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Metaphors We Dance By:
On ‘Falling’ and Kinaesthetic Experience
Sarah Pini, Doris McIlwain and John Sutton
Department of Cognitive Science, Australian Hearing Hub, 16 University Avenue, Macquarie University Sydney, NSW 2109
Email: [email protected]
Introduction
Contact Improvisation (CI) is a dance form initiated in
1972 by the dancer and choreographer Steve Paxton
and his colleagues.
Characterized by the encounter between two or more
dancers and deeply grounded in improvisation and
the development of bodily awareness, it was
influenced by civil rights and anti-war movements.
This research aims to address the practice of CI as
an example of the study of intersubjectivity.
Through this study we will provide a philosophical
account of the kinaesthetic experience of dancing ‘off
balance’ highlighting the role played by socio-cultural
and historical factors in shaping skilled movement
experience.
4. ‘Falling’ and Spatial Disorientation
By focusing on contact improvisers’ physical experience of
‘falling’, or disorientation10, this work considers how
metaphors shape and are shaped, enacted and performed
by dancers’ kinaesthetic experiences.
While, as cultural metaphor11, ‘Falling’ is often associated
with negative values such as ‘Failure’12; in CI falling, as well
as being ‘lost’ or ‘suspended’ are perceived as chances to
open up multiple possibilities and different orientations11.
References:
1. Crossley, N., 1995. Merleau-Ponty, the Elusive Body and Carnal Sociology. Body & Society, 1(1), pp.43–63.
2. Csordas, T.J., 1993. Somatic Modes of Attention. Cultural Anthropology, 8(2), pp.135–156.
3. Samudra, J.K., 2008. Memory in our body: Thick participation and the translation of kinaesthetic experience. American Ethnologist, 35(4), pp.665–681.
4. Wacquant, L., 2005. Carnal Connections: On Embodiment, Apprenticeship, and Membership. Qualitative Sociology, 28(4), pp.445–474.
5. Koteen, D., Smith, N.S. & Paxton, S., 2008. Caught Falling: The Confluence of Contact Improvisation, Nancy Stark Smith, and Other Moving Ideas
Northampton: Contact Editions.
6. Novack, C.J., 1990. Sharing the dance: contact improvisation and American culture, Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press.
7. Cohen Bull, C.J., 1997. Sense, Meaning and Perception in three dance cultures. In J. C. Desmond, ed. Meaning in Motion: New Cultural Studies of Dance.
Duke University Press Books, pp. 269–287.
8. Legrand, D. & Ravn, S., 2009. Perceiving subjectivity in bodily movement: The case of dancers. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 8(3), pp.389–408.
9. McIlwain, D. & Sutton, J., 2014. Yoga From the Mat Up: How words alight on bodies. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 46(6), pp.655–673.
10. Behnke, E.A., 2003. Contact Improvisation and the Lived World. Studia Phaenomenologica, 3, pp.39–61.
11. Cooper Albright, A., 2013. Falling. Performance Research, 18(4), pp.36–41.
12. Gibbs, R.W.J., 2003. Embodied Meanings: Performing, Interpreting and Talking about Dance Improvisation. In A. Cooper Albright & D. Gere, eds.
Taken by Surprise: a dance improvisation reader. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, p. 279.
13. Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M., 1980. Metaphors we live by 2003rd ed., Chicago; London: The University of Chicago Press.
14. Foucault, M., 1988. Technologies of the Self: A Seminar With Michel Foucault L. H. Martin, H. Gutman, & P. H. Hutton, eds.,
Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press
15. Burkitt, I., 2002. Technologies of the Self : Habitus and Capacities. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 32(2), pp.219–237.
16. Turner, R., 2010. Steve Paxton’s “Interior Techniques”: Contact Improvisation and Political Power. The Drama Review, 54(3), pp.123–135.
17. Schaffman, K., 2003. Weighting Metaphors: a response to Raymond W. Gibbs and “Hilary.” In A. Cooper Albright & D. Gere, eds.
Taken by Surprise: a dance improvisation reader. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, p. 279.
1. Framework
Through the analysis of biographical5 and
ethnographic works6 as well as the active first
person descriptions of bodily perceptions in play
with CI, this work will reframe the relationship
between cognitive and sensory structures in the
phenomenal experience of the mindful dancing
body.
2. Sensory Structures
CI privileges certain sensory modalities:
• internal awareness6
• a predominance of the sense of touch over sight7
• and of proprioceptive attention over vision8
Steve Paxton, Contact Improvisation Concert, 1975. Kathy Landman
Methods
At this early stage, two different groups of Contact
Improvisers have been considered. One based in
Sydney (Australia) led by choreographer Alejandro
Rolandi and since August 2014 a second one based in
Bologna (Italy).
This research employs a phenomenological and mixed-
method approach. Sources of inspiration include:
• Merleau-Ponty’s carnal intersubjectivity1
• Ethnographic data-gathering techniques
• Assessment of personality differences
• Participant observation
• Somatic attention2
• Thick participation3
• Carnal sociology4
3. Bodily Knowledge
Considering how thought and movement are interrelated9
and the formation and transmission of knowledge as
intersubjective3, in CI the body emerges as the locus for the
coexistence of both kinaesthetic autonomy and
interkinaesthetic connectivity10.
Sarah Pini and Céline Larrère,
Improvisation, 2005. Guillaume Gaudart
Manfredi Perego and Marzio de Nardo, Ferrara
Contact Improvisation Workshop, 2014. Sarah Pini
Manfredi Perego, Ferrara Contact Improvisation Workshop, 2014. Sarah Pini
5. Metaphors and Technologies of Self
Metaphors are rooted in bodily experiences13 that are
interconnected with the physical and cultural environment1.
According to Foucault, certain practices or technologies14
instill in the subject certain attitudes15 or habitus that shape
the self. CI as a technique of the body encompasses radical
political potential16 and personal transformation .
Conclusions
CI is at the nexus of aesthetics and politics. We consider both its cultural and historical context and its intrinsic
aperspectival or multiperspectival structure10. Yet the level of the personal is also at play. It is characterized by
the development of a ‘habit of attention’16. This research displays CI as an intersubjective technique of
awareness of the self16, which presents an embodied alternative to the conceptual metaphors of space and
failure17. By shedding light on the role played by aesthetics and politics embedded in culture-specific
technologies of the body in shaping the perception of world and self, this work will contribute to the
understanding of skilled bodies’ forms of intelligence.