15/05/2015

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Index

 

​Introduction

1. Methodology

2. Outline of performers’ view

3. Outline of audience’s view

4.Questionnaires’ and open discussions’ content analysis

(Description and interpretation of participants’ witness)

5. Concluding remarks

6. Bibliography

7. Appendixes

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Introduction

 

This dissertation offers a practical-theoretical research project about proprioception and kinaesthetic knowledge that Robert Bridger, a colleague of mine, and I undergo, following the orientation of contact improvisation, conceived as “a form of nonhierarchical relations that entails an appeal to accept mutual responsibility for each other” (Engelsrud, 2007, p. 58). The subject I chose to study is strongly connected with my experience as a dance student. From the beginning, I conceived the production of the dissertation as a fortunate opportunity to theorize my own body’s experience. In short, allowing me to theorize my practice, the dissertation offered resources to pursue dancing and researching.

I have been dancing for years and I was led to analyse proprioceptive and kinaesthetic aspects of my own experience. Before even knowing the concepts of proprioception and kinaesthesia, I had thought much about their sense, intuiting, feeling and experiencing them. That very idea intrigued me and once I experienced dancing with my eyes closed, I realised that I am inevitably aware both of my body’s stances and of how it moves, without having to check it visually.

 

Furthermore, this project intends to construct knowledge about choreography through dance-making, inspired by Anna Pakes (2009), choreographic practice is considered as “a way – or series of ways – of knowing in its own right” (ibid. 10). Concomitantly, this project is developed under the scope of what Susan Stinson (2006) calls “research as choreography”. Additionally, this research follows a conception whereby dance is the essence of embodied knowledge. This conception is hold by several authors, for instance, Betty Block and Judith Kissell (2001), who express this way of seeing by means of the following words: 

                                                      

“Embodied knowing is the ability to interact with a thought or an experience holistically that involves the integrated power network of the total person” (ibid, p. 6).

 

Paraphrasing and adapting the definition of the meaning of the integrated power network suggested by these authors, one may say that the integrated power network Robert and I intensively seek, includes neural elements, efforts, memory, language, proprioceptive and kinaesthetic attunement and are found integrated throughout our bodies, not just in our brains (cf. ibid). Indeed, Robert and I, pursue an embodied knowledge of the aesthetic sense, which emerges from our proprioceptive and kinaesthetic experiences.

 

While studying these core concepts, I recognised the difficulty of the task, once several meanings are assigned to them. Accordingly, I tried to clarify its semantic scope. Attempting to grasp the meanings of proprioception and kinaesthesia, Barry Stillman (2002) suggests that once there are several common features concerning them, “to treat both words as synonyms” (ibid p. 668) and this implies that “little value can be derived from having two words with the same meaning” (ibid), because “‘kinaesthesia’ should not have the same meaning as the simple relatively self-explanatory ‘movement sense’, nor should ‘proprioception’ mean just ‘position sense’” (ibid). Pursuing, Stillman states that “‘kinaesthesia’ is defined as movement sense, and ‘proprioception’ as either position sense […] or position and movement sense” (ibid). In this dissertation I will employ both terms in the broad sense of the proprioceptive system, related to its functions, as Stillman puts it:

 

“[…] proprioceptive system has some functions which are sensory and others which are not. The sensory functions, collectively termed ‘proprioception’ (proprioceptive sensation or kinaesthesia), involve awareness of the spatial and mechanical status of the musculoskeletal framework. They include the senses of position, movement and balance” (ibid, p. 667).

 

On the other hand, Barbara Montero (2006), defining proprioception as “the sense by which we acquire information about the position and movements of our own bodies, via receptors in the joints, tendons, ligaments and skin” (ibid, p. 231), states that proprioceptive experience can be the basis of aesthetic judgments obtained through our bodies’ connective tissue. 

 

Within a more holistic and comprehensive view, Caroline Potter (2006), stresses that kinaesthesia, instead of being conceived as “an isolated sense with discreet biological pathways”, (ibid p. 444) should be seen as a sense of motion, which is intertwined with “parallel  perception through multiple sensory modes including heat and touch” (ibid). Therefore, Potter states that highlighting kinaesthesia “contributes to an understanding of the senses as a cohesive phenomenological complex that engenders an interconnected, bodily-grounded sense of cultural identity” (ibid). Potter illustrates her point by means of the following notion:

“(…) for professionally trained dancers a sense of touch operates in harmony with a sense of motion: contact of the hands leads to the sharing of weight as two dancers lean away from each other in a counterbalance, or contact within the pelvic region leads to one partner easily supporting the full weight of another in a lift” (ibid, p. 459).

In other words, dancers have the capacity of feeling and moving co-ordinately, which allows them to distribute their weight balancing on each other permitting the performance of lifts that would not be possible to execute without this skill.

 

Another core stone of this project is contact improvisation, because both this technique and its underlying practical philosophy deeply inspired Robert and I.

 

Improvisation comes from the Latin word improviso formed by in (negative) with provviso, which means, “never seen before” (Sanches, 2012, p.51,). This Latin meaning of the word improvisation was explored in every session by always surprising ourselves, creating something different every time we perform the duet. In addition, Paxton (in Fall after Newton, 1988) explains how “each dance is a series of on the spot decisions” (Paxton & Smith), which is exactly how we recreate the duet, maintaining its variability.

 

Cynthia Novack (1990) depicts the dynamic characteristics of contact improvisation as follows:

“Contact improvisation is most frequently performed as a duet, in silence, with dancers supporting each other’s weight while in motion. Unlike wrestlers, who exert their strength to control a partner, contact improvisation use momentum to move in concert with a partner’s weight, rolling, suspending, lurching together. […]. Interest lies in the ongoing flow of energy rather than on producing still pictures, as in ballet” (ibid, p. 8).

Drawing a difference between contact improvisation and traditional modern dance, Novack (1990) states that the later has “often been absent from contact improvisation” (ibid, p. 11), once the concerns of traditional modern dance are mainly “with the choreographic sharping of movement or with the explicit expression of ideas or emotions” (ibid), while in contact improvisation, “the emphasis has been placed instead on the physical dialogue of two dancers, the action which results from the sensations of touch and weight” (ibid).

Besides, Novack draws a contrast between contact improvisation and gymnastics: “although many contact improvisers demonstrate gymnastic ability, their movement, unlike that of most gymnastic routines, does not emphasize the body’s line or shape” (ibid, p. 8).  Pursuing, Novack deepens this differences: “even more important, [contact improvisers] improvise their movement, inventing or choosing it at the moment of performance” (ibid).

Beyond these concrete features of contact improvisation, Novack stresses the social-political issues and trends implied in it.

According to Novack (1990), contact improvisation drew inspiration in the broader artistic movement in the late 50’s and the 60’s, in which participated several choreographers and dancers among which stood out Merce Cunningham. That was the beginning of “social dance” (Novack, ibid, p.20) which emerged inside a deep socially implied movement, allowing that the “existing techniques took on other meanings, new techniques were developed, and different attitudes emerged toward the activity of dancing” (ibid). Besides, as Novack underlines, it happened “a fusion of aesthetic and social ideas” (ibid, p. 23). In this epoch began a movement of fusion among the performing arts, namely amid all sorts of dance. As Novack (ibid) stresses, the renewed values of this movement spread “The aesthetic proposal that any movement could be considered dance proved a powerful concept for younger dancers engaged by ideals of social equality and community” (ibid).

Having these ideas about contact improvisation, proprioception and kinaesthesia in mind, I decided to make a duet called My witness is the empty sky, where Robert Bridger and I improvise with our eyes closed during the entire piece. The name of the piece is inspired by a quote from Jack Kerouac, a Beat Generation’s author who wrote books such as On the Road (1957), where Albert Dean, the musician of the piece and I found inspiration. Robert and I have our eyes closed, so ‘the empty sky’ became a metaphor for that condition. Obviously, we were aware that we would be lost in space without knowing where we were placed, but that was a consequence while hindering ourselves of sight, “the most efficient spatial perceptual modality” (Hatwell, 2006), but we were also aware that, alike blind people, we would partially compensate this handicap by the intensive use of touch and audition (cf. ibid).

Nevertheless, the use of sight is not completely excluded from the dance experience with eyes shut. During this project and mainly when we performed the duet with stage lights, I realised that even though we have our eyes closed during the entire piece, we can still use them to help us with our orientation. Once, during a dress run, through my eyelids I perceived that we were not under any spotlight and I feared we were off stage. At that moment, I realised how I still use my sight and how it could help orientating myself and being aware of my spatial position. After this stressful moment of thinking we were off stage, we eventually changed our positions, and I ‘felt’ the spotlights back on top of us: there was a yellow and orange light that I could see through my eyelids. This experience suggests a future experiment where we will dance in complete darkness, and film it with an infra-red camera so we can analyse the performance.

Besides, we experimented dancing the same duet in a different location. We practiced it in a park and a similar thing happened related to how the light covered our eyelids. Without realising, both of us faced the sun and simply enjoyed the warm sensation of the sunlight on our faces and eyes.

Despite these limitations, we immerged in our ‘blind’ dance experiences alone with our musician, who was also immerged in his musical improvisation. Since we chose to dance with closed eyes and explore how that affects us, our rehearsals give us no option but rising our proprioception and kinaesthetic skills to their highest level. By moving with closed eyes, sensing, perceiving and interpreting sensory input is challenged (Montero, 2006). The main idea of our piece is to emphasize certain aesthetic senses, which emerge from proprioceptive and kinaesthetic practical knowledge.  

On the contrary, in dance, especially in ballet, some of the main goals are achieved by fulfilling specific visual aesthetics, such as turn out and pointed feet in a somewhat shallow manner, such as John Martin suggests: “ballet appealed to the senses on a purely superficial level” (Martin, 2004, p.34, in Burke, 2009, p.2). In this same vein, Martin underlines the absence of the ‘primitive’ heart required in contemporary dance but not in ballet, which gratifies “[…] the spectator's search for ‘sensual satisfaction’, [but] did not demand that visceral, muscular engagement with the artistic medium—the material body” (Martin, 1936, p.22, in Burke, 2009, p.2). That is, ballet spectators will simply fulfil their aesthetic senses by contemplating pleasing positions and movements, which do not require any artistic commitment, but requires a feeling of “kinaesthetic empathy” (Patterson,  2012, p. 492)..   

 

In fact, while practicing contact improvisation we constantly engage in what Mark Patterson (2012) calls a “kinaesthetic empathy” (p. 492). We sensed the state of the other in a subtle way, experiencing intersubjective capacities, that some suggest we were born with. Colwyn Trevarthen describes this innate capacity as follows:

“A child is born with motives to find and use the motives of other persons in ‘conversational’ negotiation of purposes, emotions and meaning. The efficiency of sympathetic engagement between persons signals the ability of each to ‘model’ or to ‘mirror’ the motivations and purposes of companions, immediately” (Trevarthen, 1998, p. 16).

Patterson suggests that in contact improvisation, dancers develop their innate capacities, having a vivid intersubjective experience of each other, and developing an empathic sense based on proprioceiving each other’s movements (Patterson 2012, p. 492). 

Furthermore, contact improvisation happens by aesthetic kinaesthetic and proprioceptive choices made by both dancers, which are not individual but collective, since the connection that should exist between the two dancers will not be established if those choices emerge from only one of the dancers. This means that none of the dancers knows what will happen in advance. The movement arises in the urgency of the moment, in the quest of an aesthetic emotional sense. Indeed, often while dancing the duet, Robert and I feel which movements or positions are effective and satisfying, without the need of looking at it in mirrors for example. This experience recalls Engelsrud’s (2007) suggestion about contact improvisation: “this dance form leaves movement choices and partnering solutions open to the dancer and to the relationship between dancers” (p. 58).

 

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1. Methodology

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In order to gather information concerning my study’s subject I chose to interview both the performers and the audience. Firstly, I conducted an open discussion with the performers based on a questionnaire (cf. appendix I). I aimed to avoid an artificial atmosphere with this procedure, but this questionnaire kept us focussed. I used open questions, which gave us space to go further and deeper about certain points. The structure of this dissertation follows a practical-theoretical orientation. This means that the discussion is focussed on my practical experience, in relation to several theoretical perspectives, which will allow for the interpretation of my practice. 

Secondly, I interviewed the audience by means of another questionnaire (cf. appendix I), which also used open questions, intended to allow for free expression of the participants’ feelings, impressions and points of view. Afterwards, I led an open discussion with the seven people who watched and answered the audience questionnaire.

With these procedures, I aimed to learn about the motivations and the expectations of the performers and audience, as well as the way they felt while performing and watching the piece: their emotional state, and other physical and psychological experiences. I obtained the performers’ and the audience’s points of view and analysed them, drawing a parallel between the two information sources.  

I gathered a group of seven people, being five of them female and two male, with a wide age range difference, from seventeen to fifty seven years old, and interested in different subjects (cf. appendix III). It was essential to include dancers as well as non-dancers, since usually I only get feedback about the duet from my teachers and colleagues, all belonging to the ‘dance world’. I believe that it is an important aspect, since previous exposure to skilful dance experiences is likely to affect our judgement of aesthetic values (Montero, 2006).

I wanted to get different points of view and the best way was to include people who have various interests but all of them in the arts’ field, because I wanted to have access to opinions and feelings from people who have an educated artistic sensibility. Besides, I believe that the variety of the artistic culture of the participants is also a significant aspect, since the artistic sensibility of the participants with a visual art education may be relevant to the extent that they will be watching dancers who ‘do not see’. In other words, the participants with a visual art education, may be particularly sensible to the inner experience of those who are dancing without seeing. 

The discussion has been guided in a holistic manner, avoiding to answer separately each question. I took field notes about the main points evoked by participants, whose speech has been subsequently completed with notes taken from the video recorded. I invited the audience to come to the studio to watch our duet and they read a short description I wrote about the piece on the event’s online page.  I aimed to create an intimate performance atmosphere.

After the performance, I delivered a questionnaire so they could think about the questions and write some comments about them, when their ideas and opinions were still vivid in their minds. Following this, we started an open discussion about both the duet and their answers to the questionnaire. 

The following content analysis will entangle both the written and the verbal statements, produced respectively in the answers participants gave to the questionnaire and during the open discussion. The kind of the content analysis is thematic and non-categorical, and the analysis unit has a ‘variable geometry’, i.e. it may encompass either a single word, or a sentence, or even a group of sentences (Bardin, 2009). The aim of this kind of content analysis is to grasp the global sense of the participants’ view.

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2. Outline of performers’ view

 

When Robert, Albert, and I rehearsed the piece for the first time, we did not have specific expectations, besides experimentalism and improvisation; it was a productive session, where a proprioceptive discovery began by means of a deep physical and psychological exploration. We did not reflect previously about it, and we were not worried about the final product or its visual aesthetics; instead, we were concerned with the process of getting there.  Those are some of the features that enrich the improvisation process.

We decided to improvise together, having in mind the main concepts: proprioception and kinaesthesia. On our first rehearsal, I recognised that until that experience, I had improvised with many people with my eyes open and even though, I thought about feeling the other person’s body, I did not use my hands to touch his/her body. When I improvised with Robert with eyes closed for the first time, I used intensively my hands reaching instinctively for him with my fingers. It was an exploration of a new and very sensitive way of connecting with the other person. Patterson (2012) indicates that there is no clear single organ to which touch matches like the other senses, for instance there is a direct relationship between sight and eyes and hearing and ears. Could we consider that flesh is the correspondent organ to touch? We can still feel how a certain surface’s texture is when wearing gloves, so the conclusion might be that touch corresponds to various body parts. This idea that touch has a wide range of correspondent body parts is connected to what Paxton (in Fall after Newton, 1988) suggests about our senses: “the main focus of training is retooling the senses. It isn’t just the sensitive touch which must be expanded, but all the senses must become elastic enough to navigate through spherical space” (Paxton & Smith).

Our process involved searching for kinaesthetic and proprioceptive embodied knowledge, we continually tried something new during each rehearsal, whilst keeping curiosity for each other’s bodies and where those bodies were in space. However, we were warned against the temptation of trusting in ‘the science of the body’ (Merleau-Ponty, 1968, p.7), since we were guided by this author’s enlightening assertion:

“Before the science of the body (which involves the relation with the other) the experience of my flesh as gangue of my perception has taught me that perception does not come to birth just anywhere, which it emerges in the recess of a body” (ibid, p. 9).

This means that perception does not emerge from nowhere or from the relation with another person but from the body’s setback. That open availability to immerge in our bodies’ experience changed significantly when we performed in front of other people. The idea of sharing our permanently developing quest for an aesthetic sense about kinaesthesia and proprioception with an audience seemed quite scary because this piece is a process as opposed to an offer of a finished product.  Seemingly, this is connected with the unpredictability of improvisation, every time we dance this piece it is different, and we wonder if the audience is aware of this. As Curtis L. Carter (2000) states: “What the audience views is an instance of one of the many possible realisations of the idea” (ibid, p. 181). This idea helped in the development of the piece because it made us concentrate in the process of the piece, so we could follow its main concept faithfully. The notion that the process is more important than the final product was something that helped keep myself calm, since the process of this duet is always very tangible. Designer Bruce Mau (s/d entry #3) formulates this conception by means of the following principle:

“When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we’ve already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to be there” (s/d ibid). 

 

A contiguous notion is also explored by Anna Pakes (2009) when she states that “ends and means are not as clearly defined in a creative situation” (ibid, p.17). Pursuing this idea Pakes (ibid) questions the core sense of choreographic process:  

“for one thing, the purpose or intention governing a choreographic process […] may itself shift according to the circumstances that present themselves; it may also be discovered during that process rather than being identifiable in advance” (ibid).

This uncertainty is foregrounded due the fact that we work with our eyes closed during the entire piece. This means that we are truly aware of our bodies and its surroundings, even if the outside result eventually does not adhere to the same ideals as ballet, for example.

When performing the work we wanted to create a supportive environment, and therefore invited guests. It was instructive to listen to their feedback, concerning the visual perception of the piece because they were the first ones watching how the duet looked like, so it was important to know that the shapes we created were something which captivated their attention and not only ours. At first we chose not to see ourselves in videos because we did not want to watch ourselves and become aware of the visual aesthetics of the duet. We had our own aesthetic proprioception and we did not want to change it by being aware of the shapes we created. We were afraid that this kind of awareness would make us purposely try to achieve impressive shapes, which is the opposite of our initial goal of maintaining our aesthetic sense much more internal than external. As Patterson states: “Dance is enriched by moving in a way that ‘feels right’, that is judged or feels beautiful” (2012, p. 126).

That enabled the awareness of the fact that the performance arises from the accomplishment of style through proprioceptive and kinaesthetic recognition that a movement or gesture is performed skilfully and beautifully (Patterson, 2012). In other words, in those experiences we grasp the aesthetic sense of our proprioception and kinaesthesia. We asked our teachers for feedback and they outlined that point. They said it was interesting to watch because they could feel our complicity and how much we enjoyed it.

Sometimes the movement generated contorted positions; these were achieved by the urge to discover what would happen if we pushed the movement further, rather than by trying to create a particular image for the audience. This resonates with Pedro Sanchez’s (2012) discussion of the ways dancers constantly get new spatial sensorial stimulus when improvising with someone else, since their body position changes all the time. In one moment a dancer may be standing upright and suddenly, he or she may feel his body upside down on top of the other dancer’s body. Patterson (2012) draws a parallel, discussing how a blind person knows his or her position in space through the body, which seems to be the highest use of proprioceptive feedback through muscle sense. Extending this analogy, Patterson (ibid), adds that this ability gets neater, more accurate and more flowing with practice, the result of a progressive “attunement to the muscular frame” (ibid, p. 481). 

One idea which helped us preparing to perform the duet was what Paxton (in Fall after Newton, 1988) says: “contact deals with ideas and images which are sensations first, then felt by the mind” (Paxton & Smith). This influenced the way we approach the piece, by prioritizing the sensation over shapes and images. After getting more accustomed with performing in front of an audience we started discovering tactics to attain the right mental state. We started doing the sun salutation together, feeling each other’s breathing. It was a useful tool helping with our coordination and connection. We tried to move and breathe together, so we started building a strong connection before going on stage, feeling as a unit instead of separated individuals. We had other ideas during the process of performing the piece, concepts we would like to develop in each performance. One of these ideas came from Robert which inspired me very much. Robert proposed we would think about ourselves as uneducated creatures, meaning we would not know that a hand comes after the arm or that in the end of the leg there would be a foot. Deepening this conception I added the idea of ourselves, more than uneducated about our bodies, but as aliens, we should also exaggerate the notion of searching to know how the human body works, meaning if I would find my partner’s hand I would be very interested about how that hand mechanics works. When we tried those concepts during the duet, our initial curiosity became much more intense. These techniques were extremely helpful to make us feel more aware of all the options we had while improvising, surprising ourselves, which also helped in the growing process of the piece, keeping it ‘alive’. By finding new ideas to explore, Robert and I kept on reinventing new ways of approaching the duet. As Carter (2000) says:

 

“In the many avant-garde contexts, the performer constantly has to reinvent himself or herself, often in real time” as well as “[…] improvisation as a form of performance runs the risk of falling into habitual repetitive patterns that may become stale for both performers and viewers” (ibid, p. 181).

 

Maintaining spontaneity with repeated performances of improvisational works is an interesting way of producing self-knowledge concerning the improvisation process and its characteristics, and that is why while practicing contact improvisation we constantly reinvent ourselves. To maintain spontaneity, we must avoid pitfall ‘improvisation’ choreographies which emphasise control and constraint by prioritising rules at the expense of spontaneity and creativity. We do not want to be marionettes in ‘a dance invented by a committee’ to use the expression of Beverley Clack (2014, p. 268). We want to be good dancers, whose fundamental qualities for Nietzsche were the same of good philosophers’: independence, swiftness, an ability to wander, suppleness and strength (Nietzsche, in Clack, ibid).

 

During the long process of freely experimenting, the three of us realized that this experience was not only a physical and cognitive exploration but also an emotional one. This seems to relate to Carter’s (2000) claims about improvisation:

“Improvisation draws upon intuitive resources of the mind and body” (ibid, p. 181), and “The primary instrument through which improvisation in dance takes place is the human body and its interactions with other bodies” (ibid).

Accordingly, those intuitive resources are mobilised by dancers while improvising, and thus they are implied in all the improvisation process which frequently seems to be an involuntary, if not unconscious one. Sometimes it seems that there is some sort of communication between both dancers’ unconsciousness. For instance, through experience, I realized that stimulus appear without any of the dancers having to initiate it, and I think we must treasure this aspect which keeps dancers safe from stagnation.

Pedro Sanchez (2012) underlines this idea and adds that dancers should avoid predicting and controlling the movement, and thus for dancers in improvisation contact,

“the use of momentum […] implies the searching, the recognition and the ‘hitchhiking’ in fluxes of movement already created, instead of trying to control movement by volition and muscular strength” (ibid, p. 117).

Sanchez also suggests that dancers should wait while improvising, which affords time and space so imagination appears in the dance. In a similar vein, Carter (2000) also advises about ways to avoid getting stuck while improvising, by saying that improvisation is a way of escaping stagnation, this author stressing the role of improvisation in dancers’ construction of knowledge:  “dance performances provide individualized, yet orderly knowledge be obtainable solely in the presence of improvisational dance works” (ibid, p. 23).

To escape stagnation we built a particular relationship between dance and music. Indeed, the music of the piece is live, allowing a stronger connection with the dancers, and albeit being composed it contains improvisation. Besides, the piece conceives the music and movement as one. The sound landscapes that are developed throughout the piece consort and guide the movement and vice versa. In the beginning Robert and I walk around trying to find each other in silence and the first guitar chord occurs when there is physical contact between the two of us for the first time. That leads into mellow movements and sounds building up to an explosion of sound and movement with aggressive noises and partnering moments. This structure helps us time the piece, as well as giving us different dynamics, creating diverse atmospheres during the duet, which allows us to deepen the notion and feeling of the aesthetic senses of proprioception and kinaesthesia.

 

 

3. Outline of the audience’s point of view

 

A curious comment we got was from one of our colleagues who hardly believed that all the movement in the piece was completely improvised, asking if “the entire piece was improvised”. We acquiesce, and he replied: “It really didn’t look like it was”, adding that: “your movements looked continuous and without hesitations, leading into beautiful positions and movement patterns, which made me believe it was previously choreographed”.

One might visually judge if a movement is beautiful or not because one knows that that movement if proprioceived it would be beautiful or not (Montero, 2006). Those judgments about the beauty of the movement seem to be linked to the audience imagining the experience of proprioception that the performers are experiencing. As Conroy (2013) states: “The physical experience of practicing a particular movement improves a person’s ability to perceive subtle features of that movement type when observing it” (p. 204).

Some of the audience members felt our movements on their own bodies while they watched us move.  This concept is called ‘Dance Perception’, which is the “result of the way a dancer’s body responds to the whirlings and twirlings of the performer’s” (Conroy, 2013, p. 203). This visceral feeling disappeared during the dress run, when Robert and I lost each other on stage. Usually, we never loose contact during the piece, even though we always start approximately two meters apart. In these early moments of the piece, we find one another relatively fast because we start without music, so we can hear our steps around the studio and our breathing sounds. The problem on that dress run was that we lost contact in the middle of the piece, when distorted sound landscapes devoured the theatre space. We stopped hearing any sound that would guide us and bring us together again. We both felt lost and that was when we feared that the audience would disengage from our work. This feeling haunted us until we realised that there was nothing to worry about because we could trust each other, we recognized the concept of inter-subjectivity in a practical and embodied way.

Sanches (2012) divides inter-subjectivity into 4 different categories, among them two seem to relate with our experience: a) trans-subjective inter-subjectivity, mentioning the relationship between the subject and the object; b) Inter-personal inter-subjectivity, referring to the figure of the other similar one, which presents a shared symbolic field to the subject. There are specific examples within my practice that can relate to these two categories, such as category a): once Robert and I touched a mirror, a new spatial alteration was discovered, which changed the entire atmosphere and quality of our bodies and how they touched each other by the introduction of a new feeling and texture. Also, while watching videos from the duet, I realised how many times, when I re-establish my balance Robert’s body also has a reaction to help me maintaining my balance, which seems to be an illustration of category b).

At first, we got feedback from ballet and contemporary teachers, musicians and dance students. Some people felt like they completely lost their connection with the piece from the point where we lost our physical connection. Other people told us that they found that moment very interesting because they could see that it was very real. It was an important moment for us and for the piece development, it made us realise how differently the duet can go. At first we were disappointed and we only had negative thoughts about that experience, but afterwards, we comprehended that actually that incident was a blessing. We were able to analyse the piece like we never did before, with a different perspective.

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4. Questionnaires’ and open discussions’ content analysis of participants’ responses

 

It seems that the reading of programme notes were suggestive and useful, since participant 1 wrote: “with knowledge of the programme notes, I could imagine what was going on with the dancers’ minds while they performed. (I’ve seen it before, without knowing about it beforehand)”.  Nevertheless, in her written answer, participant 2 confessed she was puzzled by the concepts she did not know, such as proprioception and kinaesthesia. This is not surprisingly if one bears in mind the fact that she is not a dancer and thus, she did not understand the concepts explored in the piece beforehand, even though she tried hard: “a lot of it I don’t understand. Sometimes trying to understand even if knowing I wasn’t going to”. During the discussion, she had the opportunity to clarify this point: "there was a lot I didn't understand from the concept but then there was a sense of relief because it was improvised, so it didn't weight as much". Seemingly, participant 7, a dance student, due to her training was better equipped to sense the piece than participant 2, a non-dancer, which converges with Montero suggestions.   

Participant 3’s first comment focused on the beginning of the piece and how he wished we took longer to find each other, creating suspense: “that there was going to be a bit more tension in trying to find each other in the space”. I explained that by now, Robert and I enhanced our acuity, being very aware of any sound, so it became quite easy to find each other.

Expressing his previous expectations, participant 4 wrote parsimoniously: “Bias - as I have seen the piece before! Went better than I thought it would”.  For her sake, participant 2 expressed her anticipated interest which was linked to the conceptual intricacy of the piece: “I was intrigued by the complexity of the concepts of the performance and was curious about understanding how you would carry it all out”.

Answering to the question concerning the physical and psychological experiences, participant 5, described her emotions while and after watching the performance. She introduced the conception of the trust needed to perform such a duet underlying what she wrote: “the trust between the dancers together with the sound harmony were very gratifying”.

During the discussion, all of the participants were surprised in how violent, and illogical our movements seemed to them at times, expressing these feelings by means of words like: “it was irrational”, “it was aggressive”. These remarks deepened the sense which emerges from some of the written sentences such as participant 6’s  answer expressing our supposed ‘fearless’ state of mind: “you didn’t seem afraid, which was quite scary”, as well as participant 3’s reply: “physical – relieved every time I thought you were going to fall but you didn’t, it looked very effortless”. I explained how much we trust each other and that we have been performing this piece many times, which enables us to take risks. Afterwards, they commented about how they feared an accident would happen, I realised how irrational it is to not dread to get hurt.  I thought that it is not a question of irrationality, but rather the result of a high and refined awareness Robert and I developed. These ideas about trust and being or not being afraid about getting hurt were already explored by Paxton and Smith (in Fall after Newton, 1988) and they concluded that, “the unconscious reflexive parts of the brain is present when the consciousmind is not afraid […] what the body can do to survive is much faster than the thought” (ibid).

Pursuing the discussion, participant 4 talked about improvisation and said that he really enjoyed that in the piece, because he could see we moved in a way we would not usually do, surprising ourselves as well as the ones who watch us. A related topic that was discussed was the honesty of the piece, for instance, participant 4 wrote: “I could connect with both the musician and the dancers because it was honest movement and honest playing – in the sense that it wasn’t for performance sake”.  In fact, our duet is not for performance sake, but for movement sake. In some extent, participant 4’s comment evokes the orientation of our duet, which considers the “aesthetic values of movement for movement’s sake” (Paterson, 2012, p. 482). To employ this author’s words, with our duet we aim to “sequester the aesthetic value of movement, and by extension, isolate and examine the particularity of movement for movement’s sake” (ibid, p. 472), thus avoiding construction a strictly choreographed performance product.

After reading the programme notes, and therefore knowing that the piece prioritised proprioception, participant 7, a dance student who prioritises ballet, said she was not sure if it would work, but after watching it, she realised that by being a somatic experience it became a good experience for the spectators, by making them feel into the movement since it was such a different way of approaching contact improvisation by dancing with our eyes closed: “I wasn’t really sure what to expect because I knew the piece prioritised the dancers experience and at first I wasn’t sure how effectively that would translate into aesthetic movement for the audience”. She admitted what appealed to her was the animalistic and instinctual sensation the piece gave her: “the appealing of the piece is that is organic, real and visceral… something very innate about watching its physicality…”. She added somewhat surprised: “you’re feeling along each other and not just going crazy… you don’t touch each other because it was choreographed…”. Answering the question concerning the physical and psychological experiences, participant 7 reiterated almost the same notions, highlighting a peaceful sensation: “It felt very innate and organic to watch: I felt very peaceful and calm but also really captivated”. Answering the question related to her emotive state, participant 7 added: “It was actually very emotionally moving because it looked so organic and real”. Moreover, all of them agreed that the piece’s physicality and the fact that Rob and I touched each other for a reason, such as curiosity, and not because it was choreographed that way appealed them.

 

Answering to the question about the emotional experience, participant 4 mentioned how the performance troubled him: “quite a mix of emotions – a little angst (music influence perhaps!) – moments of pleasure (for want of a better word!)”. Participant 2, admitted that she was confused after reading the programme notes, but once she started watching the performance, she felt relieved because the piece was all improvised, so the fact that she did not know a lot about the concepts did not weight as much as she dreaded. In fact, she experienced vivid and challenging emotions, which she formulated by means of the following words she wrote: “Unbalanced balance between positive emotions. Disturbing at times, soft and fluid others, painful relation to the music. Eyes closed triplicated the power of the performance”. During the discussion, participant 2, confessed that she feels very uncomfortable when she dances so she could not picture herself being part of such a piece “I’m awkward at dancing so I can’t imagine doing it”.  Following this same idea, she wrote while answering to the final question concerning her motivation of experiencing it herself by swapping places with the performers, she admitted: “Not really as I don´t feel identified with it and I don’t have the capability to do it. I envy the ability of doing it though”. This was a very interesting point, because all the members who were dancers had the exact opposite feeling. For instance, participant 7, a dance student and ballet fan, wrote the following enthusiastic sentence: “yes, the entire time I could feel my body becoming more aware and I felt the sensation of doing the movement as I watched it occur”. For its part, participant 1 expressed passionately her will to practice this experience, and, grounding her answer on the concepts we explore, she added the idea that it would be freeing, clarifying as well as it would help the development of her self-knowledge about her body: “I really, really wanted to experience it too. As a dancer it would seem like a very interesting challenge which would open up new ways of moving for me, and also get to play around with my own proprioception and kinaesthesia”. 

Finally, participant 6 specifically talked about how she observed our use of hands and that she liked it because it is a human instinct to reach first with our hands. This is a particular interesting point, which Robert and I discussed before. Usually, we are taught to use our centre during contact improvisation instead of our hands, but when this project started this idea changed for us.  Once we closed our eyes, our instinct was, to reach with our hands, so we decided not to ignore or supress that but enhance and exaggerate it instead.

 

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5. Concluding remarks

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While exploring and experimenting in this project, I was compelled to analyse the differences between dancing with my eyes closed or open. When dancing and improvising with my eyes open, a mainly visual aesthetic sense is automatically utilised. Subsequently, I am more focused on the external perception of body shapes achieved through movement, than on the sensation movements give me. On the other hand, when improvising with closed eyes, I tend to ‘listen’ more to my body and my proprioceptive and kinaesthetic awareness are enhanced, which means I recognize where my extremities are but I am not able to distinct a clear perception. Uwe Proske and Simon C. Gandevia (2009) illustrate this point by stating that kinaesthesia“[…] is a mysterious sense since, by comparison with our other senses such as vision and hearing, we are largely unaware of it in our daily activities” (p. 4139). These authors add that the lack of sight allows the acknowledgement about our body movements and positions even though “there is no clearly defined sensation that we can identify” (ibid).

 

So far, the most fascinating audience’s reaction I have found is how people’s kinaesthesia is stimulated and how they acknowledge that stimulus through their body in a sort of synesthetic way, as participant 7 wrote in one of her questionnaire answers. Seemingly, she projected herself on the piece, on the performers’ movements and, by wiling to be part of the improvisation, simultaneously, she seemed to achieve a kind of a process of incorporation introjection of our proprioceptive and kinaesthetic experience. Simultaneously, another concomitant process seemingly occurred with participant 7; paraphrasing Claude Lefort (1968, p. LVI), while watching the duet, the manifest visibility of the performance closed in over itself across the zone of latent visibility of her flesh.

I suggest that the intensive and exclusive use of sight ‘blinds’ us from our proprioceptive and kinaesthetic knowledge. Accordingly, we do not really live in our bodies, but in a differed way, we see our bodies.  On the contrary, when we dance with closed eyes we live in and by our bodies, in skin and fleshy awareness of our aesthetic sense, born from proprioceptive and kinaesthetic knowledge. Besides, we have a different awareness of the space surrounding us, as well as, where our body is in relation to the space. This happens because we pay more attention to every movement we do, understanding if there is any danger of clashing, while when we can see where everything is there is no need of using our proprioception or kinaesthesia since we can just look and realize our spatial position.

Nevertheless, I wonder if in the long term, the absence of visual clues will create a sort of ‘adhesive identifications’, or the constitution of ‘a second defensive skin’ (Bernard, 2011) somewhat alike of what happens with blind people when engaged in deep intersubjective situations (ibid).

My witness is the empty sky seems to be a never-ending project in which I intend to continue exploring and developing new ideas around how sight affects the way I dance through altering my proprioceptive and kinaesthetic senses and aesthetics, as well as, discovering its impact on the audience.

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6. Bibliography

 

Written Sources:

• Bardin, L. (2009). Análise de Conteúdo. Lisboa: Edições 70.

• Bernard, A. (2011). Déficience sensorielle, utilisation de l’espace et constitution de l’espace psychique. Psychothérapie d’un enfant aveugle. Neuropsychiatrie de l’enfance et de l’adolescence 59, pp. 33–40.

• Block, B. & Kissell, J. (2001). The dance: essence of embodiment. Theoretical Medicine, 22: pp. 5–15.

• Broadhurst, S. (2012).  Merleau-Ponty and neuroaesthetics: two approaches to performance and technology. Digital Creativity, Vol. 23, Nos. 3–4, pp. 225–238.

• Burke, S. (2009). Rejecting Artifice, Advancing Art: The Dance Criticism of John Martin. Columbia Journal of American Studies Volume 9.

• Carter, C. (2003). Arts and Cognition: Performance, Criticism and Aesthetics. Annals for Aesthetics (Chronika Aesthetikes), Vol. 42 (2003): pp. 19-24.

• Carter, C. (2000). Improvisation in Dance. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 58:p. 2.

• Clack, B. (2014). ‘Beginning Something New’: Control, Spontaneity and the Dancing Philosopher. SOPHIA 53: pp. 261–273.

• Conroy, R. (2013). Responding Bodily. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 71: p. 2.

• Corinne, J. & Ehrenberg, S & Reynolds, D.  (2012). The experience of watching dance: phenomenological–neuroscience duets.  Phenomenology Cognitive Science, 11: pp. 17–37.

• Engelsrud (2007). Teaching Styles in Contact Improvisation: An Explicit Discourse with Implicit Meaning. Dance Research Journal 39 / 2: pp. 58-73.

• Gandevia, S. & Proske, U. (2009). The kinesthetic senses. J Physiol 587.17 pp. 4139–4146.

• Hatwell, Y. (2006). Appréhender l'espace pour un enfant aveugle. Enfances & Psy 4 (no 33) , p. 69-79

• Hutt K., Redding E. (2014). The effect of an eyes-closed dance-specific training program on dynamic balance in elite pre-professional ballet dancers: a randomized controlled pilot study. Journal of Dance Medicine & Science. 2014 Mar;18(1): pp. 3-11.

• Kerouac, J. (1997). Some of the Dharma. New York: Viking.

• Krantz, A. (2012). Let the Body Speak: Commentary on Paper by Jon Sletvold. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 22: pp. 437–448.

• Lefort, C. (1968). Forward of the Editor, in Meraleau-Ponty, M. The visible and the invisible. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

• Mau, B. (s/d). An incomplete manifesto for growth.

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• Montero, B. (2006).  Proprioception as an Aesthetic Sense. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 64: p. 2.

• Merleau-Ponty, M. (2005). Phenomenology of Perception. London and New York: Routledge.

• Meraleau-Ponty, M. (1968). The visible and the invisible. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

• Novack, C. (1990). Sharing the Dance Contact Improvisation and American Culture.  New Directions in Anthropological Writing. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

• Patterson, M. (2012). Movement for Movement’s Sake? On the Relationship Between. Aesthetics, Essays in Philosophy: Vol. 13: Iss. 2, Article 7.

• Pakes, A. (2009). Knowing through dance-making: choreography, practical knowledge and practice as research, in Jo Butterworth and Liesbeth Wildschut (Eds.) Contemporary Choreography: A Critical Reader. New York: Routledge.

• Pinto, S. (2012). Do environmental light changes enhance proprioception/Kinaesthesia in performance specific training? Master dissertation. Trinity Laban - Conservatoire of Music and Dance.

• Potter, C. (2006). Sense of Motion, Senses of Self: Becoming a Dancer. ETHNOS, VOL. 73:4, DEC. 2008 (pp. 444–465).

• Press, C. (2009). Self Psychology and the Modern Dance Choreographer. Self and Systems: Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci. 1159: pp. 218–228.

• Roberts, R. (2014). What Goes ‘‘99-Thump?’’. November | Volume 12 | Issue 11

 

• Sanches, P. (2012). Encontro entre corpos: um estudo sobre o corpo por meio do diálogo entre a dança: Contato improvisação e a psicanálise winnicottiana [Embodied meeting: a study about body through a dialogue between Contact Improvisation dance and Winnicott’s Psychoanalysis]. Master dissertation, University of São Paulo.

• Stillman, B. (2002). Making Sense of Proprioception. The meaning of proprioception, kinaesthesia and related terms. Physiotherapy November /vol 88/no 11

• Stinson, S. (2006). Research as choreography. Research in Dance Education, Vol. 7, No. 2, pp. 201–209.

• Suquet, A. (2007). « La collaboration Cage-Cunningham : un processus expérimental », Repères, cahier de danse, 2007/2 n° 20, p. 11-16. DOI : 10.3917/reper.020.0011.

• Stinson, S. W., and A. Dils. 2008. “Dance in Qualitative Research.” In The Sage Encyclopaedia of Qualitative Research Methods, edited by Lisa Given, 184–186. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

• Stinson, S. W. 2006. “Research as Choreography.” Research in Dance Education 7 (2): pp. 201–209.

• Trevarthen, C. (1998). The concept and foundations of infant intersubjectivity. In  S. Bråten, ed. Intersubjective Communication and Emotion in Early Ontogeny,  pp. 15–46. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press  

• Vukadinović, M. & Marković, S. (2011).  Aesthetic Experience of Dance Performances. PSIHOLOGIJA, 2011, Vol. 45 (1), pp. 23–41.

 

Audio-visual Source:

• Paxton, S. & Smith. N. (1988). Fall after Newton [online Documentary]. Videoda, Contact Collaborations. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k768K_OTePM (accessed 2nd May 2015).

 

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7. Appendixes

 

Appendix I

Performers’ questionnaire

1. What were your expectations before doing the piece each time we rehearsed it or performed it? Were those expectations different in between rehearsals and performances?

2. How would you describe your physical and psychological experiences while dancing/playing the piece?

3. Could you describe your emotions while dancing/playing the piece?

4. Could you describe your mood concerning the aesthetic feelings you experience through the awareness you may have of your body while dancing/playing the piece?

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Appendix II

Audience’s questionnaire

1. What were your expectations before watching the piece after knowing the concept through reading the programme notes provided?

2. How would you describe your physical and psychological experiences while watching the piece?

3.  Could you describe your emotions while and after the duet?

4. After watching the piece did you feel any motivation in the sense of, feeling the will of experiencing it yourself by swapping places with the performers? Why?

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Appendix III

 

Participants

Age

Gender

Profession

Observations

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Participant 1

18

Female

Dance student (Rambert School of Ballet and Contemporary Dance) and photographer and video-maker amateur

 

Participant 2

20

Female

Film and TV student (London College of Communication)

 

Participant 3

21

Male

Dance student (Rambert School of Ballet and Contemporary Dance)

 

Participant 4

21

Male

Dance student (Rambert School of Ballet and Contemporary Dance)and musician

 

Participant 5

57

Female

Plastic and visual arts’ teacher (secondary school)

 

Participant 6

17

Female

Dance student(Rambert School of Ballet and Contemporary Dance)

 

Participant 7

19

Female

Dance student(Rambert School of Ballet and Contemporary Dance)