing of a kinaesthetic mode of attention for the contemporary dancers. Roche (2015) and Rothfield (2008) discuss their experiences, while working with two contemporary choreographers, explicitly in contrast to their experience of classical ballet, which brings another set of dancerperspective contrasts related to the idea of a kinaesthetic mode of attention in contemporary dance. Roche writes about ‘the myriad negotiations’ she engages in working with contemporary dance choreographers such as Rosemary Butcher and Liz Roche. She explicitly aligns her experience with Rothfield’s (2008) writings about working with choreographer Russell Dumas. Rothfield (2008) argues, from her experience, that dancers need to be open and responsive to ever-changing performative environments. She states that Dumas, for instance, cultivates dancers to be ‘available’ and ‘adaptive’, which is different for her and her experience of performing classical ballet, which she argues is about making subtle adaptations with highly defined movement vocabulary. Roche picks up on this idea of being ‘available’ and ‘adaptive’ with her own experience of contemporary dance, also in contrast to her experience of classical ballet. What distinguishes the difference for them, then, between working across the two different styles, is this element of surprise or being ‘ready’ to find ‘new’ ways of moving, echoing the ‘crash to create’ idea from Jiles above. Roche (2015) likewise indicates that in contemporary dance one is often trying to stay ‘in the moment’ and/or find unstable, uneasy, and non-habitual places of being physically. The centrality of kinaesthetic experience to this openness, surprise, and breaking of habits, though not always stated, is key. This kind of approach to movement requires a particular experienced attending to kinaesthetic awareness, which includes a familiarity and skill of reflecting on pre-reflective experience in a specific way. Roche (2015) writes: ‘By oscillating between stability and change, [contemporary] dancers demonstrate an intensified ability to repeatedly incorporate and integrate new motor skills that are imprinted on the central nervous system’ (97). One thing that is shared across the contemporary dancer descriptions is a repeated approach to movement. Roche (2015) indeed goes on to argue that dancers form corporeal maps in different choreographic

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contexts, recalling the mapping description discussed by Markula and Silk (2011) in Chapter 1. The forming of these maps is the process of mixing together new motor skills, choreographic instruction, and strategies, which then make up a ‘plan’ that the dancer can adhere to in performance. However, and crucially for my point, Roche (2015) writes that this plan is ‘located in body sensation’, ‘internalised choreographic instructions’, and anchored into the body’s tissues (my emphasis). All of these terms point to kinaesthetic experience at the centre. A focus on kinaesthetic experience allows for the perspective, for the contemporary dancer, of both a stable dancing identity, that becomes embedded from a practice of continuing to approach movement in this way, and an identity that is purposefully also continually destabilised, because of values and practices such as trying to attend to unpredictable in-the-moment experience, ‘crash to create’, and/or attend to pre-reflective experience.

A Disposition of Contemporary Dancers’ Habitus How might we address the argument one might raise, which is whether it is simply that the choreography in contemporary dance makes this way of attending possible, and even inevitable? How might the social context, as much as the movement itself, impact on the dancer and kinaesthetic experiences? These questions address the broader function to this way of attending in contemporary dance, which relates to a particular valuing of the kinaesthetic as an incorporated sociality of the culture of contemporary dance. Delineating the shared practices and values of contemporary dance, as it relates to a kinaesthetic mode of attention, is thinking about contemporary dance as a type of culture in the way Kealiinohomoku (1970/2001) argues for ballet as a form of ethnic dance and Novack (1990) argues for ballet and contact improvisation. One of Novack’s main premises is that there are shared practices, language, and behaviours in ballet and contact improvisation, which distinguish them and affect the people practising them. Novak’s argument in part follows Marcel Mauss’ (1992) ideas of techniques of the body and also follows a premise of Bourdieu’s concept of habitus. Bourdieu’s (1980/1990) habitus argues that social contexts, such as the training and working environments of contemporary dance, have ‘[systems] of cognitive and motivating structures’ and ‘procedures to follow’, which impact on persons’ behaviour (53). As Crossley (2001a)

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interprets: ‘… dispositions and forms of competence are acquired in structured social contexts whose pattern, purpose, and underlying principles they incorporate as both an inclination and a modus operandi’ (83). The premise is that people in part incorporate dispositions, or ways of behaving, from their social context to the extent that it can go unnoticed, even if these dispositions become fundamental to who they are, what they do, and indeed, how they move. However, as Cynthia Jean Cohen Bull (1988/2001) writes in another publication, conceiving of dancers’ incorporation of a dance style (as a type of culture) ‘is not to say that dancers conspicuously plan these changes; like all participants in a culture (to paraphrase Marx), they make their own dances, but within a set of rules they do not always personally create’ (412). Bourdieu (1980/1990) uses a game analogy to express his idea of habitus. With this analogy, he argues that social contexts (or fields) have a game-like structure ‘played’ by the people living and/or working in those fields. He argues that social contexts, like games, have rules that are learned and incorporated by the players in order to play the game. That is, there are distinct norms to every social field or context (the game) and only if people incorporate these norms and logic will they be able to live and work in these social fields (or ‘play the game’). For the case of dancers, they must ‘incorporate within their corporeal schema’ those stakes, patterns, and logic of the practices they work in to feel and be considered competent in them. Crossley (2001b) provides a useful description of the artist, using Bourdieu’s game analogy, for which the dancer can easily be substituted: Each field, like a distinct game, has its own norms and logic; a specific ‘point’ and stakes, which players must incorporate within their corporeal schema if they are to play. To liken fields to games is to invite sociologists to explore and discover the unique configurations of norms, stakes, patterns and logic that comprise each one…to discern…the sense at work within the hurly burly of practice. (96–97)

One of these stakes in contemporary dance is the particular type of kinaesthetic mode of attention described above. This stake is confirmed when it is found to be distinct to contemporary dance; for instance, a kinaesthetic mode of attention is not potentially ‘at stake’ in ballet, or at least not predominantly, although there are other practitioners working against the ongoing clarity of this distinction (e.g. Jackson 2005).

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What Bourdieu’s idea of habitus allows is for us to think about how a seemingly private internal bodily experience, such as a contemporary dancer’s focused attention on their kinaesthetic experiences when dancing, is tied to a larger social context. Or put another way, how certain norms, patterns, and logic affect dancers’ embodied ways of being in the practice (and/or because of the practice). As Morris (2006) writes: Bourdieu’s…concept of bodily theorizing is important for a social analysis of dance because it makes it possible to see the social…as embedded in the practice of dance, in the dancers‘ comportment and the steps they do…and in how dancers are trained and developed. (xxv–xxvi)

The kinaesthetic mode of attention employed by the contemporary dancers can thus be conceptualised as one of the dispositions and forms of know-how that make up contemporary dance as a dance style and distinguish it as such. The dancers, as agents of this practice, take on this disposition to be expert and work in contemporary dance but in and by their practice, dancers maintain this feature in the field. The disposition to attend to the body in a ‘kinaesthetic mode’ has come about because of a particular learned way of attending to dancing in this context. By incorporating the structures, or procedures, pattern, purpose, and underlying principles upheld in the practice of contemporary dance, the dancers have acquired this certain way of attending to their dancing, and they have taken it on as their own. However, the suggestion of ‘motivating structures’ brings up the problem about what purpose, on a broader scale, this kinaesthetic mode of attention is serving the contemporary dancers. What is it about this way of attending kinaesthetically that appeals to contemporary dancers and makes it what is important to them about dance? This way of attending kinaesthetically is crucial to the dancers valuing the kinaesthetic and thus also valuing issues of individual creativity, openness of form, dancer agency, and feeling over visual display; or, as dancer Erdem expresses in her interview, the value of ‘connecting to yourself and your emotional and physical expression’, but in a particular stylistic way. A kinaesthetic mode of attention not only fits what the dancers need to do to be able to work and be professionals in the field, it also fulfils some fundamental beliefs about dance and the dancers’ function in the world. Unpicking the practices and values of contemporary dance helps clarify what function this mode might serve. This will be at issue in the following chapters.

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A Habituated Mode of Attending Kinaesthetically? Conceiving of a kinaesthetic mode of attention as a ‘modus operandi’ is complex considering that contemporary dance is not a codified form in the sense of movement vocabulary (Crossley 2001a, b). In other words, a point of departure from Bourdieu’s concept of habitus is that the contemporary dancers’ kinaesthetic mode of attention is neither incorporated via repetition of a set movement vocabulary, nor through making movements habitual in the same way that it can be argued might be the case for ballet, or indeed other physical expertise, such as football (Crossley 2001a) or weightlifting (Chow 2019).11 Instead, might a kinaesthetic mode of attention become a habitual way of attending to movement and thus conceived as integral to the contemporary dance habitus in these terms? Rather than conceiving of a kinaesthetic mode of attention as ‘below the level of consciousness’, it seems to be a way of attending which can be conceived as part of contemporary dancers’ pre-reflective and reflective consciousness. As noted above, pre-reflective consciousness is defined as ‘an intrinsic feature of what is conscious and of what might enter into our reflective realm’ (Ravn 2010, 28, emphasis mine), and pre-reflective experiences are defined as ‘initially like nothing for us, and…only enter the realm of phenomenality when subjected to a reflective process that allows us to become aware of them’ (Zahavi 2011, 9). Repetition is part of how this mode of attending becomes ingrained, nurtured, and developed, because the dancers seem to repeatedly use, and are taught and encouraged to use, it in the practice of contemporary dance. The issue of repetition, and learning a mode of attention through training, again recalls the discussion of Depraz et al.’s (2002) research on ‘becoming aware’. Depraz et al. (2002) argue that ‘becoming aware’ in mindfulness meditation is both a passive attending and a skill that is learned and developed in meditation practice. They argue there are different types of ‘becoming aware’, and that it is both a structured, active experience and a kind of passivity and open attending. Likewise, Koch et al.’s (2013) taxonomy of bodily memory identifies a matrix of possibilities when thinking about consciousness in embodied activity. The 11 Though there is more to explore with other parts of Chow’s (2019) research in future, e.g. ‘The lived experience of repetition, in training, while building towards what might be thought of as uniformity – the ability to consistently repeat a movement – actually produces difference and variation, since kinaesthetic experience is rarely uniform day to day, moment to moment, body to body’ (153).

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concept of a kinaesthetic mode of attention that the dancers indicate in this study can be linked with Koch et al.’s (2013) discussion of both explicit and implicit memory. That is, the dancers indicate having acquired a disposition of attending to movement and reflecting on kinaesthetic experience in-the-moment that is habitual, to an extent, and yet they explicitly are also attending to these experiences to find ‘new’ ways of moving and/or experiencing their movement. The contemporary dancers blur those distinctions between what is explicit and implicit when they are intentionally reflecting on implicit body memories/habits/style and also trying to explicitly break those implicit memory patterns.12 The issue of movement habituation is a spectrum in contemporary dance and care must be taken for over-generalising the complex terrain of contemporary dance and thus, contemporary dancer experience(s). For instance, some contemporary dance choreography crosses over to a predominantly physical virtuosity with some works (e.g. Akram Khan, Wayne McGregor, Mark Morris, Jasmin Vardimon, Pina Bausch) and some hip hop dancers crossover to the kinaesthetic (e.g. Candace above) ends of this spectrum. Indeed, as noted above, there is of course a degree of movement habituation and external physicalised virtuosity demanded in contemporary dance. For instance, in one of the quotes from Mads above, he talks about how he has learned the choreography, repeated it so many times in rehearsal, that now he barely has to think about the sequence of the steps anymore, or as he says, ‘I’ve already got it in my body’. In contemporary dance, there is a degree of complicated, even seemingly impossible, movements, similar to those found in gymnastics or in other movement skills which similarly require ‘expert’ flexibility and/or strength. Hence, it is not to state that contemporary dance is completely void of movement repetition, and/or physical virtuosity, but to explore how, based on the dancer interviews and descriptions that inform this research, there is an emphasis on repetition coming from a diffuse philosophy of moving. This aligns with discussion in the discourse, such as Reynolds (2007) writing about retraining dancers’ ways of walking as a basic starting point of contemporary technique, and thus, how contemporary technique might aim to train dancers’ movement at the most mundane level. This re-training of something as seemingly simple as walking is 12 For a more on the issue of kinaesthetic memory, in addition to these references, see also Sheets-Johnstone (2012). See also Rothfield (2019).

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often, in principle, to get rid of the old habitual way of moving and to let the new ‘contemporary dance’ way of moving, valued by that technique, grow and flourish. In the case of Martha Graham, this retraining through walking was so that the dancers would learn, and make habitual, an emphasis on a ‘downward thrust’ (Reynolds 2007, 191). Similarly, I remember training in the Hanya Holm techniques during my BFA at Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University, and ‘simply’ walking across the studio for hours. My professor and previous assistant to Holm, Claudia Gitelman, continually cued us how to embody this certain way of walking with a downward thrust, just as Reynolds describes, and also a lift through the centre, an open chest, and with a weighted earth-bound yet forward-moving sense to it. Doing this walk over and over in my training began to reshape my way of moving at a very basic level and was crucial groundwork in my training to move ‘as a contemporary dancer’. Values diffused in this training were about grounding into the earth, suspension and release, and learning how to embody different types of energies with movement, even with movement that was very basic and familiar (i.e. walking). Or we can look at how Roche (2015) describes her ‘transition’ from classical ballet to contemporary dance in relation to falling. She states that the only way she could achieve an ‘intentional’ fall in contemporary dance was to close her eyes and ‘lose control’ (87). She states that because of her classical ballet training, she did not know how to ‘fall instinctively’ in her earlier encounters with contemporary dance and so she says she ‘forced [herself] to fall through creating a kind of sensory blackout’ (2015, 87). She alludes to this ‘sensory blackout’ leading her to embody a more diffuse approach, as discussed above, instead of a directed sense of movement experience via set movement vocabulary repetition: ‘Ballet had taught me to drive the changes in my body and this awareness [needed in contemporary dance] took many years to cultivate to the point that it felt natural’ (2015, 87). Roche supports the argument that contemporary dance requires, nurtures, and develops a way of attending that takes years to cultivate, thus train, make habitual, and make seemingly ‘natural’ as she says, as a way of approaching movement, as a kind of disposition and habitual way of approaching dancing. To clarify, the distinction I am making is that a kinaesthetic mode of attention is exploring how contemporary dance training and practice nurture and develop something like a kinaesthetic mode of attention to such an extent that it becomes a ‘modus operandi’, a way of attending to movement which has, in part, become habitual. But, I am not exploring

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how this becomes automatic via repeated codified vocabulary. It is also argued that contemporary dancers share a certain style of moving (across all iterations), such as giving a particular weightedness to movement (Ravn 2010) or moving with a suspension and release (Potter 2008), or the importance of breath (Karreman 2017). Or one might look to Rudulf Laban’s movement categorisations and choreological studies as a way of classifying movements and demarcating the aesthetic of contemporary dance. However, as noted above, I am not focusing on the specific ways of moving, or vocabulary, which comprise contemporary dance, or disputing these explorations either. It is both/and; my focus is on how the style ‘wash[es] over the entire dance’ in contrast to looking at the details of the vocabulary (Foster 1986, 91). Croce’s (2015) discussion of Wittgenstein’s rule-following and Bourdieu’s habitus is useful to clarify the subtle distinction, and how habitus is useful as part of a methodological tool of analysis of social conditions.13 In sum, Croce (2015) argues that the core aspect of Wittgenstein’s rule-following, which intrigued Bourdieu, was that, ‘[…] taking into account the nontransparency of rules at both a first-level and a secondlevel perspective is a crucial stepping-stone for a sound methodological approach to social action’ (337). Bourdieu was more concerned with second-level perspective with habitus, Croce argues, thus a methodological concern for how the researcher identifies patterns in a social context. Croce (2015) argues that habitus is a ‘[…] conceptual [device] that urge the theorist to adopt a specific attitude to practices, one that historicizes current performances and reads them against the background of past ones’ (341). Thus, habitus, as a lens, invites one to interpret (either in relation to an other and/or of herself) regularities not as unreflexive patterns of behaviour but ‘ongoing negotiations that ratify and naturalize a specific interpretation of them’ (Croce 2015, 341). Another reason for clarification is because, as discussed above, a kinaesthetic mode of attention in contemporary dance is a mode used by dancers to interrogate their own movement habits and question, physically and philosophically, their own individual ways of moving—a means to intentionally explore their unique ways of moving, which can also ‘fall below the level of consciousness’. As Legrand (2007) argues with 13 Croce (2015) also addresses some of the critiques of habitus which align with those in dance studies and other fields (e.g. Crossley) cited, such as how habitus does not, by itself, properly account for agency and reflection by the subject.

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the performative pre-reflective body concept, the dancers indicate that they direct their intentionality, or kinaesthetic awareness, towards prereflective consciousness, or those qualities of their movements that usually fall ‘below the level of consciousness’. This aspect of a kinaesthetic mode of attention makes the issue of habit, and thus habitus, especially tricky. Because, on the one hand, the dancers are indicating a habitual way of directing attention, mostly towards their kinaesthetic awareness, on the other hand, this way of attending is precisely to interrogate their habitual ways of moving, as one might interrogate habitual thinking patterns in meditation (Depraz et al. 2002). One does not need to exclude the other; it is a complexity of dancing experience that can be unpicked further as others have done, and I also try to do here. What is useful to note at this point is how the triangulation of the UK-based dancers interviewed, dance experiences expressed in available sources, and my own experiences indicate that a key part of the virtuosity in contemporary dance performance lies in the ability to be kinaesthetically sensitive. What aspects of the practice are feeding this development of a kinaesthetic mode of attention in contemporary dance, if it is not via making certain movement habitual, as Bourdieu theorises with habitus? In other words, if we agree that practices within social contexts have a distinguishable logic that impacts on individual behaviour, what are some of the principles and structures in the style which develop and nurture this overarching approach? The next chapter will address these questions.

Conclusion This chapter explores one of the themes which emerged from the interviews, which was that the contemporary dancers had a particular way of attending kinaesthetically to their movement which the ballet, hip hop, and breaking dancers did not share to the same extent. Using the lens of habitus, this chapter explores the potential for a kinaesthetic mode of attention as a type of disposition, which the contemporary dancers incorporate by training and working in the practice. This chapter gives a descriptive shape to a kinaesthetic mode of attention expressed by the contemporary dancers. The contemporary dancers indicate that their specific way of attending kinaesthetically is precisely to interrogate habits and there is a virtuosity in their particular, trained, kinaesthetic sensitivity. While, on the one hand, the contemporary dancers’ way of attending can be conceived as an

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acquired disposition that is a habitual mode, it simultaneously challenges the idea that it is made habitual in the same way as habit is conceived in other styles and bodily practices. This chapter explicitly works towards one of the main purposes of this research, which is to add to the discourse the ways that dancers’ kinaesthetic experience is highly complex and multi-layered (i.e. not only internally-directed attention). Subsequently, this chapter provides other angles from which dance practitioners (i.e. students, artists, teachers) can think about their self-relations in practice. Conceiving of dancer’s kinaesthetic awareness in dance practice in this way, can help dancers explore how what is valued in different dance contexts, might have a significant impact on how they individually (and seemingly privately) approach and feel their dancing. Dancers’ kinaesthetic experience can be conceived as both a private internal experience—no one can feel what an individual dancer feels—and yet, this seemingly private personal experience can simultaneously be affected and shaped according to outside contextual factors. As mentioned in the introduction, this chapter relies on the premise proposed by Csordas (1993) of the concept of ‘somatic modes of attention’, which is that: ‘to attend to a bodily sensation is not to attend to the body as an isolated object, but to attend to the body’s situation in the world’ (138). In this way, the contemporary dancers’ kinaesthetic mode of attention is a particular way of being situated in the style of contemporary dance, which has its own principles, practices, language, and values. The next chapter will continue with this premise and outline key practices and values of contemporary dance, as a social context, which make it distinct and thus nurture, structure, and encourage these dancers, training and working in contemporary dance, to develop and incorporate this particular kinaesthetic mode of attention. The next chapter will more explicitly explore how and for what reasons a kinaesthetic mode of attention is, or becomes, valuable for these contemporary dancers.

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Ehrenberg, Shantel. 2015. A Kinesthetic Mode of Attention in Contemporary Dance Practice. Dance Research Journal 47 (2): 43–61. Foster, Susan Leigh. 1986. Reading Dancing: Bodies and Subjects in Contemporary American Dance. Berkeley: University of California Press. Foster, Susan Leigh. 2011. Choreographing Empathy: Kinesthesia in Performance. New York: Routledge. Franko, Mark. 2011. Editor’s Note: What Is Dead and What Is Alive in Dance Phenomenology? Dance Research Journal 43 (2): 1–4. Gallagher, Shaun. 2005. How the Body Shapes the Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press. George, Doran. 2014. A Conceit of the Natural Body: The Universal-Individual in Somatic Dance Training. PhD diss, Culture and Performance, University of California, Los Angeles. George, Doran. 2020. The Natural Body in Somatics Dance Training. Ed. S.L. Foster. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ginot, Isabelle. 2010. From Shusterman’s Somaesthetics to a Radical Epistemology of Somatics. Dance Research Journal 42 (1): 12–29. Jackson, Jennifer. 2005. My Dance and the Ideal Body: Looking at Ballet Practice from the Inside Out. Research in Dance Education 6 (1/2): 25–40. Karreman, Laura. 2017. The Motion Capture Imaginary: Digital Renderings of Dance Knowledge. PhD diss, Faculty of Arts and Philosophy, Ghent University. Kealiinohomoku, Joann. 1970/2001. An Anthropologist Looks at Dance as a Form of Ethnic Dance. In Moving History/Dancing Cultures: A Dance History Reader, ed. A. Dils and A. C. Albright. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press. Koch, Sabine, Christine Caldwell, and Thomas Fuchs. 2013. On Body Memory and Embodied Therapy. Body, Movement and Dance in Psychotherapy 8 (2): 82–94. Legrand, Dorothée. 2007. Pre-reflective Self-Consciousness: On Being Bodily in the World. Janus Head, Special Issue: the Situated Body 9 (1): 493–519. Legrand, Dorothée, and Susanne Ravn. 2009. Perceiving Subjectivity in Bodily Movement: The Case of Dancers. Phenomenology and Cognitive Science 8: 389–408. Lepecki, André. 2016. Singularities: Dance in the Age of Performance. London: Routledge. Manning, Erin. 2009. Relationscapes: Movement, Art, Philosophy. Cambridge: MIT Press. Markula, P., and M. Silk. 2011. Qualitative Research for Physical Culture. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Markula, Pirkko, and Marianne I. Clark. 2018. The Evolving Feminine Ballet Body. Edmonton, AB: University of Alberta Press.

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Mauss, Marcel. 1992. Techniques of the Body. In Incorporations: Zone 6, ed. J. Crary and S. Kwinter. New York: Urzone. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 1945. Phenomenology of Perception. Translated by C. Smith. London and New York: Routledge. Montero, Barbara Gail. 2016. Thought in Action: Expertise and the Conscious Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Morris, Gay. 2006. A Game for Dancers. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press. Novack, Cynthia J. 1990. Sharing the Dance: Contact Improvisation and American Culture. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press. Pakes, Anna. 2018. Knowing Through Dance-Making: Choreography, Practical Knowledge and Practice as Research (revised edition). In Contemporary Choreography: A Critical Reader, ed. J. Butterworth and L. Wildschut. London: Routledge. Pallant, Cheryl. 2006. Contact Improvisation: An Introduction to a Vitalizing Dance Form. Jefferson, NC: McFarland. Parviainen, Jaana. 1998. Bodies Moving and Moved. Tampere: Tampere University Press. Parviainen, Jaana. 2002. Bodily Knowledge: Epistemological Reflections on Dance. Dance Research Journal 34 (1): 11–26. Potter, Caroline. 2008. Sense of Motion, Senses of Self: Becoming a Dancer. Ethnos 73 (4): 444–465. Purser, Aimie. 2018. ‘Being in Your Body’ and ‘Being in the Moment’: The Dancing Body-Subject and Inhabited Transcendence. Journal of the Philosophy of Sport 45 (1): 37–52. Quinlan, Meghan. 2017. Gaga as Metatechnique: Negotiating Choreography, Improvisation, and Technique in a Neoliberal Dance Market. Dance Research Journal 49 (2): 26–43. Ravn, Susanne. 2008. The Pre-reflective Performative Body of Dancers. 9th International NOfOD Conference Proceedings, edited by L. Rouhiainen, 139–144. University of Tampere, Finland. Ravn, Susanne. 2009. Sensing Movement, Living Spaces: An Investigation of Movement Based on the Lived Experience of 13 Professional Dancers. Saarbrücken, Germany: VDM Verlag. Ravn, Susanne. 2010. Sensing Weight in Movement. Journal of Dance & Somatic Practices 2 (1): 21–34. Ravn, Susanne. 2017. Dancing Practices: Seeing and Sensing the Moving Body. Body & Society 23 (2): 57–82. Ravn, Susanne, and Helle Ploug Hansen. 2013. How to Explore Dancers’ Sense Experiences? A Study of How Multi-sited Fieldwork and Phenomenology Can Be Combined. Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health 5 (2): 196– 213. Reynolds, Dee. 2007. Rhythmic Subjects. Hampshire: Dance Books.

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Roberts, Rosemarie A. 2013. How Do We Quote Black and Brown Bodies? Critical Reflections on Theorizing and Analyzing Embodiments. Qualitative Inquiry 19 (4): 280–287. Roche, Jennifer. 2011. Embodying Multiplicity: The Independent Contemporary Dancer’s Moving Identity. Research in Dance Education 12 (2): 105–118. Roche, Jennifer. 2015. Multiplicity, Embodiment and the Contemporary Dancer: Moving Identities. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Roche, Jennifer. 2018. Dancing Strategies and Moving Identities: The Contributions Independent Contemporary Dancers Make to the Choreographic Process. In Contemporary Choreography, ed. Jo Butterworth and L. Wildschut, 150–164. Oxon: Routledge. Rothfield, Philipa. 2008. Feeling Feelings, the Work of Russell Dumas Through Whitehead’s Process and Reality. Inflexions 2. Accessed 8 December 2018. http://www.inflexions.org/n2_rothfieldhtml.html. Rothfield, Philipa. 2019. Keynote. In Body of Knowledge: Art and Embodied Cognition. Melbourne, Australia: Deakin University. https://blogs.deakin. edu.au/bok2019/keynotes/. Rouhiainen, Leena. 2003. Living Transformative Lives: Finnish Freelance Dance Artists Brought into Dialogue with Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology. Helsinki: Acta Scenica, Theatre Academy. Sklar, Deidre. 2000. Reprise: On Dance Ethnography. Dance Research Journal 32 (1): 70–77. Varela, Francisco. 1992. The Reenchantment of the Concrete. In Incorporations, ed. Jonathan Crary and Sanford Kwinter, 320–339. New York: Zone 6. Zahavi, Dan. 2011. Varieties of Reflection. Journal of Consciousness Studies 18 (2): 9–19.

CHAPTER 4

Practices and Values Which Develop and Nurture a Kinaesthetic Mode of Attention

Introduction As summarised in the previous chapter, Bourdieu argues, as a central premise for his concept of habitus, that social contexts have ‘[systems] of cognitive and motivating structures’ and ‘procedures to follow’, which impact on people’s behaviour (1980/1990, 53). He argues that there are structures to social contexts, and logic to the practices within them, which can impact on people’s behaviour. …my whole effort aims at explaining, via the notion of habitus for instance, how it is that behaviour (economic or other) takes the form of sequences that are objectively guided towards a certain end...the habitus, a system of predispositions [are] acquired through a relationship to a certain field…. (Bourdieu 1987/1990, 90)

In sum, people do not just take on ways of physically behaving randomly, mechanistically, or without will; rather, people become enmeshed in social contexts and collectively incorporate certain values that make up, and are important to, that context. People acquire dispositions, including physical bodily practices and ways of being, because they have learned, and are impelled, to do so to maintain a position within that context, or are motivated towards certain ends established as important to that context. As Jenkins (1992) summarises: ‘… the habitus disposes actors to do certain things, it provides a basis for the generation of practices. Practices are © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 S. Ehrenberg, Kinaesthesia and Visual Self-Reflection in Contemporary Dance, Cognitive Studies in Literature and Performance, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73403-9_4

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produced in and by the encounter between the habitus and its dispositions’ (78). In turn, practices and values produce, and maintain, fields with which people have relationships via their physical dispositions. Or as Wainwright et al. (2005) summarise: …our social practices as agents are usually the result of various habitual schemas and dispositions (habitus), combined with various types of resources (capital) that we have accrued. These forms of capital are then activated by certain structured social conditions (field) that they both belong to, and reproduce and modify. (62–63)

As discussed in the previous chapter, Bourdieu asserts that the structure of social contexts or fields can be viewed as a game, according to rules, stakes, and values. Just as a game can be dissected for its rules, stakes, and values, so too can social contexts be dissected for their rules, stakes, and values. As Crossley (2001b, 101) describes: ‘Each field, like a distinct game, has its own norms and logic; a specific “point” and stakes which players must incorporate within their corporeal schema if they are to play’. Players in a game become disposed to behave in certain ways because they want to play the game, just as people in social contexts behave in certain ways because they want to play in that field and want to ‘win’ within it in a similar way. A similar logic applies if someone wants to fit within another culture as an expatriate, they too might want to learn the rules of conduct and over time, become skilled at embodying the rules, stakes, and values of the other culture to fit in (or ‘play’). Croce (2015) provides further methodological clarification of habitus as methodological tool on this point, ‘An analysis of habitus […] contributes to understanding that the different fields constituting the social domain emerge as crystallized negotiations meant to establish what counts as “the natural” and “the normal,” that is, as a correct and adequate conduct within them’ (342). The field of contemporary dance can also be conceived as a social context, which has pattern, purpose, and underlying principles, many of which can be conceived to contribute to developing and incorporating a kinaesthetic mode of attention. The previous chapter shows that a kinaesthetic mode of attention is shared and has descriptive shape, and is, to an extent, habitual as a way of approaching movement in the style. But what might be the rules, stakes, and values specific to contemporary dancers in the fieldwork which suggest development and nurturing of this mode of kinaesthetic attention as key to their ‘game’ of contemporary dance?

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The literature featured thus far, particularly those that share in the discussions of something like a kinaesthetic mode of attention (e.g. Rouhiainen 2003; Potter 2008; Ravn 2009, 2010, 2017; Ravn and Hansen 2013; Brandstetter 2013b; Roche 2015; Purser 2018a, 2018b;) support the argument for shared particularities of attending in the practice. This approach to movement foregrounds bodily in-the-moment experiencing, values getting beyond habit, open discovery modes of movement exploration, repetition of not only movements but of ways of approaching and executing movement. The bringing together of these resources, and finding their similarities, reveals a pattern, but might also lead to historicising of this as particular to contemporary dance aesthetics of this current time, particularly in the UK where the majority of the fieldwork took place. In addition, the accumulated and shared discourse to date supports the argument for how dance studies, as well as other fields such as sociology and phenomenology, are in a place to bring together these embodied ways of knowing, in ways that were not possible in relation to dancers’ experiences in modern and contemporary dance before now. We do not have the range of contextualisation of what Duncan dancers experienced, for instance, or Graham or Cunningham dancers, to the same extent, to be able to do that analysis; we do not have that kind of complexity of other types of kinaesthetic modes of attending in contemporary dance historically that we do today. This chapter helps to contribute to understanding dance experience complexity, alongside the above authors; but it does so by presenting how the kinaesthetic mode of attention relates to a set of cultural practices and values that seem particular to contemporary dance in the current moment. Put in another way, if dance styles are social contexts which are structured, to an extent, then this chapter outlines some of those structures—specific patterns, purposes, and underlying principles—which develop and nurture a kinaesthetic mode of attention in this time. The premise is that there are identifiable patterns, purposes, and principles found in the field of dance (more precisely current contemporary dance practices), which help shape the interviewed, read about, and my own contemporary dance bodily dispositions and one of these dispositions is a kinaesthetic mode of attention. As noted in the previous chapter, Bull (1988/2001) conceives of dancers’ incorporation of a dance style (as a type of culture); however, she clarifies that this ‘is not to say that dancers conspicuously plan these changes; like all participants in a culture (to paraphrase Marx), they make

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their own dances, but within a set of rules they do not always personally create’ (412). Depraz et. al. (2002), in discussing ‘becoming aware’ in relation to meditation practice, do not discuss the concept of habitus following Bourdieu; however, their discussion of training, and building of fine habits of attention via training, is useful to touch on again since it expands on the above discussion of habitus related to embodied practice. They argue that ‘becoming aware’ is a practice; therefore, it takes work and it is trained (99, original emphasis). However, they distinguish that, with meditation, becoming aware is learned ‘on the job’ as they say, or through experience, much like the kinaesthetic mode of attention I describe in the previous chapter. A kinaesthetic mode of attention, like the skill of reduction discussed by Depraz et al. (2002), is not a birthright but needs to be built up by expertise acquired step-by-step (99). And again, like their discussion of reduction, the experience is available to anyone, but, ‘you have to work at it, […] there are degrees of expertise which condition the possibility of access to certain aspects of subjective experience that, without them, would remain inaccessible’ (100). They thus support the argument for how introspection is trained; for instance, there are differences in the types of introspection found across mediation, psychology, and indeed dance practice. A few key texts in dance studies, also discussed in the previous chapters, are particularly crucial to the thinking underpinning this chapter. Although these texts do not explicitly cite Bourdieu, I find they implicitly advocate the application of the above premise to dance contexts, which is that dancers’ experiences are in part constructed in and by specifiable dance practices and values (Foster refers to them as ‘features’, ‘metaphors’, or ‘tropes’) of the dance styles within which they train and work. Cynthia Novack’s (1990) text Sharing the Dance outlines the practices and ‘core movement values’ of contact improvisation and argues that contact improvisation is a type of ‘dancing culture’, and thus a specific social context, which impacts on those who train, rehearse, teach, and perform in the style. She argues that dancers of contact improvisation eschew certain values upheld in the field, primarily identified by their engagement, physical commitment, shared exercises, language, and bodily dispositions (115). Susan Foster (1997), in her essay Dancing Bodies, likewise argues that ‘key features of [several Western theatre dance] techniques’ reinforce certain principles of each dance style and subsequently impact on dancers’ training and bodily knowing in each (241). She argues

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that training practices create the type of dancer that is valued in that style. Similarly to Novack, Foster (1997) suggests that each dance style has institutionalised practices, and thus values, which impact on dancers’ behaviour and experience and help ‘connect the dancing body to its aesthetic project’ (252). For instance, she argues that: ‘The restrained successive movements of Graham’s contraction and release build a sinewy, tensile, dynamic body that symbolizes a self full of turbulent feelings and the struggle inherent in expressing those feelings’ (252) and that practices like this for students of Graham introduces them ‘to the set of metaphors out of which their own perceived and ideal bodies come to be constructed’ (253). However, I also heed the criticisms of ‘disciplining the body’, voiced by dance scholars, such as Gardner (2007) and Morris (2006). I identify in this chapter that in contemporary dance in particular, dancers are often asked to improvise and choreograph and thus engage in (and value) interpersonal relations in the choreographic process. Interpersonal relations in practice instil a sense of agency for the dancers and advocates that they can be at times de-centred in relation to the fixed roles of choreographer and dancer (Gardner 2007). I similarly focus on kinaesthesia and kinaesthetic descriptions to address the materiality of the dancers’ bodies and their sense of agency, rather than reading their bodies solely in terms of texts and discipline (Morris 2006). As discussed in Chapter 1, it is important to identify the practices and values which develop and nurture a kinaesthetic mode of attention because these identifications can more concretely help dancers, pedagogues, and those working in other fields such as cognitive science, philosophy, and sociology understand how dancers might come to incorporate a way of attending. Doing so specifically argues for the ways that kinaesthesia is socially implicated for the case of dancers, as much as kinaesthesia is also a physiological, personal, and private aspect of dancing experience. Identifying these values demystifies dancers’ kinaesthetic perceptions. As Croce (2015) argues: […] the social theorist comes into play with her theoretical devices (like the habitus ) that accentuate the issue of temporality and tease out the relationship between past and current accounts of practices. […] how the schemes of perception that led to the production of past accounts of a practice affect and/or constrain current ones. Only the examination of the specific nature of the different fields, in conjunction with the study

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of the strategies employed by the agents therein and of the lexicon that they adopt to provide accounts of what they do, allows deciphering the relationship between competing accounts. (342)

This chapter serves as a kind of deconstruction of current contemporary dance practices. These identifications can address the social aspects of the practice within which dancers are disciplined and yet, question those very social aspects because contemporary dance values a questioning of disciplinary practices. It is applying the thinking which Morris (2006) summarises of Bourdieu’s critique of the artists of nineteenth-century French Modernism: ‘even as they ridiculed [the bourgeois] and battled against it, they could not completely sever their ties from it. Some part of them still yearned for acceptance’ (xvi). These identifications serve as a potential point of resistance within the field for contemporary dancers as well (e.g. do we want to think of other ways to approach training, technique, artistry, and positioning in the field?). This chapter is one response to a problem Roche (2015) raises in her book, related to working with several contemporary choreographers: ‘how dancers operating within the contemporary dance milieu might experience themselves as agents while being subject to the instabilities of a career path that is built on, often, random connections with choreographers and is difficult to intentionally direct’ (52). The centrality of kinaesthetic experience, and the practices and values that nurture this centrality, discussed further below, is one of the central features of the practice that might help anchor dancers or at least help them ‘find ground’, even if only at times, with an ever-shifting practice also rich in multiplicity, instability, and unpredictable-ness. In addition, it might help to be aware and further explore contemporary dance’s ongoing resistence(s) to its own institutionalisation (e.g. Diehl 2018; George 2014, 2020). The practices of somatics, improvisation, and choreography are presented below as key features to the contemporary dancers’ developing and nurturing a kinaesthetic mode of attention. Educational practices impacting on contemporary dance contexts are discussed, likewise, for the importance in developing and maintaining a kinaesthetic mode of attention. A demand for contemporary dancers to be versatile, along with the value and demand of versatility, is presented as it necessitates a kinaesthetic mode of attention. The values of freedom and mutual feelings between dancer and audience are highlighted for the ways that they too

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function towards the dancers’ acquisition and development of a kinaesthetic mode of attention. I acknowledge, as Quinlan (2017) points out in relation to Gaga, that many approaches in contemporary dance blur the lines between what is understood as somatics, improvisation, choreography, and other sub-sections of this chapter (28). Nevertheless, the practices and values are outlined to explore what some of the dominant practices in contemporary dance are which support the argument for the development of a kinaesthetic mode of attention, summarised in the previous chapter. It is beyond the scope of this work to encapsulate all practices and values in contemporary dance and also critique how they are practised. It is hoped this research is read alongside existing research, as discussed in the previous chapters, and future research will continue to address this. As stated, one significant aspect of contemporary dance practice, and developing and maintaining a kinaesthetic mode of attention, is the incorporation of somatics.

Somatic Practices A number of somatic practices, and their integration within dance training, foster dancers incorporating, and thus valuing, a kinaesthetic mode of attention.1 As discussed in Chapter 2, dance and somatics have developed increasingly in tandem since the 1960s. As Eddy (2009) points out, many of the 2nd generation somatic pioneers were predominantly dancers (7). George (2014) argues, in summary, that twentieth-century contemporary dancers revolutionised their training under the influence of somatics and ‘by the end of the twentieth century, [somatics-informed contemporary dance training] had found its way in the worlds most venerable dance education programs’ (ii). Mangione (1993) likewise contends: ‘Somatics and the [post]modern dance are linked. Both movements were born of the same time and possibly for many of the same reasons’ (27 as cited in Eddy 2009, 9–10). Fortin, Long, and Lord (2002) report that: ‘Many authors have claimed that somatics influences dance teaching , choreography, performance, dance medicine and more recently epistemology’ (156). Eddy (2009) evidences the slow merging of dance and somatics in her 1 A synopsis of the many practices, which fall under the umbrella term ‘somatics’ can be found in Eddy (2009).

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discussion of Irmgard Bartenieff . Bartenieff fled to the USA from Nazi Germany in 1936 and as a dancer and practitioner of ‘Bindewebegung Massage’ (aka ‘Connective Tissue Therapy’) ‘did not feel welcome in the [New York] dance community, which was then dominated by Martha Graham’ (15). But ‘in time’, Eddy reports, Bartenieff was working with some dancers and, today, Bartenieff Fundamentals is part of a complex history of contemporary dancer training, particularly release technique (see also George 2014, 2020). Further evidence to the linking of these two practices, Roche (2015) discusses Release Technique and the somatic practice of Ideokinesis and likewise notes the history of UK contemporary dance in the 1970s and other somatic practices such as Body-Mind Centring and the Alexander Technique (6). The kinaesthetic mode of attention described in the previous chapter is similar to the explorative process of awareness and ‘listening to the body’ written about with somatic practices. The crossovers can be read, for instance, in the International and Somatic Movement Education and Therapy Association’s (ISMETA) ‘scope of practice’, in which they state that the ‘purpose of somatic movement education and therapy is to enhance human processes of psychophysical awareness and functioning’. According to their descriptions, the value of somatics is learning to ‘focus on the body’, ‘refine perceptual, kinaesthetic, proprioceptive, and interoceptive sensitivity’, and ‘recognize habitual patterns’ (ISMETA 2003 as cited in Eddy 2009, 8). These stated values are similar to those expressed in contemporary dance related to a kinaesthetic mode of attention, such as listening to the body’s sensations or problem solving with the body, as discussed in the previous chapter (Schupp 2017). As Gabriele Brandstetter (2013a) writes in discussion of somatic practices (such as Body-Mind Centring, ‘ideokinesis’, and Feldenkrais), contemporary dance, and contact improvisation: Here, as in all works of kinesthetically oriented practices, it is not a “beautiful” bodily form resulting from a course of training dictated by an esthetic style or movement code that is the guiding principle of the idea of dance and choreography, but the question posed by Linda Rabin: “What would dance performance be like if dancers drew from this essential source?” (172)

Rabin’s ‘essential source’ refers back to Brandstetter’s description of ‘kinaesthetic orientation’, which refers to practices not focused on the

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aesthetic or movement code of dance and choreography, therefore, referring to practices not foregrounding the look of movement. Or as Whatley et al. (2009) distinguish in their editorial of the first issue of the Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices: These [dance and somatic] practices are characterized by a return to the self and sensorial awareness, to cultivate a new consciousness of bodily movement; hence the term ‘soma’ (of the body) and ‘somatic’ as a reference to the first-person perception, and the balance between first and third-person perspective, which underpins these experiential practices. (3)

The emphasis on ‘sensorial awareness’ and ‘a new consciousness of bodily movement’, or a kinaesthetic mode of attention, is at the heart of their description of both of these practices. George (2014) addresses this point in greater scope, including summarising their experience of somatic practices and contemporary dance education, predominantly in Europe: ‘In contrast with emulating a visible kinetic form, teachers argued that in a receptive state, students recover functional movement patterns related to evolutionary development’ (3). Many somatic practitioners hold that refining one’s kinaesthetic sense is central to the skill of the practice, central to the task of exploring an imagined ‘internal landscape’, which is easily likened to (if not the same as) the approach in contemporary dance, particularly that of release technique. Fortin, Warwick, Long, and Lord (2002) contend, for instance, ‘One way somatic education links with dance education is through learning to direct attention to movement on an incrementally fine level’ (166). In the dance classroom, inclusion of somatics practices is used to emphasise the importance of physical sensations versus reproduction of forms (Ginot 2010;George 2014, 2020). Or as Ravn (2009) describes, ‘in general [aiming] at initiating a process of movement re-education of the dancer...[Somatics] tend to emphasise constant exploration by avoiding repetition of specific exercises as is characteristic for training in ballet , Graham, and Limon techniques’ (102).2 The two disciplines—contemporary dance and somatics—sometimes employ similar movement exercises, which further links the ways they

2 There is overlap here with Legrand’s (2007) pre-reflective performative body and dancers focusing intention on pre-reflective consciousness, as discussed in the previous chapter.

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define and value kinaesthetic awareness (Schupp 2017). For instance, yoga postures are used by some dance teachers in contemporary classes, although the links between the two practices are not always explicitly acknowledged. It was while taking a yoga class in New York City in the 1990s, after my university dance training, that I realised I had done many yoga positions throughout my contemporary dance training. I realised I had done the position of ‘downward dog’ (an upside-down V position made with the arms and the legs pushing against the floor) countless times before but only until I attended a yoga class did I learn of the connection.3

Improvisation Being ‘in tune’ with one’s own particular way of moving is important in somatics as much as it is in improvisation, another commonly found practice in contemporary dance . Improvisation, alongside somatics (or possibly because of), began to proliferate in contemporary dance around the 1960s and 1970s.4 All dance requires some kind of improvisational practice (Bresnahan 2014). The type of improvisation I mean here is a particular practice in which dancers are moving purposefully to find their own way of moving in the moment, develop a unique movement vocabulary, challenge habits, and finding movement that comes out of foregrounding physical impetus versus pre-set movement vocabulary (Kloppenberg 2010; Albright and Gere 2003; Minton 2007; Biasutti 2013). Lynne Anne Blom and L. Tarin Chaplin’s (2000) book The Moment of Movement: Dance Improvisation is one example of the importance of improvisation to dance education and practice I am referring to. Blom and Chaplin (2000) describe contemporary dance improvisation as:

3 There is much more to this history that Gottschild (1998) astutely points out, also touched on in previous chapters, ‘Unlike modern and postmodern decisions to appropriate imported elements from Zen Buddhism , yoga, T’ai Chi, or other Asian disciplines, the Africanist presence comes to Americans from home base, from the inside’ (p 23). 4 For a more in-depth history of improvisation, contemporary dance, social landscapes, please see Danielle Goldman’s (2010) book which ‘explores improvised dance as a vital technology of the self-an ongoing, critical, physical, and anticipatory readiness that, while grounded in the individual, is necessary for a vibrant sociality and vital civil society’ (22). See also Midgelow (2019).

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…the dancer simultaneously originates and performs movement without preplanning. It is thus creative movement of the moment.[…] Improvisation in movement is analogous to free association in thought […] Improv implies a lack of constraints, a diversity of possibilities to follow in any direction for as long as the mover pleases. (x)

The value of not reproducing a form, and the emphasis on dancers’ creativity, is central to this practice of improvisation, and as such also develops and nurtures dancers’ incorporation of a kinaesthetic mode of attention. Improvisation practices are often infused throughout various contemporary dance contexts. For instance, contemporary dancers might learn the skill of improvisation in university or conservatoire training, as a distinct module as a part of their coursework, separate to choreography or technique class. Improvisation is found in creative choreographic practices as well, as a way of generating choreography. As Roche (2018) points out: Leena Rouhiainen (2011: 45– 47) proposes that the turn towards ‘performative choreography’ in the late twentieth century has altered the focus of the dancer from developing acuity in ‘specific [dance] regimens’ towards developing skills in exploring ‘sensation, perception and kinesthesia for dance-making’. Furthermore, this includes the capacity for dancers to ‘utilize their immediate experiences as material for performing.’ (156)

The point is that the practice of improvisation reiterates the values of openness to the dancer’s particular way of moving and exploring habits, versus, for instance, the valuing of shapes and positions executed by imitation of a choreographer. The practice of improvisation reiterates some of the descriptions about listening and awareness in the previous chapter, such as Parviainen’s (1998) description of bodily knowledge in dance technique: ‘Listening to bodily movements and the body’s answers in a movement pattern, various dimensions emerge from the same movement’ (52), or dancer Mads talking about listening to how his body responds to the space and awareness of how the space ‘is’, ‘what’s around me’, as he dances. The idea of ‘crash to create’ brought up by Jiles, discussed in the previous chapter is an example of current choreographic practice which further affirms the argument for the value that improvisation holds. As discussed, Jiles talks about how the valuing of mistakes in improvisation and choreographic practice reiterates the importance of his creativity and

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own movement style. This practice of ‘crash to create’ requires a foregrounding of his kinaesthetic sensations in his practice, because it aids the creation of new material and attention to what he senses in a spontaneous moment of movement. But Jiles also indicates a general valuing of mistakes in contemporary dance practices, as does Roche (2015) throughout her text in working with Melnick and Jaspers. The valuing, or ‘heralding’ as Jiles says, of mistakes puts less emphasis on a perfection of form and more emphasis on the dancer’s unique contribution through improvisation, and thus their own kinaesthetic experiences. Crash to create is important in endorsing the value of the dancer’s discovery of new ways of moving via a kinaesthetic mode of attention, ways that surprise the dancer as well as the teacher, choreographer, and/or audience member. As also mentioned, several of the dancers, such as Willow, likewise talked about their experience with this type of choreographic approach. The emphasis on improvisation and mistakes is highlighted by contrast with an emphasis on perfection of form expressed by the ballet dancers in the interviews. Both styles, at the professional level, require perfection and mistakes (or risk); however, the type and amount of emphasis are expressed differently in the interviews. In contrast to the above, ballet dancers interviewed emphasise perfection as important to their practice. For instance, Eugenie indicates how being in the ballet corps includes the pressure to get everything perfect: ‘…you just make sure you know everything perfectly…because obviously if you stand out and you do the wrong steps and everybody is on the other side, you’re like “oh my god! What am I doing?!”’ (interview 1). Eugenie, James, and Lena also refer to ballet as ‘the perfect technique’. For instance, Lena says, in distinguishing what she likes about ballet versus contemporary, that she likes the challenge of trying to make the movements ‘right’, proclaiming that ballet is ‘perfect technique…it’s like perfection’, indicating that she enjoys a pursuit of perfection, a value of it, in her ballet experience (interview 1). Dance scholar Angela Pickard (2012) likewise found in her research with young ballet dancers that perfection of the aesthetic was an issue for young dancers in training. She argues: ‘The development of the ballet aesthetic, of beauty and perfection for others to see, is powerful and is entrenched in the schooling and training of the dancer’ (34). This particular way of working with improvisation demonstrates the use of a kinaesthetic mode of attention because the dancers aim to

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generate material from their own bodies and/or work through a choreographer’s verbal direction in a kinaesthetically foregrounded and bodily way. The dancers are actively involved in the process of generating material; thus, the dancers’ private kinaesthetic experiences are brought more to the fore and given more importance (Gardner 2007). The ideas of kinaesthetic exploration and discovery, as also noted in the previous chapter, are affirmed by improvisational practices. Contact Improvisation Contact improvisation, as a sub-style within the broader form of improvisation, also noted by Jiles, distinctly foregrounds touch or tactile feedback (as do many somatic practices) and provides yet another point of how a kinaesthetic mode of attention develops and is nurtured in contemporary dance practices. In contact improvisation, the skills of movement from feeling and creating movement with another person, rather than an emphasis on how movement appears, are often a strong value. Thus, contact implicitly foregrounds a tactile, kinaesthetic, relationship and intentional focus for dancers. Bull’s (1997) description of contact improvisation supports this point: ‘the sense of touch, which guides the dancing, assumes importance both technically and symbolically…”the point of contact” provides the impetus for movement’ (276). Another way in which touch is important is in contact with the floor: dancers ‘sense, feel, experience , notice, and give in to the changing patterns of their own bodies on the floor’ (Bull 1997, 276). In sum, the practice of contact improvisation foregrounds the sensation of weight and momentum, which also foregrounds the feeling and nuance of movement; as Ravn (2009) notes, improvisation is often included in training as a way of ‘increasing the dancer’s groundedness in the body’ (106). Or as Bull (1997) describes: ‘[contact improvisation is a] resulting duet [which] intertwines two bodies in a fluid metamorphosis of falls and suspensions, propelled by the momentum of the dancers’ weight’ (275). Likewise, Foster (1997) describes contact improvisation as teaching, ‘not … a set vocabulary of movements … but [students] are … encouraged to “listen” to the body, to be sensitive to its weight and inclinations and to allow new possibilities of movement to unfold spontaneously by attending to the shifting network of ongoing interactions’ (250). Gabriele Brandstetter (2013a) echoes many of these descriptions in a book chapter exploring kinaesthetic experience(s) in contact improvisation and cites

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veteran contact improvisers, such as Nancy Stark Smith; she writes about how Smith constantly stresses the spatial orientation created not only by vision but by the entire physical perception as a condition Smith calls ‘telescoping awareness’ (166). Again, the practice of contact improvisation is less about perfection of external form and more about a value of finding one’s own way of moving with another person/people and about creatively generating movement material in the moment of experiencing it kinaesthetically (Foster 1997). In contact improvisation, the polarisation of the kinaesthetic and the visual is more distinct because of this. As summarised above with Brandstetter (2013a), contact improvisation, similar to somatic practices within contemporary dance, is less dictated by aesthetic style, viewed from an outside eye, than it is by the ‘guiding principle’ of kinaesthetics (172). To argue that contact improvisation develops and nurtures a kinaesthetic mode of attention in contemporary dance, in contrast to other styles such as ballet, Ravn (2009) writes that during an interview she asked one of the Royal Danish ballet dancers about improvisation and the dancer said that ‘… she was very impressed by the dancers in modern/new dance who could improvise and then added that she herself was much too conscious of how she looked to improvise’ (83). Ravn further notes: ‘The body is not framed in the improvisation in relation to how it looks but in relation to how it relates and interacts with the bodies of other dancers’ (83).

Choreography There have not often been distinct fixed roles between choreographers and dancers in contemporary dance practice across its history. For instance, in very early modern dance, Isadora Duncan danced her choreography as well as choreographed on other dancers (Gardner 2007,36–37). Copeland (1993) points out: ‘It is significant that…we continue to refer to artists such as Martha Graham or Mary Wigman as modern dancers – not modern dance choreographers ...[these choreographers] didn’t stand apart from the choreography and view it as external to themselves’ (139). Or as Foster (1997) reports of the Cunningham technique, ‘…with its emphasis on composition, [Cunningham] encourages dancers to interest themselves in making dance as well as in performing’ (252, emphasis mine). Gardner (2007) argues, likewise, that contemporary choreographic practice today is a ‘complex process of transmission where authority might remain with the choreographer but also belong to

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the dancers’ (50). The fluid relationship between dancer and choreographer can also be found in Roche’s (2015) working processes with several contemporary choreographers where either she is asked to develop material in tandem with the choreographer and/or she is asked to respond to movement anew at each performance, thus putting a good deal of emphasis on her input as a dancer to how the choreography is performed, executed, and makes up what is ‘the dance’.5 Quinlan (2017) argues that as a ‘metatechnique’ Gaga ‘integrates the practice of choreographing’ (as well as improvisation; 33). Indeed, several of the contemporary dancers interviewed for this study, such as Erdem, Mads, Willow, Jasper, and Jiles, were either in the process of choreographing and showing their own work and/or creating material for a choreographer as part of the choreographic process (mentioned in the section on improvisation, above). Learning the skill of choreography, and/or working in an intersubjective framework in which a divide between choreographer and dancer is blurred, reinforces the kinaesthetic mode of attention because, as with improvisation, the dancers need to be skilled at generating movement from/with their own bodies. Thus, they develop and nurture a keen understanding, and creativity with, how their movement kinaesthetically feels and imagining, through kinaesthetic feeling, movement they want to project.6 Choreographic skill includes trying to find new ways of moving, and kinaesthetic sensitivity is central to this because the dancer must have a felt sense of what their body does, as well as imagining and discovering new ways of moving to create material. Choreography includes the skill of thinking about how movement is structured in a larger framework, outside of the body, and thus about being able to take a more objective ‘bird’s eye view’ on movement material created on one’s own body. As Quinlan (2017) summarises, choreography in contemporary dance today requires understanding of how the term is used in dance studies literature, as, generally, ‘an organizational and structural system of movement’ (32). Choreographic skill supports the idea of feeling the logic of the body, as Ravn (2009) describes above, and seeing/feeling how movement maps on to an external choreographic framework and being central to collaborative dance-making processes, as

5 See Roche (2018) for more on this perspective with experience from dance artists Rahel Vonmoos and Henry Montes as well. 6 See also Butterworth and Wildshutt (2018).

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Roche (2015, 2018) explores. It is being able to understand how the feeling of the movement fits into the larger whole, which eventually will be viewed by an audience; to be able to transfer the bodily sensation, kinaesthetically felt as much as imagined, into an ‘artistic product’, and vice versa.7 Describing Movement One aspect of the skill of choreography, particularly in the field of contemporary dance, is an ability to describe movement in a wide range of idiosyncratic ways, for instance to tell other dancers how to do movement and make the choreography look a certain way. Finding one’s own way to describe movement is often necessary in contemporary technique class as well; for instance, the teacher often has to use a number of different descriptive words, images, and directions to convey to students what the movement should look and feel like because the style is not codified. This descriptive aspect of the practice creates a distinct link for contemporary dancers between language and movement, as also touched on in previous chapters. Description of movement is an important aspect of a kinaesthetic mode of attention, because these dancers often hear movement described in a number of different ways, by a number of different teachers and choreographers, and they eventually also find their own way to describe movement themselves, particularly when choreographing or teaching. Roche (2015) provides further evidence for this claim. In discussing her work with Liz Roche, for instance, she dedicates a section of the chapter to show how she and the two other dancers worked with writing about their experiences of the same fifteen-second piece of movement. Roche (2015) thus shows, through this example, that the practice of writing and moving, together, is not completely foreign amongst contemporary dancers. She distinguishes, however, how written reflection is a useful part of the process as ‘movement-initiated writing’ and developing personalised language-specific narratives with choreographic phrasing. She aligns the process of doing so with the idea of a Deleuzian line of flight ‘which extends knowledge beyond the territory of the

7 Contemporary dance choreography is also much more than this brief summary related to a kinaesthetic mode of attention, see, for instance, Foster (2009), Protopapa (2013), Butterworth, and Wildschut (2018).

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studio and the inherent power dynamics surrounding the choreographic production to establish alternative creative and critical outlets’ (94). This particular symbiosis with language, or a type of languaging, is crucial to the contemporary dancers’ ability to describe their kinaesthetic experiences, as featured in Chapter 3. As will be discussed more under the heading ‘Versatility’ below, the contemporary dancer encounters a number of different movement styles, and thus, many different words must be used to describe movement. A ‘contraction’ in Graham technique, for instance, has a different nuance than a ‘contraction’ in Horton technique. Thus, other words are used to describe these different contractions. In release technique, as another example, most teachers and/or choreographers have their own movement style and their own way of describing movement; thus, different words are used to describe the many different ways of moving. A specific example from my fieldwork backs up the issue of different movement descriptions found between a contemporary and a ballet class, both taken in London, UK. In my ballet class, the teacher emphasised the display and the doing of the movement. Her directions about turning out from the hip, showing the heel in my tendu, keeping the arm upheld rather than drooping, opening the chest, making movements clearer and sharper. The movements themselves needed less description because I, and everyone in this intermediate-level class, already knew them; indeed, in some instances, she only had to list out a string of words and we knew what to do, such as ‘Tombé, pas de bourrée, glissade, assemblé’. The rest of her description could be focused around the doing and execution of the movement, because the movement vocabulary was set and learned many years prior to this class. By contrast, in my contemporary release-based class, the teacher showed movements as well as used a myriad of descriptions and metaphors to communicate what the choreography was. For example, as she taught a movement phrase, one I had never seen before done in that particular way, she described one of the arm movements, which went in a clockwise circle at the side, as ‘swooping’. This description gave me information to both identify the movement, since it was relatively unfamiliar, but also as a direction about how to do the movement. The word swooping facilitated my proper execution, learning, and dancing experience. The contemporary teacher used a great deal of metaphoric imagery in teaching the movement as well. For example, she said at another point a scoop of the arm into the torso was to be performed as if scooping ice cream out of a bucket. I

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was not simply executing a scoop of the arm, but was layering my experience with descriptions of ‘scooping ice cream’. There was a binding of that verbal description and my imagination, anticipation, and execution of that movement. My dancing was intertwining with language and description (and memories) in my experience in a very particular way which was distinctly different to my ballet class experience. Other examples of the particular kind of engagement with idiosyncratic language in contemporary dance are provided by Roche (2015)and Karreman (2017). Roche (2015) writes, in relation to creating a solo with Rosemary Butcher, that an important part of the choreographic process was ‘[finding] a number of body positions on the ground that evoked a sense of freefalling’ (38). Butcher then introduces words from which Roche was to ‘create a movement code’. Some of the words were: moving out, eliminating, burning, throwing away, and breaking. Roche (2015) goes on to describe how words continued to evolve in the process. Laura Karreman (2017) provides rich description from a workshop with Rosas dancer Elizaveta Penkova, evidencing the variability of language used in transmission of contemporary dance repertoire: Move your hands away from each other as if you’re stroking a water surface, then lift them up and let the water fall from your fingertips. Now you put pressure on your arms and you move upwards. Not only your breath is moving, all your muscles are breathing. Your arms keep pushing into the floor. Then your head suddenly moves: ‘Somebody turns on a light’. Then you realize: ‘Nothing is there’ and you sink down, while letting go of the breath. (Penkova 2013 as cited in Karreman 2017, 38)

The point here is, again, how the idiosyncrasy with movement and language facilitates a particularity for the contemporary dancer . Verbal description(s) become linked with the experience of movement from the contemporary dancers’ perspective in a particular way. In learning and mastering contemporary dance , dancers will therefore associate movement with a variety of description, and the descriptions often focus around the kinaesthetic sensation of the movement. This is another reason why contemporary dancers develop, and value, a particular movementlanguage relationship which informs a kinaesthetic mode of attention.

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Education and training The educational structures and contexts of contemporary dance contribute to a kinaesthetic mode of attention. Taking a wider view of this chapter, it might be argued that the sub-sections delineated in it outline some of the distinct values and practices that inform a contemporary dance education today. Generally, contemporary dance training values contexts in which practice and theory, or movement and philosophy, intermingle. This section on education focuses on some aspects of current training contexts to offer specific support on this point from the fieldwork and thus argue how values within dance education and training also develop and nurture a kinaesthetic mode of attention. Throughout modern and contemporary dance history, the contexts in which dance training happens have changed and thus subtle shifts of the philosophy and movement practised together can be traced historically. George (2014, 2020) provides a compelling argument for the repeated rebellion(s) against institutionalisation across modern, contemporary, and postmodern dance training history. As discussed in Chapter 2, Isadora Duncan is often attributed to have rebelled against the institution of ballet, for instance (Daly 1995; Copeland 1993). In the 1940s, Katherine Dunham’s school curriculum is argued to have resisted the norms of dance aesthetics via education practices, by including training in other courses such as general anthropology, introductory psychology, and Caribbean folklore (Risner no year). Cunningham is argued to have rebelled against Graham’s psychic energies and psychological imperatives (Foster 1997).George (2014) argues for how dance artists rebelled against Cunningham-era aesthetics and approaches: ‘[…] jaundiced by the institutionalization of modern dance, [late 20th Century contemporary dancers] augmented or critiqued existing vocabularies with progressive era Somatics’ (6; see also Franko, 1995; Morris 2006). George (2014) goes on to argue how a rebellion can be seen to be formalising again with more recent pedagogical approaches. The key point is that, while from one perspective contemporary dance training offers feelings of freedom and open expression, from another perspective also repeatedly nurtures and sustains a firming of dominant practices and values, through its educational systems, which contemporary dance (aesthetics, training, discourse) then historically tries to rebel against (e.g. George 2014, 2020).As Shepherd (2009) states, dance training can be argued to be:

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a mechanism that prepares both body and subjectivity to absorb and embody value and to practise its liturgy. ... Training can be used to support the dominant and to oppose the dominant, to sustain those values that seem ’natural’ and to promote that which deviates from the ’natural’. … its distinctive power is that it can prepare individuals and groups to embrace value…. (14–15)

Indications of current questions regarding the institutionalisation of contemporary dance training are evident in work discussed by Ingo Diehl (2018) for instance, where he discusses how, from a European perspective (contemporary) dance knowledge is continually asking/exploring ‘what technique is in a subject which is constantly reflecting and analysing its own references’ (n.p.). He indicates parallel questions about delineating certain practices, which are institutionalised in contemporary dance training, within a style which encompasses such a wide range of diversity and hybridity in methodologies and practices (n.p.). George (2014) also provides critique related to the institutionalisation of contemporary dance training, but focuses on the ideology of the ‘natural’ in relation to somatics practices. By the twenty-first century, they write, with somatics in many of the ‘most major dance training institutions within and beyond the West’, ‘[…] great numbers of dance educators invested in the idea that extra-cultural motile capacity provides a foundation for unfettered individual creative freedom’, thus nurturing a dominant value of ‘extra-cultural motile capacity’ through the educational contexts (George 2014, 5). From another perspective, Emilyn Claid (2016) questions the impact of ‘excessive measures of health and safety, government-defined research frameworks, over-attentiveness to students’ welfare and form-filling, excessive managerial constructions […]’ on contemporary dance training based in UK universities and conservatoires, thus questioning current mechanisms of institutionalisation through current educational systems (153–154). Raquel Monroe (2011) raises further crucial questions about contemporary dance training in US university systems and reinforcing ideologies that might reduce the contribution of West African dance styles and dances from the African diaspora; Monroe’s article signals a larger global shift in contemporary dance towards decolonising dance curriculums, which I address again in Chapter 6 (see also Fensham 2008). One way current education practices impact on the dancers’ kinaesthetic mode of attention interpreted from the fieldwork is through the

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intertwining with movement description in technique classes, as discussed above. Another way that current education practices impact is the implicit ways that university and conservatoire settings, and the degrees and knowledge systems they work with(in), support the value of a ‘thinking dancer’, and thus a certain level of emphasis on reflexivity and logic alongside physical mastery (Bunker 2013). Albright (2011) helps to support the argument for this crossing of the academic and the physical in contemporary dance training when she writes about her pleasure teaching in a dance department in a liberal arts college: ‘…for the first time in my academic life, I could teach intellectual analysis and physical training in the space of one class session. Engaging students across the traditional mind/body divides of dance studio and academic classroom…’ (7–8). The dance school P.A.R.T.S. (Performing Arts Research and Training Studio) trains dancers in ‘a broad range of techniques’ but also ‘[…] provides students with reflection tools that support the development of critical views on their own individual paths’ (Karreman 2017, 27). Karen Schupp (2017) writes about education as a means of transgression, communicating how contemporary dance education in university and conservatoire settings imbues values of freedom, discussed below, and those found in somatics, as discussed above. She writes, for instance, ‘[…] when students have the opportunity to sense their values and themselves in their movement practices, they begin to emancipate themselves as dance artists’ (Schupp 2017, 164). The practice of training dancers in theoretical (or philosophical) perspectives, alongside technique training, within many university and conservatoire environments, creates a context in which dancers’ crossover between academic and physical (or practical) domains, and thus the value and practice imbued to ‘think’ kinaesthetically. As Schuh (2019) summarises, from the European perspective, although relevant to many institutions which train in contemporary dance: Today, education in dance often requires numerous competencies, which move far beyond the traditional requirements of formal dance training, involving cross-media capabilities, discursive and conceptual skills learned by reading and discussing critical or postmodern theory, and managerial skills for administrating potential funding and setting up a marketable personal profile. (85)

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In these contexts, dancers’ simultaneously experience and develop skills in both practice and theory, or indeed, question the value systems which define what is ‘theory’ and what is ‘practice’, while at the same time being implicated in systems (e.g. universities) which also continue to perpetuate theory and practice as separate endeavours. This crossing-over of theory and practice knowledges has a knock-on effect, particularly for the use of language, as discussed above, related to a kinaesthetic mode of attention. In sum, educational contexts contribute to a valuing of reflexivity that is based on not only studio-based practices, such as technique, but also the practices discussed above (e.g. choreography), as well as a wide range of other coursework and methods of study. Schuh (2019) goes as far to claim that, despite not all contemporary dance ‘emerging artists’ having formal contemporary dance training, they nevertheless continue to follow similar principles of a bricolage training approach and ‘eclectic training’ which Bales and Nettl-Foil (2008) write about (84). ‘In fact, there is just about any kind of “training package” you could imagine going on these days’ (Bales 2008, 15 as cited in Schuh 2019,84). Schuh (2019) argues that Bales and Nettl-Foil’s claims still resonate and the type of training and practices taught in workshops, as much as in universities and conservatoires (84). Current educational practices summarised above reflect complexities of contemporary dance aesthetics more broadly, which Lepecki (2016) discusses in more depth. Lepecki (2016) argues that the past decade has seen dance taking ‘an increased critical function in scholarly publications in performance studies, cultural studies, disability studies, black and critical race studies, queer theory, and in contemporary art history’ (16). Lepecki (2016) argues that dance has ‘[…] become one of the most relevant critical-aesthetic practices’ (16, emphasis mine), indicating the crossing of discourse and practice that I am trying to argue for here from the dancers’ perspective. It is hoped that this summary, on some of the current approaches, helps to support the argument that the intermingling of practice and theory, particularly with the alignment of contemporary dance training in universities and conservatoires, also significantly impacts on something like a kinaesthetic mode of attention in the field. The issue of education also relates to the issue of versatility discussed more below.

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Symbolic Capital There are practical as well as social reasons for contemporary dance education structures and contexts, as summarised above, that reflect wider issues of the economic landscape of contemporary dance which also impacts on a kinaesthetic mode of attention. For instance, training in a university degree programme might provide more options of employability in a precarious contemporary dance economy, at least in ‘Western’ contexts, such as the USA, Europe, and Australia (e.g. Rouhiainen 2003). Enhancing multiple skills is therefore related to the symbolic capital of contemporary dance, because maintaining multiple skills, as dancer, teacher, and choreographer, and often other skills, such as curator, lawyer, and/or administrator, can help professionals survive in the field. By symbolic capital, I am referring to Bourdieu’s (1980/1990) use of the term as a way of conceiving status as something set by members of a field according to what they deem valuable, in both an economic and social sense. This standard motivates individuals towards certain practices to maintain or progress their position within the field (112–121). It is applying the model of economic capital, or money as a symbol of value, to other aspects of culture, such as educational qualifications . As Crossley (2001a) summarises: Anything may count as capital that is afforded, however tacitly, an exchange value in a given field, and that thereby serves both as a resource for action and as a “good” to be sought after and accumulated. The implication of this is that forms of capital are multiple; each field defines its own species of capital (87)

There is direct economic benefit to pursuing a dance degree, for instance. In sum, many contemporary dancers cannot support themselves on dance expertise alone and need other means for financial stability. Having a dance degree, or a particularly located dance training, can also carry symbolic capital in allowing a contemporary dancer a certain economic and social position, which is valued by the field as well. That is, contemporary dancers might utilise a degree, and the education it provides, to get other employment to support their ‘independent’ dance career, or to do other jobs if their ‘dance job’ does not pay enough, or if they need work between touring. Subsequently, contemporary dancers might gain or maintain a certain status within the field when they have more than one job.

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There is also the issue of the social exchange value of remaining ‘independent’, even when dancers perform with well-known companies, discussed further in relationship to freedom below (Rouhiainen 2003, 183; Roche 2018; Quinlan 2017; Schuh 2019). During the fieldwork, two of the dancers interviewed, for instance, were dancing with Lea Anderson’s The Featherstonehaughs and the physical theatre company Punchdrunk, relatively well-known and established contemporary dance companies in the UK. However, neither of these dancers were employed by these companies full-time. The dancers instead identified themselves as ‘independent contemporary dancers’ and supplemented their income with work from other sources. Quinlan (2017) further supports the argument for the social capital of something like a kinaesthetic mode of attention, particularly in the way that they argue for how neoliberalism and other contemporary dance training approaches, such as Gaga, share values of ‘developing efficient workers and privilege the individual as the primary agent for one’s own destiny’ that dancers also might find a sense of agency with (36). The important questioning of enduring assumptions in our educational contexts, such as via scholars and practitioners addressing issues of decolonisation (e.g. Kerr-Berry 2012; McCarthy-Brown 2014, 2017; Davis 2018; O’Shea 2018; Walker 2019; Prichard 2019), will undoubtedly shift the nuances of this value, including as symbolic capital.

Versatility Not only is having multiple skills related to symbolic capital in contemporary dance; the value of being versatile, flexible, and multi-skilled also manifests in a particular physical way, mainly because contemporary dancers in many cases need to be versatile to adapt to many different ways of moving in the style. Another part of the practice that affirms the argument for an acquisition of a kinaesthetic mode of attention, again more relevant today than for modern dance before the 1960s, is that many contemporary dancers are expected to be able to adapt to many different choreographers and teachers. In addition, many contemporary dancers train in several different dance styles and usually have competence in more than one style, though contemporary dance technique might remain at the core of their practice. As Jasper states in an interview excerpt below, contemporary dance is considered by him as dance with the big ‘D’—any movement can fall under contemporary dance if

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framed in a particular way. Foster (1997) indicates this valuing of versatility under the term of ‘multi-talented dancer’, wherein a ‘new cadre of dance makers, called “independent choreographers” has emerged’ and as such they ‘encourage dancers to train in several existing techniques without adopting the aesthetic vision of any. They require a new kind of body, competent at many styles. The new multitalented body…’ (253). Roche (2015) further summarises that there is a ‘dissolution of canonical modern dance practices in the 1990s’ that led to ‘the more diversified and democratic topography of twenty-first century contemporary dance’ (9). She identifies other writings and terminologies regarding contemporary dancers’ encapsulation of many styles, as put forth in the literature, such as ‘the body eclectic’ (Davida 1992) and ‘hybrid bodies’ (Louppe 1996). Indeed, Jennifer Fisher (2014) suggests the term ‘versatile body’ might better ‘indicate the positive aspects of “embodied multiplicity”’ that Roche addresses (332). Schuh (2019) argues that as the economy of contemporary dance continues to foreground freelance work and short-term projects, contemporary dancers ‘have to show a high tolerance for flexibility and mobility’ (84). Foster’s ‘hired body’ Schuh argues ‘remains true today when it comes to the role of the dancers’ (Schuh 2019,84). Schuh describes the necessity for ‘metatechnique’, following Meghan Quinlan’s definition: ‘the ability to negotiate multiple bodily techniques embedded in techniques, such as Gaga, which blur the line between technique, choreography, and improvisation’ (Schuh 2019,84; Quinlan 2017,35). Schuh further supports the argument for the foregrounding of versatility and adaptation for contemporary dancers today, stating, ‘[…] it is crucial to note that contemporary dancers are constantly asked to find support to navigate the field in which they are working’ (Schuh 2019, 84–85). Contemporary dancers training and working in these ‘versatile’ frameworks encounter a wide range of idiosyncratic vocabulary across classes , auditions, and/or rehearsals (Roche 2018). Contemporary dancers are required to adapt quickly to new ways of moving, just by the nature of the huge variation of movement styles in the field. Thus, if the dancer can be keenly kinaesthetically aware and attentive, s/he is more likely to be able to navigate new choreography quickly in contemporary dance practice, because the sensitivity enables greater skill in taking on different ways of moving. Instead of mastering a certain vocabulary, contemporary dancers are often challenged to master agile adaptation to a variety of movement styles or, put another way, be skilled with a kinaesthetic mode of attention

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to precisely facilitate an agile and open approach to take on a variety of different kinds of movement. In turn, learning and mastering a number of different ways of moving expands the dancers’ physical capacity and thus expands their kinaesthetic experience. Contemporary dancers often explore a variety of different ways of moving which likewise exposes them to a variety of kinaesthetic sensations and attentive possibilities and in turn develops a varied kinaesthetic capacity. The concept of kinaesthetic empathy is particularly relevant to the value and practice of versatility in contemporary dance. For example, the concept of kinaesthetic empathy can be employed to argue for how it helps contemporary dancers take on movements of another and enact it in their own bodies (Parviainen 2002; Ehrenberg 2010). By kinaesthetic empathy I mean ‘…the capacity to participate [via a type of resonance] with another’s movement or another’s sensory experience of movement...’ (Sklar 1994, 16). It is conceptualised as a type of ‘virtual participation’ with another’s movement which is particularly useful if the type of movement to be adapted continually changes (Reynolds 2007,14). Foster (1997) likewise describes this as ‘the capacity for kinaesthetic empathy’: Dancers…strongly sense what other persons’ bodily movements feel like. Walking down the street, they register the characteristic posture and gait of passers-by…. (240)

In the case of dancers, they can take virtual participation with another’s movement and make it ‘real’, translate another’s movement through their bodies, and perform it in their own way. Kinaesthetic empathy can have a particular purpose for contemporary dancers in their training, rehearsing, and performing if encountering a number of different teachers and choreographers, i.e. a number of different ‘others’. However, they must also maintain a sense of their own way of moving, as was discussed regarding improvisation above—a particular balance between incorporating others’ way of moving while maintaining a strong sense of their own unique movement style.

‘Freedom’ The value of ‘freedom’, or more precisely the value of the idea of freedom, came up often in the interviews, my experience, and the

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discourse when analysing the values and practices of contemporary dance which might impact on a kinaesthetic mode of attention. For instance, dance scholar Sondra Horton Fraleigh (1987) declares the idea of freedom as the existential core of modern dance, explicitly declaring its inherent value: As a witness to the times of modern dance – from its theatrical beginnings as expressionist modern dance, through late modern formalist dance, through nonexpressionist dance, full circle to neoexpressionist works – I have observed and experienced its similar rootedness in freedom and individuality. I view freedom and individuality as the existential context of modern dance. (xxxii)

Fraleigh supports the value of freedom in a number of other ways in her text, such as the ethical right of having free will (following Aristotle), being free from habitual movement, and being free in the sense that she moves herself. She is free to ‘create [her] body through [her] choices and [her] actions, in this [she] also create[s herself]’ (17). Fraleigh (1987) expresses here what I found in my fieldwork as well, that the idea of freedom is a central premise of the contemporary dancers’ practice and this idea of freedom weaves through a number of aspects of a kinaesthetic mode of attention. However, I discuss it as a ‘value of freedom’ following the ideas of Michel Foucault of ‘practices of freedom’ (Foucault and Rabinow 1997) and that it has an ideological status versus freedom being an ‘desired endpoint devoid of constraint’ (Goldman 2010, 3). The dancers and others (e.g. teachers) indicate that the focus on kinaesthetic experience is a way of valuing what the dancer deems important to attend to, instead of foregrounding the demands of others. Thus, this valuing of being free from habitual movement might be interpreted from the practice of continually interrogating one’s own movement habitus and those movements that they have made automatic via their dance training and being disciplined in a specific social practice (Bourdieu 1980/1990). This continual interrogation of habits, theoretically, ‘frees’ the dancers from an imposed structure and hierarchy. A kinaesthetic mode of attention helps dancers to feel ‘free’ to move as they intend, not strictly according to a set technique. It is also related to focusing on present, in-the-moment experiencing as discussed with somatic practices above. Feelings of freedom is a value that carries political meaning, in that contemporary dancers should be free from institutional structures,

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norms, and dominant practices, as also touched on above—‘free’ from those disciplining structures that Bourdieu often proposes for his idea of habitus. The contemporary dancer values being ‘free’ to create dance and to dance in ways that are theirs alone, or, taken to an extreme, to go against expectations of what dance is and should be. It is the belief in the idea that if dancers focus on what they feel, and part of that being what they privately kinaesthetically experience, more so than what they externally project, then dancers will remain free as individual artists and people. It is a value Fraleigh (1987) declares, ‘I realize my freedom when I move as I intend. Then I experience my movement powers as personal powers. I experience such freedom most intensely when I solve challenging movement problems that extend my skill and imagination’ (21). The complex nuances of this feeling of freedom and choice can be increasingly found in the dance studies literature related to kinaesthetic experience. Figuerola (2009), in her study of release technique, similarly declares that ‘freedom of choice’ in terms of dynamic qualities was important to the release-based teachers she interviewed (62). For instance, one of the teachers she observed ‘encouraged the students to individually decide which dynamics they would like to explore…the students did not have to conform either to a pre-set range of dynamics…[or the teacher’s idiosyncrasy]’ but could explore their own unique dynamic possibilities (62). Purser (2018a) declares that a ‘physical openness or responsiveness of the dancer who is in his or her body and “in the moment” is thus experienced as freedom to act…’ (48, my emphasis). She clarifies that the feeling of freedom, for the dancers she interviews, happens distinctively when the dancers are ‘in-the-moment’, when they ‘did not think ahead of or beyond the here-and-now’ (48). Quinlan (2017) writes about how Gaga is marketed for ‘freeing’ dancers from ‘conventional technique’ and yet, argues for how gaga also ‘enforces norms and ideals even within the improvisational, open-ended structure of its classes’ (28–29). George (2014) provides further evidence to this pursuit of freedom in tracking the various rebellions against institutionalisation across modern, postmodern, and contemporary dance history. Several of the dancers interviewed elucidated the value of the idea of freedom, more specifically freedom of choice and individuality, in their descriptions related to a kinaesthetic mode of attention, also echoing some of the research cited above. For instance, when Jasper is asked what

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interests him in contemporary dance, particularly in contrast to hip hop (as he does both), he said ‘creative and stylistic freedom’ was key for him: Jasper: What interests me in contemporary dance? [pause] I would say….[sigh]…I would say it’s the dance with the big ‘D’…you can put anything in it, because you don’t define contemporary dance, it’s really open to anything…..to me it’s just dance, like you can put any style [in it] and I think it’s the most creative one because you’re free to do anything…(interview 1).

Jasper echoes Fraleigh’s point of view that contemporary feels free because there is an openness to many different ways of moving. This openness again returns to the idea of a kinaesthetic mode of attention related to there being little codified choreographic structure to define the style generally. Therefore, the dancer can feel they utilise kinaesthetic attention to adapt to the variety of ways of moving that they encounter and also remain free to move in various different ways as they feel they want (rather than feeling disciplined to only move one kind of way). A kinaesthetic mode of attention relates here again to the approach of openness to the various ways of moving and the dancer’s feeling of creativity and individuality in different movement styles. The kinaesthetic becomes valued in this way because of its usefulness to adapt to many styles and also for the dancers’ sense of agency in their dance practice. There is no need to accept the value of the kinaesthetic per se, but the kinaesthetic is valuable to many dancers’ practice because it facilitates a freedom of exploration into many ‘others’’ ways of moving along with their own way of moving. In a subsequent interview , Jasper clarifies this idea of freedom in contemporary dance practice for him, in contrast to his experience in other styles: Jasper: But I’ve found….this relation… that’s why I love contemporary dance…it can be anything, as I told you, I love that free….you’re really free, with music, with space, with intention, with….well when in jazz....breakdance, hip hop, ballet…you’re not that free…or even ballroom dancing, […] it’s more [in contemporary] the body feeling, like the, sort of….to me [breakdancing is] less arty in a way….cause you’re not that creative in it….that’s it […] but the traditional, sort of…breakdance....hip hop…jazz…I put them all together, they’re really…to me

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[…] they’re influences are rather traditional, where, you know, […] you feel less, you do more….yeah. (interview 2)

Here, Jasper more explicitly indicates the ‘body feeling’ as a difference in focus in the style, and that this is crucial to this idea of freedom for him; by focusing on body feeling, he feels free to be creative with many aspects of the style, such as music (more on this below), space, and intentions, whereas in his practice in other styles, such as breakdance or jazz, he experiences an emphasis on moving on certain counts of the music, which limit his idea of freedom. Crucially, Jasper indicates that he loves these aspects of contemporary dance and also that he highly values the feelings of agency and individuality. The above-expressed values related to a feeling of freedom are crucial to what he wants to be as a dancer and what he wants to do in dance. Jasper also discusses the difference in what is considered virtuosic in different styles and how the doing dominates for him in his experiences of jazz and hip hop; he says that in these practices, ‘you feel less, you do more’ (my emphasis). By this, he indicates that, by contrast, in contemporary dance practice, not that he necessarily physically does less, but, as noted above, the focus for his attention is focused more on feeling than doing. Importantly, Jasper notes that freedom is not necessarily a value only upheld by contemporary dance but is at times shared with other styles, such as breakdancing, depending on the dancer and the perspective they are coming from. Jiles emphasises the idea of freedom when contrasting his experiences in contemporary dance and ballet practices. Jiles: Contemporary is a very free…in a lot of what they do…certainly a lot of the professional processes I’ve been in which are merely… I don’t know maybe it’s the style at the moment, to be sort of task-based, but there’s a lot of freedom, creative freedom, and um...in ballet…again, I’m fairly ignorant of the whole, ballet…but…it seems to me there’s only freedom in the expression…of how you do these very set certain patterns and timings and things… (interview 1).8

8 When Jiles says he is ‘fairly ignorant to ballet’ here, I think it is worth noting that he is indicating that it is ignorance in contrast to professional-level ballet dancers, and so compared with them he does not claim to be a ballet expert. However, Jiles trained at a conservatoire which he said emphasised ballet, and he was still taking professional-level

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Part of this idea of freedom expressed by Jiles, in contrasting the practices of contemporary and ballet, is a greater emphasis on an individual dancer’s way of doing the movement and individuality, as also discussed above. That is, a freedom to express the choreography in the way he wants to, which requires kinaesthetic sensitivity to his unique way of moving, in a way which is unique to the form. In addition, Jiles perceives ballet practice to be prescriptive because the choreography is codified and, in his experience, the ballet dancers are rarely asked to give their creative input into the work, outside of, for instance, the personal way that they might express a character, at least in his knowledge of ballet practice. In his comparison, creativity stands out as the core of his interpretation of freedom in contemporary dance practice. Lena echoes some of Jasper and Jiles’s comments on freedom and its relationship to the kinaesthetic mode of attention, but because she identifies as a ballet dancer with some contemporary dance experience, she also uses ballet as a contrast. Shantel: And contemporary…what do you like about performing? Lena: I don’t know why, I feel more free to express and…it’s like…a [relief] doing contemporary […] I can do whatever I want to in a way…because…we feel our movement in a special way, it’s not the same…if I do the same movement for two persons, they will do…differently, so…I think that’s the good thing about it… Shantel: There’s, ok, so you’re sort of hinting that in ballet, it has to be very much similar the technique. Lena: The shape I would say, the technique and the shape…and…of course each person does [it] in her style and…expresses different things too, but it has a story…has its very…mmm I don’t know how to say it, it’s not basic but it’s… it makes sense always, you know…like the story of a performance, it’s…it’s always there…and in contemporary I think it’s different… (interview 1).

Lena indicates that, for her, this valuing of the idea of freedom impacts on the active engagement with the choreographic process and greater emphasis on how she uniquely moves and expresses herself in movement, rather than trying to look uniform with her fellow dancers, as she does in

ballet classes occasionally at the time of interview, so his ‘ignorance’ is relative to a very high standard of ballet technique.

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ballet. Lena feels free to interpret set choreography in her own way more than she feels free to do so in ballet, and, because of this, she foregrounds her unique kinaesthetic experiences rather than mastering the set movement. She indicates that the valuing of her unique way of moving, again being creative in how she does the movement, helps her embody this idea of freedom. But Lena also notes that contemporary dance is free from the narrative structure that is more often the case in her experience of ballet, and as such, there is more freedom in what the dance is and what she does in it. It is important to emphasise that it is an idea of freedom, rather than arguing that the dancers are free. Contemporary dance also demands years of training and as I try to set out in this chapter, to an extent, the kinaesthetic mode of attention the dancers indicate is a learned way of approaching dancing and it is a style-specific disposition, so in these ways, actually the issue of freedom can be explored further in future research. This is a contradiction that Danielle Goldman (2010) addresses in much more theoretical depth, though her position is one I am trying to also advocate for here. That is, it is a myth to think that one can ever achieve freedom, principally because, if so, then this would support two misconceptions: (1) that it is possible to eradicate difference in the imagination of freedom between people and (2) that ‘if one could overcome a particular set of oppressions, all would be well’ (3). Nevertheless, the idea of freedom in the way of creativity, personal style, and set movement vocabulary is very important to contemporary dancers in the fieldwork and thus the kinaesthetic attention valued in the practice. ‘Freedom’ from Music The importance of dance to stand alone as its own art form and practice, separate from music, also came up often and deserves special mention because the dancers’ relationship to music emerged as a point of distinct contrast between dancers interviewed and their experience across different styles. I return to Jasper’s quote above, where he distinguishes this freedom from music in contemporary dance in contrast to other styles (of which he had experience) as one example: Jasper: But I’ve found….this relation…that’s why I…that’s why I love contemporary dance…it can be anything with your, as I told you, I love that free….you’re really free, with music […]….well when in

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jazz....breakdance, hip hop, ballet…you’re not that free…or even ballroom dancing, you have to start on the 2 or….put the 4 in the 8, like salsa… (interview 2).

Jasper talks about the ability to move to a wide range of music as freeing for him. In addition, following the discussion of improvisation above, freedom from music reiterates the kinaesthetic mode of attention because of finding ways of moving to the feeling of one’s own body, or moving to one’s own ‘rhythm’. As Jasper states, contemporary dancers do not have to move lyrically to classical music, or move on a certain rhythm, though this can sometimes be the case. Contemporary dancers might instead be encouraged to ‘listen’ to their kinaesthetic sensations and, via kinaesthesia, be in a sense independent from the music. Doris Humphrey (1959) supports the argument for this as a historicised value in contemporary dance practice in her book ‘The Art of Making Dances’: ...for dance can dispense with sound almost entirely and be done in silence. This approach was particularly popular in the twenties and thirties, when many were intent on proving the thesis that dance was an independent art and could stand alone. But these techniques still exist, and have a particular power and fascination of their own. (142)

Humphrey goes on to state that this is not the only approach valued in contemporary dance in regard to music, but it is an important approach of the style.9 One of the modern dance pioneers, Mary Wigman, likewise wrote in her diary: ‘To become free of music! That’s what they should all do! Only then can movement develop into what we all hope from it: free dance, pure art’ (as cited in Reynolds 2007, 51). The idea of freedom and dancing without music came up during the fieldwork. In almost all of the contemporary dancer interviews, the dancers did their movement phrases without music. Only a few of the dancers mentioned any awkwardness of doing their phrase without music, and if so it was only briefly. The dancers indicated, by the relative lack of

9 Strangely, Humphrey (1959) also emphasises dance and music as collaborative (and, problematically, gendered), seemingly contradicting herself she states, ‘[Dance] is not an independent art; it is truly female, needing a sympathetic mate, but not a master, in music’ (132).

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comment about the absence of music, that they were comfortable and familiar to dance without it. By contrast, the dancers working predominantly in ballet, hip hop, and breaking dance styles indicate a different relationship with music and a general discomfort in dancing without it in the interviews. In fact, it could be explored whether these dancers indicate a foregrounding of something like a musical mode of attention. Toni is one of the ballet dancers who, when asked how the movement she just did felt, brings up music straight away. Shantel: Do you feel any um….like I’m- do you feel any qualities when you’re doing it [the Movement] Toni: Yeah…..and that comes also from the music as well, like… if I like that music and I can more enjoy myself doing it, and I can more relax and…..yeah…. Shantel: Why do you think that is? Toni: I think…… if the music is beautiful, I can…..feel like I’m dancing…more….if you get what I mean….I can… oh [sigh]…it’s hard….[little laugh]….it’s hard to describe. Shantel: Yeah Toni: [pause] like you know if you don’t like that music… you feel more, it’s not uncomfortable, but you don’t really enjoy yourself do you….like maybe you’re, for example when you’re in the club and…..and if the dj played the music that is your favourite, then you’re more like ‘wee, yay!’… if you didn’t like that music you would feel more, um, ‘whatever’… (interview 2).

Toni indicates how central the connection with the music is for her in her ballet dance practice and how much of a collaborative place it has in her experience of her dancing. It is not that this way of dancing with music is completely alien in contemporary dance, but that it is the frequency in which ballet and music came up as synonymous from the dancer perspective in the interviews, particularly when discussing kinaesthetic experience of their dancing. Candace, one of the hip hop dancers, likewise talks about the importance of music for her and her dance practice. Particularly for freestyling in hip hop and breaking, Candace states that music is central to the mastery of the style. In other words, to be good at freestyling, Candace indicates, you have to know how to ‘feel the music’, or as she describes in one part of the interview:

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Candace: I think inspiration in terms of…I think the music brings you a quality of movement…you know what I mean, like a beat can make you groove, a beat can make you strong, a beat can make you slow, a beat can make you soft, a beat- yeah it’s just getting…something…you know that makes you dance….but here [in silence] its dancing empty…so it feels like…I’m dancing…like I’m moving but [dancing empty]….does that make sense? […] Because you’re reacting to the music you know, it’s a response… (interview 2).

Santana, a b-boy dancer, echoes Candace’s comments about feeling the music and his relationship to it in his practice: Santana: […] if I really like the track I’ll…go mad. I probably look better too. If I really hate a track, or if I just can’t…get into it, it’s like you almost have to ‘fake the funk’ as they say, you have to kind of go out and pretend that you’re into the music, but really you’re not, you’re just….kind of, almost, acting…so that definitely affects…. performance (interview 2).

Like Santana, Mads also comments on his attention to music in his experience of breaking. However, because Santana has experience across contemporary , hip hop, and breaking, he articulates explicitly the differences in these practices. Similar to Toni, Mads is not prompted to talk about music but brings it up on his own. Shantel: Does hip hop feel different to you than contemporary? Mads: Um……..[pause]…. in some ways yes…smaller ways no….because…um…..I think…..if I do hip hop classes, with other people, I feel like oh there’s, there’s quite a restricted thing that you can do and you need to follow the music, and you need to react to the music in this and this way and they’re telling you how to move in that direction and if I do improvisation I will react to the sounds…and…answer in a way…or…….make it look like I can show the music for you, in a way, like an equaliser……..and then you have contemporary where…you can actually go…oh there’s a structure here, you can follow that…or suddenly they just go…ok there’s nothing here now there’s no counts you just have to…..do movement, and there’s music there but you really just have to follow yourself, and when it changes that’s when you go into the structured area…again,

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so there’s….it’s a completely different way of looking at…the music (interview 2).

Therefore, while the contemporary dancers often foreground a kinaesthetic mode of attention in the interviews, which makes the absence of music less noticeable, the ballet, hip hop, and breaking dancers indicate that a musical mode of attention is often foregrounded in their dance experiences, by contrast. This contrast helps bring out the differences in the dancers’ experiences to propose how a contextual value about music also impacts on the dancers’ experiences, thoughts, and behaviour when dancing.

Mutual Feeling(s) / Affect Another important value related to a kinaesthetic mode of attention from the fieldwork relates back to prevailing issues of authenticity and affect related to performance, such as when Leslie Kaminoff states ‘you can’t fake release’ (as cited in George 2014, 57). Although this value can be argued to be changing with the ‘conceptual turn’ (e.g. Cvejic´ 2018), and a wider review of global contemporary dance aesthetics (e.g. Lepecki 2016), the value is still up for debate from the contemporary dancers’ perspective. What came out in the fieldwork is a prevailing, if not always explicit, belief that the contemporary dancer’s kinaesthetic feeling(s) can match what the dancer is projecting to an audience. This practice can be conceived in parallel to acting techniques such as Stanislavsky and Method (which combines Stanislavsky’s techniques with his pupil Eugene Vakhtangov’s work), in which the actor aims to imbue a character through simulation or ‘working from the “inside out”’ (Krasner 2000, 131). Indeed, Stanislavsky designed his entire ‘System’ of acting around the idea of ‘experiencing’, which he likened to ‘the sensation of existing fully within the immediate moment – what he calls “I am” and what Western actors generally call “moment-to-moment” work’ (Carnicke 2000, 17).10 Elia Kazan reports that with Method acting, ‘the 10 Further strengthening the parallel approaches of Stanislavsky and contemporary dance as I propose in this chapter: Stanislavsky encouraged actors to practice the somatic technique of Hatha yoga much like contemporary dance has increasingly included somatic practices, including yoga, in its approach (Carnicke 2000, 17). See also George (2014, 2020).

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actor must be going through what the character he’s playing is going through; the emotion must be real, not pretended; it must be happening, not indicated’ (as cited in Krasner 2000, 131). To do this, the actor must be in the ‘immediate present’ or working ‘moment-to-moment on impulse’ (Krasner, 2000, 131). The actor ‘draws from the self, from his or her emotional, psychological, or imaginative reality, bringing into view aspects of one’s memories, life experiences and observations that correlate with the role’ (Krasner 2000, 131). In other words, the actor aligns their ‘self’ with the ‘life’ of the character; s/he tries to be the character and feel the character’s feelings in order to convey the character to the audience. Jasper, for instance, expresses how abstraction, feeling, and/or affect are central to his experience of contemporary dance and indicates how it requires him to be kinaesthetically invested in the movement in a particular way. He indicates that there is some other kind of kinaesthetic feeling to contemporary dance than in his experience in other styles. Jasper here emphasises the emotions involved in feeling movement or kinaesthetically feeling a certain emotion and trying to convey that to an audience which recalls particular acting techniques as discussed above. In jazz, he indicates it is more a rhythmic feeling, and in hip hop, it is more an idea of presentation. Jasper: […] its really good to connect the actual feeling...the feeling, the emotions, to something….to the body, and to the brain, and I think… those three things really connects [in contemporary], whereas in jazz its really, body and mind and not too much the emotion, you would really go bah, kah, kah, you know....and hip hop is really showing off, so same thing, body and mind, but you don’t really…you would put the emotion on top of it… (interview 1).

It is not that these other dance styles cannot have an emotional element to them or that Jasper’s internal engagement in one style is more important than another, or indeed that contemporary dance cannot have a narrative or rhythmic focus. Rather, what Jasper expresses is the degree of emphasis for him as a contemporary dancer on the abstract emotion or idea and, thus, the kinaesthetic mode of attention as central because it facilitates the ability to execute this abstracted approach. As Jasper continues, he emphasises that in contemporary ance a feeling, emotion, or idea has to be at the centre of his movement, and he also reiterates here that the

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dancer is supposed to feel what the audience is feeling—conveying what is ‘true’ rather than ‘fake’: Jasper: […] that’s why I love [contemporary dance company] mostly, um, having the emotion being first, and [emotion] giving the movement, and so that’s really true, what you give is true, it’s not something like...fake…that’s why I’m interested in contemporary dance [light laugh] (interview 1).

It is important to reiterate where this approach in contemporary dance sits historically, as also discussed in Chapter 2, which is that the type of kinaesthetic attention valued for today’s contemporary dancer (including those interviewed) comes out of a more recent dance history in which the physiology of the body is more in the foreground of dancers’ process than before (Foster 2011; George 2014, 2020). Morris (2006) describes, for instance, that the various abstract ideas for dancers’ impetus for movement go from the ‘dramatic tension’ of Graham to the ‘peripheral emotions’ of Nikolais (183). For Nikolais, for instance, ‘Peripheral emotions such as sorrow, joy, and rage were exchanged for primary emotions that were abstract feelings of heavy, light, thick, thin, large, small, fast, slow, and so forth’ (Morris, 2006, 183). Instead of an ‘emotional point of view toward action’, the dancer is asked to be ‘sentiently and kinetically involved in its unfolding’ (Morris, 2006, 183). Shortly after the 1960s and up to today, the influx of somatic practices on contemporary dance, as already discussed above and in Chapter 2, likewise shifts the dominant focus for dancers’ kinaesthetic attention to this more diffuse kinaesthetically-directed explorative focus and projection (George, 2014, 2020). A surge of research related to affect in dance studies supports the argument for how this value in contemporary dance persists in relation to contemporary dance aesthetics which, in turn, impacts on the dancers’ experience(s). The concept of kinaesthetic empathy, also discussed above, is one example. Discussion of this concept in a wide range of discourses substantiates what dance and performance studies scholars have known for a long time, for example that movement experience impacts on what we see and that watching dance performance is much more complex than is generally recognised (e.g. Reynolds and Reason 2012; Brandstetter 2013b; Foster 2011). Summarising the research on affect crudely, contemporary dance aesthetics can be analysed in terms of affect, and the

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highly complex and diffuse audience experiences they provide. Reynolds (2012) describes it as ‘the choreographing of energies, ‘‘kinesthetic empathy” as a mode of relating to choreographed movement in a performance can be described as engagement with kinesthetic intentionality, which inheres in the choreographed movement, rather than in the psychology of individual dancers or even the characters they may embody’ (124). With this motivation, a contemporary dancer focuses less on the precise look of the movement, but also is not necessarily concerned with a distinct character, narrative, or shape per se (though this issue of ‘the look’ is explored further in the next chapters).

Conclusion This chapter outlines some of the dominant practices and values of the style of contemporary dance, which contribute to the dancers’ developing and nurturing a kinaesthetic mode of attention—a mode of attention described in the previous chapter. By outlining some of these practices and values, the aim is to encourage closer thinking about how contemporary dancers might come to incorporate a certain mode of attending which is both highly personal and yet simultaneously tied to external social factors outside of one’s control. It is worth noting again that the practices and values discussed in this chapter emerge principally from fieldwork conducted in the UK beginning in 2008, and this context impacts on the discussion. However, the dancers interviewed reflect a relatively international community of contemporary dancers based in the UK at the time—that is, dancers working in the UK, some with training and working backgrounds in the USA, Russia, Norway, and Brazil. In addition, as discussed in Chapter 2, the research takes a triangular conversational analysis approach, interpreting the dancer interviews with my own experience as a contemporary dancer—principally training and working in US and UK contexts—and a range of dancer experience found in the available sources coming from a range of geographical contexts as well, although predominantly from European, US, and Australian contexts. There are various practices and values outlined in this chapter to support the argument for how they develop and nurture a kinaesthetic mode of attention. Somatics is featured as a group of practices that have been important to contemporary dance for at least the last fifty years. Somatics practices have become integral to contemporary dance and the

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nurturing of dancers to explore kinaesthetic awareness in a particular way, a way that often features a kinaesthetic mode of attention. Improvisational practices are also important to contemporary dance and likewise train and nurture dancers to focus on their own movement style, trying to be free from habit, and to encourage a certain emphasis on the feelings of weight and , especially in contact improvisation. The value of choreographic skills and being creative with one’s own movement similarly feeds a kinaesthetic mode of attention crucial to contemporary dance. Choreographic skills further help dancers to articulate kinaesthetic experience of movement with language, which is distinct for the style and a kinaesthetic mode of attention. Educational and training contexts for contemporary dance impact on a distinct crossing between practice and theory, or movement and philosophy, that nurtures a reflexivity related to a kinaesthetic mode of attention. The value of the idea of freedom attributes importance to individuality and dancer agency. The value of contemporary dancers’ projection of affect to the audience—the audience being able to feel what the dancer feels in an abstract and diffuse way—is also linked with a kinaesthetic mode of attention. The next chapter aims to examine further the premise that seemingly ‘external’ contextual elements affect dancers’ private kinaesthetic experiences. Following the same line of thinking—that external social factors can impact on seemingly private kinaesthetic experiences—the next chapter zooms in on the problem that these dancers are performing artists and explores what the dancers think they look like for how this also feeds into the dancers’ kinaesthetic sensations. The next chapter tackles how this kinaesthetic mode of attention is sometimes posed in opposition to the visual, and yet for trained professional-level contemporary dancers, an element of the visual will impact on their kinaesthetic experiences, because they are trained and working in a performing art form, which includes performance to a degree, at the professional level.

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Croce, Mariano. 2015. The Habitus and the Critique of the Present: A Wittgensteinian Reading of Bourdieu’s Social Theory. Sociological Theory 33 (4): 327–346. Crossley, Nick. 2001. The phenomenological habitus and its construction. Theory and Society 30: 81–120. Crossley, Nick. 2001. The Social Body: Habit, identity and Desire. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Cvejic´, Bojana. 2018. Choreography That Poses Problems. In Contemporary Choreography, eds. L. Wildschut and J. Butterworth. London: Routledge. Daly, Ann. 1995. Done into Dance: Isadora Duncan in America. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press. Davida, Dena. 1992. Dancing the Body Eclectic. Contact Quarterly, Summer. Accessed 14 June 2018. https://denadavida.ca/articles/dancing-the-body-ecl ectic/. Davis, Crystal U. 2018. Laying New Ground: Uprooting White Privilege and Planting Seeds of Equity and Inclusivity. Journal of Dance Education 18 (3): 120–125. Depraz, Natalie, Francisco J. Varela, and Pierre Vermersch. 2002. On Becoming Aware a Pragmatics of Experiencing. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Diehl, Ingo. 2018. A European Perspective on Dance Technique: Problematising Hybridity (presentation excerpt). In Bridging Dance Training Contexts. Centre for Performance Practice and Research, University of Winchester. Accessed 17 Sep 2020. https://youtu.be/BUbkPgkIeVg. Eddy, Martha. 2009. A Brief History of Somatic Practices and Dance: Historical development of the field of somatic education and its relationship to dance. Journal of Dance & Somatic Practices 1 (1): 5–27. Ehrenberg, Shantel. 2010. Kinaesthetic Empathy and Dancer-Choreographer Relations: A Case Study, Poster presentation, Kinaesthetic Empathy: Concepts and Contexts Conference, 22–23 April, University of Manchester, UK. Fensham, Rachel. 2008. Deconstruction and Embodiment: Steps Towards the Decolonising of Dance Discourses. Discourses in Dance 4 (2): 25–38. Figuerola, Luisa. 2009. Release Based Dance Technique: A Systematic Investigation. MSc thesis, Dance Science, Trinity Laban, London. Fisher, Jennifer. 2014. When Good Adjectives Go Bad: The Case of So-called Lyrical Dance. Dance Chronicle 37 (3): 312–334. Fortin, Sylvie, Warwick Long, and Madeleine Lord. 2002. Three Voices: Researching how somatic education informs contemporary dance technique classes. Research in Dance Education 3 (2): 155–179. Foster, Susan Leigh. 1997. Dancing bodies. In Meaning in Motion, ed. J.C. Desmond, 235–257. Durham: Duke University Press. Foster, Susan Leigh. 2009. Choreographies and Choreographers. In Worlding Dance, ed. S.L. Foster. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

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Foster, Susan Leigh. 2011. Choreographing Empathy: Kinesthesia in Performance. New York: Routledge. Foucault, Michel, and Paul Rabinow. 1997. Essential Works of Foucault, 1954– 1988. New York: New Press. Fraleigh, Sondra Horton. 1987. Dance and the Lived Body: A Descriptive Aesthetics. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. Franko, Mark. 1995. Dancing Modernism/Performing Politics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Gardner, Sally. 2007. The Dancer, the Choreographer and Modern Dance Scholarship: A Critical Reading. Dance Research XXV 1: 35–53. George, Doran. 2014. A Conceit of the Natural Body: The Universal-Individual in Somatic Dance Training. PhD dissertation, Culture and Performance, University of California, Los Angeles. George, Doran. 2020. The Natural Body in Somatics Dance Training. Ed. Susan Leigh Foster. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ginot, Isabelle. 2010. From Shusterman’s Somaesthetics to a Radical Epistemology of Somatics. Dance Research Journal 42 (1): 12–29. Goldman, Danielle. 2010. I Want to Be Ready: Improvised Dance as a Practice of Freedom. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Gottschild, Brenda Dixon. 1998. Digging the Africanist presence in American performance: Dance and other contexts. Westport, Conn.: Praeger. Humphrey, Doris. 1959. The Art of Making Dances. London: Dance Books Ltd. Jenkins, Richard. 1992. Pierre Bourdieu. London and New York: Routledge. Karreman, Laura. 2017. The Motion Capture Imaginary: Digital Renderings of Dance Knowledge. PhD dissertation, Faculty of Arts and Philosophy, Ghent University. Kerr-Berry, Julie A. 2012. Dance Education in an Era of Racial Backlash: Moving Forward as We Step Backwards. Journal of Dance Education 12 (2): 48–53. Kloppenberg, Annie. 2010. Improvisation in Process: “Post-Control” Choreography. Dance Chronicle 33 (2):180–207. Krasner, David. 2000. Strasberg, Adler and Meisner. In Twentieth Century Actor Training, ed. A. Hodge. London and New York: Routledge. Lepecki, André. 2016. Singularities: Dance in the age of performance. London: Routledge. Louppe, Laurence. 1996. Hybrid Bodies. Writings on Dance 15: 63–67. McCarthy-Brown, Nyama. 2014. Decolonizing Dance Curriculum in Higher Education: One Credit at a Time. Journal of Dance Education 14 (4): 125–129. McCarthy-Brown, Nyama. 2017. Dance Pedagogy for a Diverse World: Culturally Relevant Teaching in Theory, Research and Practice. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company Inc.

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Midgelow, Vida, ed. 2019. The Oxford Handbook of Improvisation in Dance. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Minton, Sandra Cerny. 2007. Choreography: A Basic Approach Using Improvisation. 3rd ed. Champaign, Ill.: Human Kinetics. Monroe, Raquel L. 2011. “I Don’t Want to do African … What About My Technique?”: Transforming Dancing Places into Spaces in the Academy. The Journal of Pan African Studies 4 (6): 38–55. Morris, Gay. 2006. A Game for Dancers. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press. Novack, Cynthia J. 1990. Sharing the Dance: Contact improvisation and American Culture. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press. O’Shea, Janet. 2018. Decolonizing the Curriculum? Unsettling possibilities for performance training. Brazilian Journal on Presence Studies 8 (4): 750–762. Parviainen, Jaana. 1998. Bodies Moving and Moved. Tampere: Tampere University Press. Parviainen, Jaana. 2002. Bodily Knowledge: Epistemological Reflections on Dance. Dance Research Journal 34 (1): 11–26. Pickard, Angela. 2012. Schooling the Dancer: The evolution of an identity as a ballet dancer. Research in Dance Education 13 (1): 25–46. Potter, Caroline. 2008. Sense of Motion, Senses of Self: Becoming a Dancer. Ethnos 73 (4): 444–465. Prichard, Robin. 2019. From Color-Blind to Color-Conscious: Advancing Racial Discourse in Dance Education. Journal of Dance Education 19 (4): 168–177. Protopapa, Efrosini. 2013. Choreography as Philosophy, or Exercising Thought in Performance. In Thinking through Dance: The Philosophy of Dance Performance and Practices, ed. J. Bunker, A. Pakes, and B. Rowell, 273–289. London: Dance Books. Purser, Aimie. 2018. ‘Being in your body’ and ‘Being in the moment’: The dancing body-subject and inhabited transcendence. Journal of the Philosophy of Sport 45 (1): 37–52. Purser, Aimie. 2018. ‘Getting it into the body’: Understanding skill acquisition through Merleau-Ponty and the embodied practice of dance. Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health 10 (3): 318–332. Quinlan, Meghan. 2017. Gaga as Metatechnique: Negotiating Choreography, Improvisation, and Technique in a Neoliberal Dance Market. Dance Research Journal 49 (2): 26–43. Ravn, Susanne. 2009. Sensing Movement, Living Spaces: An investigation of movement based on the lived experience of 13 professional dancers. Saarbrücken, Germany: VDM Verlag. Ravn, Susanne. 2010. Sensing Weight in Movement. Journal of Dance & Somatic Practices 2 (1): 21–34.

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Ravn, Susanne. 2017. Dancing Practices: Seeing and Sensing the Moving Body. Body and Society 23 (2): 57–82. Ravn, Susanne, and Helle Ploug Hansen. 2013. How to explore dancers’ sense experiences? A study of how multi-sited fieldwork and phenomenology can be combined. Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health 5 (2): 196–213. Reynolds, Dee. 2007. Rhythmic Subjects. Hampshire: Dance Books. Reynolds, Dee, and Matthew Reason, eds. 2012. Kinesthetic Empathy in Creative and Cultural Practices. Bristol and Chicago: Intellect. Risner, Vicky J. 2020. Katherine Dunham: A Life in Dance. Library of Congress. Accessed on 31 Aug 2020. https://www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200152685/. Roche, Jennifer. 2015. Multiplicity, Embodiment and the Contemporary Dancer. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Roche, Jennifer. 2018. Dancing Strategies and Moving Identities: The Contributions Independent Contemporary Dancers Make to the Choreographic Process. Contemporary Choreography, eds. Jo Butterworth & L. Wildschut, 150–164. Oxon: Routledge. Rouhiainen, Leena. 2003. Living Transformative Lives: Finnish Freelance Dance Artists Brought into Dialogue with Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology. Helsinki: Acta Scenica, Theatre Academy. Rouhiainen, Leena. 2011. An Investigation Into Facilitating the Work of the Independent Contemporary Dancer Through Somatic Psychology. Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices 3 (1 & 2): 43–59. Schuh, Anne. 2019. Having a Personal (Performance) Practice: Dance Artists’ Everyday Work, Support, and Form. Dance Research Journal 51 (1): 79–94. Schupp, Karen. 2017. The transgressive possibilities of foregrounding somatic values. Research in Dance Education: Dance Futures 18 (2): 161–173. Shepherd, Simon. 2009. The Institution of Training. On Training: Performance Research 14 (2): 5–15. Sklar, Deidre. 1994. Can bodylore be brought to its senses? The Journal of American Folklore 107 (423): 9–22. Wainwright, Steven, Clare Williams, and Bryan Turner. 2005. Fractured Identities: Injury and the balletic body. Health: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health, Illness and Medicine 9 (1): 49–66. Walker, Ayo. 2019. Rebalancing Dance Curricula Through Repurposing Black Dance Aesthetics. Research in Dance Education: Dance and Work 20 (1): 36–53. Whatley, Sarah, Kirsty Alexander, and Natalie Garrett. 2009. Editorial. Journal of Dance & Somatic Practices 1 (1): 3–4.

CHAPTER 5

Kinaesthesia and Video Self-Image(s): Foregrounding the Imagination

Introduction The previous chapters addressed a ‘kinaesthetic mode of attention’ indicated by the contemporary dancers’ descriptions in the interviews. I argue that the dancers’ kinaesthetic attention is not arbitrary, but is directed according to acquired practices and values upheld in contemporary dance. A primary aim is to explore, in conversation with existing research, the fieldwork, and in my own dance experience, how seemingly ‘external’ factors (e.g. training structures) impact on seemingly ‘internal’ and private perceptions (e.g. kinaesthetic attention). Given this understanding, this chapter will focus in on ways dancers indicate and express intertwining and disruption between dancing kinaesthetic experiences and video self-image(s) recorded and viewed in the interviews, leading to a foregrounding of the imagination. This chapter addresses the problem that contemporary dance needs to look a certain way despite a prevailing emphasis on kinaesthetic experience for dancers in the practice which might at times polarise the visual and bodily felt experience from the contemporary dancers’ perspective. Different ways of conceiving contemporary dancers’ engagement with performance and dancing self-image(s) are explored, with perspectives from phenomenology, feminist and critical theory to address prevailing assumptions about dancers’ engagements and use of visual-based self-reflections, particularly considering those contexts which do require contemporary © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 S. Ehrenberg, Kinaesthesia and Visual Self-Reflection in Contemporary Dance, Cognitive Studies in Literature and Performance, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73403-9_5

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dancers to reflect on what they look like (e.g. rehearsal towards performance). Below I utilise Merleau-Ponty’s concept of reversibility to explore how the video self-images both intertwine and yet disrupt dancers’ kinaesthetic experiences of dancing. In this way, this chapter attempts to address what Purser (2018b) advocates, ‘[…] to further contribute to a philosophical understanding of skill acquisition from the phenomenological perspective through a detailed empirical exploration of the lived experience of learning new movements, styles, and techniques within the field of professional dance’ (319). This chapter can be read alongside other publications addressing dancers’ particular engagement with visual selfimage and corporeal schema to add to the complexity of understanding professional-level dancers particular embodied knowledge (e.g. Montero 2006; Ravn 2017; Ravn and Høffding 2017; Purser 2011). In addition, this chapter focuses on a problem often found in dance practice and experienced by dancers but rarely put under the microscope; that is, those moments when dancers experience discontinuity and disruption between their kinaesthetic experiences and what they see on video. This chapter explores what role disruption, discontinuity and gaps with video self-images play in a group of dancers’ practice and becoming professional-level dancers, building on understandings of kinaesthetic destabilisation in the practice. Exploration of video self-images indicates layers of complexity to the dancers’ experiences with them. Following from the previous chapters, this chapter supports the argument that dealing with video self-image disruptions is one way to challenge that this group of dancers are servants to a habitus, which also opens up for the potential to decentre the human within these experiences, explored more in the next chapter. The fieldwork indicates that these dancers offer ways to continue to think and practice critically with video self-imagery, particularly as video technology becomes more accessible and frequently used. The issue of disruption and discontinuity with video self-images, for a group of professional-level contemporary dancers in the practice, is a problem in particular because these moments disturb an important historicised value which prevails in contemporary dance practice, which is that kinaesthetic exploration is a way to discover one’s ‘true’ self and that kinaesthetic experience is always ‘true’. Martha Graham professes this value in the statement: ‘Movement never lies’ (Graham 1991, 4). This value of truth and kinaesthetic experience is also implicit in Claid’s (2006) description of ‘new dance’ in Britain in the 1970s: ‘Letting go of

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the mirror we became real people, with back, front and sides, thinking dance movement from the inside out’ (83). This phrasing implies that, at the time, ‘feeling the body’ from all its dimensions, was feeling the ‘real’, thus ‘true’, body. This ideology of the natural continues in release technique in the 1990s, as noted in Chapter 2, such as when Leslie Kaminoff declares in a 1999 Movement Research issue, ‘You can’t fake release’ (George 2014, 57) However, as discussed in the previous chapters, neither kinaesthetic experience nor visual self-reflection are necessarily ‘true’. Nevertheless, a belief that dancers need to be suspicious of visual selfreflection still persists, including video self-reflection, following arguments of how video objectifies. Dancers are often taught this opposition implicitly throughout the practice without necessarily further considering how this way of thinking might be implicated historically, or question what such an engagement with video offers (or not). Therefore, what is addressed in this chapter are some of the multiple, even contradictory, reactions that a group of dancers have with video self-images, particularly considering that one predominant goal as a professional-level dancer is to become skilled at presenting movement which looks a certain way to an outside eye. How do moments of mismatch with visual self-images impact on the dancer and their dancing experiences? What purpose might disruptions and discontinuity serve for a group of contemporary dancers, particularly when they want to ‘successfully’ perform for an audience? Building on the phenomenological perspective of reversibility with the dancer interview descriptions, I explore the concept of Kaja Silverman’s (1992, 1996) ‘productive look’ to consider how dancers might pragmatically work with instances of disruption with video self-images which might be akin to the alienation they find in the experience of performing. The aim is to explore senses of play and agency, but also continuity and discontinuity, between kinaesthetic experiences and video self-images, which might be further explored in the practice, from the dancers’ perspective. Put in another way, there is great emphasis in the practice, such as is found in the fieldwork for contemporary dance training in the UK, on attending to kinaesthetic sensation, not necessarily focusing on the visual aspect of this kinaesthetic experience, which can leave the problems of being a performer, and being watched, for the dancers themselves to figure out with little reference to the visual

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image or aesthetic that they create, or the dancers are left to negotiate the challenges of being a dance performer in this regard relatively alone.1 The dominant value of a kinaesthetic mode of attention, as discussed in depth in the previous chapters, has been integral to modern and contemporary dance across its history, and this chapter does not aim to subvert this value. As also discussed briefly in Chapter 4, there is a value in contemporary dance aesthetic that the dancer can produce a feeling or affect through their dancing. I focus on one underexplored problem that complicates this value, which is that performance is a significant part of a contemporary dancers’ practice, and yet the importance of how movement appears and dealing with this, from the dancer’s perspective, remains relatively underexplored. It must also be noted that the focus of this chapter is on the fieldwork interview descriptions from the contemporary dancers; however, the theme of this chapter was not found to be exclusive to the contemporary dancers. Negotiating how movement feels and how it looks was shared by all the dancers interviewed. However, the degree of emphasis of the dancers’ attention to how movement looked was different, an issue which authors such as Foster (1997), Ravn (2009), Purser (2011), and Aalten (2004) also discuss. The focus here is on contemporary dancer descriptions, as contemporary dance is the primary focus of the book overall. This chapter addresses this by focusing on certain contexts and contemporary dancer descriptions which support the argument of the continuities and discontinuities between the imagined visual appearances of one’s own dancing, via video imagery and kinaesthetic feeling.

1 In addition to myinterviews, during my fieldwork I encountered other veteran professional contemporary dancers who expressed a problem of learning how to perform during their careers. For instance, dance practitioner Lauren Potter, during a talk at Independent Dance in London, UK on 12 October 2010 titled the ‘Performer’s Perspective’, said that she learned how to perform with DV8 ‘by default’ and her practical performing experience developed by learning on the job and with the help of an informal mentoring system. Similarly, dance practitioner and scholar Sue Hawksley, at the 2011 Dance and Somatic Practices Conference at the University of Coventry, commented on a continual unease in her performance career in which many times she felt she was achieving something to be told by the choreographer that she was not. Dance practitioner and scholar Jennifer Roche agreed with Hawksley that dancers need more tools to deal with the feeling of ‘destabilisation’ in the choreographic process (see also Roche 2015, 2018).

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Intertwining Several dancers’ descriptions suggested that kinaesthetic experiences include a ‘folding in’ of video self-image(s) viewed. ‘Folding in’ refers to Merleau-Ponty’s (1945) idea of the ‘double horizon’ of present perception and the idea that past experiences impact on present perceptions. Merleau-Ponty illustrates ‘double horizon’ with the example of perceiving a house. He argues that in looking at a house, we perceive that house but the present perception of that house is also wrapped up with previous perceptions of that house and other houses. He thus suggests a crucial temporal idea about present perceptions, which is that present perceptions are wrapped up with previous experiences: ‘…past time is wholly collected up and grasped in the present….Thus, through the double horizon…my present may cease to be a factual present...’ (Merleau-Ponty 1945, 80). Or in another part of the text as he states more generally: At each successive instant of a movement, the preceding instant is not lost sight of. It is, as it were, dovetailed into the present, and present perception generally speaking consists in drawing together, on the basis of one’s present position, the succession of previous positions, which envelop each other. (Merleau-Ponty 1945, 162)

The premise I want to highlight is his argument that present perception includes a folded up of the past into that present and also that the present perception gets folded up into future perceptions. Merleau-Ponty is not alone in his ideas about the intertwining of past and present perceptions. Henri Bergson (1912/2004) likewise argues for how memories always impact on present perceptions, sensations and experiences. Bergson’s commitment to this position is found in many places in his text Matter and Memory, but he most closely provides links to Merleau-Ponty’s ideas of the double horizon when he declares: ‘Memory thus creates anew the present perception; or rather it doubles this perception by reflecting upon it either its own image or some other memory-image of the same kind’ (Bergson 1912/2004, 123). Merleau-Ponty distinctly takes the above claims for vision and applies them to kinaesthetic perceptions. For instance, he argues that present kinaesthetic perceptions can also be tied to previous kinaesthetic perceptions. In addition, he argues that because perceptions are multi-sensorial,

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present kinaesthetic perceptions can be tied to past visual perceptions as well (e.g. Merleau-Ponty 1945, 175; 1968, 134–135). At first glance, such is the case for the dancers in my research, which brought out the idea of ‘folding in’. The dancers’ present kinaesthetic perceptions can be interpreted as dovetailing previously seen video selfimage(s). Or, in the way I discuss it here, the dancers’ present kinaesthetic perceptions include a ‘folding in’ of previously seen video images. Examining some of the interview excerpts demonstrates the different ways the dancers indicate a folding in of video self-image(s) into their corporeal schema and reveal some of the ways this theme came out in the dancers’ descriptions. Mads provides a prime example of the ‘folding in’ of kinaesthetic experiences and visual self-image(s) seen on video. In one part of his interview, he articulates that the previously seen video self-images had an impact on his present kinaesthetic experiences. As the issue of video image memories ‘folding in’ to present experience arose in previous dancer interviews before the one with Mads, I chose to ask him about this problem directly. Shantel: …..did you think, just now doing it, did the image of the video just watching it come up at all? Mads: Uh…yeah it came up….um……….. it was more of a…um…warning signs…that is, ‘oh this part you did it really hard on the video’….and ‘this part, you did it….in this way, keep that…still, and, emphasis in this part’…… (interview 2).

After having watched the video, Mads suggests that video comes back in another, imagined, form as he does the phrase again—as a set of imaginary reminders, or as ‘memory traces’, as he does the phrase the second time. I use the term ‘memory trace’ to capture the idea that the ‘folding in’ of the video previously seen is partial; the video does not impact on all of his present kinaesthetic experiences but does so at thinly marked moments. Watching the video makes a mark on Mads, and as such he goes lightly back over the video in his next ‘present’ kinaesthetic experience. He traces back over that video as he kinaesthetically experiences the movement again. Continuing from above, Mads says: Mads: […] I had [the video] more, in the back of my head, so [I] kind of…pictured it in my head… I didn’t see myself though [laugh]…….I was seeing movement and…a silhouette of…..a person doing it, and then..kind of pointers of…here, this part…that part…careful… (interview 2).

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Mads suggests the memory trace of the video is a kind of reincarnation of the image(s) previously seen, and these ‘memory traces’ re-direct his kinaesthetic intentions the next time he does the phrase. Other dancers give similar examples of previous video image(s) intertwining with their next kinaesthetic intentions of the movement. Tineka, for instance, talks about watching the first video of her movement and, noticing the dynamics are a bit flat, she wants to change that aspect of the movement the next time she does the phrase. She too affirms that the video comes up as ‘memory traces’ the next time she does the phrase. Tineka: No its just….I didn’t tell you before, but I remember now, as I was [dancing]…that I thought that my dynamics were crap [in the video], […] And I was paying attention to it now [dancing]….quite consciously…..[…]…it wasn’t like, I’m going to work on my dynamics now, but I think as I started doing it I was like…oh yeah I can [work on my dynamics]… (interview 2).

Similar to Mads, Tineka describes that she did not start the phrase with a conscious choice of changing the dynamics, but that, as she starts to do the phrase again, it is that the ‘memory trace’ of the video comes up and serves as a faint reminder of exact places she wants to change. It is only when she starts to do the phrase again, experiencing it kinaesthetically, that the video ‘memory traces’ are summoned up. Jasper also describes a simultaneous process of dancing and reflecting on the previously seen video image(s). He states that the video memory is something that ‘just keeps coming up’ the next time he does the phrase: Jasper: Yeah you remember….I don’t know, when you’re doing it, if you’ve got time…enough brain space to be like ‘ok that’s what you look like…..that’s what I want…that’s what I feel…that’s what I-, that’s what it’s supposed to be…’ (interview 1).

Jasper flags up an important point with his description, which is that I am not claiming conclusively that the previously seen video will always feed into the next time the dancer does the phrase, or at least not in a way that the dancer might always be able to reflect consciously. For instance, sometimes movements are so fast that the dancer can do nothing but attend to executing the movement. Sometimes the choreography is new so the dancer’s attention is focused on the sequencing of the phrase. Reflecting on a previously seen video image is therefore in some cases

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nearly impossible for the dancer to do consciously, because there is not enough ‘brain space’, as Jasper refers to it, for the dancer to attend to, for instance, both remembering the new choreography and the previously seen video image. Nevertheless, Jasper, similarly to Mads and Tineka, indicates that sometimes, while dancing, he simultaneously executes the choreography, what he calls ‘the performance’ and also reflects on various intertwinings between performative elements, such as, ‘how did the movement look’, ‘how did it feel’, ‘how should it look’. He likewise suggests that the memory trace is crucial to a relation-ing between his ‘present’ and ‘past’ experiences of dancing. As he continues, Jasper states more explicitly that like Mads, ‘he has the video in mind’ as he dances the phrase after having seen the video. All three dancers’ excerpts suggest the ways, from the dancers’ experiential perspectives, that they engage in multi-faceted yet contextually specific kinaesthetic awareness while dancing. Their kinaesthetic experiences are multi-layered, but more specifically in this case, multi-layered in relation to previously seen video self-image(s), which complicate microrelations in the practice, particularly between the dancer’s fleshy bodily and seemingly private experiences in relation to a ‘hard,’ ‘external,’ ‘other’ video two-dimensional image object. Unless consciously and purposefully reflected on, as in the case of these interviews and research, these types of relations, between video selfreflection and kinaesthetic awareness for instance, might go unnoticed by the dancer. Therefore, repetition of these kinds of experiences can become automatic and ‘unconscious’ to the dancer’s dancing experiences, in a similar way that Pierre Bourdieu (1980/1990) conceptualises that muscle memory can become automatic and ‘unconscious’ in terms of habitus. For instance, movements can be repeated so often that eventually the mechanics of the movement fall below the level of the person’s consciousness and become part of their muscle memory, shaping their habitus. That is to say that a practice can become so habitual that a person can no longer articulate how or why she/he does the movement that way, because ‘that way’ of moving has become so automatic through repetition, that eventually they simply just do the movement that way. A dancer might also repeatedly ‘fold in’ previously seen video self-images into present felt dancing experiences until these previous self-images become part of their kinaesthetic and mind’s eye memory as part of their dancing experience and knowledge. In other words, if a dancer repeatedly sees themselves

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dancing many times over their career, those self-images might settle into the dancers’ imagination, but they might do so eventually below the level of consciousness. The above discussion is informed in part by Barbara Montero’s (2006) philosophical discussion of aesthetics, dance experience, and what she calls ‘proprioceiving aesthetically’. That is, philosophical discussion about the idea that self-image(s) previously seen or imagined, ‘what I look like dancing’, might intertwine with proprioceptive experiences, ‘what I feel like dancing’, in a particular ‘non-conscious’ way, over time, which leads to something like ‘proprioceiving aesthetically’.2 Montero (2006) claims that dancers can proprioceive when movements are ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ in the same way that a person can visually assess a painting. She writes: A dancer, during a rehearsal onstage...may claim that a certain movement or position is beautiful or...complain that the beauty, or whatever other aesthetic quality he or she is aiming at producing, is lacking: ‘The movement is too abrupt’; ‘The line is ugly’; ‘I’m not feeling the connections’. (232)

In sum, Montero suggests that a dancer can judge the projected image of their body through proprioceptive feeling; that a dancer can process the aesthetic of the movement via bodily sensations and perceptions, or proprioceptive experience. One of the dancers, Tineka, supports this claim when she says in one of her interviews that she can sense when a movement is right or wrong in the same way that a choreographer judges her movements from the outside.3 2 Montero (2006) uses ballet examples, such as arabesque and port de bras, to substantiate her claims, thus there is some unpicking to do further in terms of differences for ballet versus other styles with the concept of proprioceiving aesthetically which I am unable to pursue here in-depth. 3 It is important to distinguish again between the terms proprioception and kinaesthesia. Montero (2006) defines proprioception as ‘the sense by which we acquire information about the positions and movements of our own bodies, via receptors in the joints, tendons, ligaments, muscles, and skin’ (p. 231). She does not reference this definition, however her definition is in accordance with physiology and motor control and learning textbooks (Tortora 2002; Magill 2007). Proprioception is thus conceived as distinct to kinaesthesia in that the latter includes the other sense modalities, such as vision, whereas the former refers primarily to one’s bodily sensation via the central and peripheral nervous systems, such as for sensing limb position when eyes are closed.

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Montero (2006) allows the consideration for how the training of dance performers, and a developed (versus innate) intertwining of how movement feels and how it looks, impacts on this ability to proprioceive aesthetically, particularly for the case of professional-level dancers who are repeatedly exposed to visual self-reflection, be that images, verbal descriptions or other imaginations. Montero (2006) argues that the visual and proprioceptive work together uniquely for the case of dancers and that dancers can understand movements to be proprioceptively graceful in part because they can also judge the movements would be graceful if seen (236). Montero’s (2006) purpose is to argue how proprioception can be as important as is visual information in the case of being and becoming dancers, particularly considering the issue of aesthetics historically from a philosophical perspective. Building on Montero’s (2006) discussion, it can be argued that dancers training and working in Western theatre styles, such as ballet, contemporary, hip hop and breaking, face numerous representations of what their dancing looks like in practice, such as from watching video selfreflections on ‘smart’ phones, which inform or impact on this ability to ‘proprioceive aesthetically’ in the way Montero argues for. These dancers repeatedly hear, see, and imagine how their dancing appears from the outside and these repeated experiences end up intermingling with and informing dancers’ proprioceptive experiences in ways that can fall to the back of present and conscious experience once the visual self-image(s) becomes a part of the automatic habitual behaviour. In other words, dancers in these styles are often encouraged to utilise self-reflection and feedback from teachers, choreographers, and fellow dancers, to get a sense of how their movement appears. This is not to deny becoming a professional-level dancer without ever receiving visually based feedback from a mirror or video (i.e. Montero writes about the example of visually impaired dancers, such as Alicia Alonso). However, even in the case of visual impairment, it is likely that dancers training and working in Western theatre styles will be concerned with visual display in some form; put another way, dancers working in these styles often face the issue that understanding how their movement appears is important, to an extent, to be successful in the field; hence, mirrors, video, verbal, and/or tactile feedback about how movement appears are used in the practice. Many dancers encounter the problem of trying to understand how their movement appears, primarily because dance is a visual art made up of dancers’ performing bodies. Visual representations of their dancing come up in

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the practice and inevitably, over time, these visual imagined self-images get incorporated into dancers’ seemingly private kinaesthetic experiences. Michela Summa (2018) supports this claim in her elaboration of Fuchs’ (2017) work on bodily and cultural memory, touched on in Chapter 2. Summa argues against all memory being conceived in terms of habit as fixed, such as in the case of an experienced organist who can adapt to different type of environments to play (Merleau-Ponty 1945).4 Fuchs (2017) argues, according to Summa, that body memory is bound to the ongoing dynamic coupling between body and environment (emphasis mine). Fuchs precisely describes the body in connection with environment as the carrier of habits and skill. Body memory is in the body’s interaction with the environment as well as in the flexible re-actualisation through similar interactions later on. As Summa (2018) summarises later in her presentation: ‘There are some capacities of body memory which mean body memory is coupled with the capacity to grasp the novelty of each situation, possibly of taking some distance from the acquired patterns of experience through a form of bodily reflexivity or about adaptation or transforming previously acquired patterns of experience (body memory) in a productive way’ (n.p.). Thus, for the case of dance performers, such as those working in contemporary, ballet and hip hop styles, proprioception and imagined visual projected dancing develop hand and hand, in a context-specific (not universal) way, and many dancers, to an extent, incorporate a way of perceiving movement according to an external aesthetic of the style they work in. Montero’s (2006) argument for dancers’ proprioceiving aesthetically supports the argument that dancers develop an intertwining between ‘what my movement looks like’ and ‘what my movement feels like’, so that eventually dancers might be able to feel when something looks ‘right’ and/or have a visual imagination of something looking ‘right’ when movement feels ‘right’. These aspects of feeling and imagining the look of movement can also be separated, but the focus here is how they are intertwined for the case of dancers. Referring back to the issue of repetition from Bourdieu’s (1980/1990) idea of habitus, so too can self-images previously seen or verbal feedback about how one’s movement appears fall to the background and the proprioceptive come to the foreground, especially over the dancers’ 4 See Purser (2018a) for discussion of Merleau-Ponty’s organist and dancer experience and Ravn and Høffding (2017) for discussion of violinist perspective.

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training and as their skills improve. Indeed Montero (2006) argues that ‘a dancer often trusts proprioception more than vision’ (231). However, Montero does not address in detail how this might develop over time. That is, as the dancer becomes expert, the coupling of the visual and the proprioceptive can become such that the dancer can, with reliable certainty, imagine what movement they felt might look like from the outside. In addition, from the dancer perspective, this attention to the external visual display of their dancing can fall to the background and the kinaesthetic come to the foreground. Looking at it from yet another way, a professional-level dancer might say they perceive something ‘right’ proprioceptively because they have had plenty of previous experience of seeing and hearing how their movements look, in tandem, so that eventually they can rely only on kinaesthetic sensation to imagine how their movement looks. The interviews serve as examples of how this idea of developing the ability to proprioceive aesthetically comes up in practice for a group of contemporary dancers. The descriptions by the dancers indicate that becoming dancer means learning how to join visual self-image(s) with proprioceptive experience, and develop a skill of knowing how a felt movement might appear.

Double Sensation Merleau-Ponty’s (1945, 1968) writings on the idea of ‘double horizon’ can be linked with his writings on reversibility and ‘double sensation’, largely to be found in his later works, primarily The Visible and Invisible.5 The framing of the above terms, ‘folding in’ and ‘memory trace’, serve as precursors to thinking further about the dancer interviews with Merleau-Ponty’s concept of reversibility, particularly his ideas around the intertwining of seer and seen. Merleau-Ponty uses the example of two hands touching to illustrate his idea of ‘double sensation’, which is crucial to his idea of the intertwining

5 Elizabeth Grosz (1994) writes about the idea of ‘folding in’ in her discussion of

Merleau-Ponty’s reversibility, ‘double sensation’, and intertwining, supporting the argument that these ideas are linked. She writes, ‘Flesh is being’s reversibility, its capacity to fold in on itself, a dual orientation inward and outward...the flesh is reflexivity, that fundamental gap or dehiscence of being that Merleau-Ponty illustrates with a favourite example, the “double sensation”’ (100).

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side of reversibility, as also discussed with Legrand (2007) in the previous chapter. In sum, he argues that when I touch my own right hand with my left, I both feel the left hand touching my right and I am the left hand which touches the right. In this sense, touching and touched are one and the same. As Grosz (1994) interprets: ‘My left hand has the double sensation of being both the object and the subject of the touch’ (100). Merleau-Ponty (1968) argues that the same model for touchingtouched can be applied to seer-seen. He argues that seer and seen have a reciprocal, intertwined, and circular relationship: Since the same body sees and touches, visible and tangible belong to the same world...he who sees cannot possess the visible unless he is possessed by it, unless he is of it, unless, by principle, according to what is required by the articulation of the look with the things, he is one of the visible, capable, by a singular reversal, of seeing them – he who is one of them. (134–135)

He claims with intertwining, as one side of reversibility, that my body and the world come from the same place. Flesh intertwines the physical object that reflects, such as a mirror, and the eyes that see. The body ‘is made of the same flesh as the world’ and ‘this flesh of my body is shared by the world, the world reflects it’ (as cited in Parviainen 1998, 63). Flesh (the material person who perceives and feels) acts between the physical object that reflects, such as a mirror or video, and the eyes that see. Thus, subject and object intertwine in these acts of seeing oneself. As Susan Kozel (2007) puts it, ‘Flesh is inserted into the relation between the one who sees and the thing seen’ and ‘I am both subject and object through the act of seeing’ (35 and 36). When we apply the premise of reversibility of being and world to selfreflection via an object, such as a video camera and self-image, we come to a way of theorising how the video self-image(s) become intertwined with the dancer’s seemingly internal and private proprioceptive sensations. For instance, the video image is made up of my body dancing, it is a recording of my dancing, and thus my dancing is shared with the object, the object

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becomes my dancing. The dancing in the video is, on the one hand, me and my being in the world.6

Paradox All of the dancers interviewed had moments when they watch the video and the self-image also seems incongruent with their kinaesthetic memory and/or imagined idea of the previous kinaesthetic experience. In other words, all the dancers at times experience a paradox or disruption between what they see on video and what they previously felt of that same movement. A few of the dancers give particularly poignant descriptions to help indicate the ways disruption happens for them. Jasper, for instance, talks about experiencing disruption while watching back a contemporary dance phrase he just performed: Jasper: I really felt like my back was really round, rather than flat, and…….I feel [laugh], I feel longer than I look….usually. And, because I’m really rurgh….and… I’m short, so I’m really trying to look, to feel, big and long and… I never do look like it [light laugh], but…..[…]…yeah pretty much, I look sort of…maybe the first one of the first big jump… usually would travel much further back…and I thought it could travel more, but it was almost on the spot on the video so…. (interview 1).

One instance of disruption here is Jasper kinaesthetically feeling his back was round when he dances the movement, but then visually perceiving his back is flat when watching the video. Another instance of disruption is when Jasper says that he thinks he never looks as big and long as he feels, yet he always aims for looking big and long and believes he attains it at times. Jasper also indicates, more specifically regarding the movement phrase, that his kinaesthetic and imaginative experience, ‘the first big jump’, is not matched with the video image shown back to him just after: ‘I thought it could travel more’, ‘but it was almost on the spot’, indicating that on some level he has an imagined idea of how the movement might appear from the camera’s point of view. Watching the video back he realises the imagined idea is not matched for him.

6 Please see Ehrenberg (2012) for a case-study discussion of other kinaesthetic-visual intertwinings that came up in the fieldwork, such as verbal descriptions from teachers and choreographers and from watching other dancers.

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Willow expresses a familiarity and frequency in encountering disruption with video self-reflection in a similar way that Jasper describes: Willow: […] yeah I’m pretty sure if I watch myself on video I’d go, mmm alignment there, oooo, you know things that you wish…you’re trying to incorporate, you’re going, ahhh….definitely not coming through the way you’d like them to (interview 1).

Willow talks specifically in this part of the interview about her spinal alignment, stating that it is a part of her kinaesthetic experience of her dancing body in which she frequently experiences disruption with video self-images. She indicates that she intentionally focuses on making her alignment appear in a certain way and in some cases (but not all) imagines she attains this alignment. However, when she watches video footage, her alignment often does not appear to her how she intends and imagines based on her kinaesthetic experience—the alignment does ‘not [come] though the way you’d like [it] to’. Santana also comments on the frequency with which he confronts video disruption when he watches himself dancing. Interestingly, Santana indicates that sometimes disruptions that happen in a positive direction and movement can sometimes look better on video than he had kinaesthetically felt, or imagined, they would. Santana: Yeah…I get that a lot…I watch…you know when I practice and I train, even if I train moves…they’ll feel really nice…and I watch back the clip and …[inaudible]….it’s just like what we did now [in interview; did movement and watched it back on video]… some of the stuff I did I thought ‘oh that felt really nice’ and then I look-…and it works the other way around as well, sometimes I think ‘oh that didn’t feel good’ or…’that probably didn’t look right’…and I watch back and actually, you know, actually it’s ok!… (interview 1).

Santana is not a contemporary dancer and is relatively new to breaking compared to the other dancers in the study. Thus, one might argue that disruptions happen more frequently for Santana because he is newer to training and that video disruptions are related to the amount of training one does, or that Santana has a different relationship to video because hip hop and breaking have a different historical and performative relationship to screens than other styles, such as contemporary dance. Although the degree of disruption might relate to training level and style

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to an extent, the overwhelming responses in the interviews across all of the dancers were that disruption with video self-reflection happens no matter what level and style. The variation across training is minimal compared to the problem of why disruptions come about and what is at stake for the contemporary dancers’ experiences of disruption with video self-reflection. So, generally, in certain moments of watching the video self-reflection, the dancers indicate experiencing disruption, or a gap being thrown open, between the kinaesthetic feeling of the movement, what they imagine, and what they see on video. There are distinct connections made by the dancers between the kinaesthetic feeling of the movement and an imagined way the movement should appear. The visual video self-reflection, however, stands distinctly apart in these instances of disruption. There is therefore a distinct gap between kinaesthetic experience and imagination and the appearance of the video self-images. Simon Ellis (2013) echoes the theme discussed among these aspects of the dancer interviews in his ‘playfully experimental’ description of encountering his own video image as part of a performance practice: I see them – the audience – watching me. And him–me. And I am me watching me–him, and them. Who is this person I have become ... or am about to be? Who is that person on that screen to me? I think this might be how I know that conceptual problems are not just understood, but felt (Ryerson 2011). Which version of me is which in this case (as I reflect)? This projected me is acting, I am watching. But the distance feels vast. We talk the talk of how technology is shrinking distances, but my solitude is acute in this digital (projected) divide. I am experientially and perceptually different over there on that screen. Or rather, audiences understand that person there on-screen to be me, but recognize that it is a me from another time–space. A him-but-not-him. I suspect, though, that they-you enact judgments about my performance as if it were me, and are probably unconcerned with the chasm between my various performing selves (251)

Ellis, with notable analytical and philosophically informed reflective writing skill (including making note of the frequent use of first-person pronouns in the above quote), expresses a spatial and temporal gap in watching himself on video dancing. He articulates his trouble with never truly being able to see what the audience sees. He feels a distancing from himself and communicates a negotiation between the him that is not him

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and yet he knows it is him on the screen. A vision of a person that he understands is a part of his performing self and yet also rather separate from it. Ellis (2013) echoes Susan Kozel’s reflections on her experience with motion capture: ‘[The motion captured figure] exists, it is not exactly the same as me, but it is also not irrevocably different from me, and, in a broader sense, we cannot pretend that the digitisation of our bodies and social relation is going to evaporate or even diminish. Like it or not, we have digital twins’ (250, also cited in Karreman 2017, 112). Ellis’s (2013) underlying thrust here is a distrust for that image, however, emphasising its otherness. The essay leans towards the ‘real’ felt and experiencing body, rather than the visual image. For instance, earlier in the essay he quotes Carsten Höller, also in reference to video: ‘It makes me unsure of what really is … It is about losing certainty … And then the real film starts, the inner film’ (249; also cited in Aitken and Höller 2006, 165).

Chiasm Merleau-Ponty’s (1968) concept of chiasm is a useful way of bringing back in thinking in phenomenological terms about how these dancers experience disruption with video self-reflection, to then later move in other directions. The argument for chiasm follows the concept of reversibility, discussed above, in which Merleau-Ponty argues that, on the one hand, human beings are bodies of flesh, which are things like other things. My body and the world come from the same place, as Parviainen (1998) interprets: the body ‘is made of the same flesh as the world’ and ‘this flesh of my body is shared by the world, the world reflects it’ (63). The same premise of reversibility of being and world can apply to objects like a video camera and its image, as Ellis (2013) alludes. The dancing in the video is, on the one hand, me and my being in the world. However, another key part of reversibility is that being and world, or self and other, do not melt into each other. At the limits of reversibility, Merleau-Ponty (1968) argues, is where a gap, chiasm, or écart takes place. Applying this idea to a dance context, this means that a dancer’s dancing experience and perceived video self-image likewise do not melt into each other (Parviainen 1998, 65). As discussed above with ‘double horizon’, it is for the same reason I cannot ‘truly’ touch myself that I also cannot ‘truly’ perceive my own movement in visual self-reflection. A mirror, for instance, is only an extension of my body so it cannot help me escape the relation I always have with my body either. The mirror is a reminder

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of the otherness that already exists in oneself and that ‘every perception is doubled with a counter-perception’ (Merleau-Ponty 1968. 264). Merleau-Ponty (1945) alludes to the concept of chiasm in Phenomenology of Perception: I can see my eyes in three mirrors, but they are the eyes of someone observing, and I have the utmost difficulty in catching my living glance when a mirror in the street unexpectedly reflects my image back at me. My body in the mirror never stops following my intentions like their shadow, and if observation consists in varying the point of view while keeping the object fixed, then it escapes observation and is given to me as a simulacrum of my tactile body since it imitates the body’s actions instead of responding to them by a free unfolding of perspectives. My visual body is certainly an object as far as its parts far removed from my head are concerned, but as we come nearer to the eyes, it becomes divorced from objects, and reserves among them a quasi-space to which they have no access, and when I try to fill this void by recourse to the image in the mirror, it refers me back to an original of the body which is not out there among things, but in my own province, on this side of all things seen. (105)

The gap between seer and seen resides within the self, because the bodyself is also an other to itself and the mirror (or video) only reminds me of this problem, or adds another layer, of the same kind, to the layer of fissure I experience within myself (Parviainen 1998, 64). In short, taking what Merleau-Ponty suggests, we might argue that the problem, of disruption with the dancers’ experience watching themselves on video, is that the dancers’ eyes are in the very body which moves and is perceived. Thus, they cannot ‘see’ outside of their body or see their own movement in a purely objective way, because those with which they see—the eyes—are also part of the body which moves. When MerleauPonty tries to examine his body in the mirror to examine the objectness of his body, he realises that he can only see his body from where he sees. He cannot examine his body ‘objectively’, from the outside, or removed from his experience of his body and his previous experiences. For the same reason, the dancers will never be able to view the video image removed from the previous lived, or kinaesthetic, experience and the previous experience will always colour the viewing of their self-images. Parviainen (1998) likewise applies Merleau-Ponty’s ideas about chiasm and self-reflection to dancers (mainly in the context of dance education) and insists that the problem of dancers being on the same side as

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their bodies will mean that they will, at times, experience disruption with video self-reflection: ‘There is always an écart between moving and moved (visual) to the dancer her/himself. This implies that a certain body movement may look strange when it is seen by the dancer on the video’ (66). Utilising Merleau-Ponty, Parviainen (1998) argues that chiasm takes place for the dancer in two ways: ‘1) in the dancing body itself and 2) between the moving body and the one who perceives it’ (66).

Disruption, Discontinuity, Gaps These instances of dancers’ experiences of disruption, between kinaesthetic experience and visual self-images, are a catalyst to explore productive ways of thinking about dancers’ unsettling experiences with video self-image in the practice. All of the dancers claim to use video feedback and find video self-reflection in dance useful, although to varying degrees. They thus indicate that, to an extent, video self-reflection in dance practice can be productive, even if also disturbing. By ‘productive’ I do not mean working towards a product, but in contrast to it being destructive, in a theoretical sense. Historically, video self-reflection has been conceived suspiciously in contemporary dance discourse principally in terms of objectification, which is in line with poststructuralist concepts such as ‘the male gaze’ and the camera as mechanical object (e.g. Weiss 1999). The dancer interviews indeed support this argument. For instance, one of the dancer’s interviewed, Tineka, indicates quite strongly the anxiety that the video can bring up. After filming her movement phrase, Tineka immediately reflects on a sudden rush of anxiety in hearing the camera being turned on, relating it to experiences she has felt at auditions. Tineka: I got a bit nervous [the second time]! I was like ooh! […] It’s just like....’I’m recording’, you know, this is your chance, kind of thing…..I didn’t, yeah…….it’s not an assessment or audition, but I felt my heart beat go rising up…[little laugh] […] ‘here you are I’m recording you’…I don’t know......performing….even though you’re not saying that, you know….[…] Yeah….I just felt a bit my heart rate come up a bit like, ah ok ok…ah ah..ok I’m performing! [talking to herself, internal dialogue]…you know… (interview 2).

Tineka explicitly describes her reaction to the camera ‘eye’ not as a conscious reaction, but a sudden rather unconscious feeling of her heart

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beat picking up pace—what a physiologist might call an autonomic ‘fight-or-flight’ response. Tineka was not the only dancer to discuss this relationship to video self-image. Erdem likewise recalled a ‘horrible’ time when she ‘was genuinely shocked’ to see herself dancing on video (interview 2). Candace talked about a time when she wanted to cry because the experience of seeing herself on video was so awful. Robert Bingham (2018), working with Sondra Fraleigh and writing from a phenomenological perspective, also reflects on a similar experience with video self-reflection, ‘I recollect my quickening awareness of being filmed and the possibility that my dancing may become a composition for other eyes […]’ (43). The anxiety which Tineka and Robert encapsulate evokes Jean-Paul Sartre’s (1943) concept of ‘the look’ and how these dancers might be indicating the alienation processes and shame in internalising the gaze of the other in being and becoming professional-level dancers.7 Purser (2018a) implicitly supports a similar reading from dancer descriptions of visual self-images as ‘distracting’ in discussion with Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology. She summarises, from the contemporary dancer descriptions from her research, that there is a distinction between ‘the body as a source of transcendence’ and ‘the body as a source of immanence’, but that, as such, an ‘over-reliance on the mirror (or photographic) image of the dancing body was understood by the dancers to focus too much attention on “making shapes” and on the objective positioning of the body in space’ (Purser 2018a, 41). She likewise describes this experience as alienating for the dancers (41). As discussed in Chapter 3, Purser (2018a) goes on to explore the dancers’ descriptions as they relate to ‘inhabited transcendence’ (45) and how the dancers descriptions bring out the body-focus in their practice. However, whether or not we agree with how these experiences are philosophically framed, what I would like to explore here is the aspect of body-as-object, or transcendence interrupted by immanence, when dancers focus on their bodies which renders the body an object to them and their experience reduced to a being-for-others (Purser 2018a, 40), as something that might also actually be a necessary part of a professional-level performing dancer experience, which one will never be ‘free’ from entirely and, thus, an area of the practice we can further explore. That is, to explore the multiple 7 There is much more to unpick here to rigorously explore Sartre’s ‘the look,’ though feminist philosophy and the power of the visual is a part of this philosophical lineage (e.g. Ehrenberg 2019).

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layers of this problem of visual self-reflection and being-for-others for the context of performing contemporary dancers, and how this place of discomfort in the practice might actually be understood as inherent to being a dance performer and a space of creativity as much as a space of alienation. This means also to question how much the dancers’ discussion is also a reflection of a discourse and ideology within the style. What I am trying to emphasise here is that these emotional responses to disruption and negative readings of body-as-object in dancer experience provide another rationale for exploring productive ways of thinking about dancers’ experiences with video self-images in the practice. That is, by exploring a productive approach, without negating the arguments of the power of the visual and body-as-object, and arguing that there are a multitude of responses possible, is to affirm the multiple ways dancers work with video self-reflection and work between kinaesthetically feeling one’s dancing and imagining the visual apprehension of that same dancing. Doing so might allow for more pragmatic means of responding to times when visual self-images are emotionally disturbing and/or alienating within the practice. One current response is to avoid the ‘critical eye’ of the camera entirely. Indeed, Tineka suggests in other parts of her interview that she principally focuses on the feeling of movement rather than how the movement looks, and almost never looks at herself on video. However, as mentioned above, with the proliferation of handheld video devices and platforms featuring dance performance such as YouTube and Vimeo, and the as yet unknown full impact of the pandemic and practising over zoom and other online platforms, it will become more difficult to avoid video self-images as a contemporary dancer, as might have been done previously. There is an ethical problem here, which I address in another publication (Ehrenberg 2019) and in the next chapter, building on feminist philosophy and the problem of the power of the visual as well. This is a particularly rich time in the discourse to explore multiplicity between dancers’ kinaesthetic experience and visual self-images. There has also been increasing scholarship (critical thinking technology) to build on the productive potential of seeming object-subject relations, supporting the interpretation that, though disruptions may at times be experienced by these dancers as troubling and/or reveal a troubling issue about power and difference with the visual, disruptions might also be a necessary aspect of becoming a professional-level dancer in the current contemporary dance economy. This perspective of multiplicity builds on the way that identity formation, or processes of becoming, is theorised to include

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moments of shift and change, as much as continuity and stability (Butler 1990). Returning to Merleau-Ponty’s (1968) writings on chiasm, there can likewise be found the call for a productive account of visual self-image and becoming. He argues that chiasm is the very point at which we create our Being, or in which our imagination helps us make connections between self and other, which shapes who we are. ‘…there is not only a me-other rivalry, but a co-functioning (Merleau-Ponty 1968, 215). As Gail Weiss (1999) argues, Merleau-Ponty offers ‘the development of an intracorporeal spatiality … that provides a more positive and productive account of the formation of the body image…as anintersubjective phenomenon that need not be grounded in deception’ (13). Weiss’ (1999) writings on body image as intercorporeality, utilising Merleau-Ponty throughout, and her more recent work on normativity (Weiss 2015), helps to begin to conceive how disruptions for these dancers is productive. She writes about the multiplicity of body image(s) we encounter that impact on a continual process of re-construction of our body images and our identities, which when applied to dance also suggests that dancers need to be conceived of as agents in the relationship with chiasm and video self-reflection. …the multiplicity of body images that we possess, rather than signifying a fragmented or dispersed identityis paradoxically, precisely what helps us to develop a coherent sense of self. More specifically, insofar as these multiple body images are themselves generated out of the variety of situations in which we find ourselves, they enable us to develop fluid and flexible responses to them. Moreover, I would add, it is the ongoing exchange that occurs between body images, an exchange that unfolds at the very moment that one body image imperceptibly gives way to another, which provides us with a sense of intercorporeal continuity, a continuity that is reinforced through our concrete relations with others. (167)

Applying this thinking to the dancer interviews, what Weiss (1999, 2015) suggests is that the videos can offer the dancers other images of their dancing—a multiplicity of dancing self-images—that might aid the dancer in imagining something like a ‘dancing identity’. However, in this chapter the focus is primarily on visual aspects of that identity, such as ‘that’s what I look like dancing’ or ‘that’s what I want to look like dancing’. In other cases, it might be a dancing identity based around tactile or auditory feedback. Put simply, isolating the visual aspects of these dancers’

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dancing identities, if the video self-images were to always match how the dancers imagined, then there would be no creative potential with these interactions. As Weiss (2015) suggests, body images are not static viewed things in themselves, but instead contribute to a ‘generation’ of other selfimages. Thus, video self-image disruptions pose potential to re-imagine how the dancers want to project movement and re-imagine how they want their dancing to appear to others. Video self-image disruptions are thus also conceived as part of an ongoing evolving imaginary project for the dancers with this re-framing, rather than a complete break of a flow of wholeness which ruins them completely (significant discomfort might happen at times and for some dancers, but it does not always have to be the case). The dancers’ viewing of the dancing self-images on video is intercorporeal in that it is in conjunction with a concrete thing—a video image—but also in conjunction with an imagined ‘other’—the audience. Parviainen (1998) indeed argues that dancers should study carefully the gap between dancing and video image, as it is similar to the gap between dancer and audience, which is often faced by the dancer during performance. The disruptions between dancing and watching on video might be useful in learning how to become more comfortable with gaps that also might be felt between dancer and dancing for an audience. As Parviainen (1998) states, the ‘mirror image [or video image] itself makes possible contemplation of the self’ and likewise one’s dancing as oneself being perceived by an ‘other’ (72). The video reminds the dancers that ‘I am also the image and impression of myself that is given to me by the other person’, an other which is not my self (72), and this might help the dancer to grapple with the otherness of performing and being watched, especially at the professional-level. Confronting video reflection resembles confronting audiences because it offers an ‘opportunity to learn to understand the other’ (or the other’s perspective) ‘and construct one’s own [dancing] identity’ via communion with otherness (73). Parviainen (1998) poses this problem as a ‘responsibility’ for dancers, but this seems particularly relevant to those working to be professional in the context of contemporary dance, which makes the working through disruption more palatable: Dancers, in order to express meanings through movements experientially lived, have to study the abyss between the experiential movements and their visual appearance, the moving-moved. How are their lived movements perceivable, since their experiential body is never totally visible to

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the other? What do their movements actually reveal? Are they the same as they experience doing them? (66)

Dance artist and scholar Susan Kozel (2007) echoes Parviainen’s sentiments and argues that self-reflection via technological devices (which include video, although she writes more often about motion capture) can serve as ‘a destabilization of identity that is fundamentally creative’ (39). By positing it this way, the dancers’ experiences of disruption can be conceived of as part of their creative act of dancing and dance technique, and a continual re-construction of their dancing identity more broadly. Kozel (2007) argues for a relational beingness with technology for dancers and that they can re-construct relations with others in a positive way. ‘Through technologies our relations with ourselves shift (our movement, our perceptions, our thought processes) and inevitably our relations with others shift too...’ (215). Reynolds (2007) likewise identifies disruption as an essential aspect of creativity, especially in her discussion of kinaesthetic imagination. She argues that one ‘[act] of kinaesthetic imagination’ is disruption, ‘Movement events that disrupt normative, habitual ways of using energy in movement and produce innovations in production, distribution, expenditure and retention of energy in the body…’ (4). Kinaesthetic imagination has a reflexive potential with the use of technology, such as the moving-image on video (Reynolds 2007, 197) and ‘technology can itself extend the possibilities of kinaesthetic imagination’ (Reynolds 2007, 201). Aalten (2004) likewise found with a group of ballet dancers that, though the visual ideal prevails in their descriptions about dancing, ballet dancers are not left empty by the gap, but work with it in a similar way to what I found for the group of contemporary dancers: But within the confines of these ideals, there were other stories. In these stories the distance between the material and the ideal body was not only a source of frustration, but also a challenge and a reason to work even harder. In these other stories the body of the female dancer was not only the clay that was necessary to mould a dancer’s body, but also a source of worthy experiences and possibilities. (271)

Simon Ellis (2013) likewise, in his postulating of his digital self-reflection as a kind of friend discusses the self-video images as a representation, or

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confrontation, of the various identities through the lens of an expanded notion of choreography: If art is, as Brian Eno suggests, “the place where you become what you’d like to be” (1996: 225), then perhaps these mediated choreographies – with such distinct contexts (stage of career, audience numbers, economies, ambition, complexity, narratives, etc.) – somehow reflect a confrontation with the various identities I experience or imagine as a choreographer: limited, open, closed, egotist, communicator, visionary, uncertain, confident, dogged ...“Strangely, the foreigner lives within us: he is the hidden face of our identity ... by recognizing him within ourselves, we are spared detesting him in himself. (Kristeva 1991: 1)”. (256–257)

This gap is addressed by performance theorist Susan Broadhurst (2006) as liminal thresholds for new experimental practices: It is also my belief that tensions exist within the spaces created by the interface of body and technology and these spaces are “liminal” in as much as they are located on the “threshold” of the physical and virtual. I am suggesting that it is within these tension-filled spaces that opportunities arise for new experimental forms and practices. (137)

In her study into the movement of the Tortugas, in which she immersed herself in learning the movement, Sklar (1994) writes that distancing, similar to disruption, was important for her to be empathetic, and to see things from another’s perspective, and this helped her shift her imagination and learn a new way of moving. Once I made the change in imagination and watched myself synchronizing with the other women’s performance, I could step back inside it and experience with pleasure the heat, the contact, and the waves of movement and joking passing through the group. But first it took creating distance, or dissociating from my body, to create the possibility of empathy. It had been necessary to disembody, or “get a new perspective,” as the old folk wisdom has it, to enable a different kind of embodied experience. (18–19)

Distance, dissociation and disembodiment are posed by Sklar as necessary kinds of disruption to open up her empathic potential and thus her experience of ‘other’ modes of embodiment. Albright (2011) likewise argues the position that moments of disorientation open up new ways of doing contact improvisation and being a contact dancer.

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Summarising a key argument from Sarah Ahmed’s (2006) book Queer Phenomenology,Albright writes: ‘…these moments of disorientation, while frequently disturbing at first, can also become “vital.” Indeed, being lost can open up new directions and sensibilities that otherwise would escape our attention’ (16). How might these relatively well-established perspectives and arguments from the discourse lead to more pragmatic ways to explore this problem, towards this productive conceptualisation in practice? Below I offer a possible response to this question, building on the previous work, through discussion of the idea of ‘the productive look’ and foregrounding the imagination.

The ‘Productive Look’ Film and feminist theorist Kaja Silverman (1992, 1996) proposes a way of reflecting on self-reflection, foregrounding the imaginary, which she refers to as ‘the productive look’ (1996, 5). With this idea of ‘the productive look’, Silverman (1996) argues that there can be ‘circumstances [in relation to a screen] under which we nonetheless manage at times to see productively or transformatively’ (3). Following Silverman’s thinking and applying her idea to the dancers, she allows the possibility that even if the dancers at first find their response to a video image disturbing, they can reflect on that reaction and have what Silverman calls ‘an ethical or nonviolent relation with the other’ (Silverman 1996, 3). Dancers can appropriate a way of engaging with video self-reflection in the way which Silverman suggests for other types of visual representations (e.g. narrative film), as a sort of layered reflecting on reflection: ‘Although we cannot control what happens to a perception before we become aware of it, we can retroactively revise the value which it assumes for us at a conscious level. We can look at an object a second time, through different representational parameters…’ (Silverman 1996, 3). Although the dancers initially may be disturbed by what they see, they can reflect yet again on this reaction of shock or view the video self-image again, reflecting on the initial perception and how it shifts with the second viewing. Silverman builds on Lacan’s (1973) idea of the gaze (and the screen) for her analysis and, through Silverman, I find Lacan’s ideas about the screen particularly useful to foreground the imagination and its role in disruption for the dancers.

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In his book Four Fundamental Concepts in Psychoanalysis, Lacan (1973) conceives of the screen as a type of mimicry with which the subject can play, precisely because the subject can be aware of their specularity— he conceives of the subjects’ relation to a screen which foregrounds the active imagination of the person seeing him/herself (Silverman 1992, 152). Lacan argues for an idea of play with the image, which is specifically made as an extension to Merleau-Ponty’s productive conception of chiasm above.8 Lacan gives this play metaphor a particularly performative slant, as Silverman interprets it: ...the subject [unlike the animal]…is not…entirely caught up in this imaginary capture. He maps himself in it. How? In so far as he isolates the function of the screen and plays with it. Man, in effect, knows how to play with the mask as that beyond which there is the gaze. The screen is here the locus of mediation. (107)

Silverman argues that there is a juncture in Lacan’s oeuvre with his ideas of the gaze and the screen, more specifically he allows the subject agency with these ideas (Silverman 1992, 149).9 She writes, ...consciousness as it is redefined by Lacan hinges not only upon the internalization but upon the elision of the gaze; this ‘seeing’ of oneself being seen is experienced by the subject-of-consciousness-by the subject, that is, who arrogates to itself a certain self-presence or substantiality – as a seeing of itself seeing itself. (127)

8 Lacan explicitly states that Merleau-Ponty’s problem of reversibility and seeing-seen from The Visible and Invisible are important to his ideas of the screen (Lacan 1973, 71; he states he only just received a copy of Merleau-Ponty’s ‘posthumous publication’). Lacan claims to extend Merleau-Ponty’s idea of reversibility (and thus chiasm) to what he calls ‘the gaze’, which expresses the idea of seeing-seen more as a multiplicity of factors than a dialogic relationship. Lacan takes into consideration here Sartre’s the look too, but foregrounds the imagination, ‘...the gaze of which Sartre speaks, the gaze that surprises me and reduces me to shame…is, not a seen gaze, but a gaze imagined by me in the field of the Other’ (Lacan 1973, 84). 9 See also Purser (2011) for analysis of Merleau-Ponty’s mirror stage with Lacan’s analysis of ‘negative alienation’ in the mirror phase, this being, I think, the oeuvre Silverman refers to here. Purser likewise finds a negative sense of alienation not the ‘norm’ in Merleau-Ponty’s account of mirror image perceptions and discusses this further in relation to professional-level dancer experiences (189).

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To play with the image gives dancers agency because they are given the potential to see themselves being seen and to reflect on reflection in the way Lacan describes. This last passage, as above with Silverman’s ‘good enough’ paradigm, allows for a paradox in self-reflection which also reinforces the metaphor of play; the gaze, she argues, reiterates the defining and structuring role of the screen, while at the same time makes it possible to consider that it might be possible for a subject [the dancer] who re-conceives of his or her necessary specularity [or indeed how specularity is predominantly conceived] to exaggerate and/or denaturalize the image/screen. (Silverman 1992, 149)

The dancers indicate by their descriptions that when watching the video, they utilise disruption to imagine anew their dancing, re-imagining what they want to do the next time they dance, re-reflecting what they kinaesthetically felt and what they want to kinaesthetically feel in the future. They all reiterate the metaphor of play in that they suggest that, rather than become entirely subservient to their self-image and passive under their ‘power’, they also play with the image as it plays back at them, i.e. mimics what they previously did. To ‘play with the image’ indicates a light and experimental perception of one’s video self-image and re-affirms the illusory properties of image (rather than supporting it as ‘reality’). This is precisely what Ellis (2013) offers us above in his engagements with his video self-image. We can see how this potential to see oneself being seen can help to look again, and again, looking other ways each time. Lacan’s metaphor of masking is also poignant for thinking about dancers’ engagement with video self-reflection because the dancers are performers and, even in contemporary dance, with its emphasis on kinaesthetic experience, dancers are playing with a type of masking via the movement and image they are trying to project to an audience. When there is disruption, something is not yet quite right with the masking process for the dancer and they use disruptions to fine-tune the mask(s) to be projected, or at least the dancer’s imaginative experience of the mask(s). The ideas of play and masking I find akin to a way of thinking encountered with social anthropologist Tim Ingold at a talk he gave at a Crossing Borders at Independent Dance in London, UK on 15 November 2011 (Ingold 2011). In this talk, Ingold claims that how we conceive of objects constrains our engagement with them. He argues that when we see things

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only as ready-made ‘objects’, that they stay just that, ‘objects’. We in turn treat these ‘objects’ as if they cannot be manipulated, changed, and played with—they remain static as ‘objects’. For instance, he argues that if we are given a glass of water and asked to study it as ‘object’ that we might examine and admire it as a glass of water. However, when we start to conceive of things as ‘material’, things take on a different meaning, simply by re-conceiving them as such. For instance, if we conceive of the glass of water as material, we might smash up the glass and use the shards to make something else, or we might dump the water over our head and use it as a shower, or put the glass in a recycling machine and make something else out of it. In essence, his point is that conceiving of things as ‘material’ gives things a playful and constructive meaning and as such we engage with these things differently. The same kind of thinking can be applied for video self-images to help show how imagination can play a more central role in dancers’ engagement with it. This is to address how predominantly video self-images are conceived of as ‘objects’—static things fixed in time and space. One of the dancers, Tineka, for instance was anxious about the video ‘capturing’ her dancing, implying that she felt it held her dancing in that video image in time and space once it was made, that it became an image, and thus a static object, only. This is not an uncommon view and I believe it comes out of a predominant thinking, among many people, not just dancers, that video self-images are objects, and ‘objectifying’, only. Again, I do not want to exclude this interpretation because I think it is one facet of video self-image engagement and think that it is indeed one other way to respond to video self-image.10 However, if dancers can also, at the same time, think of video self-images as ‘material’, as Ingold frames, dancers can be open to explore further this other facet of video self-reflection as part of (a series of) processes of being a dancer, and as something they play with in the same way as smashing the glass above. In sum, the playfulness with video self-images and its ‘material’ quality can be brought out more in practice. Thinking of the video as one kind of imagination, rather than a fixed entity, is one way to conceive of video self-images as more an interpretation of ‘material’ than a fixed meaning of an ‘object’. The video must be viewed for it to have meaning. The video does not have meaning in 10 Please see Ehrenberg (2019) for a more detailed exploration of the power of the visual from feminist theory and the fieldwork informing this research.

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the way the dancers describe by itself. As Haraway (1988) argues in her discussion of feminist potential of scientific objectivity with the metaphor of vision, ‘There is no unmediated photograph or passive camera obscura in scientific accounts of bodies and machines; there are only highly specific visual possibilities, each with a wonderfully detailed, active, partial way of organizing worlds’ (583). Indeed, a video of someone dancing will have a very different meaning for a random spectator versus the dancer who did the movement. So, following Lacan via Silverman, the meaning of the video essentially lies in the dancers’ perception and interpretations of it. The dancer’s imagination in viewing and interpreting that image is what gives that image meaning. The dancer’s memory of that video image and re-creating that image in their memory signals the imagination. This perspective also helps to foreground the imagination in the productive intercorporeal potential of experiences of disruption and disorientation between kinaesthetic experience and visual self-images, from the dancer perspective, as discussed above, as well.

Video Use as Skill There are other more concrete aspects of the dancers kinaesthetic and video self-image relations that provide further perspectives of the materiality of the video and these encounters, and pragmatic approaches to foregrounding the imagination in the practice. Mads is one of the contemporary dancers who suggests (though other dancers hinted at this idea as well) that over time a dancer becomes skilled at using video as a feedback tool, in the same way as one might develop skills using any form of technology, such as contemporary dance technique, hand–eye coordination with video gaming, or kinaestheticanimation coordination with motion capture. Video use as skill offers yet another refinement of discussion about body memory in skilled experience, as discussed with Summa (2018) above, and how it couples with our environment and has, in some situations, the capacity to grasp the novelty of a situation at the same time as using sedimented habituated skill. Video use as skill, as Mads describes, also begins to address what De Jaegher (2015) notes as the ‘intricate, multi-layered complexity of daily life intersubjectivity’, particularly for the case of contemporary dancers in dance contexts (n.p.). Or as Zanotti (2019) summarises of the work of Lisa Nelson and dancing experience and video, ‘A second viewing of a

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film often reveals something that was not visible the first time around’ (n.p.). With the increasing availability of video camera technology and the increasing emphasis of video as a performance platform, such as YouTube, Vimeo, and a wide array of social media, the current and subsequent generations of dancers are more prone to (or need to at least think about) their developing dancing relationship and technical skills with video technology. The global marketplace will continue to impact on dancers in this way, continuing to re-shift dancers’ engagement with various types of visual self-reflections in the practice. Mads used video self-reflection and investigated his improvisational skills via video feedback for his BA dissertation at a performing arts conservatoire in London, UK. He indicates when talking about this experience that the relationship with his video image changed as the project progressed; more specifically, the more he saw himself on video, the less troubling it became to watch himself, as he became more familiar with how his dancing appeared: Mads : […] in the beginning, when I started doing that dissertation thing, I was looking at myself, going ‘oh my god’, it was actually uncomfortable watching, but it got to a point where I went, ok let’s just use it, it’s a tool to…see and analyse movement in a way…and…if I just look at it as if..I was a teacher teaching myself…so….you look at yourself going, you’re actually not using that much of your feet when you’re doing it, you’re not stretching out…you’re too tense and you need to relax more…so it’s kind of like telling myself…..you know… Shantel: Corrections and that… Mads: Yeah….so it’s as if the choreographer was there…but you’re trying to be in the same mind-set as the choreographer… (interview 1).

Although Mads principally talks about what’s missing when he watches video, ‘you’re actually not using that much of your feet’ or ‘you’re too tense’, what he indicates in a productive direction is that he learns to watch himself with a more pragmatic approach and a more consciously analytical lens, in the same way as a teacher or choreographer would view another dancing in certain contexts. As mentioned in the previous chapter, contemporary dance values training dancers as choreographers, so this training in particular greatly helps Mads take that different point of view. Mads suggests he learns in this project to consciously put himself

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into certain ‘outsider’ positions when watching himself on video, in contrast to a passive viewing of the video self-images.

Time = Distance Time away from doing the phrase and filming it helps the dancers engage with the video differently too. Several dancers in the second interview, when we watch the video filmed from the first interview, indicate that the time away from actually doing the movement helps them view the video self-images differently. In other words, if the dancers view the videos right after making/recording them, they have a significantly different response to viewing the videos a week or more later. Several dancers in the research indicate that time has a significant impact on viewing video self-images and whether they are or are not able to use the video self-reflection constructively as part of the processes of becoming professional-level dancers. The theme of time, between recording and viewing, reveals another level of malleability of the video self-images for the dancers and another way that the context is critical to how the dancers view the images as material.11 Time, between recording and watching the video selfrecordings, reveals multiple relationships possible, between the dancer and their perceptions of the video. Some of this issue of time is evident above in the dancers descriptions already, however, there are other moments in the dancer interviews where this issue of time came up more explicitly. The research methodology is crucial to this theme because it allowed time between making and watching the videos. What this process reveals are the difference between how the dancers are more kinaesthetically and emotionally attached, sensitive, and critical of the videos, when movement is just performed, versus when watching that same video a few weeks later, in a subsequent interview. Erdem, for example, discusses her experience in terms of feeling less critical of the image.

11 This issue of context and viewing is a point also given in the historical account of mirrors by Sabine Melchoir-Bonnet (1994, 5), ‘Men of the eighteenth century, by then familiar with household mirrors, did not look at themselves in the same manner as men of the twelfth century, for whom the reflected image went hand in hand with the devil’.

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Erdem: It is easier to watch it after time, because you become less critical, I think, or I think I do. Because your expectations have changed and when you watch it back in the moment, or, in the same timeframe, for instance in rehearsal or something like that, I feel like you have more control over it, in that you can change it in the moment. And I suppose you have an expectation of yourself, at all times. Whereas, if you are distanced from it, then you have kind of moved on. So it does not matter what it was, it just was that. Does that make sense? Shantel: What do you think makes it more difficult to watch it the last time, when we were in [the other] studio [during previous interview]? Erdem: I think because I was closer to [the movement experience], my expectation was different, my expectation of myself was different to what I saw. Of course, as it always is, pretty much, but there’s a sense of frustration in not achieving that and also potential to achieve that, at that time. Like, you have more [potential for] effect. And, I suppose, watching something back, straight away, it is very much…I am used to using [video] as a rehearsal tool, or something like that, in which case you watch it in order to improve on it, or choreographically improve it, I suppose, to see exactly what it looks like. And I was just in a very judgmental frame of mind to view [the video in that moment] […] So, I suppose, when you see something later, you are definitely not in that process….

The way that Erdem talks about this impact of time with watching the video self-images does not give power to the image, rather it places the power with the viewer and the temporal context that the viewer is watching the video. The critical intensity and power of the image decreases as time away from the experience of performing that movement increases. Or put in another way, the video might have a distinct power and/or a critical reading when first viewed, particularly after just videoing the movement, but then there are these other readings as Erdem watches the video a second or third time, particularly if she is out of the rehearsal process. Mads likewise addresses the issue of time and the perception of the video self-images in his interviews. Related to the dissertation discussion highlighted above, for instance, Mads indicates how he became aware of an explicit familiarity with his video self-image as he watched himself on video many times. His description above indicates there was a first viewing that was more destructively critical, but then a second and possibly more viewings over time of the same video images which revealed a more

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constructively critical teacher and/or choreographer perspective in relation to them. Again, as with Erdem, Mads indicates how his relationship and perception of video self-images changes over time along a spectrum of different types of critical self-viewings in the project of becoming dancer. Jasper, a contemporary and hip hop dancer, talks about watching video several times as a way of ‘exhausting himself of all the different criticisms’ he sees on the video and to be able to get to a constructive engagement with it. He indicates that this multiple viewing helps him drain the needs out of the video, as he says, until there is no need for that video image any more. Instead of the image capturing him, he expresses a power in his ability to ‘exhaust the image’ through multiple viewings. Jasper: I think the more you watch the video, the more you get out of it, until you are really drained of all the needs [of the video]… Shantel: Or drained yourself? Jasper: Exactly.

Jasper supports the argument for the multiple viewing and critical or constructive eye similar to Mads above. In another part of the interview, Jasper says that video is something he gets used to because he has seen himself on video so many times. In other parts of his interview, like Erdem above, Jasper talks about how his ‘mindset’ impacts on his viewing as well. That is, sometimes he is watching the video detached from it because he is tired or has a different working intention for the day. The idea of being more constructive and seeing oneself as another would, with time, Jasper also talks about. In his second interview, for instance, Jasper talks about viewing the video recorded in the first interview as ‘not me’, and that he was correcting his own video image as he would another dancer, echoing Ellis’s (2013) writing above. Again, like Erdem, he says that if he watches a video straight after recording it he is probably more worried about it. He also talks about how the week in-between the first interview and the second interview impact on his viewing, talking about how he had taught the movement and that teaching and doing the movement again over the week made him view the video differently, similar to Willow above and her experience between the two interviews. I am not encouraging dancers to watch video self-recordings over and over to get rid of the power of the image with this interpretation. Mads also talks about the importance of dancing away from video and paying attention to kinaesthetic sensations when dancing. Rather, I am arguing

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here for how we can understand videos temporality as much as their means of capturing and fixing as one of the more concrete elements of exploring the productive look and foregrounding the imagination. The risk of becoming too absorbed with the video image remains, particularly in the age of selfies and easy access to video recording. But I do not think it is one or the other, but both—the impact of time and the risk of narcissism—that dancers can explore. The former has been discussed less than the latter in dance discourse related to visual self-reflection to date.

Conclusion In this chapter, I address the problem that contemporary dance as a performing art has a visual aesthetic and therefore needs to look a certain way despite a historical discursively constructed and nurtured polarisation of the kinaesthetic and the visual. Different ways of conceiving of contemporary dancers’ engagement with kinaesthetic experience, performance and dancing video self-image(s) are presented to argue for the multiple and complex relations for dancers’ with visual-based self-reflections and to argue that some contexts require contemporary dancers to reflect on what they look like dancing from the outside. Principally, I argue that dancers intertwine an imagined idea of how their movement appears to the outside with their kinaesthetic experiences. This became evident as a theme during the fieldwork when the dancers indicate that previously viewed video self-images intertwine with their next kinaesthetic experience of the same movement. The dancers suggest by their descriptions that the video images previously seen at times ‘fold into’ their next kinaesthetic experience. However, as much as there is intertwining there are also disruptions, discontinuity, and gaps in these contemporary dancer descriptions between kinaesthetic experience and visual self-images recorded in the interviews. This chapter also discusses the issue that what the dancers do not see in the video can also impact their kinaesthetic perceptions. In other words, this chapter focuses on those moments in the interviews when the dancers indicate disruption between what they previously kinaesthetically felt of movement and how they perceive that same movement on video. Merleau-Ponty’s (1968) chiasm is utilised to explore the problem that dancers will always experience disruption between kinaesthetic experience and video self-reflection, because the dancers will always

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be on the same side as their body, and never be completely removed to be able to objectively perceive themselves in video self-reflection. One response to this problem is to foreground the imagination in these experiences. Kaja Silverman’s discussion of ‘the productive look’ building on Lacan’s ideas about the gaze helps to explore how these moments of disruption and mismatch are an opportunity to play with the dancing being projected back and experiment with the masking processes in becoming a professional-level dancer. This opens up a discussion about the materiality of objects discussed by Tim Ingold and expanding potential in thinking of video self-images as material, which dancers might continue to play with. Put in another way, how these dancers might continue to explore how their imagination is central to how they view, perceive, and play with the video self-images of their dancing made in the interviews, and in the practice. Building on the foregrounding of the imagination and its potential in the liminal space between kinaesthetic experience and dancing selfimage(s), some of the dancers indicate they have a particular skill in using video self-reflection. Understanding and exploring this skill might challenge and problematise the intensity of a critical eye when watching video self-images, and moving beyond judgemental aspects of watching oneself dancing on video for these professional-level dancers. Nurturing video self-reflection as a skill in contemporary dance practice might be particularly useful in learning to work with the alienating aspects of performance and of being watched by an audience, which can provoke a similar kind of anxiety. Time away from the direct and immediate kinaesthetic experience of the movement seen on video might also help, since in the interviews, it appears that there is a distinct temporal impact to these viewings for the dancers. In addition to these suggestions, the dancers can also think beyond their initial reflections and not fall ‘victim’ to the power of the visual. Merleau-Ponty, Lacan, Silverman, and others above inspire the idea that dancers can re-reflect on dancing self-reflections and that, in dance practice, dancers can thus play with how the imagination lies at the centre of engagements with video self-reflection, even in cases of disruption and alienation.

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George, Doran. 2014. A Conceit of the Natural Body: The Universal-Individual in Somatic Dance Training. PhD diss., Culture and Performance, University of California, Los Angeles. Graham, Martha. 1991. Blood Memory. New York: Doubleday. Grosz, Elizabeth. 1994. Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Haraway, Donna. 1988. Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective. Feminist Studies 14 (3): 575–599. Ingold, Tim. 2011. Materials, Movements, Lines. Crossing Borders. Independent Dance, London UK. Accessed 21 August 2020. https://www.independentd ance.co.uk/author/tim-ingold/ Karreman, Laura. 2017. The Motion Capture Imaginary: Digital Renderings of Dance Knowledge. PhD diss., Faculty of Arts and Philosophy, Ghent University. Kozel, Susan. 2007. Closer: Performance, Technologies, Phenomenology. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Lacan, Jacques. 1973. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis. London: Penguin Books. Legrand, Dorothée. 2007. Pre-reflective Self-Consciousness: On Being Bodily in the World. Janus Head, Special Issue: The Situated Body 9 (1): 493–519. Magill, R. 2007. Motor Learning and Control, 8th ed. New York, NY: McGraw Hill. Melchoir-Bonnet, Sabine. 1994. The Mirror: A History. New York: Routledge. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 1945. Phenomenology of Perception, trans. C. Smith. London and New York: Routledge. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 1968. The Visible and the Invisible, trans. A. Lingis and ed. C. Lefort. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Montero, Barbara. 2006. Proprioception as an Aesthetic Sense. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 64 (2): 231–242. Parviainen, Jaana. 1998. Bodies Moving and Being Moved: A Phenomenological Analysis of the Dancing Subject and the Cognitive and Ethical Values of Dance Art. Tampere: Tampere University Press. Purser, Aimie. 2011. The Dancing Body-Subject: Merleau-Ponty’s Mirror Stage in the Dance Studio. Subjectivity 4 (2): 183–203. Purser, Aimie. 2018a. ‘Being in Your Body’ and ‘Being in the Moment’: The Dancing Body-Subject and Inhabited Transcendence. Journal of the Philosophy of Sport 45 (1): 37–52. Purser, Aimie. 2018b. ‘Getting It into the Body’: Understanding Skill Acquisition Through Merleau-Ponty and the Embodied Practice of Dance. Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health 10 (3): 318–332.

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Ravn, Susanne. 2009. Sensing Movement, Living Spaces: An Investigation of Movement Based on the Lived Experience of 13 Professional Dancers. Saarbrücken: VDM Verlag. Ravn, Susanne. 2017. Dancing Practices: Seeing and Sensing the Moving Body. Body and Society 23 (2): 57–82. Ravn, Susanne, and Simon Høffding. 2017. The Promise of ‘Sporting Bodies’ in Phenomenological Thinking—How Exceptional Cases of Practice Can Contribute to Develop Foundational Phenomenological Concepts. Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health 9 (1): 56–68. Reynolds, Dee. 2007. Rhythmic Subjects. Hampshire: Dance Books. Roche, Jennifer. 2015. Multiplicity, Embodiment and the Contemporary Dancer. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Roche, Jenny. 2018. Dancing Strategies and Moving Identities: The Contributions Independent Contemporary Dancers Make to the Choreographic Process. In Contemporary Choreography, ed. J. Butterworth and L. Wildschut. Oxon: Routledge. Sartre, Jean-Paul. 1943. Being and Nothingness. London and New York: Routledge Classics. Silverman, Kaja. 1992. Male Subjectivity at the Margins. New York and London: Routledge. Silverman, Kaja. 1996. The Threshold of the Visible World. New York and London: Routledge. Sklar, Deidre. 1994. Can Bodylore Be Brought to Its Senses? The Journal of American Folklore 107 (423): 9–22. Summa, Michela. 2018. Phenomenology of Body memory: Its Relevance for the Inquiry into Self-Experience. In Phenomenological and Psychopathological Approaches: Time, the Body and the Other. Heidelberg. Accessed 19 August 2020. https://youtu.be/C2LJbLdUu8Y. Tortora, Gerard J. 2002. Principles of Human Anatomy, Vol. 9. New York: Wiley. Weiss, Gail. 1999. Body Images: Embodiment as Intercorporeality. New York and London: Routledge. Weiss, Gail. 2015. The Normal, the Natural, and the Normative: A MerleauPontian Legacy to Feminist Theory, Critical Race Theory, and Disability Studies. Continental Philosophy Review 48: 77–93. Zanotti, Marisa. 2019. Digital Spaces, Analogue Thinking: Some Thoughts on Screendance. The International Journal of Screendance 10. Accessed 15 September 2020. https://screendancejournal.org/article/view/6569/5231.

CHAPTER 6

Concluding Diffractions | Diffracting Conclusions

Diffraction is a mapping of interference, not of replication, reflection, or reproduction. A diffraction pattern does not map where differences appear, but rather maps where the effects of differences appear. (Haraway 1992, 300) Differential, grounded perspectives are the motor for differential patterns of becoming. (Braidotti 2019, 19)

In the previous chapter, I conclude on the idea that what is at work between dancers’ kinaesthetic attention and video self-reflections is the imagination. In conversation with Silverman, I propose how dancers look at their video self-images a second (and more) time(s), through different representational parameters (Silverman 1996, 3). Instead of seeing video self-images as fixed objects, video self-images can also be conceived as material with which dancers can play, as Lacan (1973; Silverman 1992) and Tim Ingold (2011) inspire. The dancers indicate many layers of dancing imaginations in relation to recording and watching video self-images in the interviews, some imaginings emerging in response to intertwining with the memories of the video images, such as the videos leaving marks on kinaesthetic imagination the next time they do the phrase, other imaginings emerging out of disruption via the video images, and what was not seen in the video in relation to the dancers’ kinaesthetic experience. Encountering a number © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 S. Ehrenberg, Kinaesthesia and Visual Self-Reflection in Contemporary Dance, Cognitive Studies in Literature and Performance, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73403-9_6

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of different ‘others’ enables these dancers to continually think through different approaches to performance, and different ways of becoming the dancer in the style that they want to be expert in as performers, including contemporary dance.

Knowledge is situated The research informing the previous chapters lead to other considerations, questions and concerns. As addressed in Chapter 1, this book is grounded in the position that all experience—and all knowledge—is situated (e.g. Haraway 1988). I want to return briefly to this issue and explicitly reflect on how the research informing this book is situated. That is, this book represents a research project that spans a particular time in contemporary dance and dance studies, which includes significant paradigmatic shifts across a wide range of fields (e.g. performance studies, sociology, psychology, philosophy) particularly on the subjects of reflection and human-technology relations. This book, from a bird or drone’s eye view, reveals a UK-based white able-bodied cis-gender dance artist-scholar working across a time of considerable change in ontoepistemological frameworks, as Karen Barad (2007, 43) puts it, including discourses addressing human-technology inter/intra-action(s). The previous chapters are principally grounded in phenomenological, ethnographic and poststructuralist critical perspectives related to self/other relations, discipline and power, and ideologies and values which principally emphasise the social and foreground human experience and (human) agency. However, within the last themed chapter there is a slight shift towards issues of materiality and the malleability of human-technology relations, such as with kinaesthetic experience and video self-images. I find this shift to reflect the research’s historicised context and signal a move towards posthumanism and new materialism, though the research in the previous chapter does not do so explicitly. It is useful to explore briefly the historical situatedness of this research in this regard to then open up to some final diffractions that the research leads to, as a means to more explicitly address the research situatedness and limitations, as well as affirming that no research is finished or fixed. As mentioned in the introduction, I began the fieldwork informing this book in 2008, working between Manchester and London, UK. This is a time in dance studies when there is a distinct bringing together, and yet building critique, of ‘the natural’ and the social principally across

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poststructuralist and scientific perspectives. For instance, as discussed in Chapter 2, the topic of kinaesthetic empathy emerges with a distinct currency at this time, with neuroscientists, sociologists, psychologists, and dance studies scholars grappling with similar questions and problems relating to this concept (Foster 2011; Reynolds and Reason 2012). This is a time of paradigmatic shifts with dance and technology in performance and practice as well. Butterworth and Wildschut (2018) state, reflecting on contemporary choreography from 2009 to 2018, ‘New developments in technology have inaugurated a new era for dance archives, education, research and creation […]’ (5) and bring in a series of new chapters addressing perspectives on contemporary dance choreography and technology. Bleeker and Delahunta (2017) evidence this in their overview of a number of projects informing the edited collection Transmission in Motion: The Technologizing of Dance. They argue for the interconnectedness of technological change and dance as a discourse: ‘The descriptions of these projects coming into being testify to how the ways in which they took shape are intertwined with the emergence of new technological possibilities they could draw on’ (Bleeker and Delahunta 2017, 7). Most of the projects in their book span from early 2000 to 2016. Across the projects featured, the incredible boom in social media platforms and portable ‘smart’ technologies is evident. The project Synchronous Objects, for instance, started in 2005 when, as Zuniga Shaw states, ‘YouTube was a new phenomenon […] and the potential for sharing great quality video online was still emerging’ (7). Dance practice and dancer experience in the practice is impacted on by these paradigmatic shifts. As Bleeker (2017) succinctly summarises in the introduction, ‘What we know and how we think therefore cannot be understood separately from the technologies we use to process, store, and transmit information’ (xix). Bleeker argues for how the shift occurring at this time impacts on how we conceptualise and philosophise cognition and movement, crucial to dance. The research informing the current book occurs over the time when Karen Barad (2007) publishes Meeting the Universe Halfway, and larger shifts can be seen historically in the critical theory and philosophy discourse, in particular the relatively new fields of new materialism and posthumanism. Other critical publications that inform new materialist and posthumanist perspectives include Donna Haraway’s (2016) Cyborg Manifesto, Rosi Braidotti’s (2002, 2011) Nomadic Subjects and Metamorphoses: Towards a Materialist Theory of Becoming, just to name a few.

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This shift can be argued to continue with Braidotti’s (2013, 2019) The Posthuman and Posthuman Knowledge. More recently, the larger shift at play is summed up more broadly by Bayo Akomolafe (2020): In a world where intentionality, agency, causality, learning and memory can no longer be safely ensconced away in the fleshy caverns of human be-ing – and at a time when modern civilization, our cherished binaries, our institutions, and our cultural lexicons are unfurling at their seams, grappling with resolute impasses and spinning black holes... (n.p.)1

Akomolafe indicates in this description, in particular with the terms they use, such as intentionality and agency, and also writing from a philosophical point of view, that this ‘world’ that is unfurling and facing resolute impasses and spinning black holes includes the academic institution and its historicised frameworks. Bleeker (2017) likewise indicates this paradigm shift as transformative/in a time of transformation, in her summary of the edited collection discussed above: a ‘wide variety of fields that point to meaning as something that is performative and comes into being’ is ‘now at odds’ with meaning as something that ‘transforms, is relational, and emerges from the interplay between our cognitive perceptual practices and the technologies used’ (xix). More concretely, Bleeker (2017) states that the projects explored in her book ‘offer a complex image of knowledge cultures in transformation’ (xxi). Adapting what Bleeker argues, this book cannot be understood separately from the technologies used to process, store, and transmit information, such as language, dance technique/discipline, and, as explored in the last chapter, dancers’ engagements with video self-images in the practice (Bleeker 2017, xix). Rapid technological developments impact on the access of hand-held video devices which impact on the dancers’ experience discussed in this research. But also, critical theory as a technology, with its own innovations, such as via postmodernist and new materialist thinking, also impacts on the processing and transmitting of information. As Akomolafe (2020) proposes above, this book comes at a time full of unknowing, grappling, and spinning. Braidotti (2019) refers to the current moment as a ‘posthuman convergence’ which I find succinctly summarises a position in which this book is situated. Braidotti (2019) communicates this position of not knowing and paradox with great skill, 1 With thanks to Stefanie Sachsenmaier for referring me to this material.

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providing a position of affirmative acceptance for ending on an opening in these posthuman times: We are not in a position yet to fully grasp the complexity of these internally contradictory phenomena. We need much more research on the material aspects that compose those phenomena, on their assumptions and implications. […] Yet, this process of transformation towards the posthuman should not be taken for granted, like a sort of evolutionary destiny or socially inevitable goal. It is more useful to approach it instead as an experiment and ensure that it becomes the focus of public discussions, collective decision-making processes and joint actions. […] All the more reason to acknowledge that the posthuman convergence is already here, being the prime marker of our historicity (38)

The research informing this book is predominantly embedded in notions of poststructuralist and constructivist subjectivity, such as in the conversations with Bourdieu, Foucault, Merleau-Ponty, and Silverman—and, importantly, the wealth of dance studies building on these perspectives, and others. And yet the research informing this book also leads me to question, grapple and spin with some of the flow and complex assemblage Braidotti describes. Her elaboration of the above position, related to agency and consciousness, is highly relevant to the research informing this book as well: Firstly, that the agency commonly reserved for subjects is not the exclusive prerogative of Anthropos. Secondly, that it is not linked to classical notions of transcendental reason. Thirdly, that it is de-linked from a dialectical view of consciousness based on the opposition of self and others and their struggle for recognition. The knowing subject is not Man, or Anthropos alone, but a more complex assemblage that undoes the boundaries between inside and outside the self, by emphasizing processes and flows. Neither unitary, nor autonomous, subjects are embodied and embedded, relational and affective collaborative entities, activated by relational ethics (Braidotti 2019, 39).

I acknowledge that this research does not yet fully achieve a de-linking from the ‘dialectical of consciousness’. For one, this text does not explicitly interrogate its situatedness in my interpretations as a white female able-bodied cis-gender dance studies scholar working principally from European and US points of view. Despite this limitation, the research

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informing this book aims to move towards what Braidotti advocates for and there is an understanding of previous philosophical perspectives, ontologies and epistemologies, that bring the research to this place, in part. Hence, although Braidotti’s call is not fully fleshed out in this book, I conclude on final diffractions to address what Braidotti (2019) argues for in terms of working towards a more sustainable future: […] there is much to be gained by approaching the posthuman present along the parallel plateaus of the actual and virtual […] because by positing a time continuum as a process ontology of becoming, the practice of social and cultural criticism of the current crises can be supplemented by the more affirmative project of constructing sustainable alternatives (51).

For instance, there is an ethical problem in the currency that video selfimagery is gaining in our capitalist neo-liberal-driven Western-dominated worlds. As Haraway (1988) writes, ‘Vision is always a question of the power to see – and perhaps of the violence implicit in our visualizing practices’ (585, italics original). This chapter aims to begin to address questions such as: How might rapid changes with video recording devices be seen as creative and relational in becoming dancer (as discussed in Chapter 5) without losing sight of the problem of the politics and power at play? Or as Braidotti (2019) asks: How can we continue ‘approaching time as a multi-faceted and multi-directional effect [enabling] us to grasp what we are ceasing to be and what we are in the process of becoming ’ (51 italics original)?

Dancing with new materialism and the posthuman One of the issues explored in the previous chapter is those experiences of alienation of being watched (by oneself on video, though this also includes choreographer(s), teacher(s), audience), as a part of being/becoming a professional-level contemporary dance performer, which fieldwork with video self-images helps to explore. Dancing with new materialist and posthumanist thinking offers further interpretations related to this alienation, building on the previous explorations. New materialist and posthumanist perspectives, in conversation with the

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fieldwork and my own experience, offer additional considerations and questions, in an open-conclusion.2 The dancer interviews suggest that despite a foregrounding of kinaesthetic awareness in contemporary dance practice and discourse, the issue of projecting a visual aesthetic with one’s own body nevertheless brings feelings of alienation because of the very nature of being a dance performer. As Purser (2011) also argues, putting in conversation Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology and a group of professional-level dancers’ discussion of mirror use in their practice: ‘[…] as both Massumi and Merleau-Ponty predict, the feeling that the mirror image somehow interrupts movement and in doing so produces feelings of alienation and objectification […] is central to the dancers accounts of their experiences of using mirrors in learning dance’ (190). Purser (2011) likewise goes on to write about how the mirror alienation signals a complex necessary interaction of inside and outside in the lived-experience of the professional-level dancers she interviews. Focusing attention and intentionality on kinaesthetic awareness in contemporary dance mitigates the sense of alienation in being a contemporary dance performer, who is the dancing that is the art, to an extent, from the dancers’ perspectives, as well as addresses a political problem of dancer as spectacle/object/shape only. Previous research explores the concept of the of the visual in feminist philosophy related to the fieldwork (e.g. Ehrenberg 2019). I argue in this publication how the dancers indicate the power of the kinaesthetic as a means to undermine the power of the visual in their practice, thus, as in the previous chapter, discuss dancers’ foregrounding of the imagination related to visual display and the video self-images in the practice. What new materialism and the posthuman perspectives help to begin to explore here is agency as multiplicity and, as such, come back more explicitly to issues of politics, namely power and ethics, in these relations 2 Incidentally, as I work on this chapter, a call for papers (cfp) for a Performance Research special issue ‘On Diffraction’ circulates. The cfp expresses related concerns and potential for the concept of ‘diffraction’ in new materialist (e.g. Barad) and posthumanist (e.g. Haraway) thinking and performance studies. They argue: ‘So far, although posthuman and new materialist theories have begun to sound across various conceptual playing-fields and educational landscapes, strikingly less attention has been paid to how these might affect the development of performance and performance studies. How might new considerations of posthuman and new materialist concepts of diffraction become part of the way we envision, create and practice in the twenty-first century?’ (n.p).

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with video self-images in ways that are important for future inquiries in this area of study.3 That is, if agency is conceived in its multiplicity, not just residing with the dancer, this conceptualising offers even more to ‘play’ with. I will explore this briefly conceptually below, however, in sum, the point is that the dancers’ descriptions can further be interpreted as working at an intersection of multiple agencies, such as a dancer’s individual sense of dancing agency, but also the agency of the audience, the agency of the technique, or the agency of any other material (e.g. video self-images). There are multiple moving materialities and agencies at play, though my interest below is focused on the contemporary dancers’ point of view, in the dance studio, before the curtain rises. Dancing with new materialist and posthuman perspectives below begins to expose some subtle shifts in future interpretations related to this group of dancers’ experiences and knowledge in the practice, particularly related to kinaesthetic experience, video self-images and the fieldwork. As Rebecca Schneider (2015) addresses, despite the work of incredible performance studies scholarship, ‘[m]ost scholars consider living humans to be the only agents with their fingers on the puppet strings […]’ however new materialism helps to reverse that perspective, in part (10). ‘The dominant (scholarly) Western imaginary still rigorously polices borders distinguishing live and nonlive, human and non’ (10).

Intra-action Karen Barad’s (2007) concept of agential realism, more specifically the concept of intra-action, extends the sense of play and materiality in the previous chapter, while also addressing issues of non-linear time, nondualism, and the Anthropocene.4

3 This might be usefully contrasted in future research with other dance studies scholars who take up new materialism and environmental crisis in their work, which seem to indicate a complicated matrix for the discourse, particularly in terms of complexities of ‘nature’ and ‘the natural’ (e.g. Kramer 2012; Fraleigh 2018). 4 It is beyond the scope of this chapter to go into critiques of new materialism (e.g. Ahmed 2008). While I find specific ideas and concepts discussed under the umbrellas of new materialism and/or posthumanism useful here to expand understanding of phenomenologically informed discussions of reversibility and the dancers’ described engagements with video self-reflections in the interviews, I do not suggest that all of the answers are ‘new’ or to now be found within these more recent umbrella fields alone. I engage with these concepts with the understanding that there are going to be

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One of the first key points about agential realism Barad argues is that intra-acting is phenomena. As Barad (2007) states: A phenomenon is a specific intra-action of an “object ” and the “measuring agencies ”; the object and the measuring agencies emerge from, rather than precede, the intra-action that produces them. Crucially, then, we should understand phenomena not as objects-in-themselves, or as perceived objects (in the Kantian or phenomenological sense), but as specific intra-actions (128, italics original).

Importantly, intra-acting focuses on relations and emergence. To begin to explore this slight shift in engaging with ‘intra-acting is phenomena’, I return to the Mads’ discussion in the previous chapter about video self-images impacting on his kinaesthetic experiences when dancing the same phrase seen on video recorded in the interviews. As stated in the previous chapter, I ask Mads about the video coming up in the excerpt below because it came up in other dancer interviews and in my own experience. Below is after having viewed himself dancing a phrase on video and doing the phrase again. Shantel: …..did you think, just now doing it, did the image of the video just watching it come up at all? Mads: Uh…yeah it came up….um……….. it was more of a…um…warning signs…that is, ‘oh this part you did it really hard on the video’….and problems left unaddressed philosophically and critically, beyond the scope of this chapter. There are relationships to be found between discussion of Merleau-Ponty’s intertwining in the previous chapter and intra-acting to provide some evidence of a logical reasoning as to why intra-acting extends some of the thinking in the previous chapter, however. For instance, Barad explicitly states that her discussion of the concept of intra-action is distinct to intertwining: ‘To be entangled is not simply to be intertwined with another, as in the joining of separate entities, but to lack an independent, self-contained existence. […] individuals emerge through and as part of their entangled intra-relating’ (Barad 2007, ix). Intertwining, according to Barad, implies an inherent separability, subject and object remain distinct. Intertwining, she argues, problematically centres the experience and examination on the human, thus limiting the potential for emergence through intraaction. She argues that, through each intra-action, it is ‘impossible to differentiate in any absolute sense between creation and renewal, beginning and returning, continuity and discontinuity, here and there, past and future’ (Barad 2007, ix). Intra-acting, by contrast to intertwining, helps to rethink how historicised conceptions of space and time impact on our discussion of how things come to be, challenging existing conceptions of social and material relations. See also Kissmann & van Loon (2019) in which it is argued that Merleau-Ponty’s discussion of visibility and invisibility impact on the development of new materialist concepts.

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‘this part, you did it….in this way, keep that…still, and, emphasis in this part’……(interview 2).

What phenomena is this intra-action? What is becoming dancer in this intra-action of Mads’ flesh, video self-image, memory trace, and imagination? What is the dancing that is becoming here? Before addressing these questions directly, its useful to touch on how Barad clarifies the concept of intra-action, arguing for how agencies are entangled. Entangling agencies helps to avoid re-instating subject/object binaries. In contrast to phenomenological discussions of agency where intentionality might be critiqued for centring on human experience, Barad argues that intra-action considers intentionality ‘as attributable to a complex network of human and nonhuman agents’ (Barad 2007, 22– 23). As Barad clarifies further, ‘[…] it is less that there is an assemblage of agents than there is an entangled state of agencies ’ (Barad 2007, 22–23, emphasis mine). In other words, when human and non-human entities are in relation, their agencies and different directed intentionalities, entangle. Barad (2007) writes: Agency is a matter of intra-acting; it is an enactment, not something that someone or something has. Agency cannot be designated as an attribute of subjects or objects […] Agency is a matter of making iterative changes to particular practices through the dynamics of intra-activity (including enfoldings and other topological reconfigurings) (214).

Critical here is that agency is not something that someone or something has, rather, agency emerges in intra-action, which is found through dynamic, reconfiguring, and changing practices. As Domm (2019) likewise interprets: Barad’s ‘[…] notion of agency is reworked insofar as it cannot be conceived of as a property of an individual subject; instead, agency is to be identified in the world’s ongoing intra-activity – the world’s “dynamism is agency” […]’ (69). With Mads description above, there is an enfolding of the video and the kinaesthetic imagination, as well as an enfolding of Mads experiences into the video and the video responding to Mads. Mads is entangled with the video enacting agency in this intra-action. In contrast to the previous chapter, agency, according to a new materialist perspective, is not only attributed with Mads as (human) dancer. The agency emerges in the dynamic intra-action of dancer and video self-images. Enfolding

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therefore is slightly different to the interpretation in the previous chapter of ‘folding in’, in that enfolding centres more on the intra-action, the in-between. This slight shift helps to decentre the human in these dancervideo self-image intra-action dynamics and consider what might become in and with these intra-actions.5 As Barad clarifies: ‘Agency is about the possibilities and accountability entailed in reconfiguring material-discursive apparatuses of bodily production, including the boundary articulations and exclusions that are marked by those practices’ (Barad 2007, 214). Boundaries are not absent; in this example, there are the boundaries between the dancer, video device, and video self-images. Instead, there is a slight shift in the perspective on how boundaries are conceptualised that in turn impacts on different perspectives which can further impact on the practice. As Barad clarifies: ‘Agency is “doing” or “being” in its intra-activity. It is the enactment of iterative changes to particular practices—iterative reconfigurings of topological manifolds of spacetimematter relations —through the dynamics of intra-activity’ (Barad 2007, 178, italics original). Mads and the touch of another dancer, a costume, a mirror are all different forms of intra-action and changing possibilities entailed in reconfiguring material-discursive apparatuses of bodily production (Barad 2007, 178). It is beyond the scope of this chapter to explore all of the possible intra-actions and these final diffractions only touch the surface of what agencies are enacted in the ‘topographical manifolds of spacetimematter’ of a dancer’s described kinaesthetic experience with video self-images. Some of this has been explored in the previous chapter. Here I aim to extend and expose further methodological and theoretical questions, in dancing with Barad’s new materialist concept of intra-action which might begin to decentre the human, which the previous chapters do not address explicitly.

5 For parallel analysis of dancer experiences see recent writings of motion capture (e.g. Hutchison and Vincs 2013; Karreman 2017). Exploring other dancer-technology experiences raises interesting questions about the familiarity of technology(ies) and what might be noticed and/or what might be made habitual because of the familiarity in experience with how the technology operates. Karreman’s (2017) discussion of Hutchison’s meta, a performance which seems to make motion capture’s impact on the artist visible through its absence, raises questions as to whether video’s impact might be similarly revealed in its absence, or whether video technology is so embedded in our everyday that its untangling in this way is not possible?

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Barad’s discussion of agency has a critical sense of movement, which is particularly useful to the discussion of dancers’ kinaesthetic experiences and visual self-images in the practice—what happens there, what this might mean, and what this knowing might signal for how contemporary dance develops more broadly as a form, especially in the context of burgeoning technologies that are increasingly impacting on contemporary dance practice. Barad’s discussion of entangled states of agency builds on what I find with Silverman in the previous chapter in relation to the potential for change, e.g. re-reflecting on reflections. As Coleman (2018) interprets: ‘For Barad, “agency” is […] the process of cause and effect in “enactment” (p. 214) […] Like Braidotti, Barad’s position argues that in and through the entanglements of matter, agency also refers us to the “possibilities for worldly re-configurings” (Barad 2012, p. 55)’ (n.p). The concept of performativity is crucial to Barad’s ongoing sense of movement and relation. Performativity, as part of intra-action, helps to focus attention on the ‘practices of engagement with, and as a part of, the world’ in ways that work against binaries that position the human as central to understanding relations in practice (Barad 2007, 133). ‘[…] a performative account insists on understanding thinking, observing, and theorizing as practices of engagement with, and as part of, the world in which we have our being’ (Barad 2007, 133). Barad takes seriously the concept of performativity as something that all material has access too. Performativity is not only a way of conceiving of socially constructed ways we engage with gender (Butler 1990), for instance, but also provides an opportunity to question our epistemological and ontological assumptions, and, as she puts it, unexamined habits of considering how the social and material intra-act.

Agential cuts While the foregrounding of the imagination, as I explore in the previous chapter, is one way of conceiving of dancers’ kinaesthetic experience and video self-images, and how one might understand how this particular way of working with video self-image can be productive, it is still principally centred on the underlying principal of the human. The centring of the human is clear, for instance, when Lacan gives the video a sense of play, in discussing how the human plays with the mask of the screen (Silverman 1992, 149). Lacan argues that this is what differentiates ‘man’ from ‘animal’, this ability to play with the self-image. And thus, my building on

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this point of view in the previous chapter means the conclusions drawn are also partially implicated in an anthropocentric view. I write ‘in part’ because Silverman’s feminist philosophical position might also be interpreted as part of the philosophical history of new materialism and posthumanism, in their indebtedness to feminist philosophy. Barad (2003), for instance, expresses her ‘more limited goal’ with her seminal essay on posthumanist performativity, ‘[…] is to use the notion of performativity as a diffraction grating for reading important insights from feminist and queer studies and science studies through one another while simultaneously proposing a materialist and posthumanist reworking of the notion of performativity’ (811). Braidotti (2013) supports the argument for a similar historicisation for her posthumanist perspective: ‘…the posthumanist position I am defending builds on the anti-humanist legacy, more specifically on the epistemological and political foundations of the post-structuralist generation, and moves further’ (38).6 The links between feminist philosophy and poststructuralism, which Silverman’s work is a key part of, are thus critical to the thinking that links the previous analysis to the preliminary explorations here. In Barad’s discussion of agential cuts, the issue of apparatus is important because of how it helps align, as well as help to subvert and queer, the concept of apparatus as both material and social.7 For instance, to consider the video as apparatus and the contemporary dance technique as apparatus, or recognising as Haraway (1988) does ‘our own “semiotic technologies” [as well as the more obvious ‘physical’ technologies] for meaning making’ (579). The use of the concept of apparatus is one of the ways that Barad (2007) helps to ‘[…] theorize the social and the natural together, to read our best understandings of social and natural

6 It might also be argued that some of my critical discussion of phenomenology in

Chapter 2 signals a move away from other positions that echo Lacan. For instance, Sheets-Johnstone (2018) argues, ‘Humans are uniquely gifted through the practice of phenomenological methodology […]’ (6). I do not argue against this claim per se; however, the central positioning of the human perspective does raise question which I find perspectives critical of the anthropocentric view help to reflect on, particularly related to historical lines of thought that might need to be reconsidered. 7 Apparatus is of course a term frequently used by Foucault & Deleuze, see, for instance, Lepecki (2007): ‘As Gilles Deleuze explains Michel Foucault’s major contribution to a political theory of signification, the concept of apparatus is one that foregrounds perception as always tied to modes of power that distribute and assign to things visibility or invisibility, significance or insignificance’ (120).

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phenomena through one another in a way that clarifies the relationship between them’ (25). Barad’s discussion of apparatus explores how cuts are essential to relation. Again, Barad’s framing of apparatus related to agential cuts is to try to move beyond historically predicated binaries. And as Braidotti (2013) argues in her discussion of the posthuman, ‘The technological apparatus is our new “milieu” and this intimacy is far more complex and generative than the prosthetic, mechanical extension that modernity had made of it’ (83). Where might agential cuts signify the boundaries of the phenomena, and yet are also a necessary part of any resolution perceived in this intra-acting that is phenomena because of the boundary-making function of apparatuses? In Barad’s (2007) words: ‘In short, the apparatus specifies an agential cut that enacts a resolution (within the phenomenon) of the semantic, as well as ontic, indeterminacy. Hence apparatuses are boundary-making practices’ (148, italics in original). The critical point here is that agential cuts determine the boundaries between the components that are intra-acting. However, boundaries are indeterminate. Indeterminacy is an essential part of every intra-action. We perceive boundaries because the components of what we are investigating are intra-acting. Thus, phenomena will always reveal boundaries, because it is these boundaries that are necessary for there to be intra-action. The gaps need to be there for the intra-action to resolve something. But that resolving is not finite or towards a whole. Rather, the intra-actions reveal how there are an indeterminant amount of possible entanglements to enact a multitude of possible resolutions because of the multitude of apparatus which are relating in any given enactment. There is the multiplicity of apparatus in the exploration of Mads’ experience in the example above for instance. There is the apparatus of his kinaesthetic experience, dance technique(s), bodily affordance, video device, and video self-image, to name only a few apparatuses at work in this example. Barad argues that agential cuts refer to the boundaries that are articulated and made meaningful via the apparatus under examination of the phenomena. This brings in the indeterminacy that is argued to always be present with any apparatus enacting phenomena. Agential cuts are made meaningful in my examination of the apparatus of Mads’ kinaesthetic experience which I relate to the apparatus of his dance training and the apparatus of the video and self-image. There is an indeterminacy with these entanglements of apparatus; there are an indeterminant number

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of boundaries to be articulated and made meaningful in the particular instance of Mads and his experiences with his dancing self-images. This discussion of apparatus by Barad resolves a problem for me in the previous discussion in Chapter 5 of Merleau-Ponty’s reversibility and ‘double sensation’, such as explored with two hands touching. For Merleau-Ponty two hands touching is one hand touching another, I can feel my right hand touching my left, as much as two hands touching to make one intertwining experience; as much as there is an intertwining, there is also a gap between them which my various perception-ings of the hands brings up. What is different, however, is Barad and Merleau-Ponty’s implicit conceptualisation of time with intertwining and intra-acting. Folding in related to Merleau-Ponty is a linear sense of time. As Kissman (2019) argues, referring to Phenomenology of Perception, ‘Merleau-Ponty’s sense of the virtual [past folding in to the present into the future…] is entirely embedded in the classical rectilinear structure of time’ (23). Barad’s (2007) discussion of quantums helps to further illustrate the both/and of intra-acting and agential cuts, to re-consider the interpretations above in terms of time. Barad’s discussion of quantum leaps also helps to expand on the sense of play brought in with Silverman and Ingold in the previous chapter. Barad (2007) summarises, Quantum leaps aren’t jumps (large or small) through space and time. An electron that ‘‘leaps’’ from one orbital to another does not travel along some continuous trajectory from here-now to there-then. Indeed, at no time does the electron occupy any spatial point in between the two orbitals. But this is not what makes this event really queer. What makes a quantum leap unlike any other is that there is no determinate answer to the question of where and when they happen. The point is that it is the intra-play of continuity and discontinuity, determinacy and indeterminacy, possibility and impossibility that constitutes the differential spacetimematterings of the world (182).

The discussion of quantum intra-action is crucial to Barad’s discussion of new materialism overall and the epistemological and ontological shift related to historicised concepts of how we conceive of space and time that inform the new materialist perspectives Barad is offering. This ‘discovery’ of quantum leaps helps to challenge fundamental positionings about what might be fixed within our perceptions of material and phenomena; more specifically, bringing to question significant positionings about how we conceive of our perceptions and previous ‘truths’ coming out of social

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constructivism and/or scientific positivism. Put in another way, Barad’s discussion of quantum leaps asks us to question some of the embedded frames through which we understand phenomena, particularly related to materiality. To question fundamental aspects of how we think the world works, such as how time ‘works’ in our perceptions of dancing bodily experience and video self-images. As Kissman (2019) puts it: Time is conceived in the sociology of, for example, Max Weber as a linear course of events. Within this framework, the present becomes the past and the future turns into the present. The linear structure of time was long considered as a precondition for action and causality. However, in the current discussion of “new materialism” this concept of time is questioned by authors such as, for example, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari (1997), Bruno Latour (e.g. 2005, 2008) or Karen Barad (2007). The former authors each draw upon the sociology of Gabriel Tarde in order to develop a concept of nonlinear time. In this perspective, time is understood as imitation and differing repetition (21).

Crucially, then, is the point that as much as there is continuity to allow us to perceive phenomena as intra-acting, as discussed above in relation to video self-images and the dancers’ kinaesthetic experiences, there are also always discontinuities, indeterminacy, and impossibility. Differential spacetimematterings are crucial to the world and it is the intra-play between any components of agential cuts, continuity, and discontinuity or indeed subject and object, which is crucial to intra-action. In short, agential cuts are necessary and will always be there. Paradoxically, then, while dancers might work to make sense, make relatable, their kinaesthetic experiences and video self-images, they might also always encounter these gaps, these cuts. This is, as Barad (2007) puts it, the indeterminate nature of existence. As she goes on to argue: Or to put it another way, if the indeterminate nature of existence by its nature teeters on the cusp of stability and instability, of determinacy and indeterminacy, of possibility and impossibility, then the dynamic relationality between continuity and discontinuity is crucial to the open-ended becoming of the world which resists a causality as much as determinism (182).

In sum, the dancers in my fieldwork support the argument that they are creative and ‘play’ with these marks—the cuts, gaps, and chiasm that

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they face in experience in the practice. As technology proliferates, such as video access on hand-held devices, critical and practical resistances to these forces is continually necessary, not least coming out of the continued re-valuing of digital technologies that will undoubtedly continue to occur, and impact on dancers’ experience and frequency of encounter with visual self-reflections. Barad (2007) helps to articulate the creative potential with discontinuity, cuts, gaps: The re-working of exclusions entails possibilities for (discontinuous) changes in the topology of the world’s becoming. But not everything is possible at every moment. Interior and exterior, past, present, and future, are iteratively enfolded and reworked, but never eliminated (and never fixed). Intra-actions reconfigure the possibilities for change. In fact, intraactions not only re- configure spacetimematter but reconfigure what is possible (182).

The cuts and exclusions which the video self-reflections provide the dancers entail possibilities for (discontinuous) changes in the topology of the dancer’s becomings as part of the world. But it is not only the dancer’s agency that might work to make these discontinuities continuous, as in the way the dancer’s play with the video images the next time they do the phrase and/or the videos ‘come up’ in the dancer’s memory and directs their intentions towards a certain becoming related to these video self-images. There are other possibilities to consider and the extent to which discontinuities are as important as intra-action. There are indeterminate agencies and discontinuities to consider, entangled within seemingly simple everyday intra-action(s) of a dancer dancing, recording their dancing, and then watching a video self-image of that dancing.

Becoming (contemporary) dancer The above discussion of indeterminacy, gaps, and cuts hints back to the previous chapter discussion about dancers’ knowing and intelligence in the practice, as Parviainen (1998) and others argue. Dance knowledge, like all knowledge practices, entails indeterminacy, gaps, cuts. Knowledge is simultaneously and paradoxically an entangling and differentiating. Knowing is not about seeing from above or outside or even seeing from a prosthetically enhanced human body. Knowing is a matter of intra-acting.

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Knowing entails specific practices through which the world is differentially articulated and accounted for. In some instances, ‘‘nonhumans’’ (even beings without brains) emerge as partaking in the world’s active engagement in practices of knowing. Knowing entails differential responsiveness and accountability as part of a network of performances. Knowing is not a bounded or closed practice but an ongoing performance of the world (Barad 2007, 149).

The point Barad is helping to consider, with her exploration of agential cuts, and a point continually grappled with in the discourse in terms of dancers’ practice, is how we might, in the configuration of entangled agencies, consider further the ethics, and power dynamics, between the contemporary dancer and video self-image in these particular intra-actions. As Domm (2019) summarises of Barad (2007), ‘[…] the entanglement of phenomena points to ethical implications: insofar as the unfolding of the world’s becoming produces both connections and boundaries, inclusions and exclusions, it requires an ethical engagement with the range of configurations that can be realized’ (69). Entangled agencies entail response and responsibility to the particular boundaries and phenomena being configured (Domm 2019, 69). Or as Barad puts it, it ‘entails an ethical obligation to intra-act responsibly in the world’s becoming, to contest and rework what matters and what is excluded from matter’ (Barad 2007, 178). This discussion is not new, but it does keep metamorphosing as technology changes; indeed, others offer rich analysis on becoming dancer (e.g. Manning 2009; Rothfield 2021) and critical and practical developments with(in) the dance and technology discourse, which includes performance, aesthetics, and practice research (e.g. Parviainen 2011; Blades 2015, 2017; Jennings-Grant 2017; Karreman 2017; Blanco Borelli and Monroe 2018; Butterworth and Wildschut 2018; Defrantz 2019a, b; Duke University 2020a, b; Bench 2020; Katan-Schmid 2020). Harmony Bench (2020) sums it up well: Dance makes visible how cultural processes recruit participants at the level of their embodiment, offering an opportunity to consider the various political, cultural, and technological projects into which we are enlisted without our full awareness or knowledge. Dance scholars thus have an opportunity— perhaps even a mandate— to contribute their deep investments in bodies as sites of knowledge and practice to such analyses of digital cultures […] (12).

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Ongoing consideration of ethics, and power, in dancer-technology relations, especially those increasingly found in ‘everyday’ contemporary dance environments, will in turn contribute to better awareness in bodies as sites of knowledge.

Ethics and power ‘Recognizing the embodied and embedded, relational and affective positions of humans is a form of situated knowledge that enhances the singular and collective capacity for both ethical accountability and alternative ways of producing knowledge’ (Braidotti 2019, 16). As mentioned above, a key reason I find the concepts of intra-action and agential realism useful is for how they lead to re-considerations of ethics and power in terms of the contemporary dancer and visual selfimage experiences discussed, and in the light of current technologies (including theoretical ones) in which this research is situated. However, as also noted above, there remains an underexplored centring of the human, and anthropocentricism, in the previous analysis. One problem central to the above discussion is how contemporary dancers are currently exploring, critiquing, and complicating (or not) their increasing work with video self-image(s), with the continuing proliferation of hand-held recording devices and video performance platforms, including social media. Exploring (or not) to what extent dancers might be ‘becoming machine’ (Braidotti 2013) in the practice at the same time as they are ‘becoming dancer’ as video technology proliferates. Or put another way, explore how becoming dancer might include becoming machine, as much as it might include multiple other becomings, such as becoming choreographer as Roche (2015) argues in detail, also focusing on the dancer’s perspective in the practice. Andre Lepecki (2016) addresses the concern I am trying to address here, in specific reference to choreographic analysis: In the context of ever-expansive cyber-industrial and cyber-stately policing apparatuses in Western democracies— where the unprecedented surveillance of the citizenry, the privatization of cultural activities, the economization of artistic expression, and the movement of sociality as mainly the movement of Self(ie)-images disseminated through controlled and monetized cyberplatforms are the rule— the unruly promises of performance and performativity must be reckoned with by power. Thus, performance

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and performativity find themselves a primary target for surveillance and for being (ab)used by surveillance and for being (ab)used by economic and state power. Faced with this situation, the choreopolitical question becomes: how to act under such predicament and propose something else, a “differential and differentiating process of materializing and mattering, which remains uninsured and unanticipated, persistently and interminably susceptible to the spectral forces of eventness,” to quote Athena Athanasiou’s definition of the performative (Butler and Athanasiou 2013, 140)?’ (19)

It is beyond the scope of this book to fully address the problem of surveillance and all that Lepecki addresses,8 however the above discussion with Barad and Braidotti moves towards this, by exploring differentiating processes of materialising and mattering. My hope in moving towards diffraction helps to complicate previous movings with reflection (Haraway 1992), towards a critically informed perspective on repetition, between dancer kinaesthetic experiences and video self-images for instance, that continues to put difference at its core (Bench 2020, 49); disruption, gaps, and chiasm as necessary shifts in ongoing cohesions with(in) one’s contemporary dancing experiences and in becoming contemporary dancer. Or as Bench (2020) writes in discussion of restaging, reperformance, and hyperdance, ‘Unworking refers to the interruption through which cohesion as completion is disrupted’ (53). Barad (2007) writes that the indeterminate nature of existence and causal intra-actions refers to ‘marks left on bodies’, which recalls the idea of ‘folding in’ discussed in the previous chapter and how the video makes a ‘mark’, or memory trace, on the dancers’ kinaesthetic experience the next time they do the phrase. Except here, in contrast to the discussion in the previous chapter, Barad (2007) refers to bodies in relation to all materiality, she is not referring to bodies as solely human. Either way, what is important about causal intra-actions is that ‘‘marks are left on bodies’’: bodies differentially materialize as particular patterns of the world as a result of the specific cuts and reconfigurings that are enacted. Cause and effect emerge through intra-actions. Agential intra-actions are causal enactments (176). 8 The (in)fertile territories project is precisely trying to grapple with this and related issues. I will continue to pursue this thinking in/through the project, in the capacity I have to do so. Please see Ehrenberg (2020) and https://shantelehrenberg.weebly.com.

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With the Mads example, I discuss how the video self-images leave a mark on Mads the next time he does the phrase. This idea comes out of conversing with the concept of ‘folding in’ with Merleau-Ponty. But bringing in Barad’s perspective, marks are left on all material ‘bodies’, marks are left on the video bodies too. The marks on the video might not be perceived in the same way as we do the marks left on the dancers’ bodies. Marks are left on the videos in the sense of economy and use, for instance. Indeed, Laura Karreman’s (2013) research on video annotation tools supports the argument for technologies developing specifically with contemporary dance and the dancer in mind, some of them since the 1980s (122). These technologies intra-act with technologies emerging for other purposes, extending the idea of the video technology and agency.9 Barad’s (2007) proposal of materiality of all bodies and the call to consider the agency of the non-human in some ways parallels Braidotti’s (2013) discussion of Deleuze and Guattari’s ‘becoming machine’, as mentioned above, more specifically her discussion of Guattari’s ‘machinic autopoiesis’. She states that machinic autopoiesis radically redefines machines as both intelligent and generative because machines, like organic matter, self-organise (2013, 94). Machines also aim to create metastability and their own forms of alterity, as individual humans do (2013, 94). As with Barad’s (2007) discussion, machinic autopoiesis likewise helps us to question mediated subjectivity (Braidotti 2013, 94). ‘The relationship between the human and the technological other has shifted in the contemporary context, to reach unprecedented degrees of intimacy and intrusion’ (Braidotti 2013, 89). This intimacy, Braidotti argues, links becoming machine to the posthuman predicament. It makes it very difficult to distinguish boundaries between flesh and metal for instance, thus indeed dancer and video recording device. Becoming machine moves beyond metaphor and imitation. Instead, we now have ‘a more complex political economy that connects bodies to machines more intimately, through simulation and mutual modification’ (Braidotti 2013, 89–90). The ‘visual modes of representation’, she argues, are replaced by ‘sensorial-neuronal modes of simulation’ (Braidotti 2013, 90). And, importantly for the point for becoming dancer and becoming machine related to video self-image, she argues that ‘all technologies can be said to have a strong bio-political effect upon the embodied subject they intersect 9 Forsythe’s (2011) discussion of Choreographic Objects might be considered a parallel exploration of the object and issues of agency (see also Karreman 2017).

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with’ (Braidotti 2013, 90). The video self-image has a strong bio-political effect on the dancer. Bringing in the issue of ethics more concretely to this problem of bio-political effect upon the embodied subject (than done in the previous chapter) she argues, ‘technological mediation is central to a new vision of posthuman subjectivity’ and ‘provides the grounding for new ethical claims’ (Braidotti 2013, 90). Furthermore, the idea of play is a key part of this ethics: becoming machine is a process which introduces ‘a playful and pleasure-prone relationship to technology…’ (2013, 91). ‘[A] political dimension [which sets up] the framework of recomposition of bodily materiality in directions diametrically opposed to [or at least becoming more aware of] the spurious efficiency and ruthless opportunism of advanced capitalism’ (Braidotti 2013, 92). Becoming machine helps ‘to rethink our bodies as part of a nature-culture continuum in their in-depth structures’, which is what engaging with Barad’s agential realism above does as well (Braidotti 2013, 92). Re-considering the proposal of agency and the video, with what Braidotti discusses and the Mads example above, there is a political dimension to re-explore. For instance, to consider how Mads is entangled with a video device driven by capitalist desire and function, and also neoliberal forces which complicate or disguise senses of agency in/with/through these devices, and consider what becoming contemporary dancer emerges from these ongoing, potentially daily, entanglements. In a re-framing of Braidotti’s (2013) words, video self-images in this example ‘are…devices that both capture and process forces and energies, facilitating interrelations, multiple connections and assemblages. They stand for radical relationality and delight as well as productivity’ (92). Exploring this reframing, even if only briefly here, helps to move towards new modes of subjectivity in relation to visual self-image technologies in contemporary dance. As Braidotti (2013) argues, ‘The merger of the human with the technological results in a new transversal compound, […] radical transversal relations that generate new modes of subjectivity’ (92). There is a multiplicity and entanglement which the exploration with Barad’s agential realism offers. Braidotti’s discussion

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of becoming machine likewise considers transversal crossing, and assemblage, of the multiple layers of the subject, ‘from interiority to exteriority and everything in between’ (Braidotti 2013, 92).10 Future questions can continue to address what emerges in the intraaction between dancer and video self-images, as entangled agencies, therefore addressing further the problem of what contemporary dance, and the contemporary dancer as a part of this larger field, becomes in these transversal crossing and assemblages. Particularly since, in the case of dancers and video self-reflection, differing and emerging agencies contributes to each body having, or imagining and feeling it having, its own currency and power-relations particularly in prevailing Westernised profit-oriented capitalist frames. This open-ending exploration of agential realism and the posthuman acknowledges an ongoing problem of difference and the risk of ‘technotranscendence’ (Braidotti 2013, 97). As Braidotti (2013) argues, a need to continue to be careful how a focus on indeterminacy might relate to the political economy of advanced capitalism. In the electronic frontier, […] the technologically mediated point of reference is neither organic/inorganic, male/female, nor especially white. Advanced capitalism is a post-gender system capable of accommodating a high degree of androgyny and significant blurring of the categorical divide between the sexes. [The technologically mediated] is also a postracial system that no longer classifies people and their cultures on grounds of pigmentation (Gilroy 2000), but remains nonetheless profoundly racist (98).

How might the assemblage of dancers’ kinaesthetic experience and video self-images in the practice as a part of this electronic frontier continue to be problematised? Considering this question I am led to further questions about the repetitive nature of dancer and video self-image intra-actions

10 Philipa Rothfield’s (2019) discussion of Deleuze’s reading of Nietzsche and force seems to have potential here, though more research is needed. In the presentation, Rothfield’s discussion suggests that the idea of force (‘forces as virtual tendencies’) might have some cross-overs with Barad’s agential realism; indeed, Barad is informed by Deleuze as well. Rothfield’s discussion of corporeal formation, Master’s Ripose, and specific practices within postmodern dance which decentre the self seems particularly relevant to my speculations with Barad’s work. See also Rothfield (2021).

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which might signal what Bench (2020) discusses as ‘indifferent differences’ (42). Are these disruptions ‘only differences that cannot make a difference’ (Bench 2020, 42)? Future research will continue to pursue this concern and address Braidotti’s call for ‘a strong theory of posthuman subjectivity’ to re-appropriate these processes of racism and sexism and also offer ‘alternative ground for formations of the self’ (Braidotti 2013, 98). While this research and its focus on the lived, felt practice is indebted to a history in the discourse that Alison Phipps (2019) discusses as ‘“leaning in” to indigenous contexts and being reconstituted dialogically’ (2), as discussed in Chapter 1, it does not explicitly address and problematise relationships to indigenous practices or indeed other issues of difference such as race, sexuality, and dis/ability. Phipps (2019) argues that focusing on the lived, felt practice is a ‘creative practice’ which attempts to ‘break with colonial, epistemic ways of seeing in order to open a space for a way of writing between philosophical prose, personal story and poetic activism’ (2). As I complete this manuscript, I understand that while on the one hand I aim to contribute to better understanding of contemporary dance(r) experiences as knowledge in its complexities, there is still much more work to be done to achieve what Phipps (2019) advocates and what Held (2019) discusses as a coproduced ‘multiparadigmatic space’. I hope that in questioning contemporary dance as a homogenised form, coming from the dancer’s perspective, the work might be useful towards other issues of difference in its analysis of contemporary dance values, the ‘natural’ and ‘social’ of the kinaesthetic, and dancer-visual self-image relations. I hope that the work contributes to what Gail Weiss (2015) argues, which is that Merleau-Ponty’s ‘phenomenology of embodiment legacy’, and critiques of it (e.g. Young, Butler, Fanon, Garland-Thomson) can help to overturn accepted notions of normalcy, naturalness, and normativity (77). However, I also remain keenly aware of Schneider’s (2015) warning: If we are not careful to attend to intersectional histories of how matter has materialized differently or unevenly for different people and things in different places and times, the new materialism threatens to ignore the important difference between Beckett’s and Foucault’s modes of posing the [questions: ‘What does it matter who is speaking?’ (Beckett) and ‘What difference does it make who is speaking? (Foucault)’] (13).

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There are a number of dance studies scholars whose work is and has been addressing questions considering norms and normativity, in particular race and the decolonisation of contemporary dance, in ways that are critical to new modes of subjectivity that Braidotti (2019) calls for. The 2019 Dance Studies Association Conference at Northwestern University in Chicago, IL, USA, featured a wide range of international scholars whose work is leading in this regard. One of two ‘Gatherings’, titled ‘Decolonizing Dance Discourses’, on the specific topic of ‘training’ and ‘technique’, was emblematic of issues contemporary dance is grappling with (Croft et al. 2019; see also Banerji and Mitra 2020). The panel, including academic/artists/scholars Anthea Kraut, Clare Croft, Imani Kai Johnson, Janet O’Shea, Munjulika Tarah, Shanti Pillai, and Royona Mitra, gathering to decolonise key terms, such as ‘technique’ and ‘training’, in dance studies ‘in its universalising, Eurocentric, and English-language modes’, which take for granted competing cultural perspectives. This session (and the research and practice discussed, including during the Q&A) addresses ongoing essential questions for contemporary dance, such as how we might be upholding whiteness through ignoring transmission of whiteness in our practices, the never-ending process of decolonisation we need to address, questions about how we discipline in dance training/possibly giving up the fantasy of mastery, and how to continue to be critical of the terms ‘decolonise’ and ‘decolonisation’ (Banerji and Mitra 2020). Parallel to events such as this gathering, other dance scholars address how ongoing decolonisation of university and conservatoire dance curriculums will impact on contemporary dancers’ experiences in the practice in significant ways (e.g. Kerr-Berry 2012; McCarthy-Brown 2014, 2017; Davis 2018; O’Shea 2018; Prichard 2019; Walker 2019). More movement towards citation, teaching, honouring, contributing, and allocating resources to black and global south dance scholarship will impact on important discussions and change related to contemporary dancers’ practices and the kinaesthetic and the visual (e.g. Ahlgren et al. 2020). As will further understanding through the research from eminent practitioners and scholars exploring African diaspora dance, in particular Afrofuturism, such as has informed the last several years’ Collegium for African Diaspora Dance (CADD) gatherings, events, and publications (2020).11 In the UK, recent work, such as the Contemporary Dance and

11 See also a number of sources by Thomas DeFrantz (e.g. 2016, 2019a, b).

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Whiteness project (Mitra, Stanger, and Ellis 2020), and other publications (e.g. Burt and Adair 2017; Adesola 2018, Sörgel 2020), signals important movements across both theory and practice to better address issues of race and decolonisation in and through contemporary dance; not only examining what we experience on the stage, but also what happens in and around the studio, before the curtain rises. A response to the above summarised concerns in dance studies and practice might be to utilise contemporary dancers’ specialised ability to respond kinaesthetically; that is, being kinaesthetically sensitive, as discussed with a kinaesthetic mode of attention, as a productive way to address difference in and through contemporary dance practice(s). For instance, kinaesthetic awareness might be the tool to sit with, deconstruct, and respond, to anger, frustration, discomfort, and pain that might come with trying to productively address anti-racism in contemporary dance, to build new practices, and to work towards taking action, not simply thinking and talking about the problems. While from one perspective there seems potential in this idea, that something like kinaesthetic sensitivity, as a value of the practice, field, and discourse is a way to ‘stay with the trouble’ (Butler 1990).12 Indeed, it seems Sara Ahmed (2007) suggests, writing about a phenomenology of whiteness, is to pay attention to that which falls below our attention, to notice those habits of whiteness that inhabit our spaces and our actions. This is part of how ‘whiteness holds its place’, she argues (2007, 156). ‘It is by […] attending to what is habitual and routine in “the what” of the world, that we can keep open the possibility of habit changes […]’ (Ahmed 2007, 165).13 Ahmed (2004, 2007) is not concerned with a contemporary dance context in these analyses, however. There are questions that remain as to whether the practices and values, within the sub-culture of contemporary dance more specifically which point towards a kinaesthetic mode of attention as it is discussed in Chapter 3, might need a much more radical rethinking/doing. This re-thinking/doing can take into action the work already done by a number of scholars, including Sara Ahmed (2004, 2007) as well. ‘Racism would not be evident in what “we” fail to do, but what “we” have already done, whereby the “we” is an effect of the doing’ 12 This was offered as part of the conclusion by event co-chair Adesola Akinleye at ID’s 2019 Higher Education Roundtable (Independent Dance 2020). 13 See also Weiss (2015) and Fanon (2008) related to the ‘white gaze’, body schema, and (kinaesthetic) empathy.

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(Ahmed 2004, n.p). She specifically offers important critiques of the transformative potential of self-reflection, such as might be critiqued with focusing on kinaesthetic awareness as the ‘answer’ to anti-racism, which recalls some of the scholarship that critically analyses somatic practices and questions of universalist ideologies (Ginot 2010; George 2014, 2020). ‘The term ‘self-conscious’ has its own genealogy; its own condition of emergence’ (Ahmed 2004, n.p). Ahmed (2004) goes on to caution how a self-conscious subject is ‘classically a bourgeois subject, one who has the time and resources to be a self, as a subject that has depth which one can be conscious about in the first place’ (n.p). Elsewhere Ahmed (2007) calls us to consider the ‘the effect of accumulations’ and what we inherit, which the above-cited dance studies scholarship seems to also be addressing (160).14 As Akinleye (2020) alludes in a provocation commissioned on the subject of contemporary dance, UK HE dance, and anti-racism, the issue of discipline, including wanting to be a ‘good’ anti-racist self-conscious subject, might be part of deeply embedded issues central to dismantling structures towards anti-racism.15 There are crucial yet challenging indications related to disciplining in contemporary dance, such as issues of (maladaptive) perfectionism, a ‘tyranny of niceness’, and/or limited aesthetics of beauty, which are part of the problem, despite well-intentioned efforts towards multiplicity, difference, freedom, and resistance, which some of the values and practices in Chapter 4 aim for within the practice (e.g. Wang, Castro, and Cunningham 2014; Akinleye 2020; Banerji and Mitra 2020; Erickson 2020; George 2020; Lewis 2020).

14 See also George’s (2014, 2020) in-depth exploration of the history of contemporary dance related to somatics, sexuality and race. Through their work one can begin to understand the importance of Pooh Kaye and Ishmael Houston-Jones and Fred Holland’s work historically in this area. 15 See also Banerji and Mitra’s (2020) discussion of mastery (23) and Kraut’s discussion of ‘techniques of transmission’ (47). See also Sörgel’s (2020) interrogation of ‘un-suturing’ white spectatorship in response to contemporary African dance theatre performance; in particular she potently writes, ‘[…] when I open myself to fully experience the affective quality of contemporary African dance theatre politics, I allow myself to touch some of the pain and anguish of my complicity with white ideological systems that have hurt black lives historically for too long. To stay in that pain is to acknowledge that in confrontation with my own discomfort and pain over white guilt and exploitation, I can begin to un-suture and change’ (157).

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In considering the situatedness of the contemporary dance research more broadly, although speculative, the above seems to align with questions about the failure of liberal politics in the light of important global movements, such as #BlackLivesMatter, #MeToo, the climate crisis, just to name a few of the significant life-changing concerns of this time. The research indicates that contemporary dance is also grappling with how current global concerns all too readily suggest the argument that our experiences are not only within the neurons, sinews, and sensations (and the potential good intentions) of our individual bodies. The structures, technologies, and ways of thinking-being, are inside us as much as outside of us. The coronavirus pandemic illustrates this all too well, evidencing how the agency of a microbe is impacted on by globalisation, and also how the agency of globalisation (e.g. freedom to move) impacts on microbial cellular structures of an individual human. There is on the one hand a kinaesthetic mode of attention in contemporary dance, particularly as discussed in relation to chiasm and agential cuts, that resonates with ‘staying with the trouble’ (e.g. Butler 1990) and acting from an in-between positioning that seems productive in foregrounding process, failure, not-knowing, and critiquing how contemporary dancers are disciplined. On the other hand, more research and action are needed regarding (kinaesthetic) experiences related to issues of difference, such as race, specifically in the context of professional-level contemporary dance training and rehearsal contexts. As mentioned above, I move more explicitly towards these concerns in this final chapter as concluding diffractions/diffracting conclusions, and yet I recognise that there is a great deal more to be done. If independent (contemporary) dance risks exclusion from the reproductive economy as Roche (2015) argues, mainly because of its attachment to the power of the visceral transaction between performer and audience—a historical attachment which I try to argue continues as a value in the practice through a kinaesthetic mode of attention—then how might the apparatus of video self-images—particularly with their increasing use in the practice, impact on issues of access and/or exclusion, or not? Are contemporary dancers employing Braidotti’s position of becoming machine as a part of becoming dancer in an affirmative and productive direction? If not or if so, how might this impact on dancers’ ‘everyday’ relations, explorations, and creative challenging(s) with these technologies? How can we further consider all of this as material, to play with, dismantle, deconstruct, see, hear, and touch in different ways than

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the one that predominates, which is often driven by neoliberal and capitalist power, and also racism, sexism, and still limited bodily norms? What might contemporary dancers continue to offer in terms of power differentials in conversation with intra-action, and discontinuity as central to that, particularly in terms of kinaesthetic and visual ideologies, and also in considering the historicised resistive potential of contemporary dance? Ending on these questions explicitly acknowledges the limitations of the research informing this book and yet also supports ending on an opening as an affirmative position: that no research is finished and fixed, but an ongoing process of discovery, opening up new possibilities of becoming.

In summary In this book, I explore the multiple, specialised and, in part, situated aspects of contemporary dancers’ kinaesthetic experiences in training and work contexts. I support the argument that contemporary dancers’ kinaesthetic attention is, in part, constructed by practices and values upheld and perpetuated in the style and in particular explore how these are conceived in relation to visual self-image, particularly for the case of professional-level performing contemporary dancers. I aim to show how the kinaesthetic is situated in a larger social context, which includes the visual for contemporary dance. Put in another way, how contemporary dance includes a situated knowledge of how movement is supposed to look, which continues to challenge a historicised polarisation of the kinaesthetic and the visual in the style. By presenting dancers’ experiences in practice as multi-sensorial and multi-layered, even contradictory at times, I argue that a small group of dancers’ kinaesthetic experiences are distinct to the context and situations they work in, and develop according to the unique demands of their profession. I utilise dancers’ descriptions of kinaesthetic experience and their interactions with video self-reflections to flesh out this point of view further in relation to ideas from Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jaana Parviainen, Michel Foucault, Susan Foster, Dee Reynolds, Kaja Silverman, Susanne Ravn, Karen Barad, Jennifer Roche, Rosi Braidotti, among many others. I endeavour to contribute to better understanding of contemporary dance knowledge and its production with this inquiry, affirming the call by Sklar (1994) which is to take ‘seriously the ontological status of

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immediate bodily experience in the production of knowledge and epistemologies’ (12). I put the dancers’ descriptions, and reflections on my own practice, in dialogue with theoretical concepts to interrogate dancers’ described experiences and the meaning making of these experiences by the dancers. I do not question the validity of philosophical and theoretical concepts in themselves, rather I engage with philosophical and theoretical concepts as a conversational partner with which to re-reflect on, re-think-with, and re-conceive of dancers’ practice. Analysis of the dancers’ described experiences, in tandem with my own experiences and theory and experience from available sources, is intended to contribute to the developing discourse about dancers’ experiences in practice, in parallel with existing dance scholarship, which aims to integrate theory and practice without prioritising one over the other. In the above summarised ways, this book aims to contribute to understanding contemporary dance’s development of a ‘metalanguage’ or ‘metatechnique(s)’ (e.g. Gough and Shepherd 2009; Bleeker 2017; Schuh 2019). It aims to do so through contributing to the accumulation of rich description from dancer voices in the discourse. My explorations affirm the position that contemporary dancers maintain a complex balance between being historically, culturally, and socially situated, and yet having ongoing sense(s) of agency, freedom, and indeterminacy in their creative pursuits of becoming contemporary dancer(s). Ultimately, I hope for dancers, educators, and academics to continue to critically reflect and diffract about where contemporary dancers are positioned, particularly as trained performers within a specific discipline, at times situated between the dancing they are kinaesthetically feeling and the dancing they are projecting. The problems, arguments, and themes raised throughout this book aim to stimulate dancers, educators, and academics to continue to explore continuity as much as discontinuity, indeterminacy and alienation in contemporary dance practice from the dancers’ perspective. The problems, arguments, and themes raised are meant to encourage ongoing questioning with processes of becoming dancer, such as by critically reviewing the roles that style-specific ideologies and values concerning kinaesthesia and visual self-reflection play in contemporary dance practice and the feelings, imaginings, and ongoing dancing conceptions emerging in and through their relations.

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Index

A Aalten, Anna, 30, 62, 63, 125, 192, 212 absence of music, 176, 178 acting, 120, 121, 178 aesthetic(s), 30, 33, 48, 57, 99, 118, 147, 156, 161, 180, 192, 197, 198 contemporary dance, 145, 164, 178, 246, 255 affect affective relation, 63, 235 agency(ies), 6, 48, 71, 76, 77, 79, 80, 82, 119, 135, 172, 215, 230, 232, 233, 235–239, 249, 250, 256. See also sense of agency of dancer, 75, 129, 180, 214, 243 agents, 12, 20, 75, 131, 144, 148, 210, 236, 238 agency as multiplicity, 235 agential realism, 22, 236, 237, 247, 250, 251 agential cuts, 240–244, 246, 256 Ahmed, Sara, 13, 214, 236, 254, 255

Albright, Ann Cooper, 9, 67, 74, 78, 81, 163, 213, 214 Alexander technique, 57, 150 alienation, 83, 191, 208, 209, 215, 224, 234, 235, 258 angelology, 72 Anthropocene, 236 anthropocentricism, 247 anthropocentric view, 240–241 anthropological, 64, 74 anticipation, 107, 160 anticipatory quality of attention, 33 anti-racism, 254, 255 anxiety, 207, 208, 224 apparatus, 241–243, 256 appropriation, 66 assemblage, 233, 238, 250, 251 attention, 50, 56, 58, 84, 87, 99–137, 146, 151, 154, 172, 195, 200, 214, 229, 235, 240, 254. See also kinaesthetic awareness; kinaesthetic mode of attention open attention, 100, 110, 117, 127, 132, 145

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 S. Ehrenberg, Kinaesthesia and Visual Self-Reflection in Contemporary Dance, Cognitive Studies in Literature and Performance, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73403-9

265

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INDEX

way of attending, 123, 129, 131, 132, 134, 147 attuning, 106 audience, 8, 26, 30, 33, 86, 113, 122, 148, 154, 158, 178, 179, 182, 191, 204, 211, 216, 224, 234 audience experiences, 69, 71, 181 audience’s gaze, 74, 119 audition(s), 167, 207 authenticity, 52, 113, 178 authentic bodily experience, 50 automatic habitual behaviour, 198 awareness, 5, 27, 47, 50, 54–55, 85, 102, 104, 106, 110–111, 113, 150–151, 153. See also kinaesthetic awareness B ballet, 7, 46, 57–58, 63–64, 66–68, 71, 77, 81, 105–106, 119, 123, 125, 128–130, 132, 134, 154, 156, 159, 160, 171–175, 178, 197–198, 212 Banerji, Anurima, 253, 255 Banes, Sally, 48, 49, 64 Barad, Karen Michelle, 22, 25, 103, 230, 231, 235–246, 248–251, 257 Bartenieff fundamentals, 50, 52, 150 Bartky, Sandra Lee, 30 becoming becoming dancer, 35, 82, 114, 190, 198, 208, 210, 218, 220, 222, 230, 246–249, 256–258 becoming diffraction, 25 becoming machine, 247, 249–251, 256 becoming socialized, 77, 98 dancers’ practice, 190 becoming aware, 83–85, 121, 132, 146 being

being-for-others, 208, 209 being in body, 120, 122 being in the moment, 120 being-in-the-world, 83 being watched, 35, 59, 86–87, 88, 211, 224, 234. See also audience Bel, Jérôme, 71 Bench, Harmony, 24, 26, 246, 248, 252 Bergson, Henri, 193 biases, 21, 23, 24 binaries, 16, 232, 240, 242 bio-political effect, 249, 250 Bleeker, Maaike, 27, 31–33, 59, 71, 79, 119, 231, 232, 258 bodily affordance, 242 body, 3, 5–7, 9, 12, 13, 27, 32, 33, 35, 48, 50, 56, 63, 74, 115, 210 body as object, 54–57, 208, 209 body as subject, 55, 57 body eclectic, 29, 167 Body-Mind Centering (BMC), 57, 150 boundaries, 239, 242, 243, 246, 249 Bourdieu, Pierre, 22, 29, 63, 65, 75, 76, 127, 129–132, 135, 136, 143, 144, 146, 148, 165, 169, 170, 196, 199, 233 Braidotti, Rosi, 25, 82, 229, 231–234, 240–242, 247–253, 256, 257 brain, 67–70 Brandstetter, Gabriele, 101, 108, 109, 112, 145, 150, 155, 156, 180 breaking/breakdance, 10, 101, 105, 106, 126–128, 136, 171, 172, 175–178, 203 bricolage, 164 Brown, Trisha, 49, 51 Bull, Cynthia Jean Cohen, 10, 130, 145, 155 Butcher, Rosemary, 114, 128, 160

INDEX

Butler, Judith, 30, 210, 240, 248, 252, 254, 256 Butoh, 7, 77, 100 Butterworth, Jo, 72, 157, 158, 231, 246

C Calvo-Merino, Beatriz, 67–69 camera, 26, 207–208, 218 canonical, 50, 166–168 capital, 144, 165 capitalism, 234, 250, 251 capture, 27, 215, 250 chance, 105 chiasm, 22, 205–207, 210, 215, 223, 244, 248, 256 choreographer(s), 7, 24, 36, 46, 48, 49, 51, 61, 63, 70–72, 81, 87, 100, 103, 114, 118, 127, 147, 148, 153, 154, 159, 165, 202, 213, 219. See also choreography contemporary dance, 7, 128 choreography, 29, 50–53, 63, 70–71, 76, 84, 87, 110–111, 113, 117– 118, 122, 129, 133, 148–150, 153, 156–159, 167, 173, 174, 195, 196, 231. See also dance composition choreographic imaginings, 108 choreographic method, 48 choreographic objects, 249 choreographic perspective, 103 choreographic process, 147, 157, 160, 173, 192 choreographic skill, 157, 182 expanded notion of, 213 Claid, Emilyn, 51, 57, 58, 74, 162, 190 Clark, Marianne I., 7, 36, 64, 81, 125 codified, 46, 52, 135 codification, 73

267

cognition, 28, 104, 129, 231–232. See also consciousness cognitive science, 67, 68, 70, 74, 85, 98. See also neuroscience collaborative dance-making processes, 157 consciousness, 45, 53–54, 58–59, 61–62, 83, 109, 115, 119, 132, 135, 136, 151, 196, 197, 215, 233 pre-reflective, 53, 55–56, 83–84, 106, 115, 118, 129, 132, 136, 151 reflective consciousness, 53, 55, 61, 106, 115, 132 contact improvisation, 10, 52, 61, 64, 65, 78, 85, 101, 102, 108, 129, 146, 150, 155, 156, 182 contemporary dance practice(s), 30, 34, 36, 53, 58, 77, 99, 100, 102, 116, 123, 129, 145, 148, 149, 154, 156, 167, 172, 192, 224, 235, 240, 254, 258 context(s), 31, 54, 59, 85, 87, 124, 128, 143, 192, 220, 257. See also dance styles contextual factors, 137 dance contexts, 3, 19, 59, 104, 115, 205, 218 continuity, 190, 191, 243, 244. See also discontinuity conversation (method), 14, 27, 35, 36, 110, 113, 181 Copeland, Roger, 30, 46–48, 156, 161 corporeal corporeal formation, 251 corporeal lived experiences, 80 corporeal maps, 128 corporeal schema, 130 corporeal turn, 64

268

INDEX

crash to create, 116, 117, 128, 129, 153, 154 creativity, 153, 171–174, 182, 209, 212 critical eye, 209, 222, 224 critical theory, 189, 231, 232 Croce, Mariano, 135, 144, 147 Crossley, Nick, 12, 28, 60, 129, 130, 132, 135, 144, 165 Csordas, Thomas, 3, 6, 12, 64, 69, 104, 122, 137 culture, 5, 6, 10, 18, 23, 29, 64–66, 78, 80, 129, 130, 144, 145, 165, 251 cultural codes, 3, 29 cultural perspectives, 253 cultural trope, 34 Cunningham, Merce, 33, 48, 49, 51, 61, 62, 105, 156, 161 curiosity, 28, 99, 101, 106, 108 Cveji´c, Bojana, 60, 70, 71, 178 D Daly, Ann, 46, 82, 161 dance composition, 55, 60 dancer perspective, 7, 18, 32, 64, 67, 72, 75, 100, 103, 104, 115, 176, 192, 200, 218, 235, 236, 252, 258 dance styles, 7, 8, 10, 29, 30, 32, 35, 36, 52, 61, 64–66, 68, 77, 97, 99, 101, 103, 119, 123, 127, 130, 131, 145–147, 162, 166, 176, 179. See also technique(s) dance theatre, 37 Davida, Dena, 29, 167 Davies, Katherine, 27, 62 Davis, Crystal U., 166, 253 decentre, 63, 190, 239 decentre the human, 239 decentre the self, 251 decolonisation, 166, 253, 254

decolonisation of ethnographic practices, 14 decolonising dance curriculums, 162 deconstruct, 254, 256 DeFrantz, Thomas F., 127, 246, 253 De Jaegher, Hanne, 17, 218 Deleuze, Gilles, 79, 81, 82, 158, 241, 244, 249, 251 demonstrative body, 61 Dempster, Elizabeth, 46 denaturalising the notions of the self, 60 denaturalize, 60, 216 Depraz, Natalie, 9–11, 15, 19, 20, 34, 59, 83–85, 103, 109, 120, 121, 132, 136, 146 description(s), 8–13, 15, 21–23, 29, 51, 53–58, 61, 70, 75, 84, 85, 101, 104, 108, 109, 111, 115, 117, 121–130, 133, 147, 151, 153, 158, 160, 163, 170, 189–195, 198, 200, 223. See also experience contemporary dancer descriptions, 115, 123, 128, 192, 208, 223 descriptive approaches, 11 descriptive horizons, 15 descriptive qualities, 101 descriptive shape, 136, 144 phenomenological description, 55, 61, 78, 84 destabilisation, 192 of identity, 212 determinacy, 243, 244. See also indeterminacy diasporic, 66, 253 Diehl, Ingo, 148, 162 difference, 24, 33, 51, 59–61, 132, 229, 248, 251, 252, 254–256 differential patterns of becoming, 229

INDEX

diffraction, 25, 35, 229, 230, 235, 239, 248 diffuse, 99, 109, 134 digital, 204 digital cultures, 246 digital devices, 27 dis/ability, 24, 67, 252 discipline, 60–62, 64, 85, 147, 148, 169, 171, 230, 253, 255 disciplinary perspectives, 72 disciplinary shifts, 74 docile bodies, 7, 62 discomfort, 254 discontinuity, 190–192, 223, 237, 243–244, 257 discourse contemporary dance discourse, 46, 99, 207, 209 dance discourse, 223 discursive context, 66 discursive determinism, 74 discursively constructed, 223 disembodied postmodern readings, 63 disembodiment, 63, 213. See also embodiment disorientation, 213, 214, 218 disposition, 83, 84, 99, 129–131, 134, 136, 143–146, 174 disposition of attending, 133 disruption, 189–191, 202–207, 209, 211–214, 216, 218, 223, 224, 229, 252 diversity, 72, 74, 162 Domm, Daniela Perazzo, 238, 246 double sensation, 201, 243 double horizon, 193, 200, 205 dualism, 5, 236 dualist perception, 62 Duncan, Isadora, 46–49, 61, 156, 161 Dunham, Katherine, 161 dynamics, 195

269

E écart, 205, 207 Eddy, Martha, 49, 50, 149, 150 education, 59, 148–149, 151, 161–165, 207. See also technique; training conservatoire, 51, 58, 172, 219 educational and training contexts, 182 education and practice, 152 education in higher education, 36, 77 electronic frontier, 251 Ellis, Simon, 26, 204, 205, 212, 216, 222, 254 embodiment, 3–6, 15, 37, 59, 73–75, 81–83, 100, 246, 252 embodied, 10–12, 27, 45, 60, 65, 66, 79, 80, 83, 101, 104, 131, 146, 167 embodied experience(s), 11, 12, 45, 60, 79, 104, 213 emotion(s), 46–48, 50, 73–75, 83, 120, 179, 180, 209 empathy, 213. See also kinaesthetic empathy empathic resonance, 20 enmeshment, 106, 108 entangle entangled agencies, 246, 251 entangled states of agency, 238, 240. See also agency(ies) entanglements, 242, 250 ephemeral, 13, 56 epistemology(ies), 8, 9, 13, 15, 149, 234 ethics/ethical, 7, 17, 75, 169, 209, 214, 233–235, 246–247, 250 ethics and ontology, 2, 240–241, 243. See also onto-epistemological

270

INDEX

ethnography/ethnographic methodology, 64, 73, 79 expert/expertise, 17, 19, 34, 67–69, 72, 77, 80, 104, 115, 116, 123, 131, 132, 146, 165, 172, 200, 230 explorations/explorative/exploratory, 107, 114, 150, 151, 256 exteriority/external, 48, 58, 199–200, 251

F failure, 254, 256 fake(ing), 52, 177, 180, 191 fall, 134, 155 Fanon, Frantz, 252, 254 feedback, 198, 210, 218 feeling, 13, 35, 48, 50, 124, 125, 131, 137, 147, 148, 155, 171, 172, 178, 179, 192, 199, 235, 258 audience, 180 Feldenkrais, 49, 150 felt sense, 51, 100, 157. See also kinaesthesia; proprioception feminism/feminist, 4, 48, 61, 189, 241 feminist philosophy, 24, 82, 208, 209, 235, 241 feminist studies/theory/writing, 27, 30, 78, 100, 217 Figuerola, Luisa, 51–53, 170 first-person, 8–11, 19, 20, 65, 66, 73 first and third-person, 151 first-level and a second-level, 135 Fisher, Jennifer, 66, 167 flesh, 200, 201, 205, 238, 249 folding in, 193, 194, 200, 223, 239, 248, 249. See also entangled Forsythe, William, 117, 249 Fortin, Sylvie, 50, 149, 151

Foster, Susan Leigh, 1, 29, 32, 33, 47–49, 51, 52, 60–62, 65, 72, 74, 75, 104, 135, 146, 147, 155, 156, 158, 161, 167, 168, 180, 192, 231, 257 Foucault, Michel, 61–63, 75, 81, 101, 169, 233, 241, 252, 257 Fraleigh, Sondra Horton, 1, 28, 56, 57, 60, 65, 74, 75, 79, 169–171, 208, 236 Franko, Mark, 48, 77, 79, 101 freedom/free, 107, 121, 148, 153, 160, 162, 166, 168–175, 181, 182, 255, 256, 258 freedom from music, 174–175 freedom of choice, 170 freelance, 76, 167. See also independent contemporary dance Fuchs, Thomas, 59, 74, 83, 84, 199 Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), 67, 69 G Gaga, 100, 103, 108, 149, 157, 166, 167, 170 Gallagher, Shaun, 115 game analogy, 130, 144–145 gaps, 200, 204–207, 211–213, 223, 243–245, 248 Gardner, Sally, 61–63, 74, 75, 80, 147, 155, 156 gaze, 56, 224. See also male gaze gender, 6, 49, 61, 240 genealogy, 49, 50, 255 genealogy of somatics, 104 George, Doran, 4, 28, 49–52, 67, 104, 148–151, 161, 162, 170, 178, 180, 191, 255 gestures, 6, 12, 14, 59 Geurts, Kathryn Linn, 75 Ginot, Isabelle, 28, 104, 151, 255

INDEX

Gitelman, Claudia, 134 globalisation, 256 Goddard, Jonathan, 51, 73 Gottschild, Brenda Dixon, 4, 48, 66, 152 Gough, Richard, 73, 74, 258 Graham, Martha, 46–49, 51, 61, 62, 119, 134, 145, 147, 150, 151, 156, 159, 161, 180, 190 Grau, Andrée, 4, 8, 72 gravity, 7, 109 Green, Jill, 16, 24, 25, 30, 62, 73 Grosz, Elizabeth, 30, 82, 200, 201 Guattari, Félix, 82, 244, 249 gymnastics, 133 H habits, 53, 65, 80, 83, 111, 116–118, 136–137, 145, 152, 153, 169, 182, 199, 240, 254 habitual, 239 habituation, 83, 84, 114, 117, 118, 132–134, 136, 137, 144, 196, 212, 218, 254 habitus, 22, 28, 29, 63, 99, 127, 129–132, 135, 136, 143, 144, 146, 147, 169, 170, 190, 196, 199 hand-held devices, 209, 232, 245, 247 Hanna, Thomas, 50 Hansen, Helle Ploug, 74, 76, 105, 145 Haraway, Donna J., 4–6, 25, 27, 218, 229–231, 234, 235, 241, 248 hip hop, 10, 13, 23, 28, 101, 103, 105, 106, 123, 126–128, 133, 136, 171, 172, 175–179, 198, 199, 203 hired body, 29 historicisation/historicised, 2, 54, 73, 175, 232, 237, 257

271

history, dance, 2, 29, 47–48, 53, 150, 180 Høffding, Simon, 76, 199 Holm, Hanya, 134 Horton technique, 159 Humphrey, Doris, 46, 61, 175 hybrid bodies, 29, 167

I ideal, 54, 56, 57, 60–62, 82, 83, 170, 212 idealised images of femininity, 30 identity(ies), 80–82, 129, 209–213 ideokinesis, 150 ideology(ies), 46, 55–56, 74, 86–88, 104, 115, 162, 191, 209, 230 idiosyncrasy/idiosyncratic, 51, 160, 167 illusion, 54 image(s), 33, 48, 57, 194, 195, 198, 202, 205, 210, 211, 216–218, 220, 232, 237 imagination, 5, 29, 107, 160, 170, 197–198, 216–218, 229, 235, 238, 240 cultural imagination, 31 imagine(d), 26, 34, 57, 110, 116, 151, 158, 192, 199, 200, 203, 204, 211, 213, 215, 216 immanence, 80, 121, 208 immediate moment, 123, 178. See also presence/present implicit, 83–84. See also explicit; knowledge(s)/knowing; memory improvisation, 26, 59, 103, 116, 148, 149, 152–157, 175, 177, 182, 219 incorporate, 87, 129–130, 136, 137, 147, 181, 203 incorporation, 99, 145, 149, 153 incorporative body memory, 83

272

INDEX

independent contemporary dancers, 29, 72, 165, 166, 256. See also freelance indeterminacy, 242, 244–245, 251, 258 indifferent differences, 252 Ingold, Tim, 216, 217, 224, 229, 243 inhabited transcendence, 80, 101, 113, 114, 120, 121, 208 inside out, 58, 178 instability, 148. See also destabilisation institutionalisation, 4, 148, 161–163, 169–170, 232 intelligence, 7, 36, 58, 65, 80, 109, 117. See also knowledge(s)/knowing intentionality, 20, 56, 106–107, 133, 135–136, 148, 155, 181, 232, 238 intention, 50, 111, 151, 222, 245 interactions, 17, 26, 230, 257 intercorporeal(ity), 31, 74, 81, 83, 210–211, 218 interdisciplinary, 7, 80, 100 interlocutors, 15 intermediate, 35 intermediate processes, 35 internal/interiority/internalised, 35, 49–50, 53, 55, 86, 87, 100, 129, 179, 189, 200, 207, 251. See also exteriority/external interpretations, 9, 10, 13, 14, 16–18, 20–25, 55, 135, 218 interpretative paradigm, 21, 73 intersubjective(ity), 5, 10, 17, 21, 26, 63, 78, 210 intersubjective validity, 15, 24 intertwine(s)/intertwining, 3, 10, 12, 13, 29–32, 86, 160, 163, 190, 194, 201, 223, 237, 243 interview (method), 9, 10, 13–15, 17–26, 104, 106, 110, 113, 116,

122, 123, 125, 127, 131, 136, 192, 200, 204, 207, 220, 235 intra-action, 236–240, 242, 244–249, 251, 257 introspection, 146 invisible(ity), 74, 115, 120, 237, 241. See also visible/visibility inwardly, 58

J Jackson, Jennifer, 62, 130 Järvinen, Hanna, 28, 50 Jay, Martin, 31, 33 jazz, 171, 172, 175, 179 Jola, Corinne, 32, 68, 69 Jones, Amelia, 33

K Karreman, Laura, 135, 160, 163, 205, 239, 246, 249 Kealiinohomoku, Joann, 66, 129 kinaesthesia, 5–8, 28, 31–33, 37, 45–50, 55–58, 66, 75, 77, 82, 85–88, 99–100, 114, 118, 147, 153, 175, 192–194, 197, 258 kinaesthetic, 1, 3, 4, 7, 8, 10, 13, 64, 111, 114, 123, 168, 190–191, 195, 222, 253, 257. See also kinaesthetic mode of attention kinaesthetic attention, 50, 82, 84, 101, 103, 104, 111, 114–115, 122–123, 127, 136–137, 171, 174, 180, 189, 229, 257 kinaesthetic imagination, 118, 212, 229, 238 kinaesthetic awareness, 24, 28, 32, 48, 49, 51, 58–59, 100–102, 104–106, 109–111, 116–117, 123, 125–128, 136, 152, 157,

INDEX

178–180, 182, 196, 202–204, 209, 216, 235, 254, 255 kinaesthetic empathy, 65, 66, 69, 168, 180, 231, 254. See also empathy kinaesthetic mode of attention, 8, 15, 28, 29, 32, 36, 84, 99, 101–109, 113, 115, 117, 119–124, 126, 128–137, 144–151, 153–158, 160–162, 164–167, 169–171, 173–175, 178, 179, 181, 182, 189, 192, 254, 256 kinetic, 12, 50, 64, 112, 151 Klein, Susan, 109, 111, 112 knowledge(s)/knowing, 4–8, 15, 17, 18, 21, 24, 28, 36, 57, 60, 70, 73, 81, 83, 84, 99, 104, 108, 111, 145, 158, 190, 196, 233, 236, 240, 245–246. See also intelligence bodily experience, 1, 3, 15, 32, 33, 54, 59, 60, 68, 80, 85, 102, 106, 116, 119, 131, 145, 189, 258. See also kineasthesia; kinaesthetic awareness bodily knowing/knowledge, 6, 78, 80, 83, 107, 109, 110, 112, 153 forms of knowing, 123, 129, 131 knowledge, dancer, 67, 75, 108, 109, 116, 122, 257 knowledge(s) cultures, 232 knowledge(s) is situated, 230 knowledge(s) production, 71 knowledge(s) systems, 163 Koch et al., 132, 133 Koch, Sabine C., 59, 74, 83–85 Kozel, Susan, 27, 74, 79, 201, 205, 212 Kuppers, Petra, 67 Kvale, Steiner, 17, 24

273

L Laban, 49, 61, 135 laboratory, 7, 112 Lacan, Jacques, 214–216, 218, 224, 229, 240, 241 language, 10–13, 24, 59, 64, 103, 104, 124, 127, 137, 146, 158–160, 164, 182, 232 Legrand, Dorothée, 13, 74, 86, 101, 111–113, 115, 116, 118–121, 135, 151, 201 Lepecki, Andre, 2, 3, 64, 72, 105, 164, 178, 241, 247, 248 life-world/lifeworld, 9, 19, 76 liminal, 213, 224 listening/listen, 51, 101, 106, 108, 109, 111–113, 115, 117, 150, 153, 155, 175 live, 27, 132 live audience, 26 lived experience, 9, 55, 77, 81, 99, 100, 110, 114, 120, 190, 206, 235, 252 logic (kinaesthetic), 110–112, 118, 131, 157, 163 Long, Warwick, 50, 149, 151 look, the, 151, 208 look like, 55, 58, 182, 190, 195 look of the movement, 181 Lord, Madeleine, 50, 149, 151 Louppe, Laurence, 29, 167

M machinic autopoiesis, 249 male gaze, 48, 207 Manning, Erin, 114, 246 Manning, Susan, 4, 48, 66, 72 map, 18, 22, 29, 129, 215, 229 mapping, 18, 129, 229 mapping of interference, 25 marks, 229, 244, 248, 249

274

INDEX

Markula, Pirrko, 6–8, 16, 18, 20–22, 36, 63, 64, 74, 80, 81, 85, 125, 129 masking, 216, 224 mask of the screen, 240 Mason, Jennifer, 17, 27 Massumi, Brian, 31, 82, 235 mastery, 122, 163, 176, 253 materiality/material, 63, 75, 82, 103, 147, 224, 230, 236, 241, 244, 249 matrix, 83, 132 matter, 246, 252 Mauss, Marcel, 129 McCarthy-Brown, Nyama, 166, 253 meaning making, 10, 13, 258 mediation, 81, 146, 213, 215, 249 meditation, 85, 120, 132, 136, 146 memory, 14, 19, 83, 84, 108, 179, 193, 196, 199, 218, 229, 232, 245–246 bodily, memory, 132 kinaesthetic, memory, 133, 202 memory frameworks, 84 memory trace, 194–196, 200, 238, 248 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 1, 9, 16, 21, 22, 31, 75, 76, 78–80, 82, 114, 119, 190, 193, 194, 199–201, 205–208, 210, 215, 223, 224, 233, 235, 237, 243, 249, 252, 257 metalanguage, 73, 74, 258 metaphor(s)/metaphoric, 85, 107, 109, 125, 127, 146, 147, 159, 216, 218 metatechnique, 157, 167, 258 methodology/methodological, 10, 27, 51, 65, 69, 87, 99, 135, 144, 162, 220 mimicry, 215–216 mimics, 216

mindfulness, 85, 132 mindfulness meditation, 51 mind thinks/feels, 85 mirror neuron(s), 67–69 mirror(s), 30, 31, 50, 58, 61–62, 87, 191, 198, 201, 205, 206, 208, 211, 215, 220, 235, 239 mirror alienation, 235 mirror stage, 215 mistakes, 116, 117, 154 Mitra, Royona, 72, 253–255 modern and contemporary dance, 33, 46–48, 103, 145, 152, 161, 169 modern dance, 46–50, 61, 156, 161, 166, 169, 175 modus operandi, 130, 132, 134 Monroe, Raquel, 4, 162, 246 Montero, Barbara, 30, 115, 190, 197–200 Morris, Gay, 63, 131, 147, 148, 180 motion capture, 205, 212, 218, 239 motivating structures (habitus), 28, 123, 129, 131, 143 movement analysis, 65. See also Laban movement code, 150–151, 160 movement principles, 51–52 multiplicity, 29, 45, 54, 57, 104, 148, 215, 236, 255 multiplicity and complexity, 76 multi-sensorial, 86, 193, 257 multitalented body, 167 Mulvey, Laura, 33 music, 69, 172, 174–178

N narcissism, 223 natural, 28, 46, 48, 49, 104, 134, 144, 162, 230, 236, 241, 252 nature and culture, 82, 250 value and ideology, 50 neoliberal and capitalist power, 257

INDEX

neoliberalism, 166 Ness, Sally Ann, 60, 64 neurochoreography, 70 neuroscience, 5, 70. See also cognitive science new dance, 57, 58, 190 new materialism, 25, 34, 230, 231, 234–236, 241, 243, 244, 252 new technologies, 27, 78 Nikolais (Alwin), 180 Noland, Carrie, 6, 14, 75 non-dancer, 24, 116, 118 non-dualism, 79, 236 non-linear time, 236 non-spectacle, 48 non-verbal, 10, 13, 14, 21, 27, 72, 104 norms/normativity, 62, 67, 130, 131, 144, 170, 210, 253, 257 Novack, Cynthia J., 1, 10, 49, 64–66, 68, 74, 78, 101, 129, 146, 147

O objectifying/objectivity, 4, 34, 48, 217 object(s), 4, 30, 35, 56, 57, 69, 116, 119–120, 137, 201, 205–208, 214, 216, 217, 224, 229, 235, 237, 244, 249 Ochs, Elinor, 14, 20, 21 ontology, 2, 8, 9, 15, 50, 234, 257. See also epistemology(ies) onto-epistemological, 75, 230 opaque, 120 openness, 85, 106, 114, 115, 128, 131, 153, 171 O’Shea, Janet, 166, 253 other(s), 66, 69, 81, 171, 205, 206, 210–212, 214, 215, 230, 233

275

P pain, 102 Pakes, Anna, 55, 60, 68, 71, 104, 163 paradigm(s), 8, 21–22, 80, 85, 230–232 paradox, 202, 216, 232 participation (method), 23, 65 participatory sense making, 17 Parviainen, Jaana, 1, 6, 32, 74, 75, 86, 104, 107–109, 112, 153, 168, 201, 205–207, 211, 212, 245, 246, 257 passive, 85, 109, 132 pattern(s), 10, 80, 84, 108, 111, 118, 130–131, 135–136, 144, 145, 150, 155, 199. See also habits; habitus perception(s)/perceive, 3, 32, 33, 50, 61, 68–69, 84, 106, 108, 111–113, 116, 120, 121, 153, 189, 193, 197, 211–212, 214, 216, 220–222, 241, 243–244 perfect/perfection, 46, 116, 117, 122, 154, 156 Performance Philosophy, 71 performance(s), 29–31, 33, 36, 69, 71–73, 79, 87, 129, 149, 177, 178, 181, 182, 189, 190, 192, 196, 204, 211, 219, 223, 224, 230, 231, 235, 239, 246, 247 performative, 33, 113, 115, 232, 240, 248 performance studies, 64, 71, 85, 235, 236 performative pre-reflective body, 115, 116, 136 performing, 4, 27, 82, 87, 104, 119, 168, 204–205, 207, 211 performer/performing, 34–36, 198–199, 221, 235

276

INDEX

phenomena/phenomenon, 18, 22, 54, 231, 233, 237, 238, 242–244, 246 phenomenality, 106 phenomenology, 7, 9, 17, 19–23, 36, 53–54, 59, 60, 74–83, 85, 101, 114–115, 120, 145, 189–191, 230, 235, 238, 241, 252. See also description(s) phenomenological accounts, 45, 57, 60, 75 phenomenology and ethnography, 76 phenomenology and performance, 79 phenomenology and sociology, 7, 9, 10, 77, 101 phenomenology of whiteness, 254 philosophy, 5, 80, 85, 100, 231 play, 251–217, 224, 229, 234, 236, 240, 243–245, 250, 256 polarisation of kinaesthetic and the visual, 45, 46, 53, 82, 86 politics/political, 234, 235, 241, 250, 256 postcolonial theory, 61 posthuman, 34, 232–235, 242, 249, 251–252 posthumanism, 25, 101, 230, 231, 236, 241 postmodern dance, 48, 49, 51, 149, 251. See also modern and contemporary dance poststructuralism/poststructuralist, 7, 22, 45, 60–61, 66, 71, 74–75, 81, 207, 231, 233, 241 postmodernist, 232 Potter, Caroline, 77, 86, 87, 100–102, 109, 113, 135, 145 power, 22, 24, 62, 80–81, 159, 216, 221–222, 230, 234–235, 241, 247, 248, 251, 256–257

power of the visual, 208, 209, 217, 224, 235 practice and theory, 36, 80, 161, 164, 182 practice research, 71, 246 practice(s), 9, 14–15, 19, 29, 99–100, 136, 143, 146–151, 155, 161–165, 168–169, 172–174, 177, 181, 231, 254. See also styles; technique; training bodily, 36, 63, 137, 143 practices and values, 49, 131, 137, 146–149, 181, 189, 254, 257 pre-reflective, 53, 55–56, 84–85, 106, 115, 118, 128, 132, 136, 151 pre-reflective performative body, 101, 151 presence/present, 57, 105, 108, 193–194, 196, 198. See also immediate moment bodily (presence), 113 Prichard, Robin, 66, 166, 253 principles, 128, 130, 131, 136, 137, 144–146 problem solving, 101, 106, 112, 150 process, 58, 69, 107, 118, 234, 256 productive look, 191, 214, 223, 224 proprioceive aesthetically, 197–200 proprioception, 32, 33, 86, 88, 112, 197–200 psychology, 5, 6, 17, 47, 74, 80, 85, 146 Purser, Aimie, 14, 30–32, 79–81, 85, 101, 113, 114, 119–122, 145, 170, 190, 192, 199, 208, 215, 235 Q qualitative research, 8, 79–80 queer theory, 61 Quinlan, Meghan, 34, 100, 108, 149, 157, 166, 167, 170

INDEX

R Radell, Sally, 30 Rainer, Yvonne, 48, 105 Trio A, 48, 49 Ravn, Susanne, 7, 13, 23, 30, 32, 36, 52, 53, 74–77, 81, 85, 86, 100, 102, 103, 105, 111–113, 115, 119, 132, 135, 145, 151, 155–157, 190, 192, 199, 257 Reason, Matthew, 17, 18, 66, 68, 69, 180, 231 rebel/rebellion, 4, 161 record, 26, 222, 223, 237 recording, 35, 201, 207, 220, 222, 229, 245 recruitment, 105, 106 reflecting on reflection, 214, 216 reflection(s)/reflective, 4, 15, 17–19, 22–26, 34–36, 54–59, 61, 82, 85, 100, 107, 120, 127–128, 132, 135, 209, 224, 229, 230, 248, 258 reflective writing, 69, 204 reflexivity, 199–200 types, 54 rehearsal, 29, 31, 87, 113, 133, 167, 190, 197, 221, 256 relation(s)/relational, 51, 62, 74–76, 84, 85, 201, 205, 212, 233, 237, 238, 240, 242, 247, 258 release technique, 50–52, 62, 102, 119, 134, 135, 150, 151, 159, 170, 191 repertoire, 160 repetition, 84, 99, 111, 132–134, 145, 151, 196, 199, 248 representation, 27, 60, 61, 64, 86, 212 representational parameters, 214, 229 re-reflecting/re-reflections, 24, 25, 214, 216, 240 researcher, 135

277

resistance, 34, 148, 255 reversibility, 190, 191, 200, 201, 205, 215, 243 Reynolds, Dee, 32, 47, 66, 68, 69, 116, 118, 133, 134, 168, 175, 180, 181, 212, 231, 257 rich description, 8, 10, 80, 160, 258. See also ‘thick’ description Roberts, Rosemarie A., 14, 127 Roche, Jennifer, 7, 8, 29, 30, 32, 36, 52, 72–74, 81, 82, 85, 100, 114, 115, 117, 118, 128, 129, 134, 145, 148, 150, 153, 154, 157, 158, 160, 166, 167, 192, 247, 256, 257 Roche, Liz, 128, 158 roles of choreographer and dancer, 72 Rothfield, Philipa, 2, 32, 60, 75, 85, 101, 128, 133, 246, 251 Rouhiainen, Leena, 12, 28, 32, 74–76, 100, 102, 109, 110, 145, 153, 165, 166 Royal Ballet, 26, 123 rules, 130, 135, 144 S Sartre, Jean-Paul, 1, 208, 215 schema(s), 12, 75, 80, 130, 144, 190, 194, 254 corporeal schema, 130, 190, 194 Schneider, Rebecca, 236, 252 Schuh, Anne, 163, 164, 166, 167, 258 Schupp, Karen, 150, 152, 163 screen, 203–205, 214–216 second-person perspective(s), 19–20, 65, 135 seeing of oneself, 201, 215, 222 seeing-seen, 201, 215–216 self, 6, 25, 46, 47, 57, 61, 66, 80–82, 105, 113, 151, 179, 190, 205, 206, 210, 211, 233, 252, 255

278

INDEX

self-awareness, 110, 112, 116 self-conscious subject, 255 self(ie)-image(s), 189, 196, 197, 199, 201, 202, 206, 210–211, 216, 223, 224, 243, 247, 251–252. See also visual self-image; visual self-reflection self-reflection/self-reflective, 26, 29, 63, 64, 110, 151, 198, 201, 203, 206, 208, 212, 216, 219, 223, 224, 245, 255, 257 video self-reflection, 18, 22, 26, 27, 82, 191, 196, 198, 204, 205, 207, 209, 210, 214, 216, 217, 220, 224, 229, 236 visual self-reflection, 8, 30, 31, 34, 36, 37, 56, 58, 87, 88, 191, 198, 205, 212, 219, 223, 245, 258 semiotic(s) analysis, 60, 62, 241 sensation(s), 3, 6, 32, 50, 108, 111, 112, 116, 129, 150, 153, 178, 256 bodily (sensation), 100, 109, 158, 193 sense of agency, 28, 29, 34, 51, 147, 166, 171, 191, 250, 258. See also agency(ies) sense of movement experience, 134 sense(s), 6, 33, 64, 109, 110, 116, 123, 155, 163, 197 sensory, 5, 19, 27, 66, 102, 108, 134, 168 seselelame, 75 sexuality, 24, 252, 255 shame, 208, 215 shared practices, 27, 64 Shea Murphy, Jacqueline, 4, 66 Sheets-Johnstone, Maxine, 1, 13, 28, 31, 53–60, 64, 75, 133, 241 Shepherd, Simon, 73, 74, 161, 258 Silk, M., 8, 18, 20–22, 80, 129

Silverman, Kaja, 191, 214–216, 218, 224, 229, 233, 240, 241, 243, 257 simulacrum, 206 simulation, 33, 67, 68, 178, 249 situatedness, 5, 16, 18–19, 60, 81–83, 87, 233, 256, 258 cultural situatedness, 64–65 situated knowledge, 247, 257 skill(s), 85, 132, 199, 218, 219, 224 skill acquisition, 80 Skinner Releasing Technique, 52 Sklar, Deidre, 1, 11, 12, 15, 21–23, 32, 64–66, 68, 69, 74, 75, 78, 109, 112, 122, 168, 213, 257 Smith, Nancy Stark, 156 social context(s), 28, 124, 129–131, 135–137, 143–147, 257 social conditions, 76 social construct, 34, 63, 99 social constructivism, 244 social domains, 12, 104 social factors, 181, 182 social network, 20, 80 social media, 219, 231, 247 social’ of the kinaesthetic, 252 sociocultural, 16, 64 sociological approaches and perspectives, 7, 10, 21, 63, 64, 74, 76, 78 sociology, 5, 7, 17, 36, 66, 75–77, 79, 80, 85, 100, 145, 244 somatic modes of attention, 3, 69, 75, 122, 137 somatic(s), 1, 12, 48–52, 55, 87, 88, 101, 104, 110, 148–152, 155, 156, 161–163, 169, 178, 181, 255 space, 102, 153 space and time, 243 spacetimematter, 244–245 spatiality, 78

INDEX

spectacle, 30, 48, 235 specularity, 216 Srinivasan, Priya, 4, 66 staying with the trouble, 254, 256 Stinson, Susan W., 16, 24, 25, 73 structure(s), 85, 131, 137, 143, 145, 255, 256 structuring structures, 28, 36 subject, 4, 6–7, 30, 35, 61–62, 78, 121, 135, 201, 215, 216, 233, 237, 238, 244, 251, 255 subjectivation, 105 subjectivity, 48, 74, 80, 119, 162, 250, 252, 253 dancer/dancing subjectivity, 3, 13, 29, 51, 61 subjective experience, 19, 56, 82, 121, 146 subvert, 241 surveillance, 62, 247, 248 suspension (consciousness), 19, 23 suspension (movement), 52, 135, 155

T tacit know-how, 84 tactile, 66, 155, 198, 210 tango, 7 taxonomy, 83, 84, 132 teacher(s), 12, 34, 154, 158, 159, 165, 168, 169, 198, 202, 219, 234 teaching, 10, 36, 101, 118, 127, 146, 155, 158, 163, 222 technique(s), 29, 51–52, 57, 61–63, 72, 77–78, 87, 101–102, 148, 153, 164, 167, 169, 173, 212, 232, 242. See also practice(s); styles; training contemporary dance, technique(s), 23, 36, 133, 158, 166, 218, 241

279

technology(ies), 3, 4, 25–27, 34, 36, 59, 190, 204, 212–213, 218, 219, 231–232, 239–241, 245–247, 249–251, 256 telescoping awareness, 156 temporal/temporality, 5, 34, 147, 193, 223–224 themes, 15, 18, 21, 22, 24, 25, 127, 136 theory and practice, 14, 16, 71, 78, 164, 254, 258 ‘thick’ description, 25 third in-between state, 80, 113, 121 third-person perspective/reflections, 31, 65 Thomas, Helen, 64 three-dimensional, 121 time, 220–223, 234, 243, 244 topography(ical), 18, 167, 238–239 topology, 245 touch, 108, 155, 181, 199, 201, 205, 239. See also tactile touching-touched, 201 training, 6, 10, 29, 31, 36, 61, 62, 73, 76–77, 82, 86, 100–102, 105, 114, 118, 129, 131, 132, 134–136, 146–148, 151, 154, 155, 161, 163–165, 168, 169, 174, 182. See also education; technique contemporary dance, training, 13, 134, 150, 152, 161–164 dance training (general), 12, 62, 81, 114, 149, 152, 161–162, 165, 242, 253 transcendence, 4, 80, 114, 121, 208 transcriptions/transcripts, 14, 18, 20–22 transparent body, 119–121 triangulation, 10, 14, 15, 19, 24, 136 Turner, Bryan S., 63, 144

280

INDEX

U unconscious, 106, 196, 207 unfolding, 18, 114, 246 unity, 54, 56 universal/universality, 10, 22, 45, 51, 59, 60, 63, 75, 82, 104, 255 universities and conservatoires, 164 university, 25, 162–165 V validity, 15, 19, 20 Varela, Francisco J., 114, 136 verbal description, 65, 160, 198, 199 Vermersch, Pierre, 59, 136 versatility, 148, 159, 164, 166–168 video, 26–28, 30, 33, 35, 36, 105, 190, 191, 194–196, 198, 201–212, 216–224, 229, 234, 237–242, 245, 248–250, 257 video image(s), 15, 26, 34, 190, 193– 196, 201, 203–204, 206, 211, 214, 219, 221–223, 229, 230, 232, 234–240, 242, 244–251, 256 view, 218, 220–222, 224 Vimeo, 209, 219 virtual participation, 168 virtuosity, 46, 73, 105, 113, 122, 133, 136 visible/visibility, 34, 201, 211, 237, 241 vision, 27, 31, 86, 193, 197, 200, 234 visual, 28, 30, 31, 33, 45, 46, 48, 49, 55, 57, 66–68, 82, 83, 86, 87,

131, 182, 189, 194, 198–200, 207, 223, 235, 253, 257 visual image, 12, 27, 192, 205 visual modes of representation, 249 visual self-image, 24, 26, 29, 86, 105, 190, 191, 194, 198, 200, 207, 209, 210, 218, 223, 240, 247, 257

W Wacquant, Loïc, 23 Wainwright, Steven P., 63, 80, 144 Warburton, Edward C., 6–7, 68 watching dance, 69, 180 weight, 102, 108, 109, 135 Weiss, Gail, 3, 4, 6, 30, 31, 207, 210, 211, 252, 254 Western theatre dance, 4, 7, 32, 62, 72, 105, 146, 198 whiteness, 66, 253, 254 wholeness, 45, 54, 55, 87, 105, 115 Wigman, Mary, 46, 61, 156, 175 Wildschut, Liesbeth, 72, 157, 158, 231, 246

Y yoga, 50, 152, 178 Young, Iris Marion, 30, 78, 252 YouTube, 209, 219, 231

Z Zahavi, Dan, 106, 132