Performing the Remembered Present: The Cognition of Memory in Dance, Theatre and Music 9781474284714, 9781474284745, 9781474284738

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Performing the Remembered Present

Performance and Science: Interdisciplinary Dialogues explores the interactions between science and performance, providing readers with a unique guide to current practices and research in this fastexpanding field. Through shared themes and case studies, the series offers rigorous vocabularies and methods for empirical studies of performance, with each volume involving collaboration between performance scholars, practitioners and scientists. The series encompasses the modalities of performance to include drama, dance and music. SERIES EDITORS John Lutterbie Chair of the Department of Art and of Theatre Arts at Stony Brook University, USA Nicola Shaughnessy Professor of Performance at the University of Kent, UK IN THE SAME SERIES Affective Performance and Cognitive Science edited by Nicola Shaughnessy ISBN 978-1-4081-8398-4 Performance and the Medical Body edited by Alex Mermikides and Gianna Bouchard ISBN 978-1-4725-7078-9 Theatre and Cognitive Neuroscience edited by Clelia Falletti, Gabriele Sofia and Victor Jacono ISBN 978-1-4725-8478-6 Theatre, Performance and Cognition: Languages, Bodies and Ecologies edited by Rhonda Blair and Amy Cook ISBN 978-1-4725-9179-1

Performing the Remembered Present The Cognition of Memory in Dance, Theatre and Music Edited by Pil Hansen and Bettina Bläsing

METHUEN DRAMA Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, METHUEN DRAMA and the Methuen Drama logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2017 Paperback edition first published 2019 Copyright © Pil Hansen, Bettina Bläsing and contributors , 2017 Pil Hansen and Bettina Bläsing have asserted their rights under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as editors of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. xvi constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover design: Adriana Brioso Cover image: Photograph by Chris Herzfeld/Camlight Productions All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Hansen, Pil, 1974- editor. | Bläsing, Bettina, 1970- editor. Title: Performing the remembered present : the cognition of memory in dance, theatre and music / edited by Pil Hansen and Bettina Bläsing. Description: London ; New York : Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017027696| ISBN 9781474284714 (hardback) | ISBN 9781474284738 (epdf) | ISBN 9781474284721 (eBook) Subjects: LCSH: Performing arts–Psychological aspects. | Memory. | Cognition. Classification: LCC PN1590.P76 P47 2017 | DDC 791.01/9–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017027696 ISBN: HB: 978-1-4742-8471-4 PB: 978-1-3501-1884-3 ePDF: 978-1-4742-8473-8 eBook: 978-1-4742-8472-1 Series: Performance and Science: Interdisciplinary Dialogues Typeset by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

CONTENTS

List of Figures viii List of Contributors x Acknowledgements xvi

1 Introduction: Studying the Cognition of Memory in the Performing Arts 1 Pil Hansen and Bettina Bläsing PART ONE Arts 37

Overview: Memory and the Performing

2 Memory and Dance: ‘Bodies of Knowledge’ in Contemporary Dance 39 Catherine J. Stevens Review of insights from experimental psychology 3 Memory in Music Listening and Performance Jane Ginsborg

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Cross-disciplinary review 4 Distributed Cognition, Memory and Theatrical Performance 97 Evelyn Tribble Analytical theory construction and review

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CONTENTS

PART TWO Learning to Perform from Memory: Effects of Embodiment, Analysis and Expertise 111 5 Action, Memory and Meaning: Embodied Cognition and the Actor’s Fictional Present Rick Kemp

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Analytical theory construction 6 Learning Complex Actions through Physical vs. Observational Experience: Implications and Applications for Dance and Other Performing Arts Dilini K. Sumanapala and Emily S. Cross

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Neurocognitive review and quantitative experiment 7 Analytical Aspects in Children’s Performance of Music from Memory 153 Anna Maria Bordin Mixed methods behavioural experiment PART THREE Re/Constructing Embodied Memories: Relationships between Memory and Self in Performance 173 8 Music Improvisation, Identity and Embodied Cognition 175 Robert J. Oxoby Quantitative, behavioural experiments

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9 Dancing With a Bullet: Moving into Memory with Music 197 Vahri McKenzie Qualitative case study 10 Already Seen, Already Heard, Already Visited: Constructing the Experience of Déjà States within Live Intermedial Performance 225 Deirdre McLaughlin and Joanne Scott Practice as Research investigation Index 251

LIST OF FIGURES

Cover Image: Proximity – Australian Dance Theatre. Artistic Director Garry Stewart and Paris-based video engineer Thomas Pachoud (with the support of didascalie.net) collaborated to create a dialogue for dance and real-time video manipulation. Proximity explores the body’s active role in seeing the world, neural body maps, and the phenomenology of perception. Related ideas such as a psychology of perception grounded in action, and embodied memory for contemporary dance are considered in Chapter 1, 2 and 6 in this volume. Photograph by Chris Herzfeld/Camlight Productions. 2.1

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6.1 6.2 7.1 7.2

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James Batchelor, Sam Maxted and Rebecca Frasca in Reactional Movement, a new work choreographed by Emma Batchelor and James Batchelor. Photograph by Garth Paine In the Margaret Barr dance documentation project, a mannequin was used to investigate the effect on recall when the dancer’s use of movement of their own body or kinaesthetic sense had been minimized. Photograph by Catherine Stevens Key brain regions involved in body processing Mapping of a human figure onto a point light display B. Bartók, Melody against Double Notes, with the teacher’s annotations Accuracy values in percentages of the three performances of each child, detected by the analysis of all the bars and of the changing bars Nat Cursio Co., With a Bullet: The Album Project – Perth Edition, Fringe World 2013, Perth Institute of Contemporary Art. Photograph by Ivan Shaw Nat Cursio Co., With a Bullet: The Album Project – Perth Edition. Dancer: Shona Erskine. Photograph by Nat Cursio

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53 135 137 163

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LIST OF FIGURES

9.3 Nat Cursio Co., With a Bullet: The Album Project – Perth Edition. Photograph by Trent Suidgeest 10.1 Jo mixing sounds, images and texts as part of Transmitted Thoughts, Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, London, December 2012. Photograph by Jo Scott and Deirdre McLaughlin 10.2 A mix of live feed images and digital text, created as part of Transmitted Thoughts, Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, London, December 2012. Photograph by Jo Scott and Deirdre McLaughlin 10.3 A moment of intersubjective exchange from Transmitted Thoughts, Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, London, December 2012. Photograph by Jo Scott and Deirdre McLaughlin 10.4 Deirdre performing as part of the intermedial space created in Transmitted Thoughts, Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, London, December 2012. Photograph by Jo Scott and Deirdre McLaughlin

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LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

Bettina Bläsing is a responsible investigator at the Center of Excellence Cognitive Interaction Technology (CITEC) at Bielefeld University, Germany. She studied biology at Bielefeld University and applied animal behaviour and welfare at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. Bettina worked as a science journalist and editor, and as a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and University of Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany, before joining the Neurocognition and Action Research Group at Bielefeld University in 2006. Her main research interests are mental representations of body, movement and space; the control and learning of complex movements and manual actions; and expertise in dance. Anna Maria Bordin is piano professor and head of the Department of Research in the Conservatory of Genoa, Italy. She received a postgraduate degree from the ‘Musik-Akademie’ of Basel, Switzerland, and the degree of ‘Specialist in Piano Pedagogy’ from the Piano Academy of Imola, Italy. She carried out intensive concert activity and recorded for RAI and BRT (Italian and Belgian Broadcasting Company). Bordin authored ‘When music goes beyond the borders . . .’, a diary of her experiences with an autistic child, and the essay ‘In the sign and in the sound’, both published in Italy. She led the Laboratory of Musical Pedagogy Research for the Williams Syndrome Association in Turin, Italy. After collaborating as a professor with the Brera Academy of Arts in Milan, Italy and with the Faculty of Psychology at the University of Pavia, Italy, she has devoted the past ten years to theoretical and applied research in the fields of piano teaching methodology. Emily S. Cross is a professor of social neuroscience and dancer based at the School of Psychology at Bangor University, UK, where she directs the Social Brain in Action Laboratory. Using intensive

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training procedures, functional neuroimaging and paradigms involving dance, acrobatics and robots, she explores observational learning throughout the lifespan, how motor expertise is manifested and social influences on human–robot interaction. Emily received a BA in psychology and dance from Pomona College, USA, an MSc in cognitive psychology from the University of Otago as a Fulbright fellow, New Zealand, and a PhD in cognitive neuroscience from Dartmouth College, USA. She undertook postdoctoral training at University of Nottingham and the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, and was previously an assistant professor at Radboud University Nijmegen, Netherlands. Her research has been supported by the National Institutes of Health, USA, Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research, Economic and Social Research Council, UK, Ministry of Defence, UK and European Commission. Jane Ginsborg is associate director of research, director of the Centre for Music Performance Research and programme leader for research degrees at the Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM), Manchester, UK. Winner of the British Voice Association’s Van Lawrence Award in 2002 for her research on singers’ memorizing strategies and shortlisted for a Times Higher Education award in 2013 for research on musicians with hearing impairments, she has published widely in the field of expert musical performance. Managing editor of Music Performance Research, she is also associate editor of Musicae Scientiae and Journal of Interdisciplinary Music Studies, and serves on the editorial board of Psychology of Music and Performance Science (Frontiers in Psychology). Between 2012 and 2015 she was president of the European Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music. Recent and current research interests include collaborative performance, practice-led research, music and dementia and musicians’ health, hearing and well-being. Pil Hansen is an assistant professor and graduate program director at the School of Creative and Performing Arts, University of Calgary, Canada; a founding member of Vertical City Performance; and a dramaturg. Her empirical and PaR experiments examine cognitive dynamics of memory and perception in creative processes. With Bruce Barton, she developed the multi-disciplinary research model ‘Research-Based Practice’. Hansen chairs the PSi Working Group on Dramaturgy and Performance; her award-winning

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creative work has toured nationally and internationally; and her scholarly research is published in Connection Science, Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, TDR: The Drama Review, Performance Research, Theatre Topics, and Koreografisk Journal among other journals and twelve essay collections on dramaturgy, cognitive performance studies and research methods. Hansen coedited the essay collection Dance Dramaturgy: Modes of Agency, Awareness and Engagement (2015). Current and recent artistic collaborators are: Kaeja d’Dance, Theatre Junction Grand, Toronto Dance Theatre, and Public Recordings. Rick Kemp has over thirty years of international experience as an actor and director. The co-founder and artistic director of London’s Commotion Theatre, he has worked with companies and theatres such as the Almeida, Complicité, Círculo de Bellas Artes, Quantum, the Pittsburgh Playhouse, 404 Strand, Squonk Opera, Teatr Polski and the Bouffes du Nord. Awards include the British Telecom Innovations Award, the Institut Français Award for Theatre and the USA’s Heinz Endowments Creative Heights Award. He studied English literature at Oxford University and holds an MFA in performance pedagogy and a PhD in theatre and performance studies from the University of Pittsburgh, USA. Rick is a fellow of the Salzburg Global Seminar on Neuroscience and Art and the head of acting and directing at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, USA. His publications include Embodied Acting: What Neuroscience Tells Us about Acting (2012) and The Routledge Companion to Jacques Lecoq (2016). Vahri McKenzie is a senior lecturer in the School of Arts and Humanities at Edith Cowan University in Western Australia. She engages in practice-led research and publishes traditional research with a creative arts focus. Recent projects include Underscore Alchemy (2013–16), a methodology that shows how creative artists in a variety of disciplines benefit from a practice that focuses on somatic awareness, improvisation and collaboration, with findings published in Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices (2014) and Brolga: An Australian Journal about Dance (2014). Recent performance works include Lysistrata (Bunbury Regional Entertainment Centre, 2015), which applies Underscore Alchemy to a performance outcome; live art installation Only the Envelope (Bunbury Regional Art Galleries, 2016); and Telephone

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(InConversation, Spectrum Project Space, 2014). Vahri’s writing on contact improvisation has been published in Adbusters (2008) and Proximity (2008, 2011, 2012). Deirdre McLaughlin is the director of MA acting at Arts Educational Schools London, UK. She has worked professionally as an actor, director and dramaturg in the USA and UK at venues including Shakespeare’s Globe, National Theatre Studio, The Place, Williamstown Theatre Festival and New York Stage and Film, and is a PhD candidate at The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. Deirdre is a contributing author to the forthcoming edited collection, Performing Interdisciplinarity: Working across Disciplinary Boundaries through an Active Aesthetic (Routledge, 2017). She is a founding member of the Embodied Cognition, Acting and Performance working group at AISB (The Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and the Simulation of Behaviour) and coedited a special edition of the journal Connection Science, exploring the intersections between embodied cognition and performance. Deirdre’s experience with temporal lobe epilepsy serves as the starting point for her ongoing collaborative practice and research with Joanne Scott. Robert J. Oxoby is a professor of economics in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Calgary, Canada. As a researcher, his primary focus is in behavioural economics, with specific attention to the ways in which market incentives and cognitive processes feedback on one another to affect individual and social behaviour. The insights from this research have been applied to issues of poverty and to developing an understanding of the mechanisms underlying personal and social identities. His recent research focuses on the ways in which loss aversion can be affected by attention shifting, and he also conducts research in the psychology of music. He served as a member of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (Social Interactions, Identity and Well-Being working group) and is a research fellow with the IZA Institute for Labor Research, Bonn, Germany. Joanne Scott is a live media practitioner-researcher and lecturer in performance at the University of Salford, UK. She completed a Practice as Research PhD in October 2014, which is forthcoming from Palgrave titled Intermedial Praxis and PaR. Jo regularly

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presents her practice-as-research at a range of different events, with recent performances including sets for the Sonic Fusion Festival at MediaCityUK, Salford, and the EVP Sessions at Shoreditch Town Hall, London. Her work is published in RiDE (Research in Drama Education) and in the forthcoming edited collections Performing Interdisciplinarity: Working across Disciplinary Boundaries through an Active Aesthetic (2017) and Intermedial Theatre: Principles and Practice (2018). Jo is co-convener of the Practice as Research Centre of Excellence at the University of Salford and is due to take up co-convenership of the TaPRA (Theatre and Performance Research Association) Performance and New Technologies working group in 2017. Cognitive psychologist Catherine J. Stevens investigates the psychological processes in creating, perceiving and performing dance and music, and applies experimental methods to evaluate human–computer interaction. Her earliest studies of contemporary dance were in collaboration with Shirley McKechnie AO and Robin Grove. More recently, Kate has been a member of Dance Engaging Science workshops led by Scott deLahunta in Frankfurt and has been collaborating with Garry Stewart, artistic director of Australian Dance Theatre. Kate’s research into contemporary dance includes studies of choreographic cognition – creativity, improvisation and memory – as well as development of new methods for measuring audience reactions in real-time and collaborative art-science methods for investigating distributed memory. She holds BA (Hons) and PhD degrees from the University of Sydney, Australia. Kate is professor in psychology, editor-in-chief of Music Perception, and director of research and engagement in the MARCS Institute for Brain, Behaviour and Development at Western Sydney University, Australia (https://www.westernsydney.edu.au/marcs). Dilini K. Sumanapala is currently investigating individual differences in action understanding as part of her PhD work with the Social Brain in Action Laboratory, supervised by Emily S. Cross, at the School of Psychology, Bangor University, UK. Dilini has conducted training studies involving a combination of functional neuroimaging and video-game based motion-capture techniques to assess motor performance and action processing in both adolescents and young adults. Prior to undertaking her doctoral work, she obtained a BA in psychology from Concordia University, Montreal, Canada, where

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she investigated fine-motor skill development with the Laboratory of Motor Learning and Neural Plasticity. Evelyn Tribble is Donald Collie Chair of English at the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand. She is the author of Margins and Marginality: The Printed Page in Early Modern England (1993); Writing Material: Readings from Plato to the Digital Age (with Anne Trubek, 2003); Cognitive Ecologies and the History of Remembering (with Nicholas Keene, 2011); and Cognition in the Globe: Attention and Memory in Shakespeare’s Theatre (2011). Her book Early Modern Actors and Shakespeare’s Theatre: Thinking with the Body was published by Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare in 2017. She has also published scholarly articles in Shakespeare Quarterly, Shakespeare, Shakespeare Survey, ELH, Shakespeare Studies and Textual Practice, amongst others.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

As editors, we would like to recognize the important work of the following associations and platforms in fostering the kinds of exchange between the performing arts and the cognitive sciences that has made possible this volume: The Dance Engaging Science Network | Motionbank; the Centre for Cognition, Kinesthetics and Performance; the Cognitive Humanities conferences; the working group in Cognitive Science in Theatre and Performance at ASTR (the American Society for Theatre Research); the symposia on Embodied Cognition, Acting and Performance at AISB (Artificial Intelligence of Simulation of Behaviour); the European Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music. Our sincere thanks go out to our editorial assistant, PhD candidate Natalia Esling, for her outstanding work on English language revision for international authors, her insightful editorial comments and her attention to formal details. We would also like to thank the Faculty of Arts at the University of Calgary for their generous financial support; and express our appreciation of the valuable editorial support offered by the series editors, Nicola Shaughnessy and John Lutterbie, and the full editorial team at Bloomsbury Methuen Drama. We are deeply grateful for the rich experience this project has afforded us of working collaboratively across the different discipline-specific and interdisciplinary lenses of the co-editors and authors of this volume.

1 Introduction: Studying the Cognition of Memory in the Performing Arts Pil Hansen and Bettina Bläsing

This collection is the first to treat the cognition of memory in the performing arts as a central focus.1 It delivers overview chapters authored by leading scientists and scholars on the cognition of memory in dance, music and theatre, as well as contributions reporting on individual empirical studies or making specific theoretical proposals whilst emphasizing areas of application. All contributing authors write from the perspective of their individual discipline-specific research practice and address the following question: which aspects and dynamics of memory in the performing arts become accessible when examined through insights, and at times experimental methods, drawn from the cognitive sciences? The cognitive scientists amongst the authors furthermore respond to an interest in what the specialized training, expertise or extradaily behaviours of performing artists teach us about the cognition of memory in general. Finally, contributing performing arts scholars The authors’ research described here has been supported by CITEC, the VW Foundation, the Faculty of Arts at the University of Calgary and the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).

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offer the observation that some cultural dynamics of memory become less accessible when regarded from a scientific perspective. In response, they turn towards analytical, qualitative or artistic research methods to expand the discussion of the cognition of memory in the performing arts through and beyond the cognitive sciences. The collection is highly cross-disciplinary in terms of the research methods and terminologies used, the literature referenced, and the aspects of memory and the performing arts studied. In this first chapter, the editors deliver a sounding board of cross-disciplinary insight as a basis to render accessible the concepts of memory used, to relate to the kinds of performance practices discussed, and to appreciate the radically different forms of knowledge produced. We begin with a brief roadmap to the contents of the book. Then the different paradigms of knowledge that are present in the chapters are introduced. This is followed by a brief discussion of the complementary differences between studies of cultural memory and cognitive memory, which leads to an accessible introduction of cognitive concepts of memory in the performing arts. The latter includes embodied memory and action-perception coupling, working memory, implicit and procedural long-term memory, explicit and declarative long-term memory, and the distribution of memory between individuals and environments. These types of memory are introduced and discussed through rich examples of performing arts practice and research, drawn from a broad range of studies of the cognition of memory in the performing arts, including the research of the collection editors and authors. The book is structured in three main parts. The first part (Chapters 2–4) comprises an overview and review chapters on research into the cognition of memory in, respectively, dance, music and theatre. In Chapter 2, cognitive psychologist Catherine J. Stevens considers the way contemporary dance illuminates connections between perception and action as well as factors that affect human short-term or working memory and long-term memory, particularly for extended movement sequences. She furthermore discusses characteristics that distinguish long-term memory for dance, as well as questions from the art form that can potentially inform psychology’s understanding of the way the brain perceives, retains and recalls embodied phenomena that are imbued with personal, social and cultural meaning. In Chapter 3, vocalist and music psychologist Jane Ginsborg introduces the role

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of expectations when listening to music and ties it to learning and memorization strategies used by musicians in both oral and Western classical traditions. She also examines the pedagogy of memorization in a historical view and discusses the extent to which recent scientific findings support widely held beliefs of musicians and teachers. In the last contribution to the overview part, Chapter 4, English and drama scholar Evelyn Tribble reconciles cultural and cognitive approaches to memory by applying a model of social and distributed cognition. She presents a synthesis of her extensive analytical research into how classical and contemporary actors’ memorization and recall during performance may be guided and constrained by the distribution of memory to their training, environment and co-practitioners. The second part of the collection (Chapters 5–7) shares new research results, perspectives and technical recommendations on memorization and learning which are based on focused studies in the three art forms. A common thread between these chapters is the discovery of important relationships between the embodied experience/memory of the memorizing and learning performer and an external source of reference such as a play-text, observation of movement or the structural principles of a musical score. Theatre scholar and actor Rick Kemp draws on links between physical action and language discovered within the cognitive sciences to further develop existing memorization techniques for text-based acting in Chapter 5. In Chapter 6, neuroscientists Dilini K. Sumanapala and Emily S. Cross review and report experimental findings on the learning effects of observation and performance of dance and movement actions. Their review includes ideas for the enhancement of memorization and technical movement precision through virtual feedback technology. Music teacher and scholar Anna Maria Bordin studied the error patterns of children who were learning and performing structurally unfamiliar piano compositions from memory. Based on this mixed methods behavioural experiment, Bordin concludes in Chapter 7 that young learners will likely benefit from introductions to structural analysis that are more comparative to those typically reserved for adult learners. The authors of the third part (Chapters 8–10) address the construction and reconstruction of embodied memories in specific studies. Despite significant differences in research methodologies, they each discover significant feedback effects between processes of

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memory and understandings of the self in performance. In Chapter 8, behavioural economist Robert J. Oxoby reports on two experiments that demonstrate how simple musical improvisation can affect word recall in a psychology-based working memory paradigm. Causal factors tested and discussed are embodiment and a salient musician identity, and findings suggest an interrelation between social identities and embodied memory. In Chapter 9, dance scholar Vahri McKenzie reflects on qualitative, phenomenological data from a large-scale dance project in which established choreographers were tasked to revisit the first choreography they ever made using the music this dance was first set to as a memory trigger. Her methods offer insight into the choreographers’ subjective experiences of various memory triggers and hindrances, including negative conflicts between the autobiographical moment of the youthful choreography and the participants’ current professional identities. The authors of the final contribution, Chapter 10, pursue the subject of autobiographical memory and sensory triggers through Practiceas-Research and artistic enquiry. Performance scholars and artists Deirdre McLaughlin and Joanna Scott explore one of the authors’ experience of memory loss, treatment measures and déjà vu, caused by her temporal lobe epilepsy. By looping and layering performative engagements with evidence and personal accounts, they effectively (re)construct interpersonal, autobiographical memory.

Expanding notions of memory using multi-disciplinary methodologies A precondition for productive cross-disciplinary dialogue and interdisciplinary collaboration is awareness of the methodological criteria of knowledge we move across. As editors, we chose to include studies in this volume that are positioned differently on a broad spectrum of methodologies and use different methods to investigate the shared subject of the cognition of memory in the performing arts. As both editors have experienced, even basic communication can be difficult when collaborating across the knowledge paradigms of these different positions. It takes patience to reach clarity and it is also crucial to go a step further, to accept the existing differences and make a serious effort to understand

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and overcome their origin (see Bryon 2017). This might at times be hard, for example when the same term is used in distinct disciplines to describe different content. In order to achieve common ground, some multi-methodological literacy is needed alongside an appreciation of what rigour looks like in various fields, how knowledge is produced and qualified differently, and why it is thus applicable to some fields and not others. The reason why we consider this challenging and time-consuming process promising and worthwhile, is that we are convinced of the significance of this work in promoting the understanding of embodied human minds, their unique abilities and different accomplishments, and the forms of creative interaction they contribute to and advance through. A positivist ontology and an experimental epistemology form the methodological bases of the majority of the studies presented in chapters by Stevens (Chapter 2), Ginsborg (Chapter 3), Sumanapala and Cross (Chapter 6) and Oxoby (Chapter 8) and many of the studies referenced in the remaining chapters. The phenomenon studied is assumed to exist objectively, and test measures of preand post-experimental states give the scientist access to universal knowledge about this phenomenon and the way in which it is affected by an intervention. Variables must be reduced to eliminate competing causal explanations, and randomly selected, statistically valid numbers of participants need to be recruited to arrive at generalizable knowledge (Cherulnik 2001: 1–21) – knowledge that is meant to confirm or refute a precisely formulated hypothesis. Methodological consistency is also important to ensure that the study is repeatable and falsifiable (Popper 1999). The empirical studies presented by Bordin (Chapter 7) and McKenzie (Chapter 9) and some of the studies referenced by Stevens and Tribble in Chapters 3 and 4, use qualitative and mixed methods within interpretive ontologies. It is assumed that a phenomenon exists and only becomes epistemologically accessible in relation to other phenomena, and thus inevitably will be different depending on the relation studied and the perspective of the observer. In the examples included in this volume, data are collected in performing arts settings and performing arts phenomena are observed that were initiated and even slightly adjusted with a research intention and broadly defined question in mind. In Bordin’s work, qualitative data (performance videos and piano teacher notes) are processed through systematic coding (Bryman, Teevan and Bell 2009: 46–59)

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in order to reveal relationships between quantitatively analysed error patterns in children’s performance by memory and factors of musicianship, learning progress and personal reaction that might offer causal explanations (Chapter 7). McKenzie is less interested in causal explanations. Her data are observation notes from the dance studio and interviews with participating artists about their phenomenological and autobiographical experience. This material is analysed to draw out patterns of behaviour and experience that might articulate interpersonal dynamics and strategies of memory involved in their praxis (Chapter 9). A third kind of knowledge represented in this volume is scholarly analysis and theory construction. In such research, the importance of conceptual clarity extends past the initial formulation of a hypothesis. The building blocks of a scholarly, theoretical construction are a series of connected concepts that are produced, adapted or further developed through analysis. Research contributions from a wide range of disciplines (history, philosophy, sociology, cognitive psychology, theatre studies, etc.) are examined closely and combined eclectically to form a theoretical lens through which we are enabled to understand the phenomena studied in new ways. When Tribble (Chapter 4), Kemp (Chapter 5), and to some extent also Ginsborg (Chapter 3) and McLaughlin and Scott (Chapter 10) turn to scholarly methods, they choose to prioritize subject-specificity over methodology. Their ontology is also interpretive, but with a flavour of constructivism that renders epistemology relative. It is considered a valid possibility that a phenomenon partly comes into being through our attempt to understand it. With each new perspective applied, each new relationship established, the phenomenon becomes something different to us, and the purpose of research is to broaden our understanding by expanding and recalibrating the lenses available. The last paradigm of knowledge included here takes the constructivist perspective a step further and regards phenomena in the world as emergent (Haseman 2007). This emergence is realized through enactive and embodied artistic engagement with the phenomena – that is, in performance. Practice as Research projects within this methodology (like McLaughlin and Scott’s exploration of déjà vu, epilepsy and interpersonal memory in Chapter 10) typically start out with a broad research interest or subject that is used as a catalyst for an iterative process of discovering and

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exploring questions through praxis whilst observing and extracting otherwise implicit insights earned. The latter is sometimes done by drawing into this methodology a series of scholarly and empirical research methods (Nelson 2013). To summarize, these starkly different and often incompatible methodologies take us from the most objective to the most subjective position of observation and knowledge production. The introduction to these paradigms is offered here as a bridge that may foster curiosity and understanding of the criteria of knowledge within which each of our authors contributes to the study of memory in the performing arts. Equally important, however, is our wish to facilitate transfer and collaboration across the performing arts, performing arts scholarship and cognitive sciences. Negotiation is no doubt needed – negotiation about what key concepts mean, whether methodological consistency or subject-specificity takes the lead, how generalized and subjective knowledge might interact, what is gained and lost by using the different methods, and how they might complement each other. On the other side of that negotiation, the aspects of the performing arts and cognition that we can study are significantly expanded. That is the potential and promise that the authors of this book express as their contributions stand side by side, taking us on a journey through the cognition of memory in dance, theatre and music.

Expanding concepts of memory in performing arts studies and practices As Evelyn Tribble mentions in her contribution, theoretically informed concepts of cultural memory are well established in theatre and performance studies (Chapter 4: 97–8). This statement can be extended to dance studies and musicology (e.g. Burt 2009; Strong 2011). Based on frameworks of historiography and cultural analysis, such work is concerned with material memorial structures, objects and archives that, for example, bear witness of past collective traumas. With reference to the philosophies of Pierre Bourdieu, Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault, research into cultural memory often looks at how cultural habitus and discourses are passed down and reconstituted iteratively through our everyday,

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interpersonal performance of them (Foster 1996; Carlson 2001; Taylor 2003). Extending from the paradigm of constructivism into the field of phenomenological analysis, Edmund Husserl, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Henri Bergson and Gilles Deleuze’s interpretation of Bergson have inspired subjective accounts of how temporalities of memory and future projection are experienced in the present by audience members or explored within creative processes (e.g. Parviainen 1998: 54–8; Hogg 2012; Kozel 2015). These bodies of research are all interpretive accounts that are formed by the subjective experiences of each researcher, the selective philosophical concepts he or she is informed by, and the specific artistic practices and cultural contexts examined. They enable us to regard very complex phenomena of cultural memory through a large number of different theoretical, analytical and subjective lenses, and to deepen our understanding of these phenomena through each new encounter. If the objective, however, is to apply knowledge about memory to contexts of learning and performance in ways that might enhance personal agency and choice, then the framework of cultural memory can be less productive. From the perspective of constructivist performativity theory, subjective agency is dissolved into the cultural discourses and systems we inevitably perform (e.g. Butler 1993). Although these theories provide analytical tools to identify and deconstruct such discourses and social patterns, they afford us neither choice nor the ability to develop strategic alternatives. Because discursive change happens incrementally and socially (i.e. in the small differences between each iteration of a discourse shared by many), it cannot be initiated or directed intentionally by individuals (Butler 1988, 1993; Magnus 2006). However, despite the degree to which we may contribute to and be formed by such social patterns embedded in collective memory, people do perceive and respond differently. Our individual experience of and resulting approaches to embodied learning and specialization lead to significant differences within the collective – including differences in processes that demand conscious attention and those that remain implicit. Strategies of agency can emerge from the physiological and behavioural structures that underlie these differences – strategies that build on empirical insights into effects and are applicable to specific types of interaction. Although we as editors of this volume recognize the reduction of artistic and contextual specificity caused

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by the generalization of positivist, scientific methodology, we also see an opportunity to access otherwise implicit cognitive and embodied mechanisms that underlie or facilitate the differences associated with performing arts training, practice and experience. Through the cognitive sciences, one can examine dynamics of memory in the brain, in an individual’s embodied mind, in basic actions and interactions, and in relationships between such actions and environments. The larger and more complex phenomena of cultural memory cannot be subjected to the experimental research methods of the cognitive sciences. There are too many variables affecting each other and offering competing and different causal explanations, and there are too many unobservable factors involved. When using experimental methods, one gains access to precise insight into systems and dynamics of memory in the brain that involve the agent’s body, actions, interactions and environments. As demonstrated in the following section, this insight invites researchers to focus on the ways in which approaches to learning and teaching in the performing arts construct, adapt and reconstruct memory; the ways in which the performing arts manipulate memory as performers and audiences perceive and respond through memory; how memory is distributed across a number of the domains that are involved in performing arts training and skills; how sensory modalities concertedly contribute to constructing and reconstructing memory and support memorization for performance; and the extent to which the performing arts can foster a strength-based approach to nonnormative memory and learning processes.

Cognitive concepts of memory and the performing arts Here we take a closer look at insights into the cognition of memory from the disciplines of cognitive psychology, neurocognition or social cognition that either are applied to the performing arts or arrived at through the performing arts. When thinking of memory in cognitive terms, it is relevant to look at closely related aspects such as the tight coupling between perception and action, as well as levels of memory processing,

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including short-term or working memory. These functions of our cognitive apparatus, our mind and brain, are inextricably linked and depend upon each other. This means that our perception is never naïve, it is already shaped by experiences that are stored in our long-term memory, by our skills, knowledge and expectations (Schütz-Bosbach and Prinz 2007). Short-term or working memory acts as a gate or filter through which only relevant information is passed on to long-term memory, in which information can be stored for a longer time, and from which it can be retrieved for various purposes (Squire and Zola 1996). All information stored in long-term memory can potentially be drawn back into working memory, where it can be compared to, merged with or modified by novel information from current processes of action-based perception (Baddeley 2000). Perception is never independent of action (Schütz-Bosbach and Prinz 2007), it is always shaped by the body and its spatiotemporal conditions. Therefore, memory in its most immediate form is embodied and situated in the world via our bodily self (Glenberg 1997). These connections enable us to perceive through memory, to learn by adapting and forming memories or to recall memories. Processes of learning and memory can be conceptualized as either implicit or explicit; that is, we may or may not achieve awareness of them at the time they take place. Most aspects of memory are considered constructive in the sense that memories are not stored as whole entities ready for recall, but are flexible and adaptive in ways that we rarely experience consciously. Action-based perception is already shaped by our experiences and provides us with new stimuli that elicit the reconstruction of memories. Because the processes described here involve our body and sensorimotor system they also extend to individuals and environments external to us. The stimuli we attend to, the actions and interactions we are involved in, and the environments we are situated within are rarely novel to us; they are remembered to a large extent. The functionality of this remembering is aided through the constraints of interactions, situations and environments: their social rules, action patterns, physical boundaries, sonic qualities and much more. In the following, the processes that have been sketched here in brief are pursued to or through the performing arts with attention to the research of the editors and authors of this volume.

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Embodied memory and action-perception coupling The idea that action and perception depend upon each other is not at all new to the performing arts. According to Rudolf Laban’s modernist approach to movement intention from the early to mid-twentieth century, movement represents a dynamic interplay of internal and external motivations, mixing voluntary and involuntary actions, and the body is accordingly described as ‘not only an instrument of expression, but also an instrument of impression: there is a two-way traffic of sending and receiving’ (Hodgson 2001: 175). Cognitive psychology has taken a longer detour through theoretical notions of cognition (or ‘intelligence’) understood as being independent of its ‘implementation’ in the world before arriving at the theoretical framework of embodied cognition: the general idea that no mind (and therefore no cognitive function) can exist without being grounded in the physical world via a physical body equipped with the basic abilities to perceive and to move, and thereby to interact with the world surrounding it (Wilson 2002). Based on empirical observation and analytical insight, the theoretical claim has been made that perception and action should be closely related on all levels (as opposed to the otherwise independent input and output channels of a central ‘thinking’ system, conceptualized like a computer).2 Whilst a lot of supporting evidence for action-perception coupling and common coding existed from behavioural studies, the discovery of ‘mirror neurons’ provided the first proof of a neural correlate. These neurons that were first found in monkeys’ brains reacted to action execution as well as the observation of the same actions with high specificity (Rizzolatti and Craighero 2004; see also Chapter 2: 42 and Chapter 5: 121–2). From this finding, multiple lines of research derived that aimed at investigating corresponding structures in the human brain, addressed as ‘human mirror neuron system’ or ‘action observation network’ (AON; e.g. Cross, Hamilton and Grafton 2006). Neuroscientists Beatriz Calvo-Merino and colleagues were the first to investigate the topic of mirror neurons in the context of dance expertise. They showed that the activation of the particular

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brain areas was more distinctive in dancers watching movements belonging to their own active dance repertoire, compared to movements they had frequently watched but not performed themselves (Calvo-Merino et al. 2005, 2006). Brain structures with the described ‘mirroring’ characteristics were soon considered to be highly relevant for various higher cognitive functions including empathy, language comprehension, social learning and cultural transmission (Rizzolatti and Sinigaglia 2008). General applications of such discoveries from cognitive psychology and neuroscience that address this relationship can be found in the embodiment philosophies of Shaun Gallagher, Alva Noë and Evan Thompson, amongst others. Following an initial tendency to ascribe a broad range of cognitive effects to the ‘mirror neuron system’, to some extent with more enthusiasm than was justified by empirical evidence, more critical views regarding the interpretation of such studies were expressed by scientists arguing that most of the phenomena mirror neurons had been associated with – including understanding intentions and actions, language comprehension, imitation, and disorders like autism – are not yet fully understood and that more research is needed to substantiate such claims (Glenberg 2011).3 Critical studies that experimentally examine the boundaries and effects of embodiment have recently been carried out in cognitive linguistics (e.g. Pexman 2017) and kinesiology (e.g. Rodriguez et al. 2012). Insights into the embodied cognition of language in particular have led to new creative strategies for how to adapt the language–action connections embedded in the performance memories of dancers and actors through live improvisation (Hansen 2016) and detailed studies of the role of embodiment in conventional actors’ memorization techniques (Noice, Noice and Kennedy 2000; Utterback 2013). In this volume, Kemp advances this work by presenting a theoretically qualified argument for how the embodied nature of language and action perception can be used to develop finely granulated and deeply embodied action beats when analysing and memorizing dramatic dialogue. To Kemp, this work is not primarily about memorizing lines; it is about embedding memorized material in the actor’s fully embodied and fictional performance presence (Chapter 5). From the claims made by psychology regarding embodied cognition and action-perception coupling, it follows that memory itself is also embodied and situated, as its content enters our system

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via action-based perception, and is recalled and reconstructed in the context of perceived action and action-based perception (Glenberg 1997). Potential boundaries between perception and memory do not register consciously unless we are deliberately engaged in recall or are learning to perceive something novel, for which we do not have matching memories. In Chapter 2, Stevens provides a detailed and thoughtful discussion of these interactions for the topic of memory in dance.

Working memory Working memory provides more than short-term storage of small amounts of information, it also plays an important role in integrating newly perceived and remembered information, for example in learning and decision-making. Working memory processes include attending to and mentally manipulating information whilst supressing distractions (Miyake and Shah 1999; Lawlor-Savage and Goghari 2016). Working memory capacity is usually described as up to seven chunks (i.e. meaningful units) of information held in up to three minutes, but it can be extended by training to several more minutes and larger amounts of information. In cognitively demanding situations that require multitasking or task switching, working memory plays a crucial role controlling and allocating attentional resources (Burgess 2000). The comprehensive working memory model of Baddeley and Hitch (1974) ascribed the latter function specifically to a ‘central executive’ in which information from lower-level sub-systems is integrated. The subsystems are specific to vision (the ‘visuospatial sketchpad’) and audition (the ‘phonological loop’) and hold small amounts of modality-specific information for a few milliseconds, like an afterimage or echo. In addition to attention, executive functions in the working memory also involve inhibition and low-level problemsolving. The central executive processes sensory information selectively and connects it with long-term memory. Later versions of Baddeley’s model include a fourth compartment, the ‘episodic buffer’, in which multi-modal information can be held, modified and linked to long-term memory content (Baddeley 2000).4 Returning to the performing arts, music improvisation and improvised gestures have both proven to enhance the capacity

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to memorize text within working memory through embodiment. In some instances, this effect depends on whether or not the improvisation task is meaningful in the given performance situation. Oxoby studied how the motor action and perception involved in music improvisation might enhance working memory processing and recall in general by allowing cross-modal and embodied encoding of abstract words and numbers (Chapter 8). He also looked at the impact of social identification on such processes. Oxoby found that improvisational and musical embodiment of words and numbers did improve working memory capacity and recall for participants without music training, whilst participants with music training only experienced improvement when they were presented with questions that solicited identification as a musician over other identity markers. This finding can be related to Neil Utterback’s research into the affect of free theatrical gesturing on word memorization. He found that embodiment through gesture improved working memory recall (Utterback 2013). Studies of working memory and general motor action (e.g. pointing) support these findings, but only in cases when the action is functionally related to the task requirements (Chum et al. 2007; Dodd and Shumborski 2009). Lack of meaningful connection is not the only factor that can have a negative effect on working memory in non-performers. Utterback (2013) and Wachowicz, Stevens and Byron (2011) found in separate studies that acting-naïve individuals’ ability to learn and recall short sentences decreased when gestures were choreographed instead of free. This decrease could possibly be caused by the competing proprioceptive attention needed to perform the movement correctly, resulting in attentional overload. Subject-specific as well as empirical evidence indicates that working memory overload issues, experienced by novice performers when given such complex multitasks, are solved by advanced performers. The latter develop implicit adaptation responses that turn abstract connections into embodied and meaningful units. The cognitive flexibility needed for such adaptation is extraordinary, and, obviously, sensitive to training. In 2012, Hansen tasked an expert dancer and actor to each recall a series of four closely associated sets of memorized movement phrases and speech acts (Hansen 2016). These meaningful units were then taken apart and recombined in non-meaningful sets. The

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research intention was to observe whether or not the performance of these sets would phase shift back to the meaningful sets over time and with increasing speed (for details on phase shifts in dynamical patterns see Kelso 1995; Thelen and Smith 1994: 45–70). Although there were instances where this happened, the primary discovery made was that both performers effectively adapted the part of each set that was unfamiliar to the part that adhered to their own discipline, and they found new anchors between the arbitrary sets to render them meaningful. This adaptation happened implicitly; when asked, the performers had not registered any change of the material. The study was a pseudo-scientific and subject-specific behavioural experiment (observations regarding the specific training of the two participants was prioritized over the benefits associated with a generalizable sample size). It produced relevant scholarly insight into two contemporary theatre and dance performers’ active ability to quickly establish the kind of associative meaning we know supports working memory capacity. An excellent ability to sustain attention to present stimuli is necessary to produce stage presence. These cognitive traits of performance expertise could hold keys to understanding performers’ ability to bring something new into the world, to create. The possible importance of working memory capacity in sustaining a heightened and continuous performance presence was the topic of a pilot study in a recent collaboration between Hansen, Oxoby and cognitive psychologist Vina Goghari at the University of Calgary. The team took a close, analytical look at the cognitive challenges posed by systematic approaches to improvisation in dance, theatre and music in order to arrive at hypotheses for experimental testing. These improvisation systems require performers to respond to multiple tasks within the constraints of specific rules and whilst recycling pre-identified source materials (words, text, roles, pitches, scores, phrases). Often the rules involve inhibiting learnt and habitual responses like the sequencing of movements, or natural tendencies like copying or entraining others. The tasks demand that the performers simultaneously register a large amount of sensory information in the present, consciously analyse it, and act or adapt their actions in response to it within the rule constraints. Asking questions about how the performance presence of these works is earned, it was hypothesized that such live multitasking demands sustained working memory processing and cognitive

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strategies that expand working memory capacity. The team’s quantitative study was inconclusive, whilst qualitative data collected did show that the performers experienced significant changes in their attention and perception. The primary contribution of the study was thus to emphasize that new test measures for working memory and executive capacity are needed for studies of highly specialized and embodied artistic practices. Consequentially, the hypotheses are still waiting to be verified or falsified by suitable experimental procedures (Hansen and Oxoby 2017).

Implicit and procedural long-term memory Memory and learning have been basic topics in cognitive psychology for a long time, and different explanatory models have been created. The case of the famous patient Henry Molaison led neuroscientists to differentiate between the consciously accessible declarative memory that comprises personal experiences (episodic memory) and knowledge of facts (semantic memory), and procedural memory, which includes motor and cognitive skills that have typically been acquired implicitly through practice. The observation that Henry Molaison, as a ‘side effect’ of severe life-saving brain surgery, had lost the ability to store new episodic information, but was still able to learn procedures through practice, enabled the scientists to draw conclusions regarding the brain circuits involved in the different memory functions (Scoville and Milner 1957). The contents of procedural memory (Squire 1992; Squire and Zola 1996) are typically neither consciously accessible nor immediately available for verbal expression, but underlie all skills we master, from riding a bike to playing Chopin’s Études. Another type of implicit memory comprises tacitly learnt episodic memory that situates us in space or in relation to others. Performing artists often rely on procedural and implicit memory for expertise, but this strength can also become a weakness: it fosters repetitive and habitual responses, which in turn reduce the chance of bringing something new into the world. This is one of the reasons why dramaturgs (i.e. consultants who design creative processes and advise on compositional choice-making in dance and theatre), can see it as their task to ‘read’ the patterns of response of dancers and actors and provide obstacles in the form of rules and tasks

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that help the performers move beyond some of their procedural and implicit memory, and thereby gain the freedom to act more flexibly (Hansen 2011). This dramaturgical way of looking, of observing and reflecting upon otherwise implicit tendencies, is of course not limited to the designated dramaturg; a performer can also apply such a dramaturgical self-reflexive perspective (Chapter 2: 61; Midgelow 2015), or it can be built into an improvisation task such as a request to ‘take the sequencing [i.e. automated planning] out of your sequences’ (Hay qtd. Hansen with House 2015: 68). In this sense, the kind of performance presence that is about flow and competence – about being in the moment and responding from intuition without self-awareness – is highly reliant upon perceiving and responding through memory (Jackman 2016). The presence that is earned by inhibiting implicit memory and directing attention towards the environment whilst sustaining self-awareness enhances the performer’s ability to process new stimuli and arrive at novel responses (Hansen with House 2015). At the centre of these implicit memories is the remembering person’s body as interface between motor actions, action-based perception, and higher-level concepts and thought, and thus these memories are often tied to that person’s sense of self and autobiographical memory (Baddeley, Eysenck and Anderson 2015: 299–327). Indeed, cognitive representations of the body (Haggard and Wolpert 2005; de Vignemont 2010), embedded in both implicit and explicit memories, are constitutive for his or her sense of a consistent self over time (Prebble, Addis and Tippett 2013).5 Following this line of argument, it is evident that the loss or failure of embodied memory functions consequently interferes with autobiographical identity and the experience of self-consistency. In their contribution to this volume, McLaughlin and Scott describe the phenomena of memory loss and déjà vu caused by temporal lobe epilepsy as new perception that is experienced like it was autobiographical memory, but with a distinct lack of memory trace (Chapter 10). Through a process of exploring McLaughlin’s personal experience of temporal lobe epilepsy in a public, creative process with Scott, these two artist-scholars constructed interpersonal memories from personal accounts, images and sound material surrounding McLaughlin’s condition (including loss of sensory abilities and medical monitoring). In this case, a breakdown of the ability to perceive seamlessly through implicit episodic memory, possibly

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because that memory cannot be reconstructed, produces a conscious experience of déjà vu. The performers combine this experience of déjà vu with a series of sonic and visual recordings of embodied treatment and epileptic experiences that may or may not otherwise have registered consciously. This exploration renders otherwise implicit experiences explicit and declarative autobiographical memory through an interpersonal process shared between the artists, their audience and the readers of this volume. By weaving our act of bearing witness to McLaughlin’s autobiographical memory, cognitive and cultural processes of memory are merged.

Explicit or declarative long-term memory As previously sketched, declarative and explicit memory contains all verbally expressible knowledge about the world, its content is consciously accessible and can be modulated by thought and language. Events we have encountered and learnt explicitly are stored in episodic memory, whereas facts that are not linked to specific events are stored in semantic memory (Tulving 2002). Episodic and semantic memory can be associated with different processing stages, as most facts have at some point during the learning process been linked to episodes, before they are generalized by frequent repetition and retrieval. Even though the differentiation of long-term memory is helpful in general, for example, in analysing and diagnosing memory (dys)functions, complex learning situations in the real world typically require the combination of different memory functions. An artist learning to dance a complex movement or to play a sophisticated piece on the piano (and of course the experienced teacher) will achieve the best results when combining implicit and explicit means of learning and memory. When a dancer learns a movement sequence as part of a new choreography, the novel movements are demonstrated and to some extent explained verbally by the choreographer and adapted by the dancer and his or her colleagues using their own creative and bodily workspace. The situation in the dance studio, the face and voice of the choreographer, the images given to illustrate or generate the movement, and the others’ comments and responses are all stored in the dancer’s episodic memory. After some time, the dancer will

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likely forget many of the details of this experience, and only the relevant facts will remain as part of semantic memory. Whilst the dancer observes and practises the movement, all sensorimotor information is stored in his or her procedural memory. With repeated practice, the movement becomes more and more automatized and independent of attention, which gives him or her increasing freedom to focus on other aspects and work creatively with the newly acquired movement material. For modifying or adapting the sequence, or for correcting learnt mistakes, language can provide clarity and help to make implicit movement knowledge explicit before linking it to new episodic, semantic and procedural content. The area of explicit cognitive memory in all three art forms that has received the most attention is the memorization and recall of material to be performed from memory. Kemp’s previously discussed proposal for an embodied approach to memorization for the actor advances the recognized work by cognitive psychologists Helga Noice and Tony Noice (Chapter 5). Rather than focusing on embodiment as a primary mode, Ginsborg offers a historical overview of memorization practices and research in music, which points towards the benefits of multi-modal pedagogical approaches (Chapter 3: 75–80). She argues that visual, auditory, kinaesthetic and analytical approaches should preferably be combined when memorizing music effectively (the same is true for dance, with dancers relying on multi-modal cues for memorizing choreography; see Chapter 2). In music, a performer uses mental imaging to remember the visual score, different kinds of body movement to create rhythmic landmarks and qualities, and sequencing and auditory schema (implicit long-term memory of general patterns in music; see Bharucha 1994: 216) to recognize and memorize structural components (Chapter 3: insert page). Whilst each performer develops their own memorization technique, their ability to memorize greatly depends on both their implicit and explicit repertoire of music. A musician with a wide and deep range of experience with music will have more and stronger cognitive schemas to draw on when memorizing than a novice. The main challenge when memorizing music, which Ginsborg emphasizes, is to push beyond forming associative chains and develop what is called content-addressable memory (Chaffin, Logan and Begosh 2009; Chapter 3: 83, 86). In associative chains, the recall of one component depends on its position in relation to

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the others; thus, to recall, the performer using this technique has to start from the beginning (like when children start the alphabet song from A to recall the letter that precedes K). Memory recall using associative chains breaks down when an error is made within the chain, and also does not assist the artist in adapting details and qualities of performance. More effective content-addressable memory is harder to achieve, but far more reliable and flexible, as it allows the artists to work on any segment of a given piece individually and independently. Ginsborg argues that this technique depends on conceptual memory for compositional structure and the connected abilities to divide composition into smaller segments and to work with structural landmarks (Chapter 3: 83). The case study presented by Bordin in Chapter 7 takes off from this notion, but adds a complication. Young children are conventionally not taught tools of complex structural analysis; they are typically taught to read the music and perform it with a reasonable degree of accuracy and musicianship, without access to conceptual comprehension. Bordin conducted an experiment with three young piano students, tasking them to learn and perform from memory structurally unconventional music they did not yet have schemas for. Whilst the children became able to perform the music without errors in private, the emotional pressure associated with public performance led them to make errors around the structurally complex transitions in the music. From this result, Bordin concludes that children are limited by their lack of structural conceptualization and analysis. Expanding this conclusion with concepts drawn from Ginsborg’s overview, it is possible that compositional analysis might actively help even young students strengthen and expand schemas and arrive at the segmentation and landmarks needed to achieve content-addressable memory for high-pressure performance of structurally complex works. The structural landmarks for content-addressable memorization that Ginsborg and Bordin address are closely related to the praxis of marking in dance. Marking is a shorthand for choreography and movement through which experienced dancers indicate sections, transitions and directions typically with hand or foot gestures, with reduced full-body movement or by turning to directions in space, instead of dancing the full choreography. Marking can be considered a cognitive tool that makes use of the same cognitive functions and brain structures as executing, observing and mentally

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simulating motor actions (Jeannerod 1995, 2004) and that is frequently used by dancers to learn, recall, modify, adapt, create or communicate movement. A comprehensive study of marking was carried out by social cognition scholar David Kirsh in collaboration with Wayne McGregor’s contemporary dance company. Kirsh assembled a taxonomy of marking practices and analysed their cognitive function as landmarks for memorization and tools for choreographic thinking (Kirsh 2011: 197–203). Warburton and colleagues tested the effectiveness of marking for memorization and recall and found that dancers arrived at superior recall of newly learnt choreography when marking, in comparison with dancers who danced the choreography ‘full out’ instead (Warburton et al. 2013). Interestingly, Kirsh also observed and induced from subjective reports that marking is used as a tool for choreographic thinking. The experienced dancer is able to mentally image one version of a specific choreography whilst marking another to compare different iterations or develop ideas for changes (Kirsh 2011: 197–203). In this volume, the topic of cognitive strategies applied for movement learning in dance is also addressed by neuroscientists Sumanapala and Cross (Chapter 6). The authors take a look at the relationship between visual observation and physical experience in novice dancers learning codified movement (ballet), arguing that a combination of conscious observation and physical praxis may best support learning. Observation provides extrinsic information about the relationship between body and space that is augmented by somatosensory information acquired through motor simulation. Physical praxis provides intrinsic motor knowledge supported by multisensory feedback. Together, these training modalities enhance the dancer’s ability to learn through procedural immersion and action whilst adjusting with reference to consciously observed differences. The authors found that awareness of the training modality (observation or physical practice) was associated with better movement performance and thus with more efficient learning. The benefits of combining intrinsic and extrinsic frames of reference addressed by Sumanapala and Cross also apply to advanced student or expert dancers imaging motor execution and marking the body in space as a form of choreographic reflection. This shows that training suggestions deriving from a cognitive approach to explicit learning and declarative memory need not primarily be about technical precision, but they can also assist in interpretive and creative thinking.

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Rendering implicit long-term memory explicitly expressive Some characteristics of the performing arts call for studies that consider implicit and explicit memory in combination. In the context of dance, Stevens argues that performance makes procedural memory explicit without verbal articulation (Chapter 2: 50). From the perspective of experimental psychology, one of the remarkable feats of contemporary dance is the extent to which otherwise procedural motor processes are used to consciously express relationships, emotions, dynamics, intentionality and much more. Stevens emphasizes the construction of cognitive grammars (i.e. recognizable patterns and styles of movement that are based on implicit ‘rules’) to explain how this expressive movement becomes meaningful to an audience. The observation that contemporary dance, which is not operating within the predefined set of movements and qualities of classical ballet, renders procedural memory collectively declarative is another example of a potential point of connection between cognitive and cultural concepts of memory. Artistic practices that target this process deliberately have been subjected to both behavioural and ethnographic studies. In a pseudo-scientific example of the former, Hansen asked whether and how episodic, autobiographical memories that were invested as source material in systematic approaches to improvisation (called performance generating systems) were adapted by the praxis. Her interest was in the consequences for performers’ maintenance and continuity of an autobiographical self (Baddeley, Eysenck and Anderson 2015: 306–18). Creative approaches were examined in which memories of movement danced in the past or anecdotes about past events with a narrative structure were pre-identified and used as source material for improvisation by two individuals, and within a specific set of constraining tasks and rules. The participants subjectively observed and reported that the source memories were not affected by the improvisation. However, comparison of memory recalls that were recorded before and after the improvisation clearly showed that the movement material and the story material had changed significantly. More specifically, it had become adapted to the discipline-specific training of the other performer who participated in the improvisation. The embodied and active engagement with

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the memory sources had reconstructed individual, autobiographical memories as new collective memories (Hansen 2015). The publicly shared performance did in many ways render explicit this otherwise implicit process of collective memory adaptation. Autobiographical memory is also the subject of McKenzie’s contribution (Chapter 9). In an ethnographic study of the dance project With a Bullet: The Album Project in Melbourne from 2006 to 2013, she focused on the strategies choreographers discovered and used when tasked to revisit choreographically their explicit memory of the very first dance they set to music. McKenzie found that music, in particular, but also memories of space, other people and emotions, helped the choreographers recall very early and youthful attempts at setting dance to music. These techniques of recall, however, were merely the first stage of a process that, due to conflicts between the autobiographical memories and later professional identities, demanded strategies for the creative reconstruction and adaptation of memories. These included learning the memories anew whilst performing them and responding to the feedback that interactions between the enacted memory and the new context provided (Chapter 9: 209–11). McKenzie’s discoveries do in many ways match the choices made by McLaughlin and Scott (Chapter 10; also see section on ‘Implicit and procedural long-term memory’ in this chapter), although the reasons why autobiographical memories needed to be reconstructed declaratively through performance differed significantly.

Distributed memory: Dynamics, constraints and environments What are the internal and external constraints that remind performers of memorized landmarks and limit their possible responses during performance? In this volume, Tribble turns to the concept of distributed cognition (Michaelian and Sutton 2013: 1) and Dynamical Systems Theory (Thelen and Smith 1994: 45–70) to argue for a notion of distributed memory, looking at how environments, co-performers, objects and much more reduce the range of suitable actions in ways that aid memorization (Chapter 4). She acknowledges that embodied training and procedural memory

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are the first constraints – the first markers of selective responses – but emphasizes the importance of external play-texts, environments and co-actors to further narrow down the frame of response. Dynamical Systems Theory is concerned with the way in which dominating parameters tend to attract self-organized patterns of behaviour in shifting phases and within complex systems that are neither closed nor fully open (Thelen and Smith 1994: 45–70). With attention to both the distribution of memory across the actor’s body and his or her external environment, and the self-organizing dynamics that render this distribution functional, Tribble looks at the cognitive ecology of a performance situation to explain how an experienced actor can memorize and convincingly perform hours’ worth of text. In a related manoeuvre, Stevens turns to Dynamical Systems Theory to consider the many internal, external and relational factors a contemporary dancer needs to register and respond to (Chapter 2: 54). Dancers do make use of procedural memory for memorization, performance and choreographic thinking, but they are equally reliant on the many constraints in space, sound and between bodies that govern and attract physical actions. Task- and rule-based approaches to improvisation are amongst the clearest examples of a dynamical system at work. The tasks, rules and predefined sources work as internal and external constraints that greatly limit the range of possible responses. Since these constraints are shared amongst dancers, they are distributed across their praxis at the same time as individual strategies make use of external constraints. For example, in Ame Henderson’s Voyager from 2014, dancers worked on the task of never repeating a movement during fifty minutes of continuous improvisation. To work towards this impossible task they devised the strategy of ‘inhabiting a new space’ with each movement (Hansen 2014, rehearsal notes from Voyager). This strategy involved placing markers in space and observing their own body extrinsically in addition to relying on individual motor memory. With distributed memory, extrinsic observation and Dynamical Systems Theory we complete the circle of the cognition of memory that was foreshadowed at the opening of this section – a circle that moves from the brain and through the relationship between the embodied mind, others and environments. We have drawn attention towards the dynamics of memory in the performing arts that can be accessed through the cognitive sciences. In the following, we ask what the cognitive sciences can learn from the performing arts.

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Expanding cognitive concepts of memory through the performing arts With the rise of embodied cognition, scientists have become increasingly interested in the question of how cognitive functions and skills work in the real world rather than under highly controlled laboratory conditions. An impressive example of a study conducted in a performing arts context has been provided by Jola, Pollick and Grosbras (2011) who measured brain activity (excitability of the motor cortex) in audience members watching the dress rehearsal of a classical dance performance. As a complementary line of research, studies of expertise can teach us how cognition works under challenging real-world conditions in individuals with exceptional skills, and to what extent and by what means the performance of the human neurocognitive system is enhanced and modified through specific training (Yarrow, Brown and Krakauer 2009). Understanding memory and learning is crucial in this respect, as all training results in learning of some kind, on different levels, requiring various types of information storage and recall. When it comes to memory and learning, performing artists represent a specific kind of expert, as for them, learning and memory skills themselves are a fundamental part of their expertise. Dancers, musicians and actors are memory experts – it stands out that artists who perform live on stage have to master not only the performative skills of their discipline, but also how to manage vast amounts of material that is to be learnt, stored, recalled, adapted, modified and used for new creative processes. Dancers hold hour-long sequences of complex movement in their memory to perfectly reproduce and recreate them on stage, adapt them to the spatial and temporal requirements of the performance and to the ongoing interactions with other dancers and the audience. The same holds true for musicians and actors, each within the framework of their respective artistic disciplines. Even though the basic material to be remembered seems diverse in the first instance – body movement in one case, musical sound in the second and language supported by nonverbal means of communication in the third – the ways of memorizing, recalling and creatively working with this material have much in common, as they all go through processes of being enacted and embodied by the performing artists, becoming their very own individual artistic property.

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Underlying the complex processes of re-creating the learnt material are embodied cognitive representations in the artist’s longterm memory in which all sensory modalities are integrated and merged into one entity that is perceived as consistent and meaningful. According to recent theoretical and empirical evidence, motor learning includes the integration of visual, verbal, proprioceptive as well as kinaesthetic information into a holistic multi-modal mental representation of the learnt action (Schack et al. 2014). We have come to understand that such representations in long-term memory are not purely procedural or declarative, nor learnt either implicitly or explicitly, but that they comprise procedural, semantic and episodic aspects that are integrated and updated with every new access, and that they underlie the execution as well as the imagination of the learnt actions (Land et al. 2013). Studies investigating memory and learning in dancers show that dancers indeed possess enhanced memory skills compared to nondancers, and that they acquire techniques for facilitating movement learning and recall in their training (Sevdalis and Keller 2011; Bläsing et al. 2012). In two consecutive studies, Bettina Bläsing and colleagues investigated the multi-modal mental representations of classical dance movements in the long-term memory of dancers of different skill level (Bläsing, Tenenbaum and Schack 2009; Bläsing and Schack 2012). They found that the representations of ballet movements showed a high degree of order formation reflecting the functionality of skilful movement execution in professional dancers and advanced amateurs, whereas beginners and novices did not possess such functionally structured movement representations. Interestingly, only the expert dancers showed similarly functional results when the same movements were experimentally addressed via associated spatial directions in an egocentric frame of reference, suggesting that skilled dancers indeed possess embodied representations of dance movements that include relevant spatial information. In a complementary study, Bläsing (2015) applied an experimental paradigm based on Jeffrey Zacks’ event segmentation theory (Zacks et al. 2007) to study how observers of different levels of dance expertise segment a choreographed sequence of contemporary dance. Fundamental to Zacks’ theory is the notion that we spontaneously parse any action or scene we observe into small parts or segments, and, crucially, that our understanding and later recall of the observed depends on this initial subconscious segmentation (Zacks et al.

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2007). The results of Bläsing’s experiments revealed that expert and amateur dancers parsed the observed dance sequence into broader segments than novices, and that motor experience of the sequence resulted in broader segmentation, whereas purely visual familiarity and music affected segmentation in contradictory ways. These findings support the notion that high anticipation and prediction success reduces the number of perceived segment boundaries, and points towards different cognitive frameworks underlying dance parsing (deLahunta and Barnard 2005). Taken together, these studies, in line with those presented by Stevens (Chapter 2), show that dancers possess specific memory skills that are shaped by their professional training. These skills do not only comprise an enhanced capacity for storing and recalling complex movement material, but also an extensive ability to integrate the learnt motor actions with relevant multi-modal information and semantic content at the different stages of memory processing from perception to recall.

Cross-disciplinary potentials Cognitive insights into memory and their associated research methods open new doors for the performing arts. They enable scholars, artists and cross-disciplinary collaborators to consider processes and effects of memory, which can neither be accessed through subjective, phenomenological experience nor theoretical analysis alone. With these insights in hand, existing approaches to learning, performance practice and the facilitation of audience experience can be adjusted and further developed – new strategies can be imagined. The growing reciprocity of the field leads to appreciation amongst cognitive scientists of professional performing artists’ memory expertise as a unique window into the embodiment of memory. In extension, the memory training potential of performing arts learning processes is now better understood and benefits a wide range of populations. These developments are exciting, but they do of course also come with limitations. Some such limitations are about the kinds of knowledge produced and used as well as their appropriate range of transfer, others concern the pragmatic form of utility at times targeted by research into the cognition of the performing arts.

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Whilst these limitations perhaps stand out most clearly when comparing an experimental, scientific study with a process of Practice as Research, studies that bridge cognitive and cultural concepts of memory are not excepted. When, for example, conducting an empirical field study of social cognition (as Kirsh did), the work is directed by a hypothesis and attention is directed towards behaviours, interactions and environmental components that reveal constraints and dominant parameters of memory. In an unpublished working paper, Ella Perry-Davies asks important questions about the aspects of the environment that do not serve our distributed memory and that we do not interact with, either because they no longer exist materially, or because they have not been included in the Anthropocene (i.e. human-centric) cognitive ecology (Perry-Davies 2015). Davies’ point reminds us of how important it is to address the subject of memory from cross- and inter-disciplinary perspectives, bringing together methodologically incompatible forms of knowledge in order to make visible and move past the limitations of a singular paradigm. Indeed, we are excited by this potential. Perhaps the identification of elements that contribute to the selective, self-generating system of distributed memory can also provide the first step towards looking beyond that system. It is also possible that insight earned into implicit, cognitive processes at play in performing arts contexts can inspire both interest in and appreciation of functions and effects of memory that currently are considered impairments or escape a human-centric epistemology. We believe that the fullest understanding of memory in the performing arts can be arrived at by bringing into dialogue studies of cognitive, cultural and non-Anthropocene memory. The aim of this volume is to contribute one corner of that triangle, to offer insights into the cognition of memory in the performing arts with which scientists, scholars and artists can enter into dialogue.

Notes 1 Recent essay collections and journal issues on performance and cognition (Shaughnessy 2013; Blair and Cook 2016; Falletti, Sofia and Jacono 2016; Santana 2016; Bishop et al. 2017), music psychology (Hallam, Cross and Thaut 2009; Tan, Pfordresher and Harré 2010;

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Deliège and Davidson 2011; Williamon et al. 2014) and the (neuro) cognition of dance (Bläsing, Puttke and Schack 2010; Reynolds, Jola and Pollick 2011; Reynolds and Reason 2012) generally include limited, if any, dedicated coverage of memory topics. 2 In a highly influential article, Wolfgang Prinz claimed that ‘perceived events and planned actions share a common representational domain’ (1997: 129), and this common coding principle became the central idea of the ‘theory of event coding’ that proposed a theoretical template of how action and perception are coupled on the cognitive level (Hommel et al. 2001). 3 Furthermore, it was argued that neurons in the motor system might have developed mirror properties as an artefact, additional to their original and more relevant functions, as by-product of associative learning and social interaction (Heyes 2010). 4 In addition to Baddeley’s ‘classical’ model, alternative models have proven to be of high explanatory value for recent research. Salvucci and Taatgen (2008), for example, have proposed a theory of threaded cognition to explain domain-independent multitasking, in which no supervisory executive is needed, but autonomous processes interact and are coordinated via resource acquisition and conflict resolution processes. 5 Cognitive representations of the body have been studied extensively during recent years and different concepts have been proposed, the most relevant of which is the body schema, which was initially conceptualized as a subconscious postural body frame informed by proprioception (Head and Holmes 1911–1912). This schema concept was adopted to the general context of learning by Frederic Bartlett (1932). Later, psychologists applied it to describe patterns of behaviour or information acting as frameworks for building up knowledge and organizing memory content on the conceptual level.

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Calvo-Merino, B., J. Grèzes, D. E. Glaser, R. E. Passingham and P. Haggard (2006), ‘Seeing or doing? Influence of visual and motor familiarity in action observation’, Current Biology, 16 (19): 1905–10. Carlson, M. (2001), The Haunted Stage: The Theatre as Memory Machine, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Chaffin, R., T. Logan and K. T. Begosh (2009), ‘Performing from memory’, in S. Hallam, I. Cross and M. Thaut (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Music Psychology, 352–63, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cherulnik, P. D. (2001), Methods for Behavioral Research: A Systematic Approach, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Chum, M., H. Bekkering, M. D. Dodd and J. Pratt (2007), ‘Motor and visual codes interact to facilitate visuospatial memory performance’, Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 14 (6): 1189–93. Cross, E. S., A. F. Hamilton and S. T. Grafton (2006), ‘Building a motor simulation de novo: Observation of dance by dancers’, Neuroimage, 31 (3): 1257–67. deLahunta, S. and P. Barnard (2005), ‘What’s in a phrase?’, in J. Birringer and J. Fenger (eds), Tanz im Kopf/Dance and Cognition, 253–66, Munster: LIT Verlag; Jahrbuch der Gesellschaft für Tanzforschung 15. Deliège, I. and J. W. Davidson, eds (2011), Music and the Mind: Essays in Honour of John Sloboda, Oxford: Oxford University Press. De Vignemont, F. (2010), ‘Body schema and body image – Pros and cons’, Neuropsychologia, 48 (3): 669–80. Dodd, M. D. and S. Shumborski (2009), ‘Examining the influence of action on spatial working memory: The importance of selection’, Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 62 (6): 1236–47. Falletti, C., G. Sofia and V. Jacono, eds (2016), Theatre and Cognitive Neuroscience, London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama. Foster, S. L. (1996), Corporealities: Dancing, Knowledge, Culture, and Power, London: Routledge. Glenberg, A. M. (1997), ‘What memory is for’, Behavioral and Brain Science, 20 (1): 1–19. Glenberg, A. M. (2011), ‘Introduction to the mirror neuron forum’, Perspectives on Psychological Science, 6 (4): 363–68. Haggard, P. and D. M. Wolpert (2005), ‘Disorders of body scheme’, in H.-J. Freund, M. Jeannerod, M. Hallett and R. C. Leiguarda (eds), Higher Order Motor Disorders, 261–72, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hallam, S., I. Cross and M. Thaut, eds (2009), The Oxford Handbook of Music Psychology, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hansen, P. (2011), ‘Perceptual dramaturgy: Swimmer (68)’, Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, 25 (2): 107–24. Hansen, P. (2014), ‘Notes from Voyager rehearsals with Ame Henderson’, Toronto Dance Theatre, Toronto. Unpublished.

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Hansen, P. (2015), ‘The dramaturgy of performance generating systems’, in P. Hansen and D. Callison (eds), Dance Dramaturgy: Modes of Agency, Awareness and Engagement, 124–43, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Hansen, P. (2016), ‘The adaptability of language-motor connections in dance and acting: A coordination dynamics experiment’, Revista Eletrônica MAPA D2, 3 (1): 5–15. Hansen, P. with C. House (2015), ‘Scoring the generating principles of performance systems’, Performance Research: On An/Notation, 20 (6): 65–73. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13528165.2015.1111054 Hansen, P. and R. J. Oxoby (2017), ‘An earned presence: Studying the effect of multi-task improvisation systems on cognitive and learning capacity’, Connection Science, 29 (1): 77–93. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080 /09540091.2016.1277692 Haseman, B. (2007), ‘Rupture and recognition: Identifying the performative research paradigm’, in E. Barrett and B. Bolt (eds), Practice-as-Research Approaches to Creative Arts Enquiry, 27–34, New York: I.B. Tauris & Co. Head, H. and G. Holmes (1911–1912), ‘Sensory disturbances from cerebral lesions’, Brain, 34: 102–254. Heyes, C. M. (2010), ‘Where do mirror neurons come from?’ Neuroscience and Biobehavioural Reviews, 34: 575–83. Hodgson, J. (2001), Mastering Movement: The Life and Work of Rudolf Laban, New York: Psychology Press. Hogg, B. (2012), ‘Enactive consciousness, intertextuality, and musical free improvisation: Deconstructing mythologies and finding connections’, in D. Clarke and E. Clarke (eds), Music and Consciousness: Philosophical, Psychological, and Cultural Perspectives, Oxford Scholarship Online. Available online: doi:10.1093/acprof:oso /9780199553792.003.0037 (accessed 8 November 2016). Hommel, B., J. Müsseler, G. Aschersleben and W. Prinz (2001), ‘The Theory of Event Coding (TEC): A framework for perception and action planning’, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 24 (5): 849–78. Jackman, C. J. (2016), ‘Training, insight and intuition in creative flow’, in R. Blair and A. Cook (eds), Theatre, Performance and Cognition, 107–21, London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama. Jeannerod, M. (1995), ‘Mental imagery in the motor context’, Neuropsychologia, 33 (11): 1419–32. Jeannerod, M. (2004), ‘Actions from within’, International Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 2 (4): 376–402. Jola, C., F. E. Pollick and M. H. Grosbras (2011), ‘Arousal decrease in Sleeping Beauty: Audiences’ neurophysiological correlates to watching a narrative dance performance of two-and-a-half hours’, Dance Research, 29 (Supplement): 378–403.

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PART ONE

Overview: Memory and the Performing Arts

2 Memory and Dance: ‘Bodies of Knowledge’ in Contemporary Dance Catherine J. Stevens

At a recent discussion with seven contemporary dancers, we asked what factors influence their capacity to recall – perform from memory – previously learnt dance material. Within a couple of minutes, the dancers had described twenty-eight different factors. At once I felt elation at the extensive list of variables and exhaustion at the number of experiments required to determine the psychological reality of the multi-level variables and their interactions. Dance as a form of human behaviour that is seemingly universal, but practised and expressing meaning in culturally, socially and personally specific ways, offers a tantalizing, albeit daunting, medium for exploring the nature, limits, capacity, complexity and intermodality of human memory (Stevens and McKechnie 2005a; Bläsing et al. 2012; Cross and Ticini 2012; Jola, Ehrenberg and Reynolds 2012). This chapter begins by considering the way characteristics of dancing shed light on perceptual and cognitive constraints and The author’s research described here has been supported by the Australian Research Council Discovery Project, Linkage Project and Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment and Facilities grant schemes: DP0986394, LE0668448, LP0562687, LP130100670.

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capacities. The contemporary view in psychology that perception and action are interconnected will be summarized. General characteristics of human memory will be outlined followed by an account of short-term or working memory for dance. Longterm memory for dance will be conceptualized as both somatic declarative memory and as implicit memory. Long-term memory as ‘veridical expectations’ and ‘schematic expectations’ will be discussed together with examples of experiments designed to elicit explicit, declarative (conscious) and implicit (unconscious) expectations for contemporary dance. The chapter concludes with a discussion of characteristics that distinguish long-term memory for dance and the potential for questions from the artform to illuminate the way the brain perceives, retains and recalls contemporary dance.

Why dance? Dance as material created, performed and perceived offers insight into human perceptual and cognitive capacities and constraints. In antiquity, dancing and dance-making could be regarded as the somatic and bodily equivalent of an ‘oral tradition’. Without notation or recording systems, and where a dance piece is set for repeated performance over generations, newly created works need to be able to be learnt, retained in memory and reproduced accurately. The importance of memory becomes immediately apparent. What are optimal lengths for phrases, sections, pieces? How might structure and form support learning and memory? Benefits arise, for example, from motif, repetition, rhythm and hierarchical structures such as metre. Thus, understanding the creation, performance and perception of dance can reveal the vast potential and upper limits of human perception and cognition. Current research interest in memory for dance-like material using even very short excerpts arises from the tradition in perceptual and cognitive psychology to scrutinize perceptual acuity, memory limits and knowledge representation (e.g. Golomer and Dupui 2000; Calvo-Merino et al. 2005, 2010; Bläsing, Tenenbaum and Schack 2009). Similarly, expertise of the observer is used frequently in

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psychological research as the means to investigate highly attuned and acquired skills and competencies. Such research often compares behaviour or patterns of neural stimulation in experts with those of novices to bring into relief neural plasticity and the effects of learning and experience both at the level of behaviour and the brain. The experiments are designed generally to test psychological theories of perception or memory, more than informing ideas of dance or cultural behaviour. For a cognitive scientist interested in the structure and function of human memory, as well as cognition more broadly, the dance studio is an ideal laboratory teeming with memory-rich behaviour and phenomena. Observing the various ways in which contemporary dance artists and choreographers improvise, task and create new material, the way they experiment, play and discover, the way they learn, re-learn, memorize, recall and recognize, can be studied in a natural or ‘ecologically valid’ setting. To do justice to such culturally, socially, personally and psychologically imbued material, an interdisciplinary and collaborative research approach is vital. Since 1999, I have had the great fortune to collaborate with and learn from artists in dance and in music, researchers from the disciplines of dance, literature and the humanities, music, social anthropology, and colleagues from psychology and cognitive science. With multiple perspectives and a large set of quantitative and qualitative methods, we may begin to explore, reveal and better understand the breadth and depth of cognition in dance. In some of the scientific studies to be described, laboratory-based experiments on memory for dance-like material will be sketched. Such studies draw on dance as a tool to probe short-term memory for unfamiliar, non-verbal motor sequences. In other sections, experiments will be described that have been informed more by collaboration with choreographers and/or dance artists. Some studies describe (but do not necessarily explain) the psychology of dance behaviour and phenomena. Others take an applied question and investigate it with the experimental control and rigour afforded by a laboratory setting. Through the systematic manipulation of theorized variables, the laboratory-based approach has the potential to provide a causal explanation of some of the cognitive processes involved in particular instances of dance behaviour.

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Perception-action coupling and embodied cognition Before memories can be formed, we come to know the world – that is, learn and acquire knowledge about the world – through perception. There are six perceptual systems: vision, audition, taste, olfaction, touch and balance. Interconnections between various perceptual systems or modalities also exist such as combining auditory and visual information in perceiving spoken language. Human perception is now also thought to be intimately connected, at the levels of both brain and behaviour, with the body’s suite of motor actions. Perception and action are coupled – what is perceived visually is influenced by one’s motor repertoire and experience. Frequent reference to action and the human body in studies of human perception is also in keeping with the concept of embodied cognition. There is growing consensus that the brain’s capacity to represent objects, events and concepts from the world is supported by the sensorimotor systems that we rely on to navigate the world (Barsalou 1999; Beilock 2009). In other words, human perception, cognition and memory are grounded in action (Barsalou 2008; Beilock 2009). Experimental evidence is accumulating in support of perception-action coupling. For example, reading action words associated with particular body parts (e.g. ‘kick’) activates areas of the brain involved in movement of those parts (Hauk, Johnsrude and Pulvermüller 2004) and the motor system can be stimulated not only by performing a particular action, but also by observing that action performed by someone else (Gallese et al. 1996; CalvoMerino et al. 2005). Observed movements are said to be mapped onto one’s own action system (Sevdalis and Keller 2010). The network of cells or neurons in the brain that are stimulated when actions that we have performed are observed has been described in shorthand as the ‘mirror neuron’ system. Rather than assuming the process is one of mirroring, a more precise term for such hypothesized neural networks is the ‘action observation network’ (e.g., Cross, Hamilton and Grafton 2006). A key assumption is that visual observation and motor action are linked. The implications of the theorized action observation system are far-reaching. Action expertise influences visual perception to such an

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extent that dancers watching others dance have reported that they feel as if they are dancing (Foster 1976). It has also been theorized that such ‘motor simulation’ or ‘motor resonance’ underpins understanding and empathy (e.g. Leslie, Johnson-Frey and Grafton 2004; for a critique see Decety 2010). Watching a gesture, expression or action, and having had similar prior experience such that the action is part of one’s motor repertoire, is said to give rise to an embodied understanding of that action. Here empathy springs from shared embodied knowledge – as if standing in another’s shoes, literally experiencing another’s enacted pain or joy. Human memory, built from input to the six senses, is likely multi-modal and a product of both perception and action. In the next section, general characteristics of human memory will be described before providing examples of studies of memory that have either used dance as stimulus material or manipulated participant dance expertise as a way to illuminate cognitive processes.

Characteristics of human memory Ebbinghaus ([1885]1913) demonstrated a distinction between different types of human memory in the late-nineteenth century. He would test his own memory span by attempting to recall a series of nonsense (novel, previously unlearnt) syllables drawn randomly from a large set of items. The task was to recall the nonsense syllables in the correct order in which they had been selected from the set. A consistent pattern occurred. Recall of the item in the correct serial position was relatively good for the items at the beginning of the series (‘primacy effect’) and also for those at the end of the series (‘recency effect’). Recall was poorest for items in the middle of the series. The primacy effect was explained as evidence for long-term memory with the first few items able to be rehearsed, transferred and stored in long-term memory. Rehearsal becomes increasingly difficult as the series of items to be remembered increases and therefore the items in the middle of the list tend to be lost. The recency effect was said to occur because of short-term memory allowing the last items to remain momentarily available from a short-term buffer when the list of items to be recalled ends.

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Conceptual separation of short-term and long-term memory has persisted for more than a century. There are more contemporary views on human memory and continued debate, but some characteristics are agreed and fundamental. For example: primacy and recency effects are observed when recalling a series of novel items, although recency effects are not always obtained when the to-be-remembered material consists of actions (Allard and Starkes 1991; Wachowicz, Stevens and Byron 2011). There is some filtering of memory in that not every dance we have performed or every conversation we have had is remembered – limits on attention and decay or interference are possible reasons for selectivity. Human memory is known to be constructive and malleable, constantly changed and updated by subsequent information rather than being passive and immutable; memory is known to be better (i.e. material is more likely to be retained and recalled) when it is meaningful and connected with existing longterm memory or knowledge, and/or has a strongly emotional aspect to it; there is long-term storage of unknown capacity and a more short-term, or working memory, buffer where information is retained whilst active, which may become consolidated in long-term memory, already be part of long-term memory or be lost. The capacity of working memory is thought to be between four and nine intelligently grouped, meaningful units or chunks (Miller 1956; Cowan 2000). Rather than referring to a series of single items, chunks refer to items that are connected by meaning and therefore require less memory capacity for storage and processing. A chunk may be a two-, five- or ten-word book title, a person’s name, an acronym or a phrase of movement material, and so on. On the long-term memory side, a distinction has been made between procedural and declarative memory (sometimes referred to as implicit and explicit memory, respectively). Procedural memory refers to habits, skills and associations; it takes some time to acquire but tends to be slow to lose. Procedures and skill memory are likely unconscious and not easy to verbalize or ‘declare’ in words. Declarative memory most likely evolved as a faster and more flexible kind of human memory. It refers to general knowledge that we have acquired about the world (called semantic memory), and knowledge that includes an autobiographical reference. This latter form of declarative memory has been termed ‘episodic’ in that it refers to specific episodes with self-reference. Dance presents an intriguing challenge to a view of memory termed ‘declarative’, a

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point to which we will return. Acquiring knowledge – learning – is the flipside of memory. A key concept in knowledge acquisition is that learning can be intentional, explicit and conscious, or it can be incidental, implicit and unconscious. Both kinds of learning contribute to human memory for dance.

Short-term or working memory and dance Working memory has been defined as the active portion of long-term neural networks where stimuli can be temporarily maintained and manipulated for retrieval (Oberauer 2009). An earlier and often-cited model of working memory was proposed by Baddeley and Hitch (1974). In this model, a distinction is made between a buffer for verbal material – the ‘phonological loop’ – and another for non-verbal and visual material – the ‘visuospatial sketchpad’ (Baddeley 2003: 830). The ‘central executive’, or attention, coordinates the two systems. There is a body of research that investigates evidence for Baddeley’s model with some scrutiny of the visuospatial sketchpad using dance steps as stimulus material (e.g. Jean, Cadopi and Ille 2001; Rossi-Arnaud, Cortese and Cestari 2004). An interference paradigm was often used wherein different forms of material would be presented in an effort to see the form of material that would interfere with or impede memory for actions as a way to elucidate the coding of the material in working memory. On a trial, a series of actions would be presented as the material to be remembered for later physical recall. A set of items would be presented in the interval between the study of the to-be-remembered material and the recall of that material. The intervening items could be another set of actions or a set of words or digits, or a set of spatial locations. If it is the case, for example, that working memory stores actions in some visual and non-verbal form, then another set of actions as intervening items should engage the visuospatial sketchpad, interfere with the items held there, and subsequently impede recall of the actions. By contrast, a set of words as intervening items should engage the phonological loop, not interfere with actions held in the sketchpad, and therefore not impede action recall. Similarly, if words are the items to be remembered and actions or words intervene,

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then intervening actions should not impede recall of words but intervening words will. In line with these predictions, Jean, Cadopi and Ille (2001) demonstrated that a concurrent verbal interference task lowered recall rates slightly. Such a result is suggestive of some verbal rehearsal of to-be-remembered dance items. In a control (no interference) condition they also found that structured sequences were recalled better than unstructured sequences. Smyth and Pendleton (1990) proposed a kinaesthetic-spatial system in working memory, arguing that in spatial memory the location of a target in space is the goal for an action, whereas in memory for movement configuration of the body parts is the goal. Concurrent spatial interference (tapping four visuospatial targets) did not affect memory for ballet moves by ballet dancers. Such results have been interpreted as evidence in support of a system for motor configurations in working memory (Cortese and Rossi-Arnaud 2010). As an alternative to a distinct working memory system, we have taken a parsimonious view that the neural pathways involved in visual perception are also involved in short-term processing and ‘storage’ of actions and dance. When we observe dance, there is simultaneous perceptual processing of both form-based detail of body shape and motion-based detail of the temporal order in which the shapes appear (Vicary et al. 2014). At the neural level, perception of motion and perception of body form have been theorized to occur via separable neural pathways that later converge for a coherent dynamic action perception (Giese and Poggio 2003). Perceiving body posture (form) is associated with certain areas of the brain1 and perceiving action with other motion related areas of the cortex2 (Urgesi, Berlucchi and Aglioti 2004; Downing et al. 2006; Peelen and Downing 2007). If it is the case that the processing during perception influences visual working memory, then memory for form and action will be differentiated from each other as they are in perception. We investigated this hypothesis in an experiment where the format of stimulus material in the study phase of each trial could consist of a dance posture or a dance movement, as could the test phase. By ‘crossing’ the two levels of study formats with the two levels of test formats, four different combination stimulus formats were generated for presentation to participants, i.e. presentation of movement (motion) stimulus at both study and test, presentation of posture (form) stimulus at both study and test, presentation of movement at study and posture at test and presentation of posture

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at study and movement at test. Participants were asked to indicate whether the source of the dance-like material in the test component of each trial – the action – was the same or different from the source of the material presented in the study component of the trial. The goal was to gauge whether observers could correctly identify an action on the basis of only a static posture image. If so, this would suggest that when observing dance-like action, static images of postures are encoded and the processing of posture or form supports action recognition. The results indicate that as in visual perception, dance-like body actions are primarily stored as dynamic movements in visual working memory, although some posture-based information is encoded and available to aid recognition. More specifically, and as predicted, accuracy was greatest when the study and test formats matched each other in format, and weakened when they did not match. Surprisingly, accuracy in the posture–posture condition was significantly greater than accuracy in the movement–movement condition. Rather than the presence of movement helping in the recognition of actions by observers with little or no dance experience, the additional detail in the moving stimulus may have exceeded the capacity of visual working memory. Since both form and action pathways are active during the perception of body movement, we predicted that a movement item might be accurately recognized on the basis of only a static snapshot of the goal posture at test, but that recognition would be best when the entire movement stimulus was available. This hypothesis was supported, with accuracy in the movement–movement condition being significantly greater than accuracy in the movement–posture condition. Finally, accuracy in the posture–posture condition was significantly greater than accuracy in the posture–movement condition. When postures were observed, no motion was encoded, and therefore recognition of material when presented with the posture–movement condition required a search of the test item to be able to recognize the correct static posture. Our studies showed that recognition of body movement based only on posture was possible, but it was poor relative to recognition based on the entire movement stimulus. The results suggest that dance-like actions are more than just static postures in visual working memory. The experiments reported in Vicary et al. (2014) and Vicary and Stevens (2014) conform with current conceptualizations of working memory not as a series of modality-specific stores,

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but rather as an extension of the perceptual process and a bridge to long-term memory networks. Working memory in dance is evident in the attentional focus needed on the part of the dancer, choreographer or observer. A dancer keeping track of the location and trajectories of other dancers on stage or in the studio during improvisation, or when performing a set piece, is one example. A choreographer may be imaging multiple temporal and spatial possibilities concurrently. Observers watching a performance may select an area of intense concentration from a much larger visual array and auditory soundscape, or may deliberately divide their attention across different pools of dance activity as a dance work unfolds in the four dimensions of space and time. Visual attention has been described as a kind of spotlight that may be narrow or broad in its focus. With tight focus, more detail may be gleaned, whilst a broader focus might shed light on a range of material, but in less detail, with reduced likelihood of retention in memory. Expertise is known to affect the size and shape of the attentional spotlight (Hüttermann, Memmert and Simons 2014). The model of dynamic attending proposed by Jones (2004) builds on the assumption that humans attend and entrain to different timescales of the environment – from milliseconds, to minutes, hours, days, years – with such temporal entrainment optimizing attentional resources at regular points in time (Wyeth, Ong and Stevens 2015). The metrical structures of some music, poetry or dance exploit the capacity for humans to synchronize with, or entrain to, the beat or pulse of an external stimulus, as well as the capacity for heightened attention for material that occurs at temporally predictable moments in time (Phillips-Silver and Keller 2012). A dynamic attending view can also be applied to the temporal and personal entrainment that probably takes place between a dancer and an external stimulus such as music (Toiviainen, Luck and Thompson 2010), or between two or more dancers either in the presence or absence of music (Waterhouse, Watts and Bläsing 2014). Attention and working memory are involved in improvising, dance making and dancers interacting. Just as working memory is essential for spoken dialogue and conversation – to retain a cumulative sense of what has been said to us and what we have said – so too is the on-line (i.e. live) retention of dance phrases and sections crucial for creating dance in the moment, or for learning, setting and

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rehearsing new pieces. Retaining dance actions in working memory is cognitively effortful, especially for people with little or no dance experience. We demonstrated that simply asking inexperienced dancers to hold an off-balance stance (‘Tandem Romberg’ position, where one foot is placed ahead of the other with the toes of one foot just touching the heel of the other foot; Diamantopoulos, Clifford and Birchall 2003) drew on their finite cognitive resources with the result that their working memory for simple whole body actions was reduced. As predicted, the average number of actions retained when in a balanced stance exceeded the number retained when standing in the off-balance Tandem Romberg position. Participants with a greater amount of dance experience were less affected by the offbalance stance, and their recall of actions did not differ between the balanced and off-balance conditions (Wachowicz, Stevens and Byron 2011). Similarly, we have demonstrated the cognitive demand of retaining a novel dance-pop sequence in long-term memory by people with little or no dance experience (Betteridge, Stevens and Bailes 2014). I will turn now to consider dance knowledge in human long-term memory in more detail.

Procedural and declarative long-term memory for contemporary dance During post-performance Q&A sessions between audience members and contemporary dance artists, the question of how a forty-five or sixty-minute set work is retained is often asked. How does memory for dance work? A journalist once dismissed the need for psychological research into dance memory, scoffing to me that she could see no difference between dancing and running. Differences of course include that dance is an open skill, particularly in improvisation; it is expressive and has creative intent. Once learnt and whilst not the whole story, a dance phrase or piece is an acquired motor sequence that may appear like an automatic ‘motor programme’ or habit characteristic of procedural memory. Procedural memory is unconscious and implicit, which distinguishes it from semantic or declarative memory, where long-term knowledge can be declared consciously in words. Consistent with the idea of memory for dance as habit and skill-based procedural memory, studies conducted

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by others and ourselves on memory span for discrete movement items demonstrate the procedural memory standard phenomenon of chaining. That is, when one item is lost in recalling a sequence, subsequent items in the chain are also lost (Allard and Starkes 1991; Wachowicz, Stevens and Byron 2011). As a cultural form, contemporary dance is so much more than mere ‘procedural memory’ or a motor programme. Contemporary dance artists generate or communicate the underlying intentions for phrases, sections, works (deLahunta 2007) influenced also by context, including the space, the ensemble, purpose and so on. The passing of a dance from one person to another often occurs through a process of showing and doing (Grove 2005). In creating and learning material, dancers develop movement pathways and make intellectual and/or expressive connections through the movement material. Such contextual and intellectual meaning enables movement material to be sequenced and chunked. Meaning, then, in connecting movement phrases and ideas, serves as a kind of cognitive glue. Meaningful material is remembered. Ideas from various modalities and settings can be expressed and can inform the generation of material – a rhythm, lilt, photo, concept, word, emotion, sound, smell, kinaesthetic feeling, action (Stevens et al. 2003). Such ideas are then expressed or declared with the embodied brain. In this way, whilst not declared or spoken in words, contemporary dance is declarative knowledge. Thought is ‘made visible’ in contemporary dance with the body ‘declaring’ ideas that are communicative, expressive and meaningful at cognitive, perceptual, kinaesthetic, social and affective levels (Stevens and McKechnie 2005a). Visible thought and explicit or declarative knowledge for dance can be examined in various ways. As the knowledge or memory is not necessarily verbal or propositional in form, new experimental methods that can elicit memory in observable and quantifiable ways are needed. One can of course simply ask a dancer to recall from memory a work performed earlier in their career and record their reproduction of the material. For a scientific account of memory two things are crucial here. The first is to have access to the veridical or original record of the work so that comparisons can be made to see what is remembered and what is forgotten. If the recalled work is shorter in duration than the original, either lapses/omissions and/or some speeding up of material may explain the discrepancy (Stevens et al. 2009b; see Figure 2.1). Second, the task needs to

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FIGURE 2.1 James Batchelor, Sam Maxted and Rebecca Frasca (left to right) in Reactional Movement, a new work choreographed by Emma Batchelor and James Batchelor. James is wearing reflective markers for detection by a Vicon motion capture system. His movement in three dimensions was tracked and recorded by ten high-speed cameras. This live performance with an audience, recorded at QL2 Dance in Canberra, Australia in 2007, formed an experiment where the dancers performed in silence and then again with an accompanying soundscape. Performance under the two experimental conditions differed only slightly with some compression of the durations of stillnesses in the condition performed in silence; the performance in silence was around 5 per cent shorter in total duration (Stevens et al. 2009b). The results suggest that whilst soundscape or music is a strong associate in memory, its presence is not necessary for accurate recall by experienced dancers. Photograph by Garth Paine.

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be difficult enough to force errors even from experts. Processes of human memory are revealed less by 100 per cent accurate recall than by patterns of errors made in recall including whether memory falters at certain points in a sequence or work and whether material is lost, compressed or fabricated. Dance historian Garry Lester presented me with an opportunity to probe mature dancers’ memory for a set of dance exercises, created by dance-drama choreographer Margaret Barr, which the dancers had not performed for between three and thirty years. Four dancers were asked to recall each of seven exercises individually and in silence – that is, in the absence of the musical excerpt with which each exercise had always been performed. The dancer who had performed the material most recently had close to 100 per cent accurate recall of each exercise. The rate of recall from the other dancers varied from zero to 100 per cent. The dancers’ ‘love’ of the exercise was associated with greater recall. Once the associated musical excerpt was played, more movement material was recalled. When the dancers were brought together in the studio and the music presented, their knowledge of an exercise was visibly distributed across the group of dancers, with some remembering some aspects whilst others remembered a different part that then cued recall from the rest of the group. In addition to the recall of motor actions, the dancers recalled the inflection and sound of the choreographer’s voice, the way they felt in response to the accompanying music, the politics and social milieu of the times in which the material was first learnt (1960s, 1970s and 1980s in Sydney), their sense of self and who they were at that time, and even the smell of the studio. Longterm memory for contemporary dance then is multi-modal – visual, motor, auditory, and situated socially, personally, emotionally and culturally. The dancers’ brains and bodies are the repositories of dances learnt; their own body is sufficient but not necessary for recall, with recall being comparable using either one’s body or the manipulation of a small wooden mannequin (Stevens, Ginsborg and Lester 2011; see Figure 2.2). Anecdotally, contemporary dancers’ memories are highly plastic and adaptable. A company of professional dancers can retain subtle changes made to a phrase or section as it evolves in the studio, sometimes just before a performance, and often as an entire work develops through a season or subsequent re-staging. Somehow, the memory adapts and, most times, the most recent version is recalled.

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FIGURE 2.2 In the Margaret Barr dance documentation project, a mannequin was used to investigate the effect on recall when the dancer’s use of movement of their own body or kinaesthetic sense had been minimized. The dancers were equally effective at recalling movement material from long-term memory using the mannequin or their own body (Stevens, Ginsborg and Lester 2011). Photograph by Catherine Stevens.

In performance, timing and memory are precise and reliable. How then, can an experiment be designed to investigate a system so seemingly infallible? Theories of human memory are built from studies that elicit memory failure – 100 per cent accurate recall under different experimental conditions provides little insight into memory processes and mechanisms. Recently, in collaboration with a group of dancers, we have developed a new method to elicit memory lapses in professional contemporary dance artists. Together with Scott deLahunta, Kim Vincs, Elizabeth Old and dancers from Australian Dance Theatre (ADT; see cover image), we devised ‘The Memory Challenge’ (Stevens et al. 2015). The group of ADT dancers was divided in two and each group asked to come up with a set of dance memory challenges for the other group, drawing on the company’s extensive repertoire of set works.

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The experiment consisted of fourteen trials, a mix of solo and duo excerpts from six different ADT works. The veridical version of each excerpt was available from the company’s digital database of pieces and they ranged in length from one to seven minutes. The method succeeded in that memory lapses were evident in most trials. The starting position with respect to body form and location in space was often recalled; when it was not, little else followed. Actions rather than dynamic or expression were generally recalled. Some excerpts elicited memory for rhythm, breath, sound. Within a duo, memory appeared to be distributed across the two dancers with one often able to cue the other, akin to a collaborative ‘dynamical system’ in which wholes and forms emerge from simple elements via processes of self-organization (Port and van Gelder 1995; Freeman 1999). A dynamical view can be applied to identify pulses, rhythms and patterns that spark an idea that is utterable in movement (Jalics et al. 1997; Bradley and Stuart 1998; Stevens and McKechnie 2005b). In the context of a memory task, and according to a dynamical systems view, the whole system’s behaviour is continuous with each component acting and interacting with others in the system. Each state of the system determines the next state so that a structure or form evolves. The process is one of self-organization where solutions emerge to problems defined by particular constraints of the immediate situation (Thelen 1995). In the context of movement, there will be a number of physical constraints that will influence and determine the evolving form. Constraints might include mass, limb structure, size, weight, flexibility, space limitations, and so on. Within the set of constraints there will only be a certain number of possibilities so that the evolving movement is determined by what has come before and the context in which the movement is set. Importantly though, the movement is flowing, continuous, transitional – it is motion (or its withholding, from which meaning is re-derived) rather than simply ‘moves’ or ‘steps’ predetermined to some degree by a chosen musical accompaniment. During a focus group conducted with the dancers after the Memory Challenge experiment had concluded, the artists brainstormed more than two dozen factors that impact, for better or for worse, their memory and accurate recall of a set dance work. From the experiment, it is evident that physiological arousal, motivation and emotion are central to accurate recall.

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In many cultures, dance and music are inseparable. ‘Mousike’ from the Greek ‘mousa’ is the union of song, dance and poetry to which the Muses gave their name (Murray and Wilson 2004). Music, dance, song, word and visual art are intertwined in Australian Aboriginal performance (Ellis 1984). From an embodied cognition point of view, there are benefits for memory from their combination. As an example, folk music from the Balkans, often marked by asymmetric metrical structure, is learnt inseparably from dance. Stimulation of multiple modalities and sensorimotor coupling mean that there are at least two codes in memory – motor, auditory, verbal, visual, emotional, olfactory – supported by activation of a number of distributed but interconnected neural networks. Spreading activation across interconnected networks will enable stimulation of just one mode to activate associated networks – seeing the dance actions, for example, may elicit the song words and melody. Redundancy in the system, such as metre captured in the dance, words and music and the widespread neural activation associated with those modes, goes some way to explain the preservation of music and dance in human memory in old age when other cognitive skills have begun to decline. The many sensory and cognitive dimensions of dance and music as an integrated memory should ensure that the more cues to those dimensions that are present in the environment, the greater the chance for their precise recall. Rather than conceptualizing dance as steps performed to music or music as an accompaniment to dance, music may be considered an extension and ‘auralization’ of dance and dance an embodied and visual expression of music (Vass-Rhee 2011). Added to this integrated view of dance and music as works of art and as the stuff of memory, judicious stillnesses and silences play powerfully expressive roles.

Unconscious memory for dance The long-term memory and associated knowledge examined in studies with Margaret Barr’s dancers and ADT, and prompted by the transparent and explicit nature of our experimental method, are declarative and conscious. Some or all of the material recalled may have been acquired or learnt through more implicit and unconscious

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means. Contrasting with explicit memory, much of our knowledge is implicit or out of conscious awareness. It is also the case that knowledge can be learnt or acquired implicitly or incidentally; that is, learnt without having had the intention to learn. Young children’s acquisition of spoken language is learnt implicitly. Through immersion in a particular linguistic environment, the child becomes attuned to perceiving and producing the sounds and eventually words, phrases and sentences of that language. Knowledge of Western tonal music, for people raised in the West, is also learnt largely implicitly, through ‘mere exposure’ (Zajonc 1968; Huron 2006; Rohrmeier and Rebuschat 2012). The human brain has been conceptualized as a pattern recognition system, a system sensitive to the statistical regularities such as frequency of occurrence of certain sounds, sound combinations and sequences. Through exposure, we learn the probabilities between certain linguistic sounds (phonemes) or musical tones or durations that follow each other. This process of internalizing the regularities of an environment is called statistical learning and is thought to underpin the learning of patterns in vision, speech and music. Sensitivity to such statistical regularities is related to developing expectations of what and when things will occur in a visual scene, a sentence or a sonata. Our brain anticipates and predicts based on the statistical structure of prior experiences. A laboratory method for studying implicit learning uses an unfamiliar artificial grammar applied to events such as discrete written alphanumeric characters, spoken phonemes or musical tones. Participants are introduced to examples of sequences of tones or letters that are structured according to the rules of the novel grammar: e.g. R always follows V. Presentation of these materials in the exposure phase is usually contextualized with a fictional scenario or ‘cover story’ to encourage incidental rather than intentional learning. In a subsequent phase, a new set of sequences is presented where some of the sequences follow the grammar and others do not; the accuracy of selecting the grammatical sequences is recorded. Capturing unconscious processes is challenging and, in some quarters, still contentious in psychology. For this reason, there are stringent criteria to be met before concluding that the learning that has taken place within an experimental session is implicit or unconscious. The criteria refer to the implicit nature of learning rather than the depth or success of learning. Implicit learning is said to have occurred when participants select grammatical sequences at

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a rate significantly greater than that predicted by chance; compared with a control group who had not completed the exposure phase; and there is no correlation between the confidence in their judgement and accuracy of responding; that is, there is no relationship between how accurate an individual’s recall is and their feeling of confidence in the precision of their recall. It suggests material learnt implicitly is completely outside of conscious awareness. Does incidental or implicit learning apply to contemporary dance? With exposure to exemplars of dance sequences, do observers internalize the statistical regularities – the transitional probabilities – and develop expectations for what will happen and when? Is the learning implicit? These questions were addressed with the presentation of three, four and five-item sequences of contemporary dance movement extending from nine to nineteen seconds, and sequences according to the rules of a novel or ‘artificial’ grammar (Opacic, Stevens and Tillmann 2009; for an example, see http://katestevens.weebly.com/stimuli.html). As the cover story, participants who had little experience with contemporary dance were asked to view the sequences and rate whether they had seen them before. The set of sequences was played in a random order with each sequence presented twice. In a second and unexpected phase, new sequences made up of the same dance phrase items, but ordered either according to the grammar or not, were presented and participants indicated whether each was grammatical; they also gave a rating of the confidence of their decision. As hypothesized, the group who had completed the exposure phase was better than chance level and significantly better than the control group in selecting grammatical sequences. There was no relationship between accuracy and confidence ratings, suggesting that the learning was implicit. This laboratory-based experiment provides evidence for the implicit learning of relatively long sequences of contemporary dance where the likelihood of one or two phrases following each other is learnt without conscious awareness by observers with little dance experience or domain-specific knowledge. The results have implications for audience development. Novice observers begin to develop expectations or knowledge of dance structure during just ten to twenty minutes of exposure. Increased familiarity with material is associated with increased liking and preference. Consumers opt for familiar products, faces, music and things they recognize; such recognition may be underpinned by

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perceptual fluency, an offshoot of statistical learning. Familiarity then breeds content with obvious ramifications for audience building (Zajonc 1968; Opacic, Stevens and Tillmann 2009).

Expectation and prediction as long-term memory for dance Another way to test the hypothesis that long-term memory for contemporary dance takes the form of expectations is to compare approaches to the perception of dance by observers who are very experienced watching and performing dance with those much less experienced. The recording and analysis of eye movements, or fixations, of domain experts and novices as they view visual stimuli is one way to elicit and quantify expectations and specialist knowledge in long-term memory. Whilst reading, searching for an object or watching dance we continually make eye movements, called ‘saccades’. Between saccades, the eyes remain relatively still, with fixations of about 200–300 milliseconds. One reason that saccades are made frequently is because of acuity limitations. The visual field can be divided into three regions that vary in acuity: foveal (central 2 degrees of vision; good acuity), parafoveal (extends out to 5 degrees on either side of fixation; poor acuity), and peripheral (region beyond the fovea; very poor acuity). We move our eyes to fixate on that part of the environment we want to see clearly or focus attention on. Characteristics of stimuli in the parafovea and periphery determine whether or not a saccade needs to be made to identify the stimulus; moving stimuli such as dance frequently drive saccades and fixations. Beyond this perceptual level, knowledge from long-term memory – ‘expectations’ – also influence saccades and fixations. Eye movements provide detailed, quantitative information about moment-to-moment visual attention. Although rapid covert shifts of attention do not necessarily involve eye movements, the pattern of eye fixations and the trajectory of eye movements are informative (though not unique) behavioural indicators of aspects of visual selective attention. Fixation time measures the processing time given to overtly attended regions. Longer times are often associated

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with more interesting, puzzling or difficult material and are likely to be influenced by observer expertise. For example, novice pilots dwell nearly twice as long as experts on the information-rich attitude directional indicator, requiring more time to extract less obvious information, and novice car drivers record longer headdown dwells than experts. If it is the case that expertise is associated with the development of expectations for the artform and its genres, called schematic expectations (Bharucha 1994: 216), and for particular dance works or veridical expectations, and if expectations guide the observer in knowing where and when to look, then the eye fixations of expert versus novice observers will differ (Stevens et al. 2010). More specifically, guided by their acquired expectations, dance experts, like experts in other domains from aviation to reading to sport, will fixate regions of a dance film for shorter amounts of time than novices. Expectations facilitate viewing by guiding, anticipating, predicting and filling in. Using a five-minute dance duet that we had commissioned as a film for the experiment (Sue Healey’s 13 & 32), four dance experts, four dance novices, and the choreographer viewed the duet twice. Eye fixation and movements were recorded using head-mounted video cameras. As hypothesized, dance experts fixated regions of the film for shorter durations and their eye movements, or saccades, covered a greater spatial area than those of dance novices. Encouragingly, and consistent with results of the artificial grammar experiment, novice observers appeared to develop veridical expectations for the particular dance film and, whilst not eclipsing the experts, recorded significantly shorter fixations when viewing the film a second time. Both expert and novice groups fixated the background as if this was an effective way to view both dancers, especially when they were dancing in separate spatial locations in the frame. The choreographer showed evidence of anticipating where the dancers would move; the experts also did this but less accurately, followed by the novice observers (Stevens et al. 2010). Eye movements provided an indirect measure of rapid cognitive processes without the need for verbalization. Dance experts’ enhanced speed of visual processing suggests heightened capacity for anticipating movement and rapidly processing dance material, including body and movement configurations, thanks to acquired schemata or expectations in long-term memory.

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What distinguishes dance knowledge in long-term memory? The experiments reported here come from a tradition of deducing hypotheses from theory and testing those hypotheses using experimental methods applied to human perception and cognition. The results provide support for concepts such as associative learning across multiple modalities, statistical learning, artificial grammar learning, mere exposure, and schematic and veridical expectations in the context of memory for contemporary dance. The theories have their origin in studies of language acquisition, speech perception, music perception and cognition, and memory for poetry and drama. On the one hand, the psychological concepts and theories have been upheld, and on the other hand, memory for contemporary dance draws on general perceptual and cognitive processes that appear to apply to music, drama and poetry. What then, if anything, is unique to memory for contemporary dance? The creation, performance and perception of dance is a microcosm of human behaviour. Not only is cognition in dance fully embodied, the body itself is the instrument. The creation of set works and improvisation draw on multi-modal stimuli and triggers and, not surprisingly, associations in memory are multi-modal, with cues to recalling material from memory taking all forms. Long-term memory itself is multi-modal, spatial and temporal. In ensemble settings, memory for a work can be distributed across the group and extend to tools and artifacts (deLahunta, Clarke and Barnard 2012). Distributed memory and knowledge refer to relations between the dancer and choreographer where such relations are interpersonal and social (Stevens and Leach 2015). An example of externalized memory in dance is when dancers indicate body movements with the hands, effectively visualizing the key components of a choreography by ‘marking’ them (Allard and Starkes 1991; Kirsh et al. 2009). Marking is both an energy-saving rehearsal technique that can verify movement, rhythm, direction and spacing, and benefit cognition during the rehearsal process (Warburton et al. 2013). Perhaps the most striking distinction from most behaviours other than improvisation is the capacity for the dancer to break habits in creating new work, form habits to perform set work from memory, and then break those habits again in preparing the next new work.

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The capacity to adapt, subtly modify and retain the latest version is an intriguing and compelling aspect of dancer memory that appears unstudied and waits close investigation. Pure speculation on the processes at work here includes the idea that with extensive dance training and expertise there is heightened capacity for conscious control of procedural memory concerning the body and motor skills. As noted earlier, procedural memory is largely unconscious and implicit. It may be that with dance training comes an ability to bring motor programmes to conscious awareness without disruption to the skill or programme. Conscious attention may enable nuance and expression not achievable by those less expert as well as breaking habitual motor routines and creating new pathways and patterns; it may also enable conscious de-coupling of interacting systems such as visual perception and action. The inverse of explaining perceptual and cognitive processes by studying domain experts and comparing their performance with those less proficient is to investigate situations that give rise to perceptual errors (‘illusions’) or a system that has sustained damage in some way. Examples of the latter approaches can be found in Fuentes et al. (2013) and Longo et al. (2009).

Research questions from the artform The next frontier in cognitive science investigations of dance is for increased interdisciplinary collaboration. That is, for research questions and challenges to arise from artists and choreographers, ideally, that counter or conflict with psychological concepts or that extend or even break psychological concepts or assumptions. What counterintuitive hypotheses might exist? Or what new hypotheses and theories might arise from an understanding of the decisionmaking and intuitions that inform the creation and production of dance? It is possible for questions from the studio or performance to be addressed in the laboratory or, with the control and rigour of lab investigations, to be conducted in the studio or theatre (Stevens et al. 2009a; Ferguson, Schubert and Stevens 2010; Stevens et al. 2014). Methods also exist for experiments involving more temporally extended artistic stimuli. Importantly, studies with some control

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permit greater generalization than those without such control (Banaji and Crowder 1989). Some progress towards interdisciplinary teams and questions has already been made (e.g. deLahunta, Barnard and McGregor 2009; Reynolds and Reason 2012; Waterhouse, Watts and Bläsing 2014). Just as techniques used by visual artists to convey distance, depth, colour and motion from a canvas predate by centuries psychology’s explanation of the perception of distance, depth and so on (Lehrer 2007), so too are dance artists and choreographers likely to be knowledgeable of dance perception, perception-action coupling, learning of and memory for dance. Cognitive science ‘reverse engineering’ dance works and studio processes will likely unlock many of the remaining mysteries of memory for human movement.

Notes 1 Extrastriate and fusiform body areas. 2 Including posterior superior temporal sulcus.

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Beilock, S. L. (2009), ‘Grounding cognition in action: Expertise, comprehension, and judgment’, Progress in Brain Research, 174: 3–11. Betteridge, G. L., C. J. Stevens and F. A. Bailes (2014), ‘Beat it!: Music overloads novice dancers’, Applied Cognitive Psychology, 28 (5): 765–71. Bharucha, J. J. (1994), ‘Tonality and expectation’, in R. Aiello and J. Sloboda (eds), Musical Perceptions, 213–39, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bläsing, B., G. Tenenbaum and T. Schack (2009), ‘The cognitive structure of movements in classical dance’, Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 10 (3): 350–60. Bläsing, B., B. Calvo-Merino, E. Cross, C. Jola, J. Honisch and C. J. Stevens (2012), ‘Neurocognitive control in dance perception and performance’, Acta Psychologica, 139 (2): 300–8. Bradley, E. and J. Stuart (1998), ‘Using chaos to generate variations on movement sequences’, Chaos, 8 (4): 800–7. Calvo-Merino, B., D. E. Glaser, J. Grèzes, R. E. Passingham and P. Haggard (2005), ‘Action observation and acquired motor skills: An FMRI study with expert dancers’, Cerebral Cortex, 15 (8): 1243–9. Calvo-Merino, B., S. Ehrenberg, D. Leung and P. Haggard (2010), ‘Experts see it all: Configural effects in action observation’, Psychological Research, 74 (4): 400–6. Cortese, A. and C. Rossi-Arnaud (2010), ‘Working memory for ballet moves and spatial locations in professional ballet dancers’, Applied Cognitive Psychology, 24 (2): 266–86. Cowan, N. (2000), ‘The magical number 4 in short-term memory: A reconsideration of mental storage’, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 24 (1): 87–185. Cross, E. S. and L. F. Ticini (2012), ‘Neuroaesthetics and beyond: New horizons in applying the science of the brain to the art of dance’, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 11 (1): 5–16. Cross, E. S., A. F. Hamilton and S. T. Grafton (2006), ‘Building a motor simulation de novo: Observation of dance by dancers’, Neuroimage, 31 (3): 1257–67. Decety, J. (2010), ‘To what extent is the experience of empathy mediated by shared neural circuits?’, Emotion Review, 2 (3): 204–7. deLahunta, S., ed. (2007), Capturing Intention: Documentation, Analysis and Notation Research Based on the Work of Emio Greco | PC, Amsterdam: Emio Greco | PC and Amsterdam School of the Arts. deLahunta, S., P. Barnard and W. McGregor (2009), ‘Augmenting choreography: Insights and inspiration from science’, in J. Butterworth and L. Wildschut (eds), Contemporary Choreography: A Critical Reader, 431–48, Abingdon, UK: Routledge.

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deLahunta, S., G. Clarke and P. Barnard (2012), ‘A conversation about choreographic thinking tools’, Journal of Dance & Somatic Practices, 3 (1–2): 243–59. Diamantopoulos, I. I., E. Clifford and J. P. Birchall (2003), ‘Short-term learning effects of practice during the performance of the tandem Romberg test’, Clinical Otolaryngology, 28 (4): 308–13. Downing, P. E., M. V. Peelen, A. J. Wiggett and B. D. Tew (2006), ‘The role of the extrastriate body area in action perception’, Social Neuroscience, 1 (1): 52–62. Ebbinghaus, H. ([1885]1913), Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology, trans. H. A. Ruger and C. E. Bussenius, New York: Teachers College Press. Ellis, C. J. (1984), ‘The nature of Australian Aboriginal music’, The International Journal of Music Education, 4 (1): 47–50. Ferguson, S., E. Schubert and C. J. Stevens (2010), ‘Movement in a contemporary dance work and its relation to a continuous emotional response’, in Proceedings of the Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME), 481–4, Sydney, NSW: University of Technology, 15–18 June. Foster, R. (1976), Knowing in My Bones, London: Adam & Charles Black. Freeman, W. J. (1999), How Brains Make Up Their Minds, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Fuentes, C. T., M. Pazzaglia, M. R. Longo, G. Scivoletto and P. Haggard (2013), ‘Body image distortions following spinal cord injury’, Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry, 84 (2): 201–7. Gallese, V., L. Fadiga, L. Fogassi and G. Rizzolatti (1996), ‘Action recognition in the premotor cortex’, Brain, 119 (2): 593–609. Giese, M. A. and T. Poggio (2003), ‘Neural mechanisms for the recognition of biological movements’, Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 4 (3): 179–92. Golomer, E. and P. Dupui (2000), ‘Spectral analysis of adult dancers’ sways: Sex and interaction vision-proprioception’, International Journal of Neuroscience, 105 (1–4): 15–26. Grove, R. (2005), ‘Show me what you just did’, in R. Grove, C. J. Stevens and S. McKechnie (eds), Thinking in Four Dimensions: Creativity and Cognition on Contemporary Dance, 30–49, Carlton: Melbourne University Press. Hauk, O., I. Johnsrude and F. Pulvermüller (2004), ‘Somatotopic representation of action words in human motor and premotor cortex’, Neuron, 41 (2): 301–7. Huron, D. (2006), Sweet Anticipation: Music and the Psychology of Expectation, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

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Hüttermann, S., D. Memmert and D. J. Simons (2014), ‘The size and shape of the attentional “spotlight” varies with differences in sports expertise’, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 20 (2): 147–57. Jalics, L., H. Hemami, B. Clymer and A. Groff (1997), ‘Rocking, tapping and stepping: A prelude to dance’, Autonomous Robots, 4 (3): 227–42. Jean, J., M. Cadopi and A. Ille (2001), ‘How are dance sequences encoded and recalled by expert dancers?’, Current Psychology of Cognition, 20 (5): 325–37. Jola, C., S. Ehrenberg and D. Reynolds (2012), ‘The experience of watching dance: Phenomenological-neuroscience duets’, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 11 (1): 17–37. Jones, M. R. (2004), ‘Attention and timing’, in J. G. Neuhoff (ed.), Ecological Psychoacoustics, 49–87, San Diego, CA: Elsevier Academic Press. Kirsh, D., D. Muntanyola, R. J. Jao, A. Lew and M. Sugihara (2009), ‘Choreographic methods for creating novel, high quality dance’, in L.-L. Chen, L. Feijs, M. Hessler, S. Kyffin, P. L. Liu, K. Overbeeke and B. Young (eds), Proceedings of the 5th International Workshop on Design and Semantics of Form and Movement (DeSForM), 188–95, Taipei: National Taiwan University of Science. Lehrer, J. (2007), Proust Was a Neuroscientist, New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Leslie, K. R., S. H. Johnson-Frey and S. T. Grafton (2004), ‘Functional imaging of face and hand imitation: Towards a motor theory of empathy’, NeuroImage, 21 (2): 601–7. Longo, M. R., F. Schüür, M. P. M. Kammers, M. Tsakiris and P. Haggard (2009), ‘Self awareness and the body image’, Acta Psychologica, 132 (2): 166–72. Miller, G. A. (1956), ‘The magical number seven, plus or minus two: Some limits on our capacity for processing information’, Psychological Review, 63 (2): 81–97. Murray, P. and P. Wilson (2004), Music and the Muses: The Culture of Mousike in the Classical Athenian City, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Oberauer, K. (2009), ‘Design for a working memory’, in B. H. Ross (ed.), The Psychology of Learning and Motivation: Advances in Research and Theory, Vol. 51, 45–100, San Diego, CA: Academic Press. Opacic, T., C. J. Stevens and B. Tillmann (2009), ‘Unspoken knowledge: Implicit learning of structured human dance movement’, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 35 (6): 1570–7. Peelen, M. V. and P. E. Downing (2007), ‘The neural basis of visual body perception’, Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 8: 636–48.

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Phillips-Silver, J. and P. E. Keller (2012), ‘Searching for roots of entrainment and joint action in early musical interactions’, Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 6: 26. Port, R. F. and T. van Gelder, eds (1995), Mind as Motion: Explorations in the Dynamics of Cognition, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Reynolds, D. and M. Reason, eds (2012), Kinesthetic Empathy in Creative and Cultural Practices, Bristol: Intellect. Rohrmeier, M. and P. Rebuschat (2012), ‘Implicit learning and acquisition of music’, Topics in Cognitive Science, 4 (4): 525–53. Rossi-Arnaud, C. M., A. Cortese and V. Cestari (2004), ‘Memory span for movement configurations: The effects of concurrent verbal, motor and visual interference’, Current Psychology of Cognition, 22: 335–49. Sevdalis, V. and P. E. Keller (2010), ‘Cues for self-recognition in point-light displays of actions performed in synchrony with music’, Consciousness and Cognition, 19 (2): 617–26. Smyth, M. M. and L. R. Pendleton (1990), ‘Space and movement in working memory’, The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology: Section A, 42 (2): 291–4. Stevens, C. J. and J. Leach (2015), ‘Bodystorming: Effects of collaboration and familiarity on improvising contemporary dance’, Cognitive Processing, 16 (Suppl. 1): S403–7. Stevens, C. J. and S. McKechnie (2005a), ‘Thinking in action: Thought made visible in contemporary dance’, Cognitive Processing, 6 (4): 243–52. Stevens, C. J. and S. McKechnie (2005b), ‘Minds and motion: Dynamical systems in choreography, creativity, and dance’, in J. Birringer and J. Fenger (eds), Tanz im Kopf: Yearbook 15 of the German Dance Research Society 2004, 241–52, Münster: LIT Verlag. Stevens, C. J., S. Malloch, S. McKechnie and N. Steven (2003), ‘Choreographic cognition: The time-course and phenomenology of creating a dance’, Pragmatics & Cognition, 11 (2): 297–326. Stevens, C. J., E. Schubert, R. Haszard Morris, M. Frear, J. Chen, S. Healey, C. Schoknecht and S. Hansen (2009a), ‘Cognition and the temporal arts: Investigating audience response to dance using PDAs that record continuous data during live performance’, International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 67 (9): 800–13. Stevens, C. J., E. Schubert, S. Wang, C. Kroos and S. Halovic (2009b), ‘Moving with and without music: Scaling and lapsing in time in the performance of contemporary dance’, Music Perception, 26 (5): 451–64. Stevens, C. J., H. Winskel, C. Howell, L-M. Vidal, C. Latimer and J. Milne-Home (2010), ‘Perceiving dance: Schematic expectations guide

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3 Memory in Music Listening and Performance Jane Ginsborg

Introduction In this chapter I reflect on how memory is involved in key aspects of music. An introductory section on the subject of listening to music leads into a more comprehensive review and discussion of the processes whereby singers and instrumental players commit music to memory for the purposes of recalling and performing it. The first main section introduces the role of expectations in active listening to music, which are both retrospective (i.e. we make sense of what we are listening to in relation to what we have just heard) and prospective (i.e. we predict what we are about to hear in relation to what we are listening to ‘in the moment’), and the extent to which our expectations being fulfilled or violated influences our enjoyment of listening. The second section begins with the reminder that performers are also listeners, and that the deliberate practice in which they engage so as to be able to perform from memory involves learning by ear even if they also make use of musical notation such as a composer’s score. A discussion of musicians in oral traditions including folk music and jazz, which are not typically

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notated in the same way as most Western classical music, leads us to consider the range of learning and memorizing strategies that are available to musicians, and that have been recommended by pedagogues over the past century and more, either on the basis of their own personal experience or, latterly, empirical evidence from research. The remainder of the chapter is devoted to this topic, presenting research on memorizing under five sub-headings: 1) Visual, aural, kinaesthetic, analytic and combined strategies; 2) Longitudinal case study research: Practice features and performance cues; 3) Long-term recall; 4) Singers’ strategies for the words and melodies of songs; and 5) Mental representations revisited. Finally I show that converging evidence from a broad range of studies supports the widely-held intuitions, beliefs and experiences of musicians and teachers, particularly as they relate to the communication of performers’ conceptualizations of musical intentions.

The role of memory in listening to music Expectations: Retrospective and prospective memory Memory is intrinsic to the process of listening actively to music. We use retrospective memory when we listen to music actively to make sense of it in the context of music we have already heard – all the music we have ever heard, knowledge of which is stored in long-term memory, and the particular sequences of sounds (timbres, pitches, rhythms, harmonies) immediately preceding our perception of the music ‘in the moment’. We use prospective memory to predict what we are about to hear, and we find music enjoyable because, as the philosopher Leonard Meyer (1956) points out, it both fulfils and violates our expectations. Sometimes, of course, it can do both simultaneously: the first fortissimo chord in Haydn’s ‘Surprise’ Symphony can sound as deliciously unexpected when we know the piece well as when we are hearing it for the first time. This phenomenon was dubbed ‘Wittgenstein’s paradox’ by the psychologists Jay Dowling and Dane Harwood (1986), and the cognitive neuroscientist Jamshed Bharucha (1987) explains it by

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distinguishing between two kinds of expectation, schematic and veridical: Schematic expectations are the automatic, culturally generic expectations . . . generated by a system that has learned to expect the events that are the most likely. Veridical expectations are for the actual next event in a familiar piece, even though this next event may be schematically unexpected. They must be generated by a system that has learned that particular piece. Since schematic expectancies are acquired from hearing many individual pieces, the two kinds of expectancies will converge more often than not for pieces typical of one’s musical culture. Sometimes they will diverge, however, creating the sense of violation of which Meyer wrote. (Bharucha 1994: 216) More recent theories develop Meyer’s and Bharucha’s accounts of the role of expectations in music appreciation; for example, Eugene Narmour’s Implication-Realization theory (1991, 1992), Elizabeth Margulis’s theory of tensions arising from melodic expectations (2005) and David Huron’s ITPRA theory (2006) in which imagination, tension, prediction, reaction and appraisal responses evoke feelings including ‘thrills’ and ‘chills’ (Goldstein 1980; Panksepp 1995). All these rely on prospective memory, the purpose of which is to help us create ‘future adaptive behaviours’ (Huron and Margulis 2010: 580).

The role of memory in performing music Performers as listeners Although not all listeners are performers of music, all performers are listeners. Whilst they listen to their own performances as they unfold, they monitor them in the light of what they have just heard themselves play or sing, and often with reference to their own and others’ previous performances of the same music. Unless they are soloists, singing or playing unaccompanied, they are also listening to the performances of their fellow musicians. Whether or not they are performing from memory, ‘future thinking’ is crucial,

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particularly for local goals concerning the next few moments of the performance (‘I have to get louder on the last note of the phrase, which lasts for seven beats’; ‘I’m going to creep in really quietly at the next entry’).

Deliberate practice Thus, performing music inevitably relies on both retrospective and prospective memory. In oral traditions, musicians rely on retrospective auditory memory to remember the sound of others’ renditions and produce their own versions, if appropriate. When musicians read musical scores or parts, hearing the notated music ‘in their mind’s ear’, they are using a skill that the pianist Walter Gieseking and his teacher Karl Leimer ([1932]1972) called ‘visualization’. The music educator Edwin Gordon (1993) renamed this ‘audiation’ because the sound of music can be imagined when it is being improvised or composed, as well as read from the score. In the context of score-reading, however, audiation involves translating symbols into sounds by drawing on the associations between them that have been learnt and are stored in the musician’s long-term memory. Musicians who perform notated music without the musical score must have committed it to memory. They will have done this via deliberate practice (Ericsson, Krampe and Tesch-Römer 1993), defined most recently as ‘the engagement with full concentration in a training activity designed to improve a particular aspect of performance with immediate feedback, opportunities for gradual refinement by repetition and problem solving’ (Ericsson 2013: 534), using learning and memorizing strategies involving not only visual and auditory, but also conceptual (otherwise known as analytic, involving understanding of the compositional structure of music) and kinaesthetic (otherwise known as ‘motor’ or ‘muscle’) memory. In what follows I discuss musicians’ use of learning and memorizing strategies during practice and how these enable musicians to form different kinds of mental representations on which they draw to play or sing accurately, reliably and yet spontaneously, remembering what has gone before and imagining what is still to come, within the constraints of the music to be performed and the context of the performance.

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Musicians in oral traditions The extent to which musicians in oral traditions are free to produce variants of, or improvise on what may be long-forgotten, originals depends on many factors. These include culture (geographical and historical), genre and whether the musician performs alone or with others. At one end of the spectrum of freedom, so to speak, is the folk singer accompanying him- or herself; at the other end, the Maori singers who perform the chants of their tribes in perfect unison; in between, members of jazz bands who improvise solos between choruses. In Funk and Wagnall’s Dictionary of Folklore, published in 1950 (and therefore well before the establishment of university degrees in the performance of folk music and the widespread use of recording and playback technology), the ethnomusicologist George Herzog wrote: There is usually no technique of teaching, certainly no formal technique, connected with the making and singing of folk songs; they are learned by ear, and transmitted in this fashion from generation to generation. Nor is there any awareness of form or construction on the part of the folk singer; there is no aesthetic or analytic theory in his mind. (qtd. Karpeles 1968: 10) Nevertheless, ‘learning by ear’ implies the matching of new information, such as a tune or lyric heard for the first time, with information relating to similar tunes and lyrics stored in the hearer’s long-term memory; recall, in performance, is unquestionably constrained by the implicit (if not necessarily explicit) awareness of general, aesthetic goals and the specific ‘form or construction’ of the song. In a somewhat deprecatory fashion, reminiscent of Herzog’s comments on folk musicians, the historian Robert Darnton argues that: ‘“singers of tales” [in oral traditions] do not possess the fabulous powers of memory and memorization sometimes attributed to “primitive” peoples. They do not memorize very much at all. Instead they combine stock phrases, formulas, and narrative segments in patterns improvised according to the response of their audience’ (Darnton c. 1984: 19). Yet the impressive ability exhibited by jazz musicians to store, retrieve and combine ‘stock phrases’ at

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will, improvising on ‘riffs’ and ‘licks’ in dozens of modes, relies on information and its organization in long-term memory. The more accurately the music must be performed, the more important it is that it should be memorized deliberately. The chants of Maoris, observed and recorded by the ethnomusicologist Mervyn McLean, exemplify music that is learnt via oral transmission, but in which variants are absolutely taboo; he describes the singers’ ‘involuntary actions such as foot-tapping, swaying, nodding and beating time’ (McLean 1961: 61) ensuring the avoidance of ‘whaekaeke’ or errors in the melody, pitch, words and – especially – highly complex rhythms. A more recent account of how the music was learnt is provided by a member of the Ngati Porou tribe: They [the elders] would wait late at night at the marae, until late and then the lights went down, all the lights were switched off, tilly lamp, candles, they blew it out and the room was in total darkness and they’d practice on us as little children for the retention of memory. They’d practice talking so that we can beam in with our ears and we were more comprehensive and tentative of the information because there was no visibility of our eyes to contaminate our brain, it was totally clear. I marvel at the use of original and traditional methods of learning and here it was being displayed by our elders. (Anaru Kupenga qtd. Mahuika 2012: 287) Metre provides a framework for recall of rhythm, and by extension, the words or lyrics of songs, particularly when they are set to melodies reflecting their natural prosody. Research with young children suggests that they perceive songs initially in terms of their words, reflecting the development of their own singing skills as they acquire the ability to produce rhythms, musical contours and intervals (Welch 2006; Stadler Elmer 2011). Just as the rhymes of poems and songs constrain recall for what comes next by limiting possible alternatives (Rubin 1997, 2006; Chaffin, Logan and Begosh 2009), melodies, stored and retrieved as sequences of linked phrases, also constrain and thus enhance recall of texts. This explains why it can be so much easier for children to learn information such as the alphabet or multiplication tables in the form of songs (e.g. Chazin and Neuschatz 1990), and particularly when they sing as well as hear them. I return to this point when

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I describe singers’ memorization strategies for the words and melodies of songs. Adults have also been found to have superior recall for melodies they have performed than those to which they have merely listened (e.g. Mathias et al. 2014). It is plausible, however, that this is associated with musical training and the ability to read notation; even if a piece of music has been learnt by ear and not from the notated score, as described by teenage participants in a study by the music educator Lucy Green (2012) and almost half of a sample of 240 students at conservatoires and university music departments (Ginsborg and Prior 2011), the performer may nevertheless have encoded it in the form of a mental representation resulting in a memory trace combining visual and kinaesthetic with auditory information. Retrospective auditory memory, then, involves memory for more than ‘sound’ alone. The skill of audiation, as we have seen, includes the ability to imagine what notated music sounds like, regardless of whether the audiator uses the score as an aide-mémoire to recall an actual performance or to conjure up an ideal performance. This skill presupposes musical literacy, usually learnt through singing and/or playing, along with the associations between the bodily movements that produce sound, stored in the form of kinaesthetic (otherwise known as ‘how to’ or procedural) memory and/or the auditory stimuli that are indicated by the notated score, stored in the form of visual and auditory memory. For this reason, attempts by pedagogues to separate visual, auditory and kinaesthetic approaches to the learning and deliberate memorization of music, dating from the early years of the twentieth century but echoed by the proponents of ‘learning styles’ (see, for example, Dunn, Beaudry and Klavas 2002), are bound to fail (Odendaal 2013); all three approaches are needed.

The history of the pedagogy of memorization In her review of the pedagogy of memorization from 1879 to 2006, the music educator Jennifer Mishra (2010) summarizes the history of music performance from memory. Until the mid-nineteenth century, performance from memory had been discouraged, since it was assumed that the music would be played inaccurately: as the composer, conductor, violinist and teacher Leopold (father of the

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more famous Wolfgang Amadeus) Mozart wrote in his Treatise on the fundamental principles of violin-playing (1756): One should not give [a beginner] minuets or other melodious pieces which remain easily in his memory, but should let him at first take the middle parts of concertos wherein are rests, or fugal movements; in a word, pieces in which he has to observe all that is necessary for him to know and read at sight . . . He will, otherwise, accustom himself to play by ear and at random. (Mozart 1756: 35) In his introduction to the exercises he added ‘I must again remind you that the teacher must on no account play the prescribed example to the pupil, for he would then play only by ear . . . Here are the pieces for practice. The more distasteful they are the more am I pleased, for that is what I intended to make them’ (Mozart 1756: 88). Similarly, the composer and virtuoso pianist Jan Nepomuk Hummel in his A Complete Theoretical and Practical Course of Instruction on the Art of Playing the Piano Forte argued that: ‘[the master] should accustom the pupil betimes to direct his eyes to the notes only, and to find the keys by the feel of the fingers . . . Many pupils, particularly children, endeavour at first to play from memory, by which means they never attain to any readiness in reading the notes’ (Hummel 1828: v). Reviews of the cellists Bernhard Romberg and Joseph Merk, dating from 1822 and 1825 respectively, identified and translated from the original German by the cellist and musicologist George Kennaway (personal communication, 16 April 2016) suggest that, whatever Mozart and Hummel might have written in their treatises, some musicians did nevertheless perform from memory: Romberg’s great freedom in his element shows already in his appearance. Spurning the printed music as an aide-mémoire, he takes his place, the magic instrument in his hands, and, without hiding himself behind a music stand, presents to the public the whole picture of a free, unrestricted ruler of the kingdom of tones. The left hand flies with a never before seen ease through high and low positions, while the right swings the bow with an unsurpassed calm and security. Not revealing any courageous

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effort, in spite of the strength of the low strings [when] landing in high positions, the whole bodily strength required by passages of such speed, shows the eye an interesting picture of this artist, such as his marvellously beautiful playing brings to the delighted ear. It sings, to put it in a word, and seizes the listener’s soul by the power of its singing. In the adagio all hearts admitted themselves overcome by his art, which were already overcome and carried away in the preceding fiery allegro by the force of his tones. The applause acknowledged the character of stormy joy, and at the end of the finale hardly seemed to want to end (‘Novellistik’ 1822: 25–6); Herr M[erk] does not play, like Romberg usually does, without having the notes before him, yet one sees that he does not anxiously follow them, that he keeps the orchestra in view, and now and then reins in its turbulence; in short, that he moves with complete freedom and certainty, like a man of the world, not fearfully observing the tradition, but establishing it. (Rellstab 1825: 170) Whilst the pedagogue Maria Anfossi recommended that singers should, ‘[if] a phrase begins a little before the turning of the page, turn first and sing such bar or bars from memory’ (Anfossi c. 1840: 77), the first pianist to play in public without the musical score was Clara Wieck (later Schumann) in 1837. She performed Beethoven’s Sonata in F, op. 57 (Chissell 1983) and was indicted accordingly by the author, composer and singer Bettina von Arnim as ‘“the most insufferable artist she had ever come across” who had the “audacity” to play the whole of her programmes by heart’ (May 1912: 196). Nevertheless, in 1838 the composer and virtuoso pianist Franz Liszt is reported to have played more than forty works by composers including Beethoven, Weber, Chopin, Scarlatti and Handel in Vienna, all from memory; the following year, the pianist Carl Czerny, who had been one of Beethoven’s pupils, advocated memorization for his students, writing in his Letters to a young lady, on the art of playing the pianoforte, as follows: ‘It is very necessary . . . that you should study and commit to memory a good number of little, easy, but tasteful pieces; so that, on such occasions, you may be able to play them by heart’ (Czerny 1839: 41). In 1847, the nineyear-old Georges Bizet (subsequently best known for his operas) performed piano sonatas by Mozart from memory, inspiring the

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parents and managers of subsequent child prodigies to demonstrate ever more impressive feats of memory as well as pianism. Many commentators in the 1870s were critical of performers from memory, particularly conductors (see Hiller 1872), but it is clear that by the turn of the twentieth century pianists and singers were being exhorted to perform from memory, and pedagogues were beginning to give advice on memorizing strategies. Some early recommendations foreshadow the findings of the empirical research that has been undertaken much more recently, and which I discuss later in this chapter. The four ‘forms of memory belonging respectively to the ear, the fingers, the eye, and the intellect employed more or less continuously throughout the progress of a piece’ had been identified by the pedagogue Frederick Shinn (1898: 1), but the great piano teacher Leschetizky argued not only for the preeminence of the intellect, but also for methods still used today: Thought is indispensable in the study of pieces, as they are learned first by the brain, and from that by the fingers . . . To memorize a piece, read it through at the keyboard only once, to get its outline without creating any faulty habits of fingering. Then take one or two measures at a time . . . analyse the harmonies, and decide upon the fingering and pedalling. (Brée and Bernstein [1913]1997: 57) As the Irish baritone and teacher Harry Plunket Greene reminded singers: Song deals with the great human emotions expressed in words, and the singer stands face to face with his audience. Every friend of expression that has been given him he is in duty bound to make the most of. Hard work is not easy, memorizing is a work of extreme laboriousness, but when that work is done, it is in the singer’s possession for ever. (Plunket Greene 1912: 12) Echoing the approach suggested by Leschetizky, which we would describe nowadays as ‘top-down’, Plunket Greene set out two main rules for learning (‘Classify your song; Find your fundamental rhythm and absorb it’) and five subordinate rules for memorizing: 1 Learn the song in rough. 2 Memorize it.

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3 Polish it musically first. 4 Reconcile the phrasing to the text. 5 Absorb the accompaniment of the song. (Plunket Greene 1912: 233–7) Other pedagogues noted the roles of automatization for singers: ‘In studying a song, the first thing to do is memorize it, so that the mind will not be taxed with trying to recall the words and the melody’ (Taylor c. 1914: 26); and, again following Leschetizky, mental practice: ‘all work of learning and memorizing music should be mental. When the mind is concentrated upon learning the melody, rhythm and construction of a composition, the voice should not be used’ (Curtis 1914: 26). Edwin Hughes expanded on Shinn’s forms of memory and introduced the notion of analytic memory, leading to the development of mental representations: Piano music may be memorized in three ways: by ear, visual memory, either of the notes on the printed page or the notes on the keyboard, and by finger memory or reflex action [strongly discouraged on the previous page of the article]. On one or both of the first two ways are dependent the very useful and important methods of learning the harmonic and formal structure of the composition to be memorized and of being able to say the notes, or at least to bring up a very distinct mental picture of them. (Hughes 1915: 595) Today’s critics and audiences expect solo pianists and singers to perform from memory in most circumstances, although exceptions are typically made for contemporary and newly-composed music on the grounds that it can be difficult to memorize, particularly on short notice. Conductors often prefer not to use a score, and players of instruments other than the piano may choose to perform concertos from memory. It is only over the past century or so, however, that these conventions have become established. As performance from memory became more common, it became necessary for pedagogues to teach memorizing strategies, initially on the basis of their own experiences as performers. Many of these strategies have been passed down from teacher to pupil; accordingly, they are still taught and used by musicians. They have

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also attracted the attention of researchers who have tested their efficacy and explored the cognitive mechanisms that could explain why, and how, they work.

Research on memorization for musicians In the following section, I outline empirical research on musicians’ strategies for learning, memorizing, recalling and performing music from memory. Its authors are researchers from disciplines including psychology, cognitive science and education, often working in collaboration with musicians not only as research participants but also as co-investigators. The aims of the research can be theoretical, in that findings can add to what is known about memory generally, but, more often than not, it is hoped that research outcomes in this domain will be of practical use to performers and those who teach them.

Visual, aural, kinaesthetic, analytic and combined strategies Articles and books on memorizing for and by performers and teachers continued to be published throughout the twentieth and into the twenty-first century, advocating visual, aural, kinaesthetic, analytic and combined strategies. Recommendations could not be made on the basis of evidence from research, however, until Grace Rubin-Rabson published the results of the first experiments measuring the relative effectiveness of these strategies (RubinRabson 1937, 1939, 1940a, b; 1941a, b, c, d). These confirmed the views of Leschetizky, Curtis and Hughes, quoted above: ‘analytic pre-study’, to use Rubin-Rabson’s term (1937: 1), improved recall following memorization, as did learning the piece in small sections and the use of mental practice during the period in which the piece was being learnt. She also found that recall was better after several short practice sessions than when learning was attempted in one long session, and when pianists learnt the music for left and right hands separately rather than always together. Subsequent researchers confirmed and extended Rubin-Rabson’s findings. In one study, for example, a group of wind players trained

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to analyse ‘tonal relationships, the use of imitation, important intervals, repetition of motives and phrases’ (Ross 1964: 278) memorized a test piece of music significantly faster than a control group of wind players who did not receive the same training. In another, Michiko Nuki (1984) asked students of piano and composition first to play at sight and then memorize a novel piece of music; finally, they reported on the strategies they had used. Those who used a ‘visual’ strategy were better sight-readers and had better recall than those who said they had used ‘acoustic’, ‘kinaesthetic’ and ‘mixed’ strategies – but the ‘visual’ strategy turned out to be based on a teaching technique called solfège, which is designed to improve audiation and interval recognition. This study underlines the difficulty, already noted, of separating visual, auditory and kinaesthetic approaches. None can be implemented without one or both of the others, and without drawing on representations or ‘schemas’ stored in long-term memory. Visualizing the musical score in its absence can be an extremely useful strategy for the musician memorizing a piece of music, but it is impossible to use eidetic or photographic memory to memorize a score at a single glance unless its lines, dots and squiggles are meaningful to the musician, representing sounds that can be played and heard. Likewise, imagining the sound of the music away from the score and/or the instrument can be useful, but the equivalent of eidetic memory for music – the skill of reproducing a work heard only once or twice – depends on the size and availability of the listener’s stored repertoire, which may be in the form of visual and kinaesthetic as well as auditory representations. This underlies the ‘photographic ear’ of the jazz musician described by Karl Macek (1987) and the musicians described by Daniel Levitin (2012: 634) who have developed ‘phonographic’ memories: DJs who draw on their wide knowledge of music across different genres to recognize and identify pieces from the briefest of excerpts, perceiving and demonstrating the connections between them. Research with exceptional performers underlines the role of stored knowledge: when John Sloboda, Beate Hermelin and Neil O’Connor (1985) tested the ability of the autistic savant known as NF, who was thought to be able to play on the piano, ‘verbatim’, music that he had heard only once, it transpired that he could do so only when the music was in genres with which he was familiar; more recently,

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Adam Ockelford (2009) has tracked the development of the blind, autistic pianist Derek Paravicini’s astonishing ability, over the course of many years’ obsessive listening, learning and playing, to reproduce and improvise on novel music. For musicians, kinaesthetic strategies can be used to support the development of mental representations. In a study of my own preparation for performance from memory of the first Ricercar from Stravinsky’s Cantata, to which I return in the next part of this chapter, objective analysis of video-recordings of my practice and rehearsal sessions showed that I used different kinds of body movement as I learnt and memorized. Beating a pulse provided the framework for ensuring rhythmic accuracy; conducting helped the formation of a metrical representation (crucial in this piece, since the metre shifts from 4/8 to 3/8 and back again both between and within sections); gesture, once the piece was learnt and memorized, underpinned my communication of semantic meaning both musical and verbal (Ginsborg 2009). Whilst it might be thought that singers are freer than players of musical instruments to move their bodies in such ways, there is a wealth of research on musicians’ embodied cognition that suggests otherwise (see Leman and Maes 2015; Geeves and Sutton 2015, for recent reviews). Since an important aim of developing kinaesthetic or ‘muscle’ memory is to automatize the musician’s playing and allow them to focus on fulfilling their expressive intentions for the music, the music is intrinsic to their movements. The same has been shown to be true of dancers. Kate Stevens, Garry Lester and I asked dancers to recall exercises in the form of sequences of steps learnt many years earlier and always performed to the same music (Stevens, Ginsborg and Lester 2010). The dancers demonstrated their recall for the exercises in a series of tasks in which they either danced themselves or manipulated the limbs of a wooden mannequin. Recall was much better when they heard the music to which they had originally danced than when the tasks were carried out in silence. In short, whilst memorizing notated music involves encoding and storing visual, auditory and kinaesthetic information in such a way that it can be recalled at will for and during performance, there is little evidence that strategies focusing on the memorization of one type of information over another are effective. Reliance on kinaesthetic memory formed as the result of rote repetition is particularly unreliable, as observed by the early pedagogues

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quoted above. This is because rote repetition produces memory for ‘associative chains’ such that the end of one passage cues recall for the beginning of the next, rather than ‘content-addressable’ memory, which is much more reliable (Chaffin, Logan and Begosh 2009: 352). When novice and inexperienced performers practise, they often start each attempt on the music they are learning at the beginning of the piece or song (Renwick and McPherson 2000; Ginsborg and Pitkin 2008). If they have a memory lapse in performance, they usually have to go back to the beginning to re-start the chain of associations. By contrast, experienced musicians have been shown to use ‘cognitive analysis’ (Hallam 1997: 9). This underpins the development of conceptual memory for the compositional structure, both global and local, of the work to be performed and its most salient features. The ‘landmarks’ thus identified create a framework for the encoding, storage and retrieval of music for performance and long-term recall whereby the musician can start at any location at will. At the very least, awareness of compositional structure enables the musician to divide the music into short sections to be learnt and memorized, whether each section is memorized by rote or subjected to further analysis, before re-combining them into longer sections and eventually the whole. Aaron Williamon and Elizabeth Valentine (2002), for example, demonstrate that the ability to use section boundaries to guide practice increases with developing expertise, as predicted by Anders Ericsson and Walter Kintsch’s (1995) theory of long-term working memory evidenced in other domains; these boundaries, like other features of the music such as modulations to a different key, climaxes and pauses, may well come to function subsequently as cues for retrieval in performance. Musicians’ perspectives on the compositional structure of the works they are memorizing do not necessarily have to reflect those of their composers or a musicologist’s analysis, of course; the identification of musical features is most likely to be useful when carried out by musicians themselves. The practical applications of the research outlined above are that all strategies available to musicians should be deployed simultaneously, but the formation of mental and physicallyembodied representations via analytical and kinaesthetic methods provides invaluable frameworks for recall. In the next part of this section of the chapter, I consider such frameworks in more detail,

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distinguishing between ‘practice features’ and ‘performance cues’, and how they can be inferred from the study of practice, rehearsal and performance.

Longitudinal case study research: Practice features and performance cues The relationship between practice features (those to which the musician attends whilst practising independently or rehearsing with others) and performance cues (those consciously registered by the musician whilst performing) has been explored in a series of longitudinal case studies undertaken by the cognitive scientist Roger Chaffin and a number of musician and psychologist colleagues, including myself in the role of both singer and researcher. In each study, similar methods are used, although a number of refinements have been introduced over time. Essentially, performers track their practice, rehearsal and performance, audio- or video-recording all sessions for subsequent analysis of practice behaviours: the beats of the piece on which each practice segment starts and stops, and the number of times each passage is repeated. After each session, or before the first performance, they note the locations (startbeats) and types of practice features on the musical score. These can be categorized as ‘structural’ (typically relating to section and phrase boundaries, perhaps reflecting the musician’s perception of the narrative or emotional trajectory of the work); ‘basic’ (e.g. fingering, pedalling, bowing, breathing, according to instrument or voice); ‘interpretive’ (to do with the musician’s interpretation of the composer’s intentions, in relation to tempo, dynamics, etc.); and ‘expressive’ (i.e. how the musician’s interpretation is conveyed to the audience, e.g. yearning, joyful); they can overlap, of course, since choices of fingering, pedalling, bowing and breathing are inevitably made on the basis of both interpretation and expressive communication. After each performance, the performers note the locations of those features used as performance cues, and any other thoughts they may have had whilst performing. Analysis of practice features and performance cues can then be undertaken in relation to the musician’s practice behaviours. The earliest studies were of the pianist Gabriela Imreh’s thirtythree hours of practice and performance of the Presto from Bach’s

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Italian Concerto (e.g. Chaffin and Imreh 1994; Chaffin, Imreh and Crawford 2002); a similar investigation was undertaken in collaboration with the cellist Tânia Lisboa involving a similar amount of practice and repeated performances of the Prelude from Bach’s Suite no. 6 (Chaffin et al. 2010). Other studies of solo performers include collaborations with the authors of two influential articles on actors’ memorizing strategies (Noice 1991; Noice and Noice 2006) and a jazz pianist (Noice et al. 2008); another classical pianist, Cristina Capparelli Gerling (Chaffin et al. 2013); and students (e.g. Ginsborg et al. 2013; Lisboa, Chaffin and Demos 2015). I have studied the development of shared performance cues in a series of investigations of a singer and pianist-conductor (e.g. Ginsborg, Chaffin and Nicholson 2006a, b; Ginsborg and Chaffin 2011a; Ginsborg et al. 2016); the shared performance cues of a cellist and pianist rehearsing and performing together have been investigated by Lisboa et al. (2013) and those of a viola player and singer by Dawn Bennett and myself (Ginsborg and Bennett 2015). Performance cues were once conceptualized as a subset of practice features retained as landmarks for recall; the remainder were thought to be discarded as no longer useful or meaningful, or assimilated during the process of automatization in order to free the musician to give an expressive, communicative performance. It has become clear from research on practice, rehearsal and multiple performances, however, that awareness of practice features not registered in one performance can resurface in another, and that musicians’ new insights whilst performing – arising in part from the heightened awareness of the music provided by the opportunity to hear it in the context of the concert hall or similar environment – can serve as retrieval cues in subsequent performances (e.g. Ginsborg and Chaffin 2011b; Ginsborg, Chaffin and Demos 2014; Ginsborg and Bennett 2015). Such insights are often reported by musicians; it is these that create spontaneity, making the difference between rehearsal and performance, and enhancing both the experience of performing for the musician and the experience of listening for the audience. For music psychologists and cognitive scientists, questions arising from the study of musicians’ practice, rehearsal and memorized performance may concern stability of memory, or the accuracy with which the performer can retrieve the music to be played or sung, and its durability, or length of time the memory can be said to

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last. Meanwhile, performers want to know how they can memorize most effectively so that they can re-learn and memorize music for future performances as swiftly as possible. In the next short part of the chapter, I briefly report a case study that aimed to answer both kinds of question.

Long-term recall Performance cues are crucial not only to the process of memorizing and performing from memory, as we saw above, but also in determining long-term recall. For the purposes of the study to which I referred earlier, in which I memorized and performed the Ricercar from Stravinsky’s Cantata, I recorded all my practice sessions and rehearsals. After the public performance, I marked the locations of phrases and sections in the score, as well as the locations of the performance cues I had used. Over the next five years, I wrote out the vocal part from memory six times, at intervals ranging from four to ten months. Omissions and errors in each written-out free recall were scored and analysed to show how my memory for the piece changed for better and worse over time. Initially, my recall was perfect. After fourteen months I remembered the piece with around 87 per cent accuracy, with only two small gaps where I recalled nothing; two years later, my accuracy had deteriorated to around 66 per cent, with ten gaps. It was marginally higher in the final recall, five years after the original performance, but the same gaps remained. The effects of different kinds of performance cues, which provide content-addressable access to associatively-chained memory, changed, however, as my reasons for remembering changed. In the early free recalls, I was close enough to the performance for the expressive cues to be the most salient; my memory was better at locations where I had marked musical feelings, and worse at cues representing stress on and pronunciation of words. Five years later, my memory of giving the performance had faded and I had become more interested in the research on memory that my colleagues and I were undertaking; the lyrics and their meaning provided a more effective framework for my recall than the expressive trajectory of the music (Ginsborg and Chaffin 2011a; Ginsborg et al. 2016). In short, the purpose of recall may be as influential on strategy and subsequent performance as the performer’s original conception of the music to be learnt and memorized. Furthermore, as described in

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the first part of this section of the chapter, we saw that other factors affecting memorization and recall include genre (e.g. folk music, jazz, ritual chant, Western classical music) and the freedom with which the musician is expected to ‘interpret’ the material to be performed. The demands made on a particular kind of instrumentalist or singer need to be taken into account, too. Keyboard players and harpists, for example, use their feet as well as both hands; many wind and brass players play more than one instrument within their instrument ‘family’; and to be fully literate, musically, performers need to be able to read in more than one clef and/or transpose from one key to another. I have focused on singers in this chapter for two reasons: singers can be considered a special case since they have to memorize lyrics as well as melodies, and – as I am a singer myself – some of my research derives from the study of my own preparation for performance from memory. In the last two parts of this section of the chapter, I will look at singers’ memorizing strategies more generally and return to the concept of mental representations as suggested by Edwin Hughes more than a century ago.

Singers’ strategies for memorizing the words and melodies of songs Research on singers’ memorizing strategies (e.g. Ginsborg 2004a, b) suggests that a range of approaches is available, depending on the relative importance of words and melody within the genre (the former are more important in operatic recitative and Sprechgesang, the latter more important in scat singing in jazz, and the choral music of Bach, for example) and to the singer. In an observational study of thirteen singers learning and memorizing an unfamiliar song in up to six ninety-minute practice sessions undertaken over the course of two weeks, I identified some of these approaches, which focused on the words or music separately and together, and were used when the singers were reading from the score and when they were singing, speaking or playing from memory (Ginsborg 2002). The singers who were quickest to memorize and sang most accurately from memory were those who used the widest range of approaches and who were earliest to start memorizing and thus sang more of the song from memory during their practice sessions. In the first of two follow-up experiments, John Sloboda

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and I compared accuracy and fluency of recall in singers with more and less musical expertise, when the words and melody of a new unaccompanied song were memorized separately and together, and found that expert singers had better recall when they memorized the words and melody together. They also found it easier to recover from losses – typically hesitations at the ends of phrases – and to keep the melody going when they forgot the words, and vice versa (Ginsborg and Sloboda 2007).

Mental representations revisited Whilst we showed that the semantic meaning of song lyrics is important for long-term recall (Ginsborg et al. 2016), it may be less important for memorizing and performance than some singers and singing teachers believe. In the second of the two experiments I carried out, I adopted a research paradigm introduced by Lehmann and Ericsson (1995) and asked expert singers to memorize and perform two songs on separate occasions with a recorded ‘pacing’ accompaniment (Ginsborg 2000). One song had semantically meaningful words, the other non-semantically meaningful words: digit-strings. Although the singers took longer to memorize the latter, there was no difference between the reliability of the singers’ memory for the two songs once memorized successfully, reinforcing the suggestion made above that recall for words is constrained and therefore enhanced by melody. After each performance the singers were asked to carry out a series of tasks designed to test the extent to which they could ‘manipulate’ their recall for the songs. There was no correlation between speed of memorizing and success on straightforward tasks such as singing with accompaniment at the correct tempo, attributable to the singers’ rote repetition of words and melody together. Speed of memorization was correlated, however, with performance on more difficult tasks such as speaking the text of the song at speed and demonstrating the contentaddressability of their recall by starting at atypical locations or being able to sing the phrases of the song in reverse order. The most likely explanation for the ‘best’ memorizers’ success is that they had encoded and stored visual, auditory, kinaesthetic and conceptual mental representations for the songs on which they were able to draw whilst performing the song and carrying out the postperformance tasks; if one failed, the others remained.

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Although many musicians – instrumentalists and singers alike – have to learn and memorize their repertoire in less time than they would prefer, it should be possible – under ideal circumstances – to prepare for performance so thoroughly that they are able to form and rely on multi-code representations and thus be sure that their memory is as secure as possible. In this way, they can be free not only to play or sing with spontaneity, ‘from the heart’, but also to respond flexibly to the challenges and opportunities presented by co-performers, audience, hall and other aspects of the environment of each performance, listening to themselves and others as they create the music.

Summary and conclusion In the first section of this chapter, I explored briefly the roles of retrospective and prospective memory in the process of listening actively to music, showing that listeners’ experiences are shaped by the ways in which schematic and veridical expectations are fulfilled and/or violated. I observed that performers are also listeners, although they must engage in deliberate practice when they learn music for the purposes of performing it from memory. Learning ‘by ear’ is typical for musicians in oral traditions, although their approaches to learning depend to a certain extent on their freedom to improvise, which varies from one tradition to another. Musical characteristics such as metre can provide a framework for recall. But whilst we often think of learning to play by ear as separate from learning to play notated music, auditory, visual and kinaesthetic strategies are in truth inextricably tangled, since our experiences of hearing, listening and performing music involve embodied cognition. Whilst early pedagogues recognized the importance of mental practice and analysis of music, the popular concept of visual, auditory and kinaesthetic learning styles – which can be seen as a twentieth-century educational approach to grouping individuals deriving originally from the four ‘humours’ or temperaments of Classical times, and more recent notions of personality type – informs much advice on memorization for musicians. Nevertheless, the findings of research undertaken in the past eighty years on musicians’ strategies for memorizing and recall, particularly by

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those exploring the characteristics of expertise and the nature of its acquisition, largely confirm the views of the early pedagogues. Longitudinal case studies with experienced professional musicians and music performance students at an advanced level of training, in particular, illuminate the role of practice features, performance cues and new insights creating spontaneity, not only in memory for music whilst performing, but also in long-term recall. The chapter ended by surveying singers’ memorization strategies for the words and melodies of songs, revisiting the all-important concept of mental representations. To conclude, memory can be considered as a phenomenon experienced passively: music elicits memory. But it is also an active process. Whether or not we are aware of it, we remember and predict when we listen. Musicians engage in deliberate practice and memorization when preparing to perform by heart, and when they do so, they use memory for different aspects of the music to varying degrees and with more or less conscious awareness. Yet, whilst memory is integral to the experiences of listening to and making music, the greatest gift of music lies perhaps in its power to help us forget the past and future and, for each and every moment, enable us to focus on or – in the words of the title of this book – ‘perform the remembered’ present.

References Anfossi, M. (c. 1840), Trattato teorico-pratico sull’arte del canto: A Theoretical and Practical Treatise on the Art of Singing, London: Author. Available online: http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.390 15080971149;view=1up;seq=3 (accessed 30 July 2016). Bharucha, J. J. (1987), ‘MUSACT: A connectionist model of musical harmony’, in Proceedings of the Cognitive Science Society, 508–17, Seattle, Washington, 16–18 July, Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Bharucha, J. J. (1994), ‘Tonality and expectations’, in R. Aiello and J. A. Sloboda (eds), Musical Perceptions, 213–39, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Brée, M. and S. Bernstein ([1913]1997), The Leschetizky Method: A Guide to Fine and Correct Piano Playing, North Chelmsford: Courier Corporation.

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Ericsson, K. A., R. T. Krampe and C. Tesch-Römer (1993), ‘The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance’, Psychological review, 100 (3): 363–406. Geeves, A. and J. Sutton (2015), ‘Embodied cognition, perception, and performance in music’, Empirical Musicology Review, 9 (3–4): 247–53. Gieseking, W. and K. Leimer ([1932]1972), Piano Technique, New York: Dover. Ginsborg, J. (2000), ‘Off by heart: Expert singers’ memorisation strategies and recall for the words and music of songs’, in C. Woods, G. Luck, R. Brochard, F. Seddon and J. A. Sloboda (eds), Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition, n.p., Keele, UK, 5–10 August, Staffordshire, UK: Keele University. CD-ROM. Available online: http://www.escom.org/proceedings/ ICMPC2000/start.htm (accessed 30 July 2016). Ginsborg, J. (2002), ‘Classical singers memorising a new song: An observational study’, Psychology of Music, 30: 56–99. Ginsborg, J. (2004a), ‘Strategies for memorising music’, in A. Williamon (ed.), Musical Excellence: Strategies and Techniques to Enhance Performance, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ginsborg, J. (2004b), ‘Singing by heart: Memorisation strategies for the words and music of songs’, in J. W. Davidson (ed.), The Music Practitioner: Exploring Practices and Research in the Development of the Expert Music Performer, Teacher and Listener, 149–60, Farnham: Ashgate. Ginsborg, J. (2009), ‘Beating time: The role of kinaesthetic learning in the development of mental representations for music’, in A. Mornell (ed.), Art in Motion, 121–42, Vienna: Peter Lang. Ginsborg, J. and D. Bennett (2015), ‘Developing familiarity: A new duo’s individual and shared practice features and performance cues’, Presentation at International Symposium on Performance Science, Kyoto, Japan, 2–5 September. Ginsborg, J. and R. Chaffin (2011a), ‘Performance cues in singing: Evidence from practice and recall’, in I. Deliège and J. Davidson (eds), Music and the Mind: Investigating the Functions and Processes of Music (a Book in Honour of John Sloboda), 339–60, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ginsborg, J. and R. Chaffin (2011b), ‘Preparation and spontaneity in performance: A singer’s thoughts while singing Schoenberg’, Psychomusicology: Music, Mind, Brain, 21 (1/2): 137–58. Ginsborg, J. and J. Pitkin (2008), ‘Long-term Memory for Simple and Complex Music: The Effects of Practice Time and Expertise’, Presentation at Empirical Musicology Conference, Institute for Musical Research, London, UK, 2 April.

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4 Distributed Cognition, Memory and Theatrical Performance Evelyn Tribble

Memory is a subject divided by a common vocabulary. The term is used so variously that common ground in discussing the subject can be difficult to achieve. As Robert Wilson has suggested, disciplinary boundaries mark very different ways of conceiving of memory. In biology and psychology, memory is generally treated as an ‘individual capacity’, whilst the humanities and social sciences view it as ‘a collective phenomenon’ (Wilson 2005: 227). This individual/social binary has profound implications for the way that the phenomenon is conceived across different disciplines. For many cognitive psychologists, memory has been seen as an intracranial phenomenon, best studied in laboratory settings, where it can be tested in isolation from confounding factors. Because they assume memory takes place inside the head, they attempt in their experimental designs to control for external elements or supports for memory (Manier 2004: 252). Researchers in the humanities and the arts, in contrast, often view memory as a social and collective phenomenon. Historians, anthropologists and cultural critics tend to be much more interested in the social and public aspects of memory, as embodied, for example, in museums, monuments and

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commemorative activities, or as collective traumas that are repressed or expressed by public acts of memory. There is often little overlap between these two paradigms for studying memory; for example, the cognitive-science oriented Oxford Handbook of Memory (Tulving and Craik 2000) does not discuss social or collective memory at all; in turn, the historical-philosophical oriented collection Theories of Memory: A Reader (Rossington and Whitehead 2000) ignores cognitive science completely. Within theatre and performance studies, memory is an equally contested and capacious term. Marvin Carlson’s famous characterization of theatre as a ‘memory machine’ is drawn from the historical-philosophical tradition just described. In this view, theatre ‘is the repository of cultural memory, but like the memory of each individual, it is also subject to continual adjustment and modification as the memory is recalled in new circumstances and contexts’ (Carlson 2001: 2). In a similar vein, Joseph Roach’s work employs the influential theory of Pierre Nora on sites of memory or lieux de memoire, as well as Paul Connerton’s discussion of cultural memory as ‘incorporating practices’ (Roach 1996: 27–8). These models of memory spur Roach’s discussion of the ways in which theatre uses ‘kinesthetic imagination’ to incorporate, transmit and shape cultural memory (1996: 29). Perhaps the most influential model of memory in theatre studies is Konstantin Stanislavski’s powerful concept of ‘affective’ memory or ‘emotion memory’ (Stanislavski 1936: 180). Unlike work from the historical-philosophical tradition, this view of memory is fundamentally internalist. Such memories are drawn from the episodic or autobiographical memory of the performer. In this technique, an actor seeks congruence between affect-laden personal memories and the arc of his or her character. Stanislavski’s approach to ‘emotion memory’ as a tool for the actor – to reach within one’s autobiographical memory to ‘recapture the emotion that once flashed by like a meteor’ (Stanislavski 1936: 164) – is yet another example of the array of ways that memory is defined and understood across disciplinary lines. In addition, memory might be construed as feats of verbal memory, as when lay audiences ask actors the dreaded question: ‘how do you remember all those lines?’ Like other queries directed at experts, the question seems to misrepresent the essential nature of acting, confusing a technical ability with the much more complex and nuanced craft and training

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that lies behind performance. Thus, the boundaries and implications of the term are labile. In many ways it may seem that these ways of describing memory are incompatible – that memory cannot be simultaneously individual and social, private and public, technical and deeply personal. Yet these divisions may not be as deep as are sometimes thought. This chapter attempts to bring together common elements within such seemingly disparate ways of conceiving memory. I argue that, however different they seem, a common thread linking them is the importance of ‘constraints’, conceived very broadly as any array of social, technological, cognitive and material pressures in a task-world. A simple example might be the deliberate constraints of rhymed verse or song; if a song is end-rhymed, or if the first rhyme-pair is remembered, the choice of the second will be greatly constrained or narrowed. More complexly, in a game or performance, one choice greatly reduces the range of possibilities for the next. Whilst ‘constraints’ may seem to be a negatively loaded term, in fact, as I shall show, they are absolutely crucial for managing sophisticated collaborative tasks. Constraints reduce complexity. I will argue that such constraints are best viewed in a distributed model of cognition, and that such a model has the advantage of illuminating practices as disparate as early modern playing, method acting techniques, and emerging practices such as headphone verbatim theatre. Many strands of psychology have become increasingly attentive to ubiquitous social shaping of memory, such that the stark individual/ social divide is not as firmly drawn as once it was. William Hirst’s recent account of the history of cognitive psychology shows that under the influence of information processing models of memory, ‘a clear line was drawn between what was out there in the world and what took place in the mind. Psychologists, by and large, study the latter and treat the former merely as input into the system’ (Hirst, Coman and Coman 2013: 274), resulting in indifference to ‘the social nature of humans’ (2013: 274). Hirst proposes an alternative genealogy of the study of memory incorporating, amongst others, such writers as Frederic Bartlett, whose pioneering book Remembering (1932) studied human memory ‘in the wild’, so to speak, by examining how memories changed and coalesced over time, and similarly, the influential work of Lev Vygotsky, who analysed the historical, social and developmental scaffolding of

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human memory. ‘Scaffolding’ is a term derived from Vygotsky that refers to the ways that adults provide aids – physical or material – to children to support their cognitive development. More broadly, it refers to any form of mediation that aids thought. This account of ‘mediated memory’ provides an important challenge to models of memory that situate it as an individually bounded faculty (Vygotsky 1978: 48). Yet, simply flipping the model and insisting solely on the social constitution of memory fails to fully account for the dynamic interactions amongst mechanisms of perception, attention and memory and the myriad forms of remembering practices. In one sense, memory in theatrical performance is amongst the most individually bounded of feats – for actors, stage fright is one of the most personal of all fears. The actor is alone, exposed to the pitiless gaze of the audience – blankly rooted in one place or casting about frenetically for a line (Merlin 2016: xxi). Yet, underpinning even such individual and idiosyncratic processes as line learning and forgetting is an entire set of social and material practices. Memory is best seen not simply as intracranial, situated between an actor’s ears, but as fundamentally distributed. For this reason, I employ the model of distributed cognition, a theory that conceptualizes memory and related cognitive mechanisms such as attention and perception as individual and social, moving fluidly across objects, environments and interpersonal systems. Distributed cognition is a way of looking at how thought – including attention, perception and memory – is spread across bodies, environments and social structures. As Kourken Michaelian and John Sutton define it, distributed cognition posits that ‘remembering does not always occur entirely inside the brain but is often distributed across heterogeneous systems combining neural, bodily, social, and technological resources’ (Michaelian and Sutton 2013: 1). This strain of thought arises out of a number of intellectual traditions. It is closely related to the challenge in philosophy of mind to internalist or ‘brainbound’ models of thought. This challenge, known as extended mind theory, is best exemplified by the work of the philosopher Andy Clark, who argues that ‘certain forms of human cognizing include inextricable tangles of feedback, feedforward and feed-around loops: loops that promiscuously crisscross the boundaries of brain, body and world . . . Cognition leaks out in the body and the world’ (2008: xxviii).

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Thus, the term ‘cognitive’ in this context is not to be equated with rationalism, so-called ‘cognitivism’ or, as theatre professionals sometimes describe it, ‘being in the head’. Rather, cognition is simply ‘thinking’, so long as we posit that thinking is not simply intracranial: it is not just done ‘in the head’, as individualistic, internalist models of cognition propose. Cognition is distributed across internal mechanisms that constrain and enable such processes as memory, perception and attention; material tools (‘cognitive artefacts’) and environmental surrounds; social systems, in a coordinated yet always shifting triad of insides, objects and people. In addition, we think, remember, attend and perceive within the constraints and the affordances of our bodies – and the bodies of specialists in performance have been trained to remember in highly skilled ways and in ongoing modulation with other bodies, tools and environments. High-level, high-pressure, high-stakes performance is amongst the most cognitively demanding of all human activities and occurs within carefully designed cultural frameworks and institutions that support and enable it. Thus, a systems-level study of memory and attention in the task-world of the theatre illuminates the profound social, environmental and material shape of thought. Remembering does not take place simply in the head of the individual; instead, it is distributed across the entire task-world. Moreover, memory is situated, embodied and extended. Actors come to their work trained in different ways, with different habits, dispositions, experiences, tool-kits. The same task  – say, of line learning – might be approached in different ways – that is, might be differently distributed depending on training or the nature of the skilled body-mind brought to the task. Distributed cognition has perhaps its most accessible articulation in the work of the anthropologist Edwin Hutchins in his ground-breaking book Cognition in the Wild (1995). The reference to ‘in the wild’ in the title reflects his conviction that thought is not best studied in artificial laboratory settings that reduce complexity, but rather in real-world environments. Hutchins did his fieldwork for the book on board a naval vessel, where he studied the highly complex task of coordinating social, technological and material systems. His central claim was that the thinking needed to manage the task-world lies neither in the individual, nor the structure, nor the material, but that all these elements are in dynamic interaction with one another.

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As Michaelian and Sutton summarize: ‘flexible and intelligent action [involves] the cooperation and coordination of disparate individual, interpersonal, and technological activities. In more or less stable organized settings, groups and artifacts form distributed cognitive systems which are collectively responsible for the emergent overall behaviour of the whole’ (Michaelian and Sutton 2013: 5). In later work, Hutchins describes this model as a ‘cultural-cognitive ecosystem’ (2014: 45). This ‘ecosystem’ is a ‘constraint satisfaction system’ – ‘constraints exist in many places and interact with one another through a variety of mechanisms of constraint satisfaction. Some of these are neural mechanisms; others are implemented in material tools, and still others are emergent in social processes of collective intelligence, the development of conventions, for example’ (Hutchins 2014: 45–6). Although the distributed model of memory holds much promise for analysing theatre and other forms of mindful group performance such as dance and sport, this model does not simply describe collective activities such as theatre or naval navigation. As Hutchins remarks, ‘distributed cognition is not a kind of cognition; it is a perspective on all of cognition’ (Hutchins 2014: 36). That is, the model of distributed cognition entails fundamental claims about the nature of memory, attention and perception; it is not confined to particular collaborative practices. In one sense, it is obvious that theatre-making is a collaborative art and that knowledge and memory is distributed across the task-world. But the more profound implications are that cognition is always spread across – not parcelled out amongst – mind, world and other people. For this reason, distributed cognition is a powerful way of understanding how people remember together and think in groups. As I have attempted to articulate in my publications on the subject of early modern theatre and distributed cognition (Tribble 2005, 2011), this model helps to account for feats of memory and attention that might otherwise be difficult to explain. For example, theatre historians have sometimes struggled to understand how boys were able to credibly perform such demanding parts as Lady Macbeth. If we think of a sixteen-year-old boy today performing the part, it strains credulity. Yet, a systems-level approach to the question can put such an accomplishment into perspective. One of Hutchins’s most telling examples of distributed cognition is a

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midshipman newly posted on board a naval vessel. Taken as an individual, the midshipman is a novice, his knowledge and abilities woefully incomplete. As an actor within a distributed system, however, he benefits from the cunningly designed material and social environment in which he is embedded. Hutchins writes: ‘the task world is constructed in such a way that the socially and conversationally appropriate thing to do given the tools at hand is also the computationally correct thing to do. That is, one can be functioning well before one knows what one is doing, and one can discover what one is doing in the course of doing it’ (Hutchins 1995: 224). By analogy, by the time our putative boy plays Lady Macbeth, he has spent years as an apprentice immersed within a smart structure, beginning with small attendant parts designed to develop situation awareness, moving into longer parts supervised and scaffolded by more senior actors, until he is able to master the mnemonic, cognitive and aesthetic demands of a complex part such as Lady Macbeth. Distributed cognition thus has particular promise for understanding memory-work in the theatre. This is true not just for the early modern repertory system, but also for all forms of performance. If we take seriously Hutchins’s ‘cognitive cultural ecosystem’ (or the related term ‘cognitive ecology’ (Tribble and Sutton 2011) as a ‘constraint satisfaction system’ we can see the interplay of constraint and performance at work across a range of theatrical practices and periods. As noted above, Hutchins enumerates a variety of mechanisms of ‘constraint satisfaction’: neural, material and others that are ‘emergent in social processes of collective intelligence’, such as the forging of shared conventions and practices. Reducing these simply to internal cognitive mechanisms – personal or individual strategies of memory-work – neglects the profound extended shaping and material constraints of memory work. Such neglect is a shortcoming of otherwise excellent research in the psychology of acting. This work is best exemplified by the studies of Tony and Helga Noice, who have spent most of their careers examining the question of contemporary actors’ mnemonic strategies. Their work is ‘in the wild’ to the extent that it relies upon trained actors and a mixed methodology that includes experiments, interviews and self-reports. Over the years they have amassed an enormous amount of evidence attesting to the strategies that

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modern actors use for line learning. They note that ‘virtually all actors’ use a two-stage process: the first (analytical) stage consists of examining the script in depth to determine the intentions of the characters; the second (rehearsal/ performance) stage consists of what the researchers have called ‘active experiencing’, which entails actually doing whatever the character is doing, whether it is taunting, interrogating, bullying or any of the hundreds of common human transactions that might occur in the performance of a role. Proper application of this principle results in the actor experiencing the mental life of the character along with the concomitant feelings and appropriate physiological states. (Noice and Noice 2006: 493) As Noice and Noice discuss, these strategies are heavily influenced by the Stanislavskian tradition that remains dominant in many American schools of acting training. Because of its dominance, it is easy to forget the extent to which it is itself built upon an extended and distributed set of traditions, assumptions, materials and social constraints. They note that actors are often reticent about their precise methods of line-learning, preferring to state that remembering ‘comes naturally’ as a by-product of deep immersion in the role. But this immersion is the result of a highly scaffolded and rigorous process. For example, An Actor Prepares describes an extensive process through which an actor learns to train his autobiographical memory and his emotional responses to ‘arouse feelings in the actor that are analogous to those required for the part’ (Stanislavski 1936: 162). These goals create a certain kind of ‘constraint satisfaction system’ that demands an interplay between autobiographical memory-work, study of the part to discern ‘intentions’ of the character, the social and interpersonal process of workshops and rehearsals, and, of course, integration of the discoveries so made into the technical, social and material constraints of a particular production. Lighting, for instance, creates a powerful set of constraints on actor movement, as the blocking needs to be regularized and predictable so as to integrate with the technical requirements. Thus, any production employing lighting effects must balance decisions and preferences made by actors, directors and the technicians. Since movement is one of the most powerful ways to integrate kinesic and verbal memory, the

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technological demands become an invisible yet ubiquitous element of memory-work. The principle of constraint satisfaction and distribution can also be used to further illuminate the memory-work of the early modern theatre. Prominent actors in companies like the Lord Chamberlain’s Men (Shakespeare’s company) or the Admiral’s Men (Edward Alleyn’s company) had to perform what seem like astounding feats of memory. Edward Alleyn may have played as many as seventy parts in a three-year period. The model of distributed cognition helps to explain how he was able to accomplish what seems like an overwhelming task. Simply put, memory-work involves assemblages of material, and social, bodily and neural resources. The nature of such assemblages varies historically, according to the kinds of material and social resources at hand and how they are deployed. The availability of, for example, paper and books, skilled scribal labour, systems of tutelage and instruction, and spaces engineered for human voice and movement, shape and constrain human creativity and performance. Memory-work for the early modern actor consisted primarily of what was known as ‘private study’ of the individual part. As we know from the one surviving professional part in the period, that of Edward Alleyn in Orlando Furioso, actors received only their own part with cues. Each part was written by the company scribe, who also prepared the complete playbook, marked up to include music and property cues, and a ‘plot’, a large paper that served as a condensed précis of stage action and a casting chart. The part was perhaps the key ‘constraint’ of the early modern acting system. Accustomed as modern actors are to easy access to the entire text of a play, as well as to information about previous productions, having only the part might seem at first glance like a form of deprivation. But, as I have argued, the constraint of the stripped-down part may well have functioned as a form of information under-load. Moreover, the part is only one element of a mnemonically distributed system. Through his study the skilled actor deeply encodes his part – that is, not merely commits it to memory at the surface level, but embeds it into his body. In the early modern period, the art of gesture or ‘action’ was the primary method used to yoke the linguistic to the somatic. Actors scanned their lines for cues to the unfolding ‘passions’ or emotions experienced by the character, and the expressive movements of the body, and especially the hand,

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lifted the words off the page into the body (Karim-Cooper 2016: 88). Because gesture is so tightly linked to speech – research shows that gesture is more closely bound to linguistic centres than other forms of motion (Cole, Gallagher and McNeill 2002: 58–9). This method provided a form of cognitive boot-strapping, a ‘hook’ for memory. So whilst it is true that the actor may be learning in so-called ‘private’ study, he is not remembering alone. He has at his command his embodied experience, and a lifetime of training that might include long practice at conning Latin verses whilst at school; the training of breath, body and social coordination; intelligence gleaned from learning to sing in a choir school; training on an instrument such as a lute; the experience of attending on stage, perhaps long before he speaks his first words in performance; the part, the cognitive artefact from which he works, on which is inscribed the lines of the playwright as mediated by the organizing activity of the playhouse scribe, who has written out the part; training in rhythmic, intelligent, sociallycoordinated practices such as fence and dance; and an apprenticeship in ‘action’, knowledge of how to ‘grace’ a part, gleaned both from observation and experience, as well as direct instruction from a master. The actor, in conning his part, is making something, albeit in invisible relationship with the writer. He is deeply embedded in a techne, engaging in the ‘rhythmicity and mnemonic character of human activity’ (Ingold 2013: 116). The constraints and affordances of his body – his gestures yoked to the words of the part – become part of the extended mnemonic system. Finally, distributed models of memory and cognition do not only account for historical modes of theatre, such as the early modern repertory systems, or techniques of method acting, such as those described by the Noices. Emergent practices such as verbatim headphone theatre may also be illuminated by this approach. Cyrielle Garson describes verbatim headphone theatre as ‘a technologied form of writing that has created new protocols for performing verbatim materials on a stage. It is indeed hardly separable from the technological means by which it is produced and transmitted in the sense that it is enhanced, encouraged, and even enabled by audio technology’ (Garson 2014: 52). Arising out of the documentary theatre tradition, the central tenet of verbatim headphone theatre is the faithful rendering of speech, mannerisms and gestures of the reporters: ‘This commitment is extended beyond replicating argot, to include replicating coughs, pauses, hesitations, and repetitions’

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(Wake 2013: 322). This goal is approached in a variety of ways. Practitioners like Roslyn Oades use no transcriptions at all, instead making an ‘audio script’ (2013: 322). Others, such as Hilary Halba and Stuart Young, allow actors to use transcripts as well as audio and video recordings for preparation. As Halba and Young observe: ‘Whereas the voice of the participant is provided directly to the actor in performance – albeit mediated by the iPod – the physical score is remembered and therefore its veracity is more slippery and unstable’ (2017: 4). All forms of the practice, however, challenge the very nature of memory-work as it is construed in text-based theatre. This way of working is challenging to actors, who struggle to find their own agency within this unfamiliar system. Halba and Young write that ‘the sheer technical discipline and precision required to reproduce so specifically both the gestural and verbal score of each interview seemingly render the process of performing a purely mechanical exercise’ (2017: 5). Yet, in the course of their work Halba and Young discovered that the constraints of this discipline produced a form of empathy from the outside in, so to speak: ‘Body movements and posture in general, and head and eye movements in particular, not only communicate meaning to the audience; they also generate feelings in the actor’ (2017: 5). The discipline of imitation results not in static reproduction, but instead in a heightened awareness of the experience of the subject. This new form, then, represents a very different ‘constraint satisfaction’ system than text-based theatre. The early modern actor works from a linguistically dense text, with what David Rubin describes as ‘surface features’ such as metre, repetition and rhyme that are adapted to the constraints of human memory (Rubin 1995: 72). These, in turn, are mapped onto the body as the actor seeks to mould his gestures into the shapes of the unfolding passions of the part. The modern actor working in the method tradition, by contrast, often works with modernist texts with relatively sparse surface features; she must elaborate the motivations behind relatively everyday language. Comparatively, the memory-work of verbatim headphone practice eschews the constraints of linelearning, but introduces other, equally complex registers. Actors hear the words of the reporters through headphones; they face the challenge of reproducing their characteristic kinaesthetic melodies on the fly, whilst still attending to the other actors, remembering cues for movement and so on. Moreover, this form typically casts

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actors in a variety of roles, multiplying the challenges of embodying a range of characters. This practice eliminates some of the constraints common to memory-work in traditional theatre, but at the same time introduces numerous others, especially as it ties the kinesic intelligence of the performer to the relentless temporality of the tape. These three examples, then, reveal the fundamentally distributed nature of memory-work across a range of historical practices. Although the constraint-satisfaction systems differ, as we would predict, they nevertheless operate under the same general principles, assembling neural, material, social, technological and environmental resources into the alchemy that is live theatre.

References Bartlett, F. C. (1932), Remembering: A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Carlson, M. (2001), The Haunted Stage: The Theatre as Memory Machine, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Clark, A. (2008), Supersizing the Mind: Embodiment, Action, and Cognitive Extension, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cole, J., S. Gallagher and D. McNeill (2002), ‘Gesture following deafferentation: A phenomenologically informed experimental study’, Phenomenology and the Social Sciences 1 (1): 49–67. Garson, C. (2014), ‘Remixing politics: The case of headphone-verbatim theatre in Britain’, Journal of Contemporary Drama in English, 2 (1): 50–62. Halba, H. and S. Young (2017), ‘Embodied Technology in a Specific Verbatim Theater Practice’, Unpublished manuscript. Hirst, W., A. Coman and D. Coman (2013), ‘Putting the social back into human memory’, in T. J. Perfect and D. S. Lindsay (eds), The SAGE Handbook of Applied Memory, 273–91, London: SAGE. doi: http:// dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781446294703.n16 Hutchins, E. (1995), Cognition in the Wild, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Hutchins, E. (2014), ‘The cultural ecosystem of human cognition’, Philosophical Psychology, 27 (1): 34–49. Ingold, T. (2013), Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture, New York: Routledge. Karim-Cooper, F. (2016), The Hand on the Shakespearean Stage: Gesture, Touch and the Spectacle of Dismemberment, London: Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare.

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Merlin, B. (2016), Facing the Fear: An Actor’s Guide to Overcoming Stage Fright, London: Nick Hern. Manier, D. (2004), ‘Is memory in the brain? Remembering as social behavior’, Mind, Culture, and Activity, 11 (4): 251–66. Michaelian, K. and J. Sutton (2013), ‘Distributed cognition and memory research: History and current directions’, Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 4 (1): 1–24. Noice, H. and T. Noice (2006), ‘Artistic performance: Acting, ballet and contemporary dance’, in K. A. Ericsson, N. Charness, P. J. Feltovich and R. R. Hoffman (eds), The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance, 489–503, New York: Cambridge University Press. Roach, J. (1996), Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic Performance, New York: Columbia University Press. Rossington, M. and A. Whitehead (2000), Theories of Memory: A Reader, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Rubin, D. (1995), Memory in Oral Traditions: The Cognitive Psychology of Epic, Ballad, and Counting-Out Rhymes, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stanislavski, K. (1936), An Actor Prepares, trans. E. R. Hapgood, New York: Theatre Arts. Tribble, E. (2005), ‘Distributing cognition in the Globe’, Shakespeare Quarterly, 56 (2): 135–55. Tribble, E. (2011), Cognition in the Globe, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Tribble, E. and J. Sutton (2011), ‘Cognitive ecology as a framework for Shakespearean studies’, Shakespeare Studies, 39: 94–103. Tulving, E. and F. I. M. Craik (2000), The Oxford Handbook of Memory, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Vygotsky, L. S. (1978), Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wake, C. (2013), ‘Headphone verbatim theatre: Methods, histories, genres, theories’, New Theatre Quarterly, 29 (4): 321–35. Wilson, R. A. (2005), ‘Collective memory, group minds, and the extended mind thesis’, Cognitive Processing, 6 (4): 227–36.

PART TWO

Learning to Perform from Memory: Effects of Embodiment, Analysis and Expertise

5 Action, Memory and Meaning: Embodied Cognition and the Actor’s Fictional Present Rick Kemp

As an embodied art, theatre requires actors to engage in most, if not all, of the cognitive processes that humans conduct in daily life. Actors display expertise in eliciting and regulating features of behaviour that most people simply allow to ‘happen’ unbidden. These features include imagination; memory; empathy; emotion stimulation and regulation; interpersonal awareness; and narrative, linguistic and psychological analysis, amongst many other activities. It is in the realm of these cognitive activities, as well as the more physically evident areas of voice and movement, that an actor’s technique operates. When an actor is successful in her technique it becomes invisible, leading many onlookers to assume that the apparent naturalness of behaviour in the fictional circumstances of a drama is an implicit ‘talent’. In fact, this naturalness is generally the result of long and painstaking preparation.1 The invisibility of technique has, until comparatively recently, meant that actors’ expertise has received little examination by psychologists, especially in comparison to the domains of music and dance. Additionally,

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the varied and specialized vocabularies used in theatre often mystify actors’ processes for the uninitiated, further complicating the potential for investigation. In the last fifteen years, however, researchers in the cognitive sciences and scholars in the fields of theatre and performance studies have found common ground in the concepts of embodied cognition, which offer a theoretical context comprehensive enough to address the multiple aspects of human perception, cognition and expression that are present in the actor’s craft. Embodied cognition presents a radical departure from the Cartesian idea of reason separated from body that has influenced traditional Western psychology. The concept proposes that thinking and behaviour constitute a property of the whole human organism, not just the brain, and that body, brain and cognition are ‘situated’ – tied to the surrounding environment. Embodied cognition incorporates research from many related disciplines – psychology, linguistics and neurobiology amongst many others. The field contains varied opinions but some important concepts are generally accepted. An insight that has emerged from neuroscientific findings and significantly influenced the field of embodied cognition is that sensorial and motor experiences form the neural foundations for mental concepts. This insight is evoked in the title of Shaun Gallagher’s book How the Body Shapes the Mind (2005) and informs many other works (e.g. Varela, Thompson and Rosch 1991; Johnson 1987, 1993; Lakoff and Johnson 1999; Gallese and Lakoff 2005; Haggard, Rossetti and Kawato 2007). This concept challenges assumptions that underlie much of Western thought. From the perspective of embodied cognition, phenomena such as consciousness, empathy, intersubjectivity, affect and aesthetic responses ‘come from having a body with various sensorimotor capacities [that] are themselves embedded in a more encompassing biological, psychological and cultural context’ (Varela, Thompson and Rosch 1991: 173). Within this field there is a growing consensus that meaning results intersubjectively from our situated interactions with the world. The field incorporates both theoretical hypotheses and experimental findings, such as the recent development in understanding of Broca’s area in the brain. This area was previously considered to be responsible for speech production but is now recognized for its engagement in networks distributed through the brain that are involved in the production of

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language as a multi-modal activity involving face, voice and hands (Gentilucci and Dalla Volta 2008; Glenberg and Gallese 2011; Bernal, Ardila and Rosselli 2015). This understanding features in neuroscientists Glenberg and Gallese’s Theory of Action-Based Language (2011), which suggests that language acquisition, comprehension and some aspects of production, including gesture, can be related to the sensorimotor neural networks involved in physical actions. Applying information such as this to acting practice presents a challenge. Whilst there are a few experimental studies that have focused directly on acting, they are small in number and limited in scope. The vast majority of cognitive neuroscientists focus on naturally occurring cognitive phenomena as topics of research rather than the consciously executed behaviour of performers. The lack of directly transferable empirical evidence regarding the cognition of acting forms part of my reason for turning to the theoretical and analytical transfer of more general studies. It may initially appear as if there is a difference in kind between the subjects of study in the neuro and cognitive sciences and the virtuosic activities of performers, which renders analytical transfer of insights untenable. However, activities in both daily life and in performance depend on common human processes such as those that I described at the beginning of the chapter. Differences between the two spheres of activity arise because of ‘framing’ (sets of expectations and conventions associated with varied types of activities) and levels of accomplishment in the common processes (i.e. trained expertise). For example, whilst an actor has to memorize more content more often than the average person would in their daily life, it is likely that similar cognitive processes are involved. So it is, arguably, appropriate to think of a continuum of behaviours that link the categories of ‘daily life’ and ‘performance’ activity. My strategy has been to identify scientific research that formulates principles and theories about cognitive processes that are recognizable in acting processes and then apply those principles and theories analytically to the field of acting practice. I return to embodied cognition later; for now, it is sufficient to note that theories and findings from this field offer more coherent explanations than were previously available of the cognitive phenomena involved in acting – including the interweaving of action, memory and meaning.

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Prior to the development of the conceptual framework created by embodied cognition, one of the most evident and measurable features of actors’ expertise was that of memorization, which led to it being one of the aspects of acting most studied by psychologists. However, the studies that have been conducted have been limited by the necessity to isolate specific phenomena and, where these studies have been directly linked to acting, by their application to a script-based, Stanislavskian approach (e.g. Noice and Noice 1996, 1997; Schmidt, Boshuizen and van Breukelen 2002). Evidently there are more varieties of performance than this single style, and when viewed in the framework of embodied cognition, these varieties can be linked by common cognitive activities, including the elements of technique mentioned earlier. A fuller understanding of an actor’s process of memorization and its relationship to verbal and non-verbal meaning can be gained by widening the scope of enquiry, both within acting practice and in the range of relevant scientific research. The intent of this chapter is to advance actor practice by placing memorization within a conceptual framework that integrates research and concepts from the neuro and cognitive sciences with the practical experience of acting in a range of approaches. Increasingly, neuroscientific studies recognize that cognitive activities are neurally ‘distributed’ through the brain rather than confined to one area, and interlinked to a high degree. In the analysis that follows, I examine ways in which memorization is networked with action and meaning. This will be assayed by synthesizing relevant material from a number of sources to create a cognitive framework for some of the common processes involved as actors memorize the expression of meaning, linking physical action with language. In the process, I propose a refinement of existing conceptual models in acting practice by suggesting that an actor’s assimilation and expression of meaning lives in a spectrum of temporally co-existent and overlapping modes ranging from gestural behaviour through language to narrative units. I hope that this conceptual refinement can assist actors in identifying and further developing different memorization approaches for various styles of performance. Additionally, the discussion offers some insights into the paradoxical phenomenon  of memorized behaviour appearing truthful in the actor’s fictional present.

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Modes of memorization In my own experience as an actor and director I have tried various processes of memorizing and have learnt that different approaches are required in different circumstances and for different types of performance. For example, when I was creating devised material as a solo clown and in making ensemble shows with Complicité, Commotion and other theatre companies, I found that, in general, I memorized both the language and the actions of the performance score we had developed with little conscious effort. I attribute this largely to the fact that the material emerged organically from improvisation, was frequently repeated as we developed variations and had become familiar through repeated physical action by the time we ‘set’ the content for performance. Moving from this process to a production of Ibsen’s The Wild Duck in the United States was a rude awakening. The time constraints of the rehearsal, the amount of language and the necessity to ‘set’ actions early in the process meant that my organic process of retention through discovery and experimentation was both ineffective and inappropriate. I had to swiftly change tack in order to integrate rote memorization with retrospectively assigned behavioural actions. These experiences exemplify just two of the many different types of memorization challenges that performers face in the contemporary era. Different approaches include learning ‘by rote’ – generally through repetition of units of text – the European siffleur method whereby a prompter whispers the dialogue into an actor’s ear for immediate re-speaking in rehearsal, or the wide-spread practice of reading from the script during rehearsal, melding verbal repetition with physical activity. Within this varied range, a widely accepted ‘folk’ belief amongst theatrical practitioners is that dialogue memorization does not really ‘stick’ until it is coupled with movement. This belief is supported by research from a psychologist/ actor team, Helga and Tony Noice (1996, 1997, 2002, 2006; Noice, Noice and Kennedy 2000), who have conducted a long-term research programme that has produced significant empirical data identifying the relationship between script analysis, physical activity and memorization. In recent years, they have suggested theoretical links between their research and the concepts of embodied cognition. Their experimental findings show that experienced actors rely less

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on verbatim acquisition of dialogue (rote learning) for memorization than on the contextualization of dialogue into goal-directed narrative through ‘actioning’ a text (Noice and Noice 1997). In theatrical parlance, ‘actioning’ is a process in which actors divide their own character’s dialogue into chunks of varying sizes. Actors identify these chunks by segmenting the play’s narrative according to the intent of the character. These varying intentions are defined with transitive verbs such as ‘persuade’, ‘deceive’, ‘intimidate’ and so on. The verbs provoke physical actions that generally do not literally express the linguistic meaning of the dialogue, but complement it by defining behaviour that expresses underlying intent. Through this process, actors create a ‘score’ of movement, and this is one of the factors that would seem to facilitate the memorization of dialogue in comparison to rote memorization. Neal Utterback, another researcher who links cognitive science, theatre and memory, also reports that movement facilitates retention of memorized language, even when it is only minimally related to narrative (2013). In his study, it seemed that self-generated movement was more effective in aiding memorization than movement carried out to order. The research of Noice and Noice focuses on the performance genre of script-based psychological realism and data sets that seem to be drawn from actors who follow an American ‘Method’-based approach. This approach has its roots in the acting system that was developed by Russian actor and director Konstantin Stanislavski, but differs in significant ways (for more information on this see Carnicke 1998; Kemp 2012). The Noices’ use of this performance genre as their referent for theatrical activity has led them to focus on the practice of ‘beat actioning’ common in the United States. ‘Beats’ are passages of dialogue defined by characters’ ‘objectives’ (tasks or goals pursued over varying temporal periods). As the Noices state: Throughout the early studies, actors often referred to a categorization scheme they called ‘finding the beats’. (A beat is the smallest goal-directed unit of the script. For instance, if the actor determines that, for the first four lines of dialogue, the character is interrogating someone, and, for the next two lines, that character is threatening the same person, these six lines of dialogue would constitute the first two beats of the scene). (Noice and Noice 2002: 11)

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The Noices’ research can be valuably enhanced and extended by identifying an even smaller goal-directed unit that is operative in all forms of performance, not only those based on scripts. These are the behavioural actions expressing thought units that are discernible through gesture. For cognitive science, an action is a goal-directed motor activity, and is directly related to language, since mental concepts are shaped by physical experiences situated in the environment. Consequently, behavioural actions and gestures are goal-directed, convey meaning and offer a more detailed level of analysis than ‘beat’ actions. In the ‘beat actioning’ process, behavioural actions generally arise spontaneously from an imaginative engagement with the pursuit of the identified goal. The behavioural action can, however, be consciously assigned by the actor, a process called ‘line actioning’ more commonly practised in the UK than in the United States. This practice has its origins in Stanislavski’s ‘Active Analysis’ (also known as the ‘Method of Physical Actions’), a feature of his approach that was not adopted in American ‘Method’ training. It has been developed by British directors such as Max Stafford Clark and Terry Johnson and popularized in the widely used book Actions: The Actor’s Thesaurus (Caldarone and Lloyd-Williams 2004). ‘Line actioning’ will be described more fully later. Beyond the realm of scriptbased work, the physically based approaches of the choreographer Rudolf Laban and theatre pedagogue Jacques Lecoq have provided performers with techniques that articulate the use of action verbs in ways that are congruent with the ‘line actioning’ process and the principles of embodied cognition. The information described above about the cognitive definition of an action as a goal-directed motor activity and the varied performance practices associated with the use of ‘actions’ suggest that the practice of ‘actioning’ as it is described in the theatrical technique analysed by the Noices can be usefully refined. Identifying the process of ‘actioning’ at a different level of granularity strengthens its position within the theoretical environment of embodied cognition, and can facilitate further empirical research. In a reflexive understanding, a cognitive definition of actions furthers acting practice by providing a greater level of detail and linking script-based psychological realism with a wider range of performance genres. These theoretical steps also refine an understanding of the memorization process by linking it to meaning-specific movement at a micro-level, suggesting that

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beyond the general enhancement of memorization by movement, there is a meaningful relationship between specific actions and memorization, frequently arrived at intuitively by actors, but identifiable through a cognitive analysis.

Embodied cognition and the action based theory of language It is useful at this point to review in greater depth some of the relevant scientific research that forms the conceptual environment for this discussion. In the broader field, there is general, current consensus that there are three types of long-term memory: ‘declarative, semantic memory’ (facts and events that can be consciously recalled), implicit and explicit episodic memory (unconscious and conscious memory of situations and relations) and ‘procedural memory’ (the unconscious memory of motor-based skills). Information that is retained in these three types of memory is typically acquired through repetition and practice. The studies mentioned above, which show that memorization of dialogue is aided by movement, tend to suggest that this activity is somehow linking declarative memory and procedural memory. A potential explanation for this phenomenon lies in the foundational proposition of embodied cognition briefly mentioned earlier – that the mind is inherently embodied, not simply because the brain operates in a body, but because physical experience shapes conceptual thought. Furthermore, thought employs many of the same neuronal pathways as physical action, a process often called ‘neural exploitation’ (Gallese 2008: 327). Kinaesthetic and perceptual experiences of the material world generate cognitive systems that reflect our physical environments and interpersonal experiences and form patterns for higher cognitive activity. As a result, cognitive processes like language and conceptual thought use partial reactivations of sensory, motor and affective systems. As neuroscientist Vittorio Gallese proposes: [K]ey aspects of human social cognition are underpinned by brain mechanisms originally evolved for sensorimotor integration. It is proposed that these mechanisms were later on adapted as new neurofunctional architecture for thought and language, while

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retaining their original functions as well. By neural exploitation, social cognition and language can be linked to the experiential domain of action. (Gallese 2008: 317) For example, the neuronal patterns that fire in the physical experience of grasping an object are partially reactivated when one says or reads the word ‘grasp’, even when one uses the term metaphorically as in ‘grasping an idea’ (Pulvermüller and Fadiga 2010: 355). In another expression of this phenomenon, the network of motor neurons associated with the action of ‘grasp’ are also activated when one observes another person doing this action, through what are known as ‘mirror neurons systems’ (MNS). These systems incorporate neurons that have mirror properties, meaning that they are active not only in an individual’s execution of movements and actions, but also in the perception of movements and actions executed by others. Originally discovered in macaque monkeys by a team including Gallese, mirror neurons map an observed action onto the network of motor neurons that is involved in the observer’s execution of the same action. As these monkeys’ brains are very similar to those of humans, it has been common to extrapolate findings such as these to human activity, but there continues to be significant debate amongst scientists about the nature and existence of mirror neurons in humans. This arises because ethical standards of research on humans prevent the duplication of experiments that were conducted on monkeys through the implanting of electrodes in their brains. In place of these types of experiments, numerous brainimaging studies have been conducted to test the mirror hypothesis in humans, although evidence from these types of studies is not conclusive. Many consider a study that was able to record the activities of single cells in human brains to have firmly established that mirror neurons exist in humans (Mukamel et al. 2010). A recent meta-analysis (a survey of multiple studies) shows significant evidence of the existence of ‘mirror systems’ distributed through multiple regions of the human brain (Molenberghs, Cunnington and Mattingley 2012). Another meta-study confirms the involvement of mirror systems in the ways in which we understand the actions and goals of other people (Van Overwalle and Baetens 2009). The identification of this phenomenon has many implications. Gallese has proposed that it supports social cognition and the concept of intersubjectivity – the idea that our sense of our individual

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selves arises through interaction with others: ‘Intercorporeality thus becomes the main source of knowledge that we have of others. The motor simulation instantiated by neurons endowed with “mirror properties” is probably the neural correlate of this human faculty, describable in functional terms as “embodied simulation”’ (Gallese and Cuccio 2014: 11). Gallese has also extended his research in the field of mirror neurons to develop an action-based theory of language. He points to ‘findings that strongly support the existence of mirror neurons in the human motor system and [that] have led to the notion of a mirror neuron system involving areas in the frontal lobes (notably, Broca’s area) and parietal lobes’ (Glenberg and Gallese 2011: 8). The significance here is that Broca’s area has traditionally been associated in brain research with speech and language. Gallese is careful to point out that, in addition to the motor system, he also considers both emotion and perception systems to be active in language. That said, he assimilates data from multiple findings in a theoretical framework that roots language in action. Using the example of ‘grasp’, he and Glenberg explain: A major step forward in the research on the mirror neuron systems (MNS) consisted in the discovery that parietal mirror neurons not only code the goal of an executed/observed motor act, like grasping an object, but they also code the overall action intention . . . The MNS maps integrated sequences of goal-related motor acts . . . to obtain . . . temporally chained sequences of motor acts properly assembled to accomplish a more distal goal-state. The ‘motor vocabulary’ of grasping-related neurons, by sequential chaining, reorganizes itself [so] as to map the fulfillment of an action intention. The overall action intention (to eat, to place the food or object) is the goal-state of the ultimate goal-related motor act of the chain. (Glenberg and Gallese 2011: 3) The significance of this part of the mosaic of scientific information for the topic at hand is multifold: first of all, the neural networks of motor actions are involved in language; secondly, that meaning arises intersubjectively; thirdly, that one can identify meaning in relation to small units of behaviour. This third statement arises from the fact that, whilst a single motor act (like ‘grasp’) may not in itself contain narrative meaning, it stimulates neural links with a sequence of motor acts associated with a goal directed action

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(such as ‘to eat’). With regard to the first statement, I have now established that both language production and the procedural memory engaged in physical activity rely on neural systems involved in motor control. This reliance upon shared systems suggests why physical activity in general aids the memorization of language. Glenberg and Gallese’s description of the neural activity associated with the more specifically goal-directed actions also provides a possible explanation for the prevalence amongst actors of using goal-oriented intentions to define segments of narrative meaning.

‘Line actioning’ and scale Whilst goal-oriented intention informs the practice of ‘beat actioning’ that I described earlier, the scale of narrative segments that are defined as ‘beat’ actions does not match the scale of goaldirected actions as they are defined by Glenberg and Gallese. (I use the term ‘scale’ here to describe variations in temporal duration, amount of behavioural action and meaning). As I mentioned previously, the scale level of goal-directed actions is more closely approached by ‘line actioning’. Proponents of ‘line actioning’ are emphatic that the words used to describe actions are transitive verbs  – describing intersubjective actions that correlate in some regards to the ‘action intentions’ described above by Glenberg and Gallese. As the authors of Actions: The Actors’ Thesaurus point out: An action word must always be a transitive verb. A transitive or active verb is a verb (‘a doing word’) that you can actively do to someone else. It is always in the present tense and transitional, expressing an action that carries over from you (the subject) to the person you’re speaking to (the object). (Caldarone and Lloyd-Williams 2004: xvii) The same authors, Caldarone and Lloyd-Williams, representing the practice that is prevalent in the UK, also insist that actions should be identified for thought units as well as for the larger narrative units of ‘beats’: ‘We choose an action for each whole thought’ (2004: xx). To this extent, their working practice creates a more detailed verbal ‘score’ for associated motor actions than ‘beat actioning’ alone, as it

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defines the meaning of smaller units of behaviour within a dramatic narrative. Furthermore, by enabling the actor to consciously define physical action at a level of scale (or granularity) that matches discrete thought units, this process would further facilitate the consolidation of neural patterns in procedural memory. This level of definition could usefully complement the model of an actor’s process used by the Noices. It offers an articulation of a feature of memorization that they have discovered as their research has progressed. They have found that it is not ‘beat actioning’ alone that facilitates retention of material, but its support of a phase of the process that they have called ‘Active Experiencing’: Instead of instructing the students to analyze the text, we had them read the material, imagining someone they knew who needed this information. Indeed, we specifically told them not to try to remember the words but to put all their concentration on meaning them (i.e. actively using them to gain a specific end such as warning a friend). Suddenly, the results were reversed: Meaning the words produced greater retention than memorizing them did, with 50 per cent retention for the memorization strategy but 60 per cent for the actors’ performance strategy. (Noice and Noice 2006: 15) They go on to say that ‘Active Experiencing’ is the use of ‘all physical, mental, and emotional channels to communicate the meaning of material to another person, either actually present or imagined’ (2006: 15). The following description makes clear that this process provokes ‘actions’ in the sense that Glenberg and Gallese use the term: A professional theater director presented a series of progressively more difficult exercises in which participants became cognitively, emotionally, and physically involved in the performance. Thus, if the exercise called for one participant to demand attention from another, there would be observable changes in the first participant. These might include increased sternness of facial expression, harshness of tone of voice, and aggressiveness of body language. (2006: 16) Using the concept of ‘line actioning’ that I described earlier, the definition of ‘actions’ at a more granular level than that of ‘beats’ gives

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greater specificity to moment-to-moment behaviour (the ‘observable changes’ that the Noices describe above) in a way that is coherent with theories of action-based language. If, as I suggest above, the meaningspecific movement of goal-oriented actions facilitates memorization by linking language with procedural memory, this is what is prompted in the phase that the Noices call ‘Active Experiencing’. Whilst the process of ‘line actioning’ can usefully complement that of ‘beat actioning’, there are, however, some problems with Caldarone and Lloyd-Williams’ description of the relationship of thought to language and the transition to embodied speech. They propose, presumably to facilitate script analysis, that a thought will always be equivalent to a sentence: ‘A whole thought is comprised within a whole sentence’ (Caldarone and Lloyd-Williams 2004: xvii). Even a cursory consideration of this statement complicates the thought/grammar symmetry that Caldarone and Lloyd-Williams propose. Evidently, playwrights, by virtue of using punctuation, give more form to dialogue than is common in everyday speech, with its incomplete sentences, elliptical statements, references to shared knowledge and redundancies. Just considering the sole stylistic example of psychological realism, simple consideration of our own speech suggests that there can be more than one thought expressed in a single grammatical sentence, and that on other occasions, more than one sentence may be required to express a discrete thought. The idea that thoughts are equivalent to sentences also neglects thought that is expressed by behaviour, or the grammatical intricacies employed by playwrights like David Mamet to achieve dialogue that can both sound naturalistic and have poetic effect. A more refined understanding of the relationship between thought, language and speech can be derived, again, from experimental data in the neuro and cognitive sciences. This data links thought and speech with gesture and is thus an essential component of a cognitive understanding of actors’ memorization processes.

Thought, speech and gesture Cognitive linguists David McNeill and Adam Kendon have pioneered the recognition that gesture and language are equal communicators of meaning in speech (e.g. Kendon 2004; McNeill

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1992, 2000, 2005, 2016). As McNeill points out: ‘[G]estures are an integral part of language as much as are words, phrases and sentences – gesture and language are one system’ (McNeill 1992: 2). Kendon, working separately from McNeill, but aligning with the principles that he has established, explains: When a speaker speaks, the speech is organized into a series of packages . . . [t]hese packages tend to correspond to units of meaning . . . which may be referred to as ‘idea units’. Gesture is also organized into packages of action, . . . which coincide with and tend to be semantically coherent with . . . the ‘idea units’ . . . However, the gestural expression typically takes up just a part of the idea . . . For example, it may bring out an aspect of meaning associated with the verb . . . or it may add an imagistic dimension to something referred to by a noun. (Kendon 2004: 126) This analysis, in talking about gestures as ‘packages of action’ that are ‘semantically coherent’ with ‘idea units’, identifies a more detailed segmentation of meaning than either ‘beat actioning’ or ‘line actioning’. It is an analysis that is coherent with the experimental data upon which McNeill bases his description of the relationship between gesture and speech in Gesture and Thought (2005).2 In McNeill’s conception, gesture is an integral component of language, not merely an accompaniment to, or ornament of speech, but synchronous and co-expressive with it, actively participating in both speaking and thinking. This hypothesis is developed from multiple experimental studies observing the synchrony of speech forms and gestures, which indicate that they are co-expressive of the same underlying thought unit. McNeill’s proposal is, furthermore, supported by more recent experimental data which suggest that speech and gesture use the same communication system (Bernardis and Gentilucci 2006). In McNeill’s formulation, the process of thinking for speaking involves an instability of imagery and language, which seeks resolution in utterances that can be expressed either as gesture or speech, or both. The smallest element of this process is the Growth Point (GP), a snapshot of an utterance at its beginning mental stage. A further feature of the GP is that it: addresses the concept that there is a specific starting point for a thought. Although an idea unit continues out of the preceding

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context and has ramifications in later speech, it does not exist at all times, and comes into being at some specific moment; the formation of a growth point is this moment, theoretically, and it is made visible in the onset of the gesture. (McNeill 2016: para. 1) McNeill describes a process whereby a GP arises from a context and differentiates itself from that context by virtue of being ‘newsworthy’. Whilst McNeill’s research uses observed speech and gesture to identify units of thought, the principle that it identifies can be applied to script analysis, offering units of meaning that are semantically coherent with gesture. This approach provides a more reliable way of identifying thoughts to be actioned than the ‘one thought comprises one sentence’ principle advanced by Caldarone and Lloyd-Williams. Also, because it is operating at the level of gesture, it offers an analytic system that can be directly expressed in motor actions, and draws upon procedural memory. The identification of thoughts through gestural actions allows actors to consciously define the otherwise ephemeral moment-to-moment behaviour that is involved in the ‘Active Experiencing’ phase of the Noices’ model, and which cumulatively forms larger chunks of narrative action, such as ‘beats’, episodes and scenes.

Actions – the memorized present In an earlier publication (Kemp 2012), I investigated the implications of McNeill’s research for a Stanislavskian form of script analysis; here, my focus is on how a definition of moment-to-moment actions assists our understanding of the present-tense reality of memorized material in performance. As I described earlier, many studies have shown that movement in general assists in memorization; a focus on the concept of gesture as action incorporates the consideration of meaning. A number of studies have demonstrated the relationship of gesture to learning and memorization (Cook, Mitchell and GoldinMeadow 2008; Cook, Yip and Goldin-Meadow 2010; GoldinMeadow and Beilock 2010; Goldin-Meadow et al. 2012).

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In one of these, tellingly titled ‘Gesturing makes memories that last’ (Cook, Yip and Goldin-Meadow 2010), the authors state that: when people talk, they often gesture with their hands, thus adding an action component to talking. The question we asked in this study was whether producing gesture along with speech makes the information encoded in that speech more memorable than it would have been without gesture. We found that gesturing during encoding led to better recall, even when the amount of speech produced during encoding was controlled. Gesturing during encoding improved recall whether the speaker chose to gesture spontaneously or was instructed to gesture. Thus, gesturing during encoding seems to function like action in facilitating memory. (2010: 465) This and other related studies, when connected with the principles outlined by Glenberg and Gallese, and Kendon and McNeill, which I described earlier, suggest that gestures are ‘thought actions’, specifying meaning at a moment-to-moment scale and facilitating the memorization of its verbal expression. This conceptualization helpfully adjusts existing actor practice to incorporate the findings of embodied cognition. It creates a continuum of dramatic action, from the smallest observable unit – gesture – through goal-oriented ‘beats’ to sequences of ‘beats’ that form episodes, which in turn form scenes. This model relates to the type of cause-and-effect narrative that exists in the style of ‘psychological realism’, which is predominant in Western stage and screen drama. Additionally, as it rests on common components of human behaviour, it can also serve (with some modification), other styles of performance and aspects of scripted performance in which meaning is communicated nonverbally. Acknowledging embodied action as an equal communicator of meaning with spoken language in performance also supports the dissolution of restrictive barriers between different approaches to actor training. For example, the physically oriented pedagogy of Jacques Lecoq is generally confined to ‘movement’ classes in Western acting conservatoires, whilst Stanislavski’s approach informs most ‘acting’ classes. However, Lecoq’s training incorporates sophisticated investigations of verbs of action such as ‘push’ and ‘pull’ and their postural, gestural and metaphorical dynamics (see Kemp 2012; Evans and Kemp 2016), work that could usefully complement Stanislavski’s ‘Active Analysis’. The notion of communicative embodied actions

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also finds explicit expression in the acting approaches of Michael Chekhov and Jerzy Grotowski and the movement approach of Rudolf Laban in its application to actor training.

Summary A description of ‘actioning’ rooted in embodied cognition assists us in understanding the phenomenon of the actor living in a fictional present tense whilst engaging in thoughts, behaviour and dialogue that have been memorized. This description rests on theories of human cognitive activity, which are based on evidence from multiple experimental studies and applied to acting processes. As a result, the theoretical hypothesis offered in this contribution is compatible with these theories and with a variety of actor practices. Effective ‘deep’ memorization occurs through reactivating the neural links between mental concepts, the words and phrases that express them and their motor origins in physical behaviour. Because of the actional and intersubjective nature of language, when actions arise at a gestural level, they are engaging sensorimotor networks, and thus are more easily encoded and consolidated within procedural memory, which relies on neural systems involved in motor control. The actor’s process of segmenting dramatic narrative into goal-oriented chunks probably assists in memorization through prompting movement in the form of behavioural actions at varying levels of detail. Meaningful gestural actions that either arise spontaneously or through conscious choice in the practice of ‘line actioning’ are semantically coherent with ‘idea units’, and it would seem likely that it is at this level that links with procedural memory are made. These gestural actions, defined as transitive verbs, also assist the actor in clarifying a character’s intent to an audience by enabling him or her to consciously define the meaningful behaviour that accompanies speech.

Notes 1 Exceptions to this general principle arise when film, TV or web directors use untrained individuals whose everyday behaviour matches that of the character. This approach can succeed on screen

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where camera and microphone can compensate for the lack of the trained ability to ‘project’. It rarely succeeds on stage where actors have to amplify and clarify both voice and communicative behaviour to connect with audience members beyond the third row of seats, analyse a script and sustain continuous imaginative engagement with its fictional circumstances. Additionally, there are a number of performance genres (e.g. classical verse drama or musical theatre) that require specialist knowledge and skills far beyond the range of everyday behaviour. 2 McNeill conceives of language as an imagery-language dialectic in which gestures provide imagery. This description speaks of language and imagery in binary terms, which at first may seem in conflict with the concept of neural activity as distributed and networked. It may be, however, that the apparent contradiction arises from the terminology that McNeill is using, as he acknowledges that speech and gesture are often co-produced by a thought unit. This phenomenon is compatible with Glenberg and Gallese’s Theory of Action-Based Language, and the findings that Broca’s area in the brain is engaged in the production of language as a multi-modal activity involving face, voice and hands.

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Gallese, V. and V. Cuccio (2014), ‘The paradigmatic body: Embodied simulation, intersubjectivity, the bodily self, and language’, in T. Metzinger and J. M. Windt (eds), Open MIND, 1–29, Frankfurt am Main: MIND Group. Available online: http://open-mind.net/papers (accessed 4 April 2016). Gallese, V. and G. Lakoff (2005), ‘The brain’s concepts: The role of the sensory-motor system in reason and language’, Cognitive Neuropsychology, 22 (3): 455–79. Gentilucci, M. and R. Dalla Volta (2008), ‘Spoken language and arm gestures are controlled by the same motor control system’, Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 61 (6): 944–57. doi: 10.1080/17470210701625683. Glenberg, A. M. and V. Gallese (2011), ‘Action-based language: A theory of language acquisition, comprehension, and production’, Cortex, 48 (7): 1–18. Available online: doi:10.1016/j.cortex.2011.04.010 (accessed 13 May 2016). Goldin-Meadow, S. and S. L. Beilock (2010), ‘Action’s influence on thought: The case of gesture’, Perspectives on Psychological Science, 5 (6): 664–74. Goldin-Meadow, S., S. L. Levine, E. Zinchenko, T. K. Yip, N. Hemani and L. Factor (2012), ‘Doing gesture promotes performing a mental transformation task better than seeing gesture’, Developmental Science, 15 (6): 876–84. Haggard, P., Y. Rossetti and M. Kawato, eds (2007), Sensorimotor Foundations of Higher Cognition: Attention and Performance XXII, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Johnson, M. (1987), The Body in the Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Johnson, M. (1993), ‘Conceptual metaphors and embodied structures of meaning’, Philosophical Psychology, 6 (4): 413–22. Kemp, R. (2012), Embodied Acting: What Neuroscience Tells Us about Performance, New York: Routledge. Kendon, A. (2004), Gesture: Visible Action as Utterance, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lakoff, G. and M. Johnson (1999), Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought, New York: Basic Books. McNeill, D. (1992), Hand and Mind: What Gestures Reveal about Thought, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. McNeill, D. (2000), Language and Gesture, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McNeill, D. (2005), Gesture and Thought, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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McNeill, D. (2016), ‘The Growth Point’, McNeill Lab: Center for Gesture and Speech Research. Available online: http://mcneilllab.uchicago.edu/ writing/growth_points.html (accessed 6 February 2016). Mukamel, R., A. D. Ekstrom, J. Kaplan, M. Iacoboni and I. Fried (2010), ‘Single-neuron responses in humans during execution and observation of actions’, Current Biology, 20 (8): 750–6. Molenberghs, P., R. Cunnington and J. B. Mattingley (2012), ‘Brain regions with mirror properties: A meta-analysis of 125 human fMRI studies’, Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 36 (1): 341–9. Noice, H. and T. Noice (1996), ‘Two approaches to learning a theatrical script’, Memory, 4 (1): 1–17. Noice, T. and H. Noice (1997), The Nature of Expertise in Professional Acting: A Cognitive View, Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Noice, T. and H. Noice (2002), ‘A review of recent research on the expertise of professional actors’, High Ability Studies, 13 (1): 7–19. Noice, T. and H. Noice (2006), ‘What studies of actors and acting can tell us about memory and cognitive functioning’, Current Directions in Psychological Science, 15 (1): 14–18. Noice, T., H. Noice and C. Kennedy (2000), ‘The contribution of movement on the recall of complex material’, Memory, 8 (6): 353–63. Pulvermüller, F. and L. Fadiga (2010), ‘Active perception: Sensorimotor circuits as a cortical basis for language’, Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 11 (5): 351–60. Schmidt, H. G., H. P. Boshuizen and G. J. van Breukelen (2002), ‘Longterm retention of a theatrical script by repertory actors: The role of context’, Memory, 10 (1): 21–8. Utterback, N. (2013), ‘Embodied memory and extra-daily gesture’, in N. Shaughnessy (ed.), Affective Performance and Cognitive Science: Body, Brain and Being, 147–58, London: Bloomsbury. Varela, F. J., E. Thompson and E. Rosch (1991), The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience, Boston, MA: MIT Press. Van Overwalle, F. and K. Baetens (2009), ‘Understanding others’ actions and goals by mirror and mentalizing systems: A meta-analysis’, NeuroImage, 48 (3): 564–84.

6 Learning Complex Actions through Physical vs. Observational Experience: Implications and Applications for Dance and Other Performing Arts Dilini K. Sumanapala and Emily S. Cross

Introduction Observing a model is often a first step towards learning a new motor skill. When learning a complex new movement, such as a triple jump in figure skating or a challenging chord progression in a piano piece, an instructor can communicate precise visual, spatial and movement characteristics of an action simply through demonstration. The observer must then memorize this action before converting it into a motor command that can be accurately

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performed. Although numerous studies in motor learning have measured how physical performance improves with repeated practice (Lee, Swinnen and Serrien 1994; Wulf and Schmidt 1997; Walker et al. 2002; Savion-Lemieux and Penhune 2005), the precise manner in which physical and observational experience affect action memory is less well understood. Nevertheless, a growing body of literature is beginning to address how the ability to process other peoples’ bodies moving in space may contribute to improvements in an observer’s ability to understand and subsequently perform a movement. Performing an exact set of movements as modelled by a choreographer or director can be a crucial aspect of artistic expression in performing arts settings, such as when learning classic Denishawn, Graham or Balanchine choreography.1 As such, the type of memory processes required to learn sequences of movements in these settings can be considered distinct from other types of skill learning, given that these actions are defined by highly specific characteristics of timing, intention and expression. For instance, crossing a stage from upstage left to downstage right performing a combination of piqué and chaîné turns requires performance of a sequence of movements defined not just by an end goal (i.e. to cross the stage), but also by the precise movement profiles of the individual turns, as well as the choreographic intent underlying this movement (i.e. the dancer is heading to that part of the stage to joyfully greet a friend in a celebration scene in a particular ballet). In a contrasting example taken from sport, different tennis players may use different approaches to hit a ball that are nevertheless equally effective in scoring points. Similarly, professional basketball players may pass a ball using movements that are different between players, but can be combined during team play to achieve the mutual objective of scoring points. For students of dance and other performing arts, the additional imitative aspects of performance (for instance, emulating the focus of gaze, the tension held in the shoulders and angle of the head) place numerous extra demands on action memory compared to contexts where minute features of movement kinematics are less emphasized and the goal of an action (i.e. passing a ball or scoring a point) matters most. The aim of this chapter is to illustrate how findings from empirical investigation of observational learning may be applied to contexts that require detailed movement memory for action performance.

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Body processing in the brain Fortunately for performers and non-performers alike, the human brain is equipped with sophisticated cognitive machinery that can deal with the demands of translating rich visual information about the postures and movements of another performer’s body onto one’s own body. When observing actions, the human brain processes these actions using multiple tiers of visual data. Early visual processing areas in the brain, located within the occipital and temporal lobes, decode visual input regarding the angles of body parts and outlines of body shapes that we encounter when we see other people (Downing et al. 2001; Kamitani and Tong 2005; Urgesi et al. 2007). Particular patches within the occipital cortex contain populations of neurons that respond to basic visual properties such as colour, shape and line orientations in the surrounding environment (Murray, Olshausen and Woods 2003; Kamitani and Tong 2005; Parkes et al. 2009). In addition, activity within the extrastriate body area (EBA) and superior temporal sulcus (STS) appears to be tuned to bodies (Downing et al. 2001) and biological motion (Thompson et al. 2005), respectively.

FIGURE 6.1 Key brain regions involved in body processing.

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Overall, activity within these particular brain regions facilitates the visual processing of others’ bodies in rich detail. Some studies have shown that we are able to understand biological motion even in the absence of visually detailed human figures, as in the case of point-light displays (Pinto and Shiffrar 1999). These displays are often composed of nothing more than a few ‘floating’ dots positioned on key joints in a moving human figure, which when seen moving together give the viewer a strong impression that they are watching a human body in motion, even though they might only be seeing seven white dots moving on a black background. Despite the fact that the figure itself is completely invisible, the ability to infer motion is so advanced that humans can accurately determine whether a figure shown in a point-light display is happy, sad or fearful (Clarke et al. 2005). Remarkably, even an actor’s gender (Mather and Murdoch 1994) and sexual orientation (Blake and Shiffrar 2007) can be deduced at higher rates than chance from such point-light displays of biological motion. These findings demonstrate that complex information regarding identity, emotion, sexual orientation and even mental states can be inferred through human actions depicted using an extremely minimal level of visual detail. The fact that the human brain can pick up such a rich array of movement and social information from a few dots moving on a screen suggests that such minimal displays might also be useful in exploring how memory for movement is encoded.

Point-light display Speaking further to this point, if detailed visual information about another person’s body is not required for the human brain to process human motion, point-light displays themselves may be an effective tool in teaching movement information in a stripped-down context. Currently, studies that have compared point-light displays against other forms of demonstration provide mixed support for using visually reduced stimuli to teach new movements (Rodrigues, Ferracioli and Denardi 2010; Kordi and Ghamary 2014). When comparing point-light displays to naturalistic video demonstrations, Rodrigues, Ferracioli and Denardi (2010) found that dance-naïve participants in the naturalistic video group performed better than

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FIGURE 6.2 Mapping of a human figure onto a point light display.

participants in the point-light group when performance was assessed by expert ballet dancers. In a separate study involving basketball free-throws, however, participants assigned to a point-light group showed a similar capacity to learn these movements as participants assigned to a naturalistic video group, indicating that skill learning in this particular basketball context was comparable across the two demonstration modes (Kordi and Ghamary 2014). However, these studies only feature point-light displays during initial demonstration and do not explore how the same displays could be adapted to provide online feedback during performance. Using similar motion capture techniques as those required to produce the point-light displays in the first place, instruction and feedback modes could be combined side-by-side so that students seeking to perfect aspects of a particular movement (such as the timing or amplitude of a jump or a kick) can observe the extent to which their own movements deviate from a

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model when observed in a simplified point-light format. Whilst this technique might not be as useful for students working on expressive variations, such as muscle intentionality or direction of gaze, what point-light displays do offer are simple interfaces to communicate subtle physical and visual differences between demonstrated and reproduced movements whilst leaving out visual detail that might otherwise distract when focusing on enhancing precise physical reproduction of movement timing, scale and amplitude.

Learning by doing versus learning by seeing Research findings from social neuroscience could help explain why providing more detailed visual feedback may not necessarily aid action memory and performance in all contexts. Although some common brain regions spanning sensorimotor cortices are engaged when we perceive as well as perform movements (Grèzes and Decety 2001; Caspers et al. 2010), the degree to which these regions are found to be active during observation and performance vary across studies. When expert ballet dancers observe unpractised choreography performed by oppositegendered performers, activation in key visuomotor processing regions such as the premotor and parietal cortices (see Figure 6.1) is reduced compared to when they observe movements from their own-gendered repertoire (Calvo-Merino et al. 2006). This profile of neural activity amongst expert dancers suggests that a lack of physical experience with movements that are gender-specific for the opposite gender, despite frequent visual experience, results in more superficial processing of these actions. In contrast, during action observation amongst dance-naïve participants, Cross and colleagues found similar patterns of brain activation for previously observed and previously performed dance movements, following five days of visual or physical practice (Cross et al. 2009; Kirsch and Cross 2015). Juxtaposing these results with those reported by Calvo-Merino et al. (2006), the participants featured in the study by Calvo-Merino and colleagues may have had more fully developed motor templates for actions they had learnt through years of physical training, which were not engaged when

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observing choreography that is extremely visually familiar, but not at all physically familiar. For Cross and her collaborators’ dancenaïve participants, it is likely that the recentness of observational and physical training experience, as well as the overall similarity of movements encountered across both types of training, may have evoked similar movement memories. Overall, these studies highlight how individual differences in movement experience as well as taskrelated differences could affect the degree to which observed actions elicit movement-related activity in the brain. In certain conditions, observation alone has been shown to improve subsequent motor performance (Kohl and Shea 1992; Black and Wright 2000), highlighting the fact that some improvements in motor performance can be achieved without concurrent sensorimotor feedback. In a study that required participants to trace patterns using a computer mouse, observing another learner’s movement errors produced subsequent improvements in the observer’s own movement profiles, even when no physical practice was involved (Hayes, Elliot and Bennett 2013). Specifically, participants in the observation group demonstrated improved performance after being yoked to participants in a physical practice condition, indicating that visuomotor information regarding tracing motions could be learnt and retained through observation alone. Similar effects on performance have also been documented immediately following observation without prolonged training. In a study by Mattar and Gribble (2005), participants who observed videos of other individuals learning to manipulate a robotic arm performed better than control subjects who had no experience observing how to move the robot arm. Together, these studies suggest that useful information about how to perform a new action may be learnt and retained for later performance, even within a limited timeframe and even when no concurrent physical movement is performed.

Movement facilitation during action observation Depending on circumstances, executing an action whilst concurrently observing another person performing the same action has been associated with more fluid performance. For example,

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participants in a study by Heyes et al. (2005) experienced facilitation of their own movements when performing hand gestures if they concurrently observed videos that were congruent with their own actions, such as opening and closing the hand. Similarly, movement facilitation has also been demonstrated when participants are instructed to perform finger-lifting movements if these movements match videos that are simultaneously observed (Brass et al. 2000). These studies suggest that observing movements of others can activate similar motor representations in an observer’s brain (see Introduction to this volume for more discussion of the human mirror system), which may in turn lead to more fluid movement execution. If this logic applies during complex movement learning, movement facilitation effects may directly contribute to the speed with which movement memories are formed and transformed into self-generated motor commands. In practical settings that involve simultaneous demonstration and performance (particularly when a mirror is present, to provide additional visual feedback on whole-body movements), it would be expected that learning would be superior in these contexts, compared to simply watching or performing without visual feedback. As such, demonstrations are potentially most effective in contexts where an observer is able to perform during observation, like in the context of many dance, mime and physical acting classes. As alluded to above, facilitation effects during imitation have additional implications in training contexts that incorporate a performer’s own reflection. However, little is known about how observing one’s own movements during performance from a thirdperson perspective could lead to motor improvements. If physical action understanding is built purely on the basis of basic visual processing, the human brain should treat a mirror reflection as it would any other human body in space. With that being said, the ability to identify one’s own body in a mirror likely has a positive impact on the ability to learn movements compared to observing (only) someone else. In essence, a mirror reflection instantly communicates movement feedback during performance in a way that cannot be matched by demonstrators or verbal feedback alone. Since immediate error-related feedback is known to facilitate learning (Kawato and Gomi 1992; Bijsterbosch et al. 2011), mirrors and other techniques that enable real-time movement feedback, such as humanoid avatars in gaming devices, may prove

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to be particularly useful in contexts that require precise movement replication. However, studies that generate movement facilitation effects tend to involve situations where participants can produce movements without lengthy periods of training (Maeda, Kleiner-Fisman and Pascual-Leone 2002; Hardwick and Edwards 2012). In real-world contexts, it may be the case that these facilitation effects are only preserved if demonstrated movements are either very simple or very similar to movements that a learner can already perform. In contrast, movements that are much more physically complex may require far more varied approaches to demonstration and training. In a virtual environment, a learner may be able to use his or her own body within the same space as an avatar to ‘trace’ an action as it is being performed. Similar techniques available in racing videogames such as Forza, Dirt and Gran Turismo (available across various gaming platforms) allow players to trace the paths of competitors in order to beat leading race times. The feature is commonly referred to as ‘ghosting’ due to the transparency of the competitor’s vehicle, which allows a player to move one’s own car within the competitor’s space. If this type of simultaneous action modelling is adapted for other forms of movement learning, such as music and dance, a novice would be able to gain access to movement feedback from an expert’s perspective, even if the learner’s own performance ability is limited.

Action encoding across different spatial reference frames An individual’s own experience performing specific motor actions may determine the extent to which an observed action is encoded in memory. A movement could be encoded according to an extrinsic reference frame where a movement’s features are mapped with respect to the external environment (i.e. I run towards upstage left, turn around and then piqué turn towards the tree located downstage right), or an intrinsic reference frame that maps movement with respect to the observer’s own body (i.e. I turn around my left shoulder, take two steps backwards and then perform five chaîné turns leading with my right foot in a clockwise

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direction). Frequently observed actions that are never practised do not benefit from feedback acquired through physical experience, and as such, may be encoded with visual and spatial information relative only to an extrinsic frame of reference. This limitation of visual-only experience has implications for observational learning contexts where an observer has no first-person, intrinsic reference frame for matching an observed action onto his or her own body. In contrast, firsthand physical experience may provide access to both intrinsic as well as extrinsic visuomotor information, which in turn could facilitate long-term memory for frequently practised movements. Evidence from arm-reaching experiments by Brayanov, Press and Smith (2012) demonstrates that intrinsic and extrinsic action encoding is likely fluid in nature. In this experiment, arm movements generated by participants were mapped using intrinsic as well as extrinsic reference frame information, suggesting that an individual’s memory of a movement may move flexibly between the two reference frames during learning. The additive impact of both physical and observational experience may facilitate long-term movement retention through cognitive mechanisms that encode actions using coordinate systems not limited to just the observer’s own body or just the external environment. In intervention programmes designed to treat developmental coordination disorder (DCD), difficulties with encoding intrinsic and extrinsic aspects of movements by observation can be overcome if an experimenter manually positions a learner’s limbs to provide haptic feedback (Niemeijer et al. 2003). When limbs are repositioned, the learner is able to bypass difficulties translating extrinsically encoded movements by gaining access to the motor information within an intrinsic reference frame. For students who exhibit difficulties imitating observed movements during early stages of training, similar forms of instruction could be incorporated to provide intrinsically-framed motor feedback if translating extrinsically encoded movement information proves difficult. For example, if a dance student is finding it difficult to emulate his instructor’s épaulement, his learning could possibly be accelerated by the instructor placing the student’s heads, arms and torso in the appropriate place, so he can experience, firsthand, what his body should feel like in a certain position. Naturally, many dance instructors already make use of this approach, but exploring ways to provide learners with intrinsic motor feedback

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during more complex action learning could further accelerate the learning process. In studies that involve similar feedback principles, haptic sensation has been successfully used to improve motor learning in tasks ranging from juggling (Ankarali et al. 2013) to driving (Marchal-Crespo and Reinkensmeyer 2008). By incorporating haptic feedback into a virtual juggling task, Ankarali et al. (2013) demonstrated that artificial force impulses applied to the hands could be used to minimize movement errors during learning. When virtual juggling motions are accompanied by haptic feedback that the brain can encode within an intrinsic space, the student is able to combine information from both intrinsic as well as extrinsic reference frames to form a more detailed memory of effective juggling motions (Ankarali et al. 2013). Similarly, driving accuracy was improved in simulator conditions where haptic feedback was provided through steering mechanisms that also helped participants to integrate information from intrinsic and extrinsic spatial reference frames (Marchal-Crespo and Reinkensmeyer 2008). To consider how similar haptic mechanisms could be applied to whole-body learning in a performing arts context, students could wear augmented clothing or accessories that provide degrees of vibrating haptic sensation to specific regions of the body when moving through space. If the student learns that the nature of the haptic sensations is linked to how well or effectively a movement is performed, the student may be able to determine how to adjust that movement in order to maximize its aesthetic value or how clearly it is ‘read’ by the audience. Variations of such systems could also incorporate auditory feedback that works in tandem with haptic feedback to provide more detailed timing cues. In this manner, virtual environments and multisensory feedback options could be combined to provide an array of extrinsic and intrinsic movement information as students learn to perform complex movement sequences themselves. Individuals who are better able to distinguish between internal and external reference frames during new action learning may also possess more detailed knowledge of the kinematic and visuospatial properties of newly learnt actions. In turn, detailed action memories could also be associated with an individual’s ability to reproduce these movements from memory. To test this theory, our research team developed a four-day dance training paradigm where novice dancerparticipants received physical and/or observational experience with

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hip-hop dance sequences using an Xbox Kinect set up and the Dance Central video game (Sumanapala et al. 2017). Following training, participants were asked to identify the learning modality (physical or observational) associated with individual actions depicted via animated body silhouettes. These silhouettes were used to test action memory in conditions stripped of any superficial visual similarity associated with a motor action’s original training context, which featured several detailed avatars in visually rich contexts. Although response accuracy in this task did not significantly differ between physically practised and observed actions, accurate categorization of physically practised actions was associated with an increased ability to perform these actions following training. In addition, accurate categorization of observed actions was also associated with an increased ability to perform observed actions following observational training. These results suggest that a participant’s ability to learn via motor training was associated with their ability to discriminate between the visual and physical features of actions acquired through physical and observational learning. In contrast, categorization of untrained actions was not associated with increased performance ability for untrained actions, despite the fact that categorization accuracy was highest for untrained actions, potentially due to the fact that the untrained actions might have captured attention as being particularly novel. Nevertheless, categorization rates for actions from all training contexts (physically practised, observed and untrained) were significantly above chance levels, indicating that participants could reliably recall characteristics of their training experience with particular actions. The ability to categorize specific training modalities based on highly simplistic depictions of actions demonstrates a level of intrinsic and extrinsic action encoding that is not dependent on visual familiarity with the original stimuli encountered during training. As such, it is plausible that a learner’s ability to generalize intrinsically and extrinsically encoded action information into novel visual contexts could be directly linked to performance proficiency.

Avatars and virtual feedback Conventional training contexts can often present physical obstacles to incorporating information from multiple reference frames. For

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instance, a novice trapeze artist would have difficulty gaining intrinsic movement information from watching an expert perform if he or she has spent very little time hanging upside down on a trapeze. Any bold attempts to follow through with complex trapeze moves could result in serious injury if the novice has little or no experience coordinating and performing highly skilled movements whilst swinging with one’s feet above one’s head. However, the use of animated avatars to render such movements within an artificial environment could radically transform the type of physical and visual information available to a learner. Specifically, an avatar of a moving agent can be designed to communicate precise aspects of movement information, and nothing more. For instance, a threedimensional recording of a backflip could be rendered in a virtual environment in such a way that postural information can be studied in isolation at various time points and from various angles – for example, side-on, from below, from above, etc. Although traditional video footage permits frame-by-frame movement analysis, a virtual environment could allow learners to pause movements and examine them from multiple viewing perspectives. Another benefit of using this kind of technology to learn particularly complex movements where the performer’s safety relies heavily on getting the timing and amplitude of the movements right would be to juxtapose digital displays (possibly point-light displays) of the learner’s movements with an expert’s, in order to highlight particular aspects of the movement or stunt that need to be refined. Currently, this type of training or feedback setup has yet to be rigorously tested in empirical settings, but more research in this field may be on the horizon due to the growing availability of accessible three-dimensional motion tracking technology. To date, complex avatars have already shown promise in feasibility studies as instructional agents in motor learning as well as rehabilitation paradigms (Eaves, Breslin and van Schaik 2011; Roosink et al. 2015). Moreover, the popularization of Microsoft’s Kinect motion capture system has led to the development of popular video games that match a player’s movement profile to computer avatars (e.g. Dance Central, Just Dance and Dance Masters, available on the Xbox platform). The rudimentary scoring methods featured in these games provide players with a basic index of their ability to move in ways that match the avatar’s movement timing, positioning and amplitude. Whilst these technologies are still in their infancy,

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great scope exists for developing them further, allowing researchers to quantify the learning process in finer detail. In particular, direct comparisons between movement representations of avatars and players could inform both recreational as well instructional settings. One study that specifically addressed dance learning through virtual reality demonstrated that limited feedback via an avatar led to better movement performance in participants than feedback via an avatar that provided more detailed information (Eaves, Breslin and van Schaik 2011). In this case, the benefits of using avatar-based feedback may be related to an individual’s threshold for retaining visual and spatial aspects of movements during observation. This threshold could be modulated by individual differences such as attention, working memory, visuospatial processing and prior visuomotor experience. Currently, such thresholds and their overall impact on action memory and performance remain ripe for future investigation.

Learning paradigms for the future and concluding thoughts In this chapter, we aimed to provide an introduction to research in psychology and cognitive neuroscience that is relevant to learning via watching or doing within the performing arts. Although the content reviewed here is by no means an exhaustive overview of all relevant empirical studies within these domains, the examples featured cover an array of paradigms addressing simple movements that require no prior training, to more complex movements that require years of experience to master. These studies have been selected to highlight the diversity of factors that affect performance gains and movement memory through observational experience, as well as associated brain processes. Nevertheless, various other questions regarding the impact of observation on overall motor learning remain unanswered. For example, to our knowledge, no studies have yet conducted detailed comparisons of how observational learning of whole-body actions may differ from observational learning of fine motor skills. Generally, whole-body actions, such as dance choreography, could provide an observer with a greater volume of movement information to be reproduced, compared to fine-motor actions, such as playing a sonata on the

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piano. In the former instance, learning to perform a dancer’s leap sequence, for example, would involve more effectors (i.e. the head, legs, feet, torso, hips, arms, hands, etc.) than learning to reproduce the intricate finger-motions of a pianist, when viewed from the perspective of a passive observer. However, learning the precise temporal features and a long sequence of the many individual notes involved in playing a piano sonata could be far more demanding than remembering the three individual jumps of the dancer’s leap sequence. Such differences in observable and mappable movement information will undoubtedly influence the degree of performance gains acquired through observation in fine-motor compared to whole-body training contexts. In-depth comparisons of action perception in fine-motor versus wholebody training settings could thus be useful for determining when and how observational practice provides conditions that are most beneficial for motor learning. Returning to examples explored earlier in this chapter, methods such as motion tracking, virtual reality and virtual body representations must be carefully evaluated in terms of how they shape high fidelity action reproduction and learning before they are incorporated into training environments. In the example of the pianist, the placement of the performer’s fingers in close proximity to each other may obscure vantage points that are necessary for an observer to map the observed actions onto his or her own hands. However, if the pianist’s fingers are mapped in a virtual environment using point-light markers (or similar techniques), then the highly skilled movements required for virtuosic piano performance can be examined in a three-dimensional space that is free from visual obstructions such as the piano itself, or even the anatomical detail of the hand. The scope of these training paradigms could even be extended to visual renderings of musculoskeletal anatomy to show how performed movements might appear beneath a performer’s skin. This would provide an observer with novel insights into movement characteristics that are generally impossible to communicate in a traditional learning environment. In order to apply such techniques to training, however, the practicality of these methods must be rigorously investigated to assess whether potential training benefits outweigh the cost of implementation. If traditional training environments, which typically feature live demonstration and verbal instruction, result in the optimal

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rate of performance gains, then investing in virtual technologies to accelerate learning may not be beneficial for learners in the short term. However, to avoid the possibility of confounding cohort effects, newer generations of performers could provide an unbiased base for testing the effectiveness of newer, technology-based techniques in the absence of experience with more traditional methods. New students entering ballet or acrobatics training could be recruited to explore the benefits of virtual training environments in a side-by-side comparison with other students learning via traditional instruction methods. If training of both groups progresses similarly in all respects except for the type of training implemented, any (statistically) significant differences between their learning outcomes could be used to promote either form of instruction, depending on what is found. Drawing on research expertise from backgrounds as diverse as psychology, neuroscience, computer science and engineering – as well as the performing arts themselves – such investigations may inform how technological advances can transform and accelerate the way we learn, remember and perform movement, both onstage and off.

Note 1 We acknowledge that in many contemporary dance and devised theatre settings, choreography and movement scores are first generated through improvisational responses to tasks and then set. Thus, they are frequently not modelled by a director or choreographer. Participatory, immersive, environmental, relational, site responsive and improvisational approaches to dance and theatre furthermore include a series of responses in performance that also cannot be predetermined or modelled. In such contemporary praxis, the performers work with rules, material to recycle and a network of possibilities. However, in the context of this present chapter, we are concerned with specific movement vocabularies that require reproduction with fidelity.

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7 Analytical Aspects in Children’s Performance of Music from Memory Anna Maria Bordin

Performance and piano pedagogy studies This case study deals with analytical and gestural aspects of children’s performance from memory. Three pianists, all aged ten, studied a piece they had neither played nor heard before, selected from Béla Bartók’s Mikrokosmos. During the learning process their teacher kept a diary. When they were able to play the piece fluently by memory, the girls performed in three video recording situations, which progressively became more challenging with respect to audience and importance. The analysis of the videotapes considered the formal structures of the pieces, the mistakes and the spontaneous gestures highlighted in the children’s performances, and the remarks contained in the teacher’s diaries. The results indicate a significant increase of errors and spontaneous gestures in the bars limiting the formal sections of the pieces, and highlight that analytical intuition, indirectly induced in the students through information from a teacher, is not sufficient to constitute strong support whilst performing from memory. Explicit, structural analysis and learning may be needed.

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The topic of this case study was inspired by the theoretical contributions of three different areas of research: musical analysis, performance by heart and piano pedagogy. The musical training of young musicians is based on the development of multiple skills in three different areas of knowledge: theoretical, instrumental and musical. Teaching and learning paths can develop these three types of expertise by introducing specific problem-solving strategies, gradually sorting the information according to its complexity and difficulty. The goal is to coordinate the use of these skills so as to create something that is different from each of them individually, yet more than a mere combination of parts – that is, the expressive communication of a musical text. In the performances of professional musicians, these skills are seamlessly integrated and emerge as a harmonious and functional unicum in the moment of the performance. In the case study, I examined performances from memory of three young pianists who had only recently started musical training, highlighting aspects that might link musical structure to performance by heart whilst attempting to understand whether these constitute important reference points for children, as is the case with adults. A direct comparison was made with studies carried out on trained pianists, which have revealed a deep-rooted link between performance from memory and structural analysis. This study’s design to understand what is happening in children’s performance from memory therefore proceeded from the observation of two aspects that are prominently featured in research on adults: musical structure and accuracy in performance (Rink 1995; Shaffer 1995; Duke, Simmons and Cash 2009). The aim of this study is to contribute to the revision and development of teaching methods for children by encouraging the use of suitably selected and trained analytical skills.

Contextual research The theoretical framework that supports and clarifies this study refers to research within different disciplinary frameworks. The first group of studies that I considered focuses on the analysis of performance (Cone 1968; Schmalfeldt 1985; Palmer 1992;

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Rink 1995; Duke, Simmons and Cash 2009), highlighting that a professional performer, or an advanced student, does not reproduce exactly what the score indicates, but rather plays something more (or less) related to the score in terms of tempo, dynamics, articulation and sometimes even pitch. The second group I considered includes studies on musical memory, which are many and varied, ranging from: 1 the nature of memory in connection with motor aspects of musical performance (Palmer 2006); 2 the organization of practice around musical structure, the enhancement of interpretation before working on technique, and strategies of memory and retrieval (Chaffin et al. 2010); 3 the effects of the auditory context of learning and retrieval of musical performance from memory (Finney and Palmer 2003); 4 the identification and memorization of the formal structure of a piece as a way of organizing and retrieving memory cues that control playing (Chaffin and Imreh 2002). There is a rich repertoire of studies in the field of piano pedagogy, too: on the teaching of performance (Shaffer 1995; Brendel 1997; Monelle 2002); on the links between musical text, mnemonic learning and performance; on memory strategies (Williamon 2002; Chaffin et al. 2010); on the complexity and interactivity of various useful skills when a musician is playing (Hallam 1995; Cox 2001; Davidson 2007); on the timing, content, attention and attitude during the practising of a repertoire (Miklaszewski 1989; Jørgensen 2004; McPherson and Evans 2007); on the relationship between expressiveness and text, expressiveness and performance and expressiveness and gestures (Clarke 1991; Rothstein 1995; Juslin, Evans and McPherson 2007); and on the relationship between score analysis and the study of a repertoire for recital purposes (Dalmonte 1999; Sacchetti 1999; Rink 2002). There are also studies that have specifically investigated the context of expressiveness in performance from memory, taking for granted that the perfect synthesis of information is what distinguishes already trained musicians. In a player’s mental representation, all of these aspects are inextricably linked (Rink 2002; Chaffin et al. 2010). When it

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comes to similar studies of performance by beginners, especially young children, it should be borne in mind that their entire musical experience – home practice, recitals, lessons – takes time and depends on the methods and repertoires of the teacher. When designing and realizing the best path to train these future musicians, the teacher unconditionally supports the unaware apprentices, reassuring and helping them by creating respectful, convivial conditions with reference to their age, personality and abilities. All the procedures used to study performances by professionals or advanced students are based on thorough knowledge of the musicians in regards to the quality and general characteristics of their performance, their self-determination with respect to practice, their ability to describe the strategies used, their opinions on particular pieces and their expressive intentions. Any study that sets out to examine children’s performances by memory clearly cannot rely on self-determination, nor on any formal critical or descriptive faculties; neither can it rely on technological tools that intrusively modify the performance setting with which children are familiar. The observations and findings of this study were derived from experimental and analytical methods similar to those used to study performances from memory of professional musicians; even if the procedure had to be adapted to account for the sometimes unpredictable reactions of the very young pianists involved in this study, the tools used had to be less unusual and as reliable as possible with respect to the context of their performance experience.

Practice phases and the teacher’s diary Three young female pianists, all aged ten, studied a new piece they had neither played nor heard before, with an unfamiliar structure and expressive profile, but not so remote from their sensitivity and experience as to be repellent. The difficulty of the chosen pieces was carefully evaluated according to each student’s level of pianistic training, and all the pieces were selected from Béla Bartók’s Mikrokosmos. Chiara studied Five Tone Scales and Clara studied Melody against Double Notes, both from the third volume, whilst Luisa studied Minor Seconds, Major Sevenths, from the sixth volume. The pieces, although very different in terms of difficulty,

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do share some common features; namely, a title closely related to the musical meaning and/or structure; the use of a non-tonal musical language; simple, recognizable structures; and no repetition of themes, compositional material or sections. These features are intimately linked to the choice to examine the students’ experience in a neutral musical context. Using pieces with features closer to their experience would have meant investigating their personal level of familiarity with that kind of music, making an analysis of their experience more complex and less reliable. The three students, all at a fairly basic level of instrumental training, had not yet received sufficient theoretical information to prompt basic analytical attitudes or thinking, since, at their training level, the theoretical information in the standard curriculum simply focuses on developing the skills of reading and singing notes on the pentagram. The only analytical suggestions received by the students were indirect aspects of their piano teacher’s instructions. The teacher was requested to work with reference to fundamental analytical information and to make constant use of these elements by proposing segmentation and strategies. Nonetheless, he was not expected to make a proper formal analysis of each piece. Throughout the entire period, from the initial assignment of each piece to the final recording, the teacher kept a diary for each child, which provided documentary evidence of the instructions given during the lessons, all of which had to be strictly related to the written score, gestures, technical resources, the children’s personal experience, tone quality, expressive features of each piece and the memory strategies used. In the case of the two children from the first piano course, the teacher emphasized splitting into phrases, dynamics, and the relationships between dissonance and consonance and sound and silence. In the case of the child from the fourth course, the teacher pointed out and addressed the presence of climactic points of tension, polyphonic parts and changes in metre and mood. In no cases did the information given to the students make use of images, stories, characters, metaphors, drawings or other narrative or visualization techniques. For example, when the teacher indicated which segments of a piece the students needed to repeat in order to overcome a difficulty, these instructions corresponded to relevant analytical components (phrases, junctures or transitional points). In this way, the students’ practice was

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oriented towards a structurally-correct assimilation of the piece rather than haphazard fragmentation. The children were helped to develop their performance from memory through remarks and strategies that tended to highlight each piece’s very simple structure – an aspect crucial in developing an expressive and confident performance from memory. The teacher suggested points of departure and arrival in order to foster a sense of musical discourse; he favoured an understanding of the compositional materials through simple directions such as equal/different (differences between character, length, dynamics) and ascending/descending; lastly, he emphasized elements of discontinuity and static or dynamic situations by encouraging the students to be aware of moments of surprise, movement, stasis or silence. Once the students were able to play their respective pieces fluently by heart, a video recording was made during one of their lessons in the classroom with only their teacher and the camera operator present. These first recordings took place on different dates, since each child’s learning time was significantly different. (The piece had been assigned to all three children in the first week of November 2012; Clara’s first recording took place on 25 January 2013, Chiara’s on 1 March 2013 and Luisa’s on 7 March 2013.) In these first recording sessions, the students were allowed to perform their piece a second time, in case the first recording proved particularly problematic; the actual process of recording was a curious novelty for each of them and a source of great distraction. Although the recording session was arranged and described in detail to the students prior to the event, Clara, for example, continually gazed towards the teacher, whilst Chiara was intrigued by the presence of the camera operator and distracted from focusing on the performance. It became clear during the first recording sessions that the process of acquiring the audio-video document should have taken into account the prospect of having to compensate for unexpected behaviour and reactions. For this reason, it was considered necessary to repeat the initial recordings wherever required. The second recording sessions were scheduled for 25 March 2013, which allowed sufficient time for both the students and their teacher to examine any critical errors that had emerged during the first session, and to prepare themselves to overcome problems of concentration, memory and anxiety. These errors included wrong

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notes, problems with rhythm, phrasing and pedal use that had mostly been addressed during earlier lessons, as the teacher’s diary showed, but had evidently not been corrected since their recurrence. Conversely, the concentration, memory and anxiety problems were unforeseen, but were considered to be caused by a combination of inexperience and personal reactions to ‘stage fright’. Thus, the teacher had time to help the students reflect on their experience and learn to cope with the second recording. The times that elapsed between the start of the study and the first recording of performances, and between the first and second recordings of performances, were very different for each of the three students, varying from fifteen to sixty days. Their individual difficulties and the nature of their errors turned out to be the least significant variables in determining these differences; the diary allows me to understand that events of a quite different nature delayed their learning time and affected the accuracy of the research, such as childhood illnesses, family problems and scholastic commitments. The setting of the second video recording was slightly more official, but with an audience still limited to people the students had already encountered during their piano lessons. The recording venue was the Conservatory Auditorium and the event was attended by the teacher, the children’s parents and some other students, totalling about five or six audience members. The teacher asked the students to maintain their concentration since it would not be possible to reschedule the recording. The third video recording, two and half months after the second one, coincided with a student concert open to the public (9 June 2013), which was organized for both the children in the study as well as other piano students. The circumstances of this third recording emulated a typical performance setting, since it took place again at the auditorium, this time with a printed concert programme being distributed to a group of about fifty audience members. The video recordings were processed through detailed quantitative and qualitative analysis, which involved identifying the structural elements from the pieces in the students’ performances from memory. The detailed information contained in the teacher’s diary allowed me to understand which performance aspects were the result of the learning process and which ones were not in order to exclude from my analysis actions caused directly by external influences. Moreover, the diary information was substantiated by

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the scores the students had used to study, which contained useful graphic information and notes made by the teacher, confirming what had been said during the piano lessons. These details summed up important aspects of the process of learning each piece. For example, information related to musical phrasing was always emphasized on the score with a V placed at the end of a phrase and before the start of the next, meaning that the teacher had highlighted these points and been obliged to emphasize this aspect and demand that attention be paid to it. The teacher’s diary provides general information on the students’ practice method, their progress, emotions and reactions. In the first week of November 2012, the teacher explained to them the experience they were to face and then assigned the pieces by Bartók. The three children then started practising. As soon as they were able, they played with both hands together, working as quickly as possible to achieve dynamics, tension, the proper tempo, playing from memory and a progressive refinement of all the information necessary for a successful performance. The procedures and the relevant types of information supplied during the learning process seem to have been similar for all three children, representing the least significant part of the diaries, whilst other types of information related to individual practice routines were different in all three cases and are therefore more valuable to the goal of this study. The following information was extracted from the data sets: 1 the learning times for each piece (counted in weeks from the first date of assignment), periods of absence due to illness and other difficulties and delays in practising; 2 the type of difficulties encountered during practising, plus new or recurring errors that indicated particular difficulties; 3 the time needed to solve problems and errors; 4 memory learning times, expressed in weeks; 5 the children’s thoughts on and reactions to their practice, the piece or the research procedure. The learning and memorization times for the piece – in other words, the time it took the children to read, study, examine and memorize the piece with the teacher before the first performance – were very different in all three cases; Luisa was able to record for the first time

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after thirteen weeks, Chiara after twelve, and Clara after eight. We can also see that Luisa was dedicated to learning by heart from the seventh lesson onwards, followed by a further seven lessons, Chiara from the eighth, for a further five lessons, and Clara from the sixth for a further three lessons. As for ‘difficulties’ that the students encountered, it is important first to establish what was considered to be a difficulty: a ‘difficulty’ was not one particular type of error, nor one particular problem, but rather is defined by the need to insist on the same instruction for more than one lesson. Problems that were solved from one lesson to another were not considered difficulties – only those that required repeated reminders by the teacher and more practice at home for the child. For example, in Luisa’s case, difficulties occurred at a more advanced level of practice closer to the performance to do with touch, pedal use, dynamics and accuracy of the rhythmic pattern (semiquaver, dotted quaver) used throughout the piece. In every case, it was important to determine whether the student’s errors were unpredictable or unusual – that is, they had never occurred before the recording session – or whether the teacher had already noticed and tried to correct them. By reading the teacher’s diary it is possible to uncover important details that help in understanding the paths through which the performances matured, including information about the strategies used by the teacher and comments about the children’s reactions and thoughts that were noted by the teacher during the lessons.

Analysing the video recordings Data collected from the nine videotapes of the three students were analysed by applying two different levels of musical analysis: 1 a first level, looking at the piece as a whole, bar by bar, in order to detect the presence of errors in the three students’ performances, without distinction as to the position and content of the bars analysed; this index is relevant since it reveals the degree of accuracy in their performances from memory; 2 a second level, which considered only the bars dividing the structural segments of the piece, i.e. the first and last

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bar of each formally recognizable segment; the structural segments, identified before the start of the learning path, constituted an important reference point for the teacher and the students at all times, since they were the criterion used to split the pieces into parts to be learnt by heart. Melody against Double Notes (Figure 7.1) is a piece of perfect architecture with a dialogue between melodic parts in forte espressivo and bichords oscillating between a minor third and a perfect fifth played piano. The first eight bars are built around three notes, F# (right hand) D and A (for the left hand) using two sequences of four notes: D–E–G–A (left) and F#–G#–B–C# (right hand). The eighth and ninth bar feature a six-beat suspension over a G#, which is a temporary stasis with an almost modal profile. At bar ten there is an inversion of the functions of the two hands, the right hand taking the part of oscillating bichords played piano, and the left the melody in forte espressivo, as far as bars seventeen and eighteen. Then once again the texture is simplified and creates a transition to the final section, which hints at the melodic and oscillating compositional materials, treating them not as a dialogue but as imitation (melody responding to melody, bichords responding to bichords) ending in two perfect fifth bichords (D–A in the left hand and F#–C# in the right). The segmentation of the piece took into consideration all these aspects with further attention to the profile of the ascending or descending melodic material, a facet that is certainly more gestural, but significant and perceptible in a small, exquisitely balanced piece of musical architecture like this. It generates seven segments with perceptible features that even a child can bring out. In the first recording of Melody against Double Notes, made after eight weeks of practising, Clara performed the piece in one minute, twenty-two seconds instead of one minute, eight seconds as indicated by the composer. Right from the start we can hear that the child was able to effectively bring out the cantabile line, and concentrated on dividing the two different parts between her hands, alternating and changing roles. In the recording, Clara only makes errors in bars eighteen and nineteen, i.e. the transition to the final section of the piece, more precisely in bar eighteen, omitting the diminuendo and in bar nineteen starting in mezzoforte instead of piano (see Figure 7.1).

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FIGURE 7.1 B. Bartók, Melody against Double Notes, Mikrokosmos, vol. III (ed. Boosey and Hawkes), with the teacher’s annotations.

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In the second recording (25 March 2013), Clara played in a very similar way to her first performance, but the duration of the piece was one minute, seventeen seconds, and at bars eight and nine – the end of the first section of the piece – she shortened the length of the two tied minims by a crotchet. These were the same bars where she had carefully beat time with a movement of her right leg in the first performance. In this second performance, her leg remained immobile, but the total value of the G# was shortened by a crotchet. In bar nineteen, where in the first recording she had omitted the diminuendo, she ignored a crotchet rest. In the third and last recording, Clara performed the piece in one minute, sixteen seconds, very closely reproducing her second recording. Quantitative analysis of the data for Clara shows significantly higher percentages of errors in the first and third performances than in the second, specifically for the bars delimiting the formal segments in comparison to the total number of bars. In the second performance, a trend reversal seems to have taken place – that is, the percentage of errors for the bars delimiting the formal segments is lower than that of the total number of bars (see Figure 7.2). Nevertheless, the mean value of error percentages for the bars delimiting the formal segments (Mean=0.12) is higher than that of the total number of bars (Mean=0.09). An increased number of errors in the evaluation of the total number of bars, as was detected

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FIGURE 7.2 Accuracy values in percentages of the three performances of each child, detected by the analysis of all the bars and of the changing bars.

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in the third performance, can be easily connected with the more official context when considering that: 1 during lessons Clara was able to play the piece without errors; 2 she approached her piece with interest and curiosity right from the start; 3 public recitals tend to motivate young students to impress teachers, fellow students and parents. However, the comparable indices of errors made when playing the delimiting bars in the first and third performances lead me to think that this type of error is much less sensitive to the variations in context and audience member numbers. This result, only apparently contradictory, offers interesting insights regarding the nature of the error in relation to the context of its occurrence. After twelve weeks of practising the piece, Chiara made a first recording of Five Tone Scales lasting forty-five seconds; the composer indicates a time of twenty-seven seconds, so she was playing it more slowly. In the teacher’s diary we find that, in two consecutive lessons, he appealed to the student to perform the piece more fluently, and in the lesson before the first recording, the student reacted to one such appeal by arguing that the piece would be less attractive. The level of performance accuracy was consistent with the teacher’s expectations and the child’s training level and knowledge. In particular, it shows that she generally respected the phrasing, carrying out a slight relaxation in dynamics at the end of each phrase. She played only one wrong note and had two minor lapses in memory. Further, she performed a rubato in a section that is particularly significant as it presents iterations of the compositional material in crescendo, and approaches the repetition of the initial pentatonic idea with an inversion of roles for the hands. This slight rubato was not amongst the instructions noted by the teacher in the diary, therefore it represents a spontaneous and expressive idea on behalf of the student. In the last bars, she had a memory lapse in conjunction with an error by her left hand, which played E on the second beat instead of G. She then missed one bar and played the final bar, commenting discouraged: ‘I’ve got it all wrong.’ The memory lapse thus induced a sense of surprise and gave her the feeling of having done something so wrong as to

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invalidate her whole performance, a performance which in reality was rather accurate. The second recording of Chiara lasted thirty-five seconds and repeated a situation quite similar to the first. The piece flowed more easily and contained no lapses in memory; the rubato of the first recording was not repeated, whilst there was a clear acceleration after which Chiara promptly resumed the original tempo. Once again, the revival of the initial pentatonic idea with the inversion of the parts for the right and left hands seems to have attracted the student, who referred to this point as being sensitive and important; this is the same point where she played rubato in the first recording. The third and final recording lasted thirty-four seconds and had two slight hesitations, both significant. The first occurred where the left hand hesitated before playing the F#, showing a slight disorientation just when the left hand part had abandoned the descending, perfectly pentatonic line of the first eight bars to acquire an upward movement, different from the previous one in terms of intervals. The second hesitation occurred in the last four bars, where the phrasing of the left hand is reduced to one bar repeated twice. In the closing section, Bartók writes a crescendo, but Chiara ended on a diminuendo, suggesting an instinctive use of the most common way to close musical phrases, i.e. a dynamic détente. The errors in the three recordings of Chiara involved mistaken notes (only in the first performance), dynamics, phrasing and memory; a quantitative analysis of them presents a situation similar to that of the overall error rates. Three weeks before the first recording, Chiara had said, without being in any way required to do so: ‘This piece sounds like a film score.’ The teacher asked her, ‘What film in particular does it remind you of?’ and she replied, ‘None in particular.’ The interesting aspect of this claim is that the child needed to fantasize that the piece could be combined with images. These images, however, were not part of her personal memories; in fact, according to her statements, they represent something she feels a need for, but that do not exist, even in her memories. Luisa made a recording of Minor Seconds, Major Sevenths for the first time after thirteen weeks of practising, lasting three minutes, twenty-four seconds instead of three minutes, twentyfive seconds as indicated by Bartók. A general lack of accuracy and a large number of errors are immediately apparent. In the

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teacher’s diary, we find indications concerning the student’s difficulties during her initial practice of the piece. Despite Luisa’s unquestionable pianistic skill, her encounter with dissonance and an unusual language were probably what led to a qualitatively lower result than expected in the first recording. The type of error most frequently observed was the rendition of the rhythmic pattern (semiquaver note, dotted quaver note), which characterizes the whole first part of the piece. Another significant error, spotted especially in the first recording, concerned the use of the pedal. Bartók requires the use of pedal to be deeply integrated within the overall sound of the piece, sustaining clusters, sounds and chords that are meant to resonate for a long time, which is decidedly more complex than the traditional use of the pedal. This student, who had already tackled a wide-ranging tonal repertoire, developed a remarkable aversion to this piece by Bartók. Indeed, her experience with a musical language so different from the tonal generated a sort of inhibition in her ability. The teacher dealt with this difficulty by trying to offer the child strategies to make the second and seventh bichords and the numerous clusters less jarring. In fact, they sound very dissonant if played too forcefully using dynamics that are different from those indicated by Bartók. This is why Bartók requires the first page to be played piano, with a diminuendo at the minor second, which completes the initial cluster of F#–G–G#–A–B♭–B♮ in contrary motion. Obviously, in the first phase of practice, the child did not understand the meaning of what the composer had written and her clusters sounded extremely strident. The solution proposed by the teacher was to look for a softer, more yielding quality of sound to make the clusters less harsh, re-establishing the cluster effect desired by the composer. In one of her lessons, the teacher asked the child for a quality of sound ‘as beautiful as that used to play Chopin’, and Luisa’s laconic response was, ‘I wish!’ After the first recording, Luisa’s difficulties rapidly decreased, and a week before the second recording, the child announced of her own accord, ‘Now I like it!’ The second and third recordings both lasted three minutes, four seconds and were significantly more fluid than the first. The number of bars with errors was comparable with the first recording, however pedal errors had disappeared entirely and rhythmic errors had decreased significantly. The child appeared to be less inhibited and more concentrated, and the performance

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reached a level compatible with her abilities and training level, albeit with a few lapses in memory. The complexity of the piece, which is longer and more structured than the other two pieces from Mikrokosmos used for this study, prompted deeper analysis. We processed the piece considering two levels of analytical segmentation: the first, a macroformal analysis, closely following the sections that Bartók himself highlighted through agogic, metric and mood changes, and proposing a formal segmentation that is more comprehensible by those listening to the piece or reading the score, than by those playing. The second level followed on from the first by further segmentation, stressing the different compositional materials and writing techniques in detail, and highlighting the instrumental gestures. Gestures constitute a very important reference for every pianist, since they immediately emerge in a clearly defined way that reflects the score. Thus, the main difference between the two levels of analytical segmentation lies in the degree of abstraction and in the child’s consequent ability to perceive this, even if only intuitively. The quantitative analysis of the data relating to the recordings of Luisa may prove one of the critical points of the whole procedure, given the exceptionally problematic situation during the practice period preceding the first recording. Luisa stated outright that she did not like her piece, and studied unwillingly without any great motivation. The percentage of errors out of the total number of bars progressively decreased from the first to the third recording, and we found a similar trend, but with lower indices, in the second level of changing bars analysis (the microformal one), in the shorter segments with fewer conceptual features (see Figure 7.2). However, in the first level of changing bars analysis, the macroformal one, the error percentages were much higher and tended to increase between the first and third recordings. This means that the child made fewer mistakes as a percentage in the microformal segmentation points of change, whilst there was a concentration of errors in the bordering bars of the macroformal segmentation. Thus, the highest number of errors occurred around the more abstract segmentation. Although Luisa had greater musical experience, given that she was attending her fourth piano course and could fall back on significant musical abilities, she found herself struggling when referring to wider musical structures, less verifiable in typical keyboard gestures.

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Conclusions The initial assumptions guaranteed that the development of the students’ full experience could be observed within a predominantly musical system of reference points, making it possible to consistently interpret their playing, reactions and learning path. We found that the indices showing the presence of errors in the bars delimiting the formal segments were higher in all recordings. Considering that the errors revealed during the recordings had not occurred in the lessons immediately preceding them, we may infer that they were caused by the performance setting and by the students’ reactions to new contexts. Thus, the indices reveal the existence of weak points where the errors of various types and different entities were concentrated, and these points correspond to the bars delimiting the formal sections. We must also ask ourselves whether these errors occurred at particular times of low concentration due to outside distractions such as noise coming from the hall, or the intensifying of personal sensations caused by psychosomatic symptoms of anxiety such as increased heart rate, sweaty or cold hands, ‘butterflies in the stomach’, dry mouth and other physiological manifestations. However, if the symptoms caused by the children’s sympathetic nervous system readily explain the onset of the error, they do not affect the evidence of the points when they occurred. The error indices clearly show that the weak points are those in which the musical discourse significantly changes, but the children are not fully aware of it, given that they have never developed conscious analytical thinking. From a comparison with previous studies dealing with the connection between performance from memory and musical analysis amongst trained pianists, we can conclude that this connection also exists in the performance of our three children, but starting from opposite assumptions and results; that is, whilst the trained pianists in other studies were aware of the structure of their piece, these students were either totally or mostly unaware of this aspect; whilst in the performances of trained pianists analytical awareness constitutes an important reference for memory and expressiveness, for the students this lack of awareness defined the points where the greatest number of errors occurred.

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We might expect that a learning path constantly illuminated by analytical assumptions, although not addressed to the conscious assimilation of such information, would produce similar, if not identical accuracy to that found in the studies on trained pianists. However, the results lead me in quite another direction: it is not the performative result itself that ensures mastery, accuracy, fluency and infallibility of memory, but the ability to organize musical thought, even when this involves repertoires as simple as those considered in this study. We can conclude that analytical intuition indirectly induced in the students through information from a teacher is not sufficient to constitute strong support whilst performing from memory. Instead, it shapes the very centres of weakness, the score points where higher percentages of error are concentrated. Intuitive and unconscious knowledge is not enough to improve the quality of performances from memory. We must therefore wonder about the necessity and practicality, from all points of view, of musical paths that emphasize analysis, particularly and especially for very young students. If music really is a language that aims to communicate with expression and that possesses its own peculiar structures and syntax, then why should it be impossible to design an easy and clear analytical point of departure for beginners? It would also be very important for music teachers to be ready to welcome new methodological incentives, which are by now copious and exhaustive. Despite the wealth and depth of this knowledge, it has often been neglected, disregarded and at times simply ignored by traditional piano teaching, which has continued to evolve on the basis of historically-established roots founded on workshop practice and the reputation of individual teachers, finding more or less effective and methodologically-sound paths that are often too rigid and unsuitable to meet the burgeoning demand for fresh, more effective solutions. Furthermore, current musical curricula offer analysis as a discipline that can only be tackled at an advanced stage of musical studies, often providing optional courses. In effect, students are deprived of one of the most important benefits brought about by analytical study: to make musical structures, from the simplest to the most complex, clear, repeatable and understandable. Research into the analytical skills leading to optimal results in trained musicians, along with the results of this present study, which highlight that the absence of conscious analytical skills induces

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inaccuracy, permits me to say that analytical skills and conscious knowledge are absolutely fundamental aspects of instrumental training and should therefore be introduced in the very first years of training.

References Brendel, A. (1997), Il paradosso dell’interprete. Pensieri e riflessioni sulla musica, Florence: Passigli. Chaffin, R. and G. Imreh (2002), ‘Practising perfection: Piano performance as expert memory’, Psychological Science, 13 (4): 342–9. Chaffin, R., T. Lisboa, T. Logan and K. T. Begosh (2010), ‘Preparing for memorized cello performance: The role of performance cues’, Psychology of Music, 38 (1): 3–30. Clarke, E. F. (1991), ‘Expression and communication in musical performance’, in J. Sundberg, L. Nord and R. Carlson (eds), Music Language Speech and Brain, 184–93, London: Macmillan. Cone, E. T. (1968), Musical Form and Musical Performance, New York: Norton. Cox, A. (2001), ‘The mimetic hypothesis and embodied musical meaning’, Musicae Scientiae, 5 (2): 195–212. Dalmonte, R. (1999), ‘Proto e para-analisi per l’interpretazione’, Bollettino di analisi e teoria musicale, 6 (1): 43–60. Davidson, J. (2007), ‘Corpo e movimento nell’esecuzione musicale’, in J. Tafuri and G. McPherson (eds), Orientamenti per la didattica strumentale, dalla ricerca all’insegnamento, 115–30, Lucca: LIM. Duke, R., A. Simmons and C. D. Cash (2009), ‘It’s not how much; It’s how. Characteristics of practice behavior and retention of performance skills’, Journal of Research in Music Education, 56 (4): 310–21. Finney, S. and C. Palmer (2003), ‘Auditory feedback and memory for music performance: Sound evidence for an encoding effect’, Memory & Cognition, 31 (1): 51–64. Hallam, S. (1995), ‘Professional musicians’ approaches to the learning and interpretation of music’, Psychology of Music, 23: 111–28. Jørgensen, H. (2004), ‘Strategies for individual practice’, in A. Williamon (ed.), Musical Excellence, Strategies and Techniques to Enhance Performance, 85–104, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Juslin, P., P. Evans and G. E. McPherson (2007), ‘L’interpretazione musicale e le emozioni’, in J. Tafuri and G. McPherson (eds), Orientamenti per la didattica strumentale, dalla ricerca all’insegnamento, 131–55, Lucca: LIM.

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McPherson, G. E. and P. Evans (2007), ‘Come studiare’, in J. Tafuri and G. McPherson (eds), Orientamenti per la didattica strumentale, dalla ricerca all’insegnamento, 33–48, Lucca: LIM. Miklaszewski, K. (1989), ‘A case study of a pianist preparing a musical performance’, Psychology of Music, 17 (2): 95–109. Monelle, R. (2002), ‘The criticism of musical performance’, in J. Rink (ed.), Musical Performance: A Guide to Understanding, 213–24, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Palmer, C. (1992), ‘The role of interpretive preferences in music performance’, in M. R. Jones and S. Holleran (eds), Cognitive Bases of Musical Communication, 249–62, Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Palmer, C. (2006), ‘The nature of memory for music performance skills’, in E. Altenmueller, M. Wiesendanger and J. Kesseling (eds), Music, Motor Control and the Brain, 39–54, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Rink, J., ed. (1995), The Practice of Performance: Studies in Musical Interpretation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rink, J. (2002), ‘Analysis and(or) performance’, in J. Rink (ed.), Musical Performance: A Guide to Understanding’, 35–58, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rothstein, W. (1995), ‘Analysis and the act of performance’, in J. Rink (ed.), The Practice of Performance: Studies in Musical Interpretation, 217–39, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sacchetti, R. (1999), ‘Il Preludio op. 25 n.4 di Chopin: un esempio di analisi per l’esecuzione secondo Carl Schachter’, Bollettino di analisi e teoria musicale, 6 (1): 131–44. Schmalfeldt, J. (1985), ‘On the relation of analysis to performance: Beethoven’s “Bagatelles” Op. 126, Nos. 2 and 5’, Journal of Music Theory, 29 (1): 1–31. Shaffer, L. H. (1995), ‘Musical performance as interpretation’, Psychology of Music, 23: 17–38. Williamon, A. (2002), ‘Memorising music’, in J. Rink (ed.), Musical Performance: A Guide to Understanding, 113–26, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

PART THREE

Re/Constructing Embodied Memories: Relationships between Memory and Self in Performance

8 Music Improvisation, Identity and Embodied Cognition Robert J. Oxoby

Introduction Traditionally, the brain has been considered the centre of thought, cognition and behavioural motivation. However, researchers are increasingly demonstrating that cognition is ‘embodied’, going beyond the neurological system to include physical systems that store information and provide feedback on the environment and context of an act or thought. According to theories of embodied cognition, thought and behaviour are functions of bodily, sensorimotor systems that perceive physical and social environments. This approach has expanded how psychologists and neuroscientists conceptualize thought and behaviour, moving beyond looking solely at the brain to include sensorimotor and kinaesthetic systems into our understanding of cognition. The traditional view of decision-making and information processing, as described by psychologist Michael Masson (2015), mirrors that of a computer: information is input into the system and analysed for problem-solving, decision-making and behaviour. Embodied cognition represents a break from this view (Wilson 2002),

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and recent research (see Masson 2015; Glenberg 2015a) has demonstrated how the sensorimotor systems that gather and deliver information are tied and provide feedback to the cognitive systems that are the traditional home to information processing. In short, cognition is embodied, embedded in the sensory and motor experiences operating throughout the body. In the performing arts, the concept of embodiment has been inherent in pedagogy, performance and conceptualizing artistic practice. In music, the emphasis on physically ‘feeling’ the rhythms and musical phrases has long been understood, especially in the context of musical expression (Jaques-Dalcroze [1921]1967; Berliner 1994; Bley 1999). In education research, embodied cognition is often employed in the teaching of abstract concepts like mathematics, where incorporating physical and imagined gestures improve learning and retention (e.g. Adriano, Diez and Fernandez 2014; Nemirovsky and Ferrar 2009). Psychologists Carly Kontra and colleagues (Kontra et al. 2015) present a striking example of the power of embodied cognition with respect to the abstract concepts of torque and angular momentum; that is, individuals with physical experience of these concepts (embodied knowledge) showed greater improvement on tests of these subjects. Moreover, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies confirmed that participants with embodied knowledge (acquired through training) showed greater activity in motor regions of the brain whilst being tested. Thus, knowledge embodied through previous motor simulation triggered the relevant motor regions of the brain, facilitating understanding and recall. Here, I explore how music improvisation affects memory, reporting on two experiments where participants engaging in simple musical improvisation were tasked with reading words for later recall. I find that when improvisation was a novel activity, participants demonstrated improved word recall relative to a control group that did not engage in the improvisation activity. Thus, the act of improvising may present a means of embodying information. Interestingly, there was no identifiable effect of improvisation on memory amongst individuals with prior musical experience. For those with musical experience, only when a social identity related to being a musician was made salient did improvisation affect memory. This suggests an interesting interrelation between identity, embodied cognition and memory.

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Music, embodiment and cognition The idea that physical aspects of artistic practice (the actual ‘doing’ of the art) affect cognition has long been recognized in music. As discussed by musicians Vijay Iyer (2002, 2004) and David Borgo (2007), the physical ‘feeling’ of musical swing and groove plays an important role in establishing the frame of reference for defining genres of improvisation. Embodiment of musical rhythm, structure and form facilitates an elaborate feedback between ‘thinking’ about what one is playing and the sensorimotor system doing the physical ‘playing’. In the arts, this has led to concepts of ‘futuring’ and ‘futureoriented memory’ wherein performers form hypotheses regarding future contingencies in order to create unison or complement others when performing in aleatory environments (see Hansen and Oxoby 2017). This has led musicians Paul Bley (1999), Paul Berliner (1994) and Joe Morris (2012) to stress the full integration of the sonic, aural, physical and intellectual aspects of music and to argue that musical improvisation requires the highest form of future-oriented memory and mind–body interplay. As discussed by Iyer (2002), the body (i.e. the sensorimotor activity generating sound) plays a crucial role in music perception, cognition and the production of music, with particular emphasis on physically embodying time aspects in music (rhythm, microtiming/swing, metre and phrasing). As an example, a musical groove often induces motion (tapping one’s feet, bobbing one’s head, dancing), demonstrating a clear relation between perception and body movements. Music educator Candace Brower (1993) has demonstrated that embodying rhythmic pulse facilitates the recall of sophisticated rhythmic structures, suggesting views of embodiment that psychologist Margaret Wilson (2002) characterizes as situated cognition and body-based offline cognition. According to Wilson (2002), cognition is situated when it takes place in the context of task relevant input and output (e.g. rhythm in the context of African drumming; Iyer 2002). Offline cognition is body-based when it occurs when cognitive activity uses sensorimotor functions in a covert way (e.g. musical imagery in technical and improvisational practice to recall musical patterns; Berz 1995). Both views of embodiment play key roles in the pedagogical techniques of Emile Jaques-Dalcroze ([1921]1967), Gary Karr and Bertram Turetzky

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(1974), all of whom emphasize the role of physical action and kinaesthetic perceptions in musical recall and intonation, as well as expressive musical phrasing. Going further, Borgo (2007) emphasizes the importance of embodiment in music education, identifying the utility of improvisation as a means of embodying musical and general knowledge which in turn yield improvements in other academic areas. In the current experiments, I used the concept of embodied cognition to examine the effect of engaging in musical improvisation on memory. The specific hypotheses rest on the ideas above regarding how embodying musical knowledge can influence recall. I hypothesize that engaging in a musical improvisation whilst tasked with recalling words should lead to an embodiment of the word information (through situated or offline cognition). The mechanism for this process is the theory of working memory, particularly that of psychologist Alan Baddeley (1990; see 2012 for review), wherein vocalized stimuli are held in short-term memory via a phonological loop, a slave system of central executive functioning. Music educator William Berz (1995) expanded Baddeley’s model to include a musical memory loop, dovetailing with the phonological loop and complementing one another’s functions. Through this additional system, musical memory (through listening and performance) and verbal working memory were shown to be intimately tied. Subsequent research has supported Berz’s theory, demonstrating how musical training can improve working memory through this linkage of slave systems (George and Coch 2011; Nutley, Darki and Klingberg 2014; Roden et al. 2014). I conjecture that improvisation utilizes both these loops to provide a means of embodying information (words) for later recall. I chose musical improvisation as it does not require pre-existing musical experience.1 The experiment utilized a simple iPad app and a prepared rhythmic track that allowed participants to create improvised music during a word recall task. These improvisations were only heard by the participant (via headphones), allowing participants to play whilst limiting the potential for self-perceived or direct judgement of one’s skills by others. I explored embodiment through music and memory for several reasons. Firstly, the performance of music and musical improvisation requires a sophisticated interplay between physicality, memory, perception and future-oriented cognition (Iyer 2002; Seitz 2005).

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As such, performing a simple improvisation (even if only heard by oneself) involves various aspects of cognition (e.g. pattern recognition, memory; Berz 1995). Secondly, the activity of simple improvisation was practical in a laboratory setting, compared with other forms of artistic practice requiring larger gestures or movements. Using word recall provides a tie with research on the role of embodied cognition in working memory. Evidence of the effect of embodied cognition on working memory is conflicted (see Glenberg 2015a,b; Mahon 2015a,b). For example, psychologists Michel Quak, Diane Pecher and Rene Zeelenberg (2014) conducted working memory tests using photographs of manipulable and nonmanipulable objects. They found that engaging with manipulable objects before the test had no effect, suggesting that motor systems are unrelated to visual working memory. Similarly, neuroscientists Ying Choon Wu and Seana Coulson (2014) found no relation between embodiment via a movement span task and performance on standard tests of verbal and visual-spatial working memory. However, cognitive scientists Zubaida Shebani and Friedemann Pulvermüller (2013) asked participants to engage in a complex rhythmic task (a paradiddle) using their hands or feet whilst learning arm- and leg-action words for recall. They identified an improvement in recall when words and actions were congruent (e.g. arm words and hand actions) and that participants made more errors when words and actions were not congruent (e.g. arm words and foot actions). This suggests that when cognitive and motor tasks are incongruent, one activity may interfere with the other (here, impairing word recall). However, embodiment has demonstrated effects in other realms. Psychologists Arthur Markman and C. Miguel Brendl (2005) presented participants with words of positive, neutral or negative connotation and asked them to move these words towards or away from their names by pulling or pushing a lever. The authors demonstrated that the perceived character of the word affected the physical responses; that is, participants responded faster when they had to move positive words towards their own name and negative words away from it than in the respective other direction, independent of the movement involved (pulling/pushing). This demonstrates a relation between sensorimotor activity and judgements about the connotations of words.

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A critical question here is whether or not this type of task (engaging in a musical improvisation on an iPad whilst seated at an experimental station) constitutes a means for the embodiment of information. Within music, many have argued that both the processes of creating music and listening to music involve direct participation of the physical body (Berliner 1994; Bley 1999; Iyer 2004). Acoustic researchers Alexander Foerstel, Sarah-Indriyati Hardjowirogo and Hauke Egermann (2015) argue that physical participation in music is present even in environments where instrumental techniques are absent (e.g. DJ-ing). Musicologist Marc Leman (2007) argues that the body is designed particularly for transferring physical activities and energies to the cognitive level (especially in music), thereby creating embodied knowledge. In these studies, the sensorimotor activities are frequently minimal (e.g. manipulating objects, pushing or pulling a lever). Philosopher Guy Dove (2011) argues that the capacity to store information relies both on embodied and disembodied cognition; cognition may be embodied through sensorimotor interactions with objects, but the semantic or practical content of the information being embodied is not inherited through these actions (i.e. content is disembodied). This highlights the importance of ‘how’ information is embodied, leading Dove (2011) to suggest that the physical sensorimotor requirements for embodied cognition may be subtler than once thought. That is, whilst minimal activity (music improvisation in the current experiments) may be sufficient to begin the process of embodiment, minimal activity may be insufficient to yield deeper understandings of the embodied knowledge (e.g. semantic content). In the case of music, many have argued that both gross and fine motor movements can embody musical information and improve understanding, expression and memory. This is perhaps articulated most strongly by Leman (2007), who claims that the physical energy encoded in written music and digital media is embodied by the physical body during performance. This results in musical interpretations in which embodiment serves as a mediator between (i) sensory and motor processes and (ii) subjective mental states (e.g. beliefs, emotions, intentions and evaluations). This leads Leman to argue that, at least for the purpose of embodied musical cognition, the body is an ideal framework, and even minimal physicality can serve an embodying purpose.2 Similar arguments are often made regarding ‘visualization’ practices in music and sports psychology

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whereby vividly imagining actions yields embodied knowledge of those actions (Holmes and Collins 2001; Guillot, Moschberger and Collet 2013). Neuroscientists Brian Clark and colleagues (Clark et al. 2014) have taken this concept a step further, showing that visualizing strong muscle contractions can activate the cortical areas involved with motor behaviour which, in turn, reduced the loss of strength associate with prolonged (four-week) wrist-hand immobilization. This may provide inroads to understanding how embodiment affects cortical-level neurological mechanisms, which themselves affect motor activity. Overall, this paints a holistic picture of sensorimotor activity and cognitive processes, leading researchers like psychologist Arthur Glenberg (2015a) to emphasize the dynamism and interactions between sensorimotor and cognitive systems in understanding embodied cognition. The tie of my study to social identity is based on the work of psychologist Paula Niedenthal and colleagues (Niedenthal et al. 2005) who argue that embodied knowledge is important regarding attitudes, emotions and perceptions of social environments, opening a relationship between identity (Tajfel and Turner 1986; Haslam 2004) and embodiment. Towards this end, psychologist Amanda Forest and colleagues (Forest et al. 2015) conducted experiments in which embodiment affected perceptions of the stability of interpersonal and romantic relationships. Participants who experienced physical instability (e.g. standing on one foot) perceived their romantic relationships as less stable, thereby demonstrating a link between embodiment and perceptions about social relations (as opposed to perceptions about words or objects). If we interpret an individual’s relationships as a core aspect of identity and sense of self (e.g. being a good partner), then this suggests embodiment may affect perceptions through processes of identity. Here, I have tried to avoid some of the issues identified in previous studies. First, music improvisation is sufficiently unrelated to the word-based working memory task, thereby avoiding the potential problems identified in Shebani and Pulvermüller (2013) that impaired recall. My choice to explore identity draws from the insights in Markman and Brendl (2005) and Forest et al. (2015) on how embodiment may be related to the ways in which individuals situate themselves socially in the task. One process by which individuals situate themselves in a given environment is through social and personal identities. These identities become salient in

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different situations and environments, affecting the norms and self-perceptions individuals impose on themselves and others (Haslam 2004). Thus, the manifestation of embodiment may be subject to the same identity processes affecting self-esteem and the situational norms to which individuals adhere. Assuming that individuals’ personal relationships are intimately tied to their personal identity, one interpretation of Forest et al. (2015) is that the physical activity (balancing in an unstable position) affected participants’ perceptions of relationships precisely because their relationships factor heavily in their personal identities. For this reason, in Experiment 2 I manipulated an identity relevant to the improvisational task (i.e. being a musician) so as to test for a relationship between identity, embodiment and memory. Note that this identity manipulation was congruent to the embodying task (music and improvisation) rather than the memory task (words), providing a tie between identity and embodiment (Forest et al. 2015), rather than a tie between embodiment and memory (Shebani and Pulvermüller 2013).

Experiments Experiment 1: Methods and hypotheses The first experiment explored the extent to which participation in a musical improvisation affected word recall using two types of participants. Whilst all participants were undergraduate students, participants were split between those with no musical experience and those who considered themselves musically experienced. Consideration of ‘musically experienced’ was self-reported, with participants being considered musically experienced if they answered yes to at least one of the following dichotomous choice questions: 1 Do you play a musical instrument? 2 Do you participate in an ensemble where music plays a central role (band, orchestra, choir, or dance ensemble)? 3 Have you studied music in the last five years (private or group lessons, courses at the university or elsewhere)?

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These questions provided a minimal screen for defining musical experience. Questions of instrumental and improvisation experiences were not asked. Participants were recruited in undergraduate classes and from student music clubs. The experiments lasted approximately thirty minutes, including the presentation of instructions. Participants received ten Canadian dollars for participating and completed a short questionnaire (age, major, gender and acknowledgement of their receipt of funds from the experiment). Twenty-four individuals participated in the control condition (ten women, fourteen men; average age 19.8). Twenty-three individuals participated in the improvisation condition (nine women, fourteen men; average age 20.3). In each condition, ten individuals were considered musically experienced, each answering yes to all three screening questions. Observation by the experiments’ monitors indicated that all participants in the improvisation condition used the iPad in improvisation and documented bodily movements amongst the participants.3 The memory measure used here is similar to that of psychologist Andrew Conway and colleagues (Conway et al. 2005). In the experimental task, participants were presented with twenty items alternating between compound mathematical equations and words (see Appendix; words and equations were chosen from Conway et al. 2005 and similar tests). Participants were asked to indicate whether a compound mathematical equation (e.g. (4 × 3)–5=6) was true or false and to commit the words for later recall. This test was presented on computer screens with software developed by economist Urs Fischbacher (2007). Participants indicated their answers to each equation by pressing T or F and the experiment continued independently of whether responses were correct. After answering an equation, a word was displayed for three seconds with a twelve-second break before the next equation appeared. After completing the list of ten equations and words, there was a thirty-second break after which participants were asked to enter as many words as they could recall. Throughout the experiments, all participants were seated at computer stations with dividers and wore headphones to hear their improvisations and block out the sounds of other participants. I conducted two conditions (control and improvisation, with random assignment of participants to conditions) with two types

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of participants (those with and without musical experience). In our improvisation condition, individuals were provided with a rhythm track (a medium swing drumbeat at 130 bpm from Drumgenius, Battisti 2014) and asked to improvise on an iPad using the iMaschine app (Native Instruments GmbH 2014). The app (frequently used by performers of electronic music) consists of sixteen pads, each producing a different pitch across multiple timbres. The app and rhythm track offered a simple means to perform improvised music. Participants were told they should improvise to the drumbeat (which played throughout the equations and word lists) using the app during the experiment. In our control condition, participants were asked to wait silently between answering the equations and keeping the words in memory. I hypothesized that engaging in a musical improvisation provides a means of incorporating the body (including hand actions with the app and physical movement to the swing rhythm). Following theories of embodied cognition, individuals in the improvisation condition should have more embodied knowledge relative to those in the control condition (Smithers 1996; Shebani and Pulvermüller 2013; Glenberg 2015a). Specifically, I hypothesized the following: Hypothesis 1: Participants in the improvisation condition will recall more words relative to those in the control condition. Moreover, since those with musical experience are likely to have greater knowledge of improvisation and musical rhythm, I hypothesized the following: Hypothesis 2: Participants with musical experience will recall more words relative to (i) those with musical experience in the control condition and (ii) those without musical experience in the improvisation condition.

Experiment 1: Results and discussion Table 8.1 presents the number of words recalled by participants in each of the four conditions. Given the small sample numbers in Experiment 1, the data was analysed using the non-parametric Wilcoxon rank-sum tests, taking as the null hypothesis that the

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TABLE 8.1 Average number of words recalled in each experimental condition, standard deviations in parentheses No musical experience

Musically experienced

3.86 (1.01) n=14

4.17 (1.18) n=10

Improvisation 7.57 (2.07) n=13

5.21 (1.06) n=10

Control

data are drawn from the same distribution. Thus, rejection of this hypothesis implies the data are drawn from different distributions, an indication that the improvisation task had an effect on the experimental measure (number of words recalled). I can reject the Wilcoxon test’s null hypothesis for participants with no musical experience (Wilcoxon p=0.034) but not for participants with musical experience (p=0.68). Thus, the results are supportive of Hypothesis 1 regarding inexperienced participants, but I reject Hypothesis 1 for experienced participants. That is, only for inexperienced participants did the improvisation result in greater recall. Further, I can reject Hypothesis 2; I find no differences in word recall between experienced participants in the improvisation condition relative to experienced participants in the control condition (p=0.48) and inexperienced participants in the improvisation condition (p=0.57). It is worth considering potential concerns in the current design. First, the effect of improvisation on working memory may be due to several factors. Beyond embodied cognition, there could be motivational or emotional effects related to music that affect recall. This suggests a condition in which participants only listened to the drumbeat or other music without improvisation, disentangling the effect of creating versus listening to music. Since participants in the improvisation condition listened to the drumbeat and created an improvisation, it is not clear how these two effects are causally related to differences in recall. Yet, embodiment played a role in the memory task amongst participants with no musical experience. This stands in contrast to the work of Wu and Coulson (2014) who found only limited effects of embodiment in working memory tests. If we interpret our results in light of Markman and Brendl (2005), then the

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differences observed across participants with and without musical experience suggest a complex interplay between perception of the improvisation task (from the standpoint of embodying information) and word recall. Some researchers have suggested that individuals with musical experience apply these skills in many situations and environments (e.g. Bley 1999; Borgo 2007; Iyer 2004). As such, improvisation may be a novel activity for participants without musical experience, but a regular activity for individuals who play or perform music. The more novel an activity, the more likely it serves as a channel for the embodying information relative to commonplace activities (cf. Quak, Pecher and Zeelenberg 2014). For this reason, Experiment 2 examined how the less novel activity of musical improvisation could be made more salient for individuals with musical experience.

Experiment 2: Methods and hypothesis The second experiment used only participants who had musical experience. Participants from university music clubs were screened using the questions from Experiment 1, with those participants answering yes to all three questions recruited for the experiment. The focus on individuals with musical experience was done to explore a potential social or personal identity relationship that mediates the use of musical improvisation as an embodying activity and memory. This was motivated by the experiments of psychologists Robert Rydell and Kathryn Boucher (2010). In their studies, participants with higher levels of self-esteem were able to avoid working memory decrements resulting from the negative stereotypes accompanying salient identities. One interpretation is that working memory may be ‘situational’ in the sense of occurring within a given set of personal and social identities. As discussed by Wilson (2002) and Iyer (2002), if embodiment can be situational, then one might posit a relationship between the situational aspects of a decision environment (including salient social identities) and embodiment. In Experiment 2, thirty-two individuals participated, with seventeen in the musician identity treatment (six women, eleven men; average age 20.7) and fifteen in the Canadian identity treatment (five women, ten men; average age 20.1). As in Experiment 1,

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monitors documented bodily movements amongst participants whilst improvising and listening to the drumbeat. Experiment 2 used only the improvisation condition to focus attention on the null result from Experiment 1, positing that making the embodying activity congruent with a personal identity could make the activity more relevant for embodying information. Towards this end, participants answered the following identity manipulation questions prior to the improvisation and recall tasks from Experiment 1: 1 List three ways that you are similar to other musicians/ Canadians. 2 List three things you like being a musician/Canadian. 3 List three ways that you identify with other musicians/ Canadians. Participants were randomly assigned to two groups, one receiving questions relating to ‘musicians’, the other to ‘Canadians’, and provided their responses on paper at the start of the experiment. The intent was to make salient a specific personal identity (taskrelevant identity: musician, task-neutral identity: Canadian) during the improvisation. Similar manipulations have shown effective in making identity salient (e.g. Shih, Pittinsky and Ambady 1999; Yopyk and Prentice 2005). After the identity manipulation, the same memory task (word recall and improvisation) was applied as in Experiment 1. Here, I hypothesize that the congruence between a musician identity and a musical embodying activity (improvisation) would facilitate the embodiment of information. Hypothesis 3: In our improvisation condition and amongst participants with musical experience, those for whom a task relevant identity (i.e. musician identity) is salient will recall more words relative to those for whom a task-neutral identity has been made salient. At the end of the experiment, all participants were asked to indicate on a one to seven Likert scale how much they identified themselves as musicians and as Canadians, providing a check for the identity manipulation.

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Experiment 2: Results and discussion With respect to the manipulation check, I found no difference between how participants identified themselves as musicians (average 5.94 and 5.28 on the musician identity question across the musician and Canadian identity conditions; Wilcoxon p=0.83). Given that all participants considered themselves musically experienced and were recruited from music clubs, it is not surprising that no difference was identified with regards to the saliency of a musician identity. However, I found a significant difference regarding how participants identified as Canadians, with those in the ‘musician’ condition identifying less as Canadian than those in the ‘Canadian’ identity condition (average 2.86 and 5.98; p=0.041). Thus, our identity manipulation was successful in engaging participants to think about different identities, although only on the task-neutral identity of being Canadian. One possible explanation for this may be that the initial screening questions primed a prior musician identity. Although the screening questions and the experimental sessions were at least one week apart, this may explain why no significant difference in musician identity was identified in our manipulation check. However, the saliency of different identities had interesting effects on word recall. Participants who received the musician identity treatment recalled significantly more words (average 7.71, s.d. 0.91) than those in the Canadian identity treatment (average 5.49, s.d. 1.15; p=0.037). This suggests an interesting interplay between identity and the effect of embodiment on cognition. When the motor activity surrounding the embodiment task (musical improvisation) was congruent with a personal identity (musician), embodiment had a statistically identifiable effect on recall. The absence of a stronger musician identity in the manipulation check suggests two possible views of identity processes. First, it may be that the manipulation check question was insufficient to discern a musician identity; as all participants played music, participants had sufficiently strong musician identities and, whilst the manipulation check could not discern a difference (cf. Shih, Pittinsky and Ambady 1999), the manipulation affected an identity process that benefited recall. Alternately, as suggested by psychologist Isis Settles (2004), the presence of multiple identities amongst those in the Canadian identity condition could have led to identity interference, manifesting

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itself by impairing recall. Here, the presence of multiple salient identities (the primed Canadian identity and the participants’ inherent musician identity) provided sets of task-relevant and task-irrelevant norms that interfered with one another when tasking participants with an improvisation and recalling words. The intentionally primed Canadian identity may have superseded the latent musician identity, distracting participants from the taskrelevant identity and making it more difficult for those in the Canadian identity treatment to access the benefits of improvisation as a means of embodiment. Whilst disentangling these two explanations for the differences on the working memory task is beyond the scope of the current study, the results yields some insights into the null result in Experiment 1 and other embodiment/memory studies. On the one hand, Quak, Pecher and Zeelenberg (2014) and Shebani and Pulvermüller (2013) found motor activities had no effect on working memory. Whilst these activities may be considered congruent with the object of the working memory measures (pictures of manipulable/ non-manipulable objects, arm/leg-related words), neither motor activity was related to the participants’ identity nor the tasks’ situational nature. On the other hand, Markman and Brendl (2005) demonstrated a situational component of embodiment where the stimuli (positively/negatively connotated words) provided an environment and context for the motor activity (faster responses). One interpretation of this result is that responding to negative and positive words could be an identity-related activity where we take salient any personal identity in which self-esteem or self-image (and hence attraction/aversion to positive/negative connotations) play important roles (Haslam 2004). In Experiment 2, the relevance of an identity to the activity may provide a sensorimotor link that facilitates the embodiment of information. This presents an interesting linkage between identity theory and embodied cognition whereby the two systems may work to enhance one another. It may be precisely this type of enhancement between social identity and embodiment that results in improved task performance when positive stereotypes are salient (via identity manipulations; e.g. Shih, Pittinsky and Ambady 1999) and improved productivity when individuals adopt an occupational identity (via individuals identifying with their employer or occupational title; e.g. Akerlof and Kranton 2011; Haslam 2004).

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General discussion The current experiments demonstrate that engagement in a musical improvisation can lead to an embodiment of knowledge, manifest through greater word recall. Whilst Experiment 1 failed to identify any benefits of improvisational activity amongst individuals with musical experience (but succeeded with musically inexperienced controls), an interrelation between identity and embodied knowledge (Tajfel and Turner 1986) emerged in Experiment 2; that is, recall improved when the identity of being a musician was primed (relative to a Canadian identity prime). This suggests an interesting realm of research that may elucidate some of the previous findings on embodiment and working memory. Similar relationships between working memory and identity have been documented by Rydell and Boucher (2010) and Rydell, McConnell and Beilock (2009), where the saliency of negative stereotypes impaired working memory. By concurrently making salient identities that included positive stereotypes, they found that working memory did not suffer. In a similar vein, the current results suggest that the relationship between embodied cognition and memory may work through a channel of social and personal identities. In the current experiment, it is not the presence of positive or negative stereotypes (made salient through identities) that affects working memory, but rather the relevance or irrelevance of the salient identities to the embodying task that affects working memory. My findings raise interesting pedagogical and research potentials for music psychology and performance. In their critical review of Leman (2007), music psychologists Andrea Schiavio and Damiano Menin (2013) argue that there are important avenues whereby the body and mind provide feedback to one another in developing a musical mind that facilitates understanding and expressivity. Following these lines, Seitz (2005) emphasizes the bodily processes involved in music performance as key to developing musical expressivity, understanding and memory, the latter for which the current experiments demonstrate a potential avenue for future research. With respect to embodiment and identity in music, music psychologist Nikki Moran (2013) explored performance of North Indian music with an emphasis on how performance fosters effective

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social interactions, a key aspect of a shared social identity (cf. Iyer 2002). As further evidence of the relationship between embodiment and social identity, music educator Liesl van der Merwe (2014) demonstrated how musical activities can embody knowledge and build a shared social identity amongst students. Psychologist Antonia Ivaldi (2014) studied how activities amongst music students facilitate recall and signal beneficial teacher-identity norms. Whilst these studies demonstrate the potential for embodiment to build social and personal identities, the current study demonstrates the potential of an identity to augment or interfere with the benefits of embodiment. Returning to Glenberg (2015a), these studies suggest embodiment may help create a shared identity, further increasing the benefits of embodied practices. These studies suggest further research, particularly around how personal and social identities may contextualize the embodying activity to yield cognitive improvements. As the current experiments focused on a minimal form of embodiment, a natural extension is to expand the study to higher forms of physical involvement (instrumental techniques, broader physical movements; cf. Foerstel, Hardjowirogo and Egermann 2015). The question of ‘how much’ physicality is needed for embodiment raises further questions in the field of embodied cognition: How does one contextualize embodiment with respect to a given task or measure? How does the content of the embodying task affect cognitive processes? What are the relationships between the object of embodiment and the social or personal identities individuals deem salient in that situation? These questions become increasingly important at a time when embodied cognition is receiving greater attention. Whilst education research has focused on identifying interventions that boost working memory, psychologist Thomas Redick (2015) found little evidence that such interventions can increase performance on working memory tasks. However, Rydell, McConnell and Beilock (2009) showed that working memory suffers when individuals are presented with negative, identity-relevant stereotypes, whilst Rydell and Boucher (2010) demonstrate a key link between self-esteem, identity and performance in working memory tasks. This opens multiple avenues for research linking embodiment of memory content with social identity theory.

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Appendix Equations (participants indicated them as either true or false) and words (participants were tasked with recalling these words at a later time) used in Experiment 1 and Experiment 2: 1 (4 × 3)–5 = 6 2 Contrition 3 (6 × 8)–6 = 43 4 Adjective 5 (7 × 5)–9 = 26 6 Traditional 7 (4 × 9)–3 = 33 8 Emergence 9 (8 × 7)–3 = 51 10 Sabotage 11 (9 × 6)–8 = 46 12 Cemetery 13 (7 × 5)–9 = 32 14 Accelerating 15 (7 × 4)–3 = 25 16 Brandish 17 (9 × 6)–7 = 49 18 Falsehoods 19 (3 × 9)–5 = 21 20 Humanist

Notes 1 See jazz pianists Paul Berliner (1994) and Vijay Iyer (2004) for discussions of musical improvisation amongst children with no musical experience.

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2 Leman (2007) goes as far as to argue that both real and imagined participation in the production of sound may result in direct sensorimotor engagement that creates a foundation for embodied musical cognition. 3 In both experiments, monitors documented participants’ movements (foot tapping, head bobbing). Audio recordings documented humming and vocalizing. We found no effects regarding gender, age or major in either experiment.

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9 Dancing With a Bullet: Moving into Memory with Music Vahri McKenzie

This research investigates fifteen Australian choreographers who participated in Natalie Cursio’s With a Bullet: The Album Project (WAB), a dance project that foregrounds cognitive and phenomenological processes of human memory in its design. Cursio’s curatorial framework imposed three elements: each choreographer recalled and employed the first song to which they ever ‘made up a dance’; reframed it with the set of skills they had acquired as professionals in composing dance and presenting performance; and imbued the method of making a routine with a contemporary sensibility and an approach that offered the choreographers a reflective opportunity to trace personal dance histories. Both a Melbourne Edition and a Perth Edition of WAB were developed and performed across 2006–2013 in five venues. In this empirical investigation of memory as it relates to choreographic practice, I examine choreographic cognition with a particular focus on the use of ‘sounded’ (i.e. sound-triggered) memory recall to reflect upon choreographic options.

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FIGURE 9.1 Nat Cursio Co., With a Bullet: The Album Project – Perth Edition, Fringe World 2013, Perth Institute of Contemporary Art. Standing L-R: Shona Erskine, Kynan Hughes, Michael Whaites, Sam Fox, Claudia Alessi; seated L-R: Jacob Lehrer, Aimee Smith. Photograph by Ivan Shaw.

Methodology This study makes use of qualitative measures of phenomenological and somatic modes of remembering to identify and examine strategies that enhance choreographers’ abilities to source their creation in memories. The significance of memory in WAB’s curatorial and choreographic processes is investigated through thematic analysis in several iterative stages, leading to the development of eight case studies. Recognizing the potential of WAB for facilitating research into the operations of memory in creative processes and the transfer of choreographic aesthetics, Natalie (Nat) Cursio arranged preliminary interviews with the choreographers involved in the Melbourne Edition of the project and published the transcripts on her website (Cursio 2006–2007). This material comprises transcripts of four individual choreographers’ statements, a group interview with other choreographers in the cohort and a programme

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essay written by the interviewer, Elizabeth Boyce. Boyce focused on each choreographer’s trajectory, from their first choreographic experience to their current choreographic experience, and the role of music in that reflective journey. This material served as an important resource for developing the lines of enquiry for my study, offering thematic notions around which to organize interview questions with the Perth cohort. In many respects, this data worked as a focus group conducted prior to the main period of research to elicit experiential information in reference to shared experiences, attitudes, behaviours and intentions. Although the Melbourne interview material was not analysed, and lacks some context, it offered an opportunity for hearing the vocabulary and terminology used by the respondents. In 2014, I undertook one-on-one, in-depth interviews with the choreographers of WAB’s Perth Edition, within a few weeks of the project’s completion. In most cases, interviews occurred face to face, though in some instances follow-up was done by Skype or phone. My interviews were semi-structured, guided by the keywords memory, music and movement, and aimed to reach more complex subjects suggested by the Melbourne Edition interviews: studio methods and modes of enquiry, the transfer of choreographic aesthetics, evolution of form in contemporary dance, and the use of audio and rhythm in choreographic practice. Only the first question was scripted, and each interview began in the same way: I asked the choreographer to tell me the story of their first choreographic experience as identified by the premise of WAB. The chosen methodology positions interviewing as a valid way of generating qualitative empirical data. It assumes interviews can illuminate phenomena that cannot be directly observed (Peräkylä and Ruusuvuori 2011: 529), such as the operations of memory, and can gather a rich account of participants’ experiences, knowledge, ideas and impressions (Alvesson 2011: 3). The interviews offered participants a reflective opportunity through which to explore their experience of making a new work with an old and familiar piece of music. A narrative approach is supported by theories that suggest storytelling contributes to ‘meaning making through the shaping or ordering of experience’ (Chase 2011: 421). It is less concerned with discovering the accuracy of the narrated events, and more interested in understanding the meanings people attach to those events (Chase 2011: 424). I employ an interpretive approach,

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which acknowledges that interview participants collaborate in the construction of knowledge by working to discern and communicate the recognizable and orderly features of experience (Holstein and Gubrium 2004: 145). This study focuses on the phenomenology of the choreographic experience, an approach that assumes that the relationship between perception and its objects is an active construction including elements of meaning and the personal interpretation of the lived experience (Patton 2002: 104). Given the small number of choreographers involved in WAB and the complexity of the ideas being discussed, interviewing offered rich accounts illuminating the significance of memory in choreographic processes. However, after completing eight interviews in 2014, taken together with the views of nine respondents in the Melbourne Edition interviews, what emerged was a set of case studies rather than a set of principles about the operations of memory. Several of the Perth Edition interviews yielded interesting narratives about the choreographers’ career trajectories and studio methods, and these were published as artist profiles that focused on studio methods in the Perth Edition of WAB (McKenzie 2014a,b; 2015a,b). Whilst each choreographer’s WAB story is unique, there are significant areas of overlap in forms of engagement in studio practice. These areas provide clues to understanding the cognitive processes of using ‘sounded’ memory recall (i.e. memory coded and triggered by sound) in WAB, the investigation of which requires a further stage of analysis. I returned to all of the transcripts and sought linguistic markers that suggested somatic experience. In this I was guided by Thomas Csordas’s research (1999), which illuminates links between movement and memory through the analysis of somatic modes of attention and embodied imagery. I searched the transcripts for words associated with intuition, imagination, perception and sensation, such as knew, felt, found, understood, saw, want, as well as metaphors and figures of speech. This analytical process revealed much that previous direct questions, posed in the first semi-structured interview, had not. It led to different questions, tailored to each respondent, being asked in follow-up interviews. Of the eight Perth Edition choreographers, seven participated in some follow-up conversation. The data sets produced detailed case studies that are able to accommodate layers of meaning. A case study is especially useful for the choreographers involved in WAB,

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as it investigates a phenomenon within its cultural context, where there are no clear boundaries between the phenomenon studied and its context of praxis (Yin 2014: 16). The analysis that follows draws principally from the choreographers’ episodic memories of their first choreographic experience, when triggered by a specific piece of music and constrained by the task of making a new work. I group my empirical evidence around the choreographers’ narratives of remembering, the transmission of these narratives to others and obstacles in this process. I am interested in their actions, sensations and perceptions in making their WAB work, and address their strategies not as central results in and of themselves, but rather as support for the argument that they enable the choreographers to access aspects of memory that are otherwise hard to investigate.

Analysing creative thought in choreography A significant precursor to the current study is Unspoken Knowledges (1999–2001), an Australian Research Council-funded project that aimed to explore the kinds of creative thought involved in choreography. (This project was followed by Conceiving Connections in 2002.) Chief investigators were Shirley McKechnie (School of Dance, Victorian College of the Arts, Australia) and Robin Grove (Department of English, University of Melbourne, Australia). They were joined by Catherine Stevens (Deputy Director of the Macarthur Auditory Research Centre, University of Western Sydney, Australia), whose previous research was on music cognition in composers and audiences. For their empirical study the group commissioned two choreographers to produce new dance works: Anna Smith’s Red Rain (1999) and Sue Healey’s Not Entirely Human (2000). The evolution of these works was documented. Two notions growing out of this ten-year study in choreographic cognition have been particularly useful for me. The first is McKechnie and Stevens’s contention that ‘complex dance vocabularies expand views of human memory as more than a storehouse of linguistic propositions’ (2009b: 44). Their study of choreographic cognition proposes that contemporary dance offers a ‘microcosm of cognition’

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because it is ‘non-verbal, communicative, and expressive’ (McKechnie and Stevens 2009b: 38). Further, insights are to be found in its fourdimensionality: ‘Movement through space is continuous, it flows’ (McKechnie and Stevens 2009b: 38). The authors draw attention to the ‘inherently problematic’ nature of using scientific investigation to study creativity, ‘because the underlying cognitive processes are hidden and rapid’ (Stevens et al. 2003: 297). Qualitative measures, such as the phenomenological and somatic modes of remembering employed in this study, are important additions to the experimental approaches found in cognitive psychology. Combined, these approaches can offer a more full account of creativity in the multimodal phenomenon of contemporary dance, in which bodies move through space over time, communicating in a non-verbal form. The second important notion is a research model that illustrates how academic and practice-led research can fruitfully interact: practice-led research in dance leads to new works; basic and applied research about dance responds to work created in the past; research-led practice for dance follows, in which artists use and test the findings in the studio (McKechnie and Stevens 2009a). The present study employs such a model in that I am responding directly to Cursio’s WAB, and several of the choreographers in this study use my findings in their current studio work. When dance is addressed in the literature of cognitive psychology, the aim is often to examine the process of encoding in human memory (see for example Jean, Cadopi and Ille 2001; Rossi-Arnaud, Cortese and Cestari 2004). McKechnie and Stevens state that psychological investigations of memory in dance have been ‘unnecessarily confined to codes that are verbal or visual’ (2009b: 38). The conventional view is that auditory (this often refers to verbal) and visual information is coded with respect to the sensory modality and stored in procedural (motor) or declarative (episodic and semantic) long-term memory. This view assumes that information can be broken into pieces which reflect a specific sensory modality in order to be stored and retrieved. This assumption could in part result from the fact that experimental scientific investigation in general requires complex phenomena to be broken down into small-scale singular questions that can then be addressed with the appropriate scientific methodology. In isolation, I consider this approach inadequate to address how complex movement is remembered. Instead, more integrated and informed views and

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methods are needed to understand complex phenomena that, like dance, involve constructive memory and processes of cross-modal perception. McKechnie and Stevens cite several studies which find that memory for complex movement is both kinaesthetically (a term that refers to the integrated perception of one’s own body in motion) and verbally coded (2009b: 43–44), but the cited studies (e.g. Smyth and Pendleton 1994; Solso and Dallob 1995) are concerned with forms such as ballet that have discrete and prescribed steps drawn from an established repertoire, and thus are more comparable to linguistic units and structures. Contemporary dance, by contrast, ‘frequently consists of idiosyncratic movement derived from the theme being explored and is less easily reduced to verbal description’ (McKechnie and Stevens 2009b: 44). McKechnie and Stevens offer an example in their study of Red Rain (1999) in which a dancer watching herself on video ‘had little recollection of performing the movement or how she made her body move in a particular way’ (2009b, 44). This incident is reported in the dancer’s own words in Stevens et al.: ‘I can say that largely I could remember the feeling associated with that particular movement. Yet actually re-creating it was difficult in that I was now looking at the image on the screen rather than being given a prompt which would initiate the movement’ (2003: 305, my emphasis). Even when a precise visual cue was offered, the dancer experienced difficulty. Choreographers’ and dancers’ memories are infused with bodily sensations, suggesting that implicit kinaesthetic perception, named as a feeling, is more significant than declarations or units of information encoded in visual or verbal form. McKechnie and Stevens cite Solso and Dallob’s 1995 study examining long-term memory for dance material, which concludes that ‘there is an underlying scheme that governs the formation of body actions in general and dance routines in particular and . . . it may be possible to determine basic laws of motor performance and transformation as part of a comprehensive theory of dance “grammar” and general kinaesthetic “grammar”’ (2009b: 44). Here, a multi-modal experience is reduced to a code. From a scholarly dance perspective, such encoding is not a sophisticated enough notion to address the complexity of remembering experiences like one’s first choreographic creation process. Aiming for a more complex concept of grammar (in terms of an underlying structure) that takes into account the complex nature of such holistic experiences, McKechnie

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and Stevens ask, ‘what is the nature of the representation in memory that stores and integrates visual, auditory, propositional, spatial, temporal, and kinaesthetic features?’ (2009b: 44). Dance is furthermore a cultural phenomenon; memory operates in a social context. Whilst phenomenological approaches are limited to the subjective experiences that register consciously for the individual, these experiences are situated and they also include complex embodied interactions with source materials, environments and collaborators. Such context-specific and complex interactions currently fall outside the reach of experimental procedures, mainly because of the previously mentioned methodological requirements to break down phenomena and questions, and because of a tendency to generalize statistically across groups. Thus, in my analysis, I employ Csordas’s somatic modes of attention – that is, culturally elaborated ways of attending to and with one’s body in one’s environment (1999: 151). This complementary approach to studying cultural phenomena requires ‘no special kind of data or a special method for eliciting such data, but a methodological attitude that demands attention to bodiliness even in purely verbal data such as written text or oral interview’ (Csordas 1999: 148). Rather than attributing a ‘grammar’ to the non-verbal, it might be more fruitful to attribute corporeality to language. This is Csordas’s suggestion in ‘Intersubjectivity and Intercorporeality’ (2008), which builds on the argument presented in ‘Embodiment and Cultural Phenomenology’ (1999). Instead of reducing experience to conventional cognitive and linguistic representation, the phenomenological tradition ‘offers us being-in-the-world as a dialogical partner for representation’ (Csordas 1999: 147). Merely replacing non-verbal communication with a kind of ‘body language’ is misleading because it presumes that the nonverbal is structurally analogous to the verbal and can be studied in parallel by means of parallel methods. The problem with using the term ‘communication’ in conjunction with nonverbal is that it focuses our attention on the code, and the problem with using ‘language’ is that it focuses our attention on the grammar, or the system. (Csordas 2008: 114) Focusing on codes, grammars and systems comes at the expense of analysis of experience in which imagination, perception and

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sensation form a whole. Thus, in my interpretations of the WAB choreographers’ statements, I am using their language as a clue to the information they provide about being-in-the-world, an embodied experience that works alongside language.

Something that connects: Narratives of remembering Whilst the WAB choreographers found it difficult to register their experience of operations of memory as they reflected upon their choreographic options in the present and over time, many offered comments about how the interaction of music and movement felt in the context of WAB and, more generally, in their choreographic practice. For example, Michael Whaites describes his memory of the sensation of music and movement fitting together: Just being with my body in the music . . . fitting those two things together. . .. I guess it’s as simple as when a rhythmic idea in the body fits together with a rhythmic idea in the structure of a pre-recorded piece of music. So especially in an improvised setting, it’s a synchronicity, or a sense of arriving at something spontaneous that connects. (Whaites 2014) Nat Cursio similarly describes the feeling as a sense of fittingness; it is ‘a feeling, a sense that that’s the right time, or what you’re looking at makes sense for you somehow without being able to describe it, it gives you a kind of yes . . . maybe spatially it feels right, or rhythmically it feels right’ (Cursio 2015). Luke Hockley, interviewed in 2005, explicitly linked his choreographic memory of ‘Chariots of Fire’ (1981) to the movement of the protagonist in the eponymous film running on the beach: ‘the most pleasure I have ever felt is that moment of running with absolute freedom and speed. There’s this acceleration point and I just love that feeling. I suppose that becomes a link to me as a young person’ (Cursio 2006–2007). Embodied cognition draws attention to the idea that perception and cognition are best understood in terms of their tight coupling to action in an environment (see, for example, Clark 1997; Wilson

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2002). According to Glenberg (2010), the embodiment framework even has the potential to unify different lines of research in cognitive psychology. The coupling of action and perception has been a basic idea guiding recent research in this field (Prinz 1997; Hommel et al. 2001). These modern theoretical accounts work against more conventional models of cognition in which memory was theorized as a computational system for retrieving discrete units of meaning (e.g. Newell and Simon 1976). Embodied cognition complements Csordas’s phenomenological critique of experience reduced to representation in ways that are useful for the analysis presented here. That said, I also recognize that recent literature on mental representations in long-term memory acknowledges their multi-modal, action-based nature (e.g. Schack et al. 2014). Both the philosophical tradition and recent scientific frameworks thus gesture towards the kinds of interpretations I am making out of the conversations with choreographers undertaken in this study. The idea of action in an environment provides a window onto what the choreographers had to say about hearing a familiar piece of music from their past. Nat Cursio offered statements about how engaging with the process of WAB ‘takes you back’ to that first choreographic experience. In our final conversation, she used comparisons with other sensory memory triggers to clarify her feeling; hearing a piece of music takes you back in the same way olfactory triggers do: ‘when you smell something or you hear a piece of music and it takes you back to a particular feeling that you had at [another] time’ (Cursio 2015). Further, Nat speaks of the way sounded memory recall ‘locates you in a place’, offering an immersive experience more complete than the experience that accompanies looking at a photograph: it locates you in a place of a memory in a way that looking at a photograph doesn’t locate you there. Looking at a photograph you see it visually, you have a feel for it to a degree, but a sensorial memory that music can offer is different, it feels like it’s more 3D around your body, it locates you there very briefly. It’s like déjà vu I guess. (Cursio 2015) This sense of going back to the ‘place’ is also seen in Jo Pollitt’s comments. Jo makes explicit the connection between place and memory when she says,

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I really loved that dropping back into memory and place and the connection between place and memory. When I heard music I was immediately in a place, situated, my identity at whatever time of life, it was clear to me and massively available again in my body to experience as an energetic state or emotional place. (Pollitt 2014) Jo is able to re-experience the episode physically, emotionally and energetically, which suggests the activity of context-dependent memory, in which mood, physiological and cognitive contexts work together to recreate a whole experience. Several types of context-dependent memory are identified in the literature of cognitive psychology, including environment, state and mood. State-dependent memory is the phenomenon through which memory retrieval is most efficient when an individual is in the same state of consciousness as they were when the memory was formed (Lieberman 2012: 519). Typically, this has been examined in the context of drugged states, but it is also apparent in naturally occurring physiological states, such as increased cardiovascular activity following aerobic exercise. Anderson writes that ‘aspects of our physiological state get encoded incidentally as part of the episodic experience’ (Baddeley, Eysenck and Anderson 2015: 213). The WAB choreographers’ evidence suggests more than an incidental relationship between physiological states in memory retrieval, in which embodied experience is fundamental. Claudia Alessi recalls her first choreographic experience: I led my best friend from across the road into this idea of dancing with me in the lounge room to ‘Waterloo’ by ABBA [1974]. What comes with that, that flood of excitement, emotion, bossiness, the bossiness of a five-year old not understanding why her stepball-change, step, click, looked different to my step-ball-change, step, click, and not really getting it that I had been doing dancing in a Scout hall up the road and she’d been doing tennis. (Alessi 2014) The ‘flood of excitement, emotion, bossiness’ suggests immediacy, entirety, and a sense of movement or momentum, a return to that time and place with physical feeling and emotional state intact. The ‘flooding’ feeling appears in the literature regarding context-

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dependent memory, showing that retrieval effects increase ‘as the delay between encoding and retrieval increases, which may account for why returning to a childhood home one has not visited in a long time creates the feeling of being “flooded” with memories one has not thought about in years’ (Baddeley, Eysenck and Anderson 2015: 213). Interestingly, this passage also offers evidence of a ‘unit’ of dance memory: the ‘step-ball-change, step, click’, which is an aspect of the conventional vocabulary of jazz dance that formed part of Claudia’s training. This step became a motif to be reworked in her WAB piece. Claudia had her dancers perform wearing platform boots and hot-pants, as well as a veil and wimple, producing a jarring effect that strongly contrasted the active bottom halves with the obscured top halves of their bodies. In the process of making her work, Claudia recalled that the Dominican nuns at her Roman Catholic school instructed the children to march to classes, and this memory was reflected in the costume choice that captured both the song’s disco era and the militaristic subtext (Alessi 2014). The boots were used early in the studio process, despite Claudia’s choreographic aesthetic generally favouring bare feet and dynamic movements into and out of the floor. The jazz step was not retrieved in isolation from emotions and sensations, and the process of ‘going back’ triggered further new memories and a sense that, once she was there, she could ‘navigate’ within the place: Going back stirred this emotional roller-coaster of the memory of being that age and being told certain things, that I couldn’t be left-handed, I wasn’t allowed to play tennis with my left hand, I had to switch. It did these things to my brain and my emotions that stirred up a whole lot of ideas about then . . . So there was this sense of navigating it via feeling and via emotion as well, and tapping into that five-, six-year old. (Alessi 2014) Claudia’s episodic memory additionally illustrates the spreading activation model of memory retrieval, which Anderson describes ‘is like “energy” flowing through connections’ (Baddeley, Eysenck and Anderson 2015: 199). In addition to the words ‘energetic state or emotional place’, Jo Pollitt also uses the word ‘navigate’ to describe how she moves through the imaginative space of making her WAB work: ‘this cerebral space, as well as this association-from-association poetic

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jumping or travelling through multiple spaces and situations and relationships in many worlds all happening at once, that I navigate through physically’ (Pollitt 2014). Jo’s piece, performed to Diana Ross’s ‘Chain Reaction’ (1985), has her solo female dancer moving through a series of activities that suggest her many roles – endless domestic tasks, performing on a pedestal, and lecturing, amongst others – whilst a tidy pile of Lego construction toys becomes increasingly scattered around her. The woman who resists, reacts and copes was a contemporary interpretation of the teenaged Jo’s reaction to the pressures in her world. ‘Many worlds’ is a key metaphor that Jo uses to describe her WAB experience, supporting the idea of memory as an experience that is already invested with emotions and a sense of being-in-the-world. In his study of human learning and memory, David Lieberman acknowledges the challenges that such a sense of being-in-the-world across time, place and emotions may present to an evidence-based, experimental research paradigm: a surprisingly large number of the background stimuli present during an event may become part of the memory record we form. . .. The more of these cues that were present when you later tried to remember . . . the more likely you would be to succeed. What makes all this difficult is that the environment is constantly changing – not only our external environment but also our internal thoughts and feelings. (Lieberman 2012: 416) Yet context – environment, state and mood – is fundamental to the choreographers’ memories in WAB. In this case study, the phenomenological methods allowed me as researcher to travel with the choreographers’ memories and physical explorations across changing environments and states.

Building a bridge: Choreographic transmission WAB requires that choreographers recall the very first song to which they ever ‘made up a dance’, then compose a dance and transmit this to dancers in order to present a performance employing their recalled

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FIGURE 9.2 Nat Cursio Co., With a Bullet: The Album Project – Perth Edition. Choreographer Jo Pollitt, studio photograph, 2013. Dancer: Shona Erskine. Photograph by Nat Cursio.

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piece of music. In other words, the choreographers need to transform what is tacitly (i.e. implicitly) understood by them into something explicitly communicated to others. As with my earlier argument about episodic memories in which movement is a key component, here too I find that conventional ideas of ‘representation’, where representation reduces experience to language or another kind of code, are insufficient. In ‘Making the Tacit Explicit’, Stephen Turner concludes that when implicit knowledge is made explicit, what is communicated is not implicit knowledge per se, but ‘functional substitutes for bits of tacit knowledge for particular audiences and particular purposes, invented on the fly’ (2012: 400). In his article, Turner directly addresses mirror neurons, and the way dancers learn, to support his argument. Neuroscientific findings first presented in the mid-1990s suggest that neurons exist in the brain that act as ‘mirrors’, i.e. that fire when both doing an action and watching another do the same action (see Chapter 1 for a broader discussion of the implications of research in mirror neurons). Turner argues against a conventional cognitive model of communication that involves ‘matching representations’ and instead proposes a combination of mirroring, learning by doing and responding to feedback through interaction, a process in which ‘speech serves to stabilize or crystallize the mirror neuron systems’ in-kind responses, and to add to them, as experience adds to the dancers’ ability to discern distinctions’ (2012: 394). We are reminded that memory operates within a social context in which verbal communication itself is a context-dependent improvisation. This reflects the various strategies choreographers employ to transmit their compositions. Stevens and colleagues refer to the mirror neuron system to help explain the phenomenon they call ‘sympathetic kinaesthesia’ (2003: 320), the sense dancers have when watching dance that they are feeling the dance themselves. Other authors have referred to the phenomenon of experiencing the observed movement of others almost as one’s own movement as ‘kinesthetic empathy’ (Reynolds and Reason 2012), or, in a more general context, as ‘perceptual resonance’ (Schütz-Bosbach and Prinz 2007). My interviews with choreographers offer ample evidence of this phenomenon. For example, Michael Whaites says: ‘Before I was in the Pina Bausch Company, I remember watching works of that company performed on stage and feeling an immediate connection with the dancers . . .

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and understanding what was going on, on an almost unconscious level’ (Whaites 2014). His remarks suggest that the feeling which connects music with movement for Michael himself is analogous to that of translating it to another body, the difference being which senses are engaged. When identifying the connection of music with movement for himself, ‘it’s about a feeling’, and when seeking that in others, ‘it’s about what I see . . . there is this viscerality that I connect to when I watch what they’ve done’ (Whaites 2015). I note that Michael uses the word ‘connect’ once again, as he did when describing the sensation of music and movement going together, and when watching Tanztheater Wuppertal. This suggests that similar phenomenological, and possibly cognitive, processes are occurring when Michael remembers his early dance experiences and recognizes someone else having a similar experience involving a combination of feeling, seeing and describing. Nat Cursio identifies her experience as ‘physical empathy’ and appears to naturally connect the processes of doing and watching, feeling and seeing: ‘the satisfaction of doing and watching dance set well to music can also be really satisfying because of that synergy you see, and you can sometimes feel that synergy and that sort of physical empathy that you might get as an audience member or as a choreographer watching dancers’ (2015). Nat’s ‘synergy’ aptly names the process of cooperation between feeling and seeing in sympathetic kinaesthesia. Although McKechnie and Stevens indicate that sympathetic kinaesthesia occurs ‘particularly among experts’ (2009b: 45),1 Nat Cursio’s extensive experience of watching audiences of WAB offers some evidence that the phenomenon extends beyond expert watchers. The ‘album’ nature of WAB, with a short break between each ‘track’, allowed Nat to witness conversations amongst audience members and to gather feedback over the course of WAB’s performances from 2006 to 2013. She found that for audience members, whether or not they are dancers, watching the show leads them to wonder what they might do if faced with WAB’s task: They often have a song that they remember actually creating some moves to. So they’ve had this mini-choreographic experience, and they have this strong connection to different types of music . . . it connects what they’re seeing in front of them to their own

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experience. And for me, that’s the way that the work kind of travels through the audience. (Cursio 2014) In Nat’s second interview, I asked her to expand on the idea of the work ‘travelling’: ‘thoughts that are circulating and generating in the situation of watching it. And what I think it does, in terms of travel, is take an audience somewhere, into another phase of thinking’ (Cursio 2015). Her response suggests the occurrence of various cognitive activities related to those described by McKechnie and Stevens in their comparison of choreographic cognition in creating and watching dance (2009b: 48). They write, ‘similar processes may be at work in creating and responding to dance, and processes of communication and knowledge transfer apply equally to choreographers interacting with dancers, and dancer-audience interactions’ (McKechnie and Stevens 2009b: 48). Renee Glass, a collaborator working with McKechnie and Stevens on Unspoken Knowledges, developed the Audience Response Tool and found that, compared with visual, kinaesthetic and other cues, ‘aural elements typically elicit an emotional response in a greater percentage of observers’, especially amongst inexperienced viewers (Glass 2005: 118). For Nat Cursio, the auditory mode is the most significant aspect of communication between choreographers, dancers and viewers. This view is supported by Rosenblum and colleagues who claim that perceptual experiences are shared across modalities at an early stage of cognitive processing and that sound perception is particularly well integrated with vision and other senses (Rosenblum, Dias and Dorsi 2017). Nat Cursio uses a central metaphor of music as a ‘bridge’ when describing the way information travels in WAB: ‘I think the key is the music. It builds this bridge between audience and performers, or audience and choreographers’ (2014). Of the audience experience, she says: Those leaps that they might make in terms of their thinking about it, it becomes more connected to that person, I think that’s why the work can resonate. It’s very simple but [it] can resonate in a way that afterwards they might leave the space and talk about the work and talk about things, they might not necessarily remember the show but they might actually just remember their memory. (Cursio 2015)

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Here, Nat uses the word ‘resonate’ explicitly to gesture towards the shared emotion arising as a result of witnessing WAB, leading to the possibility that audience members remember their own ‘mini-choreographic experience’. Interestingly, this possibility is related to the concept of ‘perceptual resonance’, proposed by psychologists Schütz-Bosbach and Prinz (2007). Perceptual resonance describes how the experience of one’s own movement is brought back and ‘re-lived’ whilst watching others performing similar motor actions. The term ‘resonate’ can furthermore be related to the way sound travels through space, supporting Nat’s idea that ‘the key is the music’. WAB explicitly targets the processes of sounded memory recall in its curatorial design, and Nat’s observations of the work’s audiences show that these processes affect viewers as well as the choreographers and performers. She describes a process of memory transmission, from the choreographers whose memories initiate the work, to the dancers who receive an interpretation of that in contemporary dance, to the audience: ‘when you get to the performance phase, it’s almost like the dancers and choreographers have moved further away from memories and more into the present, whereas the audience are in a situation where . . . there’s a facilitation of their memories’ (Cursio 2015).

Digging down: Overcoming obstacles So far I have addressed those aspects of WAB that require choreographers to retrieve a particular episodic memory, and then to transmit this to others. I will finish with illustrations of obstacles in this process that nonetheless enable the choreographers to access aspects of memory that are otherwise hard to investigate. In Jacob Lehrer’s WAB process, he initially resisted the project brief because he no longer liked the music of his adolescent first choreographic experience (The Orb’s ‘Little Fluffy Clouds’, 1990). In fact, he declares that he used to be ‘anti-music’, a strategy he used to draw attention to the primacy of dance; in this respect WAB was a provocation. He was also not keen on revisiting his autobiographical memories of that time, but responded to Nat Cursio’s encouragement to dig deeper: ‘I knew that I didn’t like

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FIGURE 9.3 Nat Cursio Co., With a Bullet: The Album Project – Perth Edition. Choreographer Jacob Lehrer, studio photograph, 2013. Dancers L-R: Kynan Hughes, Claudia Alessi, Joel Small. Photograph by Trent Suidgeest.

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the  song and I knew that time of my life I wasn’t particularly happy . . . it was nice just to have someone to give it a little nudge, and at that point I was just like, fuck it, I’m going to drill down into that time’ (Lehrer 2014). These feelings influenced the theme of his WAB work, which was a tongue-in-cheek presentation of ‘really bad choreography to this really bad music’, though Jacob rejects the notion of ‘feelings’ as an inspiration. Rather, he claims he was guided by ‘what activities I was getting up to, as opposed to the feelings’ (Lehrer 2014). Nonetheless, Jacob explains that the studio provided a safe space to recreate the ‘intensity’ of the ‘violent and grotesque’ adolescent work, ‘and to be reminded of this angry young man’ (Lehrer 2014). He developed characters – ‘three aspects of myself’ – that reflected who he was at that time, such as an ‘angry, punchy, bogan bitch’ and a ‘really weird, odd, sexual creature that either wanted to fuck something or eat it’: And my interest there was I’ve never created character-based contemporary dance, so I created these characters and then . . . choreographed with the characters. That was a lot of fun, so by digging down into that time, it transforms and all the rest of it, then I had these characters to play with and interact with. (Lehrer 2014) Jacob suggests his aim in this work was to make something he had never done before: ‘good bad choreography’ and ‘characterbased contemporary dance’. He does not explicitly link this to the adolescent feelings of rejecting conventional behaviour, but there are strong indications that this connection between the memory and his present exploration of it was used to bridge the very different autobiographical moments and professional identities of the young and more mature choreographer. Like Jacob, other choreographers appeared to resist the operations of memory in WAB, yet this did not seem to hamper the process of making a new dance work. Luke Hockley’s WAB work was an ensemble piece in which his dancers moved back and forth across the space performing a series of slow unison movements such as handstands and turns. Interviewed in 2005 for the Melbourne Edition of WAB, Luke spoke about his interest

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in the operations of a ‘group mind’, and despite the potential for the familiar ‘Chariots of Fire’ theme to be mocked, his dancers are neither humorous nor serious, but seek a natural ease of movement together. He says that he engaged more deeply with his memory as a result of the WAB process: ‘I didn’t think too hard, to be honest. . . But now, having done Album, I can actually tell you more about it’ (Cursio 2006–2007). In addition to the memory of the pleasure of running described earlier, Luke’s other touchstone was the process of making his first dance with a friend: ‘We were in the front yard with the record player out the window, playing it over and over again and running around and doing whatever we did. But it was about the making’ (Cursio 2006–2007). This example was not a single occurrence. In Gerard Van Dyck’s work a trio dances a rapid series of cartoon-like deaths to Elmer Bernstein’s ‘Ghostbusters Theme’ (1984). He expressed his general scepticism about the operations of memory: ‘My perspective on what it was then is going to be different because the lens I’m looking at it through is bigger or different, broader or more refined or whatever. I find it really hard to go pinpointing ideas about where I was mentally or spiritually or emotionally’ (Cursio 2006–2007). Gerard found, however, that his memory of that first choreographic experience sharpened as a result of making his WAB work, triggering explicit memories of other things occurring at that time. Performing magic tricks was, along with dance, the other important thing in his life, and he says, ‘I’ve got an even more vivid memory of what I did when I was thirteen right now than I did when we were working on it six months ago’ (Cursio 2006–2007). At the time of the interview (2006), Gerard intended to redevelop the work to reflect the retrieved memory: ‘This time around, I have ideas of illusions that I want to put in the piece that have only come up because [of] the memory of what it was to begin with’ (2006). He ascribed the clarity achieved over time to participation in WAB, as well as becoming more free of the ‘loud critic in [his] mind’ (Cursio 2006–2007). This development is an interesting example of how the phenomenological experience of memory evolves as that memory is recalled, reconstructed and adapted, cognitively and through present choreographic action. However, what matters for the creative work in this context is not the cognitive processes

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of reconstructive memory behind that experience (as described by Schacter and Addis 2007). His creation is affected most relevantly by the phenomenological experience itself, the integration of past and present contexts it involves, and the ways in which the artist uses it as source material. Several choreographers noted that the power of music to ‘take you back’ can work against the creative process, and so avoided using the music in the studio until later in the development. As Cursio’s comments make clear, this is true for the audience too, and had to be carefully considered. Chrissie Parrott says the audience will ‘automatically get lulled into a sense of history and where it takes them’, so that if ‘they’ve actually viscerally, aurally experienced that music they’ll go, bang, that’s where I was . . . you hear something, you go there, and it’ll be sitting there in the back of your memory while you’re watching something else’ (Parrott 2014). In other words, the very same cognitive processes that were targeted strategically to ‘sound out memory’ and generate choreographic responses could risk dominating its reception.

Connecting, travelling and bridging With a Bullet I have identified some cognitive processes of memory that are involved in making and watching WAB, with a particular focus on using sounded memory recall when choreographers reflect on their compositional options. Interviews with the choreographers reveal that they responded in various ways to the curatorial device; all made a new dance to an old song, but they displayed different ways of engaging with the cognitive challenge it presented. In discussing their strategies to create a new work within the curatorial framework, the choreographers’ memories are revealed as emotions and sensations, as reflections of being-in-the-world invested with significant embodied knowledge that is not separate from semantic facts. Where the experimental procedures of cognitive psychology are limited in their ability to investigate context-specific processes of memory in contemporary dance, phenomenological theories that

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privilege subjective experience enable us to examine memory in dance as a cultural phenomenon that operates in a specific social context. Nat Cursio says that social interaction is key to the work: ‘as memories are shared they lay down a lot of the social foundations of the process and the performance’ (2015). Language is an important part of this social engagement, and so in their conversations with me I use the choreographers’ language as a guide to the information they provide about their embodied experiences that work alongside language. Words I have drawn attention to – connect, travel, bridge – share a thematic concern with translation and communication. However, the WAB choreographers have expertise in communication beyond language, as dance is a multimodal expressive art form, so even in their verbal records they illuminate cognitive processes beyond language. The literature of cognitive psychology shows that, in memory, the context of retrieval is important (Lieberman 2012: 394; Baddeley, Eysenck and Anderson 2015: 211). My evidence shows that the phenomenological, and possibly cognitive, processes involved in retrieving the first choreographic memory are similar to those evident when choreographers develop their WAB dance works. These processes also emphasize context that includes other people. To transform the memory into a dance, choreographers employ a variety of strategies that go beyond language, including mirroring (i.e. copying), learning by doing and responding to feedback through interaction. This communication is a social process that the observations from WAB suggest occurs between choreographers and dancers, and between dancers and audiences. The evidence also indicates that the familiarity of the music is an important part of this process. Many choreographers had an explicit memory of their first choreographic experience, but for some this created too rigid an imposition on their current practice. Even where choreographers found it difficult to directly engage with the WAB brief, the framework nonetheless enabled them to access aspects of memory that are otherwise hard to investigate. Although choreographic responses thus differed depending on autobiographical, emotional and interpersonal factors within the context, there is no doubt that sounded memory provided a powerful tool to source choreographic work and anchor audience experiences.

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Note 1 The authors discuss the 2005 study of Calvo-Merino et al., which shows dancers are more likely to experience this sensation when watching a dance form they have learnt, and even more so if they have the personal experience of dancing the observed movements themselves.

References Alessi, C. (2014), [Digital voice recording] Interview by V. McKenzie on 15 February, Perth, Australia. Alvesson, M. (2011), Interpreting Interviews, London: SAGE. Baddeley, A., M. W. Eysenck and M. C. Anderson (2015), Memory, London: Psychology Press. Bernstein, E. (1984), [CD] ‘Main Title Theme (Ghostbusters)’ in Ghostbusters (Soundtrack), Arista Records. Calvo-Merino, B., D. E. Glaser, J. Grèzes, R. W. Passingham and P. Haggard (2005), ‘Action observation and acquired motor skills: An fMRI study with expert dancers’, Cerebral Cortex, 15: 1243–9. Chase, S. (2011), ‘Narrative inquiry’, in N. K. Denzin and Y. S. Lincoln (eds), The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research, 4th edn, 421–34, Los Angeles: SAGE. Chariots of Fire (1981), [Film] Dir. Hugh Hudson, UK: Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation; Allied Stars Ltd.; Enigma Productions. Clark, A. (1997), Being There: Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ‘Conceiving Connections: Increasing Industry Viability through Analysis of Audience Responses to Dance Performance’ (2002–2004), Research Grant funded by Australian Research Council. Chief Investigators: S. McKechnie, R. Grove, C. Stevens, S. Malloch and D. Price. Available online: https://researchdata.ands.org.au/conceiving-connectionsincreasing-dance-performance/73222 Csordas, T. J. (1999), ‘Embodiment and cultural phenomenology’, in G. Weiss and H. F. Haber (eds), Perspectives on Embodiment: The Intersections of Nature and Culture, 143–62, New York: Routledge. Csordas, T. J. (2008), ‘Intersubjectivity and intercorporeality’, Subjectivity, 22 (1): 110–21. Cursio, N. (2006–2007), ‘With a bullet: The album project’. Available online: http://www.natcursio.com/project/with-a-bullet-the-albumproject (accessed 8 January 2016).

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Cursio, N. (2014), [Digital voice recording] Interview by V. McKenzie on 1 April, Bunbury, Australia. Cursio, N. (2015), [Digital voice recording] Interview by V. McKenzie on 4 May, Bunbury, Australia. Glass, R. (2005), ‘Observer response to contemporary dance’, in R. Grove, C. J. Stevens and S. McKechnie (eds.), Thinking in Four Dimensions: Creativity and Cognition in Contemporary Dance, 107–21, Carlton: Melbourne University Press. Glenberg, A. M. (2010), ‘Embodiment as a unifying perspective for psychology’, Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science, 1 (4): 586–96. Holstein, J. A. and J. F. Gubrium (2004), ‘The active interview’, in D. Silverman (ed.), Qualitative Research: Theory, Method and Practice, 2nd edn, 140–61, London: SAGE. Hommel, B., J. Müsseler, G. Aschersleben and W. Prinz (2001), ‘The Theory of Event Coding (TEC): A framework for perception and action planning’, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 24: 849–937. Jean, J., M. Cadopi and A. Ille (2001), ‘How are dance sequences encoded and recalled by expert dancers?’, Cahiers de Psychologie Cognitive, 20 (5): 325–37. Lehrer, J. (2014), [Digital voice recording] Interview by V. McKenzie on 25 January, Perth, Australia. Lieberman, D. (2012), Human Learning and Memory, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McKechnie, S. and C. Stevens (2009a), ‘Knowledge unspoken: Contemporary dance and the cycle of practice-led research, basic and applied research, and research-led practice’, in H. Smith and R. T. Dean (eds), Practice-led Research, Research-led Practice in the Creative Arts, 84–103, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. McKechnie, S. and C. Stevens (2009b), ‘Visible thought: Choreographic cognition in creating, performing and watching contemporary dance’, in J. Butterworth and L. Wildschut (eds), Contemporary Choreography: A Critical Reader, 38–51, Abingdon, UK: Routledge. McKenzie, V. (2014a), ‘Freedom in surrender’, Dancewest, September: 22–3. McKenzie, V. (2014b), ‘A visceral kind of understanding’, Dancewest, December: 18–19. McKenzie, V. (2015a), ‘A WA icon loops the loop’, Dancewest, March: 8–9. McKenzie, V. (2015b), ‘Let’s make a mess’, Dancewest, June: 22–3. Newell, A. and H. A. Simon (1976), ‘Computer science as empirical inquiry: Symbols and search’, Communications of the ACM, 19 (3): 113–26.

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Not Entirely Human (2000), Choreographer: S. Healey in collaboration with dancer M. Heaven. Commissioned by the Unspoken Knowledges research project. Parrott, C. (2014), [Digital voice recording] Interview by V. McKenzie on 12 April, Perth, Australia. Patton, M. Q. (2002), Qualitative Research and Evaluation Methods, 3rd edn, Thousand Oaks: SAGE. Peräkylä, A. and J. Ruusuvuori (2011), ‘Analysing talk and text’, in N. K. Denzin and Y. S. Lincoln (eds), The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research, 4th edn, 529–43, Los Angeles: SAGE. Pollitt, J. (2014), [Digital voice recording] Interview by V. McKenzie on 25 January, Perth, Australia. Prinz, W. (1997), ‘Perception and action planning’, European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 9 (2): 129–54. Red Rain (1999), Choreographer: A. Smith in collaboration with the dancers. Commissioned by the Unspoken Knowledges research project. Reynolds, D. and M. Reason (2012), Kinesthetic Empathy in Creative and Cultural Practices, Bristol: Intellect. Rosenblum, L. D., J. W. Dias and J. Dorsi (2017), ‘The supramodal brain: Implications for auditory perception’, Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 29 (1): 65–87. Ross, D. (1985), [CD] ‘Chain Reaction’ in Eaten Alive, AFLI-5422, RCA (North America). Rossi-Arnaud, C., A. Cortese and V. Cestari (2004), ‘Memory span for movement configurations: The effects of concurrent verbal, motor and visual interference’, Cahiers de Psychologie Cognitive, 22: 335–49. Schack, T., B. Bläsing, C. Hughes, T. Flash and M. Schilling (2014), ‘Elements and construction of motor control’, in A. G. Papaioannou and D. Hackfort (eds), Routledge Companion to Sport and Exercise Psychology: Global Perspectives and Fundamental Concepts, 308–23, London: Routledge. Schacter, D. L. and D. R. Addis (2007), ‘The cognitive neuroscience of constructive memory: Remembering the past and imagining the future’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 362: 773–86. doi:10.1098/rstb.2007.2087 Schütz-Bosbach, S. and W. Prinz (2007), ‘Perceptual resonance: Actioninduced modulation of perception’, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 11 (8): 349–55. Available online: http://doi.org.ezproxy.lib.ucalgary. ca/10.1016/j.tics.2007.06.005 Smyth, M. M. and L. R. Pendleton (1994), ‘Memory for movement in professional ballet dancers’, International Journal of Sport Psychology, 25 (3): 282–94. Solso, R. L. and P. Dallob (1995), ‘Prototype formation among professional dancers’, Empirical Studies of the Arts, 13: 3–16.

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Stevens, C., S. Malloch, S. McKechnie and N. Steven (2003), ‘Choreographic cognition: The time-course and phenomenology of creating a dance’, Pragmatics and Cognition, 11: 297–326. The Orb (1990), [Single] ‘Little Fluffy Clouds’, BLR 33T, Big Life. Turner, S. (2012), ‘Making the tacit explicit’, Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 42 (4): 385–402. ‘Unspoken Knowledges: Expanding Industry Productivity and Value through Strategic Research into Choreographic Practice’ (1999–2001), Research Grant funded by Australian Research Council. Chief Investigators: S. McKechnie, R. Grove and C. Stevens. Whaites, M. (2014), [Digital voice recording] Interview by V. McKenzie on 25 January, Perth, Australia. Whaites, M. (2015), [Digital voice recording] Interview by V. McKenzie on 10 April, Perth, Australia. Wilson, M. (2002), ‘Six views of embodied cognition’, Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 9 (4): 625–36. doi:10.3758/BF03196322 Yin, R. K. (2014), Case Study Research: Design and methods, 5th edn, Thousand Oaks: SAGE.

10 Already Seen, Already Heard, Already Visited: Constructing the Experience of Déjà States within Live Intermedial Performance Deirdre McLaughlin and Joanne Scott

Introduction This chapter considers our collaborative Practice as Research in performance as a mode of intersubjective memory-making, and specifically as a way of activating and exploring the subjective experience of déjà vu associated with temporal lobe epilepsy. Within this chapter, we reflect on the ways in which two performance makers – one who lives with temporal lobe epilepsy and one who responds to her collaborator’s experience of it – find ways of using a live performance space to recall, reconstruct and reformulate memory, and how remembering in this context manifests as an intimate, shared and co-constructed combination of elements,

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held for a moment in time, before disappearing as performance and becoming memory. In doing so, we draw on the dual process explanations of déjà vu (as outlined by cognitive psychologist Alan S. Brown in 2004), whilst also considering the ‘incongruence’, ‘absence of “source memory”’ and ‘memory conflict’ (Martin, Fiacconi and Köhler 2015: 173) that characterize déjà vu experiences, alongside current constructive memory theory. The application of these frameworks produces a revealing analysis of our collaborative performance-making: it prompts us to consider moments of intersubjective memory generated in performance and to reflect on the relationship between memories, understood as layers of the past, and the present performance that facilitates their emergence. The motivation for this research stems from Deirdre’s desire to explore her subjective experience of déjà vu as a result of her temporal lobe epilepsy, through performance practice. However, our investment in this work as collaborators has expanded into an ongoing research project exploring the intersections of memory, experience and meaning within intersubjectively constituted

FIGURE 10.1 Jo mixing sounds, images and texts as part of Transmitted Thoughts, Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, London, December 2012. Photograph by Jo Scott and Deirdre McLaughlin.

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moments of performance. In these moments of collaborative performance, we embrace memory as a ‘complex and notoriously fallible process’ (Coetzee and Rau 2009: 1). The main focus of our analysis and reflection is the second of a set of two collaborative events created in 2012 and 2013: Transmitted Thoughts (London) and Transmitted Thoughts #2: Who is the Receiver? (San Francisco). In both performance events, Jo’s live intermedial practice – where images, sounds, texts and bodies are mixed in real time using digital technologies present in the space – was employed as a tool to intersect with Deirdre’s lived experience and personal memories of temporal lobe epilepsy, as illustrated through improvised text, movement and storytelling.

Temporal lobe epilepsy and déjà vu Temporal lobe epilepsy is a chronic, neurological condition characterized by seizures resulting from a surge of electrical activity in the brain, originating in the temporal lobe. As one of the four main cortices of the brain, the temporal lobe is involved in the formation of short and long-term memory, the processing of visual and auditory sensory input, language comprehension, and emotional functioning and recognition. The medial temporal lobe (MTL) memory system refers to the combination of the parahippocampal region and hippocampus involved in the processes of recollection and familiarity, making the medial temporal lobe ‘critical to memory’ (Eichenbaum, Yonelinas and Ranganath 2007: 124). Temporal lobe seizures may occur as simple partial seizures (occurring in one area of the brain), complex partial seizures (distributed across multiple areas in the brain) or secondarily generalized tonic-clonic seizures (starting in one area of the brain and then spreading to both sides), which may or may not be accompanied by or experienced as auras, a type of simple partial seizure that manifests as a warning sensation or perceptual disturbance occurring before the onset of a seizure. These auras result in an alternation of consciousness, which may be experienced by the epileptic as fear, euphoria, depersonalization, déjà vu (‘already seen’) or jamais vu (‘never seen’). Furthermore, these seizures can impact memory performance in patients with epilepsy, indeed ‘memory complaints are the most commonly

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reported cognitive problems in patients with epilepsy . . . [with] impairments in memory encoding and memory retrieval’ (Jokeit, Bosshardt and Reed 2012: 65). For the sake of this contribution, we will be concentrating specifically on Deirdre’s experience of déjà vu and her perception of disturbances in memory as a common characteristic amongst those with temporal lobe epilepsy. In focusing our Practice as Research on exploring and activating Deirdre’s subjective experience through an intersubjective process of remembering, we acknowledge that ‘memory is more than an instrumental cognitive function’, as ‘our personal history defines to large extent who we are, and its impairment or loss affects the awareness and perception of self’ (Jokeit, Bosshardt and Reed 2012: 66). With this in mind, a secondary function of our practice has been an ongoing process of self-exploration, which Deirdre has shared through an intimate process of collaboration with Jo, framed within the context of a series of performance experiments. These experiments have explored personal, autobiographical events in Deirdre’s medical history, including routine neurological tests, such as sleep deprivation and ambulatory EEGs (Electroencephalograms). The term déjà vu in French translates literally to ‘already seen’ and is largely associated with a sense of familiarity with an event or the perception of experiencing something for the second time. Whilst psychologists Searleman and Herrmann identify déjà vu as ‘the most wide-known anomaly of memory’ (1994: 326), there are more than twenty lesser-known subtypes, or déjà states, which serve to further classify the déjà vu experience, including déjà entendu (‘already heard’), déjà visité (‘already visited’) and déjà éprouvé (‘already experienced’) (Brown 2004). Déjà vu experiences have been examined widely throughout fictional literature, and yet the scientific research conducted remains limited and focused predominantly on déjà vu as a ‘rare and abnormal memory experience’ classified as a type of metacognition (Kusumi 2006: 303). In their exploration of the structural anatomy of déjà vu in healthy individuals, Brádzil and colleagues describe déjà vu as ‘an eerie experience in which we recognize that a situation is familiar, sometimes intensely so, while we are concurrently aware that this sense of familiarity is inappropriate’ (2012: 1). However, whilst their research suggests similarities in the anatomical structures involved in déjà vu (i.e. the hypocampi), they conclude that ‘future

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work is required to clarify whether the common anatomical basis of epileptic and non-epileptic DV [déjà vu], revealed by this study, truly reflects a common physiology’ (3). Most recently, Martin, Fiacconi and Köhler (2015) have described déjà vu as ‘a conflict between competing medial temporal lobe memory signals’ (183), which is indicative of ‘one of the most fascinating, yet elusive expressions of human memory’ (185). They also focus on the notion of ‘familiarity’, which is experienced in déjà vu, but which is ‘not accompanied by the successful recollection of information pertaining to a relevant prior episode’ (173). This ‘absence of a “source memory”’ is combined with ‘a subjective sense of inappropriateness . . . a sense that the current environment or situation should not feel familiar’ (2015: 173). Martin, Fiacconi and Köhler identify this sense of ‘incongruence’ in déjà vu as ‘a signal of memory conflict’ (2015: 173). We are interested in how our performance-making expresses, reveals and makes moments which resonate with such descriptions, specifically as they intersect with Deirdre’s subjective experience of temporal lobe epilepsy. As introduced above, déjà vu can be considered a form of metacognition and this is significant to our exploration of performance-making in this chapter. Metacognition is cognition about cognition – an attention to our own thought processes described broadly as ‘thinking about thinking’ or ‘knowing about knowing’. As ‘illusions of metacognition’ (Roediger 1996: 95), or more specifically metamemory, experiences of déjà vu might be conceived of as an experienced ‘remembering about remembering’, a ‘double memory’ (Ribot, Burnham, Smith qtd. Brown 2004: 10) or ‘been-here-before feeling’ (Burnham, Calkins qtd. Brown 2004: 10). However, according to Brown, ‘what makes déjà vu unique among metacognitive phenomena is that the experience has no clearly identifiable cause, and no objective behaviours in which it can be verified’. This means that the source and explicit nature of déjà vu as a phenomenon of memory remains unknown and, as a result, ‘the experience is purely mental conflagration between diametrically opposed evaluations of a momentary experience, with no way objectively to resolve or evaluate the accuracy of the conflict’ (2004: 4). From this position, Brown presents déjà vu as a deception of memory in the sense that the present moment is experienced with the sensation of a remembered familiarity of

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a past or future event. Furthermore, the sense of displacement or instability associated with déjà vu is compounded by the fact that it is ‘almost always fleeting and may manifest at any time’, both coming and going, here and not here (Shive 2016). However, for many it is the inability to resolve or evaluate the sense of familiarity, distortions in time and disturbances of memory associated with déjà vu that makes it such a fascinating phenomenon. In this contribution, as mentioned in the introduction, we consider déjà vu primarily through cognitive processes and specifically the ‘dual processes’ (Brown 2004) that characterize the ‘memory conflict’ and experience of déjà vu, which Martin, Fiacconi and Köhler connect to what they call a ‘match mismatch signal’ in the hippocampus, created through ‘the presence of an overlap between novel sensory inputs and stored representations’ (2015: 183). Interestingly, these scientific explanations of the cognitive and neural activity that happens during déjà vu mirror key aspects of our collaborative practice, particularly the simultaneity of ‘conflicting’ or distinct processes, as well as the ‘overlap’ between ‘sensory input’ and ‘stored representation’. Before moving into a more detailed analysis of this practice, we outline both the methodology that underpins this research and the performance events, at the centre of our discussion.

Methodology: Practice as Research and how we make performance Our collaborative performance-making is underpinned by methodological principles that inform both how the work is made and how it functions as an act of research. The methodology, which provides a broad framework for our collaboration, is Practice as Research (PaR). This particular mode of enquiry privileges the site of doing as that where knowledge emerges and research happens, involving ‘the use of creative processes as research methods’ (Kershaw 2009: 2). As such, the ways in which we make performance – how we collaborate, the materials we employ, our process of creating and performing and the positioning of the audience in relation to this – constitute research methods, ways of exploring and discovering and knowing differently.

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This Practice as Research methodology contrasts with what might be considered a more traditional, theoretical study of theatre and performance, whereby a performance is analysed and theorized from outside the event and not necessarily by the practitioner herself. Practice as Research offers an ‘insider account’ of the work made, where the practitioner’s experience of making is part of the knowledge or ‘knowing’1 produced (Nelson 2013: 89). Such an approach becomes particularly appropriate in light of the different enquiries into the lived, subjective experience of memory and déjà vu, as well as the construction of intersubjective or collective memory at play throughout our collaboration. In this site of doing, we have a performer who is also a researcher, and whose interests lie in the applications of neuroscience and cognitive science to performer training, making work with another practitioner-researcher, who creates events where different media are mixed together in real time and who researches through this making process. Clearly, we come to our collaboration with very distinct prior ‘knowings’, which inform our interests in the work itself and represent individual but often intertwining paths through the process of creating, presenting and reflecting on the work made. These prior ‘knowings’ include not just our research specialisms, but also our histories of professional practice, friendship and Deirdre’s neurological health. In addition, through our very different positionings within the act of performance-making, we bring different perspectives to ‘what is at stake in creative arts practice and the experience of it’ (Nelson 2013: 89). More discussion of the experience of making and researching in the way that we do follows, as we address the intersubjective activation of déjà vu in our practice. Practice as Research can be a fluid and complex process, where the qualities and ideas that emerge are unexpected and ‘novel’ in nature. Kershaw and Nicholson comment on the ‘intuitive messiness and aesthetic ambiguity’, which they argue ‘are integral to researching theatre and performance, where relationships between the researcher and the researched are often fluid, improvised and responsive’ (2011: 2). The latter comment is particularly applicable to our methods because we have adopted a broadly improvised mode of collaboration in our making, in which we respond to each other, the materials and media in the moment of live performance. Such methods are informed by our

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methodological interest in the ‘emergent’ quality of PaR referenced above. As practitioner-researchers, we are invested in the use of an active, ‘lively’ and generative performance space with little in place, in terms of the structure of a piece, prior to one of our collaborative events taking place. This way of making performance arose from methods applied in Jo’s work, which has insistently explored the act of improvisation with a range of technological interfaces for the past five years. Our collaborative practice adopted this principle and it has been activated by making performance from a pre-determined set of materials, but with no score or script for the piece established in advance. As such, when we co-create, it is not just a performance that is made; a set of connections and interrelations are also created between us that are emergent from our diverse positionings and experiences, the conditions of the event, the materials available to us and the locating of the audience in relation to our making. In these spaces, remembering happens as an inherently intersubjective act, in ‘the sharing of experiential content (e.g. feelings, perceptions, thoughts,

FIGURE 10.2 A mix of live feed images and digital text, created as part of Transmitted Thoughts, Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, London, December 2012. Photograph by Jo Scott and Deirdre McLaughlin.

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and linguistic meanings) among a plurality of subjects’ (Zlatev et al. 2008: 1). Through this ‘sharing’ of content in the context of this type of performance work, shifting combinations of body, image, sound, text and movement are created and, as explored below, this intermedial manifestation is a significant part of the way in which the qualities of déjà vu and intersubjective memory-making emerge through our exchanges. This focus on live and processual exchanges also links to another key methodological strand, which is our on-going engagement with the use of an ‘active aesthetic’ (Bryon 2014) in the conducting of this research through practice. Bryon describes the active aesthetic as the ‘quality of the way the doing of a process is practised in action’ (2014: 60, italics in original). It privileges the act of doing and ‘offers a way of witnessing qualities of the doing of what is done and who is doing’ (2014: 61). This methodological tool offers to us, as practitioners, a focus on the process of making and our ‘way of doing’ in the act of performing, as opposed to viewing the pieces we create as aesthetic ‘products’, acknowledging that ‘“meaning” happens in the act of performance’ (2014: 60, italics in original). Within the active aesthetic, it is the ‘doing’ of our exchange that activates a process of memory-making, developed in response to Deirdre’s experience of déjà vu and our shared working and collaborative processes. Philosopher Paulo Virno describes déjà vu as a moment when memory ‘applies itself . . . to the evanescent now’ and where ‘the instantaneous present takes the form of memory, and is re-evoked even as it is taking place’ (2015: 7). What Virno describes could be viewed as an active aesthetic, in that the memory is a doing in the present, rather than a product of an act. This is also compatible with a wider perspective of memory as a dynamic process that is ‘fundamentally constructive rather than reproductive’ (Schacter and Addis 2007: 773) and, furthermore, ‘an inherently active system’ (Riegler 2005: 95). Such a perspective of constructive memory resonates with our intersubjective memory-making in that we are part of an ‘active system’ within which states, affects and exchanges emerge through the act of performing. Before moving on to a closer analysis of this work in relation to theories of déjà vu and intersubjective memory, we outline the Practice as Research we have undertaken in more detail.

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Transmitted Thoughts: Our collaborative intermedial practice The first event we created together, Transmitted Thoughts, took place in December 2012 at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama (RCSSD), London. Transmitted Thoughts coincided with Deirdre undergoing a routine twenty-four-hour ambulatory EEG as a diagnostic tool to monitor her neurological activity. An EEG is a standard, non-invasive neurological test used in the diagnosis and treatment of epilepsy that records the electrical activity in the brain (brainwaves) through attaching a series of electrodes (small metal disks) to the patient’s head with conductive gel. These electrodes are also fixed to a series of individual wires that connect to a small machine the patient (in this case, Deirdre) wears in a belt around her waist for the duration of the test. Unlike a traditional electroencephalogram, an ambulatory (i.e. ‘designed for walking’) EEG allows the patient’s neurological activity to be monitored in their home, permitting them to move around in their lived environment rather than remain confined to a hospital room or bed. Whilst Deirdre had previously undergone a variety of EEGs as part of the diagnosis and on-going treatment of her temporal lobe epilepsy, this 2012 test was her first experience of an ambulatory EEG and served as a stimulus to the creation of Transmitted Thoughts. In response to this diagnostic event, we occupied two and a half hours of the twenty-four-hour test on the stage of the RCSSD Embassy Theatre, using that time to construct a live response to Deirdre’s real-time experience of the ambulatory EEG for an invited audience. In preparation, Deirdre provided Jo with a selection of images, texts and sounds related to temporal lobe epilepsy alongside documentation of her own medical history, including the prior diagnosis and treatment of her condition. During the live event, with Jo on one side of the performance space and Deirdre facing her across that space, the projected images generated by Jo were often thrown onto Deirdre and a large screen hung at the back of the stage. Employing a live feed camera, VJing software2 to mix video footage, a sound sampler, microphone and loop pedal, Jo engaged in mixing together the materials offered by Deirdre using these technologies, as well as responding to any prompts

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FIGURE 10.3 A moment of intersubjective exchange from Transmitted Thoughts, Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, London, December 2012. The projected images and text were activated by Jo in response to Deirdre’s recounting of her experience of seizure. Photograph by Jo Scott and Deirdre McLaughlin.

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Deirdre offered. Deirdre, wearing a small cap over the twenty wires attached to her head and chest whilst her neurological activity was being monitored, created a series of improvised spoken texts, movements and personal accounts, which arose from her experience of the test in that moment and her memory of previous medical tests. The live space evolved into a dialogue between us, facilitated and mediated by digital technologies, both those used to create the intermedial3 space and those monitoring Deirdre’s brain activity. The audience members present were also prompted to respond to our collaboration by asking questions or making suggestions to either performer via social media, post-it or microphone for actions to be taken both individually and collectively. The second event, performed at Stanford University as part of the PSi (Performance Studies international) praxis session programme in June 2013, was a co-created response to the day of the ambulatory EEG, titled Transmitted Thoughts #2: Who is the Receiver? Transmitted Thoughts #2 was a ninety-minute installation, framed as a Practice as Research experiment and positioned in a space that audience members could enter and leave at will. The prompt for our live collaboration was to remember and re-enact what happened during the twenty-four hours of the EEG, using a similar set of materials as described above, as well as documentation from the day itself. During the ninety minutes, we worked hour by hour through Deirdre’s memories of the experience of undergoing the test, with Jo again responding to the prompts Deirdre offered, through activating and mixing images, texts and sounds, in a similar way to the first event. This time, however, Jo prompted Deirdre verbally and through the use of media. She furthermore identified the time period being addressed in each section by typing up the clock time on the screen as well as questioning Deirdre about her memory of the events at this point of the day. Again, as part of this experiment, we encouraged the audience to play a role in the construction of the event, by responding verbally with written feedback and through social media, throughout the installation. As part of this reconstruction, we also reflected on and responded to the time we spent together on the day of the initial EEG and the first PaR experiment we conducted. In this way, the threads and shards of intersubjectively constructed content, feeling, dialogue, memory and experience made manifest as part of that first event were imperfectly reconstructed and replayed as a series of intermedial

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combinations in Transmitted Thoughts #2. The intermedial spaces we created shifted and moved with the varying attention of each performer and according to the memories constructed in each moment, evoking and activating a mode of dual process déjà vu, resonant with Deirdre’s experience of the condition of temporal lobe epilepsy. This second event, Transmitted Thoughts #2 is, in the context of this chapter’s discussion, of more interest in that it relates directly to acts of shared memory as constructed and activated in a live performance space, through the interactions of two collaborators and their audience. Crucial to our argument are the dual processing explanations of déjà vu (Brown 2004) that were evoked through our exchanges, alongside the influence and action of the various media in affording a variety of forms and qualities to memory and the act of remembering. Specifically, we identified a quality of flickering between states of convergence and divergence – some moments when the media, materials and our responses aligned and cohered, and others when we felt scattered across, through and between the mediatized spaces we were creating. Such flickering and contrasting states are reflective of the very nature of déjà vu – coming and going, here but not here, familiar and yet completely foreign. In the final section of this chapter, we address and remember moments of convergence and divergence as they happened within this event, exploring our intersubjective memorymaking as a dual cognitive process, creating an experience that was both strange and familiar, and where our memories applied themselves to the ‘actuality’ and ‘evanescent now’ (Virno 2015: 7) of live performance-making.

Collaboration and dual processes: Intersubjective memory and the performance of déjà vu The following analysis of Transmitted Thoughts #2, and the construction of intersubjective memories and experiences featured within this performance practice, makes reference to constructive memory theory, in combination with Brown’s dual process

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explanations of déjà vu. We will be taking a cognitive approach to memory in this analysis, which emphasizes active mental processes and functions and their effects on human behaviour. A constructive view of memory understands remembering as ‘a constructive process in which bits and pieces of information from various sources are pulled together’ (Schacter and Addis 2007: 773). This active process, involving the construction of ‘features of memory . . . distributed widely across different parts of the brain’ (2007: 774), is also an intersection with present perception and stimuli, or ‘the constraints and influences imposed by the act of recollection’ (McClelland 1995: 69). This processual understanding of memory strongly resonates with the processes of creating our performances. Here, a set of actions and manifestations in the form of voice, text, image and movement are actively ‘constructed’ in relation to the present moment of our encounter with those materials, each other and the environment. When we recall in these spaces, our processes of memory happen through the active construction of an intermedial space, which is always in conversation with the present conditions of the event. In addition, in utilizing the dual process explanations of déjà vu, we focus our attention primarily on the intersubjective, dialogic and simultaneous aspects of making performance in this way and how these resonate with conceptions of déjà vu as a particular combination of ‘dual’ cognitive processes. Brown states that dual process explanations of déjà vu assume that ‘two cognitive processes that are normally co-ordinated with each other become momentarily disjointed, unconnected, or independently activated’ and that these moments of disruption in ‘synchronicity’, which result in cognitive processes becoming ‘uncoordinated or out of phase’, can be categorized into four distinct categories (2004: 135, 127). The first category acknowledges the ‘spontaneous activation’ of cognitive processes, such as retrieval and familiarity, which otherwise should not be active (2004: 128). The second category refers to ‘merged processes’ of traditionally separate memory systems joining together simultaneously (2004: 129). The third category identifies two closely linked cognitive processes that have become ‘separated processes’, leading to the perception of two autonomous experiences (2004: 132). The fourth and final categorization is based on the argument that we have ‘two separate cognitive monitoring systems’, or varieties of consciousness, and

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refers to a specific moment when ‘background processing comes to the fore’, resulting in a ‘double impression’ of a singular experience of memory (2004: 133). Martin, Fiacconi and Köhler refer to and develop Brown’s ‘dual process’ explanation of déjà vu, specifically through focusing on the ‘memory conflict’, which is indicated by the experience of inappropriate familiarity created by déjà vu. Their theory of a ‘match-mismatch’ signal occurring because of the ‘overlap between novel sensory inputs and stored representations’ (2015: 183) is particularly pertinent to the analysis that follows. A further outline of Brown’s dual process categories is offered below, along with some of the comparisons we have drawn between the categories and our collaborative practice. Finally, we focus our attention on the ‘merged processes’ explanation of déjà vu in greater detail and the ways in which this model resonates with and speaks to intersubjective memory-making in our practice, specifically considering memory as an active and constructive process, ‘with events encoded in a piecemeal fashion instead of as a fixed “instant-replay” style recording’ (McLelland, Schacter and Addis 2015: 292).

Spontaneous activation The first category of the dual process explanations of déjà vu – spontaneous activation – is characterized by a ‘false sense of familiarity’, which is ‘traced to the spurious activation of a mnemonic function related to a sense of pastness’ (Brown 2004: 128). This spontaneous activation is largely associated with the construction of memory as it relates to a sense of familiarity (Gloor qtd. Brown 2004: 103) or the activation of a temporal tag or ‘mark’ on a memory (Underwood qtd. Brown 2004: 129). The very notion of ‘spontaneous activation’ is fundamental to our collaborative practice given that, as explained above, we create performance events in a broadly improvised manner, spontaneously responding to each other as well as the materials and media in play. Such materials also represent, in their own way, ‘temporal tags’, which mark not just medical history, but also the history of our friendship and creative work together. This can also be related back to Martin, Fiacconi and Köhler’s discussion of

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‘overlap between novel sensory inputs and stored representations’ in the experience of déjà vu (2015: 183). The improvised activation of materials, using digital media as well as movement and spoken text, generates a series of ‘novel sensory inputs’, which are placed in a shifting and simultaneous conversation with our own ‘stored representations’ of the memories we construct and those represented by the materials brought to the event. It is the spontaneous activation of these processes, in the same space and time, as explored below, which generates a ‘vivid and compelling mnemonic experience’ (Martin, Fiacconi and Köhler 2015: 176) that we co-create and share.

Merged processes Merged processes, the second category of the dual process explanations of déjà vu, occurs when ‘two cognitive functions that are normally separate or sequential become simultaneously activated’ (Brown 2004: 129). Brown focuses specifically on three pairs of sequential processes: encoding and retrieval, perception and encoding, and sensation and recollection. As mentioned above, this category is where we position the most detailed exploration of the activation of déjà vu in our practice. In some ways, it is the merged nature of this particular explanation of déjà vu that speaks most strongly to our experience in the live collaborative spaces we create. The three pairs of merged processes are addressed further in the continued analysis below.

Separated processes The third category of the dual process explanations of déjà vu is separated processes. Separated processes result when ‘a predictably brief interval between the two [cognitive processes] becomes slightly extended’ (Brown 2004: 132). Late-nineteenth-century psychologist Edmund Parish, when speaking of the potential for such an interval to occur between the processes of sensation and perception, describes this extension as an ‘abnormal widening’ (Parish qtd. Brown 2004: 132). In many ways, it is the latter phrase

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that generates a spur to understanding aspects of our collaborative performance-making, specifically the creation of intersubjective memories and the déjà vu quality that they hold. Despite the close-up, merged quality of our live exchanges in the moment of performance, there is also something about this work that activates and highlights gaps and spaces, whether that is the physical spaces between us or the gaps in consciousness and memory resultant from Deirdre’s condition, which we activate and perform. The ‘absence of “source memory”’ (Martin, Fiacconi and Köhler 2015) that the incongruent familiarity of the experience of déjà vu suggests becomes an active question in the ‘remembering about remembering’, which happens in our PaR practice and specifically in Transmitted Thoughts #2.

Background processing coming to the fore The fourth and final category of dual process explanations of déjà vu is hypothesized as background processing coming to the fore. This categorization is based in the hypothesis that we have two separate cognitive monitoring systems whereby ‘each functions in the role of a global control system, but one is usually subordinate to the other’ and, as a result, when the secondary system ‘comes to the forefront’, a ‘double impression resulting from both systems operating at the full level of awareness elicits a déjà vu experience’ (Brown 2004: 132). According to Brown, this double impression may be identified as a dual consciousness (Wigan qtd. Brown 2004: 133–4) or parallel supraliminal and subliminal awareness (Myers qtd. Brown 2004: 134–5). The notion of a dual consciousness, and the ‘double impression’ it generates, can of course be related to our dual presence and intersubjective exchange, but it is also relevant to the functioning of the media within these events. Here, the materials that are brought to each performance, sitting in the background of the event initially, become active through the choice of each performer. Often, there is an excess of sensory input from this foregrounding of material through sound, image and text and body. This creates an intersubjective, merged environment, problematizing the idea of a single perspective or source for the memories constructed and highlighting co-construction and ‘merged processes’ in the act of remembering.

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Merged processes and intersubjective memory-making in Transmitted Thoughts #2: Who is the Receiver? We have chosen to elaborate on our collaborative practice through the merged process model of déjà vu because it offers a revealing discourse for the intersubjective way in which we have created and remembered memory through performance. The déjà vu quality of the performance event is a direct result of the merging and simultaneity of otherwise distinct creative processes and outputs within our performance, including amplified voice, monologue, movement, live writing of texts, projection of images, activating of sound samples, song and play with objects and audience participation, all of which is brought into a range of live intermedial combinations. This merging and simultaneity is compatible with both a constructive theory of memory and some of the recent hypotheses put forward by Martin, Fiacconi and Köhler (2015) that characterize déjà vu as a form of ‘memory conflict’ between competing signals of ‘familiarity’ and ‘novelty’. As we construct the moments of performance described below, we mirror the ways in which memory itself is an active process of ‘pulling together’ pieces of information (Schacter and Addis 2007: 773). For us, in Transmitted Thoughts #2 in particular, a metacognitive process of remembering about remembering ‘pulled together’ our own memories, and the ‘sources’ present in the space, through the materials gathered in advance, the capacities of the technologies and the interactions of the audience. Because of the nature of the task we set ourselves, this complex, shifting, shared and vivid space was suffused with ‘familiarity signals’, whilst also constantly inputting ‘novelty signals’ (Martin, Fiacconi and Köhler 2015: 186) through the intermedial combinations we co-created. The first model of merged process we would like to consider involves two functions of memory, encoding and retrieval, becoming simultaneously activated and ‘leading to the impression that the new experience is also being retrieved from memory’ (Brown 2004: 130). We recognize that the terms ‘encoding’ and ‘retrieval’ do not fully align with the constructive theory of memory that informs this chapter, in that according to this view, ‘human memory, in contrast

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to video recorders or computers, does not store and retrieve exact replicas of experience’ (Schacter and Addis 2007: 773). However, the somewhat simplified emphasis on merging and simultaneity of distinct input and output offers a significant tool in addressing our practice and its activation of a déjà vu experience. As two collaborators working in live and evolving performance spaces with digital tools at our disposal, our exchanges mirror the duality and simultaneity of this cognitive process. By simultaneously describing and interpreting our perceptions of Deirdre’s lived experience in real time, ‘(con)fusing’ input and output, we create an intersubjective approach to memory construction within the framework of live performance. For example, in Transmitted Thoughts #2, there were a number of moments where Deirdre was constructing a memory of the initial day of her ambulatory EEG and expressing it through words and movement in the space. At the same time, Jo would be mixing images of medical scans, reading aloud some of the communications Deirdre had from the hospital and using the media available to generate an intermedial space. Jo employed live activation of these predetermined materials within the space of the performance, not as an ‘instant re-play’ but rather as a spontaneous and ‘piecemeal’ (McLelland, Schacter and Addis 2015: 292) gathering and constructing of content, in response to the conditions of the event and specifically to Deirdre’s own constructions of memory. For example, an official medical text could be spoken through the microphone and looped whilst being combined with historical images of the brain and temporal lobe and with Deirdre’s live actions and words. Interestingly, these improvised actions rarely occurred in smooth sequential sets. Rather, the piece itself was marked by the charged simultaneity of these moments and the odd, unusual, but also strangely familiar combinations that emerged through these actions. Often to the surprise of both participants, moments of convergence and coherence would arise that resonate strongly with Brown’s conception of ‘spontaneous activation’ within a dual process explanation of déjà vu. There is something about the intersubjective exchange in this practice that opens up and complicates a moment of memory, leading to us occupying, as practitioners, a familiar and unfamiliar space, as well as one that responds and applies itself to what Virno describes as ‘actuality, to the evanescent “now”’ (2015: 7).

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FIGURE 10.4 Deirdre performing as part of the intermedial space created in Transmitted Thoughts, Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, London, December 2012. Photograph by Jo Scott and Deirdre McLaughlin.

The second merged process that Brown identifies as an explanation for the experience of déjà vu is ‘perception and encoding’ (2004: 130). Drawing on Henri Bergson’s theories of memory, Brown describes how these two processes ‘can occasionally collapse on each other to elicit a déjà vu experience’ (2004: 130). With ‘the storage of information occurring the moment it is perceived’, Brown argues that ‘these two processes could occasionally become confused, giving rise to an inappropriate false positive recognition or déjà vu’ (2004: 131). This particular merging of process, where ‘the present is cognized and recognized at the same time’ (Bergson 1920: 184), generates a productive theoretical spur for addressing and understanding a recurrent process in our creative practice, which was also activated in Transmitted Thoughts #2. This particular process relates again to the idea of ‘overlapping’ signals

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or ‘memory conflict’ activating the ‘incongruent’ aspect of the déjà vu experience, where ‘familiarity is perceived with a subjective sense of inappropriateness’ (Martin, Fiacconi and Köhler 2015: 173). In the initial event we created together (Transmitted Thoughts), which coincided with Deirdre’s first ambulatory EEG in 2012, a moment occurred where Deirdre articulated her felt sense4 of a previous seizure and corresponding sense of déjà vu, in response to an audience question, whilst standing against the projection screen where Jo was generating images. As Deirdre spoke to her fragmented memory of previous seizures, Jo placed her hands under a live feed camera, which instantly projected that image onto the screen so that an enlarged image of Jo’s hands encircled and seemed to protect Deirdre in that vulnerable moment of disclosure. Both sets of actions – the recounting and the encircling – were spontaneous and met in a moment of convergence within the piece. We both responded strongly to this exchange, in the doing of it and in our reflections on it. As such, it was naturally part of the second event in 2013, where we activated our various memories of the ambulatory EEG day and the performance event we created. In Transmitted Thoughts #2, the moment was described, remembered and replayed collectively between ourselves and amongst our witnessing audience members. As we perceived and responded to each other in the present moment of that performance, we both constructed and performed our memories of this exchange through the capacities of the media in relation to Deirdre’s body in the space – the meeting of the live remembering was simultaneous with the perception of this new memory in its formation. These intersubjective ‘reconstructive processes’ (Doss, Bluestone and Gallo 2016: 1) also activate ‘overlapping’ signals – the ‘novel sensory input’ of this new intermedial construction meeting and overlapping with the ‘stored representations’ of the moment from the original work. Bergson describes that ‘as perception is created, the memory of it is projected beside it, as the shadow falls beside the body’ (Bergson 1920: 157). In our work, the shadow of the memory constructed did not fall beside us; rather, through the capacity of the projected digital image in combination with our two bodies, this shadow seemed to fall upon us, generating a moment of touch and care, of exchange and recall. This imperfectly remembered and replayed moment, infused with familiarity for us both, was also made ‘incongruently’ novel in this new construction, and represented

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something of a ‘match-mismatch’ (Martin, Fiacconi and Köhler 2015: 183) between what we both remembered and could not recall, between a newly constructed exchange and the shadow of the familiar moment we had both experienced. The moment that we both recognized and recalled was constructed anew in this act of doing in the present, generating a vivid, sensory quality of collapsing processes, of insistent dualities and of a charged affective present in conversation with a displaced memory. This specific fragment of Transmitted Thoughts #2 also links to the final merged process suggested by Brown as an explanation for the déjà vu experience, that of ‘sensation and recollection’. Brown draws on Dugas’s proposal that we have ‘three different “psychic” states along a continuum or quality of contextual detail from strong to weak (respectively): sensation, recollection, and image’ (qtd. Brown 2004: 131). In this dual process, ‘there is a levelling of these three cognitive dimensions . . . making the sensation connected with the present experience lose some of its contextual detail and resemble a memory or recollection’ (2004: 131). The complexity and energy of the moment described above – the co-construction of our intersubjective memory of Jo’s enlarged digital hands encircling Deirdre – also complicates our present sensations, how we engage with the image and our ‘grasp’ of the recollection with which it was associated. The intersubjective dynamic between our own memories and our perception of the current intermedial event in the present again speaks to the overlapping of ‘novel sensory inputs’ and ‘stored representations’ (Martin, Fiacconi and Köhler 2015: 183) associated with déjà vu. This second event, as an activation of the metacognitive process of remembering about remembering, was complex and dynamic, shifting between moments of connection and qualities of ‘incongruence’, active in both the gaps in memory and the spaces between our individual recollections. The digital media in the context of this practice offer ‘novel sensory inputs’ to the experience of constructing our intersubjective memory of Deirdre’s recounting of experience. In addition, the present process of generating and activating texts, images, sounds and movements in combination is constantly intersecting with the layers of memory and scattered fragments of source material, contained both within our own cognitive processes and externally in the intermedial space and materials brought to the event. In line with constructive memory theory, our recollection in such spaces does not operate as an ‘instant replay’ (McLelland,

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Schacter and Addis 2015: 292), but as an intersubjective gathering and constructing of experience. This experience is positioned in the ‘evanescent now’ (Virno 2015: 7) of improvised performance, where each moment is subject to a process of active choice, exchange and construction. It is the intersection of this charged and dynamic ‘now’, full of sensory input and clashes between the present elements and the ‘stored representations’ (Martin, Fiacconi and Köhler 2015: 183) of moments passed, re-constructed and activated between us, which lends the performance practice its sense of déjà vu. Just as, according to an ‘active aesthetic’, ‘“meaning” happens in the act of performance’ (Bryon 2014: 61, emphasis in the original), so the qualities of a déjà vu experience emerge and happen in the acts of construction described above. These qualities of simultaneous familiarity and incongruence, of a ‘match-mismatch’ (Martin, Fiacconi and Köhler 2015: 183) of signals, emerge directly from Deirdre’s experience being activated and constructed in this lively intermedial environment, which has the capacity to express, explore and mirror the déjà vu experience itself.

Conclusion In conclusion, the cognitive frameworks applied to this reflection on our Practice as Research project reveal déjà vu as a complex, active and constructive process, much like memory and improvised intermedial performance. A unique metacognitive phenomenon, déjà vu is often only clear in the moment of experience and we struggle to reactivate it once it is gone. Our performance practice re-engages the processes underpinning one performer’s déjà vu by creating a collaborative and intermedial environment – one which activates the constructive processes of remembering within layered fragments of image, voice, text and body collectively shared amongst performers and audience. This shared process of remembering Deirdre’s experience of déjà vu results in the construction of an intersubjective memory of her lived experience of temporal lobe epilepsy, highlighting the role of our merged and spontaneous processes, as practitioners, in this unique experience of memory. The ‘quality of the way the doing’ is done within these events – for instance, the improvised activation of materials through various media, our live exchanges and the simultaneity of multiple

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responses in the moment – creates an ‘active field’ (Bryon 2014: 60) from which the particular construction and formulation of memory described above emerges. Memory happens for us in this active, intersubjective and processual set of combinations. Finally, our live collaborations with each other and with our audience further illustrate that ‘while it is the individuals who do the remembering, their remembering most often arises out of social contexts’ (Coetzee and Rau 2009). This brings us back to our ongoing search for a practice that explores the process of remembering as ‘a past time lived in relation to other people’ (Misztal 2003: 6), and collaborative performance as a mode of shared meaning-making. This attempt to understand the subjective experience of one also informs the merging of our distinct practices, creating a range of possibilities for our continued work together.

Notes 1 Nelson (2013) suggests that the term ‘knowing’ is more appropriate than knowledge in a Practice as Research context, as it ‘acknowledges a subject engaged in the act indicated and perhaps engaged in a processual relationship spatially more proximal to the object to be understood’ (2013: 20). 2 VJing is the practice of mixing projected visuals to accompany music, often in the context of a club or festival. Jo employs the VJing software ‘Modul8’ in her practice. This platform is designed for ‘real time video mixing and compositing’ (garageCUBE 2014) and allows for prerecorded and live footage to be activated, layered and manipulated in a variety of ways. 3 The term intermedial can refer to ‘the interrelations between media as institutions in society’ (Jensen qtd. Bay-Cheng et al. 2010: 16), as well as to work which falls ‘between media’ (Higgins 1966). In this writing, it is employed to refer to the discourse between mediums – sound, image, object and body – as part of a performance event. 4 Experience Bryon describes the term ‘felt sense’ as one which ‘denotes the sensory experience of the aspect of self that we are bringing awareness to at this moment’, pointing out that ‘[i]t does NOT need to be rational’ (2014: 75). In the context of this piece, Deirdre focused on the ‘sensory experience’ of the seizure in responding to the question, rather than providing a rational explanation as to where, why and how it occurred.

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Kershaw, B. and H. Nicholson, eds (2011), Research Methods in Theatre and Performance, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Kusumi, T. (2006), ‘Human metacognition and the déjà vu phenomenon’, in K. Fujita and S. Itakura (eds), Diversity of Cognition: Evolution, Development, Domestication and Pathology, 302–14, Kyoto: Kyoto University Press. McClelland, J. (1995), ‘Constructive memory and memory distortions: A parallel-distributed processing approach’, in D. L. Schacter (ed.), Memory Distortion: How Minds, Brains, and Societies Reconstruct the Past, 69–90, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. McLelland, V. C., D. L. Schacter and D. R. Addis (2015), ‘Contributions of episodic memory to imagining the future’, in D. R. Addis, M. Barense and A. Duarte (eds), The Wiley Handbook on the Cognitive Neuroscience of Memory, 287–308, Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. Martin, C., C. Fiacconi and S. Köhler (2015), ‘Déjà vu: A window into understanding the cognitive neuroscience of familiarity’, in D. R. Addis, M. Barense and A. Duarte (eds), The Wiley Handbook on the Cognitive Neuroscience of Memory, 172–89, Chichester: WileyBlackwell. Misztal, B. A. (2003), Theories of Social Remembering, Maidenhead: Open University Press. Nelson, R. (2013), Practice as Research in the Arts: Principles, Protocols, Pedagogies, Resistances, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Riegler, A. (2005), ‘Constructive memory’, Kybernetes, 34 (1/2): 89–104. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/03684920510575753 Roediger, H. (1996), 'Memory Illusions', Journal of Memory and Language, 35: 76–100. doi:10.1006/jmla.1996.0005 Schacter, D. L. and D. R. Addis (2007), ‘The cognitive neuroscience of constructive memory: Remembering the past and imagining the future’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 362: 773–86. doi:10.1098/rstb.2007.2087 Searleman, A. and D. Herrmann (1994), Memory from a Broader Perspective, New York: McGraw-Hill. Shive, H. (2016), ‘Seen that before: What causes déjà vu?’, Neuroscience News, 13 April. Available online: http://neurosciencenews.com/deja-vutemporal-lobe-epilepsy-4040/ (accessed 8 July 2016). Virno, P. (2015), Déjà Vu and the End of the History, trans. D. Broder, London: Verso. Zlatev, J., T. P. Racine, C. Sinha and E. Itkonen, eds (2008), The Shared Mind: Perspectives on Intersubjectivity, Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

INDEX

action, 9, 14, 23–4, 26, 29 n.2, 42–3, 45–7, 49, 105–6, 115–17, 119, 121–4, 126, 127–9, 135, 138, 139–42, 144, 146, 179, 181, 205–6 action observation, 11, 42, 138–40 actioning, beat and line, 118–19, 123, 124, 125, 126, 129 behavioural actions, 117, 119, 129 memory, 123, 134, 138, 144, 146 observation, 26–7, 135, 139 recognition, 47, 57 see also automated actions; motor actions action-based perception, 10, 13 Action-Based Language (theory), 12, 115, 122–3, 125, 130 n.2 see also Gallese, Vittorio; Glenberg, Arthur M. action-perception coupling, 9–10, 11, 42, 62, 205–6 de-coupling, 61 see also embodied cognition active aesthetic, 233, 247 analysis, 119, 128 see also Stanislavskian experiencing, 104, 124, 125, 127 see also Noice, Helga and Tony

actors, 25, 85, 98, 100, 101, 103–4, 105, 107, 114, 123, 127 acting method, 115, 116, 118, 128, 129 expertise, 98, 113, 116 technique, 103–4, 105, 116, 118, 124, 130 actuality, 237, 243 Addis, Donna R., 17, 218, 233, 238–9, 242–3, 246–7 affect, 14, 246 affective memory, 98 affordances (of body), 101, 106 see also constraints Akerlof, George A., 189 Alessi, Claudia, 207–8 Allard, Fran, 44, 50, 60, Alvesson, Mats, 199 analytical process and transfer, 115, 200 skill, 154, 169, 170–1 Anfossi, Maria, 77 Ankarali, Mustafa M., 143 anxiety, 158, 159, 169 artificial environment, 101, 145 grammar, 56, 57, 59 artistic practice, 22, 177, 179, 244 see also practice associations, creative, 72, 208 between bodily movement and sound production, 75 see also gesture

252

INDEX

associative chains, 19–20, 83, 86 attention, 13, 16, 17, 45, 48, 61, 124 limits, 44 proprioceptive and somatic, 14, 204 visual, 48, 58, 138 audiation, 72, 75, 81 audience, 22, 25, 49, 57–8, 98, 159, 212–13, 214, 218, 219, 236 participation, 213, 236, 237, 242, 245 auditory feedback and information, 143, 202 hearing, 70, 72, 206 memory, 72, 75 representations, 81 augment, 21, 143, 191 Australian Dance Theatre, 53 autobiographical, 4, 6, 22–3, 44 see also declarative memory identity, 17, 18, 22, 136, 181, 182 see also identity (personal) memory, 17, 18, 22, 23, 52, 98, 104, 214, 216, 219, 228 see also personal experience; personal memories automated actions and planning, 17, 49 see also procedural memory automatization, 19, 79, 82, 85 Baddeley, Alan D., 10, 13, 17, 22, 29 n.4, 45, 178, 207–8, 219 Banaji, Mahzarin R., 62 Barnard, Philip, 27, 60, 62 Barr, Margaret, 52, 53, 55 Barsalou, Lawrence W., 42

Bartlett, Frederic C., 29 n.5, 99 Bartók, Béla, 153, 156, 160, 163, 166, 167, 168 Battisti, Mauro, 184 Bay-Cheng, Sarah, 248 n.3 Beilock, Sian L., 42, 127, 190–1 being-in-the-world, 204, 205, 209, 218 Bennett, Dawn, 85, 139 Bergson, Henri, 8, 244–5 Berliner, Paul, 176–7, 180, 192 n.1 Bernal, Byron, 115 Bernardis, Paolo, 126 Berz, William L., 178 Betteridge, Gabrielle L., 49 Bharucha, Jamshed J., 19, 59, 70–1 Bijsterbosch, Janine D., 140 Bishop, Mark, 28 n.1 Black, Carolyn B., 139 Blair, Rhonda, 28 n.1 Blake, Randolph, 136 Bläsing, Bettina, 26–7, 29 n.1, 39–40, 48, 62 Bley, Paul, 176–7, 180, 186 Bordin, Anna Maria, 3, 5, 20 Borgo, David, 177–8, 186 Boucher, Kathryn L., 186, 190–1 Bradley, Elizabeth, 54 Brádzil, Milan, 228 Brass, Marcel, 140 Brayanov, Jordan B., 142 Brée, Malwine, 78 Brendel, Alfred, 155 Brendl, C. Miguel 179, 181, 185, 189 Broca’s area, 114, 122, 130 Brower, Candace, 177 Brown, Alan S., 226, 228–30, 237–44, 246 Bryman, Alan, 5 Bryon, Experience, 5, 233, 247, 248 n.4

INDEX

Burgess, Paul W., 13 Burt, Ramsay, 7 Butler, Judith, 8 Caldarone, Marina, 123, 125, 127 Calvo-Merino, Beatriz, 11, 12, 40, 42, 138, 220 Carlson, Marvin, 8, 98 Carnicke, Sharon M., 118 Caspers, Svenja, 138 Chaffin, Roger, 19, 74, 83–6, 155 chaining, 20, 50, 122 character, 98, 104, 105, 118, 129 n.1, 216 Chase, Susan E., 199 Chazin, Sharon, 74 Chekhov, Michael, 129 Cherulnik, Paul D., 5 children, young, 20, 56, 74, 100, 154, 156, 160–1, 169, 192 n.1 learning, 20, 74, 56, 162, 167, 168 performance, 6, 153, 156 Chissell, Joan, 77 choreographic aesthetic, transfer of, 134, 198, 199 cognition, 19, 59, 62, 197, 201, 213 experience, 199, 200, 206–7, 212–13, 214, 217, 219 intent, 23, 48, 134 see also constraint; tasks; task-world memory, 60, 205, 219 practice, 26, 41, 119, 134, 138 thinking and reflection, 20–1, 24, 48, 60 see also marking choreography, choreographic process, 4, 14, 18, 19, 48, 52, 59, 138–9, 197–8, 200, 203, 205, 208, 217–18 Chum, Marvin, 14

253

chunks, 13, 44, 50 Clark, Andy, 100, 205 Clark, Brian C., 181 Clark, Max Stafford, 119 Clarke, Eric F., 155 Clarke, Tanya J., 136 codified movement, 21 Coetzee, Jan K., 227, 248 cognitive artefact, 101, 106 capacity, 27, 42, 44, 48, 59–61 (dancers), 137, 180 ecology or ecosystem, 24, 28, 102–3 glue, 50 see also chunks; sequencing of movement grammars, 22, 203 improvements, 14, 134, 139, 176, 179, 191 level, 29 n.2, 41–2, 180 linguistics, 12, 56, 106, 118, 203–4 microcosm, dance as, 60, 201–2 pressures, 20, 99, 101 representation, 17, 26, 29 n.5 resources, 13, 48, 49, 105 schemas, 19, 20, 81 skills, 16, 55 systems, 25, 102, 120, 176, 181 tasks and multitasking, 13, 15, 22, 24, 29 n.4, 88, 99, 101, 180, 170, 189 Cole, Jonathan, 106 collective memories, 8, 23, 231, 247 see also cultural memory complexity, reduction of, 99, 101 computer models of cognition, 99, 175–6, 206, 211, 242–3 Cone, Edward T., 154 conscious awareness, 17, 56, 57, 61, 169, 207, 238–9 dual consciousness, 241

254

INDEX

constraints and tasks or rules, 4, 14–15, 22, 23, 24, 53–4, 73, 74, 88, 99, 105, 107, 117, 238 constraint-satisfaction system, 102–3, 104, 105, 107, 108, 176, 178, 192, 201, 209–11, 219 constructive memory, 203, 226, 233, 237–8, 246–7 contemporary dance, 2, 21, 22, 24, 26, 41, 49, 50, 52, 57, 60, 148 n.1, 201–2, 203, 214, 216, 218 contemporary music, 81–2, 117, 170 contemporary theatre, 98, 101, 106, 107, 117, 119, 128, 148 n.1, 234 see also live performance; verbatim headphone theatre content-addressable memory, 19, 20, 83, 86 context-dependent memory, 207 Conway, Andrew R. A., 183 Cook, Susan Wagner, 127–8 corporeality and intercorporeality, 122, 204 Cortese, Antonio, 45–6, 202 cortex, 46, 181, 227 motor, 25 occipital, 135 sensorimotor cortices, 138 Coulson, Seana, 179, 185 Cowan, Nelson, 44 Cox, Arnie, 155 creative process, 8, 16, 17, 25, 198, 205, 216, 218, 230, 242 cross-disciplinary dialogue, 4, 27 see also interdisciplinary collaboration

Cross, Emily S., 3, 5, 11, 21, 39, 42, 138–9 Csordas, Thomas J., 200, 204, 206 cultural memory, 7, 8, 9, 50, 98, 101, 102, 204 Cursio, Natalie, 197–8, 202, 205–6, 212–14, 217–19 Curtis, H. Holbrook, 79 Czerny, Carl, 77 Dallob, Pam, 203 Dalmonte, Rossana, 155 dance memory, unit of, 208 Darnton, Robert, 73 decay, 44 declarative and explicit memory and knowledge, 16, 18, 19, 21, 22, 23, 44, 49, 50, 55, 120, 202, 219 see also episodic memory; semantic memory déjà vu, 4, 6, 17–18, 227–9, 233, 238, 239, 244, 247 see also Brown, Alan S. dual processing, 230, 237, 238, 239, 240, 241, 243 merged processes, 238, 239, 240, 241, 242, 244, 246 spontaneous activation, 238–9, 240, 243 De Vignemont, Frédérique, 17 Decety, Jean, 43, 138 deLahunta, Scott, 27, 50, 53, 60, 62 Deliège, Irène, 29 n.1 Diamantopoulos, I. I., 49 disciplinary boundaries and discipline-specificity, 5, 22, 25, 80, 97 displacement, 230, 246 dissonance and consonance, 157, 167

INDEX

distributed cognition, memory and knowledge 9, 23–4, 52, 60, 100–1, 102 see also Hutchins, Edwin Dodd, Michael D., 14 Doss, Manoj K., 245 Dove, Guy, 180 Dowling, W. Jay, 70 Downing, Paul E., 46, 135 Duke, Robert, 154–5 Dunn, Rita, 75 dynamical systems theory (DST), 24, 54 early modern theatre, 99, 102, 105–7 Eaves, Daniel L., 145–6 Ebbinghaus, Hermann, 43 Eichenbaum, Howard, 227 Ellis, C. J., 55 embedded (cognition), 17, 103, 114, 176 embodied action and interaction, 10, 121–2, 128, 180, 181, 204, 211, 219 cognition, 11, 42, 114, 119, 128, 175, 176, 179, 180, 205, 206 experience, 3, 106, 205, 207, 219 see also verbalization knowledge, 43, 176, 178, 180, 181, 184, 190, 191, 218 learning, 8, 178 memories, 3, 4, 12–13, 17, 27, 178, 179, 185 mind, 9, 10, 24, 99–100, 101, 102, 120, 177 see also mind–body interplay philosophies, 7–8, 12 see also memorization strategies (embodied); musical embodiment

255

embodiment, 4, 12, 13–14, 19, 176, 177, 178–9, 181, 182, 185, 188–91 emergent (knowledge), 6, 102, 103, 230, 231, 248 n.1 see also Nelson, Robin emotion, 20, 78, 84, 89, 104, 105, 124, 185, 207, 208, 209, 213 empathy, 43, 107 kinaesthetic, 211 physical, 212 encoding, 82, 83, 128, 142, 202, 203, 242 entrainment, 48 environments, 2, 3, 9, 10, 17, 23–4, 28, 48, 55, 56, 58, 100, 101–2, 114, 199, 120, 135, 147, 177, 180, 181–2, 186, 189, 204, 205, 206, 209, 241, 247 see also constraints; interaction; situated cognition; stimuli external, 24, 141, 142, 209 virtual, 141, 145, 147 epilepsy, temporal lobe, 227, 229, 234, 237, 243 episodic long-term memory, 16, 18, 120, 208, 211 see also declarative memory; implicit memory Ericsson, K. Anders, 72, 83, 88 error (pattern), 3, 6, 160, 164, 169 Evans, Mark, 128 Evans, Paul, 155 event segmentation theory, 26 see also Zacks, Jeffrey M. executive functions, 13, 178 see also working memory expectations, 40, 56, 57, 58, 59, 70, 115 schematic, 49, 59, 60, 71 see also Bharucha, Jamshed J. veridical, 59, 60, 71

256

INDEX

experimental epistemology, 9, 12, 15, 16, 20, 22 psychology, 26, 28, 39, 40, 41, 46, 47–8, 50, 51, 53–4, 55, 56, 60, 61–2, 80, 87–8, 97, 103, 114, 115, 117–18, 121, 142 see also Practice as Research; research methodology expertise, 16, 25, 40, 42, 48, 59, 88, 116, 137–8, 154 expression, 43 gestural, 128 musical, 84, 170, 176, 178 of meaning, 61, 107, 116 extended mind, 99–100 external motivations, 11 extrinsic, 143–4 frame of reference, 141, 142 information, 21, 24, 142 eye movements, 58, 59, 107 see also visual, saccades Falletti, Clelia, 28 n.1 Ferguson, Sam, 61 fictional present, 12, 113, 116, 129, 129–30 n.1 Finney, Stevena, 155 Fischbacher, Urs, 183 fixations, 58, 59 fluency, 57–8, 87–8, 170 Foerstel, Alexander, 180, 191 folk music, 55, 69–70, 73, 74, 87 Forest, Amanda L., 181–2 Foster, Ruth, 43 Foster, Susan Leigh, 8 Freeman, Walter J., 54 Fuentes, Christina T., 61 future-oriented cognition and memory, 177–8 Gallagher, Shaun, 12, 106, 144 Gallese, Vittorio, 42, 114–15, 120–4, 128, 130 n.2

Garson, Cyrielle, 106 Geeves, Andrew, 82 Gentilucci, Maurizio, 115, 126 George, Elyse, 178 gesture, 13–14, 82, 105, 106, 107, 116, 119, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130 n.2, 153, 162, 168 see also action; McNeill, David Giese, Martin A., 46 Gieseking, Walter, 72 Ginsborg, Jane, 2, 5, 6, 19, 20, 52–3, 75, 82–3, 85–8 Glass, Renee, 213 Glenberg, Arthur M., 10, 12–13, 115, 122–4, 128, 130 n.2, 176, 179, 181, 184, 191, 206 goal-directed unit, 119, 122–3 Goghari, Vina M., 13, 15 Goldin-Meadow, Susan, 127 Goldstein, Avram, 71 Golomer, Eveline, 40 Gordon, Edwin, 72 Green, Lucy, 75 Grèzes, Julie, 138 Gribble, Paul L., 139 Grotowski, Jerzy, 129 growth point, 126, 127 Grove, Robin, 50, 201 Guillot, Aymeric, 181 habits (incl. dispositions), 43, 44, 49, 60, 101 see also memory (skill-based); procedural memory habitual, 9, 16, 61 see also automated Haggard, Patrick, 17, 114 Halba, Hilary, 107 Hallam, Susan, 28 n.1, 83, 155 Hansen, Pil, 12, 14–17, 22–4, 177 haptic, 142, 143 Hardwick, Robert M., 141

INDEX

Haseman, Brad, 6 Haslam, S. Alexander, 181–2, 189 Hauk, Olaf, 42 Hay, Deborah, 17 Hayes, Spencer J., 139 Head, Henry, 29 n.5 Henderson, Ame, 24 Heyes, Cecilia M., 29 n.3, 140 Higgins, Dick, 248 n.3 Hiller, Ferdinand, 78 Hirst, William, 99 Hodgson, John, 11 Hogg, Bennett, 8 Holmes, Paul S., 181 Holstein, James A., 200 Hommel, Bernhard, 29 n.2, 206 House, Christopher, 17 Hughes, Edwin, 79–80, 87 human-centric epistemology, 28 humanoid avatars, 140 Hummel, Johann N., 76 Huron, David, 56, 71 Hutchins, Edwin, 101–3 Hüttermann, Stefanie, 48 idea or thought unit, 119, 123, 124, 126–7, 129, 130 n.2 identity, 4, 14, 17, 136, 181, 187–90 personal, 182, 187 see also personal memories social or occupational, 176, 181, 189, 191 see also autobiographical identity identity theory, 189, 191 imagining sound, 72, 81 see also audiation implicit memory or knowledge, 16–17, 18, 56, 211 improvisation, 12, 15, 22, 24, 148 n.1, 178, 179, 183, 185, 187 in dance, 24, 41, 48, 49, 60

257

in music, 4, 13–14, 73, 74, 176, 177, 178, 181, 183–4, 186, 192 n.1 in theatre, 117, 231, 232, 247 Imreh, Gabriela, 84–5, 155 incongruence, experience of, 226, 229, 246, 247 see also memory, loss and gaps individual/social binary, 97 information processing, 99, 175–6 Ingold, Tim, 106 inhibition, 13, 15, 17, 167 integrated memory, 13, 26, 27, 55, 104–5, 117, 204 interaction, 10, 11, 28, 29 n.3, 100, 101, 114, 204, 211, 180, 213 social, 191, 219 with audience, 237, 242 interdisciplinary collaboration, 4, 7, 41, 61, 80, 228, 230 see also cross-disciplinary dialogue interference, 17, 44, 45, 46, 179, 188–9, 191 intermedial environment, 237, 238, 243, 246, 247 performance, 227, 233, 236–7, 242, 246, 247, 248 n.3 interpersonal dynamics, 18, 60, 100, 102, 120 interpretive, 5, 8, 21, 84 intersubjectivity, 114, 121–2, 242, 243, 245 intersubjective memory and memory-making, 226, 228, 231, 232, 233, 237, 238, 246 intrinsic, 144 see also extrinsic motor feedback, 21, 142 reference frame, 141, 142

258

intuition and intuitive, 17, 61, 120, 153, 168, 170, 200 Ivaldi, Antonia, 191 Iyer, Vijay, 177–8, 180, 186, 191, 192 n.1 Jackman, Christopher J., 17 Jalics, Laci, 54 Jaques-Dalcroze, Émile, 176, 177 jazz (music), 69, 73, 81, 87, 192 n.1 Jean, Julie, 45, 46, 202 Jeannerod, Marc, 21 Johnson, Mark, 114 Johnson, Terry, 119 Jokeit, Hennric, 228 Jola, Corinne, 25, 29 n.1, 39 Jones, Mari R., 48 Jørgensen, Harald, 155 judicious stillnesses, 55 Juslin, Patrik, 155 Kamitani, Yukiyasu, 135 Karim-Cooper, Farah, 106 Karpeles, Maud, 73 Kawato, Mitsuo, 114, 140 Keller, Peter E., 26, 42, 48 Kelso, J. A. Scott, 15 Kemp, Rick, 3, 6, 12, 19, 118, 127, 128 Kendon, Adam, 125–6, 128 Kershaw, Baz, 230–1 kinaesthetic approach, 75, 81, 82 empathy, 211, 212 grammar, 203–4 memory, 72, 75, 82 perception (incl. information), 26, 75, 120, 178, 203 kinematic and visuospatial properties, 134, 143 kinesic, 104–5, 108 Kirsch, Louise P., 138

INDEX

Kirsh, David, 21, 28, 60 knowledge, 2, 5, 6, 7, 16, 18, 19, 21, 27, 28, 29 n.5, 40, 43, 44, 49, 50, 55, 56, 58, 60, 70, 81, 102, 121–2, 143, 154, 165, 170 acquisition, 42 domain-specific, 57 learning, 45 paradigms, 4 see also declarative, long-term memory; embodied, knowledge; intersubjectivity Kohl, Robert M., 139 Kontra, Carly, 176 Kordi, Hassan, 136–7 Kozel, Susan, 8 Kusumi, Takashi, 228 Laban, Rudolf, 11, 119, 129 Lakoff, George, 114 Land, William, 26 landmarks, 19, 20, 21, 83, 85 see also memorization strategies language, 3, 12, 18, 19, 25, 42, 60, 107, 114–15, 116, 118, 119, 120–1, 122, 123, 125, 128, 129, 130 n.2, 205, 211, 219 acquisition, 56 body language, 124, 204 see also corporeality gestures, 126 linguistics, 12, 56, 105, 106, 118, 200, 201, 203, 204, 232–3 memorization, 117 musical, 157, 167, 170 see also Action-Based Language Theory; speech; verbalization language comprehension, 12, 227 see also temporal lobe Leach, James, 60

INDEX

learning by ear or by doing, 73, 211, 219 environment, 147 path, 154, 161–2, 169, 170 skill learning, 134, 137 see also memory, skills see also embodied learning; motor learning; movement learning; scaffolding; social learning Lecoq, Jacques, 119, 128 Lee, Timothy D., 134 Lehmann, Andreas C., 88 Lehrer, Jacob, 214, 216 Lehrer, Jonah, 62, 65 Leman, Marc, 82, 180, 190, 193 n.2 Leslie, Kenneth R., 43 Levitin, Daniel J., 81 Lieberman, David, 207, 209, 219 Lisboa, Tania, 85 listening, active, 70, 71 Lloyd-Williams, Maggie, 119, 123, 125, 127 longitudinal case study, 70, 84–5, 90 Longo, Matthew R., 61 long-term memory, 10, 13, 26, 43, 44, 52, 55, 58, 60, 70, 72, 73–4, 120, 203 see also episodic memory; expectations; semantic memory low-level problem-solving, 13 Macek, Karl, 81 Maeda, Fumiko, 141 Mahon, Bradford Z., 179 Mahuika, Nepia, 74 Manier, David, 97 Marchal-Crespo, Laura M., 143 marking, 20–1, 60

259

Markman, Arthur B., 179, 181, 185, 189 Martin, Chris, 226, 229–30, 239–42, 245–7 Masson, Michael E. J., 175–6 material and social resources, 100, 105 Mather, George, 136 Mathias, Brian, 75 Mattar, Andrew G., 139 May, Florence, 77 McClelland, James, 238 McGregor, Wayne, 21, 62 McKechnie, Shirley, 39, 50, 54, 201–3, 212–13 McKenzie, Vahri, 4, 5, 6, 23, 200 McLaughlin, Deirdre, 4, 6, 17, 18, 23 McLean, Mervyn E., 74 McLelland, Victoria C., 239, 243, 246 McNeill, David, 106, 125–8, 130 n.2 McPherson, Gary E., 83, 155 meaning, production and expression of, 14, 15, 22, 26, 39, 44, 50, 54, 82, 84, 88, 107, 114–16, 119–20, 122, 124, 125–6, 128, 129, 199, 200, 226, 233, 247, 248 meaningful units, 13, 14, 44, 206 see also chunks narrative, 122, 123, 124, 199 semantic, 82, 88, 118, 127 233 medial temporal lobes, 227, 229 melody, 55, 74–5, 71, 79, 87, 88, 107, 162 memorization (or memorizing) strategies or techniques, 3, 6, 9, 12, 14, 19, 20, 21, 23–5, 70, 72, 73, 75, 77, 78–80, 82, 86–8, 89–90,

260

INDEX

103, 116, 117–18, 119–20, 124, 125, 154–5, 157 analytical, 19, 20, 73–4, 83, 84, 86, 153–4, 156–7, 168, 169, 170 auditory, 72, 75, 81, 82 see also imagining sound capacity, 13–14, 39, 115 embodied, 12, 74, 82, 176–7, 180–1 gestural, 13–14, 82, 117, 118, 120, 123, 125, 127–8 kinaesthetic, 74, 75, 81–2, 117, 180–1 visual, 75, 79, 81–2 memory of breath, 54, 106 conflict, 226, 229, 230, 239, 242, 244–5 see also déjà vu cue, 19, 52, 54, 55, 60, 83, 85, 86, 107, 155, 203, 209, 213 see also associative chains flood, 207–8 lapse, 50, 53–4, 83, 165–6, 167–8 limits, 39, 40, 44 loss and gaps, 4, 17, 18–19, 44, 50, 86, 88, 100, 226, 228, 229, 241, 246 machine, 98 see also Carlson, Marvin networks, 45, 48, 55, 116 processing, 9–10, 27, 134 of rhythm, 19, 50, 54, 70, 74, 99, 177 skills, 25, 26, 27 somatic, 50, 198, 200, 202, 204–5 of sound and sounded, 25, 50, 52, 54, 56, 70, 72, 75, 197, 200, 206–7, 214, 218–19, 242, 246 spatial, 26

trace, 17, 75 trigger, 4, 60, 176, 197, 200–1, 206, 208, 217–18 see also declarative memory; episodic memory; implicit memory; procedural memory; working memory memory-work, 103, 104–5, 107–8 see also memorization mental imagery or imaging or simulation, 19, 21, 48, 79, 126, 130 n.2, 177 mental representation, 26, 72, 75, 79, 82, 83, 87–8, 155–6, 206 see also Hughes, Edwin mental states, 136, 180, 206–7, 208, 209 Merlin, Bella, 100 metre, 48, 55, 74, 82, 89, 107, 168, 177 Meyer, Leonard B., 70–1 Michaelian, Kourken, 23, 100, 102 Midgelow, Vida, 17 Miklaszewski, Kacper, 155 Miller, George A., 44 mind–body interplay, 11, 177, 178–9, 190 mirror neuron system and mirror neurons, 11–12, 29 n.3, 42, 121–2, 211 see also action observation network Mishra, Jennifer, 75 Misztal, Barbara A., 248 Miyake, Akira, 13 mnemonic, 103, 105, 106, 239–40 learning, 155 Molenberghs, Pascal, 121 Monelle, Raymond, 155 mood, 157, 168, 207, 209 Moran, Nikki, 190

INDEX

Morris, Joe, 177 motion capture and tracking, 137, 145, 147 motivation, behavioural, 54, 175, 184–6 motor action (incl. physical action), 3, 14, 20–1, 24, 27, 42, 52, 114–15, 116, 117, 118, 120, 122, 123–4, 127, 140, 141–2, 144, 146–7, 177–8, 181, 188–9, 214 commands, 133–4, 140 configurations, 46, 59 control, 61, 122–3, 128, 129 errors, 3, 6, 20, 50–2, 138–9, 140, 143, 153, 158–9, 160–1, 164, 165, 166, 167, 179 feedback, 23, 138–9, 140–1, 142–3, 146, 177, 211–12, 219 intention, 11, 50, 70, 118, 122, 123, 134, 138 learning, 26, 134, 143, 145–6, 147, 211, 219 memory, 24, 72, 82, 138, 181 performance, 21, 134, 139, 146, 203 program, 49, 50, 61 repertoire and routines, 42–3, 61 see also habit representations, 140 sequences, 41, 49 simulation, 43, 122, 176 skills, 21, 43, 122, 176 system, 10, 29 n.3, 42, 122, 179 training, 138–9, 144 Mozart, Leopold, 75–6, 77 Mukamel, Roy, 121 multi-code representations, 89 multi-level variables, 39

261

multi-modal, 19, 60, 114–15, 130 n.2 experience, 203–4 information, 13, 27 representations, 26, 52, 60, 206 multisensory feedback, 21, 143 Murray, Penelope, 55 Murray, Scott O., 135 music psychology, 190 musical analysis, 20, 83–4, 89, 153–5, 157, 160–1, 169, 170 cognition, 180, 193 n.2 dynamics, 84, 155, 157, 158, 160, 161, 165, 166, 167, embodiment, 14, 77, 177–8, 180, 185, 188, 190–1 intervals, 81, 166 memory, 155, 178 score, 3, 15, 69, 72, 75, 77, 81, 84, 86, 87, 160, 168 structure, 79, 153, 154, 155, 168, 170 see also recall, musical Narmour, Eugene, 71 narrative remembering, 98, 104, 201, 203, 205 unit, 116, 118, 123, 127 navigation, 42, 102, 208–9 Nelson, Robin, 7, 231, 248 n.1 neural activity, 123, 130 n.2, 138, 230 networks, 42, 45, 55, 115, 122–3 Newell, Allen, 206 Niedenthal, Paula M., 181 Niemeijer, Anuschka S., 142 Noice, Helga and Tony, 12, 19, 85, 103–4, 106, 116–19, 124–5, 127 non-normative memory, 9, 16, 81–2, 228, 238, 240

262

INDEX

notation, 40, 69–70, 72, 75, 82 novice performer, 14, 19, 21, 26, 57–8, 59, 83, 141, 143, 144–5 Nuki, Michiko, 81 Nutley, Sissela B., 178 Oberauer, Klaus, 45 observation, 3, 6, 7, 11, 15, 19, 21, 22, 26–7, 40–1, 42–3, 46, 47, 48, 57, 58–9, 121, 122, 127, 133–4, 137–9, 140, 141–2, 144, 146–7, 211, 213, 220 n.1 observational experience, 134, 142, 143, 146 observational training (incl. learning and practice), 134, 142, 144, 146, 147 obstacles, creative, 16–17, 201, 216, 219 Ockelford, Adam, 82 Odendaal, Albi, 75 offline cognition, 177, 178 olfaction, 42, 50, 52, 55, 206 online feedback, 48, 137 Opacic, Tajana, 57, 58 oral traditions, 3, 40, 69, 72, 73, 74 Oxoby, Robert J., 4–5, 14–16 Panksepp, Jaak, 71 Parkes, Laura M., 135 Parrott, Chrissie, 218 Parviainen, Jaana, 8 patterns neural, 41, 120, 121, 124, 138 recognition, 22, 56, 179 response, 16, 73 rhythmic, 161, 167 Patton, Michael Q., 200

pedagogy and pedagogues, 19, 70, 75, 77–8, 79, 82–3, 89–90, 119, 128, 176, 177, 190–1 piano, 153–4, 155 pedagogy of memorization, 3, 75–6, 77–80 Peelen, Marius V., 46 Pendleton, Lindsay R., 46, 203 Penhune, Virginia B., 134 Peräkylä, Anssi, 199 perception, 42–3, 46, 55, 60, 62 cross-modal, 14, 26, 27, 42, 46, 61, 202–3, 213 see also multi-modal; visual perception and action performance live, 51, 225, 231, 237, 243 making, collaborative, 226, 229, 230, 231, 240–1 music, 75, 90, 190 performance cues, 70, 84, 85, 86, 90 performance generating systems, 22 performing music from memory, 6, 76, 77, 87, 90, 153, 154, 156, 158, 160, 161, 162 Perry-Davies, Ella, 28 personal experience, 6, 16, 17, 70, 79, 117, 141, 157, 212, 220 n.1, 235, 236 identities, 181–2, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 206–7 memories, 17, 43, 86, 98, 166, 242, 246, 227 see also autobiographical memory Pexman, Penny, 12 phenomenological analysis, 4, 8, 198, 200, 204, 206, 209, 212, 218–19 see also Csordas, Thomas J. experience, 6, 27, 217, 218 remembering, 198, 202, 219

INDEX

Phillips-Silver, Jessica, 48 phonological loop, 13, 45, 178 phrases, 14, 15, 40, 44, 48, 49, 50, 52, 56, 57, 72, 73–4, 77, 79, 84, 86, 88, 126, 157, 159 musical (phrasing), 160, 165, 166, 176, 177–8 physical action, 3, 24, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 124, 140, 178 see also motor (action) boundaries, 10 energy, 60, 180 training, 61, 138–9, 143–4, 144–5, 147, 148 piano, 3, 5, 18, 20, 72, 76, 77, 78, 79, 81, 133, 146–7, 153, 154, 157, 159, 160, 168, 170 Pinto, Jeannine, 136 Pitkin, Jenny, 83 Plunket Greene, Harry, 78–9 Pollitt, Jo, 206–9 Popper, Karl, 5 polyphonic, 157 Port, Robert F., 54 posture, 46, 47 practice, 86–7, 155, 156–7, 160, 161, 246, 247, 248 n.2 deliberate, 69, 72, 89, 90 embodied, 180–1, 191 features, 70, 84, 85, 90 mental, 79, 80, 89 performance, 6, 27, 119, 226, 237, 247 physical, 21, 138, 139 Practice as Research (PaR) and practice-led research, 6, 28, 202, 225, 228, 230–1, 232, 236, 241, 248 n.1 see also Haseman, Brad; Kershaw, Baz; Nelson, Robin

263

praxis, 6, 7, 20, 21, 22, 24, 148 n.1, 201 see also practice Prebble, Sally C., 17 premotor and parietal cortices, 122, 138 presence, 12, 15, 17, 48, 69, 70, 154, 229, 231, 238, 241, 245, 247–8 see also fictional present Prinz, Wolfgang, 10, 29 n.2, 206, 211, 214 Prior, Helen, 75 procedural immersion, 21, 138–9, 140, 142, 143–4 memory, skill-based, 16, 19, 22, 23–4, 44, 49–50, 61, 75, 120, 123, 124, 125, 127, 129 see also habits; implicit memory prospective auditory memory, 69, 70–1, 72, 89, 90 psychological realism, 118, 119, 125, 128 Pulvermüller, Friedemann, 42, 121, 179, 181–2, 184, 189 Quak, Michel, 179, 186, 189 Rau, Asta, 227, 248 Reason, Matthew, 29 n.1, 62, 211 recall of dance triggered by music, 82, 197, 200, 206–7, 208, 209–11, 214, 218, musical, 177–8 of songs, long term, 19–20, 55, 70, 73–4, 78, 83, 86, 87–8 of words, 14, 45–6, 74, 78, 79, 86, 88, 124, 176, 178–9, 183–5, 187, 188, 189

264

INDEX

recognition, 47, 56, 57–8, 227 reconstructive memory and reconstruction of memories, 3, 9, 10, 12–13, 17–18, 22–3, 217, 223, 225, 245 see also constructive memory Redick, Thomas S., 191 rehearsal, 43, 46, 60, 82, 84, 85, 86, 104, 117 Rellstab, Ludwig, 77 Renwick, James M., 83 repetition, 18, 19, 24, 40, 72, 80–1, 82–3, 84, 88, 106–7, 117, 120, 134, 157, 165, 170 research methodology, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8–9, 103, 170, 198, 199, 202, 204, 230–1, 231–2, 233 laboratory-based, 25, 41, 56, 57, 61, 97, 101, 179 see also experimental resonance, experience of, 211, 213–14 retrieval, 18, 45, 83, 155, 207–8, 219, 227–8, 238, 240, 242 retrospective auditory memory, 69, 70–1, 72, 75, 89 Reynolds, Dee, 29 n.1, 39, 62, 211 rhyme, 74, 99, 107 rhythm, 40, 50, 54, 60, 70, 74, 78–9, 82, 106, 176, 177, 178, 184, 199, 205 see also patterns, rhythmic; memory, of rhythm Riegler, Alexander, 233 Rink, John, 154, 155 Rizzolatti, Giacomo, 11–12 Roach, Joseph, 98 Roden, Ingo, 178 Rodrigues, Sérgio T., 136 Rodriguez, Amy D., 12 Rohrmeier, Martin, 56

Roosink, Meyke, 145 Rosenblum, Lawrence D., 213 Ross, Edgar, 81 Rossi-Arnaud, Clelia, 45–6, 202 Rossington, Michael, 98 Rothstein, William, 155 Rubin-Rabson, Grace, 80 Rubin, David C., 74, 107 Rydell, Robert J., 186, 190–1 Sacchetti, Rita, 155 Salvucci, Dario D., 29 n.4 Santana, Ivani, 28 n.1 Savion-Lemieux, Tal, 134 scaffolding, 99–100 see also Vygotsky, Lev S. Schack, Thomas, 26, 29 n.1, 40, 206 Schacter, Daniel L., 218, 233, 238–9, 242–3, 247 schema, 19, 20, 29 n.5, 59, 72, 73, 75, 81–3 see also expectations Schiavio, Andrea, 190 Schmalfeldt, Janet, 154 Schmidt, Henk G., 116 Schütz-Bosbach, Simone, 10, 211, 214 Scott, Joanne, 4, 6, 17, 23, 53 Scoville, William B., 16 script analysis, 104, 116, 117, 118, 119, 125, 127, 129–30 n.1 Searleman, Alan, 228 segmentation, 20, 26–7, 84, 123, 126, 129, 157, 161–2, 168 see also beat and line actioning; landmarks Seitz, Jay A., 178, 190 self-awareness, 17, 61, 181, 248 n.4 self-organizing dynamics and selforganization, 23–4, 54 semantic long-term memory, 16, 18, 19, 44, 120 see also declarative memory

INDEX

sensorimotor activity, 177, 179, 180, 181, 193 n.2 capacity and functions, 114, 117 information, 19, 139, 189 integration and interaction, 120, 180 system, 10, 42, 115, 129, 175–6, 177, 181, 183, 189 sequencing of movements, 2, 15, 17, 18, 25, 26, 27, 57, 134, 143–4, 146–7 Settles, Isis H., 188 Sevdalis, Vassilis, 26, 42 sexual orientation, 136 Shaffer, L. Henry, 154–5 Shaughnessy, Nicola, 28 n.1 Shebani, Zubaida, 179, 181–2, 184, 189 Shih, Margaret, 187, 188–9 Shinn, Frederick G., 78–9 Shive, Holly, 230 short-term memory, 13, 41, 43, 44, 46, 178 see also working memory singing and singers, 69, 70, 71, 73, 74, 75, 77, 78, 79, 82, 84, 85, 87–8, 157 sites of memory, 98 see also place situated (cognition), 101, 114, 119, 177, 178, 181–2, 204, 207 see also actionperception coupling; embodied cognition; interaction Sloboda, John, 81, 87–8 Smith, Linda B., 15, 23–4 Smithers, Tim, 184 Smyth, Mary M., 46, 203 social environments, 101, 103, 175, 181

265

interactions, 29 n.3, 190–1, 219 learning, 12, 106, 181 neuroscience, 138 structures, rules and patterns, 8, 10, 100 Solso, Robert L., 203 somatic experience, 40, 52, 200, 203, 205, 207, 208, 248 n.4 felt sense, 245 source material, 15, 204, 218, 219, 242, 246 memory, 22–3, 226, 229, 241 see also autobiographical memory; memory loss sourcing, 198, 238 space, place and location, 16, 20, 21, 23, 24, 46, 48, 50, 54, 102, 134, 141, 143, 202, 206–7, 208–9, 214, 216 spatial information and reference frames, 26, 141, 142, 143 speech, 14, 56, 106, 114, 122, 125, 126–7, 128, 130 n.2, 200, 211 see also analytical, process; language spontaneity and spontaneously, 26, 72, 85, 89, 90, 119, 128, 129, 153, 165, 205, 238, 239, 240, 243, 245, 247 Squire, Larry R., 10, 16 Stadler Elmer, Stefanie, 74 Stanislavski, Konstantin, 98, 104, 118, 119, 128 Stanislavskian approach, 104, 116, 127, 128 Starkes, Janet L., 44, 50, 60 state (of consciousness), 207, 227, 238–9, 241 see also conscious awareness

266

INDEX

Stevens, Catherine J., 2, 5, 13–14, 22, 24, 27, 39, 44, 47–54, 57–61, 82, 201–4, 211–13 stimuli, 10, 15, 17, 45, 58, 60, 75, 136, 178, 189, 209, 238 see also environment strategy, 6, 8, 12, 15–16, 21, 23, 24, 27, 70, 72, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 103, 104, 115, 124, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 161, 198, 201, 211, 214, 218, 219 see also memorization strategies Strong, Catherine, 7 Stuart, Joshua, 54, 107 structural analysis, 3, 6, 8, 20, 78, 80–1, 86, 119, 153, 154, 161–2, 203–4 subjective experiences, 4, 8, 26, 27, 204, 218–19, 225, 226, 228, 229, 231, 248 Sumanapala, Dilini K., 3, 5, 21, 144 superior temporal sulcus, 62 n.2, 135 Sutton, John, 23, 82, 100, 102–3 Tajfel, Henri, 181, 190 Tan, Siu-Lan, 28 n.1 task-world, 24, 99, 101, 102 Taylor, Diana, 8 Taylor, David C., 79 techne, technique or technical skill, 3, 12, 19–20, 21, 23, 26, 60, 62, 73, 81, 98, 99, 106, 107, 113, 116, 119, 137–8, 140, 141, 147, 155, 157, 168, 177–8 Thelen, Esther, 15, 23–4, 54 Thompson, James C., 135 Toiviainen, Petri, 48 touch, 42, 49, 161, 245 training, 9, 13, 14, 15, 21, 22, 23–4, 25, 26, 27, 61, 72, 75,

81, 90, 98–9, 101, 106, 139, 141, 142, 143–4, 146, 176, 208, 231 environment, 3, 147, 148 level, 157, 165, 167–8 musical, 75, 154, 178 paradigm, 143, 147 physical (incl. whole-body), 138–9, 143, 147 technology-based, 144–5, 148 Tribble, Evelyn, 3, 5, 6–7, 23–4, 102–3 Tulving, Endel, 18, 98 Turetzky, Bertram, 177 Turner, John C., 181, 190 Turner, Stephen, 211 Urgesi, Cosimo, 46, 135 Utterback, Neal, 12, 14, 118 van der Merwe, Liesl, 191 van Gelder, Timothy, 54 Van Overwalle, Frank, 121 Varela, Francisco J., 114 Vass-Rhee, Freya, 55 verbalization, 16, 18, 22, 44, 45, 49, 50, 59, 203 204, 211, 236 verbatim headphone theatre, 106, 107–8 Vicary, Staci A., 46–7 Virno, Paolo, 233, 237, 243, 247 virtual body representations, 147 environment, 141, 143, 145, 147–8 feedback technology, 3, 144–6 visible thought, 50 visual attention, 48, 58 feedback, 138, 140 information, 42, 135, 136, 145, 202

INDEX

observation, 21, 42 perception, 42, 46, 47, 61 processing, 59, 135, 136, 140 saccades, 58, 59 score, 19, 148 n.1 see also choreography selective attention, 58 working memory, 46, 47, 179 visualization, 60, 72, 81, 157, 180–1 visuomotor, 139, 142, 146 visuospatial processing, 146 Vygotsky, Lev S., 99, 100 Wachowicz, Fatima, 14, 44, 49, 50 Wake, Caroline, 107 Walker, Matthew P., 134 Warburton, Edward C., 21, 60 Waterhouse, Elizabeth, 48, 62 Welch, Graham F., 74 Western classical music, 56, 70, 87 Whaites, Michael, 205, 211–12 whole-body actions, 140, 143, 146, 147

267

Williamon, Aaron, 29 n.1, 83, 155 Wilson, Margaret, 11, 175, 177, 186, 205 Wilson, Robert A., 97 working memory, 48, 49, 83, 178, 179, 181, 185, 186, 189, 190, 191 capacity, 13, 14, 15–16 central executive (incl. executive functions), 13, 45, 178 see also attention visuospatial sketchpad, 13, 45 Wu, Ying Choon, 179, 185 Wulf, Gabriele, 134 Wyeth, Kathleen, 48 Yarrow, Kielan, 25 Yin, Robert K., 201 Yopyk, Darren J. A., 187 Zacks, Jeffrey M., 26 Zajonc, Robert B., 56, 58 Zlatev, Jordan, 233 Zola, Stuart M., 10, 16