the philosophy of movement
“This new provision meant a lot to endangered arts departments, departing from the usually held opinion that they did not belong in the academy because they were applied disciplines…” Nelson, p. 119
Could the argument be made that the hard sciences are applied disciplines? And if so, why are they in the academy?
We can define science as the systematic study of the natural world through observation and experiment, yielding an organized body of knowledge on a particular subject. The human [body] is undeniably a suitable subject for scientific study, and one purpose of [dance] is careful observation of one’s own [body]. This observation reveals consistent patterns that [dancers] share with one another and with teachers who direct their practice. Master [dancers] weigh these observations against their own experience and knowledge passed down from previous generations of [dance] masters, thereby generating models of the [body]. Over thousands of years, [dancers] have tested, refined, and reworked their models of the [body] based on new insights as later generations developed new [dance] techniques. Thus, over time, an organized body of knowledge has accumulated describing the nature and behavior of the [body] at a very fine level of resolution. This is one sense in which certain forms of [dance] qualify as science.
excerpted and altered from https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/your-brain-as-laboratory-the-science-of-meditation/
The universe is made of stories, not of atoms. -Muriel Rukeyser, poet and activist (15 Dec 1913-1980)
A nice sentiment, but a rather negative anti-science tone, which merely continues the unnecessary and unproductive divide between the “hard” and “soft” sciences. Muriel could have written: The universe is made of stories AND of atoms.
The existence of stories does not exclude the existence of atoms. And vice-versa.
It is kind of a nice story, how the idea came about. As Kelly said, we have stories because we have atoms.
– Aristotle, Physics II.8, The Complete Works of Aristotle Vol. I. The Revised Oxford Translation, ed. Jonathan Barnes).
If Art does not deliberate and choreography can be seen as a form of deliberation, is, then, choreographed dance not art?
Is the art that choreography generates, then, the un-deliberated performance of its execution?
Does this mean, then, that the purest artistic form of dance is the least deliberated, i.e., absolute improvisation, when the phases of exploration, experimentation, and execution collapse into a singular event, when the artist is deliberating in the moment?
Humanity also needs dreamers, for whom the disinterested development of an enterprise is so captivating that it becomes impossible for them to devote their care to their own material profit. Without doubt, these dreamers do not deserve wealth, because they do not desire it. Even so, a well-organized society should assure to such workers the efficient means of accomplishing their task, in a life freed from material care and freely consecrated to research.
-Marie Curie, scientist, Nobel laureate (7 Nov 1867-1934)
It could be argued that dance has its origins in emotions. Movement (dance) coming from the need for survival (Sheet Johnstone 1966). The need to move towards food, towards mother, away from danger, predator, fire, etc. Similarly food could be seen as the stuff that satisfies the need for nourishment.
Food, however, has ceased to be simply nourishment. Think of all the cooking shows, and kinds of food that people eat that have little or no nutritional value. Food as entertainment and enjoyment. Also the food geeks who research how to do different processes and aren’t directly interested in food as nourishment. Think of Nathan Myhrvold, Microsoft’s first CTO, who made that huge cookbook. Food as a means of epistemology.
So why is dance still so heavily associated with movement’s origin, emotion, and seen less as a means of epistemology?
“…the technique of Contact Improvisation, which prioritises the understanding of movement as response to direct physical stimuli through sharingweight with a partner(Novack 1990)”
the quote above is from Sophie Lycouris’ doctoral thesis. And I think that this notion perpetuated by Cynthia Novack’s book is what is keeping CI in the dog house of dance. This book, I believe, seems to be the academic go-to for understanding Contact Improvisation. I wish academics would use a more updated notion of CI
And I think that the above notion of what CI is, is outdated and limited. CI 26 years ago, maybe, focused on the movement in CI as a “response” to stimuli. This is only half of the coin. The focus on “movement as response” is what I think Lisa Nelson has been quoted as referring to as CI not being an art form.
There is nothing in CI that precludes the dancer from creating movement before direct stimuli. I understand why the “response” side is emphasized. Beginners all too often initiate movement without having the skills to execute their desires. End-gaining in AT™ terms. But I fear that this is where most teaching of CI stops, at the listening and responding.
But that is merely the beginning.
So back to the dog house…by limiting CI to responding, practitioners give CI that limp noodle look, the “improvised” look. (Don’t get me started about whether or not improvised has a look. Does painting have a look?). And humans, being the animals that we are, assume a whole host of values when we see an iteration of something. We, unless we know better, assume that everything of that thing we observe looks like what we have seen. Think “first impressions”. If CI is noodley in one iteration, then CI is noodley.
This noodle-heit and then the assumption of cuddly hippie everything goes lackadaisical-ness ruins CI for the rest of us who practice it differently and desire to use the tool of CI for other aesthetics and logics.
(oh, Andrew. Stop whining!)
