Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-v9fdk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T14:17:30.069Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A Kinesthetic Mode of Attention in Contemporary Dance Practice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 July 2015

Shantel Ehrenberg
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In this article, original interview material, existing published accounts, and the author's own experience as a contemporary dancer are put in conversation to explicitly address a particular kinesthetic awareness, sensitivity, and curiosity valued and employed by a group of dancers in the practice of contemporary dance, which is referred to as a kinesthetic mode of attention. The research informing this article uses a phenomenological and sociological approach and discusses, in detail, what this mode of attending “is like,” how it is described in different ways by dancers, and how it might be developed and nurtured in training and working in the style of contemporary dance. An overarching aim of this work is to contribute to greater understanding and valuing of the nuances and particularities of kinesthetic intelligence in dance practices and to address the cognitive aspects of dancing.

Keywords

Attentioncontemporary dancekinesthesiakinesthetic awarenessproprioceptionpractice-based research
Type
Articles
Information
Dance Research Journal , Volume 47 , Issue 2 , August 2015 , pp. 43 - 61
Copyright
Copyright © Congress on Research in Dance 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Aalten, Anna. 2004. “‘The Moment When It All Comes Together’: Embodied Experiences in Ballet.” European Journal of Women's Studies 11: 263–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Albright, Ann Cooper. 2011. “Situated Dancing: Notes from Three Decades in Contact with Phenomenology.” Dance Research Journal 43(2): 5–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Banes, Sally. 1987. Terpsichore in Sneakers: Post-Modern Dance. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.Google Scholar
Bartky, Sandra Lee. 1990. Femininity and Domination: Studies in the Phenomenology of Oppression. Abingdon, UK: Routledge.Google Scholar
Bleeker, Maaike. 2008. Visuality in the Theatre: The Locus of Looking. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1980. The Logic of Practice. Translated by Nice, Richard. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Butler, Judith. 1990. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Abingdon, UK: Routledge.Google Scholar
Bull, Cynthia Jean Cohen. 1988. “Looking at Movement as Culture: Contact Improvisation to Disco.” In Moving History/Dancing Cultures, edited by Dils, Ann and Albright, Ann Cooper, 404–13. Middletown, CT: Wesleyen University Press.Google Scholar
Claid, Emilyn. 2006. Yes? No! Maybe: Seductive Ambiguity in Dance. Abingdon, UK: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Copeland, Roger. 1993. “Dance, Feminism, and the Critique of the Visual.” In Dance, Gender and Culture, edited by Thomas, Helen, 139–50. London: Macmillan Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Creswell, John W. 2007. Qualitative Inquiry and Research Design: Choosing Among Five Approaches, 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Crossley, Nick. 2001a. “The Phenomenological Habitus and Its Construction.” Theory and Society 30: 81–120.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crossley, Nick. 2001b. The Social Body: Habit, Identity and Desire. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Csordas, Thomas J. 1993. “Somatic Modes of Attention.” Cultural Anthropology 8(2): 135–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Csordas, Thomas J. 1994. Embodiment and Experience: The Existential Ground of Culture and Self. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Dempster, Elizabeth. 2010. “Women Writing the Body: Let's Watch a Little How She Dances.” In The Routledge Dance Studies Reader, edited by Carter, Alexandra and O'Shea, Janet, 229–35. Abingdon, UK: Routledge.Google Scholar
Eddy, Martha. 2009. “A Brief History of Somatic Practices and Dance: Historical Development of the Field of Somatic Education and Its Relationship to Dance.” Journal of Dance & Somatic Practices 1(1): 5–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ehrenberg, Shantel. 2012a. “The Dancing Self/Other: Kinaesthesia and Visual Self-Reflection in Contemporary Dance.” Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Manchester, School of Arts, Languages and Cultures, Manchester, UK.Google Scholar
Ehrenberg, Shantel. 2012b. “A Contemporary Dancer's Kinaesthetic Experiences with Her Dancing Self-Image.” In Spacing Dance(S)—Dancing Space(S) Anthology, edited by Ravn, Susanne and Rouhiainen, Leena, 193–213. Odense, Denmark: University Press of Southern Denmark.Google Scholar
Figuerola, Luisa. 2009. “Release Based Dance Technique: A Systematic Investigation.” Unpublished MSc thesis, Trinity Laban, London.Google Scholar
Fortin, Sylvie, Long, Warwick, and Lord, Madeleine. 2002. “Three Voices: Researching How Somatic Education Informs Contemporary Dance Technique Classes.” Research in Dance Education 3(2): 155–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foster, Susan Leigh. 1986. Readng Dancing: Bodies and Subjects in Contemporary American Dance. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Foster, Susan Leigh. 1997. “Dancing Bodies.” In Meaning in Motion, edited by Desmond, J. C., 235–57. Durham: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foster, Susan Leigh. 2011. Choreographing Empathy: Kinesthesia in Performance. Abingdon, UK: Routledge.Google Scholar
Franko, Mark. 2011. “Editor's Note: What Is Dead and What Is Alive in Dance Phenomenology?” Dance Research Journal 43(2): 1–4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gallagher, Shaun. 2005. How the Body Shapes the Mind. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gardner, Sally. 2007. “The Dancer, the Choreographer and Modern Dance Scholarship: A Critical Reading.” Dance Research XXV(1): 35–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ginot, Isabelle. 2010. “From Shusterman's Somaesthetics to a Radical Epistemology of Somatics.” Dance Research Journal 42(1): 12–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Green, Jill. 2015. “Somatic Sensitivity and Reflexivity as Validity Tools in Qualitative Research.” Research in Dance Education 16(1): 67–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Green, Jill, and Stinson, Susan W.. 1999. “Postpositivist Research in Dance.” In Researching Dance, edited by Fraleigh, Sondra Horton and Hanstein, Penelope, 91–123. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.Google Scholar
H'Doubler, Margaret Newell. 1921. A Manual of Dancing: Suggestions and Bibliography for the Teacher of Dancing. Madison, WI: Tracy & Kilgore.Google Scholar
Järvinen, Hanna. 2006. “Kinesthesia, Synesthesia and Le Sacre Du Printemps: Responses to Dance Modernism.” Senses & Society 1(1): 71–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kvale, Steinar, and Brinkmann, Svend. 2009. Interviews: Learning the Craft of Qualitative Research Interviewing. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Legrand, Dorothée. 2006. “The Bodily Self: The Sensori-Motor Roots of Pre-Reflective Self-Consciousness.” Phenomenology and Cognitive Science 5: 89–118.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Legrand, Dorothée. 2007. “Pre-Reflective Self-Consciousness: On Being Bodily in the World.” Janus Head, Special Issue: The Situated Body 9(1): 493–519.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Legrand, Dorothée, and Ravn, Susanne. 2009. “Perceiving Subjectivity in Bodily Movement: The Case of Dancers.” Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 8(3): 389–408.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Manen, Max van. 1990. Researching Lived Experience: Human Science for an Action Sensitive Pedagogy. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Mason, Jennifer. 2002. Qualitative Researching, 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Mauss, Marcel. 1934. “Techniques of the Body.” In Incorporations: Zone 6, edited by Crary, Jonathan and Kwinter, Sanford, 455–77. New York: Urzone.Google Scholar
Merriman, Peter. 2010. “Architecture/Dance: Choreographing and Inhabiting Spaces with Anna and Lawrence Halprin.” Cultural Geographies 17(4): 427–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 1945. Phenomenology of Perception. Translated by Smith, Colin. Abingdon, UK: Routledge.Google Scholar
Montero, Barbara. 2010. “Does Bodily Awareness Interfere with Highly Skilled Movement?” Inquiry 53(2): 105–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morris, Gay. 2006. A Game for Dancers. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.Google Scholar
Ness, Sally Ann. 2011. “Foucault's Turn from Phenomenology: Implications for Dance Studies.” Dance Research Journal 43(2): 19–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Novack, Cynthia J. 1990. Sharing the Dance: Contact Improvisation and American Culture. Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Pakes, Anna. 2009. “Knowing Through Dance-Making: Choreography, Practical Knowledge and Practice-as-Research.” In Contemporary Choreography: A Critical Reader, edited by Butterworth, Jo and Wildschut, Liesbeth, 10–22. Abingdon, UK: Routledge.Google Scholar
Parviainen, Jaana. 1998. Bodies Moving and Moved. Tampere, Finland: Tampere University Press.Google Scholar
Parviainen, Jaana. 2002. “Bodily Knowledge: Epistemological Reflections on Dance.” Dance Research Journal 34(1): 11–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Potter, Caroline. 2008. “Sense of Motion, Senses of Self: Becoming a Dancer.” Ethnos 73(4): 444–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Purser, Aimie Christianne Elizabeth. 2008. “Exploring the Embodied Bases of Being Through Merleau-Ponty and Dance: A Conversation Between Philosophy and Practice.” Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK.Google Scholar
Rainer, Yvonne. 1965. “Some Retrospective Notes on a Dance for 10 People and 12 Mattresses Called ‘Parts of Some Sextets.’” The Tulane Drama Review 10(2): 168–178.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ravn, Susanne. 2009. Sensing Movement, Living Spaces: An Investigation of Movement Based on the Lived Experience of 13 Professional Dancers. Saarbrücken, Germany: VDM Verlag.Google Scholar
Ravn, Susanne. 2010. “Sensing Weight in Movement.” Journal of Dance & Somatic Practices 2(1): 21–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ravn, Susanne, and Hansen, Helle Ploug. 2013. “How to Explore Dancers’ Sense Experiences? A Study of How Multi-Sited Fieldwork and Phenomenology Can Be Combined.” Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health 5(2): 196–213.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reynolds, Dee. 2007. Rhythmic Subjects. London: Dance Books.Google Scholar
Roche, Jenny. 2011. “Embodying Multiplicity: The Independent Contemporary Dancer's Moving Identity.” Research in Dance Education 12(2): 105–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rouhiainen, Leena. 2003. Living Transformative Lives: Finnish Freelance Dance Artists Brought into Dialogue with Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology. Helsinki, Finland: Acta Scenica.Google Scholar
Sheets-Johnstone, Maxine. 1966. The Phenomenology of Dance. 1980 ed. London: Dance Books.Google Scholar
Shusterman, Richard. 2008. Body Consciousness: A Philosophy of Mindfulness and Somaesthetics. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sklar, Deidre. 2000. “Reprise: On Dance Ethnography.” Dance Research Journal 32(1): 70–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sklar, Deidre. 2007. “Unearthing Kinesthesia.” In The Senses in Performance, edited by Banes, Sally and Lepecki, André, 38–46. Abingdon, UK: Routledge.Google Scholar
Spohn, Cydney, and Prettyman, Sandra Spickard. 2012. “Moving Is Like Making Out: Developing Female University Dancers’ Ballet Technique and Expression Through the Use of Metaphor.” Research in Dance Education 13(1): 47–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Warburton, Edward C. 2011. “Of Meanings and Movements: Re-Languaging Embodiment in Dance Phenomenology and Cognition.” Dance Research Journal 43(2): 65–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zahavi, Dan. 2011. “Varieties of Reflection.” Journal of Consciousness Studies 18(2): 9–19.Google Scholar