Body and Mind in Motion: Dance and Neuroscience in Conversation

by Glenna Batson, Margaret Wilson

Overview

Western contemporary dance and body-mind education have engaged in a pas de deux for more than four decades. The rich interchange of somatics and dance has altered both fields, but scholarship that substantiates these ideas through the findings of twentieth-century scientific advances has been missing. This book fills that gap and brings to light contemporary discoveries of neuroscience and somatic education as they relate to dance. Drawing from the burgeoning field of “embodiment”—itself an idea at the intersection of the sciences, humanities, arts, and technologies—Body and Mind in Motion highlights the relevance of somatic education within dance education, dance science, and body-mind studies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781783201792
Publisher:	Intellect, Limited
Publication date:	09/15/2014
Pages:	254
Product dimensions:	6.90(w) x 9.10(h) x 2.80(d)

About the Author

Glenna Batson is a movement muse, educator, and mentor who has worked at the intersection of dance, movement science, and somatic education for more than five decades.

 

Margaret Wilson is associate professor at the University of Wyoming.

Read an Excerpt

Body and Mind in Motion

Dance and Neuroscience in Conversation

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By Glenna Batson, Margaret Wilson

Intellect Ltd

Copyright © 2014 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-78320-236-2

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CHAPTER 1

From Conversation to Discourse

... the aesthetic has long located art within a science of sensuous knowing. What neurosciences and cognitive science are now adding to the equation is this exciting possibility of getting closer to the underlying conditions fueling that ancient relationship. ...

(Barbara Stafford 2011: 1)

Overview

At the turn of the twenty-first century, dancers found themselves in a new and compelling conversation around the topic of cognitive processes within dancemaking. The now-global dialogue on embodied cognition has opened a space for artistic and scientific exchange. Synthetic theories and emergent technologies have charted new methodologies for researching embodied processes. The results have been tangible, spawning new movement creation, bolstering interdisciplinary studies and benefiting sociocultural, scientific and medical sectors. This chapter highlights early formal initiatives in this exchange.

Focusing in ...

• What topics are dancers currently researching within embodied cognition?

• What exchanges are happening globally in research, choreography and pedagogy?

• What forms are these exchanges taking – artistic, scientific, social/humanitarian, synthetic and beyond?

• What benefits have been realized in different sociocultural and technological sectors?

• What potential obstacles to future development merit our attention?

Experiential prelude

From where do you draw choreographic inspiration outside of dance praxis? How do you work with other fields of study, social networks and digital or other technologies to enhance your growth and development, personally and professionally? Where do you locate your work within history and historicity, from conservation (archiving) at one end to preservation (sustainability) at the other?

Create a 'mind map' – a graphic drawing of your tree of knowledge. Are you surprised by the results? Make a list of words that embrace embodied cognition in dancemaking. Now consider these questions: Where are you positioned within this conversation? What challenges do you see within the conversation and exchange? In what ways is dance influencing perspectives on embodiment in science or other disciplines?

Open-sourced dance

'May you live in interesting times' is a colloquial Chinese proverb containing within it the paradox of opportunity and curse. These times are interesting, indeed. Today, globalization and technology are driving a culture of continuous innovation. The message (overt or covert) is a call to constantly change. Within western post-modern dance, this spirit of innovation is a potent modus operandi. The processes of dancemaking have been likened to an irrepressible 'evolutionary urge' (Mason 2009: 27), struggling to thrive through complex processes of selection and variation. One major difference exists, however: Compared to the actual process of Darwinian evolution, the timeline is sped up exponentially.

As various trends continue to shape the evolution of dance, the threat of ossification and extinction loom. Tension exists between preserving the past and future survival (Lansdale 2005). Over the last century, dance has made an enormous impact on social capital and community cohesion. Meta-analyses have shattered the perception of dance as an esoteric, elite discipline devoted solely to art making (Guetzkow 2002; Mitchell, Innoue and Blumenthal 2002; Reid 2011; Burns 2007).

Paradoxically, the impact of continuous innovation offers the promise of sustainability in dance. Simultaneously, it demands that dancers lead 'hybrid lives', (Risner 2012: 185). One emblem of survival has been the thrust towards open-sourced knowledge and interdisciplinarity. Relational and cooperative in its ethos (Warburton 2011), dance largely has challenged single discipline hegemony (Melrose 2009). Throughout the last half of the twentieth century particularly, dancers sourced from everywhere for inspiration and artistic development (Borgdorff 2009). Collaborations have ramified into a system with many interacting parts offering multiple possibilities for connection (Stafford 2011). Dancers engaged in cross-disciplinary, multi-disciplinary, trans-disciplinary, post -disciplinary and even anti-disciplinary collaborations (Liu 2010; Burt 2009). These were remarkable for their heterogeneity, diversity, originality (Borgdorff 2009: 3, 13) and debatable success (Liu 2010). Interdisciplinarity within dance implies that projects have enough body and momentum to survive a contextual flash-in-the-pan. After all, sourcing in dance is not only a matter of acquiring knowledge, but also embodying knowledge through dynamical movement processes.

The exchange around cognitive processes in dancemaking is of particular interest. In the last two decades, dance has captured the imagination of many scientists interested in embodiment and cognition, exceeding that of other movement studies (gymnastics, sports or martial arts, for example). Interest in embodied cognition has stretched across a wider spectrum of domains, such as cognitive and affective neuroscience, phenomenology, neuropsychology, human movement science and digital technology. Discourses on embodiment have proliferated and cross-pollenated. Dancemakers now can source from a growing number of sub-disciplines and knowledge bases heretofore unrecognized and inaccessible (Figure 1.1).

Science and its supporting technologies offer dance a unique lens through which to examine dancemaking; dance likewise offers science a dynamic laboratory for investigation. Novel research threads and artistic collaborations have emerged (Bläsing, Puttke and Schack, 2010; Reynolds, Jola and Pollick 2012; Gehm, Husemann, and von Wilcke 2007). Exchanges are co-creating new methodologies, new platforms for exchange and new spaces for discussion and design. The engagement generates new questions in building and sharing competencies (Lapuente 2012; Borgdorff 2009). Whether formal or informal, this engagement has engendered new ideas that bridge across creative processes and research outcomes (Barnard and deLahunta 2011). Two decades of exchange have sown the seeds of new research that is both applied (praxis-based) and praxis-driven (Borgdorff 2006; Bläsing et al. 2012; deLahunta, Clarke and Barnard 2012).

The engagement offers mutual inspiration, affirmation and perhaps, confirmation to an understanding of embodied cognitive processes within dance. At the same time, as a new discourse emerges, it faces the challenge of creating a space for standing on its own without being dominated by the constraints (language among them) of other fields of knowledge. Such exchanges, therefore, call for an ongoing commitment to conceptual flexibility as they strive for rigor within and across their own domains. These collaborations strongly influence scientific as well as artistic values (Birringer and Fenger 2005, deLahunta, Barnard and McGregor 2009; McCarthy et al. 2006).

Dancemaking demands a deep immersion into systems complexity as researchers strive to capture and describe its dynamic processes. Thinking-while-dancing expands our understanding of the human capacity for creativity in communication and design. Via its immediacy of communication, dance provides a powerful, continuously evolving vocabulary for describing complex concepts within its own artistic outpourings, as well as for modeling those in science (Kolcio and Hingorani 2011).

The current conversation raises many evocative questions for all engaged (de Lahunta, Clarke and Barnard 2012) and provokes re-examination and clarification of many concepts (Figure 1.2). Just what cognitive processes in dancemaking are under scrutiny? How successfully have researchers been able to capture these dynamic processes? How might knowledge of these processes inform dance pedagogy, guide learning and enhance performance? How then might a growing understanding of these processes also continue to benefit other sociocultural, scientific and medical realms of inquiry?

We pause in the flow of the current conversation to identify pioneering collaborations contributing to the current momentum in embodied cognition in dancemaking. This chapter recounts pivotal historical events that surfaced at the end of the twentieth century. In addition to listing events, we call attention to the current openings and the barriers to future engagement. The following summary recounts key players and events that have given momentum to the current conversation.

Initial visibility

Throughout the latter half of the twentieth century dance scholars stocked their intellectual coffers with scholarship impressive for its breadth of coverage on the topic of embodiment – phenomenological, sociocultural and aesthetic (Sheets-Johnstone, 1981; 1992; 2011; Fraleigh 1991, Lepecki 2004; Cooper-Albright 1997; Kozel, 2007; van Manen 2007; Rouhiainen 2007; Legrand and Ravn 2009 – to name a few!) As phenomenology filtered into brain science (Miller 2003; Paterson 2012), the scientific climate warmed to the idea of embodiment and the moving body's role in thinking.

In the 1990s, Australian cognitive psychologist Catherine Stevens and dancemaker Shirley McKechnie spearheaded a formal investigation into the topic of cognition in dancemaking by coining the term 'choreographic cognition' (Stevens et al. 2003). Over a nine-month period, these dancers recorded their choreographic process. They averaged fifteen hours a week, working with a choreographer in shaping all phases of raw material from inspiration to production of a final 40-minute piece of choreography, Red Rain(Stevens et al. 2003). Supported by a grant from the Australian Research Council, the project was a collaboration between the Victorian College of the Arts, the University of Melbourne, Australian Dance Council (Ausdance), the Choreographic Centre, Canberra, and the MARCS Auditory Laboratories and the University of Western Sydney. The collaborators strove to format their creative work as research, carefully investigating the literature for methodological precedents on creativity, documenting the process and working with experimental psychologists on developing measurable outcomes. The cohort published extensive results of nearly a decade of dance-science engagement. This body of work was the first comprehensive attempt at articulating the relationship between cognitive and choreographic process (Grove, Stevens and McKechnie 2005; Stevens and McKechnie 2005).

The late 1990s also witnessed a fruitful exchange between dancemakers and scientists in Europe and Australia. Researchers began to tackle complex issues around cognitive processes embedded in the creation of a gestural art form. Formal and informal projects surfaced within the academy and within the professional dance world. Leading the initiatives were key choreographers from Europe and Australia, including William Forsythe (Ballett Frankfurt), Wayne McGregor | Random Dance U.K., and Shirley McKechnie and Catherine Stevens, University of Melbourne. These collaborators not only produced artistic projects in their home base, but also extended their work to distant scientific and artistic centers. In the United Kingdom, Wayne McGregor | Random Dance and dance-science researcher Scott deLahunta collaborated with a group of scientists, philsophers and other thinkers and technicians on a project entitled 'Choreography and Cognition', a project which subsequently included cognitive scientist, David Kirsh, California, US (Kirsh et al. 2009). In Germany, William Forsythe and The Forsythe Company created Synchronous Objects, a choreographic project based at The Ohio State University, US.

In the United States of America, interdisciplinary projects in dance and neuroscience began modestly on college campuses. The first published collaboration took place in 2002, at Allegheny College (Pennsylvania). Here, choreographer Bill Evans collaborated with neuroscientists and psychologists at a summer institute called Neuroscience of Dance and Movement. Hosted by the campus Neuroscience and Humanities institute, the course featured guest dance artist Evans (teaching Labananalysis) in dialogue with dance director Jan Hyatt, neuropsychology professor Alexander Dale, and psychology professor Jeff Hollerman. The scaffold of inquiry was designed to offer college students without dance backgrounds a chance to capture 'the "whole" of human [movement] experience.' Different knowledge bases were viewed not as 'contradictory but rather ... as useful polarities on a continuum ...' (Dale, Hyatt and Hollerman 2007: 100).

During this initial decade of cross-disciplinary dialogue, international dance and science symposia began to proliferate. These formal symposia brought together dancers, scientists and other humanities scholars. In the United Kingdom, the Dana Foundation sponsored 'Dance and the Brain,' hosted by Ballett Frankfurt in 2004, and included guest neuroscientists, Marc Jeannerod and Julie Grèzes. In 2006, the Federal Cultural Foundation of Germany organized Dance Congress Germany, the first dance congress to be held in over 50 years, looking at the knowledge base of dance – including neuroscience – with the subsequent publishing of Knowledge in Motion: Perspectives of Artistic and Scientific Research in Dance. In 2009, the Wellcome Trust (U.K.) hosted a Research Workshop on Dance and Cognitive Neurosciences. In Germany, at the University of Bielefeld organized a conference hosted by Tanzplan Essen 2010 on Intelligence and Action – Dance in the Focus of Cognitive Science with the subsequent publication of Tanz im Kopf (Birringer and Fenger 2005). Investigating how movement and thought co-shape the dance aesthetic brought together many disciplines within brain- and human movement science (Bläsing et al., 2012). With the dawn of the new millennium, researchers were exploring several topics on cognition and dancemaking. Embodied cognition in dancemaking began to appear as a topic of interest in dance medicine conferences and other hybrid symposia on cognition in the arts, sciences and humanities.

Bi-directional research

One shared objective in the current dialogue is 'to seek connections between choreographic processes and the study of movement and the brain/mind that are scientifically and artistically interesting' (deLahunta, Barnard and McGregor 2009). Science needs the perspective of dancers, those whose cognitive problem solving arises out of the movement moment. Dance artists need the perspective of science to reflect rigorously on their processes. Collaborations are not always feasible or easy, however. Dance provides a significant challenge for science. Thriving on interaction, distributed and collective cognition and destabilization, dance offers a radically anti-reductionist approach to investigating the processes of cognition. At the same time, science poses significant challenges for dancemakers: How can the processes of dancemaking be described in ways that have utility beyond personal narrative? Can technology afford us a means of viewing brain processes online? In what ways will new scientific knowledge translate into viable dance pedagogy?

To address these issues, numerous independent and inter-dependent laboratories have sprung up, each supporting a variety of themes and topics. These span a wide range of implicit and explicit approaches to dance cognition: neuroaesthetics (Cross and Ticini, 2012; Calvo-Merino et al. 2008), action observation (Calvo-Merino 2005; Jola, Ehrenberg and Reynolds 2012), kinesthetic empathy (Reynolds and Reason 2012; Paterson 2012), attention and attentional focus (Wulf 2007; Montero 2010), skill optimization (Bläsing et al. 2012), task-specific use of imagery in movement creation (May et al. 2012; Kirsh 2009; Barnard and deLahunta 2011), and the nature of the performative mind (Schmid 2013).

Emerging research models include 'bi-directional' designs where neither dance nor science takes analytical primacy (Jola, Ehrenberg and Reynolds 2012: 22). Dancer-scientists work towards articulating flexible frameworks for understanding complex psychophysical dynamics (Bläsing et al. 2012). These researchers strive to capture inter-subjective experience (Gillespie and Cornish 2010; Barnard and deLahunta 2011) and avoid reducing embodiment to neural mechanisms. New methodologies are paving ways to span qualitative and quantitative distinctions in more creative ways (Berrol 2004; Gillespie and Cornish 2010; Gadamer 1998). Such new research initiatives have been successful not only in measuring outcomes in things in matters heretofore considered 'immeasurable' (Fortin 2005: 4), but also in generating more complex questions. Organizing and exploring 'improvisational, intuitive, and trial-and-error approaches' are achieving a greater dimension of ease while maintaining 'structured, systematic' (and 'therefore scientific') rigor (Jola 2010: 205).

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Body and Mind in Motion by Glenna Batson, Margaret Wilson. Copyright © 2014 Intellect Ltd. Excerpted by permission of Intellect Ltd.
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Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Preface

Introduction

1. From Conversation to Discourse

2. Locating the Discourse

3. Researching Dance Cognition – Task-Based Analysis

4. Reframing Embodiment

5. Enaction

6. Attention and Effort

7. Training Attention – The Somatic Learning Environment

8. Somatic Approaches to Training Attention: Part I

9. Somatic Approaches to Training Attention: Part II

10. Vertical Dance: Re-Experiencing the World

11. The Road Forward

Appendix 1: Primer on Balance

Appendix 2: Explorations and Reflections

Index