Ehrenberg2021 Book KinaesthesiaAndVisualSelf-Refl

COGNITIVE STUDIES IN LITERATURE AND PERFORMANCE
Kinaesthesia and
Visual Self-Reflection in
Contemporary Dance
Shantel Ehrenberg
Cognitive Studies in Literature and Performance
Series Editors
Bruce McConachie, Department of Theatre Arts, University of
Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA
Blakey Vermeule, Department of English, Stanford University, Stanford,
CA, USA
This series offers cognitive approaches to understanding perception,
emotions, imagination, meaning-making, and the many other activities
that constitute both the production and reception of literary texts and
embodied performances.
More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14903
Shantel Ehrenberg
Kinaesthesia
and Visual
Self-Reflection
in Contemporary
Dance
Shantel Ehrenberg
University of Surrey
London, UK
Cognitive Studies in Literature and Performance

ISBN 978-3-030-73402-2 ISBN 978-3-030-73403-9 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73403-9
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Acknowledgments
There are a number of people I want to acknowledge in the produc-

tion of this book, which is not the work of me alone, though I take full
responsibility for any errors made.
My sincerest gratitude to the dancers who agreed to participate in the
research project that informs this book. I am indebted to you for sharing
your time and experience and I hope that by sharing some of the richness
of our time together here, it moves with others.
Thank you to Professor Dee Reynolds, whose support and guidance
through my Ph.D. made this book possible. In addition, thank you for the
co-supervisory and advisory support of Professor Nick Crossley, Professor
Amelia Jones, and Dr. Joel Smith. Special thanks to Professor Jennifer
Fisher, whose supervision during my MFA marks a critical turning point
for my passion for dance studies, and the initial sparks of research which
led to this book.
I want to express my thanks to Palgrave Macmillan for faith in
this project, in particular Series Editors Bruce McConachie and Blakey
Vermeule. Thank you to the blind reviewers who provided generous feed-
back through two rounds of reviews of Chapters 1–4. Thanks also to
Jack Heeney, Tomas René, Vicky Bates, Uma Vinesh, Eileen Srebernik,
Shukkanthy Siva for correspondence and guidance throughout the publi-
cation process.
v
vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
There are a wealth of colleagues, peers, and friends that inform,

challenge, and inspire my moving and thinking. I would like to espe-
cially thank the following people in relation to this work: University of
Surrey colleagues from 2013 to 2020, in particular, Adam Alston, Stuart
Andrews, Chloé Déchery, Patrick Duggan, Rachel Hann, Andy Lavender,
Laura Cull O’ Maoilearca, Sabine Sörgel, and Matt Wagner, working with
you and your intelligence, kindness, criticality, and fierce ethics is inspiring
and a privilege I am extremely grateful for; Stefanie Sachsenmaier, for
your camaraderie as zoom-writing-buddy, invaluable feedback on Chap-
ters 5 & 6, and much-appreciated cheerleading in the especially chal-
lenging final months; Gill Clarke, Marina Collard, Susanne Ravn, Emma
Redding, Edel Quin, and Karen Wood, for your precious critical feed-
back to earlier research informing this work. Thanks to the B.A. (Hons)
Dance and M.A. Dance & Culture students at the University of Surrey
from 2013 to 2020 and Ph.D. candidates Gemma Connell and Jonas
Schnor—you have informed my thinking and moving in many ways over
these years. I am grateful to the University of Surrey for granting me a
sabbatical from October-December 2017 which was critical to obtaining
the book contract.
I extend deep appreciation for all those that have informed me in and
through dance, theatre, and performance studies, many of whom I engage
with in the following pages, but so many more I am not able to include
or engage with in this work. Sherrill Dodds (2019) writes my thoughts
in this respect all too well: ‘[…] how to capture its complexity, how to
honour its history, how to ensure nothing is overlooked, how to avoid
a well-worn narrative, how to be inventive in approach, how to avoid
any biases and how to please its readers’ (1)? ‘[…] as I attempt to pin
down the discipline, I imagine how dance/studies will quickly expose my
limitations, prove me wrong and invite me to rethink my position’ (2).
Yet, I dance, move, and open myself up to these vulnerabilities as I also
set out to share a perspective on the rich terrain of contemporary dance
discourse.
Parts of the research informing this book is from my Ph.D. at the
University of Manchester; I would like to acknowledge the support
of a School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures Award and an
Overseas Research Studentship (ORS) Award. I am grateful for the
discussion and feedback as part of the Ph.D. viva examination with
Professor Sarah Whatley and Professor Graeme Kirkpatrick. Thanks also
to those who were of aid during fieldwork: Moira McCormack, Mark
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS vii
Taylor, David Waring, Dawn Crandell, Breakin’ Convention, One Dance

UK, Greenwich Dance Agency, King’s College London Student Union
(London Bridge), DanceWorks, Pineapple, Royal Ballet, Siobhan Davies
Dance/Independent Dance, Trinity Laban.
Finally, I want to acknowledge critical friends Catherine Long, Antje
Hildebrandt, and Maria Poulaki in relation to this work. Heartfelt grat-
itude, always, to my immediate family; without your unconditional love
and support I could not achieve this book. Thank you, Mom, Dad, Darin,
Kristi, Marcy, Mike, Kelsie, Nathan, and Kye.
Praise for Kinaesthesia and Visual
Self-Reflection in Contemporary
Dance
“Sparse are the dance scholarly works that explicitly focus on kines-
thesia - our feeling of movement. Kinesthesia and Visual Self-Reflection
in Contemporary Dance is one of these relatively rare books. In this book
Shantel Ehrenberg not only qualifies the concept of kinesthesia, she also
places the use of the concept in a historical context as well as describes
it phenomenologically. This book is without doubt a great resource for
anyone interested in the moving body.”
—Professor Susanne Ravn, University of Southern Denmark
ix
Contents
1 Introducing, Situating, Positioning(s) 1

2 Illuminating Dancers’ Kinaesthetic Experiences 45
3 A Kinaesthetic Mode of Attention 99
4 Practices and Values Which Develop and Nurture
a Kinaesthetic Mode of Attention 143
5 Kinaesthesia and Video Self-Image(s): Foregrounding
the Imagination 189
6 Concluding Diffractions | Diffracting Conclusions 229
Index 265
xi
CHAPTER 1
Introducing, Situating, Positioning(s)
In 1992, when I began a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) in Dance at

Rutgers University, there was little that excited me about dance studies.
I perceived dance studies at that time to be predominantly engaged with
dance history, aesthetics, and/or criticism. Although I appreciated the
quality and ideas learned through these perspectives, I did not find an
affinity with them as fields of study. There was not a clear link for me, at
that time, between the study of these ‘theoretical perspectives’ related to
dance and my experiences of dancing, in the studio and on the stage.
A decade or so later, however, around 2002, I began postgraduate
study in dance. The literature I began engaging with around kinaesthetic,
somatic, psychological, and experiential perspectives piqued a new and
unexpected passion for dance studies. In particular the works of dance
studies’ scholars, such as Susan Foster, Deidre Sklar, Sondra Fraleigh,
Maxine Sheets-Johnstone, Jaana Parviainen, Jennifer Fisher, and Cynthia
Novack, who write about dancer experience in ways that try to under-
stand, situate, place value on, and/or problematise what it ‘feels like’ to be
a dancer, excited me. During my initial foray into this territory of writing
about dancing experience, I also found myself repeatedly in the philos-
ophy section of the library, drawn to the works of Maurice Merleau-Ponty
and Jean-Paul Sartre, also writing about bodily experience in ways I had
not been exposed to in the same way before. At the time it felt as if the
ideas I was encountering in dance studies were not new to others—they
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2021
S. Ehrenberg, Kinaesthesia and Visual Self-Reflection in Contemporary
Dance, Cognitive Studies in Literature and Performance,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73403-9_1
2 S. EHRENBERG
were published, some of them already for a decade or more. In many ways
what I felt was right—what I was encountering in 2002 was not neces-
sarily ‘new’. But in other ways, as hindsight now allows me to understand,
the material I was encountering was still a relatively small area of dance
studies at the time.
The above personal history in dance studies first introduces you to how
I came to the material informing this book project, over a decade ago.
However, it is also to make the point of how my experience in this subject
matter is situated within the history of dance studies. André Lepecki
(2012) provides evidence to how my above personal experience relates
to a broader issue for dance studies in the 1980s–1990s, for instance.
Lepecki points out that in 1993, as part of a dance study seminar, they
noticed that the only ‘permissible model for writing’ on contemporary
dance was descriptive press reviews and, ‘The only disciplines deemed
capable of theorizing dance were either dance history or dance anthro-
pology’ (98). In addition, he argues that these approaches created a
‘literal distance (graphical, cultural, temporal) between the writer and the
dance being theorised’ (98). He goes on in this review article to urge
dance studies to address this ‘literal distance’ and to expose contempo-
rary dance’s political ontology. He states in this article what he believes
is necessary to address the literal distance between writer and dancer, or
theory and practice, this way:
I believe critical theory also provides tools for a synchronous-critical prac-

tice of writing in dance studies that in no way represents a formalist
project. It is a matter of developing epistemologies of proximity, mobilized
theorizations of the contemporary, and critical-kinetic theories (and not
formalist reviews) tuned to dancing practices taking place in the present.
(99)
Given Lepecki is stating this in 2012, we can understand that critical theo-
retical perspectives on contemporary dance is a relatively young field and
again, substantiates how my personal history in dance studies is histori-
cally situated. As Susanne Franco and Marina Nordera (2007) argue, ‘The
epistemological revolution provoked by the advance of critical theory has
had a decisive impact on dance research’ (2).1
1 I understand ‘contemporary dance’ to be a widely used, though complex, term (e.g.

Kwan 2017; Rothfield 2021). I use the term in this work principally as it is used in the UK
1 INTRODUCING, SITUATING, POSITIONING(S) 3
The above history and Lepecki’s perspective on it lead me back to

this current project. The links between philosophy and dance prac-
tice/experience/performance have grown considerably in dance studies,
as well as in other fields. Our changing relationships to technology and
how these are significantly impacting on bodily experience has impacted
on this growth. My interest and engagement, within the rich territory of
researching and writing about dancer experience, comes at a time of an
increasing interest across many fields about bodily experience and embod-
iment. My interest in bridging that divide between the dancer and what
is ‘known’ (as knowledge, as a form of intellectual activity) about dancer
experience in and with dance studies led me to the following more specific
questions:
What are kinaesthetic sensations and imaginative experiences like for
contemporary dancers in dance-specific contexts, such as rehearsal and
training? What experiences inform and/or shape contemporary dancers’
kinaesthetic sensations and perceptions? How do seemingly external
elements intertwine (or not) with seemingly internal kinaesthetic expe-
riences for professional-level contemporary dancers in particular?
Pursuing these questions has led to fruitful understandings and points
of view about the multi-dimensional, specialised, and, in part, constructed
nature of dancers’ experiences in dance contexts, of which I aim to share
through this book.
Experience is Always Situated

Above I put forward how my interest in dance studies is historically
situated. Likewise, the arguments in this book about dancer experiences
are grounded in the point of view that experiencing bodies are always
contextual; they are affected by and affect others. The material in this
book demonstrates Thomas Csordas’ (1993) concept of ‘somatic modes
of attention’, which is the idea that ‘to attend to a bodily sensation is
not to attend to the body as an isolated object, but to attend to the
body’s situation in the world’ (138). In other words, dancers’ subjectivi-
ties are implicated in the cultural codes and practices of the style in which
they train and work. It also reinforces what scholar Gail Weiss (1999)
and other parts of Europe, referring to the wide range of current modern/contemporary
dance performance and practices, however, throughout the text, I try to acknowledge the
challenge of isolating this form.
4 S. EHRENBERG
describes as ‘the experience of being embodied’, in the preface to her

book body images :
the experience of being embodied is never a private affair, but is

always already mediated by our continual interactions with other human
and nonhuman bodies...addressing the multiple corporeal exchanges that
continually take place...demands a corresponding recognition of the
ongoing construction and reconstruction of our bodies and body images.
(5)
Weiss’ perspective can be linked to Donna Haraway’s (1988) seminal

essay which offers critical feminist reflection on ‘objectivity’ and situ-
ated knowledges. Haraway traces and supports the argument for, feminist
questioning of scientific objectivity without abandoning the complexity
for ‘rational knowledge’. She calls for accounts which address, simul-
taneously, ‘radical historical contingency for all knowledge claims and
knowing subjects’ (which she also refers to as ‘a critical practice for recog-
nizing our own “semiotic technologies” for making meanings’) and ‘a
no-nonsense commitment to faithful accounts of a “real” world’ (579).
‘Feminist objectivity’, Haraway (1988) argues, ‘is about limited loca-
tion and situated knowledge, not about transcendence and splitting of
subject and object. It allows us to become answerable for what we learn
how to see’ (583). She calls on feminists to notice ‘knowledge potent
for constructing worlds less organized by axes of domination’ (Haraway
1988, 585). On the one hand, unravelling a group of dancers’ kinaes-
thetic experiences in contemporary dance contributes to challenging some
of the dominant understandings as what counts as knowledge, as a
performing arts practice often marginalised in considerations of embod-
iment, at least within the academy. However, within dance studies and
practice as a field, there remain questions about how contemporary dance
often prides itself on a kind of ‘rebel’ status within Western theatre
dance, such as repeatedly working against its own patterns of institution-
alisation (e.g. George 2014, 2020).2 In this way, there are also reasons
2 I understand ‘Western theatre dance’ to be a contentious term, at the same time I am

trying to specify a particular domain of dance practice. I want to acknowledge the highly
complex history of the term which I do not address at length here. For more detail on
the complex history I am referring to, see, for instance: Brenda Dixon Gottschild (1998),
Susan Manning (2004), Priya Srinivasan (2007), Jacqueline Shea Murphy (2007), Andrée
Grau (2007), and Raquel L. Monroe (2011), and Sherrill Dodds (2019).
to de-construct contemporary dancer experience in ways that might go

unnoticed in light of contemporary dance’s claims of being such an
open style, investigating where the imaginary and the rational hover close
together (Haraway 1988, 585). ‘I am arguing for the view from a body,
always a complex, contradictory, structuring, and structured body, versus
the view from above, from nowhere, from simplicity’ (Haraway 1988,
589). It is towards this principle of situatedness that this book is grounded
in.
The point is to argue the position that this book sits alongside existing
works that elaborate on the body as a subject-object-world relation. It is
beyond the scope of this introduction to be able to include and discuss
the many works that take up this perspective, but I want to engage with
a few more below to provide an overview of the thinking that underpins
and works through this book. I return to the more specific problem of
situated knowledges and this book again in Chapter 6.
Increasing Interest in Embodiment

The concern of situated knowledges (e.g. Haraway 1988) is part of
an increasing interest to ‘bring in the body’ across many disciplines,
including sociology, psychology, neuroscience, and architecture, to name
only a few. For instance, arguments from psychology and philosophy
regarding self-knowledge have not always included kinaesthesia as a
contributor (Cassam 1995; Crossley 1995, 133; Bermúdez et al. 1995, 1;
Parviainen 2002). It is only relatively recently that there has been such a
wealth of literature, outside of dance studies, about how awareness of the
body affects self-knowledge and meaning.3 Most of this is set to over-
turn Cartesian dualism and the mind/body split of which Descartes is
often accused (Albright, 2011, 8). This shift is evident in the increase of
sensory methodologies being used in social science research:
...the emergent focus on the social life of the senses is rapidly supplanting
older paradigms of cultural interpretation (e.g., cultures as ‘texts’ or
3 See also, for instance, a number of presentations at the 2018 conference Time, the Body
and the Other: Phenomenological and Psychopathological Approaches, an event which aimed
to explore and discuss ‘the intertwinement of temporality, embodiment and intersubjec-
tivity from phenomenological and psychopathological approaches’ (FEST Heidelberg e.V.
2018, np). I thank a reviewer for alerting me to this reference.
6 S. EHRENBERG
‘discourses’, as ‘worldviews’ or ‘pictures’), and challenging conventional

theories of representation. The senses mediate the relationship between
self and society, mind and body, idea and object. (Bull et al., 2006, as
cited in Mason and Davies, 2009)
Markula (2014) evidences this shift in relation to the literature from

discursive and critical psychology on exercising bodies. She reports on
an increase in psychology studies about the exercising body from the
1980s to a rapid increase across the 1990s, 2000’s, and the present.
Carrie Noland (2009) evidences this shift in her discussion of kinesthesia,
embodiment, agency, and gesture, aiming to ‘study the ways culture is
both embodied and challenged through corporeal performance’ (2). She
further argues, ‘[…] despite the central role kinesthetic sensation plays, it
is rarely treated as vital to the development of forms assumed by either
culture or the self’ (4). Indeed, Noland explicitly supports many of her
insights with dance scholarship and practice and notes that arguments
from dance are ‘less familiar than they ought to be’ (5). Noland later reit-
erates this area of neglect in relation to gender, class, and race, arguing
that ‘far more critical attention should be paid’ to phenomenological
dance scholarships that proposes the ways that ‘culturally framed inte-
roceptive experience constitute a type of knowledge – and engender a
variety of agency’ (6).
The Richness of Dance Studies

on Contemporary Dancer Experience(s)
Since at least the 1980’s dance studies have seen an increasing develop-
ment of more explicit arguments about how dancers are constructed and
situated as trained and disciplined subjects. Dance scholar Ted Warburton
sums up this perspective, arguing that dancer’s bodily knowledge is a
specific way of approaching and experiencing the world and is a way of
being which holds social and cultural significance (Warburton 2011, 67).
Writing specifically about dancer experience, philosopher Jaana Parviainen
(2002), argues likewise, echoing the position cited above from Csordas,
Haraway, and Weiss, that all knowers are situated:
historically, culturally, socially, spatially, temporally, kinaesthetically – all

dimensions of situation become a part of the epistemological context. Each
being has its own life history and perception, its own pattern of structurally
coupled interaction with the world. (12)
Indeed, professional-level dancers’ experiences in dance practice are rich

material for examining ways in which kinaesthesia is conceptualised within
a practice. One key reason is because dancers’ practice depends upon the
body and as such, dancers develop a particular kind of kinaesthetic intel-
ligence worth studying (Warburton 2011). Or as Daly (1992) puts it,
‘The dancing body provides a kind of living laboratory for examining the
production of the body: its training, its image, its story, and its ways of
creating the world around it’ (257). This book explores aspects of the
‘living laboratory’ of the professional-level contemporary dancer.
The research in this book is indebted to existing scholarship about
specialised, in contrast to universalised, dancer experiences in Western
theatre dance forms. For instance, Susanne Ravn (2009, 2010, 2017)
writes about the experiences of contemporary dancers, as well as ballet,
Butoh, tango, competitive sport dancers, from in-depth phenomeno-
logical and sociological perspectives, offering complex understandings
of dancer experience and knowledge, such as the signifying property
of weightedness and gravity for a group of contemporary dancers.
Markula and Clark (2018) offer a number of perspectives on ballet
dancer experience from phenomenological, poststructuralist and socio-
logical perspectives that move beyond conceiving of the ballet dancer
as simply constructed by a relatively set codified movement style and
as disciplined docile bodies. Jennifer Roche (2015) puts forward a rich
experiential-theoretical perspective about what it is like as a dancer
working with a series of contemporary dance choreographers, again,
engaging across disciplinary perspectives such as phenomenology, soci-
ology, and poststructuralism. This book compliments these, and other
texts found throughout, as it takes a similar interdisciplinary position—
phenomenological, sociological, and poststructuralist approaches—and
puts forth parallel arguments about some of the specific ways that
contemporary dancers’ experiences are situated.
This book, read alongside the existing discourse, aims to add to the
diversity of perspectives of some of the predominant Western theatre
dance styles, particularly contemporary dance, and the complexity of our
understanding of what being a professional-level dancer is like, from
dancers’ perspectives. As Roche (2015) states, it’s about investigating the
space where ‘new possibilities for defining how dancing subjects might
8 S. EHRENBERG
be produced’ and for contemporary dance that is in a way that moves

‘beyond the codified signification of established dance styles’ (15). Over-
laps with existing scholarship are useful when put together collectively to
add to our understanding of the complexity that is dancers’ experiences.
For instance, most of these texts utilise rich description and focus on the
experience of one or a few dancers versus a large number of dancers to
generalise experiences; thus, as they accumulate, we begin to see patterns
across studies and thus establish patterns for the field more broadly based
on a matrix of individualised and contextually specific material. I hope
that taken together they address what Andrée Grau (2007) calls for,
I would argue that it is crucial to carry out more empirical research and
listen to what dancers have to say about their experiences so as to better
understand, through rigorous documentation and analysis, how they find
their place in the world and how their experiences of gender, race, identity,
or other, are, or are not, invoked in their artistic practices. (203)
This book is differentiated by its specific interrogation and conceptuali-

sation of a kinaesthetic mode of attention for contemporary dance, from
the perspective of a group of professional-level dancers in the contexts of
training and rehearsal, and the problematising of kinaesthetic experience
in contemporary dance with visual self-reflection, and thus problematising
tropes about kinaesthesia from the dancer’s perspective when performing
for an audience and being watched. In addition, despite the aforemen-
tioned increase in writing on dancer experience, there is still much more
to be explored. As Roche (2015) argues, ‘there is limited analysis of the
choreographic process by practising contemporary dancers written from
the first-person position’ (16).
Ontological and Epistemological Positionings

Methodological and paradigmatic choices support ontological and epis-
temological positions about subject matter and this book is no exception
in that regard. As Markula and Silk (2011) write in relation to paradigms
and qualitative research: ‘Paradigms provide the orientations towards how
researchers see the world (ontology), and the various judgements about
knowledge and how to gain it (epistemology)’ (24).
Broadly this book is informed by multiple methodologies (e.g. inter-
views, observations, desk-based analysis), voices (e.g. dancers, writers,
my own) and practices (e.g. contemporary, ballet, hip hop, video self-
reflection, describing movement) and does not aim to prove a hypothesis,
but to find what asking questions about a phenomenon brings up. The
research crosses several paradigmatic approaches, but generally it follows
the parameters of the qualitative, interpretive, critical, and subjective ends
of the methodological spectrum.
Below I address in more depth the critical methodological aspects
of the research that informs this book to address the ontological and
epistemological positioning of it.4
Phenomenological and Sociological Approaches

Phenomenological and sociological perspectives are critical to the
research, fieldwork and analysis presented throughout the book. More
specifically, the work is phenomenological in that it is informed by
Maurice Merleau-Ponty ’s (1945, 1968) phenomenology and investigates
dancers’ ‘lived experiences’ as defined and discussed in phenomeno-
logical philosophy. As Albright (2011) describes: ‘Generally speaking,
phenomenology is the study of how the world is perceived…It is a way of
describing the world as we live it – a philosophical approach that positions
the body as a central aspect of the lived experience’ (8). The interviews,
for instance, included dancing and talking about dancing, as these are
experiences central to the dancers in practice and thus their ‘lifeworlds’
in dance. Phenomenology provides new ways of thinking about dancers’
experiences and dance practice, serving as a bridge between the prac-
tice and the theory. However, as Depraz et al. (2002) point out, the
contemporary use of the term phenomenology comes with it a certain
‘terminological blurriness’ between traditional philosophical texts and
trying to capture first-person ‘concrete’ experience. I want to acknowl-
edge this text works between a ‘still-lively’ phenomenological philosophy,
and yet also engages with the meaning making processes of individuals.
Depraz et al. (2002) define the phenomenological approach that is rele-
vant here: centred on its concrete singularity, and with reference to its
effective workings, its praxis, and to its procedural description (8).
4 For additional detail, please see also Ehrenberg (2013). Please note that pseudonym
are used for dancer-participant interviews. Additional participant details are omitted in
respect of anonymity as agreed with Informed Consent procedures under Institutional
Ethics Review Approval (University of Manchester).
10 S. EHRENBERG
However, none of this is to claim access to a universality of experience

from a phenomenological perspective, rather it is to acknowledge the rela-
tion between kinaesthetic experience and a number of contextual factors.
It means this book is working in the position of what Depraz et al. (2002)
call ‘a prudent but daring middle ground’. This middle ground includes
exploring first-person accounts fully, with the tools available, and yet not
claiming that such an access to first-person accounts is method-free or
‘natural’ in any privileged sense (10). No methodological approach, as
they point out, gives us ‘neutral’ access to experience, hence my expansion
below on issues of language, triangulation, interpretation, and intersub-
jectivity. This is also to acknowledge that while writing about experience
might at times seem to fix experience and embodied identities, embodied
experiences and identities are understood to be changing, changeable and
fluid as well (Depraz et al. 2002, 9).
A sociological position underpins the above premise on meaning
making related to embodied experiences and in relation to areas discussed
further below around language, rich description, triangulation, and inter-
pretation. However, another principal of the sociological perspective that
underpins this work is that contemporary, ballet, hip hop, and breaking5
dance styles are investigated as types of cultures within the broader culture
of dance, and the dancer as a participant in their culture (Crossley 2001).
These dance styles are conceived as culture in the way Chiseri-Strater and
Sunstein (1997) describe: ‘An invisible web of behaviours, patterns, rules,
and rituals of a group of people who have contact with one another and
share common languages’ (3). It is a view which Cynthia Novack6 (1990)
adopts to argue that contact improvisation is a shared practice with ‘core
movement values’ that distinguish it and in turn impact on those who
train, rehearse, teach, and perform in the style.
Language and the Non-Verbal

The above positions coincide with the use of interviews to explore
dancers’ kinaesthetic experiences. That is that both phenomenological and
5 While hip hop and breaking are not always the terms used in dance studies and prac-
tice, I choose to use these two terms because this is how the participants predominantly
referred to their practices in the fieldwork and for consistency throughout.
6 Cynthia Novack is also published under the name Cynthia Jean Cohen Bull. Citations
will adhere to name used for publication.
sociological approaches are interested in how embodied experiences are

described. They are based on the premise that thinking, talking about
experience, and experience itself are intertwined.
Some might argue that dance experience and language need to remain
separate. While I understand the point that not all dance experience
needs to be put into language, I want to declare upfront that sepa-
rating dance experience from language creates a false impression of the
complexity that is contemporary dance and dancers’ experiences in the
practice. It also goes against some fundamental thinking of how language
and embodied experience relate. Depraz et al. (2002) address some of the
critiques of descriptive approaches, such as that ‘first-person approaches
are embroiled from the start in pre-theorizing’ (92), which helps to
address why separating language, or more specifically description of expe-
rience, and dancing experience is problematic. One problem with the
critique, they argue, is that it is premised on the position that there is
actually authentic access to any experience, thus it disregards the impact
of culture; it is based on a belief in a transparency of language which
is not proclaimed (e.g. I am going to take everything you say at face
value) or that there is some means in which we are able to access expe-
rience without any ‘contamination by the medium employed’. A second
problem is the assumption that one might only be putting forward a sole
isolated and un-checked and tested account of experience (or ‘fantasizing
an ideally descriptive language’), whereas Depraz et al. (and myself) are
interested in a critical engagement with a number of verbal descriptions
of experience, including the author’s own experience and others’ expe-
riences in other forms (e.g. existing literature). This is thus working on
the axis of description-interpretation and not a simply self-oriented poetic
description of dancer experience(s).
Looking more specifically to dance studies, Deidre Sklar (1994) argues
a symbiotic relationship of movement and language this way—that move-
ment is thinking in itself, and thus so too can thinking (and talking) about
movement relate back to that movement that is thinking:
Rather than underline the fact that thinking can be abstracted and sepa-
rated from corporeality, I am underlining the fact that thinking depends
upon it. Wilhelm Dilthey has suggested that to understand other people’s
experience-“erlebnis, or what has been ‘lived through’” (Dilthey 1976,
as cited in Bruner 1986:3)-one must interpret their cultural expressions,
which are the ways that people communicate their experiences. For Dilthey,
12 S. EHRENBERG
expressions would comprise performances, representations, and objectifica-

tions, including texts and, I would add, bodily attitudes, movements, and
gestures. (14)
Thinking, reflecting, describing, and writing about one’s own and others’
movement experiences are a representation of what happens in the
moment of moving; thinking and discussing movement fold into and
also project into the dancing which then intertwines them. This means
there is a connection between what one says about one’s own move-
ment, and what one experiences when moving, and ‘thinking’ with the
body. Dancers oscillate between the corporeal and the verbal all the time,
particularly contemporary dancers (Grau 2007). For instance, in dance
training, the teacher might explain verbally how a movement should feel
and the dancer tries to embody this description. I follow the argument
expressed by Rouhiainen (2007) for dance artists’ practice:
I do not believe in a sharp opposition between language and experience.

In short, following the Merleau-Pontyan and Gadamerian viewpoints, I
understand that “To be expressed in language does not mean that a second
being is acquired. The way in which a thing represents itself [in language] is
part of its own being” (Gadamer 1988/1975, 432). Therefore, I consider
language to be something in which being becomes realized. Language is
not simply externally imposed upon our experiences. (116)
The above positions are akin to arguments in social science, such as that of
Csordas (1994, 2008), in which he argues that language is not conceived
as separate to embodied experience in social domains: ‘One can instead
argue that language gives access to a world of experience in so far as
experience comes to, or is brought to, language’ (Csordas 1994, 11). Or
as Crossley (2001) writes about language and learning bodily movement,
‘to acquire language is to acquire a new way of using one’s body’ (80). He
also argues that ‘Individuals must acquire or incorporate the structures
and schemas of their society, such as language, in order to become the
agents we know them to be...’ (Crossley 2001, 4). Sklar (2000) states:
Words remain permeable to their somatic reverberations. It is possible to

see, for example, “She rushed to the grocery store” as a visual image;
however, it is also possible to feel the kinetic sensation that informs the
word “rushing.” One can use words to evoke their somatic references.
Considered this way, there is no conflict between somatic and verbal experi-
ence because they are mutually generative, part of the same epistemological
process. The process constitutes meaning-making, and body-making. (74)
Thus, an underlying assumption of this book is that professional-level

dancers, in particular, simultaneously incorporate a discourse that is of
words (or a way of thinking) and a movement style that is non-verbal.
Movement and language, from the perspective of the trained dancer
in contemporary, ballet, and hip hop styles, are intimately intertwined
in practice. The issue of interpretation related to language is discussed
further below and the relationship of language to dancing experience is
further borne out throughout this book. However, it is important to state
upfront that the research is based on the presumption that language,
and how dancers talk about kinaesthetic experience in practice, reflects
and represents how dancers attend to movement in-the-moment and that
language is a key part of dancers’ subjectivity, and thus kinaesthetic expe-
rience, in dance practice. However, this is not to claim that there are not
ephemeral and indescribable aspects to dance experience as well.7
It is important to note, despite this point about the intertwinement
of movement and language, that interpretations in this book are also
informed by what is not put into words in a set of interviews with a group
of dancers.8 For example, many interviews included a host of non-verbal
communication, such as long pauses, sighs, facial expressions, and, often,
7 This is highly complex territory. For instance, Sheets-Johnstone (2018) writes that
the body ‘is full of soul’ indicating how we cannot capture all ephemeral aspects of expe-
riencing, which I agree. However, the statement in the same article, ‘[…] no one speaks
or writes of embodied feelings. This is undoubtedly because feelings do not need pack-
aging’ (13), disregards the problem that feelings can be better understood for how they
are implicated in different contexts, such as Sara Ahmed (2014) argues in The Cultural
Politics of Emotion.
8 The dancer quotes in this book have been edited for clarity of reading. Meaning,
some words or phrases that make sense in conversation have been edited slightly for
better communication in the written form. Legrand and Ravn (2009) refer to this as a
‘phase of reduction where irrelevant material [is] taken out’: ‘Certain characteristics of
spoken language, such as confusing repetition and unfinished sentences, [are] removed
or transformed into a readable written language, formulated as closely as possible to the
language and descriptions characteristic of the dancer’ (395). For instance, I edited out
repeated use of the word ‘like’, which is commonly used in speech, but can complicate
reading.
14 S. EHRENBERG
movement. These are brought in from notes taken during or immedi-

ately after the interview or from memory when doing the transcriptions.
These instances from the interviews (and as quoted in the preceding chap-
ters) are marked, such as with ellipses for pauses (the number of ellipses
indicating the length of pause). Sighs and related non-verbal sounds are
written phonetically or in [brackets]. I have also tried to make explicit
those moments when the dancers got up and moved, often redoing the
movement phrase they were talking about, such as in an interview with
Emil in Chapter 3, where Emil struggles to find the right words for
describing his movement and so does the movement again. However,
there is a limitation to the non-verbal discussed here. I do not study my
own gestures and responses to the interviews in detail as others argue
for (e.g. Noland 2009; Roberts 2013b), or enter into the important
critique about the decolonisation of ethnographic practices (e.g. Roberts
2013a, b). I acknowledge also that, as Ochs (1979) argues, ‘The physical
constraints on notetaking reduce the quality and quantity of nonverbal
context capture’ (52). In addition, subtle abstraction via memory impacts
on the recordings of non-verbal behaviour that were noted from memory.
However, this is also, as Ochs (1979) argues, a basis for making the
non-verbal context an aid to interpretation of verbal behaviour, rather
than a central feature (52, my emphasis). I also hope that the attention
to the non-verbal in the following chapters, related to the transcripts,
will help address how the non-verbal and verbal behaviours ‘interoccur’
for dancers and show the relations between them to better understand
professional-level dancers communicative processes (58).
Triangulation
The material in this book emerges from a triangulated ‘conversation’
between 1) original fieldwork, 2) my own experience as a trained contem-
porary dancer, and 3) theory and practice from available sources. I adopt
the metaphor of conversation to specify that the research sits at the junc-
ture of theory and practice and that practice and theory ‘talk’ to each
other in this research, particularly in my attempts not to privilege theory
over practice or vice versa. Purser (2008) clearly articulates the use of the
metaphor of conversation with dance practice and theory:
Neither party in the conversation is held to hold intellectual priority over

the other. The project is therefore neither theory(philosophy)-driven nor
data(practice)-driven, but is rather driven by the desire to open up a space

where the connections and interaction between the two interlocutors can
generate new depth and possibilities for our understanding of embodiment.
(8)
The dancers’ interviews serve as the primary fieldwork. Reflections on

my own experience in practice (i.e. written reflections about my kinaes-
thetic experiences dancing and reflections after viewing my own video
self-images) and engagement with ideas in the literature (e.g. detailed
discussion in Chapter 2) serve as interlocutors, as Purser (2008) calls
them, and offer opportunities to further reflect (and diffract) on the
dancers’ interviews and offer ‘new possibilities for our understanding of
[dancers’] embodiment’ (8).
Triangulation of theory, practice and experience ensures ‘texture,
depth, and multiple insights’ to analysis and can ‘enhance the validity
or credibility of the results’ for qualitative research by linking several
sources and perspectives (TESOL 2009, 18). That is, themes I raise in
the following chapters, such as a kinaesthetic mode of attention, are
brought about not solely because I have experience of this as a contempo-
rary dancer, or because I have philosophically reflected on this experience
alone to build a philosophical argument, but it emerges in engagement
with a matrix of experiences, descriptions, practices, and ideas, that comes
to show a pattern or set of themes. From another perspective, the argu-
ments offer intersubjective validity because they come about in relation
to other subjects’ contextualisation of their dancing experiences, and
through this I am led to surprises and questions about dancers’ experi-
ences that I could not have come to on my own. As Depraz et al. (2002)
state about the principal of intersubjective validity for their study: ‘Here
we find ourselves going so far as to take into account the descriptive hori-
zons opened by others, something which contributes to enlarging our
own experience, to enriching it by opening up unsuspected dimensions
and thereby questioning our own limits’ (95).
I interweave descriptions from dancers in practice and discussions from
theory to express the point of view that theory can inform dancer prac-
tice and vice versa. I also aim to further dance knowledge through this
inquiry, by supporting the call of dance scholars, such as Sklar (1994),
to take ‘seriously the ontological status of immediate bodily experience in
the production of knowledge and epistemologies’ (12). I have put the
dancers’ descriptions, and reflections on my own practice, in dialogue
16 S. EHRENBERG
with theoretical concepts to interrogate dancers’ described experiences

and the meaning made of these experiences by the dancers (see below on
the interpretive paradigm). I do not question the validity of philosoph-
ical and theoretical concepts in themselves, rather I use philosophical and
theoretical concepts as conversational partners with which to reflect on,
rethink and re-conceive of dancers’ practice. Or as Purser (2008) puts it:
I am [not] seeking to use the experience of dancers to prove, test or falsify

(aspects of) Merleau-Ponty’s theory. Neither do I wish to use dance for
merely illustrative purposes, nor to use philosophical concepts to encase
the experience of dance within a rigid theoretical framework. There are, of
course, elements of these interrogative, illustrative and reductive processes
going on in the thesis, but the aim is not to set up the voices of philosophy
and practice in opposition to each other, nor to reduce one to the other.
(9)
Analysis of dancers’ described experiences in conjunction with my own

experiences (discussed further below) and theory and practice from other
sources will contribute to the developing discourse about dancers’ expe-
riences in practice, in line with existing dance scholarship which aims to
integrate theory and practice without prioritising one over the other. Like
Markula (2014), I aim to elaborate on the layered complexities of dancer
experience and thus ‘[…] to contest conceptual binaries between society
and individual, structure and agency, and the (textual) representations and
everyday lived physical experiences in […] sociocultural body and exercise
research’ (140).
Interpretive
This book is interested in elaborating on the multi-dimensional and
complex meanings that dancers make of their experiences principally in
contemporary dance contexts. As Green and Stinson (1999) put it, the
research aims to address broader questions, such as:
What is going on here, from the perspective of the persons having this
experience? What does it mean to them? How does it come to have
that meaning? What do their experiences, their meanings, mean to me
as researcher? How do they come to have this meaning? (94)
As stated earlier in this chapter about experience being situated, I am

interested in exploring the various ways that dancers interpret, under-
stand, experience, produce, or constitute their dance worlds (Mason
2002, 3). Hanne De Jaegher’s (2020) ‘participatory sense making’ is a
complimentary conceptual framework, informed by phenomenology and
sociology on the complexity of social interpersonal relations addressing
the ‘intricate, multi-layered complexity of daily life intersubjectivity’ (np).
‘Participatory sense making’ notably focuses on the in-between and inter-
action in social situations, aiming to investigate ‘what happens between
people when they interact’; whereas, De Jaegher argues in a psycholog-
ical conference lecture, ‘we are used to looking at individuals processing
something in front of them’ (FEST Heidelberg e.V. 2018).9 De Jaegher
also asks through this framework: Why does something mean something
for someone? What is at stake for this sense-maker?
But I conceive of doing this following a particular ethical position
to the research, such as described with ‘participatory methodology’,
which is centred on the premise of ‘…[seeking] to conduct research
with individuals rather than on them, recognising and responding to
the ethical and social responsibilities of conducting research involving
people’ (Heron 1996, 19–35). For instance, the interviews with the
dancers were designed with the idea of interviews as inter-changes and
as co-constructed, ‘[...]where knowledge is constructed in the inter-action
between the interviewer and the interviewee […] an inter-change of views
between two persons conversing about a theme of mutual interest’ (Kvale
and Brinkmann 2009, 2). This attempt to try to democratise my position
as ‘interviewer’ is also to respect the expertise of the dancers I interview.
As performance studies scholar Matthew Reason (2010) points out, I
want to highlight and place value on the knowledge of the dancers and
dancing, foregrounding the participants’ expertise.
Rather than passive dupes within the process, [participants] are perceived
as active interpreters of the world and of their own experiences. Through
the use of the mediating, creative process – and the time that this process
takes – the research is able to access the participant’s reflective and engaged
thoughts and responses…. (6)
9 For more on participatory sense making and dance, please see Merritt (2013/2015).
18 S. EHRENBERG
Reason (2010) asserts that this is the ‘value of working with people as
engaged and informed individuals’, a value that was important to me for
this research (4). Like Reason, I see knowledge as rooted in encounter
and experience, and I wanted to encourage this point of view in the
interviews (5).
To clarify further, this book serves to map a set of dancers’ experi-
ences on a set of themes, rather than come to any affirmative conclusion
about what dancers’ experiences are like. Markula and Silk (2011) offer
useful description on mapping when researching physical culture (8). In
mapping, they argue, the researcher provides a general topography of a
phenomenon of physical culture. They create a map of this landscape to
show the different facets of the phenomenon under investigation, which
can be explicating who is currently involved, why these particular types
of people participate, and draw lines that connect ‘new’ aspects of the
phenomenon with ‘old’ ones. Critique of the phenomenon or illustrating
a need for change might need to come after this is done because of the
work involved to diffract the phenomena.
A large part of the research informing this book is about reflecting on
the dance experience after the experience, or descriptions that are recol-
lections of dancing experiences while watching video self-reflections. The
research is designed to explore reflections about one’s own dancing, as
they come about in dance practice, from the dancer’s perspective, and
to gather some possible themes from dancers’ reflections/descriptions as
they are constructed in the interviews. The dancers did not talk about
their experiences while they were dancing, except on rare occasions when
the dancers got up and re-did the movement while discussing it. Thus,
the dancers are interpreting and re-interpreting experience in a new way
every time. Or as Lawler (2002) describes: ‘As the past is remembered,
it is interpreted and reinterpreted in the light of the person’s knowledge
and understanding’ (249). As discussed above in terms of situated expe-
rience, I do not proclaim an ‘unmediated access to the “facts of the
matter”, nor to a straightforward and unmediated “experience”, either
for the researcher, or indeed for the research subject’ (Lawler 2002,
249). The interviews are conceived as conversations about experience
that are always unfolding, in the moment of the interview (as discussed
above) as well as through my multiple interpretations of the transcripts
and further interpretations of my interpretations (see also below on
‘Becoming diffraction’).
However, just because this research is an ‘account of subjective experi-

ence’—phenomenological, recollective, and reflective—it does not follow
that the book content is purely constructed and unrelated to ‘actual’
dancer experiences in practice. Depraz et al. (2002) argue that an inter-
view method which includes discussing experience can be thought of as
a reliving that includes a re-creational element; it is a ‘genuine act of
recalling’ (67). This reliving includes concrete memories, which might ‘let
surge forth a detailed episodic memory anchored in the sensory mode of
lived experience’ (67).
In addition, dance practice in itself does not always allow for the type
of reflection and discussion about the practice as is done here. There is
a suspension of experience, Depraz et al. (2002) write, that this research
allows, which can help us understand the complexities of that expertise,
but only because we also approach the experience from another analytical
and temporal perspective.
I have established above how the research is triangulated and intersub-
jective to account for issues of validity. However, I want to also clarify that
the fieldwork informing the interviews addressed in this book are done
explicitly in practice spaces—they emulate a dance context and investigates
a material aspect of the lifeworld of this group of dancers. For instance, at
least one, if not all three, of the interviews with each dancer took place in
a dance studio and included a number of elements that are also found in
dance practice. Multiple interviews were conducted with each dancer to
give dancers time to reflect between interviews. My own experiences in
practice linked the research to first-person experience in yet another way
(discussed in more detail below). In addition, I designed interviews to be
open-ended rather than asking participants to speak only on what I think
is important. I tried to gain distance also from the research and material
so that it does not simply report on what I believe in, but contributes
to new ideas for me and in turn, the discourse. This is an acknowl-
edged problem with research into and about embodied and reflective
experiences, as Depraz et al. (2002) write regarding ‘guided introspec-
tion methods’, ‘The main difficulty for interviewers is to avoid having
people reflect in such a way that they can only say what they already know
and thus stay stuck with what they believe about the way they go about
things’ (28). Triangulation, discussed above, likewise helps avoid using
discussions about experience and what dancing experience is like simply
to reiterate something I think to be true.
20 S. EHRENBERG
The issue of research validity here follows Depraz et al.’s (2002)

discussion of the complexity of a ‘second-person stance’ and ‘empathic
resonance’. They distinguish a second-person position, distinct from first
and third-person positions, as ‘an exchange between situated individuals
focusing on a specific experiential content developed from a first-person
position’ (81, italics original). The second-person position is trying to
expose something about a certain domain and invoked in the traditions
they work in, such as phenomenology. The second-person position, they
argue, means adopting an intentional stance (i.e. the participants are
agents who harbour beliefs and desires and other mental states that exhibit
intentionality) and the interpretation it involves explicitly, consciously and
methodologically (84). It also means supporting the rejection of a ‘strict
opposition’ between public and private, or objective and subjective, ‘in
favour of a continuum of positions in a social network’ (82). When
we become or are ‘part of the tribe’, the context under investigation,
this shifts the second-person position slightly in the interests of validity.
This brings forward an ‘empathic resonance’ with the experiences of the
community we investigate, based in our ability to resonate with others
having the experience, with ‘a modicum critical distance’ (84). Depraz
et al. (2002) refer to this further as being a ‘sensitive empathic mediator’
where the researcher is ‘looking for more or less explicit indices which can
serve as inroads into a common experiential ground’ (84). As such, the
second-person stance can take the first-person stance seriously without
having to be completely removed from what that experience is like, as
some objective truth finder, or, indeed, by taking everything a participant
says at face value.
Transcription Analysis
There are a few additional ‘internal issues’ to acknowledge in relation
to the analysis of the transcriptions, which principally inform interpre-
tation of three dominant themes discussed across Chapters 3–5 (Ochs
1979). The discussion below, about the interpretive analysis according to
Markula and Silk (2011), addresses what Ochs (1979) states of ‘being
conscious of the filtering process’ in transcribing and analysing interview
data (44). In addition, I hope that this section on methodologies shows
that I understand the material I engage with, such as the transcripts that
inform this book, ‘reflect the particular [research] interests [and goals]
[…] of the researcher’ (44). It is beyond the scope of this work to
go into detail about the transcription procedures as Ochs (1979) does,

however I do want to acknowledge my understanding that ‘What is on
the transcript will influence and constrain what generalizations emerge’
(45). For instance, I knew in advance of the interviews that I wanted to
explore, via description, what the dancers’ dancing experiences felt like;
this was informed by previous research, such as literature offering socio-
logical approaches to dancer experience, such as Deirdre Sklar, and from
reading phenomenological philosophy, such as Merleau-Ponty. Thus, in
the interview data offered in this book, it is evident that my questioning
is shaping our discussion around kinaesthetic experience. The transcribed
excerpts of the interviews throughout the book are also in the form of
what Ochs (1979) calls a ‘biased spatial organization’, which also ‘influ-
ences the interpretation process carried out by the reader/researcher’
(e.g. the interviews are written top to bottom; previous utterances affect
adjacent ones; 46–47). I want to acknowledge awareness of the biases
and implications to the transcriptional act, as Ochs calls it, and that this
impacts on my analysis. I have tried to incorporate notes on non-verbal
behaviour to address this problem, as discussed above, but future research
will address this issue further.
The analysis of the transcriptions is aligned with a number of paradig-
matic perspectives; however, it most closely follows the interpretive
paradigm discussed by Markula and Silk (2011). Analysis is underpinned
with the aim, also expressed above related to the research approach and
design, to seek how the dancers of this social world, who are highly
complex, express and define their own meanings about their experiences
(31). The interpretative paradigm sets out to understand ‘individuals
behaviours, meanings and experiences within particular social settings’
(31). It is analysis based on individuals and collective reconstructions of
knowledge (33), hence my discussion of co-construction in the inter-
views above. And following from the discussion of the linearity of the
interviews discussed by Ochs (1979), it is the understanding that the
interviews are ‘an intersubjective and circumstantial dialogue in which
it is acknowledged that the research participants affect the researcher
and the researcher has an impact on the participants’ (34). Complexity
and detail are important, rather than narrowing experience down to a
common denominator. Interview material was analysed for key themes
that came up across participants. The interviews were returned to again
and again to try to understand these themes in more nuanced ways and to
confirm initial interpretations. They were read and re-read to try to check
22 S. EHRENBERG
meaning was appropriately being designated to the expression. Although

there may be similarities and themes across participants, contexts and
groups, from the interview material shared in this book, again, the aim is
not to make universal claims for, in this case, all dancers, nor for all aspects
of the context being studied, i.e., dance practice. Instead, the point is to
report on and contribute to multiple realities (Mason 2002, 18). And,
as noted above, phenomenology is often an important approach to inter-
pretive research and phenomenological perspectives from people such as
Merleau-Ponty impact on what is ‘seen’ in the transcriptions. It becomes
a particular kind of lens through which to understand a phenomenon.
However, I do not generalise, as some phenomenologists do, to all
dancers to put forward a generalised philosophical claim on dancer
experience, but rather to map a reality to which participants’ multiple
experiences point (Markula and Silk 2011, 38). Despite this contextu-
alisation, as will be seen in the resulting chapters, issues of power and
situatedness are also addressed and so poststructuralism/postmodernist
paradigms do come into play in the analysis.
Analysis of the interview material is done in tandem with observations
and notes in the field, such as reflections on my own experience in practice
(i.e. written reflections about my kinaesthetic experiences in dance classes
and reflections after viewing my own dancing video self-reflections) and
from engaging with ideas from theory, such as Bourdieu’s (1980/1990)
habitus, Merleau-Ponty’s (1968) chiasm and Barad’s (2007) agential
realism, to name only a few. In other words, themes emerge not only
by identifying what was shared among the dancers’ descriptions, including
my own, but also, critically, themes emerge and are continually re-thought
in dialogue with ideas in the available sources.
Me as Researcher
I acknowledge above some of the ways that the work offered here is
‘inductive, emerging, and shaped by [my] experience in collecting and
analyzing the data’ (Creswell 2007, 19). As mentioned, my experiences
as a dancer unquestionably impacts on my analysis. It has been crucial
for me to explore problems in the research by experiencing them myself,
further grounding the research in dance practice.
However, throughout the research and writing offered here, there are
times when I explicitly take critical distance from the field and the mate-
rial, such as not taking dance classes for months at a time or concentrating
the interview period or re-reflecting on interpretations after several years.

Particularly when researching experience of which one is also a ‘partici-
pant’ of, it is important to continually ‘actively report [my] values and
biases’ and ‘position [myself]’ as interpreter of this research (Creswell
2007, 18). Critical distance allows me to gain a new perspective on
the material (Sklar 1994, 19). I try to challenge my own concepts
about dance experience and lift a veil on those aspects of my practice
that might have become ingrained and unnoticed. Van Manen (1990)
discusses seeking distance with a phenomenological approach as ‘inter-
rogating assumptions’: ‘We try to come to terms with our assumptions,
not in order to forget them again, but rather to hold them deliberately
at bay and even to turn this knowledge against itself, as it were, thereby
exposing its shallow or concealing character’ (47).10
The interviews and my participation, for the research informing this
book, have remained separate, in the literal sense, however. I did not,
as Ravn (2009) and Wacquant (2004) do, regularly and systematically
participate in rehearsals, workshops, and training alongside the dancers I
interviewed as a part of my fieldwork. Instead, I explored concepts at
other times, on my own or in class or group settings, which did not
intentionally include the interviewed dancers, except on very rare occa-
sions (e.g. dancers Erdem, Jiles and I occasionally ended up in the same
contemporary technique classes during fieldwork, but I did not explicitly
observe these dancers on those occasions). For instance, at different times
across the project, I filmed myself doing movement and watched it back.
I took field notes as part of this, reflecting about what this experience
was like for me and where this experience sat within my own practice. In
addition, filming movement and watching it back helped to explore how
my experiences were similar or different to what the dancers were saying
in their interviews. Field notes aided reflection about my own experiences
with video self-reflection, which could serve to complement or contrast
with the other dancers’ descriptions and relevant theory, as the analysis
for the project progressed. In addition, I participated in a number of
contemporary, ballet, and hip hop classes throughout the fieldwork. My
participation in these classes provided a number of opportunities to reflect
10 There are a number of ways that taking this distance on experience is theorised in
the literature, see also Ehrenberg (2020) on affective dissonance or Karreman’s (2017)
discussion of Rosas dancer Rumiyo Ikeda’s experience related to Michael Polanyi’s (1958)
‘tacit knowledge’.
24 S. EHRENBERG
experientially on issues about the culture(s) of dance and the distinctions

between the styles. Field notes were also recorded after classes so that I
could utilise these reflections about my own dancing experiences for the
development of key themes.
In many ways being a contemporary dancer is beneficial because it
gives me an informed knowledge of the field. For instance, my expe-
rience meant the dancer and I share ‘the language’ of contemporary
dance (Kvale and Brinkmann 2009). In addition, during the fieldwork,
I was able to engage experientially with the research problems, such as
reflecting on them while taking dance classes. However, being a contem-
porary dancer is a limitation in that it is more difficult to see ‘outside’
of the research and field, as a non-dancer might. Therefore, I contin-
ually try to be aware of biases during design, fieldwork, and analysis. I
also explicitly acknowledge that I offer one interpretation among many
possible ones (Green and Stinson 1999).
While the research informing this book aims for intersubjective validity
in its triangulation of interview material, author experience(s), and
existing literature, the work does not explicitly interrogate many other
important issues related to dancing experience, such as of race, dis/ability,
sexuality, and the socio-economic positions of myself and the dancers’
interviewed. It is important to acknowledge that my position as a white
able-bodied cis-gender female working, at the time of writing, in an
academic position in the UK, impacts on the research informing this
book as well.11 There are arguments and analysis in this book that deals
with issues of difference, such as contemporary dancer experience and
visual self-image related to issues of power discussed in dance studies
and feminist philosophy. However, as noted above and discussed again in
Chapter 6, future research will aim to address issues of difference further,
aiming to better contribute to the discourse as to how a range of issues
of difference impact on seemingly personal and private experiences, such
as kinaesthetic awareness in contemporary dance contexts.
11 I find recognition with what Harmony Bench (2020) writes in Perpetual Motion:
that the book is ‘[…] positioned within a Western, specifically white, English-language-
dominant, U.S. worldview, which manifests clearly in the examples I have included’ (11).
Becoming Diffraction: Re-reflections on Reflected on Reflections

This book includes reflections on reflections and re-reflections on reflec-
tions, leading to concluding diffractions|diffracting conclusions. As reflec-
tions on reflections and re-reflections, this book is a culmination of
returning to interviews and analysis related to this project, which began
in 2008, again and again, through the writing of this and other publi-
cations, presentations, and through discussions with friends, colleagues,
and students. For this particular book, I return to dancer interview mate-
rial and re-reflect on these discussions. I re-reflect on analysis previously
made on these interviews. I weave in new experiences and literature to this
existing text. Similar to arguments about the position of the self, as always
shifting and moving, so too does this research. That said, many of the key
themes and arguments have sustained the test of time, which has helped to
strengthen my convictions about earlier reflections. The reflections in this
book include several years’ experience as an academic working full-time
in a university dance programme as well—teaching, programme leading,
and conducting further research. Many of the arguments and text here
are re-reflections that have been shared and tested out in this setting, for
instance in choreography modules addressing the link (or not) of thinking
critically about kinaesthetic experience and video self-reflection. This has
included adapting to rapid changes in technology (e.g. video) use and
access by dancers and dancers’ in training. In addition, I engage with the
wider dance community at conferences, symposia, and less formal research
gatherings, which further impact on my convictions of previous interpre-
tations and re-reflections, either through new writings, thinking, or the
maintaining of arguments. I knowingly offer this work for the considera-
tion of others and other contexts (Green and Stinson 1999, 104). As Ryle
(1949) describes for ‘thick’ description: ‘if the descriptions are sufficiently
“thick”, others will be able to evaluate the extent to which the conclusions
are transferable to different contexts’ (see also Jola et al. 2011, 26).
However, concluding diffractions|diffracting conclusions aims to open
up the research to questions that persist, particularly as the feeling of
‘fixing’ arises as the book project enters production. Conversing with the
work and points of view of Karen Barad (2007) and Rosi Braidotti (2013,
2019), and concepts they discuss under the fields of new materialism and
posthumanism, aims to move towards what Haraway (1992) distinguishes
as a mapping of interference, questioning the replicating and reproductive
potential of reflection (300).
26 S. EHRENBERG
Video
Video recording and thus visual self-images and self-reflection are impor-
tant parts of the research informing this book, particularly Chapters 5 and
6.
Video is sometimes used as a reflective tool in dance practice in an
attempt to re-present what the audience sees; to see one’s own dancing
from the audience’s point of view. Thus, video is useful here, specifically
to investigate one of the ways dancers deal with being performers and
being looked at.
Though this is not the only way video is used in the practice. Some-
times it is used by dancers to self-correct, as part of the creative process,
or during performance. For instance, one of the dancers (Mads) showed
footage in his interview of video he recorded during his BA degree, in
which he used it to help improve his ‘tutting’ technique. Another dancer
(Jiles) talked about working with a choreographer who videoed his impro-
visations and then asked him to watch the video back and re-learn certain
parts of the videoed improvisation. One of the ballet dancers (Emil) said
that when he is videoed for Royal Ballet performances, he has to perform
simultaneously for the live audience in the theatre and the camera, which
is recording for a distributable video of the performance. He said that
during the videoed performances he has to imagine how his dancing is
being recorded by the camera ‘close up’, as well as imagine how the
live audience ‘from afar’ perceives his dancing. Thus, video is a means
to explore how the dancer and technology interact, in experience and
how a dancer might have an intersubjective relationship with a virtual (or
imagined) video image.
The need for research into the part video self-reflection plays in
dancers’ experiences is now greater than ever because of the ever-
increasing access and affordability of video, as the above examples attest.
Hamish MacPherson (2016) indeed argues ‘[…] I only have to look
around at my peers and see they are already making short films and
putting them online, and these are part of their practice and their work
as much as dancing and writing and talking and all kinds of things’
(180, also cited in Bench and Ellis 2019, np).12 Despite the increasing
12 Bench and Ellis (2019) also argue: ‘Ten volumes into [screendance] journal, we
think we are only just starting to peer into the thickness of the world of screendance: its
practices, ideas, writing, reflection, curiosities and concerns’ (np).
frequency of use, Kozel (2007) notes that performers’ interactions with

‘digital devices’, such as dancers’ interactions with video, is an under-
researched area of study and offers a wealth of perspectives on changing
embodied experiences in performance. She states, ‘What remains under-
explored is the extent to which performative acts of sharing the body
through our digital devices may allow us to construct collaboratively new
physical states or states of conscious awareness’ (306). Bleeker (2017),
a decade after Kozel, continues to argue for how new technologies,
such as interactive gaming technology and ‘twenty-first-century media’,
leave ‘many questions concerning their implications and potential […]
still to be researched’, particularly as the new technologies ‘are rapidly
becoming the standard in a wide variety of fields’, not least dance (xx).
Or as Haraway (1988) argues: ‘I want a feminist writing of the body that
metaphorically emphasizes vision again, because we need to reclaim that
sense to find our way through all the visualizing tricks and powers of
modern sciences and technologies […]’ (582).
Video was useful as a methodological tool to elicit conversation around
the dancing experience and to help explore dancing verbally, while still
acknowledging the non-verbal aspects of the dance experience, as touched
on above. As Mason (2002) advocates:
Using non- (or semi-) verbal techniques...photography or video recording,

which consciously and conscientiously move beyond a pre-occupation with
talk or with text, is clearly an important way in which we might explore
non-verbal elements of the social. (238)
The video, as a re-presentation of the dancers’ dancing, helped focus

discussions with the dancers around their dancing experiences. A similar
approach has been advocated in other ethnographic-style studies. For
instance, Mason and Davies (2009) utilised family photos in their inter-
views to elicit conversation around family resemblances. Similar to their
study, video self-reflection in this project elicited animated discussions
around the previous dance experience and offered another way to explore
the sensory. As Mason and Davies (2009) report:
Sometimes, it is because photographs only capture an instantaneous and

flat visual image, without all of the other sensory stimuli, that people may
feel frustrated and want to tell us about what the ‘live’ resemblances are
28 S. EHRENBERG
like, thus moving beyond the photograph, and indeed beyond the visual.
(8)
The limitation of video, such as only capturing a durationally fixed

two-dimensional image of the dancers’ dancing, sometimes elicited unex-
pected and useful discussion. For instance, sometimes what was not seen
on the video became a talking point for what the dancer kinaesthetically
felt when s/he did the movement.13
Chapter by Chapter Summary

In the chapters that follow, I take up the above positions in relation
to professional-level UK-based contemporary, ballet, breaking, and hip
hop dancers’ private and personal bodily experiences, my experience
as a contemporary dancer, and the existing literature. In Chapter 2, I
first provide a theoretical, historical, and chronological overview of the
different discursive ways dancers’ experiences have been conceived, prin-
cipally in dance studies, to-date. This groundwork leads to dig more
deeply into the question what are the ‘[systems] of cognitive and moti-
vating structures’ and ‘procedures to follow’ in the social context of
contemporary dance (Bourdieu 1980/1990, 53) for a group of dancers?
In responding to this question, Chapter 3 addresses ways that the
contemporary dancers interviewed, in relation to my own experience as
a contemporary dancer and the discourse, indicate a particular type of
kinaesthetic sensitivity, knowledge, and curiosity, what I refer to as a
‘kinaesthetic mode of attention’. This chapter addresses how it is not only
because these movement styles are different, but, because the styles the
dancers’ train and work in have differing types of habitus, and ‘struc-
turing structures’ (Crossley 2001) that make up each style, they therefore
impact differently on the seemingly private and personal experiences (i.e.
kinaesthesia) of individual dancers. I discuss how this position challenges
an assumption and value, historically upheld in contemporary dance, that
kinaesthetic awareness is ideologically ‘natural’ and ‘pure’ (e.g. Sheets-
Johnstone 1966; Fraleigh 1987) and, instead, expresses ways that it is,
in part, constructed and contextual (Rouhiainen 2003; Järvinen 2006;
Ginot 2010; George 2014, 2020). Based on this premise, Chapter 4
13 Please note that gender pronouns are used to the best of my knowledge at the time
of writing; in cases where I am trying to not specify gender(s), I use ‘s/he’ or ‘their’.
goes on to identify and discuss key practices and values that develop
and nurture the contemporary dancers’ kinaesthetic mode of attention.
However, the dancers’ descriptions suggest a critique of Bourdieu’s
(1980/1990) habitus as well, which is that one can exhibit a sense of
agency even after making movement habitual, such as mastering a dance
technique which is highly structured, and this in turn means that the
dancers are actively creative within their practice, even though they are
also highly disciplined. I contend that the dancers’ kinaesthetic experi-
ences are only in part constructed. The contemporary dancers indicate
that they balance between a kind of passivity, such as by being trained
and disciplined in a dance style, which has shared practices and values
(which dancers incorporate), and a sense of agency, such as continually
making choreographic decisions or, more broadly, imagining themselves
into the dancer they want to be.
Conceiving of contemporary dance, and discussing dancers’ work and
experiences within this style, in this thinking of cultural codes and inscrip-
tions is difficult because of the multiple and various kinds of techniques,
choreography, and performance that occur within the style of contempo-
rary dance in training, rehearsal, and performance. Roche (2015) provides
a concise historical brief on this point of how contemporary dance has
evolved from dancers working more stably for companies to the precar-
ious independent contemporary dancer of today. She traces the concepts
of Foster’s (1997) the hired body, Davida’s (1992) body eclectic, Loup-
pe’s (1996) hybrid bodies, and others to support the argument for the
multiplicity that contemporary dancers embody today. Despite the wide
ranging and nearly impossible quantification of contemporary dance as a
dance style, the positioning of this style is nonetheless still a concern—
that is, how are contemporary dancers shaped by the dancing practices of
the style, even with the (or precisely because of) multiplicity of movement
vocabularies that exist within it? With this research I am trying to address,
on a series of micro-levels, what this dancing subjectivity might be like, in
addition to raising questions about the ‘culture’ of contemporary dance.
After addressing the issue of how seemingly external cultural codes
and inscriptions impact on seemingly private and internal kinaesthetic
experiences, in Chapters 5 and 6 I aim to map the various ways that
the contemporary dancers’ kinaesthetic descriptions have a visual facet
to them, particularly in performance-related contexts. The contemporary
dancers indicate that perceived visual self-images and/or imaginations
intertwine with their kinaesthetic experiences and evoke other ways of
30 S. EHRENBERG
imagining their dancing, thereby challenging a predominant value in

contemporary dance history and practice which positions kinaesthetic
experience in opposition to visual self-reflection. Thinking about how
movement looks or using self-reflective devices (i.e. mirror or video)
is historically considered bad practice for contemporary dancers (Green
1999, 2003; Erkert 2003; Kimmerle and Côté-Laurence 2003; Montero
2006; Ehrenberg 2010; Radell 2013). It is only relatively recently that
the complex and contradictory relationships dancers have with visual self-
reflection, such as mirrors and video, is being explored in more depth
(e.g. Ehrenberg 2010; Dania et al. 2011; Purser 2011; Radell et al. 2011;
Roche 2013; Yan et al. 2015; Ravn 2017).
There are a number of legitimate reasons why visual self-reflection,
such as through mirrors and video, has come to be seen as suspect in
contemporary dance practice. In part, it comes out of a wealth of feminist
scholarship (e.g. Bartky 1990; Butler 1990; Copeland 1993; Grosz 1994;
Weiss 1999) about the problematic ways in which women can be objecti-
fied by idealised images of femininity; wrongly prioritising how they look,
privileging the visual sense, instead of how they feel, subordinating the
kinaesthetic sense. The problem is expressed by Iris Marion Young (2005)
this way:
An essential part of being a woman is that of living the ever present possi-
bility that one will be gazed upon as a mere body, as shape and flesh that
presents itself as the potential object of another subject’s intentions and
manifestations, rather than as living manifestation of action and intention.
(as cited in Aalten 2004, 269)
This argument has been one of the reasons to question spectacle and
objectification of the dancer (e.g. Ehrenberg 2019). The problem, in
this case, is that the suspicion summarised above has contributed to a
neglect of further critical discussion about contemporary dancers’ engage-
ment with visual self-reflection, or more precisely, how professional-level
contemporary dancers handle the pressures of being performers, and deal
with the requirement to project movement to an audience in a partic-
ular aesthetic way. Irrespective of dance style values, thinking about how
movement looks does arise for performing contemporary dancers and is
a part of their dance experience. Contemporary dance is a performing
art in which dancers project dancing to an audience and thus they must
to some extent acquire a specific intertwining of kinaesthetic and visual
sensations and perceptions. Sociologist Aimee Purser (2011), for instance,

analyses a group of dancer interviews which reveal how the mirror image
and mirroring more generally, such as with other dancers, indicates
how movement appears and looks as important to a group of dancers.
She argues for the paradoxical aspect of dance experience as dynamic
and affective (e.g. Massumi 2002; Sheets-Johnstone 2009) and inter-
subjective and intercorporeal (e.g. Merleau-Ponty 1945; Weiss 1999).
However, while there is growing interrogation about how contemporary
dancers deal with this aspect of being performers, a great deal more is
warranted. Specifically, how a large part of being a dancer includes the
co-construction of kinaesthetically feeling movement and imagining what
movement looks like, and ways that a dancer’s first-person kinaesthetic
experiences must work in tandem with third-person reflections of their
dancing, despite greater value being placed on the kinaesthetic in the
style.
I bring up the issue of performance because of its implicit role
for professional-level contemporary dancers’ practice. Issues specific to
performance contexts are beyond the scope of this work. Instead, I
focus on the processes in practice towards performance contexts, in the
studio, in training and rehearsal, before the curtain rises (although it is
understood that there will be crossovers to performance, studio, training,
and rehearsal contexts). The problems addressed are considered underex-
plored aspects of dance practice in which dancers gain a sense of becoming
and being professional-level, which implicitly includes performance as a
goal.
My intention in this work is not to undermine the value kinaesthesia
holds for contemporary dance, but to question what is missing by uncrit-
ically adopting a position about kinaesthesia that might ideologically
exclude visual self-reflection and context, and thus propose re-conceptions
of professional-level dancers’ kinaesthetic engagements. Dance studies are
now better placed to explore the visual in dancer experience in partic-
ular. As Bleeker (2002) writes: ‘A new or renewed focus on questions of
vision in a wide variety of fields, however, has begun to open our eyes
to the complexity of what is easily but mistakenly taken for granted as
“just looking”’ (131–132). Bleeker points to Martin Jay’s (1993) work
as a ‘paradigm shift in the cultural imagination of our age’ (132). She
calls for a more complicated account of the ways viewing and reading are
intertwined. For the dancer, this can mean that ‘the look’ of the move-
ment is more complicated than just ‘what I look like’—their kinaesthetic
32 S. EHRENBERG
experience can be an intertwined part of the felt and imagined dancing

self-image, or it can reflect style values. Bleeker (2017) states in the Intro-
duction for Transmission in Motion, of contemporary technogenesis that we
think through, with, and alongside media; addressing this call, Chapters 5
and 6 explore what this might mean for a kinaesthetic mode of attention
in the context of contemporary dance from the dancers’ perspective (xix).
Key Terms
It is important to clarify a few terms used throughout this book at the
outset, mainly because these terms are not always used consistently in
dance scholarship and practice.
When using the term ‘the kinaesthetic’ I am referring primarily to those
aspects of dance practice which emphasise the sensation and perception of
one’s body and movement, or simply one’s feeling of one’s body. The
kinaesthetic refers to the dancers’ bodily experiences of their dancing,
also referred to as kinaesthetic awareness, intelligence, or sensitivity (e.g.
Sklar 1994; Parviainen 1998; Rouhiainen 2003; Potter 2008; Ravn 2009,
2010; Roche 2015; Purser 2018a, b; Rothfield 2021). However, in
this work, particularly Chapter 3, I aim to question precisely how the
kinaesthetic and kinaesthesia as part of that are conceived in different
Western theatre dance styles, namely contemporary dance. I also address
distinctions between kinaesthesia and proprioception in Chapter 5.14
Foster (2008, 2011) provides an important summary of the term
kinaesthesia (and proprioception), which helps illustrate how the term
has come to be used in only fairly recent history and that there is still
ambiguity to its meaning inside and outside dance. Generally, the term
kinaesthesia first came about in the nineteenth century related to physio-
logical studies and was derived from the Greek terms kine (movement)
and aesthesis (sensation). Sir Charles Bell, around the 1820–1830s, is
said to have first identified kinaesthesia as ‘muscle sense’, after exam-
ining patients’ experience of sensations, such as pain, fatigue, weight,
and resistance. Later kinaesthesia was clarified to relate to muscular
receptors, all with specific neural properties. The term proprioception
was coined in the early 1900s by C.S. Sherrington (and kinaesthesia
fell out of use for a time) as a result of his identification that motor
14 I maintain here that kinaesthesia and proprioceptionare separate terms, as summarised

in a previous publication (Jola et al. 2011, 21).
neurons had afferent (receiving information from the environment) and

efferent (sending commands to muscles) properties. Sherrington claimed
an unconscious aspect to proprioception, particularly in physical activities,
such as balancing and/or movement learning. Gibson (1966) returned
to the term kinaesthesia and argued that our body also extracts informa-
tion from the environment, for instance gravity is a generalised sense of
bodily disposition (e.g. tension or relaxation). More recently, neurosci-
entists and cognitive scientists, such as Berthoz (2000), included cultural
and gendered differences, which may impact on kinaesthetic perceptions.
In addition, Berthoz aligned kinaesthetic perceptions with an anticipa-
tory quality of attention (feedforward mechanisms) and the simulation
of action. Foster also points out ways that modern and contemporary
dance developed in parallel to evolving definitions of kinaesthesia, further
supporting the argument for how the term is historically implicated.
For instance, she aligns the emergence and thinking of Gibson’s (1979)
theory of perception with the aesthetic of Cunningham in the way that
they both view bodily experience and kinaesthesia related to moving
through the environment, rather than only as passive perception (as it was
conceived previous to this), ‘Like Cunningham’s ideal viewers, [Gibson]
envisions his subjects as active and wilful perceivers’ (Foster 2008, 52).
Using the term ‘the visual’, I am referring to the externally visually
perceived and performative aspects of dance and dancing, or simply those
experiences in which the visual is emphasised. More specifically, for the
purposes of this work, the visual refers to the visual projected image(s)
of the dancer dancing, which can also be the visual imagined image(s)
of the dancer’s own dancing, the dancing imagined to have been seen by
an audience or the dancing seen on a video. I use this term in line with
what Bleeker (2002) calls ‘visuality’, which she identifies as: ‘an object of
study…[which] requires that we focus on the relationship between the
one seeing and the one being seen’, except that my focus is principally
from ‘the one being seen’ (2). My use of the term is likewise indebted
to visual cultural studies, which include key texts, such as John Berger’s
(1972) Ways of Seeing and Laura Mulvey’s (1975/1999) Visual Pleasure
and Narrative Cinema and the study of visual imagery and its mean-
ings from political, feminist, or psychological perspectives, which in turn
have made ‘the visual’ a subject of study (Jones 2010, 2). For instance,
‘the visual’ is precisely the subject matter of Martin Jay’s (1993) Down-
cast Eyes: the denigration of vision in twentieth-century French thought, in
34 S. EHRENBERG
which he states the visible is not only conceived as a perceptual experience

but also as a cultural trope (587).
Who Is This Book for?

The issues addressed in this work are important because they can help
dancers consider how their seemingly private kinaesthetic experiences
might be situated in relation to a larger social construct and, more
specifically, according to assumed and prevailing values about visual
self-reflection. Although this has been done relatively comprehensively
for ballet in dance studies, it has yet to be fully explored in relation
to contemporary dance. In addition, theoretical perspectives, such as
discussed in Chapter 6 related to new materialism and the posthuman,
are shifting how we conceive of ‘objectivity’ via technology, such as
video self-images. The arguments posed provide a perspective from which
dancers can re-conceive of their dancing experience or use as a point of
resistance to think/move in other ways. Critical reflection is one tool
that dancers can potentially use to handle the challenges which being
a dancer can bring. As dance scholars Sally Doughty and Jayne Stevens
(2002) proclaim, reporting on their study of reflexive processes by dance
students in HE and FE in the UK: ‘Reflective thought and judgment are
central to the artistic process and established features of arts pedagogy’
(1). The arguments address ‘the importance of Randy Martin’s [1998]
call to continuously revisit the labelling and politics of dancing’ (Quinlan
2017, 38). The problems raised encourage us to consider where dancers
feel a sense of agency in their practice and to question their processes of
becoming and being professional-level dancers, such as through critically
reviewing the role played by style-specific values in their practice.
To offer some elaboration on the application and relevance of this book
for specific populations, this work is more broadly a deconstruction of an
aspect of contemporary dance practice for which being in the practice and
being a practitioner does not always allow. This includes many roles found
in dance practice, in being a dancer, dance performer, choreographer, and
teacher. As touched on above, this book is able to offer thinking about
dance experience because, as Depraz et al. (2002) discuss, it suspends
aspects of dance experience and in doing so provides different understand-
ings of it. Researching micro-properties of experiencing specifically allows
us to begin to question the ‘intermediate’ aspects of expert experience
in an embodied activity. This suspension is one way we can understand
the many complexities of experiencing as well. In this case, it means

breaking down the experience of a dancer dancing and/or recording and
then watching that recording on video; this ‘breaking down’ then shines
different light on aspects of that experience, but aspects that are only avail-
able because the breaking down, or suspension, has allowed a change in
the temporal perspective(s) on that experience. In the everyday life of the
dancer, this process might go on without any particular notice, without
noting any of the implicit, or intermediate, processes, perspectives, histo-
ries, etc. that might be a part of this seemingly simple and ‘everyday’
experience in the practice. This book tries to respond to, illuminate,
and allow for further critical engagement with, some of the interme-
diate processes for professional-level dancers. Dancers reading about this
here can then reflect on, or diffract, those ideas and experiences when
they return to dancing and or in their own writing about their dancing
experiences when they too suspend them.
The book raises questions for dancers’ professional life and how the
structure of a dance style can impact on private and personal kinaes-
thetic experience. Professional-level contemporary dancers are more often
than not left to their own devices to work between being a body
that is the product of, performed and archived work of dance and a
feeling kinaesthetic subject involved with the work of dance—so continu-
ally being between being the object and subject of dance. While many
(already) professional dancers encountering this text will have found
their own way(s) through these negotiations of internal/external, feeling,
and being watched, this text explicitly deals with that part of being
and becoming contemporary dancer, and putting these negotiations in
a concrete and distributable written form. It is thus a potential means
of reflection and diffraction for existing professional-level dancers about
others’ means of dealing with the internal/external negotiations of being
a dance performer and/or a means of critical engagement with these ideas
to further understanding. The material can be something with which
a professional-level practitioner agrees and/or disagrees and builds on
the arguments and perspectives presented through their own practice
(e.g. choreographic works, pedagogy) or in the various talks, discussions,
symposiums, and events that practitioners engage in. It is a means to offer
my perspective on ‘conversation’ above and ask professional-level dancers
to also reflect on my reflecting on reflections (which conclude in diffrac-
tions); that is, the book is meant to open up further to the dance reader
and welcome ongoing conversations on the issues presented, such as the
36 S. EHRENBERG
development and nurturing of kinaesthetic experience in contemporary

dance practice, or the values and structuring structures of contemporary
dance as a dance style, or the engagement with visual self-reflection in the
practice. I welcome these follow-up conversations and reflections with
this work directly and otherwise, in classrooms and studios where dancers
move, dialogue, challenge, teach, and/or in future work performed and
published.
Teaching and learning in, and about, dance in higher education today
values a balance between practice and theory. This book reflects this
value for balance and adds another example to others being produced
(e.g. Roche 2015; Ravn 2017; Markula and Clark 2018; Rothfield 2021)
and in specific relationship to contemporary dance and certain philosoph-
ical and theoretical perspectives, such as phenomenology and sociology.
This book raises questions about teaching dance in higher education. In
questioning the value of kinaesthetic experience in this style, as well as
questioning the practices that nurture and delineate this dance style, this
book is indirectly bringing into question what we are delivering and devel-
oping in dance programmes around the world that feature contemporary
dance. In posing for the reader a selection of practices and values that
shape and inform contemporary dance, for instance, I am offering mate-
rial that educators, students (UG and PG), and graduates can grapple with
directly—do we agree that these practices inform contemporary dance? If
so, what needs further elaboration? What do we want to maintain, build
on, make more of? How can what we do be shared and valued more
broadly across higher education institutions to increase the value of dance
as a form of knowledge and intelligence in the academy? If not, what is
missing? Is a different perspective useful and if so what is that? What might
be at risk by creating these categories?
In another, more straightforward way, this text can be utilised across
a number of modules on existing and future dance and performance
studies programmes. For example, students might find the chapter on
a kinaesthetic mode of attention a useful reading in conjunction with
contemporary dance technique class as a means of placing some of their
physical practice within a wider historical and cultural frame. Or the
chapters on video and visual self-reflection might be useful in relation
to coursework interrogating the increasing use of digital technologies in
training, choreographic, and performance practices and the effects this
might have from the performers’ perspective. I hope that this text will
move beyond dance and be used by theatre and performance studies as
well, since the issue of embodiment and bodily practices is more prescient
today than ever before, as mentioned above. The increasing development
of ‘dance theatre’ as a field is only one example of this point on change
found across dance, theatre, and performance studies (e.g. Sörgel 2015).
This book will aid those at all levels pursuing research on the topics
of kinaesthesia and visual self-reflection. In addition, it can provide an
example and framework for conducting research in the studio and the
field.
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CHAPTER 2
Illuminating Dancers’ Kinaesthetic

Experiences
This chapter primarily provides a chronological account of the evolving

discourse regarding dancers’ embodied experience and places the work
within a spectrum of existing dance studies scholarship. I first discuss
the polarisation of the kinaesthetic and the visual in contemporary dance,
which has shaped assumptions about dancers’ experiences in the practice.
I then contend that this polarisation can be found in early phenomeno-
logical accounts about dancers’ experiences, many of which conceive
of dancer experiences according to ideologies of wholeness and in-the-
moment, or ‘non-reflective’, consciousness. I move on to discuss the way
in which poststructuralist and sociological approaches were adopted in
dance studies, in part as a response to the problems of universalism with
these previous accounts. Finally, I summarise recent sources that repre-
sent a growing discourse about the multiplicity and complexity of dancers’
experience in contemporary dance practice.1
1 This chapter should be read alongside other histories and anthologies of dance studies,
many coming out around the same time I complete this manuscript, such as The Blooms-
bury Companion to Dance Studies (2019), The Routledge Companion to Dance Studies
(2020) and a number of Oxford Handbooks related to dance; the scope of this chapter
cannot encapsulate all of the rich and complex history available, though it aims to provide
an informed perspective as is relevant to the material informing this research, particularly
the kinaesthetic and the visual, and other sources provided to aid further reading.

Switzerland AG 2021
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73403-9_2
46 S. EHRENBERG
A Historical Polarisation
of the Kinaesthetic and the Visual
The value of the kinaesthetic has been constructed in opposition to the
visual in contemporary dance discourse and practice. This constructing of
values about kinaesthesia in opposition to visual image has contributed
to a polarisation between them across modern and contemporary dance
history.
From the early days of modern dance, pioneers are keen to distinguish
themselves from ballet, in part by focusing on the kinaesthetic instead
of the visual in the way they created, presented, and spoke about their
work. As Copeland (1993) writes about modern dance at the turn of the
century: ‘One can easily imagine the early modern dance choreographers
nodding in agreement as they sing the praises of tactile kinaesthetic expe-
rience in opposition to the purely “visual” impact of ballet’ (141). Ballet
was considered by modern dance pioneers, such as Isadora Duncan, to
focus too much on visual display—emphasising the perfect technique,
line, and virtuosity displayed on a proscenium stage (Daly 1995). As
a direct statement against the visual display of ballet, modern dance
pioneers emphasised kinaesthesia and emotions in their choreography. As
Dempster (2010) states, modern dance, more specifically choreographic
output and the training systems of Mary Wigman, Doris Humphrey, and
Martha Graham, was based on emotional and psychological imperatives—
the governing logic was not pictorial, but affective (229–230). Or as
Daly (1992) puts it, there was a ‘…tension between an elitist ideology
of the sacrifice of the self to tradition (ballet) and a democratic ideology
of the expression of self through an original form (modern dance)…’
(242). In other words, modern dance is argued to have focused on the
kinaesthetic to feed an ideology of an ‘original self’, which was internally
and emotionally directed, whereas ballet focused on the visual to feed an
‘elitist ideology’, which sacrifices the self to external display and tradition.
This emphasis on the kinaesthetic in modern dance has an impact on
dancers’ experience in different ways. For instance, Isadora Duncan asked
dancers to embrace a particular kind of synthesis with ‘the natural’, which
emphasised that dancers should feel how their bodies respond to the envi-
ronment, the sun and sky, rather than focusing on projecting a specific line
or pose according to a codified movement vocabulary (Daly 1995; Foster
1997). The metaphors Duncan used were purposefully oriented in terms
of an ideology about nature and the natural (Daly 1995). For example,
2 ILLUMINATING DANCERS’ KINAESTHETIC EXPERIENCES 47
Duncan had dancers wear flowing tunics in which they could move ‘freely’
and feel the wind on their bodies as they danced—freeing the body from
the confining, image-oriented corsets of Victorian times and returning
the dancers to move in the way ‘nature’ intended (Copeland 1993). As
another example, which also evidences continuing transmission of these
values (discussed further below), while taking a class in the Duncan tradi-
tion from Jeanne Bresciani (protégée of Maria Theresa Duncan, Isadora’s
adopted daughter) during my BA at New York University, I was often
directed to orient my sternum to the sky and ground the weight into
the earth, despite dancing in a studio on the 2nd floor of a New York
City high-rise. As Foster (1997) describes, Duncan believed that, ‘When
students are asked to… “fall to the earth, lie quietly and then rise to
greet the sun,” they are participating, body and soul, in primordial human
situations’ (245).
A dominant value of the kinaesthetic, such as with Duncan’s work
in early modern dance, is a mainstay across dance history, although its
emphasis shifts subtly in nuance across the years and across a variety
of modern and contemporary dance artists (Foster 2011). For instance,
although Martha Graham professed to work actively against an inner
awareness related to nature, as Duncan had done, she ‘did not want
to be a tree, a flower, or a wave’ (Graham 1980, 45 as cited in
Reynolds 2007, 111); she oriented her work towards expressing internal
emotions, such as lust, greed, and love, as they were represented in Greek
mythology (Reynolds 2007). Graham also prioritised self-interrogation
for her dancers according to emerging concepts from psychology at the
time (e.g. Freud), encouraging a kinaesthetic focus oriented towards
scrutiny of the psychological ‘self’ and thinking of the body as a set of
systems, i.e. the nervous system (Foster 1997; Reynolds 2007). As Foster
(1997) describes:
For Martha Graham…the goal of dance, [was] to represent in archetypal

form the deep conflicts of the human psyche…the self is too dark and
repressed, the act of expression too tortured for movement to be light and
free-flowing [as in Duncan]. (246)
48 S. EHRENBERG
Graham’s technique, which became routine by the 1950s, was about

expressing the inner psychological landscape and the struggle with it,
through movement (Foster 1997, 246).2
In the 1960s and 1970s, abstracted and ‘task-based’ choreographic
method changed the emphasis on kinaesthesia in contemporary dance
(sometimes also referred to as postmodern dance), particularly in contrast
to the natural and inner-psyche imperatives of Duncan and Graham
(Banes 1977). Foster (1997) writes that, for some choreographers at this
time, such as Cunningham3 the internal focus of contemporary dancers
was geared towards a ‘body as instrument’ notion and emphasis began
to be more explicitly on ‘kinaesthetic awareness’, according to the way
it was expressed in other bodily practices (i.e. somatics). This particular
emphasis on the kinaesthetic, in contrast to the visual, had a topical polit-
ical purpose. For instance, the feminist movement and the suspicion and
resentment of what became known as ‘the male gaze’ were important.
Emphasis on the kinaesthetic represented a value for the subjective and
individual bodily experience of the dancer, in contrast to the ‘external’
and objectifying images of the dancer’s body (Copeland 1993, 142). In
other words, during the 1960s and 1970s (although it may have been
implied earlier in modern dance), the polarisation between the kinaes-
thetic and the visual served to work against the dancer feeling and/or
being treated as an object, or an objectified image. The focus on the
internal became one way to help reclaim the subjectivity and agency of
the dancer in contrast to the dancer being conceived as an image, or at
worst, a spectacle.
Yvonne Rainer’s Trio A (1966) is often heralded as representa-
tive of postmodern dance at this time, and expressing notions of the
non-spectacle and the emphasis on pedestrian-oriented kinaesthetic expe-
riences of the dancer (Copeland 1993). For instance, the choreographic
direction for Trio A does not include projecting an emotion or ‘beautiful’
aesthetic to an audience; instead, the direction for the dancer is to focus
on executing a set of ordered sequences of pedestrian movements. This
piece is considered exemplary of non-spectacle in that Rainer’s chore-
ography is not directed towards visual display; rather, Rainer focuses on
2 For more on the complexity of this dance history, see, for instance, Gottschild (1998),
Franko (1990–1991), Manning (2004).
3 Banes (1977) argues Cunningham is ‘on the border between modern and post-
modern dance’ (p. xvi).
executing movement tasks in a pedestrian way that she, or anyone, would

do ‘every day’ or ‘on the street’. As Novack (1990) states, with post-
modern dance, such as Trio A, the aim became to present ‘a real, or
authentic’ way of moving (135). Banes (1977) likewise reports: ‘[Post-
modern] choreographers deliberately used untrained performers in their
search for the “natural” body’, implying that the value of what was ‘nat-
ural’ at this time (in contrast to Duncan) was the pedestrian (xviii). Or as
Michael Kirby put it in The Drama Review in 1975:
In the theory of post-modern dance, the choreographer does not apply

visual standards to the work. The view is an interior one: movement is not
pre-selected for its characteristics but results from certain decisions, goals,
plans, schemes, rules, concepts, or problems. (as cited in Banes 1977, xiv)
In contrast to the interior emphasis required of modern dance, such as

from Duncan and Graham, the postmodern dancers’ interior revolved
primarily around logic and problem-solving ideas. Or as George (2014)
summarises, the next generation of contemporary dance aimed for a
‘gender-neutral’ body. ‘Where Graham envisions gender as a natural and
inevitable aspect of the human, […] [Trisha] Brown establishes a neutral
body onto which gender can be placed’ (Foster 2009/2018, 48).
The above partial history of contemporary dance’s emphasis on the
kinaesthetic, often in opposition to visual display, aims to begin to
establish the position for how this history informs the nuance of the
kinaesthetic for contemporary dancers today.
The Kinaesthetic in Contemporary Dance

It is important to address briefly the kinaesthetic in contemporary dance
today here, although practices and values particular to the kinaesthetic in
contemporary dance will be visited again and in more detail in Chapter 4.
In general, kinaesthetic awareness in contemporary dance is often
aligned with its definition in somatic practices, following the lineage of
Cunningham and his contemporaries, as noted above.4 George (2014)
likewise argues in their genealogy of Somatics and contemporary dance,
4 Eddy’s (2009) ‘brief history of somatic practices and dance’ specifies that the somatic
practices of the ‘first generation’ which were important to contemporary dance were
Alexander, Feldenkrais, Gindler, Laban, Mensendieck, Middendorf, Mézières, Rolf, Todd,
50 S. EHRENBERG
‘The term “release technique” emerged when contemporary dance,

informed by ideas that came to be known as Somatics, achieved success
on large concert stages with choreography that demonstrated the qual-
ities [of letting go and flowing]’ (272). Somatics is a term ‘created by
Thomas Hanna in 1976 to name the approaches to mind/body integra-
tion’ (Spohn and Prettyman 2012, 49). Hanna (1988) describes somatics
as: ‘a way of perceiving oneself “from the inside out, where one is aware of
feelings, movements and intentions, rather than looking objectively from
the outside in”’ (as cited in Spohn and Prettyman 2012, 49).
Although it can be argued that somatic practices and modern dance
have a connection that goes back much further—both practices developed
around the early 1900s in line with changing conceptions of body, atten-
tion, and movement—it is only within the last 30–40 years that somatics
and dance have become so intertwined, at least writing from the UK
and US perspectives (Eddy 2009). In turn, kinaesthesia in contemporary
dance has become conceived primarily as internally-directed awareness of
the body’s movements and unique way of moving, often in the same way
that kinaesthetic experience in somatic practices is described (Järvinen
2006; George 2014, 2020). For instance, Eddy (2009) defines somatics
as: ‘Discovery through internalised and conscious exploration of a phys-
ical or emotional challenge…diving inward’ (16). Fortin et al. (2002)
advocate the use of somatics in dance education because it helps dancers
‘…[learn] to direct attention to movement on an incrementally fine
level’, implicitly supporting a value for kinaesthetic attention in contem-
porary dance similar to the way Eddy describes (166). George’s (2014,
2020) genealogy further substantiates the historicised connection of these
practices and the kinaesthetic. George (2014) writes, for instance, how
somatics worked against the look of movement and that ‘somatic studios
had no mirrors in order to focus on sensation, and teachers believed
they facilitated a connection with authentic bodily experience rather than
teaching kinetic forms’ (104). The value and ideology of ‘the natural’
have a particular currency across somatics and contemporary dance which
alludes to both forms as defying categorisation and thus, being acces-
sible and necessary for every body. George (2014) astutely argues ‘[…]
Somatics continued to cultivate a canonical body as an invisible cate-
gory of nature, which purportedly accounted for ontology, yet marked
and Trager (and their protégés Bartenieff, Rosen, Selver, Speads, and Sweigard) and also
gives a special mention to the practice of yoga.
difference and enacted exclusion from its supposedly universal purview’

(iv).
The relationship to contemporary dance and attention-focus relevant
to somatics is again supported by the description for a research event at
Trinity Laban, one of the preeminent contemporary dance conservatoires
in the UK (Trinity Laban 2018; see also Lefebvre Sell 2020). The event
title and descriptive material give some insight to the event: Moving as a
thought process: studio development and creative encounters, and ‘Through
investigative practice involving stillness processes and relational moving,
this artistic research, conducted […] over an eleven year period, has
fostered a methodology where a refinement of the “felt sense” (Gendlin,
2003) was embodied, articulated and documented’ (n.p.). The descrip-
tion aligns mindfulness meditation and contemporary dance practice(s),
suggesting participants notice, or listen to, what happens in the moment
while moving and/or in stillness, noticing how they react physically to
environmental changes, and refining kinaesthetic awareness throughout
the practice. The description indicates this aligned approach has had
currency for some time, given the eleven-year research trajectory.
Within the domain of release technique, teachers are said to empha-
sise ‘profound exploration of kinaesthetic awareness’ (Jordan 1988 as
cited in Figuerola 2009, 8). Release technique, sometimes referred to as
‘new dance’, began to take shape in the 1970s and 1980s (Claid 2006,
80) and is a style that developed from and is argued to be indebted
to postmodern dance, such as the Judson Church group. For instance,
George (2014) argues for how Trisha Brown, as her career accelerated,
began describing her vocabulary using the term ‘release technique’ (p.
23). Release is argued to come from the desire to develop more explic-
itly a form that encourages dancers’ subjectivity and sense of agency, yet
again (Foster 1997; Figuerola 2009; Goddard 2011; Buckwalter 2012).
One predominant way in which ‘release’ tries to do this is by empha-
sising the dancers’ kinaesthetic awareness. Another is by aiming to be a
democratic technique, which teaches ‘movement principles’ rather than
distinct choreography beholden to only one choreographer, such as is the
case for the Graham and Cunningham techniques. Release encompasses
a number of different choreographers working independently with their
own idiosyncratic movement style. As George (2014) summarises, ‘By the
next decade [1980s], […] many dancers […] [pursued] individual goals in
classes that still proffered kinesthetic awareness of functional imperatives
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as foundation; but entailed reproducing novel, complex, set choreog-

raphy’ (159). Release technique serves dancers’ pursuit of what Foster
(1997) calls ‘the hired body’, in that it aims to ‘[homogenise] all styles
and vocabularies beneath a sleek, impenetrable surface’ (255). However,
Foster (1997) further argues that in proclaiming to be ‘neutral’ and
‘unbiased’ current contemporary dance ends up ‘[masking] the process
through which dance technique constructs the body’ (256).5 Indeed, the
ongoing ideology of the natural, and authenticity, continues in release,
but in a slightly different nuance and form. As George (2014) points out,
Leslie Kaminoff declares on the front page of Movement Research Perfor-
mance Journal in New York City in 1999, ‘You can’t fake release’, which
supports the argument that the training could not be copied because of
its ‘ability to restore innate natural capacity’; nevertheless, Kaminoff also
paradoxically establishes that by this time there is a style that one could
distinguish and had established prominence (57).
There are a few distinguishing features of release technique, despite the
critique of an attempt to teach ‘movement principles’ and claim to be a
relatively homogenous dance style. For instance, release technique can be
identified in the commonality of suspension and release in the movement
(Ravn 2009, 101). The movement in release has a distinct weightiness
and swing to it, and teachers of the technique often emphasise a quality of
flow (Jordan 1988, as cited in Figuerola 2009, 8). The movement shares
many of the same releasing properties found in contact improvisation and
certain somatic practices, such as Bartenieff fundamentals and Skinner
Releasing Technique.6 Buckwalter (2012) describes release initially as a
‘new type of dance technique’, ‘Where limbs had once moved as a whole,
they were now made of pieces – wrist, knee, elbow, shoulder, hip – and
could initiate movement as easily as the torso once had,’ but clarifies that
it evolved to be, later, ‘[…] a style of moving, loose jointed and relaxed’
(n.p.). Vida Midgelow (2018), writing about Skinner Releasing Tech-
nique, argues that ‘releasing is a complex notion’, which ‘incorporates
“letting go” in physical, emotional, and perceptual terms’ (68). Clarifying
5 As discussed in Chapter 1, see also Roche (2015, 9–15) on this issue regarding
contemporary dancers’ encapsulation of many styles, versus one codified style, and similar
terms from around the same time.
6 See George (2014) for more on the relationship between ‘release technique’ and
Skinner and Klein (149–150) and Buckwalter (2012) on Topf and further references for
‘confusion on the term’ release.
further: ‘The release of tension is, in effect, a release of perceptions, of

preconceived ideas, which are manifested in habits’ (Midgelow 2018, 68).
The idea and impetus of release are crucial to the way dancers ‘release’
into the floor or ‘release’ tension in order to try to obtain a more relaxed
and seemingly more efficient way of moving (Ravn 2009, 101; Figuerola
2009, 8–9).
Early Phenomenological
Accounts of Dance Experience
I have discussed above that a polarisation of the kinaesthetic and the
visual has been constructed across contemporary dance history and have
indicated how this polarisation affects contemporary dance and dancers’
experience in it. The constructed polarisation of the kinaesthetic and
the visual can also be identified from some of the early phenomenolog-
ical accounts of dance. Although none of these texts explicitly specifies
they are about contemporary dance, they are framed in a way, particu-
larly regarding dancer experience and what it is like, which indicates the
practice of contemporary dance.
Maxine Sheets-Johnstone’s (1966) text The Phenomenology of Dance is
one of the first phenomenological analyses of dance. The text covers a
number of angles on dance experience from a phenomenological perspec-
tive, such as what it is like to watch dance. However, my focus is on
the way the writing conceives of ‘dancer consciousness’ and dancers’
kinaesthetic experiences in practice. The text provides one example of the
above-historicised polarisation of the kinaesthetic and the visual, which in
some ways still permeate contemporary dance practice and thus, in part,
still represent values upheld in contemporary dance today.
Sheets-Johnstone (1966) writes about a unified, whole, and contin-
uous dancing consciousness, and the descriptions implicitly often polarise
the pre-reflective/reflective and internal/external. For example: ‘Virtual
force…is either internally related by a pre-reflective consciousness or
externally related by a reflective consciousness’ (44). In the descriptions
surrounding this quote, there is preference given to the pre-reflective
and internal. Another section of the text presents two types of dancing
consciousness, as a comparison, and, again, the (albeit simplified) impli-
cation is that one is better than the other. For instance, Sheets-Johnstone
(1966) writes about how one ‘dancer sustains the primary illusion so
long as she never separates herself from the spatial unity and temporal
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continuity of the form’, whereas the other dancer ‘reflects upon herself
apart from the dance [and then] she is no longer one with it, and in
consequence, destroys the illusion’ (39). Implicit value judgements are in
this comparison because the first dancer achieves a ‘unity and continu-
ity’ which is often complimented in the text, whereas the second dancer
‘destroys’ the illusion and, as described a bit later in the text, becomes
‘separate’ from the dance, which is undesirable for the dance(r).
The descriptions in The Phenomenology of Dance (1966) hold for a
type of dancing consciousness. However, I want to emphasise a histori-
cised ideology implied with some of the descriptions and argue that they
indicate prevailing judgements about types of reflection in dance practice.
For instance, despite being a trained and experienced dancer, the experi-
ence of an audience watching me often brings on reflection about what
I look like, even though I might not want it to. Dancing consciousness
is highly nuanced, complex, and dependent on context and a myriad of
other factors.
However, the above is not to claim that Sheets-Johnstone’s (1966) text
offers a simple phenomenology of dance. Sheets-Johnstone also writes
about the unity and ‘diasporatic nature’ with dancer experience; she also
argues for how dance experience is ‘form-in-the-making’ and is ‘both a
dispersed unity and a coherent multiplicity’ (38). However, unity is often
favoured over multiplicity, rather than equal weight being given to both.
For instance: ‘So long as the dancer is one with the dance, what is created
and presented is a complete and unified phenomenon…’ (38). However,
when the dancer reflects upon bodily experience, the body is argued to
be experienced in parts, not as unified and coherent (which, as discussed
above, is ‘undesirable’ dance experience). As another example:
The reflected-upon body is always an externally related system of parts and

never a totality, which is lived. As an objective system of parts, the body is
often regarded as an instrument of consciousness, an instrument explicitly
recognized as carrying out whatever consciousness intends. (27)
The descriptions of the dancer’s ‘lived body’ in this way express roman-
ticised notions of wholeness and an ideal of trying to continually achieve
in-the-moment subjective dancing. Descriptions of the ‘reflected upon
body’ are polarised as undesirable because reflection makes the body
an object and thus, ‘explicit awareness’ when dancing is ‘unsuccessful
reflection’ (Sheets-Johnstone 1966, 44–45).
If pre-reflective/reflective and internal/external are polarised

according to these phenomenological descriptions of dancer experi-
ence, then it can be inferred that if the dancer, while dancing, reflects
upon what her movement looks like—the visual—then she is explicitly
reflecting and thus, breaking the in-the-moment unity of her dancing. Put
in another way, the dancer is taken out of the kinaesthetic in-the-moment
experience of dancing and in these moments is judging the body as a
visual object. The ‘body-subject’, which is primarily experienced kinaes-
thetically, is broken by these ‘body-object’ moments of consciousness.
This is one of the many interpretations of the early phenomenological
accounts of dancer experience, which I argue polarises the kinaesthetic
and the visual (e.g. Pakes 2019; Bresnahan 2019).
The descriptions above are discussing dancing consciousness in the
moment of dancing. However, the same thinking also applies to reflec-
tion after dancing because reflection and pre-reflection are related. This
conclusion is supported by parts of the final chapter of the book, in
the discussion of teaching dance composition, in which Sheets-Johnstone
(1966) advises teaching dance students the idea that reflection on
one’s own dancing, ‘the reflected-upon body’, breaks ‘the pre-reflective
dynamic totality of movement of the body’ in creating movement. ‘One
must only stop reflecting – analyzing, interpreting, judging – long enough
to grasp [the pre-reflective awareness of the body in motion]’ (137).
The emphasis on wholeness and being in-the-moment in the above
examples can be viewed historically in that, at the time of its writing,
the text brings dance studies back to the ‘lived experience’ of dancing,
or as Sheets-Johnstone (1966) writes, helps recognise ‘dance as dance’
(xii). The ideology interpreted above can be viewed in alignment with the
importance of in-the-moment experiencing in somatic practices, which
were also gaining use at the same time, as discussed above. Indeed,
Sheets-Johnstone reflects that at the time of the book’s first publication:
with the exception of Susanne Langer’s book, Feeling and Form, there
were no serious attempts at a philosophical illumination of dance…there
were no dance scholars at the doctoral level who had the opportunity to
look at dance from other than an educational perspective. (x)
However, the text attempts to ‘philosophically [illuminate] dance experi-

ence’ without fully representing the multiple, contextual, and contradic-
tory aspects of dancers’ experiences.
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The ideology of unity and wholeness for a dancer’s dancing conscious-

ness is reflected in other early descriptions of dance experience, which also
imply a similar dialectic regarding kinaesthetic experience and visual self-
reflection. For instance, Poet Paul Valéry (1927/1983) describes dancing
in his text ‘Philosophy of Dance’ as having ‘no outward aim’. He similarly
implies that the subjective dancing experience is ideal in contrast to the
reflective and judging experience:
For the dancer is in another world; no longer the world that takes color
from our gaze, but one that she weaves with her steps and builds with her
gestures. And in that world acts have no outward aim; there is no object
to grasp, to attain, to repulse or run away from, no object which puts a
precise end to an action and gives movements first an outward direction
and co-ordination, then a clear and definite conclusion. (61)
According to Valéry’s description, the dancer is swept away by the move-

ment with no outward aim but to dance. The dancer does not attend to
the gaze, but the moment-to-moment experiencing and kinaesthesia of
movement. Because the dancer does not have an object to grasp, as does
a pianist or a painter, dancers’ experiences have a less precise end and
beginning, and instead are ephemeral and mystical.
Sondra Fraleigh (1987), explicitly building on Sheets-Johnstone, like-
wise contrasts ‘body-object’ with ‘body-subject’ for dance experience in
Dance and the Lived Body: ‘The body-object can be known, in the sense
that the body itself can become the object of our attention, but the body-
subject can only be lived’ (15).7 Body-object is ‘a conscious, intentional
position taken toward the body as an object of attention’ (14). The text
states that, in dance, this is when the dancer focuses on their body and
the body becomes the object of their attention (14). It is claimed that,
when the dancer does this, their ‘preflective (before-noticing) stream of
being is interrupted’, indicating that this interruption is a negative aspect
of dancing experience (14).
The distinction in this text (Fraleigh 1987) is that body-object implies
that the dancer can experience their body like other objects; body-object
is used as a ‘neutral concept’, similar to the perspective used in art when
7 In another publication, Fraleigh (2018) situates her research, particularly in relation

to phenomenological philosophy. She clarifies that Dance and the Lived Body specifically
takes an existential phenomenological position (36).
one ‘[stands] back to observe and learn’ (14). Body-subject, on the other
hand, ‘eludes our full knowledge’ and is the ‘prereflective’ self, which
can be more readily experienced when dancing and when the dancer is
‘unified in action’ and ‘living the present-centred moment’ (13). In this
body-subject state, it is argued that the dancer is not noticing, looking
back upon, anticipating, or imagining the body, but is experiencing ‘lived
and complete wholeness’ (14). This is indeed one type of dance experi-
ence. However, there is a value implicit in these descriptions, particularly
when it is claimed that ‘good’ dancers are those dancers who do not
reflect too much when dancing and, thus, do not enter a body-object
state. ‘Good dancers’ are ‘present centred’ and ‘know that the dancing
self dies when it looks back either to visualise or to admire itself’ (23).
It is suggested in these descriptions that the dancer is successful when
the kinaesthetic remains primary and their self and body merge with
the dance; this is ‘worthily representing the aesthetic’. These descriptions
imply superiority to kinaesthetic experience, in opposition to the visual,
such as reflecting on how one’s movement appears (23).
As with Sheets-Johnstone, Fraleigh is predominantly writing about in-
the-moment dance experience. Likewise, Fraleigh’s descriptions apply to
a type of dance experience. However, what remain to be described are
other nuances, complexities, and multiplicities of dancers’ experiences.
As above, what Fraleigh proposes for what happens during the dance
experience also raises problems for reflecting upon it later; that is, a
dancer should ideally try to remain focused in the moment and on the
kinaesthetic experience of movement.
Emilyn Claid’s (2006) book Yes? No! Maybe…: Seductive ambiguity
in dance illustrates how the above valuing of the kinaesthetic in these
early phenomenological accounts is partially reflected in what was impor-
tant in contemporary dance in the 1960s and 1970s. For instance, ‘new
dance’ in Britain in the 1970s was, according to Claid, a shift in ‘re-
thinking how the body moves at a deeply embodied level’ in comparison
with her experiences in ballet, which she describes as primarily object
driven, or driven primarily towards the image presented (80). Claid
writes that in ‘new dance’, dance technique was deconstructed, interro-
gated, reappraised, and re-constructed particularly in reference to other
body techniques, such as Body-Mind Centering (BMC), Aikido, and the
Alexander technique (80). The focus of dance technique shifted from the
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external idealised image in ballet to ‘the anatomical framework and direc-

tional pathways of the body’ valued in ‘new dance’ (82). Claid and her
colleagues actively challenged balletic ideals, which she identifies as:
the need for outside approval and criticism; pain as a measure of correct-
ness and articulation; formal designs and fronted shapes; the hierarchical
structures embodied in the techniques themselves and the emphasis on
state pose and two-dimensional fronted movement. (Claid 2006, 81)
There is at this time a distinct emphasis on process over product, she

reports. Mirrors were absent from the studios and explicit value placed
on a kind of ‘moving intelligence’ and movement between poses, focusing
on kinaesthetic awareness (82). The emphasis for dancers at this time
was about becoming a ‘new thinking dancer’ who rejected ‘fixed conven-
tions of space/time forms’ and worked within ‘non-forms’ (85). As Claid
(2006) states, ‘Letting go of the mirror we became real people, with back,
front and sides, thinking dance movement from the inside out’, proposing
the position that the visual reflection of the mirror worked against the
‘realness’ of their dancing bodies (83).
To be clear, I am not arguing that the above accounts are incorrect as
descriptions of dancer experience. On the contrary, I find these descrip-
tions ring true for some kinds of dancing experience. Instead, I highlight
a concern, which is the potential for these descriptions to be inter-
preted in their historical moment that was further built on as the practice
evolves. Other accounts and experiences related to kinaesthetic experi-
ence in contemporary dance practice are only recently gaining attention,
which I will discuss further below. The descriptions above inform a histor-
ical backdrop that is part of the perspective of contemporary dancer
experience today, but they do not represent the variety and breadth of
dancers’ experiences, and the many different contexts of dance and how
dancers’ experiences vary within them, particularly in relation to visual
self-reflection.
What happens with the above attempts to articulate ephemeral aspects
of dance experience is that an idealised notion of ecstatic dancing is
expressed. Only one type of ‘dancing consciousness’, to borrow Sheets-
Johnstone’s term, is foregrounded, which is kinaesthetically whole and it
should not, ultimately, include reflection on what one’s movement looks
like. There is a strong tone of ‘rightness’ in these descriptions for dancing
experience in which attention is inwardly, or kinaesthetically, directed. In
particular, the dancer who dances without reflecting about the appearance
of their dancing is the ‘good’ dancer.
These writings inspire questions such as: how does this way of
conceiving of dancer consciousness without reflection avoid the problems
for the performer who confronts being watched often and, thus, encoun-
ters reflecting on what their movement looks like, whether s/he wants to
or not? Or, how do dancers’ experiences shift in different contexts, such as
from the beginner to the professional, from the class to the stage, or from
contact improvisation to performed contemporary dance and does this
impact on the ability to be kinaesthetically aware in the way the authors
above describe? Indeed, I am not alone in asking these questions. There
has been an increase in publications addressing connections between
dance practice and performance related to phenomenology, e.g. Bleeker
et al. (2015) and those contributing to more complex phenomenological
conceptions of consciousness related to embodiment, e.g. Depraz et al.
(2002), Koch et al. (2013), Fuchs and Koch (2014), as well as the texts I
discuss further below. Nevertheless, the publication of The Phenomenology
of Dance 50th Anniversary Edition in 2015 evidences that the above-
expressed way of thinking and conceptualising dance experience is still a
part of the discourse. Indeed, one review by Jiesamfoek (2017) declares
that even after fifty years the text is still ‘fresh and applicable’ and signifi-
cant for dance education (89). The reviewer does also note, as I do above
however, that Sheets-Johnstone does not specify the kind of dance she
is writing about and questions the declaration of ‘dancers’ intuition’ in
dancing experience as absolute and one-dimensional (90).8
8 See also a more recent publication (Sheets-Johnstone 2018), even though not specif-
ically about the dance context; there is implicit valuing of bodily experience that might
return to a ‘beginning’, implying that technologies (such as language) had an impact
on bodily experience at some point in history, e.g. ‘[…] in the beginning, language did
not name things, but related the meaning of a sound to its articulation […] the meaning
of the original sound elements of primordial languages […] was thus the analogue of the
articulatory gestures composing the sound’ (7). It is presumably complex to pin down
when this ‘beginning’ occurs, however. I am not questioning the arguments being made
in the publication as a whole, indeed I am sympathetic to the claim that we need to
be aware of the impact power has on being bodily aware; but the implicit reference to
a primordial ‘original’ human bodily experience is a view which seems to still persist in
some studio contexts. Put in another way, the analysis of Aristotle, Jung, and Foster in
this article is not at issue here, rather it is the support of a universality of experience
and the implication this has on wider concerns, such as of difference and innovations in
technologies (again, which include thinking technologies) that change how we experience
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Before returning to more recent phenomenological perspectives on

dancer experience, I want to continue with the historicised account of
the evolving discourse regarding dancers’ embodied experience.
Poststructuralist Approaches
to Dancer Experience
Dance studies scholars (Foster 1986; Briginshaw 2001) have tried to
address problems with the above phenomenological accounts (Sheets-
Johnstone 1966; Fraleigh 1987) of dancer experience by using a post-
structuralist approach. Phenomenology fell out of fashion for a time
in dance studies, as it did in other domains (Crossley 1993, 399),
mainly because phenomenology became criticised as being universalist,
neglecting difference, and only conceiving of bodily experience from a
male point of view (Rothfield 2005). Following academic trends and
moving away from phenomenology, dance scholars, such as Susan Foster
(1986), argue for how dancer experience is historically and culturally situ-
ated. Dance studies utilised ideas from poststructuralist and critical theory
(Ness 2011, 20). Dance scholars working with poststructuralist posi-
tions historically argue that dance knowledge and discourse are produced,
disciplined, and regulated.
Susan Leigh Foster’s (1986, 1996, 1997) work is an important contri-
bution to a historicised shift in dance studies. Her work in the 1980s
and 1990s, in particular, using semiological analysis and theories of repre-
sentation, addresses the universalist problems with previous phenomeno-
logical accounts of dance experience. In Reading Dancing (1986), for
instance, the aim is stated: to ‘articulate a theory of representation in
dance that can encompass a variety of approaches to dance composition’
(3). The book supports the argument that theories of representation get
around some of the problems of ‘the ideal and transcendental’—terms
often relegated to critiques of early phenomenological accounts (Foster
1986, 3). The above text is just one example of work denaturalising the
notions of the self in dance practice and to look at dance practices in terms
of discourse. Or as Cvejić (2015b) puts it, in relation to Foster’s (1986)
work:
the world. For instance, in the article it states, ‘The ties that bind us in a common
humanity are furthermore evident in the fact that we are all bipedal’ (12). Yet, we are
not all bipedal. See also Pakes (2019) and Rothfield (2021).
marks the beginning of a wholesale translation of methods of culturalist

analysis and poststructuralist criticism, as well as of a set of particular
concerns and topics mirroring the agendas of feminism, gender and queer
theory, postcolonial theory and the politics of racial, ethnic and other kinds
of identitarian difference, which shaped Dance Studies in the 1990s. (n.p.)
Dancer experience is here framed in Foucauldian terms of discipline,

value, and representation (Foucault 1975/1988), in particular. Reading
Dancing (1986) specifically argues that a dancing subject is cultivated by
the values and practices of each choreographer (43). The text identifies
assumptions that each choreographer expresses about the body and argues
how this shapes a dancer’s subjectivity (Foster 1986, 43). The major
modern dance traditions of Duncan, Graham, Humphrey, and Wigman
place importance on certain principles in their different approaches. For
instance, the principles of Graham are contract and release, spiralling of
the spine; Humphrey’s are the fall, rebound, and sequential use of major
body joints; Wigman’s are adaptation of space, time, and force from
Laban’s movement analysis (Foster 1986, 90–91). All of these ways of
moving impact differently on the dancer. A predominant argument in this
text is that dancers might execute specific vocabulary in a unique way but
they will all be shaped according to the principles of the choreographer
with whom they train and/or work.
In the essay Dancing Bodies, Foster (1997) more explicitly argues
that dancers are shaped by the styles they train in, again utilising the
idea of discipline from Foucault (1975/1988). In this essay, a selection
of different dance techniques is unpacked, such as ballet, Cunningham,
and contact improvisation, breaking down the values of different dance
styles upheld in their methods of training, rather than in terms of the
choreographic aesthetic of certain artists (although in many cases this
can be the same thing). In contrast to the above phenomenological
descriptions, dancer experience is conceived in this essay in a way that
explicitly addresses reflection or reflective aspects of dancer experience.
For instance, Foster (1997) writes about ‘dancing bodily consciousness’
being made up of three components: ‘the perceived body’, which can be
‘the dancer’s felt body’; ‘the ideal body’, which can be ‘images of other
dancers’ bodies’; and ‘the demonstrative body’, which can be the image
in the mirror (as summarised by Gardner 2007, 44). It is via different
dance techniques, and each style’s ideal body, that the dancer’s self and
their experiences in dance become moulded and shaped. For example, a
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Graham dance student explores the ‘principal metaphor’ of contraction

and release, which ‘promotes a connection between physical and psycho-
logical functioning…[delving] into the interior body as they contract
and relate internal to external space through various pathways of release’
(Foster 1997, 246), whereas a Cunningham dancer is subject ‘to the craft
like task of preparing and presenting movement’ (Foster 1997, 248).
Jill Green (2003), from principally a Foucauldian perspective as well,
argues that dancers are subject to abide by norms according to the tech-
nique in which they train and are disciplined in a bodily discourse that
moulds them to be ‘docile bodies’.
…dance training is another example of a practice that moves from repres-

sive control to the implementation of a system that requires subjects
to be observed and corrected through the ritual of dance technique
classes. In the conservatory-style system student dancers’ bodies are docile
bodies created to produce efficiency, not only of movement, but also, a
normalization and standardization of behaviour in dance classes. (100)
The dancer anecdotes in Green’s (2003) essay elucidate the problems

in ‘Western’ theatre dance of authority and power (by teachers), self-
surveillance, emphasis on an ‘ideal body’, dualist perception of body as
separate from mind, and desires for body modification and regulation
through training and going to the gym.9
As significant as the above analyses, particularly Susan Foster’s work,
have been to dance and dance studies, for re-conceiving dancer experience
in terms of discipline, values, and discourse, the emphasis on the dancers’
body as constructed has not been wholly satisfactory for all. Sally Gardner
(2007), for instance, similar to others (Aalten 2004; Jackson 2005; Fisher
2007), argues that the use of semiotic analysis ‘disciplines modern dance’,
and thus puts dance at the same level of Foucault’s other modes of
production, which may not be accurate in all cases of dance making, and
indeed all dancer experience (43). What is ‘most problematic’, Gardner
(2007) states, is previous conceptualising of the dancing subject (p. 44).
Because the dancer is ‘isolated in relation to herself’, the interpersonal
aspects of the dancing self are missing. Gardner (2007) argues that this
approach ‘[subsumes] the body to the operations of consciousness’ and
9 For another example of the discussion of discipline in relation to the mirror in the
ballet context, see Davies (2018, 15).
centres the ‘(universalised) dancer’ in the ‘dance technique’ (44). Wain-

wright et al. (2005) contend a similar position: ‘contemporary writings in
the discipline of dance studies are dominated by disembodied postmodern
readings of “dance as texts”’ (50). Markula (2014a) also writes about the
critique of these conceptualisations, in respect of the ballet body, as a
‘disempowering narrative’. She addresses a complex range of ballet repre-
sentations that advocate for the ballet body as a ‘meeting ground for the
masculine and feminine where the female can also have access to male
power’ (Markula 2014a, xxiv).
Gardner (2007) argues that what is lacking in the discourse is ‘to
specify the modern dancer as one who is de-centred with respect to located
and specific others’ (44). She argues that the intersubjective and inter-
personal relationships in the processes of a dancing body need to be
considered. For instance, she states that, ‘There is no place here for an
affective relation with the choreographer or her body in “making” the
dancer’ (45). Instead of an ‘abstract and generalised other, the “dance
technique”’, Gardner (2007) calls for thinking about the ‘proclamations’
a choreographer and dancer make when dancing and/or creating work
together (44). Thus, Gardner calls for other kinds of dancers’ experiences
in the discourse and, generally, argues that more views and analyses are
needed.
Likewise, dance scholars Gay Morris (2001) and Anna Aalten (2004)
criticise the use of Foucault’s discursive body and its neglect of the mate-
riality of the dancer’s body. Aalten (2004) calls for ‘attention to the actual
material bodies of dancers and their physical sensations and experiences’
(264). Morris (2001) argues that Bourdieu’s concept of habitus can be
used to ‘grasp the materiality of the body in bodily theory’ (53). Habitus,
she states, helps explain how technique training and choreography can
order dance experience without neglecting its materiality. She writes:
In terms of dance, this view of bodily practice offers the possibility of dance
ordering thoughts and feelings not just through choreography but in the
basic techniques and comportment that present the body to the world in
a particular way. (57)
Morris claims that the dancer’s body is socialised and that the dancer’s
ideas, through the concept of habitus, can be viewed as socially
constructed and limited (58). Aalten similarly takes a sociological
approach and writes about the practice and lives of a group of ballet
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dancers, foregrounding their physical sensations and experiences in prac-

tice; she writes about ballet experiences as they are lived by the dancers
working in the practice.
Sociological Approaches to Dancer Experience

A number of sociological-based dance studies (Novack 1990; Sklar 1994;
Ness 1996; Thomas 1996; Banes and Lepecki 2007), or what Markula
and Clark (2018) refer to as ‘ethnographies’ (xxv), have been equally
important to scholarship which addresses dancer experience from inside
the practice and from a kinaesthetic perspective (many contemporaneous
to works discussed above). These perspectives also draw on postmodernist
and feminist insights. However, they take a different approach to a strictly
postmodernist view, principally interested in ideas of representation and
discipline (Thomas 2003, 66). The works I am distinguishing here are
using a primarily sociological approach and write more explicitly about
what dancing is like, in practice, from the dancer’s point of view. As
Buckland (2010) claims, ‘Since the 1990s, there has been a plethora of
publications on dance that use ethnographic methodology’ (335). Sklar
(2000) likewise reports that a radical shift occurred from 1991, at least
in American dance scholarship, when more dance scholars began turning
to sociocultural issues and ‘the cultural situatedness of dance and move-
ment [was addressed]…reflected in the names applied to the subject:
“dance ethnology”, “cultural studies in dance”, “ethnochoreology”, “per-
formance studies”, “anthropology of dance”…’ (70).10 Dance studies,
because the body is central to the field of dance, were in the best position
to challenge classical anthropology, which had previously ‘followed the
convention of the five senses’ (Sklar 2000, 70).
Cynthia Novack’s (1990) text Sharing the Dance: Contact Improvi-
sation and American Culture is grounded in the idea that each dance
style is a type of culture and systematically delineates the shared practices,
language, and behaviour of contact improvisation. Sklar (2000) argues
that this book ‘brought to public attention how ethnographic studies
might incorporate felt kinetic knowledge to address the cultural meanings
10 Sklar (1994) also reports, in another essay, that during the late 1980s and early
1990s there were ‘several…calls for a “corporeal turn” in anthropological method’ more
broadly, such as by Paul Stoller (1989), Michael Jackson (1989), Thomas Csordas (1990),
Maxine Sheets-Johnstone (1990), and Sally Ann Ness (1992) (21).
inherent in movement’ (70). Novack encapsulates how contact improvi-

sation reflected and/or represented larger socio-political issues and argues
that participants of contact improvisation incorporate ways of moving
as much as ways of thinking about their lives and the world. She illus-
trates that ‘contact improvisation was a way of moving that embodied the
“touchy-feely, group encounter” ambiance of the era’ (Sklar 2000, 70).
Novack (Bull 1988/2001) herself states about the book: ‘This study illus-
trates some ways of looking at movement as culture…evoking the way a
group of people move [to] call up the ambiance of a cultural time and
place with clarity and immediacy’ (407).
Deirdre Sklar (1994) builds on Novack’s work, but writes more
directly about her own participation and embodied exploration of
different dance styles, relying on her ‘body and bodily intelligence as
a point of access for the study of cultural practice as corporeal knowl-
edge’ (9). She argues that ‘movement is a corporeal way of knowing’,
citing Bourdieu’s (1972/1977) contention that ‘one knows oneself and
is known by others as much through the accumulated habits of the body
as through the verbalizations that people exchange’ (Sklar 1994, 11). In
her essay Can Bodylore Be Brought to Its Senses? she writes about her expe-
riences of learning two unfamiliar dance styles (for her, in experience): the
Danzante of the Tortugas fiesta in honour of Our Lady of Guadalupe in
New Mexico, USA, and Bobover Purimspiel of Boro Park in Brooklyn,
NY. What is significant about this essay is the methodology, in particular,
and writing from a first-person perspective, by contrast to the second-
or third-person perspectives of some of the above writings (though it is
important to note that Sheets-Johnston, Fraleigh, and Foster all declare
that their dance experience informs their writing but they do not fore-
ground it in a first-person account in the above-cited texts). For this essay,
Sklar (1994) employs what she calls ‘embodying method’:
Moving from distanced visual observation to close corporeal imitation can

provide clues to experiences that are usually considered to be inaccessible.
It can open avenues toward understanding the way cultural knowledge is
corporeally constituted. (14)
Critically, it is contended that the ‘technique’ of kinaesthetic empathy

and movement analysis is crucial to ‘embodying method’ and to how one
learns to embody other dance styles and come to understand how an
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‘other’ moves, so that one might move in a similar way (14). Kinaesthetic
empathy is then defined in the article as:
…the capacity to participate with another’s movement or another’s sensory

experience of movement…It is a matter of re-cognizing kinaesthetically
what is perceived visually, aurally, or tactilely. As Stern has shown, it is a
translation capacity that we all inherently possess. (15)11
Sklar contends that kinaesthetic empathy is key to her learning these other
dance styles.
Sklar’s (1994) essay, like Novack’s book, represents an increasing shift
in the discourse to describe dancer experience from the first-person
perspective. It signals a move towards ways of thinking and writing from
‘inside’ the practice and provides a model for ways one can write about,
and conceive of, dancers’ (or one’s own) embodied experiences in a
discursive context.
These latter sources from sociological and poststructuralist approaches
are also informed by significant work by dance studies scholars who
expand dance history and notions about who a dancer is or who has access
to dance. Seminal work by dance studies scholars such as Brenda Dixon
Gottschild (1998), Susan Manning (2004), Jacqueline Shea Murphy
(2007), Priya Srinivasan (2007), to name only a few, address, around
the same time as the above sources, issues of appropriation of various
diasporic, and/or marginalised dance forms. Joann Kealiinohomoku’s
(1970/2001) essay ‘An Anthropologist Looks at Ballet as a Form of
Ethnic Dance’ is one of the first to distinguish ballet as a cultural and
ethnic form (see also Fisher 2016). As Prichard (2019) summarises:
[Kealiinohomoku points] out that the term ethnic was developed to sepa-
rate “self” from “other” to elevate White European forms and deride
lower, “cultural” forms’ (p 172). This article therefore confronts the White
privilege among dance forms and made a point that ballet is as much an
expression of culture and tradition as other dance forms that tend to be
labelled as “ethnic”. (172)
11 Sklar is not the first to use the term kinaesthetic empathy. Reason and Reynolds
(2010) note that ‘the concept of kinesthetic empathy as it figures in dance studies [was]
constructed largely through the writings of dance critic John Martin from the 1930s
through the 1960s’ (53).
Increasingly works addressing inclusivity, dis/ability, and dance, such as

from Sho Shibata (2018), Ann Cooper Albright (1998), Petra Kuppers
(2003), and Doran George (2014, 2020), again, to only name a few, like-
wise begin to address complex issues of norms and contemporary dancer
perspectives.
Growing Interest in Dancers’ Experiences

From the early to mid-2000s, interest grows considerably in exploring,
understanding, and problematising the bodily expertise of professionally
trained dancers and dancer knowledge, particularly within contemporary
and ballet, including across other disciplines.
Cognitive Science and Affect

Cognitive Science studies are testament to ways in which the interest
in dancer experience spread across disciplines. A study by Calvo-Merino
et al. (2005) is a prime example of this. This seminal study by neuro-
scientists Calvo-Merino et al. (2005) interpreted Functional Magnetic
Resonance Imaging (fMRI)12 of a group of ballet and capoeira dancers
and found that the mirror neuron network (Rizzolatti et al. 1996) fires
more strongly when expert dancers watch movement with which they
are experientially familiar compared with movement they are not.13 What
12 fMRI is a technology used in neuroscience studies primarily to indicate what is

happening in the brain when a participant perceives a stimulus. Neuroscientists on the
AHRC-funded Watching Dance Project summarise the technology this way, ‘Functional
MRI is a recently developed state-of-the-art brain imaging technique that works on the
principle of the “BOLD (blood-oxygen-level dependent) effect” to measure local magnetic
changes caused by increases in blood oxygenation that accompany neuronal activity....
fMRI is a non-invasive practice that has rapidly become one of the most extensively used
techniques in neuroimaging due to its ability to yield statistically robust maps of cerebral
activity in single subject after a one hour session. This enables accuracy in comparisons
between individuals’ neural responses to stimuli to an extent that was not possible before’
(Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) 2012).
13 So-called mirror neurons were first identified in macaque monkeys by Gallese et al.
(1996). These researchers found that when a monkey observed a motor action conducted
by an experimenter, i.e. grasping food on a tray, that the movement was also represented
in the monkey’s motor repertoire even though the monkey did not perform the action
and had no muscular activation related to the action (e.g. EMG recordings; Rizzolatti
et al. 1996, 132). Basically, the monkey had a motor simulation of a movement from
purely visual input. This was an important finding for cognitive neuroscience because
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was significant with this study was that the researchers found that the
dancers’ movement familiarity was incrementally fine and that the ‘mirror
neuron system is sensitive to much more abstract levels of action organi-
sation, such as those that differentiate dance styles’ (Calvo-Merino et al.
2005, 4). To put it simply, they found that the ballet dancers had more
brain activity, within the mirror neuron network, when they watched
ballet rather than capoeira movements, and that the capoeira dancers had
more brain activity within the mirror neuron network when they watched
capoeira rather than ballet movements. This was the case even when
differences in body shape and kinematics were controlled (i.e. videos
shown were made very similar) and video clips were very short (i.e.
3 second clips force an almost implicit choice because of the minimum
amount of visual information). Hence, the researchers conclude the
dancers’ physical experience impacts on how they perceived the videos.
They contend by these findings that it is not simply being a dancer
that changes how dancers perceive the world but even the detail of the
style of dance studied impacts on how dancers perceive the world (i.e.
a capoeira dancer perceives movement slightly differently than a ballet
dancer because of their different bodily expertise).
The Calvo-Merino et al.’s (2005) study stands as a precursor to several
cognitive science and dance collaborations and publications (e.g. Calvo-
Merino et al. 2009; Bläsing et al. 2010; Reynolds et al. 2011; Jola et al.
2011; Siobhan Davies Dance 2016; Burzynska et al. 2017). It further
raises the point, and the extent to which, the interest in dancer expe-
rience has grown and impacted on interests, not only in neuroscience
but also in several other disciplines, including dance studies itself (Pakes
2006; Reason and Reynolds 2010; Warburton 2011). Part of the attrac-
tion of the Calvo-Merino et al.’s (2005) study, and others (Cross et al.
2006), is that they corroborate findings from some of the sociologically-
based dance studies, such as those summarised above (Novack 1990; Sklar
1994). That is, they convey the argument that bodily experience impacts
of its implications regarding humans’ action recognition system (Jacob and Jeannerod
2005, 1). In fact, researchers (Rizzolatti et al. 1996) soon confirmed that a similar motor
action simulation occurred with humans—the human brain also fired in a similar way
when watching a movement as when doing a movement. Mirror neurons suggest that
humans simulate others’ motor events by visual information and give humans ‘the capaci-
ty…to recognize the presence of another individual performing an action, to differentiate
the observed action from other actions, and to use this information in order to act
appropriately’ (137). See also Ehrenberg (2006, 6–7).
on how we see and experience the world. This is what Csordas (1993)
similarly claims with the concept of ‘somatic modes of attention’, in which
he argues that ‘to attend to a bodily sensation [or perception] is not to
attend to the body as an isolated object, but to attend to the body’s
situation in the world’ (138). These neuroscientific studies have been
particularly convincing because they serve as evidence of physiological and
‘pre-conscious’, or automatic, processes, which complement subjective,
descriptive, and reflective writings. Put another way, fMRI data provides
information about brain processes that happen in the moment of percep-
tion, or aspects of perception, which are not always accessible in conscious
ways, as is the case with interviews or questionnaires—two well-used
methodologies in sociological research. fMRI data provides information
about brain activity which, thanks to many years of research on the brain,
indicates what aspects of cognition are active at the same time as a person
does a particular task. Neuroscientific research distinctly gives an indica-
tion of implicit and ‘in-the-moment’ perception and behaviour during
a task, in ways that a person may not be able to consciously reflect on,
or articulate verbally (Jola et al. 2011). For instance, the Calvo-Merino
et al.’s (2005) study used fMRI data (i.e. brain scans) which indicates
what the dancers ‘see’ in the moment of watching, beyond the conscious
and reflective ways in which the dancers, during an interview afterwards,
might describe what they saw.
Watching Dance: Kinesthetic Empathy, an AHRC-funded study using
audience and neuroscience research to explore audiences’ responses to
watching dance, is a significant interdisciplinary project that is part of the
increasing interest in dancer expertise growing out of the mirror neuron
research summarised above (Reason and Reynolds 2010; Reynolds and
Reason 2012). Although this study focused on audiences’ experiences and
not those of the dancers’, the interrogation of the idea of kinaesthetic
empathy and dance is fundamental to re-thinking dancers’ engagement
with performance, music, audience, and other dancers (e.g. Sklar 1994).
The research outputs, and my experience working on the project, have
been critical in thinking further about how the concepts of kinaesthetic
empathy and affect are relevant to dancers’ experiences and expertise in
dance. Chapters 3–5 include further discussion about how kinaesthetic
empathy came up for the present research.
In addition, the Watching Dance project evidences a shift to
approaching dance studies in a particular interdisciplinary way; the
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research team of this project included neuroscientists, dance, and perfor-

mance studies’ researchers and is not alone in this kind of approach. For
instance, a 2018 symposium launched a fictitious ‘Institute of Neuro-
choreography’ at Sadler’s Wells, London, UK. The ‘institute’ is described
on its Facebook page as:
[…] a place that plays an important role in leading to breakthroughs in

the understanding of the relationship between body and mind, by creating
conditions in which artists, scientists and scholars from multiple disciplines
work together on investigating this area in their own ways.
Choreographer and performer Matthias Sperling led the symposium.

Sperling invited Neuroscientist Guido Orgs, Theatre and Performance
Studies scholar Dr Kélina Gotman, dancer and choreographer Colette
Sadler, and ‘Dance Doctor’ Choy Ka Fai to the principal presentation
panel. Though the description above does not specify the link to neuro-
science and/or cognitive science explicitly, the title of the institute—
‘Neurochoreography’—does, and the event mainly centred on neurosci-
entific and/or cognitive science perspectives, even if critical of them. The
link to neuroscience is clearer in another publication related to the launch
Sperling (2018): ‘to invite multiple imaginations about how dance and
choreography might interact with future developments in everything that
we might popularly consider to be linked with the sciences of the brain
and mind’ (n.p.). In addition, Sperling and Orgs have published together
in neuroscience journals and the dancer-choreographers on the panel
seemed open to consider the idea of neurochoreography and/or an insti-
tute that focused on a neuroscientific and/or cognitive science approaches
to dance and choreography. The event, and the ideas expressed therein,
evidence ways that work crossing neuroscience and dance continue to be
generated, including, in this latter example, some being led by the artistic
perspective more than, or nearly equal to, the scientific one.14
The ‘Conceptual Turn’/‘Choreographing Problems’

Parallel to the above, Cvejić (2015a, b) reflects on a shift in the
history of contemporary dance and performance that ‘upset the sensibility
14 Another set of events of note are the ‘Body of Knowledge: Embodied Cognition
and the Arts conferences (e.g. BOK 2016, 2019).
and knowledge about dance and [exceeds] both the formalist-abstract

paradigm of dance with its phenomenological heritage and the post-
structuralist readings of dance qua text’ (2015b, n.p.). Cvejić discusses
the work of choreographers Jérôme Bel, Xavier Le Roy, Vera Mantero,
Juan Dominguez, Mårten Spångberg, Eszter Salamon, Mette Ingvartsen,
BADco, and others across Europe for shifting the focus of performance
works to questions as to what dance and choreography are, which has
further led to questions about dancers’ experiences, input, and agency in
dance.
Jérôme Bel’s 2004 piece Véronique Doisneau is a work during this
‘turn’ that supports the argument for a shifting interest in exploring
dancers’ experiences in the domain of performance (Burt 2009). In this
piece, Véronique Doisneau, a dancer from the corps of the Paris Opéra
Ballet, performs on the Paris Opéra stage alone. What is particularly
innovative is that Doisneau, usually a silent corps dancer, discusses her
individual and personal experiences working in the corps with the audi-
ence. This piece implicitly and explicitly addresses assumptions about a
corps ballet dancer’s experience with a known piece of ballet repertoire,
Swan Lake, and the hierarchical structure that impacts on her and the
audience’s experience. For instance, when Doisneau performs the corps
choreography of a section of Swan Lake, alone on the stage to music,
her stillness stands out in stark contrast to the dominating classical music.
The absence of the principal dancer and a full use of Doisneau’s technical
skill are accentuated in her performance of the corps part alone. It is an
unprecedented glimpse at Doisneau’s perspective as a corps dancer and
the piece highlights the problem whereby other voices in dance get ‘lost’
if not given the chance to speak.
Around the same time as the conceptual turn is the growth of practice
research in performance studies. Practice research contributes further to
the shift between theory and practice and what is/how dance is being
produced, thus impacting on contemporary dance experience in the prac-
tice, although it can be argued contemporary dance has been blurring the
distinction between theory and practice for a long time. Robin Nelson’s
(2006) seminal article, and subsequent publications (Nelson 2013; Spatz
2015), problematises performance knowledge production and artistic
intelligence, complicating modes of ‘doing-knowing’ across a wide range
of performance practices, including dance. The development of related
groups, events, and publications, such as Performance Philosophy (Cull
2014; Pakes 2019; Performance Philosophy 2020) and Bleeker et. al.
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(2019), to name only a few, mark the impact on these shifts in thinking,
making, and doing with(in) Western theatre dance, which likewise impact
on contemporary dancer experience(s).
The ‘Silent’ Dancer(s)

Despite an increasing amount of different disciplinary perspectives and
performance over the last few decades centred on the dancer’s perspec-
tive, there is still a developing diversity in the representation of dancers’
voices, including in the dance studies literature. The discourse continues
to challenge hierarchies in dance about who can write about dance expe-
rience and, ultimately, expanding what we know about dancer experience
and dance knowledge. There are still more texts about ‘famous’ contem-
porary choreographers than ones focused on dancer-oriented perspectives.
Choreographically oriented work does give an indication of what dancing
experiences are like, such as through autobiography, narrative, and crit-
ical analysis (e.g. Brown 1979; Foster 1986; Graham 1991; Manning
1993 McKayle 2004; Schwartz and Schwartz 2011; de Keersmaeker
2014; Mitra 2015; Butterworth and Wildschut 2018). However, the
same amount of attention has not been paid to the expertise of ‘non-
famous’ dancers (e.g. Grau 2007; Roche 2015), or, more specifically,
those dancers who primarily remain in the role of ‘dancer’ and do not
cross-over into the role of choreographer (e.g. independent contemporary
dancers and dancers in contemporary companies such as Mark Morris,
Jasmin Vardimon, and Akram Khan), although the roles of choreogra-
pher and dancer are complex, and constantly in the midst of change, as I
address below.
In many ways, it is not surprising that there is not as much written
about dancers’ experiences in comparison with other perspectives since
being a dancer means working in a non-verbal form and the ‘voice’ of
the dancing body is important in itself.15 On a practical level, it is also
difficult to become expert in the skill of writing at the same time as
to become expert in dance technique, at least at the level expected of
a professional-level contemporary dancer. Hence, few professional-level
dancers can publish material about their practice at the same time as prac-
tising at the professional level, if they want to. Nevertheless, adhering
15 For more on the ‘voice’ of the dancing body, see Roche’s (2018) discussion of
Lepecki’s (2016) angelology.
to this reasoning without question leaves practising dancers out of the

discourse and contributes to the problem of applying the discourse back
to the practice. The call by Green and Stinson (1999) for interpretive
research which ‘can give a voice to the otherwise silent participants in
dance’ and encourage other dance scholars to use ethnographic method-
ologies to further knowledge about student dancers still continues to be
addressed (104).16
Relatively more recent journal publications, such as Theatre, Dance,
and Performance Training Journal, Journal of Embodied Research,
Brazilian Journal on Presence Studies, and Journal of Dance and Somatic
Practices, foreground dancer (and actor) practice and training, further
reinforcing a shift of interest to the performers’ perspective in the perfor-
mance studies literature. In a special issue of Performance Research:
On Training, the editors explicitly cite that further writing is needed
on the subject of performer experience and that a ‘metalanguage’ will
help those training performers think (and discuss) relationships between
various trainings and ‘assumed concepts’ and ‘emotional and physical
embodiments’ (Gough and Shepherd 2009, 1).
Despite this increase of attention in the literature, contemporary
dancers tend to go nameless in performance as well (Goddard 2011).
‘Somehow, although expanding at a fantastic rate, I think modern forms
of dance are missing a trick by not properly celebrating their most crit-
ical asset – the performer. Why is it still so hard to name a dancer?’ (15).
Goddard points out that on the one hand, the democracy of contem-
porary dance makes contemporary dance an ‘egoless’ place to work for
the dancer, with an invigorating focus on hard work rather than celebrity
and individualism. However, they also note that the downside of this,
like the problem of the lack of dancer voices in the literature, is that
dancers are left out of the credits and thus the documentation and history
of dance; dancers’ dedications are unnecessarily forgotten. Or as Roche
(2015) puts it, ‘In spite of increasing creative involvement by dancers in
the production of choreography and the increasing acknowledgement of
this by the field of dance studies, first-person of the creative practice of
dancers remains a peripheral area within dance research’ (3). Ironically,
as contemporary dance has become more multiple and fragmented as a
style, and moved further away from codification and virtuosity, the dancer
16 As well as important more recent questions about (un)disciplin(ing) contemporary

dance discussed again in Chapter 6; see also Brown and Longley (2018).
74 S. EHRENBERG
has become more invisible to the audience’s gaze, principally in an effort

to show the ‘real’ and non-fetishised female dancing body (Claid 2006;
Roche 2015).
Phenomenological and Sociological

Approaches to Dancer Experience
Development of a metalanguage (Gough and Shepherd 2009) and an
accumulation of a greater diversity of dancer voices are building in dance
studies, particularly with recent phenomenological- and sociological-
based studies (Parviainen 1998; Gardner 2007; Kozel 2007; Rouhiainen
2007; Legrand and Ravn 2009; Ravn 2009, 2010; Albright 2011; Ravn
and Hansen 2013; Roche 2015; Ravn 2017; Fraleigh 2018). These
studies consider poststructuralist perspectives, such as Foster’s (1986,
1997), and anthropological or sociological perspectives, such as Sklar’s
(1994) and Novack’s (1990), though many of them are also informed
by a phenomenological approach. They conceive of the dancer and their
experiences in terms of both its material side, as a physical intercorporeal
body that dances, and also as a dancer who is historically, socially, and
culturally situated.
Markula (2014b) writes about a trend in psychological research on the
exercising body that has historically brought together poststructuralist
and phenomenological perspectives. Her tracing of these disciplinary
shifts helps to explore what has happened in dance studies related to
phenomenology and writing about dancer experience. She summarises
the trend in psychology and the exercising body in relation to Burkitt
(2008): ‘[…] crucial examinations of ideology need to be joined with
a phenomenological understanding that “is able to see individuals as not
only the subjects of relations of control and dependence, but also as selves
who can be reconstituted within and through their social relations”’ (as
cited in Markula 2014b, 146). A primary reason for this shift, she argues,
is to bring in the active role individuals have in their subjectivity, as well
as the intercorporeal and intersubjective perspective of these relations.
Markula notes, in particular, this means being careful of looking beyond
discourse and working as if phenomenology ‘cures all the ills of discur-
sive determinism’ (146). Thomas Fuchs and Sabine Koch (2014) likewise,
in their writings about emotion and memory from the perspectives of
phenomenology, psychology, and cognitive science, articulate ways that
experience is variable according to the context a subject is in. For instance,
they write about ‘processes of embodied interaffectivity’ to illuminate

how our emotional embodied experiences do not happen in a vacuum
but in relation to others and objects in the environment (9). Carrie
Noland (2009) also writes at length about kinaesthesia from phenomeno-
logical, sociological, and a wide range of other disciplinary perspectives, as
mentioned above, basing much of her book on dance studies perspectives
and dance experience such as Deidre Sklar’s. Noland notes the significance
of Kathryn Linn Geurts’ (2002) Culture and the Senses: Bodily Ways of
Knowing in an African Community as well on the discourse and further
discussion of terms such as seselelame in predominantly Ghanian contexts
related to Csordas’ somatic modes of attention.
I will return to these perspectives more below; however, first, I want to
return to some of the relatively recent phenomenological and sociological
studies related to contemporary dancer experience(s).
One of the earliest books to take this onto-epistemological position
of phenomenology and sociology, foregrounding dancer experience, is
Jaana Parviainen’s (1998) Bodies Moving and Moved. Parviainen writes
about dancer’s bodily knowledge and what she calls ‘the ethics of the
body’. Like several of the authors above, she states that she comes to
questions about dance experience from curiosities about her own dancing
body. She looks mainly to phenomenology, primarily Merleau-Ponty and
Heidegger, to ‘evolve a philosophical dance discourse’, which in the
late 1990s was yet to be developed fully in dance studies (Parviainen
1998, 10). However, she is not strictly phenomenological because she also
uses Bourdieu’s critique of art and cultural field theory and Foucault’s
discourse of the ethical subject to support her arguments. Parviainen
focuses on the complexity of the internal-external interchange in dancer
experience and foregrounds the dancer perspective, including talking
specifically about body image and schema. She presents the dancer’s expe-
rience in a way that addresses multiple, contextualised accounts of dancer
experience, adding on to previous phenomenological accounts (Sheets-
Johnstone 1966; Fraleigh 1987; Valéry 1927/1983), which have been
critiqued for their universality (Foster 1986; Rouhiainen 2003; Roth-
field 2005; Ravn 2009). She presents dancers as active agents in their
dance experience, addressing critiques related to materiality of the dancing
body in some poststructuralist accounts (Foster 1997; Gardner 2007).
However, in some ways, Parviainen (1998) retains the ephemeral and
romantic descriptions of dance experience found in some of the above
texts, such as Sheets-Johnstone (1966).
76 S. EHRENBERG
Leena Rouhiainen (2003), in her text Living Transformative Lives,

primarily utilises a phenomenological approach, namely through the
work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. She also refers to work from sociology
throughout, such as Bourdieu. Using this dual phenomenological and
sociological perspective, Rouhiainen (2003) ‘illuminate[s] the life-world
of freelance dance artists’ in Finland (9). In this study, she ‘provides both
an analysis of some of the premises upon which being a [Finnish] free-
lance dance artist is based as well as [depicting] the concrete nature of
such an artist’s life’ (425). Rouhiainen (2003) interweaves dialogue with
the dancers, from one-to-one interviews with phenomenological and soci-
ological theory, focusing on some of the key aspects of their experiences
as independent freelance dance artists. Rouhiainen likewise argues for
conceiving of dancers’ experiences in practice according to their multi-
plicity and complexity. She argues that dancers’ experiences are in part
constructed and tied to larger social issues. For instance, she writes about
Bourdieu’s idea of cultural capital and how the dancers’ choreography and
work choices are related to broader cultural, social, and economic shifts.
However, she also argues that the dancers are constructing themselves
in other ways and are proactive and unique in their approaches to their
careers. For instance, she writes about how the unique physiology of each
dancer’s body (i.e. flexibility, strength, height) impacts on their choreog-
raphy (e.g. if the dancer is particularly muscular and taut, the movement
reflects this physique). The balance between agency and construction is
particularly evident in a quote from one of her concluding sections, ‘On
Being a Freelance Dance Artist’:
…even if we have the freedom to choose things and construct our lives
according to our voluntary acts, we do this in relation to the social
groups, institutions, historical conditions, cultural atmospheres, material
environments and bodies we live in and possess. (Rohiainen 2003, 375)
Even though in some ways the dancers exhibit agency and individu-
ality in their practice, in other ways it is evident that the dancers are
also immersed within larger social conditions, such as the Finnish dance
community they train and work within.
Susanne Ravn (2009), in Sensing Movement, Living Spaces, as well as
subsequent publications (Ravn and Hansen 2013; Ravn 2017; Ravn and
Høffding 2017), similarly utilises phenomenology and ethnography to
explore the experiences of a group of professional-level dancers. Ravn
(2009) interviews dancers across the styles of ballet, contemporary, and

Butoh dance. She too reveals insights into movement experience based on
dancers’ descriptions from practice. She starts with a frame that is similarly
balanced between the phenomenological and the sociological:
On the one hand I understand movement as a fundamental condition for

being a body-subject acting and interacting in the world – a condition
that can be described phenomenologically. On the other hand movement
is shaped and directed as certain techniques of our body. (13)
She states that her project aims ‘to explore and describe how professional
dancers, as expert movers, deal with and structure their lived experience
in movement and in doing so evolve enriching insights into bodily move-
ment’ (Ravn 2009, 13). She combines the perspectives of phenomenology
and sociology to show how the dancers are constructed by the dance
practices they are engaged in; for instance, Butoh dancers attend to their
practices in distinctly different ways to dancers in the Royal Danish Ballet.
She argues for how the dancers exhibit agency in their practice and that
dancers have a particular skill worthy of further investigation, such as the
ways contemporary dancers engage with and embody space.
Another important text to include with these works is an essay by
Caroline Potter (2008), titled ‘Sense of Motion, Sense of Self: Becoming
a Dancer’, which describes Potter’s and her classmates’ experiences
training in a one-year programme at a contemporary dance conservatoire.
Although this essay is more sociological in scope than phenomenolog-
ical, it is in the same vein as the above studies, in that it is based on
descriptions about what her and her classmates’ experiences in dance prac-
tice were like. Potter, more directly than the other studies, specifies a
‘heightened sense of kinaesthesia’ in contemporary dance practice and
what it is like. She explicitly states the point of view that ‘developing a
heightened sense of kinaesthesia (felt bodily movement) is a means of
becoming socialized into the professional [contemporary] dance commu-
nity’ (Potter 2008, 444). However, the essay does not explore how this
experience is differentiated according to approaches in training in other
dance styles (e.g. ballet), which Ravn does, or how it might be for dancers
at different levels, for instance, the professional-level dancer versus the
dancer in a one-year programme.
Dance Research Journal dedicates a special issue to the topic of
phenomenology and dance in 2011. Editor Mark Franko (2011) writes
78 S. EHRENBERG
that this issue, ‘…takes the temperature of a moment in which the

kinesthetic-visual pact of phenomenological description is under consider-
able pressure from new concepts of the subject, new theories of cognition,
and new technologies in the performance field that alter the terms of
the observer’s perception of movement’ (1). In this issue, Ann Cooper
Albright (2011) writes about the intersections between her personal
experiences as a dancer and her interests in phenomenology as a dance
scholar over three decades. As she describes: ‘This essay is…an attempt to
situate and reflect on the various intersections of phenomenology and
dance that have captured my curiosity…It maps out both a personal
journey and a disciplinary trajectory’ (7). Albright traces her experiences
in dance practice in parallel to developments in dance studies, namely
in terms of the disciplines of phenomenology (i.e. Merleau-Ponty) and
feminist studies (i.e. Iris Marion Young). She gives evidence of how
phenomenology has become prominent in dance studies over the last
thirty years according to her changing values in her practice. She provides
an example for how developments in dance studies impacted on her tech-
nical (i.e. bodily) training and interest in contact improvisation; how
theory and practice intersected for her and impacted on her interests and
explorations in dance. For example, she states: ‘In retrospect, I realize
that the movement form I was beginning to incorporate as an essen-
tial part of my physical identity [contact improvisation] helped me to
make sense of Merleau-Ponty’s analyses of spatiality, motility, and inter-
subjectivity’ (Albright 2011, 10). The essay is, as she states, ‘quixotic’
and more idiosyncratic than the others summarised above, particularly
because she only discusses her experiences in dance. However, similar to
the above works, Albright supports the argument for a shift in dance
studies toward phenomenological and sociological approaches to dance
experience. Although she proclaims a primarily phenomenological stance,
she places herself among a small group of dance scholars in the 1980s
and 1990s who were ‘producing interesting hybrids of feminist theory
and culture and performance studies’ (10). The nod to authors of dance
studies, such as Sklar and Novack, and the principal argument for how
she is historically situated in the discourse (both intellectually and phys-
ically) distinguish the essay’s relationship to a sociological position, in
part. Albright’s (2011) article reinforces this argument directly when she
argues about the ways her bodily knowledge and her phenomenological
and sociological-based knowledge(s) are intertwined. She reinforces this
argument indirectly by publishing an article, which is primarily an account
of her personal dance history, in terms of choice, agency, and broader

social changes, in a highly regarded peer-reviewed dance studies journal.
Several edited collections (e.g. Bleeker et al. 2015; Fraleigh
2018; Grant et al. 2019) dedicated to the topic of phenomenology and
performance, including dance, also mentioned above, are further evidence
of this burgeoning interest in aligning phenomenology with situated,
contextual, and specified perspectives on performance, as Franko (2011)
states. But as Fraleigh (2018) points out, ‘Several [phenomenological]
methods have developed with adaptive frameworks to guide distinct
strands of qualitative study and research’ (27). Bleeker et al. (2015) argue
that Performance and Phenomenology: Traditions and Transformations
‘offers a timely discussion about the interventions and tensions between
two contested and contentious fields, performance and phenomenology,
with international case studies that map an emerging twenty-first century
terrain of critical and performance practice’ (i). The collection builds
and expands on the traditions of phenomenology and performance to
address ‘the established performativity of perception and cognition’ and
embodied experience as the foundation of being and meaning. In the
introduction, the authors highlight how the terms and notions of perfor-
mance and bodily experience have permeated across disciplines, such as
Erving Goffman’s work which spurred the use of theatrical concepts of
performance to understand rituals, and how the perspectives of social
rituals were used by performance studies scholars such as Phelan and
Schechner to understand performance (5). Kozel, for instance, writes
briefly about process phenomenology from ‘a [choreographer/dancer]
performer’s perspective’ and ‘a [dancer] ethnographer’s perspective’ and
also perspectives from an improvisational dance workshop which led
participants through a series of exercises that emphasise sensing between
bodies and ‘deepening the sense of space around bodies’; however, these
are only brief parts of the overall book (67). Despite not a great deal of
focus on the contemporary dancers’ perspective in the collection per se,
there are overlaps in the exploration of ideas from Merleau-Ponty and
Deleuze that are important to mention alongside the other work featured
here.
Sociologist Aimee Purser is another contributor to this growing body
of work crossing phenomenology and sociology on dancer experience. In
two separate but related articles, Purser (2018a, b) utilises ideas from
Merleau-Ponty ‘[…] to elucidate through a nondualist framework for
80 S. EHRENBERG
understanding skill acquisition and bodily knowledge in sport and move-

ment cultures’ specifically looking at dance expertise (2018b, 318). In
one article, she puts in conversation Merleau-Ponty’s ideas about the
sedimentation of habit through his concept of body schema with qual-
itative interview data from contemporary dancers. She places emphasis
on ‘dancers’ accounts of learning, remembering and performing patterns
of movement and, in particular, with the dancers’ notions of having or
getting a movement “in/into the body”’ (318). In the other article,
Purser explores the interview data from another phenomenological angle
and explores ‘[…] the conceptualisation of immanence and transcendence
in relation to the embodied practice of dance, engaging with Merleau-
Ponty’s important insight that the body can be a source of transcendence’
(2018a, 37). She argues in this article that ‘[…] dancers experience a
third mode of being that is somehow in-between [the binary terms of
transcendence and immanence]’, what she calls ‘inhabited transcendence’
(37). Purser’s explorations and arguments in these articles resonate with
some of the material in this book and are discussed in more detail in
subsequent chapters. The main point here is that Purser is approaching
dance experience crossing the perspectives of phenomenology, sociology,
and psychology that is similar to the approach I employ here and, again,
amongst a growing community of scholars aiming to contribute to rich
description about dancer experience and intelligence.
Pirkku Markula (2006, 2014a, 2018) writes about dance (and other
physical) experience, crossing sociology, philosophy, and psychology.
Markula (e.g. 2014b; Markula and Silk 2011) repeatedly addresses the
paradigmatic struggles of conducting research about physical movement
experiences, such as dance, and argues that one of the prime issues is
the way that research about physical experience is connected to a histor-
ical conceptualising of subjectivity, identity, and power. She aims to
push interdisciplinary boundaries of research about bodily experience to
push theoretical readings of the physically active body. Similar to sources
discussed above, such as Gardner (2007) and Wainwright et. al. (2005),
Markula questions, through practice and theory, whether research on
identity construction has focused too narrowly, to date, on the ‘social’
and insufficiently locates the (especially female) individual, identity, and
self within an ideologically sustained (male) hegemony (142). One of the
key questions that Markula addresses is how we are to work between the
perspectives of being a subject that is part of a social network of power
relations and a subject who has agency and corporeal lived experiences.
This questioning is evident related to her work on dancer experience,

more specifically in Markula and Clark’s (2018) The Evolving Feminine
Ballet Body, and Markula’s (2006) article about her experience as a dance
performer. In the book introduction, for instance, it states:
We […] aim to avoid locating the mediated ballet body in opposition to

the lived experiences of dancing ballet. While some authors in our book
draw from phenomenology […] we also employ poststructuralist Deleuzian
[…] and Foucauldian […] frameworks to understand the lived ballet body
within the power/discourse nexus defining various contemporary contexts
for ballet bodies in Canada. In so doing, we do not install the ballet body
as a liberating or resistant body, a mediated or lived body, or an exemplary
or failed feminist project. Instead, we are interested in illustrating how the
feminine ballet body, as historically produced, is now shaped by the current
(dominant) ways of knowing dance and how the dancing selves are then
formed within these forces. (xxvii)
Markula is, similar to Albright, Ravn, and Purser discussed above, working
to illuminate our understanding of dancer experience, but in this histor-
ical moment where both its material aspect, as a physical intercorporeal
body that dances, and its historical, social, and cultural situated-ness are
important.
Jenny Roche (2015), in Multiplicity, Embodiment and the Contempo-
rary Dancer, ‘phenomenologically maps the territories’ of her experiences
as an independent contemporary dance artist, based mainly in Ireland,
working with a range of choreographers working in Britain, North
America, and Australia on the making and performing of a series of solo
works. Rosemary Butcher, John Jasperse, Jodi Melnick, and Liz Roche are
the choreographers Roche works with. For the project, which informs the
book, Roche (2015) considers the embodied self as the research ‘tool’—
‘the one who participates, discovers and records’ (vii). Roche triangulates
her own experiences with interviews with other dancers (Sara Rudner,
Rebecca Hilton, and Catherine Bennett) as well. Roche utilises this wealth
of dancer experiences in a particular set of contemporary dance contexts
to argue for the independent contemporary dancer’s identity as multiple,
particularly in the sense of making work for performance, although she
acknowledges that links can be made with her arguments and in the
training of dancers. ‘The central proposition that underscores the book,’
Roche (2015) states, ‘is the notion that the dancer has a moving identity,
which is both an individual way of moving and a process of incorporating
82 S. EHRENBERG
different movement experiences in training and in professional practice’

(p. vii). Roche (2015) underpins this proposition with the works of theo-
rists Deleuze and Guattari, Rosi Braidotti, Elizabeth Grosz, and Brian
Massumi, writing about how dancers’ experiences of self-hood are ‘dia-
logical, porous and multiple’ (17). The proposition is also grounded in
the phenomenological position of Merleau-Ponty and extended with Rosi
Braidotti and Elizabeth Grosz’s feminist philosophy that account for the
‘material embodiment’ of human subjectivity (17). Roche’s perspectives
on dancers’ identities in the practice as multiple and fluid resonate with
the ones coming forward in and through the research for this book.
Returning to the Problem

of the Kinaesthetic and the Visual
I began this chapter by discussing the problem of a historical polarisa-
tion of the kinaesthetic and the visual in contemporary dance and how
this impacts on dancer experience in the practice. I want to conclude the
above discussion of key sources that cross phenomenological and socio-
logical approaches and state that these studies allow for other conceptions
of dancer experience, particularly as they relate to the kinaesthetic and
the visual. More specifically, these accounts allow for reflection in dance
experience, including what movement looks like, in ways that represent
a breadth and situatedness of professional-level dancer experience today.
They offer conceptions of dancer experience which are multi-layered,
rather than universal and/or idealised. In addition, they consider how
dance experience is in part constructed by training and working in the
style, as well as being tied to an individual, unique, physiological, and
material body. In other words, as stated in Chapter 1, they communi-
cate the position that dancers maintain a complex balance between being
historically, culturally, and socially situated, and yet continue to exhibit a
sense of agency and becoming unique individual dancers. This is a posi-
tion that dance scholar Ann Daly (1995) also sets out in Chapter 1 of
her book Done into Dance: Isadora Duncan in America: ‘The body is
that curious place where nature and culture – what anthropologist Mary
Douglas called the “physical” and “social” bodies – somehow interpene-
trate’ (3). However, few have turned the microscope to the problem of an
over-arching approach related to kinaesthetic attention in contemporary
dance and its relationship to video self-reflection as a performing dancer
to the extent that I do in this book.
Before summarising below the problem of the visual for professional-

level contemporary dancers’ kinaesthetic experiences, I want to bring in a
few critical methodological perspectives, from outside dance studies, that
likewise expand on conceptualisations of embodied experiences related to
phenomenology. As mentioned briefly above, the work of Thomas Fuchs
and Sabine Koch on embodiment, emotion, and memory, and Depraz
et al. (2002) on becoming aware, offers further thinking on situated ways
of experiencing the world in a bodily way.
An article by Koch et al. (2013) provides a useful summary of
Professor Thomas Fuch’s taxonomy of bodily memory, building on
previous phenomenological perspectives, but expanding on particularities
of experiencing. Koch et al. (2013) first identify that body memory is a
form of ‘know-how’ and knowledge acquired over time:
The term body memory refers to all the implicit knowledge, capacities
and dispositions that structure and guide our everyday being-in-the-world
without the need to deliberately think of how we do something, to explic-
itly remembering what we did, or to anticipate what we want to do.
(82)
They then break down a phenomenology of body memory as a taxonomy

that is not fixed, but a means to understand the dimensions of this
aspect of consciousness. The parts of the taxonomy most relevant to the
discussion here are:
– habitual or procedural body memory: skill memory for motor

processes;
– situational body memory: memory of spatial familiarity (inner and
exterior spaces) and atmospheric perception, it makes possible feeling
of familiarity and alienation;
– inter-corporeal body memory: a bodily knowing of how to deal with
others;
– incorporative body memory: family and cultural habits, includes
body attitudes and assumption of embodied social roles (83).
In sum, the taxonomy presents a matrix of possibilities when thinking

about consciousness in embodied activity, or more specifically when a
dancer reflects on her own dancing. There is not one ideal way of
84 S. EHRENBERG
reflecting, or judgement about memory impacting on present percep-

tions, but a complex network of associations that might be understood
through this taxonomy. For instance, when I dance a movement phrase, I
might employ all of these memory frameworks; however, as a researcher, I
might decide to investigate the type of attention I have to my kinaesthetic
experience in the style of contemporary dance, which leads me to consider
further the particularities of situational and incorporative body memory
to further the investigation of the detail of more specific aspects of dancer
experience, and thus memory. Koch et al. (2013) go on to clarify further
distinctions of explicit and implicit memory to help understand detail
within the taxonomy:
Explicit memory contains single recollections or information that can be

reported and discretely described (knowing that). By contrast, repeated
situations or actions have merged in implicit memory, as it were, and can
no longer be retrieved as single past events. They have become a tacit
know-how difficult to verbalise, such as detailing how to waltz or play an
instrument (knowing how). (84)
Explicit memory relates to phenomenological description and those expe-

riences that we consciously reflect on and verbalise. Implicit memory
relates more to the pre-reflective of experiences, such as the feeling of
my big toe, which is there for my kinaesthetic attention even if I am not
always feeling it to be there ‘consciously’. Implicit memory is also relevant
to the ability to do a movement phrase ‘without thinking’ because the
repetition of the choreography has embedded it into my bodily memory
to allow me to not consciously reflect on the movement as I do it. The
concept of a kinaesthetic mode of attention, that the dancers indicate
in this study, can be linked with both explicit and implicit memory,
as discussed further in the next chapter. They have acquired a disposi-
tion of attending to movement and reflecting on kinaesthetic experience
in the moment that is habitual and yet they explicitly are attending to
these experiences to find ‘new’ ways of moving and/or experiencing their
movement. The contemporary dancers blur those distinctions between
what is explicit and implicit when they are intentionally reflecting on body
memories/habits/style and trying to break those memory patterns.
On this point, Depraz et al.’s (2002) research on ‘becoming aware’,
mainly in relation to mindfulness meditation practice, is useful because
of the way they write in complex detail about attending to bodily expe-
rience itself—in other words, the practice of attending to pre-reflective
experience. They discuss problems with putting into description what
‘becoming aware’ is like, i.e. what are its properties, how is it thought
of in relation to existing paradigms, philosophies, and discourse, and
they elaborate on this general description related to meditation practice.
They write about how becoming aware is attending to how the mind
thinks/feels and/or how the body thinks/feels; it is attending to what
the mind and body are doing. In this way, attending is in part a passive
task. There is openness to the attending where the metaphor of listening
to what the body is doing is suitable. On the other hand, this becoming
aware is not completely passive. For one, it is a skill that takes developing,
discipline, and apprenticeship. It is not an arbitrary becoming aware, but
becoming aware can be placed within different contexts, and thus, there
are different types of becoming aware. And in this latter way then, it
is a structured and active experience as much as it a kind of passivity.
As with Koch et al. (2013) above, Depraz et al. propose a complexity
of experiencing that is situated and also complex enough to allow us to
think through the layers of consciousness in embodied skill and action.
But also, this particular text on mindfulness is relevant to contempo-
rary dance because of how the practices of mindfulness and ideas around
psychological self-reflection are important to the style, as can be evidenced
in reference to several sources, such as the 2018 event at Trinity Laban
discussed above, Purser’s (2011) claim: ‘[…] professional dance training
and practice in fact call for a very high level of awareness of and reflec-
tion on pre-reflective embodied phenomena such as practical knowledge’
(186), and a speculation from Philipa Rothfield (2019) about a relation-
ship she perceives between a workshop she did with Buddhist meditation,
Feldenkrais technique, and decentring experiences found in postmodern
dance practices, such as contact improvisation.
In sum, the above works also allow for increasingly complex artic-
ulations of consciousness that are useful to this study. It is only now
because of where dance studies, performance studies, cognitive science,
phenomenology, psychology, sociology, and philosophy are that these
kinds of conceptualisations are possible. However, the discourse can still
grow in relation to dancer experience and vice versa, although some of the
dance studies scholars mentioned above, such as Markula, Purser, Ravn,
Roche, and Rothfield, are contributing greatly to this area.
86 S. EHRENBERG
All of these points of view are important because they help challenge
a clear polarisation of the kinaesthetic and the visual for contemporary
dancer experience that I take up in this book. In other words, they
help address an aspect of contemporary dance experience that relates
to prevailing ideologies about kinaesthetic experience—primarily the
assumption that contemporary dancers do not, or should not, consider
or reflect on the performative or visual result of their dancing. Or, put in
another way, there has been less attention in the discourse exactly how
contemporary dancers negotiate the above-historicised ideology of the
kinaesthetic when dancing for an audience and being watched. A few of
the chapter titles of Parviainen’s (1998) book, such as ‘Dancing for pure
gaze’ and ‘The dancer’s projection and practice of the self’, infer that she
considers the problem of the performative for dancers. Similarly, Legrand
and Ravn (2009) summarise a group of contemporary dancers’ described
experiences as multi-sensorial versus solely kinaesthetic:
In their descriptions, the contemporary dancers thus constantly erode the

distinction between sensing from the outside and sensing from the inside
of the body. They both externalize inside sensing and internalize the
external eye…the interesting point is that the intertwining of e.g. vision
and proprioception reveals a fundamental aspect of the visual appearance
of the body which cannot be reduced to contingent static body images:
Even if one’s representation of one’s body and movements is always more
or less distorted (compared to ‘objective’ measures), the visual appearance
of movement is not mere contingence, in that it expresses experiential
qualities which can also be experienced proprioceptively. (400–401)
Although Potter (2008) states that her essay works against ‘visual hege-
mony’ and that she focuses solely on the sensorial or the kinaesthetic
experiences of herself and the dancers she encounters, her essay implicitly
argues for an intertwining of kinaesthesia and visual self-image in dance
experience. For instance, she writes:
Dance students recognized this tension between internally- and externally-

directed ways of knowing the human body; many told me towards
the completion of their course that while they were uncertain if they
‘looked’ much different, they ‘felt’ significant changes within their bodies
in comparison to the beginning of training. Teachers also recognized this
inherent tension between directing attention inwards, towards the work-

ings of one’s own body, and outwards, towards an audience with whom
one attempts to relate. (453)
Here, Potter addresses the oscillation, or what she calls a tension between
the internally and externally directed experiences of the dancers. Even
though the students were unsure whether they ‘looked’ much different,
their wondering about the look indicates that ‘the look’ does come up and
is important to them to an extent. In addition, the ‘look’ of movement is
not discussed here in isolation, but posed in relation to what the dancers
‘felt’.
It is in this vein of thinking, namely about the ways that kinaesthesia
and visual self-reflection oscillate in contemporary dancer experience in
practice that the current research is based. This book is working precisely
to question when contemporary dancer’s kinaesthetic experiences might
be conceived of as internal, whole, and constructed in opposition to
the visual (or indeed that the performative aspects of dance are solely
kinaesthetic or visual). Instead, this book is based on the argument that
kinaesthetic experiences be conceived as specific to the context in which
they happen and as part of that, professional-level contemporary dancers’
kinaesthetic experiences conceived in relation to the visual, because of the
situatedness of contemporary dance as a performing art.
An ideological privileging of the kinaesthetic and ‘wholeness’, in
contrast to the visual, which breaks ‘wholeness’, posits a negative conno-
tation for reflecting, analysing, interpreting, and judging ‘external’ aspects
of dancer experience for the dancer in certain contexts. This is a problem
for a professional-level contemporary dancer who is working to improve
their technique and choreography, the appearance of their movement,
and perform for a teacher, choreographer, and/or an audience. There
is an underexplored contradiction for a contemporary dancer between
the values of the style that they incorporate and the regular confronta-
tion of the visual, or the experience of being watched, such as in the
mirror (although not confronted as frequently in contemporary dance as
in other styles such as ballet), in class, rehearsal, and performance. Rarely
is there an in-depth exploration of the many layers of interpreting, playing
with and reflecting on the visual aspect of being a contemporary dance
performer, and indeed what is distinct to performing in this style.
Dance practitioners interested in integrating somatics and contempo-
rary dance are aware of the dangers of privileging kinaesthesia:
88 S. EHRENBERG
Although full of promises, an emphasis on proprioception is not without

risk when carried too far …Feldenkrais [a somatics practice] is like a micro-
scopic dance, unfortunately I got so interested by this internal dancing that
I stopped dancing for a while. Instead of travelling into the space I kept
discovering my inner landscape. (Fortin et al. 2002, 172)
However, more exploration of this issue is still warranted for contempo-

rary dance and explores whether contemporary dancers risk carrying an
ideology of the kinaesthetic ‘too far’. As stated in the previous chapter,
it is only relatively recently that the complexity and inconsistencies of
dancers’ engagement with visual self-reflection are being acknowledged.
In particular, the elucidation of dancers’ kinaesthetic experience, which
includes visual self-reflection, is needed because performing and being
watched is a crucial part of being a dancer, particularly a professional-level
dancer in contemporary dance.
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Banes, Sally, and Andre Lepecki, eds. 2007. The Senses in Performance, 1st ed.
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CHAPTER 3
A Kinaesthetic Mode of Attention
Introduction
In this first of three theme chapters, I address the contemporary dancers’
particular type of kinaesthetic sensitivity, knowledge, and curiosity, what I
refer to as a ‘kinaesthetic mode of attention’, in two ways. First, I identify
and describe what a kinaesthetic mode of attention is like, in terms of
how the contemporary dancers describe it as a lived experience. Second,
I argue that this kinaesthetic mode of attention is, in part, a disposition
and constructed by the contemporary dance habitus; yet it is also a diffuse
and distributed stylistic approach to dancing that is not constructed by
repetition and incorporation of movements in the same way that is argued
with the concept of habitus and other movement practices.
The main premise of the argument presented in this chapter is put
forth in another publication (Ehrenberg 2015); however, it is crucial to
review the concept of a kinaesthetic mode of attention, in order to refer
to the concept in the chapters to follow. In addition, this chapter is able
to expand on material that was beyond the scope of the journal article,
such as how the concept came about in relation to the methodological
positioning with other dance styles, and discuss the issue of habituation
further.
As the previous chapters address, the historicised centrality of kinaes-
thesia in contemporary dance discourse is evident in the literature about
contemporary dance practice, its lineage, and aesthetic. Existing literature

Switzerland AG 2021
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100 S. EHRENBERG
regarding kinaesthesia charts an interdisciplinary territory, particularly

because kinaesthesia is related to both a physical experience—a private and
personal feeling of one’s own body—and a socially constructed concept
used within and beyond dance studies, including in cognitive science,
philosophy, sociology, and feminist theory. In Chapter 2, I outline the
growing number of dance studies scholars, many of who, at some point
in their work, describe the type of kinaesthetic awareness utilised in
contemporary dance practice.
Nevertheless, the nuances of kinaesthetic awareness valued in contem-
porary dancers practice, from the dancer’s perspective, can still be further
addressed to represent the breadth of this way of attending in dance,
building on some of the relatively rare, but growing, existing litera-
ture. For instance, Rouhiainen (2003) describes a group of independent
Finnish contemporary dancers ‘felt-sense of their bodies’ (357) and
various ways that they indicate, in their practice, ‘exploring [the] body
through sensing’ (331), and ‘concentrating on or centering upon the
lived event of their own motion through differing perspectives’ (308).
Likewise, Susanne Ravn (2009) contrasts the experiences of a group of
professional contemporary dancers with those of ballet and Butoh and as
such, identifies the dancers’ different lived experiences in each, indicating
that contemporary dancers have a particular kinaesthetically-oriented way
of attending to movement. Caroline Potter (2008) more directly speci-
fies a ‘heightened sense of kinaesthesia’ in contemporary dance practice
and what it is like, based on her experience with one year of training
at a contemporary dance conservatoire in London. She indeed states,
‘developing a heightened sense of kinaesthesia (felt bodily movement) is a
means of becoming socialized into the professional [contemporary] dance
community’ (444). Jennifer Roche (2015, 2018) discusses the emphasis
of in-the-moment experiencing and states of open attention to new move-
ment experiences throughout her working with a group of contemporary
choreographers; terms such as embodiment, sensation, and interiority
flow throughout her descriptions of, and theoretical reflections on, her
experiences. Quinlan (2017) argues that Gaga is a twenty-first-century
trend in contemporary dance that aims to teach students skills of ‘internal
negotiation’, indicating dancers’ kinaesthetic awareness throughout, but
does not use the term kinaesthesia (27). The particular aspects of a
‘heightened sense in kinaesthesia’ by all accounts valued in contempo-
rary dance, dotted across various texts, and discussed in the practice, can
still be brought together more explicitly.
3 A KINAESTHETIC MODE OF ATTENTION 101
In addition, the previous chapters establish this is a particular time in

dance studies when this kind of inquiry is possible, and, indeed, growing.
A point in dance studies that Mark Franko (2011) identifies as having a
resurgence of phenomenology, after the dominance of Michel Foucault’s
concept of post-humanism in the late 1960s. Building on the work of the
above authors, and perspectives included across the previous chapters, this
chapter provides a descriptive shape to the kinaesthetic mode of atten-
tion of a group of contemporary dancers and contrasts the contemporary
dance experience with that of dancers working in other styles, namely
ballet, hip hop and breaking in the fieldwork. Comprehensive descrip-
tion of this particular mode of attention is used to consider the function
of a kinaesthetic mode of attention as part of the style of contempo-
rary dance, in the phenomenological and sociological sense. That is, to
think of kinaesthetic attention as a ‘core movement value’ of contempo-
rary dance that distinguishes it and in turn impacts on those who train,
rehearse, teach, and perform in the style (Novack 1990, 115). Explicitly
describing what a kinaesthetic mode of attention is like, and specifying its
uniqueness among other dance styles, will help to consider further how
a contemporary dancer’s technique (and disciplining) develops and what
purpose a kinaesthetic mode of attention might serve to the style.
For clarity, as noted above, I refer to the shared approach of the
contemporary dancers as ‘a kinaesthetic mode of attention’. This term
generally refers to a mode of attending for contemporary dancers in
which they predominantly focus on their kinaesthetic experiences, rather
than music or a character. In general, the term refers to a mode of
intentionally-directed consciousness, while dancing, which includes a
number of elements, such as listening to the body’s movements, problem
solving with the body, a curiosity about bodily feelings, and various
types of embodied translation processes. However, this chapter precisely
elaborates on this term, further describing what a ‘kinaesthetic mode
of attention’ ‘is like’. The term is informed by similar terms used in
the dance studies literature, such as ‘a heightened sense of kinaesthe-
sia’ (Potter 2008, 444), the ‘pre-reflective performative body’ (Legrand
2007), ‘inhabited transcendence’ (Purser 2018), and ‘kinaesthetic sensi-
tivity’ (Rothfield 2008). As Brandstetter (2013) summarises in writing
about somatic practices, contact improvisation, contemporary dance, and
kinaesthetic awareness, ‘A key concept that plays a pivotal role in nearly all
texts and discourses of the above-mentioned body techniques and contact
improvisation is that of attention—the double sense of attention and
102 S. EHRENBERG
awareness, of directed attention (perception) and “noticing”’ (172). In

summary of contact improvisation research, she indicates the centrality of
attention which in turn suggests it to be a key part of contemporary dance
practice. ‘It is remarkable that all themes and processes that occurred in
the workshop were linked with the question of “attention”: attention as a
sensory-kinesthetic mode of participation’ (Brandstetter 2013, 174). One
term alone does not encapsulate the complexity and breadth of this aspect
of contemporary dancers’ experiences when dancing; however, having one
term aids clarity for communication for the reading.
A kinaesthetic mode of attention is not the only mode about which
the contemporary dancers discussed. Instead, it is a way of attending
which often arose in the fieldwork, across several dancer interviews, from
reflecting on my own practice and reviewing the dance studies literature.
A kinaesthetic mode of attention stands out as a predominant mode of
awareness in these UK-based contemporary dancers’ practice. Previous
authors have focused on other aspects of contemporary dancer attention,
such as weight (Potter 2008; Ravn 2009) suspension and release (Potter
2008), and space (Ravn 2017). Technical mastery, picking up chore-
ography quickly, physical fitness and pain (Rouhiainen 2003) are other
articulated aspects of dancers’ attention in practice. I cannot encapsulate
all aspects of kinaesthetic awareness in contemporary dancer experience in
this chapter, but I will expand on an important facet of it.
Crucially, there is an inherent intentional problem in my use of ‘kinaes-
thesia’ and ‘mode of attention’. I am not using these terms together to
signify that there is a fixed-mode that one can get into and the ‘secret’ to
being a contemporary dancer in a direct physical way. I am not arguing
that there is a ‘kinaesthetic mode of attention’ that one can train explic-
itly in contemporary dance per se, like you might train other dance skills
such as spotting with pirouettes. Rather, I am trying to articulate that
1) kinaesthetic experience is always situated and thus my use of the term
in this way expresses the kinaesthetic as a historically situated concept in
a particular field, and 2) yet, the dancers express an embodied way of
attending to kinaesthetic experience in the practice that moves it beyond
solely being discussed as a concept or value of the practice. It cannot be
kinaesthetic modes of attention, for instance, because that makes the act
of attending to kinaesthetic experience the defining feature of the use of
this term, whereas ‘kinaesthetic mode’ refers back to my definition of the
term ‘the kinaesthetic’ in Chapter 1. The kinaesthetic is a bodily experi-
ence and a term within a discourse. Thus, on the one hand, you might
say that a kinaesthetic mode of attention has persisted throughout modern

and contemporary dance, as stated at the start of Chapter 2. However, in
this chapter, I elaborate more specifically on what current practices and
perspectives make it possible for me to propose something like a kinaes-
thetic mode of attention in relation to current practices of contemporary
dance and across a small group of professional-level UK-based dancers,
myself, and existing available sources. This relates to what Depraz et al.
(2002) call being in a ‘prudent but daring middle ground’, between two
unilateral extremes: ‘1) claiming that experience is standard, raw, pure or
ineffable; 2) claiming that all our experience is always already molded or
even deformed by the language we use’ (10). Or, put in another way, to
address the question Karen Barad (2003) asks: ‘What is it about the mate-
riality of bodies that makes it susceptible to the enactment of biological
and historical forces simultaneously’ (809)?
Although this particular way of attending foregrounds kinaesthesia, this
is not to argue that contemporary dancers have greater kinaesthetic sensi-
tivity than dancers in other styles, such as ballet and hip hop dance,
a distinction also supported by Ravn (2009). My argument specifies a
difference of nuance and degree of kinaesthetic attention amongst the
contemporary dancers, which first came out in contrast to kinaesthetic
attention in other dance styles. This chapter discusses exactly what some
of those nuanced differences of kinaesthetic attention are according to the
fieldwork.
It is important to reiterate that I am taking the perspective of the
dancer and what approach they utilise in practice, rather than describing
an approach used by contemporary choreographers or dance artists, or
indeed all dancers. A kinaesthetic mode of attention is conceived here,
as one predominant way dancers’ approach movement as contempo-
rary dancers, rather than as choreographers, although there is crossover,
as will be addressed more directly in the next chapter. For instance,
a dancer might be working with a choreographer who employs other
methods, such as improvisation, scoring, Gaga, Flying Low, and Ferus
Animi//Terra Nova. These choreographic approaches have their own
descriptive qualities. However, the dancer might employ a kinaesthetic
mode of attention while engaging with a choreographic approach. In
other words, even if a kinaesthetic mode of attention is not the main focus
from a choreographic perspective, it might be a part of a dancer’s perspec-
tive (which in some cases might overlap). It is one aspect of the technique
104 S. EHRENBERG
of contemporary dance and learning, rehearsing, and performing in this

style.
As discussed in Chapter 1, elaboration of a kinaesthetic mode of atten-
tion for dancers follows the position that description of experience is
not entirely removed from embodied experiences and that language is
not conceived as separate to embodied experience in social domains. For
instance, as Csordas (1994) argues: ‘language gives access to a world of
experience in so far as experience comes to, or is brought to, language’
(11). However, this is not to claim that describing dance experience is
entirely the same as the experience of dancing (see also Pakes 2018). But
it is to be based on the idea that language and kinaesthetic experience are
intricately and complexly related. To add to this, analysis and interpreta-
tions offered in this chapter include what is not said in the interviews and
non-verbal communication.
Writing about the specificities of kinaesthetic awareness from the
dancer’s perspective can continue to extend our understanding of dance
expertise in order to substantiate dancers’ unique intelligence. Indeed,
Jaana Parviainen (2002) argues for more work to be done in the domain
of ‘dance knowledge and our means of attaining and communicating it’
(23). Casting a spotlight on dancers’ descriptions of kinaesthetic atten-
tion used in particular dance contexts helps validate the cognitive aspects
distinct to dance and dancing. Additional descriptions provide evidence
for the complexity, variety, and specialised skills that dancers gain and
employ in dance, in a parallel way to how other forms of knowledge
are (or have been) typically, and historically, validated (Parviainen 2002;
Foster 2011; Pakes 2018).
This is not to claim, however, that contemporary dancers can return
to a more ‘natural’ state of awareness, an ideology that has similarly been
warned against for somatics discourses. Isabelle Ginot (2010) is of the
persuasion that somatics doxa does ‘not pretend to restore a so-called
natural or original body but rather [contributes] to the reorganization of
the multiplicity and heterogeneity of that which we call the body’ (25).1
To reiterate, the research informing this chapter indicates a predominant
‘kinaesthetic mode’, on a continuum, in consideration of the style of
contemporary dance. This is not to support the argument for an ideology
1 See also George (2014, 2020) who provides a genealogy of somatics and contempo-
rary dance with specific relation to what they discuss as ‘a conceit of the natural body’
and the ‘universal-individual’.
of wholeness however, or, as Ravn and Hansen (2013) state, that dancers
can reach a ‘deeper layer of experience in a phenomenological sense’;
rather, it is to ‘present an approach to creating a different experience of
what the body might feel like’ in dance contexts (210).
Recruitment: ‘Exploring Kinaesthetic Awareness?’

A kinaesthetic mode of attention as a predominant mode among the
contemporary dancers began to emerge during recruitment, principally
conducted in London, UK. There was relatively little difficulty recruiting
contemporary dancers with the idea of ‘A Dancing Self’ (my early title)
and exploring kinaesthetic awareness as it relates to visual self-image; there
was little need to explain in detail why this kind of exploration might
be of use to the contemporary dancers’ practice.2 The contemporary
dancers indicated, by their immediate understanding and interest, that
they implicitly knew what I was referring to when I suggested ‘exploring
a dancer’s self’ and/or exploring kinaesthetic awareness. However, by
contrast, ballet, hip hop, and breaking dancers I encountered generally
did not respond with familiarity or interest in my recruitment efforts
with the idea of ‘a dancer’s self’ and/or exploring kinaesthetic aware-
ness as it relates to visual self-image. What worked better for recruiting
ballet dancers was the idea of ‘exploring ballet virtuosity’. Emphasis on
virtuosity was instead useful in recruiting hip hop and breaking dancers,
as was emphasising the use of video and the opportunity to ‘investigate
2 This finding in recruitment also supports a key argument explored by André Lepecki
(2016) and how I was implicated in the values of contemporary dance from my training
in the style. Lepecki argues for how the dancer self gets perpetuated in contemporary
Western theatre dance practices and thus a rigorous historical exploration for why this
idea of ‘A Dancing Self’ had currency in my recruitment. Lepecki argues for how Yvonne
Rainer’s ‘apersonal’ approach, for instance, was an aim to go against what she perceived
as a self-centred approach, such as with Cunningham and Cage’s chance method, ‘chance
was the expression of a diluted authorial self […] just another version of the same old
authorial self-affirmation…’ (41). Though Rainer and others have worked against/with
this problem, the currency of the self prevails in contemporary dance, again, hence the
currency of ‘A Dancer’s Self’ in my recruitment. As Lepecki (2016) summarises, linking
presence with a ‘recrudescence of the Self’: ‘In the tradition of Western theatrical dance’s
system of presence, the dancer’s presence has been experientially linked to a “powerful
narcissistic capacity” of the dancer (Gil 2009, 89), which has been historically linked to
the dancer’s person and to the epideictic mode as main structuring vectors of subjectivation’
(19, italics original).
106 S. EHRENBERG
your signature style’. Neither ballet nor hip hop and breaking dancers
seemed invested in kinaesthetic awareness and the exploration of it per
se. However, those who did participate had enough curiosity in these
ideas to be motivated to participate (although the dancers were also paid
a small fee for participation).
Recruitment efforts were the first indication that not all dancers
value and engage with kinaesthesia in the same way, particularly at the
professional level, and there was something more to untangle in this
difference.
Contemporary Dancers’
‘Kinaesthetic Mode of Attention’
In summary, kinaesthesia emerges as key to a particular way of attending
in contemporary dance practice. This way of attending includes, in large
part, a directing of intentionality towards one’s bodily sensations and
perceptions and maintaining a particular awareness of the ways the body
moves and responds to movement; a sort of listening and openness to
the body and its movements in a mode of discovery. The contemporary
dancers’ descriptions from the interviews, particularly descriptions of their
kinaesthetic experiences of dancing, consistently indicate a predominant
mode of attention towards reflective and pre-reflective bodily experiences,
with attention and awareness of the environment too (e.g. the studio
space, another dancer’s touch, the choreography, the music).3 Other
descriptive verbs attributed to this mode of attention, evident in more
detail below, are navigating, problem solving, experimenting, exploring,
enmeshing, and attuning.
Erdem is one of the contemporary dancers whose descriptions exem-
plify a kinaesthetic mode of attention, or processes of kinaesthetic
discovery. For example, just after doing a movement phrase, Erdem
describes her kinaesthetic experience this way:
3 By pre-reflective, I am referring to bodily experience which usually goes unnoticed,

rather than being ‘unconscious’, following the position that pre-reflective experiences ‘are
initially like nothing for us, and that they only enter the realm of phenomenality when
subjected to a reflective process that allows us to become aware of them’ (Zahavi 2011,
9), discussed further below.
Shantel: Ok, so can you talk about what that was like to do the first
piece…kinaesthetically let’s just focus on…
Erdem: To do that phrase…
Shantel: The first one, yeah.
Erdem: Specifically this time……um……[pause]……I think today, in my
body I feel …there is a sense of……fluidity and things bleeding into
every- you know…it’s a sense of thing…which is not necessarily always
there in that phrase…but I think, coming from a watery feel has an
effect on it……[pause]….I feel like…….the phrase… it feels fragmented
for me because I haven’t done it for ages…….and so my body feels
a bit fragmented at the moment in that kind of tight hips and stuff
like that……so…what I’m trying to achieve…kind of doesn’t …follow
through my whole body….I feel like there are sticky moments that
don’t quite……I don’t quite achieve what I intend to ……….[long
pause]…um……….it’s a nice sense of freedom and expansiveness, to
just move in space and do whatever with a set structure……and it feels
like quite a……I would say privilege, but it’s not quite the right word….
kind of, luxury, to just be able to just….move in the studio……I
appreciate that………specifically [more to herself]…………yeah, I feel
really….my sense of connection with the space and with the floor
is quite fundamental to that phrase……I think because of the way
we made it….it was very connected to the space…. but even trans-
ferring it to a different space ….this kind of sensation of a slide, a
friction…openness or enclosure…within any given space….I have a reac-
tion to that…with the piece…although I think it is quite internal……
(interview 2)
What is distinctive in Erdem’s description, related to the idea of a kinaes-

thetic mode of attention, is the overall sense of process and exploration
expressed of her dancing experience. It is also the way in which she indi-
cates that, while dancing, she maintains a mode of attention on what her
body is doing and feeling as much as on the anticipation or imagination of
her next movements. Erdem describes her experiences of the movement
using exploratory and open-ended phrases, such as, ‘there is a sense of a
fluidity…’ or ‘things bleeding into…’, indicating a metaphoric imagining
in the moment of dancing. Her descriptions of her kinaesthetic experi-
ence suggest constant flux and continual process, both in reflection and
as a way she intentionally directs her movement while dancing.
Parviainen (1998) describes dance experience as ‘bodily knowledge’
in a way which resonates with Erdem’s description and a kinaesthetic
108 S. EHRENBERG
mode of attention. Parviainen (1998) writes: ‘Listening to bodily move-

ments and the body’s answers in a movement pattern, various dimensions
emerge from the same movement’ (52). Parviainen poses dance expe-
rience as having a pattern and structure that the dancer can navigate,
explore, and ‘answer’ with the body. Similarly, Erdem indicates a sense
of listening to the patterns her body falls into, yet also an imagining
of what her body can do in the space and in that moment, a sort of
kinaesthetic problem solving which makes up her dancing experience
and knowledge. This is particularly evident when Erdem talks about the
sensation of ‘tight hips’ and utilising this perception to move towards
more smoothness with the phrase. She comments on feeling both the
space and her body as part of this—or how her body transfers different
feelings into different types of spaces. She indicates an enmeshment of
memories of previous spaces/feelings her body has experienced with the
present perceptions of current spaces/feelings. Knowledge also implies
curiosity and Erdem likewise indicates a curiosity in the moment of her
dancing, exploring kinaesthetically what she feels, as well as a curiosity in
continually reflecting on that kinaesthetic experience.
Gabriele Brandstetter (2013) dedicates a chapter to the idea of
listening in contact improvisation. Her discussion echoes Parviainen and
Erdem’s expressions. Brandstetter writes, ‘[…] “listening” refers to a field
of perception of the sensory that is not just limited to acoustics: it is a syn-
aesthetic network of experiences of the body, of its internal and external
states at rest and in movement. It involves awareness […]’ (164). She cites
Cheryle Pallant’s (2006) description of listening in contact improvisation
which reverberates with Erdem’s description above:
Listening, according to contact improvisation’s metaphorical use of the

word, refers to paying attention to all sensory occurrences arising from
touch, from the play of weight as partners move through space, and from
the event of one body encountering the presence of another. Listening
refers to noticing stimuli not only within oneself but also from another.
(as cited in Brandstetter 2013, 164)
Erdem, however, above suggests she listens not to another body, but ‘lis-
tens’ to choreographic imaginings, the space and, as discussed above, the
patterns her body falls into. Quinlan (2017) likewise indicates that in
Gaga technique students are urged to rely on ‘listening to the body and
its sensations’ (32, emphasis mine).
Descriptions from Potter (2008) add to the resonate voices alongside

Erdem’s description as well. Although Potter foregrounds gravity, her
descriptions also affirm the idea of a kinaesthetic mode of attention. For
example, Potter (2008) writes:
Phrases employed by contemporary dance instructors such as ‘melt into

the floor’, ‘feel the weight of the head’, and ‘anchor the [heavy] pelvis
into the ground’ prompted students to bring the body’s relationship with
gravity to explicit attention. (450)
These metaphoric phrases, such as ‘melt into the floor’, are both to be
sensed, or attended to kinaesthetically, and enacted by the dancers. Potter
likewise provides evidence as to how contemporary dancers are instructed
and learn to attend to bodily sensations by directing kinaesthetic aware-
ness in a particular way. However, contemporary dance is not just about
sensing gravity. Potter (2008) also notes that she and other students were
directed to attend to ‘the centre’ and that ‘a contemporary dancer’s highly
developed sense of motion’ entails a keen, yet diffuse, sensing of and
enacting the differences between tension and relaxation. What is consis-
tent is that the issue of attention to one’s own movement sensations is
continually foregrounded. In different ways, Potter’s (2008) description
is similar regarding the metaphors of listening and navigating the body’s
movements, whether it’s listening and/or navigating the weight of the
body or the centre as impetus. The basic premise is that this heightened
kinaesthetic perception is continually moving at the core of contemporary
dancers’ experiential dancing knowledge. To be clear, this is not sensing in
a solely passive way, but moving through this sensing, as Erdem and Parvi-
ainen also support with their descriptions (see also Depraz et al. 2002).
As Sklar (2000) puts it, writing about dancer experience: it is a doubled
act of moving and feeling oneself moving (72). Or as Susan Klein (2010)
puts it, ‘[Kinesthetics] requires a split level of consciousness: one level is
doing while the other level is observing what is done. Kinesthetic aware-
ness allows us to keep track of what we are doing with our bodies as well
as how we are doing it’ (cited in Brandstetter 2013, 172–173).
Rouhiainen (2003) identifies that a group of independent Finnish
dancers likewise suggest that at the core of their practice is ‘a bodily
knowledge or a kinaesthetic intelligence’ (319). This intelligence is simi-
larly described as being based around the felt experience of dancing and
what she refers to as ‘a reflective and imaginative process’ centred around
110 S. EHRENBERG
kinaesthetic awareness. She refers to this kinaesthetic intelligence as ‘a

detailed sense of the motional happening’ and states that the dancers’
‘rich sense of their bodily motion’ is based on attending to their lived
experience of motion (Rouhiainen 2003, 308). She alludes to the dancers’
‘valuing a certain mode of dancing’ and signals a key part of this mode
is a sensitivity to body awarenessss, or what she calls ‘the somatic state of
being’ (Rouhiainen 2003, 321).
One of the other dancers, Mads, particularly reiterates Rouhainen’s
(2003) description of a ‘rich kinaesthetic exploration of motional happen-
ing’. He does so in discussion after his dancing experience in the
interviews.
Shantel: Can you describe what that movement feels like for you, some
general terms, nothing right or wrong, just, sort of, how you…
Mads: It feels really grounded, in a way…….it feels, when I am doing it,
it feels like everything gets stretched out, from some magnetic field or
something like that; so it feels like everything is pulling you out from all
fours, and gravity pulls you to the floor, and something else is pulling
you out from…the space…it makes you pull out through……[sighs;
struggling to describe experience]…[it] pulls you into the movement,
in a way, so there’s an initiating pull that makes you go…aghhh……bum
bum…[he communicates a rhythm and moves at the same time as
describing]….yeah…and everything is quite stretched out [stretches at
same time]…[laugh]….the movement is open, really, for me, I feel really
vulnerable in it, because it’s so ‘out there’….instead of, what I’m used
to, which is at the end [of the phrase]…it’s more like movements that
sequence close to the body…………… (interview 2)
Like Erdem, Mads expresses a unique imaginative mode of attention in

his dancing experience of this phrase that includes a particularly focused
sensing and responding to his kinaesthetic awareness, in a complex,
highly self-reflective way. For instance, he indicates that he explores
his kinaesthetic range with the movements—stretching, pulling, sensing
rhythms—and uses kinaesthetic awareness as a central device to survey
what he feels and imagines feeling with different aspects of the choreo-
graphic phrase. And he uses this sensing to make decisions as he performs
the phrase.
At another point in our discussion, Mads reinforces the ideas of self-
awareness, bodily knowledge, and logic. Like Erdem, Mads’ reflective
descriptions of his kinaesthetic experiences after dancing indicate an open-

ended and explorative mode of attention to his body, the choreography,
and the space—a mode of ‘fresh attention to sensation’, using the terms
of Legrand and Ravn (2009). Mads talks also about the oscillating modes
of repetition (or habits):
Mads: Yeah…it feels like I am actually…not thinking about what’s the

next movement or what is the next thing I have to do and how I
have to do it, it’s more of….what’s around me…I need to engage with
what’s…around me, and there’s so many other issues that comes in
because…I’ve already….got it in my body and….trying to interpret it
in my way……and then it’s the….area of……how do you engage with-
…what’s around you?, how do you….like…is there a place where you
hit some dynamics or is there another dynamic here and there?….it’s
more about the….the intention around the movement instead of the
actual movement…. (interview 2)
Mads reiterates that his attention when dancing is predominantly directed

to his kinaesthetic sensation and response—he indicates the importance
of perceiving/feeling space; again, a type of listening to how his body
responds to the space and awarenessss of how the space ‘is’, i.e. ‘what’s
around me’. Mads’ description poses kinaesthetic awareness as a type of
interpretative mode of translation. That is, he tries to interpret the chore-
ography through his body, which implies a working through the body.
Again, in terms of logic and knowledge, actively making kinaesthetic
connections between his internal and external sensations and projections,
or as he says, between ‘what is around him’ and ‘how the movement
is’. However, he also states that it is about listening to the dynamic
patterns his body falls into habitually and trying to bring other dynamics
into the movement and being aware of those differences and how he
can physically enact ‘new’ ways of moving. Mads talks about exploring
where he directs his kinaesthetic attention and intentions once he has
memorised the choreography. In his reflections, he indicates that while
moving, he interrogates kinaesthetically the nuances and flavours of his
responses to the movement and actively assesses what he just did, what he
is doing, and what he wants to do. Again, there is this sense of a mode of
discovery which echoes other contemporary dance-related descriptions,
such as Susan Klein, ‘For me the beauty and excitement in kinesthetics
is bringing a body-felt understanding of movement to consciousness. It
is fine-tuning our ability to feel, on subtle levels. […] Kinesthetics is
112 S. EHRENBERG
our tool to bring the body into a deep state of balance, to its optimal
state of movement potential’ (Klein 2010 as cited in Brandstetter 2013,
171–172). Brandstetter (2013) interprets this description: ‘The associated
“process of discovery,” which is able to trigger a periphrasis of fixed block-
ades, of postures of muscles, bones, and tissue, leads to a kinesthetically
informed “internal knowing”’ (172).
Dorothée Legrand and Susanne Ravn (2009) write about the idea
of listening and problem solving to describe another small group of
contemporary dancers’ experiences of dancing in their fieldwork. They
describe this aspect of contemporary dance experience as a ‘kinaes-
thetic logic’, reiterating Parviainen’s (1998) analytically-framed notion
of ‘bodily knowledge’, Sklar’s (2000) proposition that ‘bodies become
laboratories for experimentation with kinetic details in dance contexts’
(72), and Klein’s (2010) use of the word ‘tool’ in the quote above: ‘In
different ways the [contemporary] dancers describe how they “listen” to
the “kinaesthetic logic” of the musculoskeletal dimension of the body
to perform movement and to use movement to investigate corporeal-
ity’ (Legrand and Ravn 2009, 403). Legrand and Ravn also suggest that
contemporary dance is not so much about a mastery of steps but a partic-
ular way of approaching movement and the body, which foregrounds
sensation and perception and thus, proprioception. As they describe from
their fieldwork:
[The seven contemporary dancers’] sensing of muscles and joints are

central to their descriptions of how they guide their movements. Their
descriptions are in different ways related to the experience of propriocep-
tion, of gravity on body limbs and of the mechanics of the skeleton…The
aim of these contemporary dancers is to investigate and develop their
experience of the body in movement. They experiment with bodily sensa-
tions in order to promote fresh attention to sensations that normally stay
unnoticed. The training focuses on such investigations and the repetition
of movements and warm-up routines [to move] “toward greater self-
awarenessss”, as one of the contemporary dancers describes. (Legrand and
Ravn 2009, 398–399)
Legrand and Ravn (2009) echo the ideas of exploration in sensation,

investigating a range of kinaesthetic sensations and increasing knowl-
edge of the body by experimenting with what the body does and can
do. Awareness and attention are described as central to the dancers’
experience in training and practice as well.
Jasper, during his interview, describes his dancing experience using

the metaphor of conversation between his kinaesthetic experience and
the choreography, which highlight the listening and responding notions
introduced above to describe a kinaesthetic mode of attention. Jasper
further demonstrates Legrand and Ravn’s (2009) discussion of experi-
mentation, particularly because of how he uses the idea of discovery in
his descriptions. In the excerpt below, Jasper describes his experience, of
the phrase he did in the interviews, by explaining how he helped another
dancer execute the same choreographic phrase in a recent rehearsal.
Jasper: …just trying to find his spine, and his weight and, just trying to,
yeah, discover, like discovery of, ‘oh ok, ok! Push up the floor, ok, reach,
that’s nice, ohh, I’ve got weight, gravity, and all that stuff’….really being
amazed by all those discoveries… (interview 2)
Jasper mentions weight and gravity, echoing Ravn (2009) and Potter
(2008) on this theme, and yet he also supports the argument for a kinaes-
thetic mode of attention in the way I am discussing here because of the
way he encourages another dancer to explore the choreography, with a
particular active perceiving of the spine and weight distribution (‘find’
where it is), and also to explore bodily responses when pushing and
reaching out from the floor (and trying to be fascinated by the possi-
bilities this acting and perceiving allow). His explanation to the dancer is
useful here as he indicates that what he tells another dancer is similar to
what he explores and feels when he does the phrase in the interview.
Purser (2018) writes about how this ‘being in-the-moment’ is central
to contemporary dance technique in her research. Purser (2018) uses
the term ‘inhabited transcendence’ and defines this as a third in-between
state of awarenessss that is both focused on in-the-moment experiences
and future-orientedness to others, such as an audience. Though Purser
does not mention kinaesthetic experience explicitly, her discussion implies
that kinaesthetic experience is central to the idea of inhabited transcen-
dence. For instance, Purser, in part, argues for the contemporary dancers’
pursuit of a feeling of authenticity with their movements, not a ‘showing
off’ in the same way as other more physically virtuosic techniques (e.g.
commercial dance) might feature; rather, the dancers in her fieldwork
indicate a performative focus on communicating a ‘genuine’ expression
of self with movement to the audience. Later, she alludes to the idea
114 S. EHRENBERG
that this ability to ‘be in the moment’ includes attention to the kinaes-
thetic: ‘Rather it is the lived experience of immediate bodily presence
to the world that characterises [the dancers’] expressive and commu-
nicative action on the world, their experience of transcendence’ (Purser
2018, 48). Presumably ‘lived experience of immediate bodily presence’
has kinaesthetic experience at its core for these dancers. In addition, she
argues that the experience of transcendence comes out of thinking with
Merleau-Ponty: ‘[…] bodily engagement in skilled activity is typically
characterised by task-focussed motor-intentionality and the body can thus
be a source of transcendence rather than a limitation upon it’ (Purser
2018, 48–49). Purser’s findings of contemporary dancer experience of
transcendence thus align with the dancer descriptions above—about
openness, a kinaesthetic logic, exploration via sensation.
Jennifer Roche (2015), writing about her experience working with
UK contemporary choreographer Rosemary Butcher, describes a moment
when she is asked to respond to the floor, which echoes Jasper’s expe-
riences above and also this issue of inhabited transcendence expressed
by Purser in the phenomenological (Merleau-Pontian) sense. Roche
(2015) argues that the challenge for dancers (and choreographers) is to
move beyond cliché, habitual movement and generic dance vocabulary
and that bodily response is one way of doing this, or one way she did this
in her work with Butcher (35). She writes, ‘Butcher asked me to work
with a different relationship to the floor […] she talked about not wanting
a dance form to emerge—how this is something other than dance. That
dance training prepares the body of a kind of response to the floor—a
“pushing into” it to rise up from it’ (Roche 2015, 35). Butcher’s refer-
ence to dance training supports the thinking that contemporary dance
trains dancers to ‘respond’ kinaesthetically, thus again the centrality of
kinaesthesia to dancer experience. Roche goes on to discuss the particu-
larities of this kinaesthetic ‘responding’ in the making of the piece. She
states that Butcher did not work to set movement in the more typical way
one might think of making choreography, but that Butcher ‘produced a
process of becoming each time’, allowing Roche (2015) to engage and re-
engage with the work anew (36, emphasis original). This engaging and
re-engaging implicitly reference kinaesthetic experience, because in this
instance Roche is working on a solo with her own body, the floor, and
choreographic instruction. Roche (2015) goes on to frame her experi-
ence with Butcher alongside Erin Manning’s (2009) idea of ‘an emerging
present’ and Francisco Varela’s (1992) ‘unfolding present’. The aligning
with these concepts by Roche (2015) implicitly points to the in-the-

moment-ness aspect of her dancer experience that the literature and the
dancers’ referenced above do, as well: openness via kinaesthetic discovery
and listening to what the body is doing (to be a part of its emerging or
unfolding).
Dorothee Legrand’s (2007) ‘performative pre-reflective body’ concept
is useful to further investigate related to the exploration of a specialised
way of focusing kinaesthetic attention indicated by the contempo-
rary dancers, but specifically utilising the concepts of reflective and
pre-reflective consciousness from phenomenology.4 Indeed, Legrand
(2007) states that, with this concept, she tries to clarify, in part, the expe-
riential perspective around a broader phenomenological question, which
is: ‘what are the different kinds of experience of one’s own body as one’s
own?’ (493). A kinaesthetic mode of attention is likewise interested in
this question, but specifically for the case of dancers in dance contexts. In
sum, Legrand’s descriptions about self-consciousness are useful to further
substantiate the kinaesthetic intelligence that is unique to these dancers’
perspective and practice, even though Legrand is concerned with broader
philosophical questions. Legrand’s discussion re-interprets and compli-
cates the relationship between the pre-reflective and reflective for the case
of dancers, in contrast to polarising the pre-reflective with the reflective
which endorses an ideology of wholeness.
Legrand (2007) describes, in part of her essay, ‘one form of bodily
pre-reflective consciousness’, which is the ‘performative body’ or the
pre-reflective experience of the body (in contrast to the pre-reflective
experience of the world in which our body consciousness might be invis-
ible) and uses body-expert dancers as being most concretely concerned
with this type of consciousness (500).5 Legrand (2007) does not specify
that she is writing about contemporary dance, but her concept resonates
most with contemporary dancer descriptions in my research.
…body expertise like dance is associated with a particularly sharp pre-

reflective experience of the “performative body”. Normal non-body expert
4 See also Ravn (2008).

5 See also Barbara Montero’s (2016) Thought in Action: Expertise and the Conscious
Mind, and Shawn Gallagher’s (2005) discussion of ‘performative awarenessss’ (as cited in
Legrand 2007, 501); it is beyond the scope of this chapter to address the nuances across
these philosophical conceptualisations; I find Legrand’s exploration suit the purposes here.
116 S. EHRENBERG
people do not lack it all together but there is a noticeable difference

between dancers’ experience and normal people’s experience: bodily pre-
reflective experience is “at the front” of dancers’ experience, whereas it is
mostly “in the world” in normal everyday life. Specifically, dancers mostly
experience their body pre-reflectively, whereas normal people in normal
circumstances mostly experience the world in a bodily way. The common
point between these two forms of experience is that they are both pre-
reflective in the sense that they both imply a specific form of experience
where the body is not taken as an object of identification (Legrand 2006).
It is also important to underline that these two forms of bodily pre-
reflective experience are not incompatible with each other, since the dancer
experiences both. (505)
Legrand argues that expert dancers, in particular (i.e. in contrast to

beginning dancers), focus attention on those experiences of the body to
which most non-dancers do not attend. For example, consider the case of
walking. Contemporary dancers might interrogate, in an exploration of
walking in the dance studio, how the foot touches the floor, sense detailed
nuances of hip movements, notice the rhythmic pattern of the arm sway
as they walk, and then respond to this sensing in their movement. They
precisely might interrogate those bodily experiences, sensations, percep-
tions, and habits that usually go ‘unnoticed’ among non-dancers, and they
simultaneously imagine and anticipate other ways of walking as they walk
(e.g. Reynolds 2007; Ehrenberg 2013; Bergonzoni 2017).
On this issue of interrogating bodily experience, sensations, and habits,
one of the dancers’, Jiles’, discussion of ‘crash to create’ is poignant.
‘Crash to create’ is a concept that Jiles introduces, in his interview, to
help describe his experience with improvisation in his contemporary dance
practice. He states outright that, for him, this concept implies a broader
value in contemporary dance for being self-aware of movement ‘habits’
and for utilising kinaesthetic awareness to find ‘new’ ways of moving. In
the excerpt below, Jiles talks about how, for him, ‘crash to create’ supports
the overarching value, in the practice, of mistakes versus perfection of
form. In addition, his discussion of ‘crash to create’ further supports the
argument, as part of Legrand’s (2007) ‘performative pre-reflective body’
discussed above, that dancers consciously reflect on bodily habits that
might otherwise go unnoticed in the case of non-dancers.
Jiles: Well…yeah….I mean, in contemporary dance there is often the phrase

‘crash to create’…you know that phrase? ‘Crash to create’? […] Yeah, so,
‘crash to create’ refers to times when you’re improvising, and whatever,
and, it’s the mistake, or the time you go off balance, for instance, that
is actually the ‘creatively interesting point’, and it is how you resolve
that…certainly in a lot of contact improvisation, you know, you find
yourself…[pause]…obviously, you have your various habits and stuff,
which you try and get away from, but, if you find yourself in a posi-
tion which is awkward, and you don’t know what to do, then, that’s,
sort of, a great place to be…because everything you do from that point
on is going to be…creatively ‘new’ for you…and also, probably, unex-
pected, for the person on top, or wherever they are…or whatever, you
know?…so ‘crash to create’ is…its something, you know, the mistakes
are, sort of, heralded within contemporary dance, and because there is
a freedom, in terms of form, you can do whatever, twitch around and
stuff, you know, all that weird stuff… there’s not, you’re not striving
for….a perfection of form… (interview 1)6
Jiles discussion of crash to create not only indicates the values of chal-
lenging habits and mistakes as part of the practice, but also, that to
challenge habits and mistakes a dancer needs to be kinaesthetically aware,
open, and ‘listen’, through feeling, to ‘hear’ those habitual and/or
surprising moments. Jiles thus supports the argument for another way that
pursuit of a particular kinaesthetic sensitivity and intelligence—a kinaes-
thetic mode of attention—is considered virtuosic in contemporary dance
because this ability to listen and be open to the mistakes and surprises of
the body while dancing (improvising in this case) is ‘heralded’ as a way to
find unexpected ways of moving in contemporary dance versus attending
to the mastery of a particular set vocabulary or, as he states, ‘perfection
of form’.
Jiles’ description recalls what Roche (2015) states about her work as
a choreographer and dancer with a number of high-profile contemporary
6 A similar approach was expressed by choreographer William Forsythe, in a pre-show

talk at Sadler’s Wells, London, UK, in February 2011, in which he said he has a desire
to interrupt and disrupt habits with his dancers when he is making new work. Forsythe
said that he does not want the dancers to mimic him when creating a new work, but
to originate their own choreography in a way that should surprise even the dancers
themselves. For instance, for the piece ‘I don’t believe in outer space’, he said he asked
dancers to go home and physically trace the layout of their apartments blindfolded and
then bring that material back into the studio. Then, he used the material they generated
to reconstruct the piece. The practice of using dancer-generated material is not unique
to Forsythe and Jiles’ ‘crash to create’. Several of the dancers, such as Willow, also talked
about their experience with this type of choreographic approach (see also Roche 2011,
2018).
118 S. EHRENBERG
choreographers: ‘The choreographic endeavour to break habitual move-

ment patterns in the creation period of a dance piece, in order to find new
movement forms, entails coaxing the dancer through thresholds of condi-
tioned movement’ (53). Roche aligns this breaking of habitual movement
patterns with Reynolds’ (2007) term ‘kinaesthetic imagination’, where
Reynolds argues that this challenging of habits can be conceived as ‘both
a response and an active resistance to constraining patterns’ (1). This
attempt to break habits is a means to try to open the dancer up, to
move away from logic, ‘thinking’, and habits, to a kind of letting go
into the process and trying to catch oneself out of being, as Roche
(2015) quotes of choreographer Rebecca Hilton, ‘a slave to the aesthetic’
(53). Or later in relation to her work with choreographer Jodi Melnick,
Roche (2015) argues that this value of breaking habits is the value in the
process to find new, fresh, original material. Roche (2015) highlights this
part of Melnick’s process and choreographing a solo for Roche, ‘I was
really concerned […] that Jenny had an experience, that I have had as
a performer’ ‘[that] every movement […] is happening to the body for
the first time’ (62). Roche references throughout her book the value that
breaking habits has for contemporary dance. As another example, Roche
(2015) writes about how John Jasperse continually threw at her different
stimuli simultaneously to ‘unfix’ her movement and stability, putting her
into a ‘new experiential terrain’ (50). Or Roche (2015) discusses Sara
Rudner’s development of a teaching ethos ‘that embeds a sense of alive-
ness and autonomy even with dance students in training’ (77); this sense
of aliveness and autonomy aims to keep students focused on developing
a ‘dynamic type of engagement with a body-in-fluxbody-in-flux’ and,
again, not to repeat habitual movement patterns. In these examples, there
is an implicit value of an ever-present-always-surprising-oneself mode of
physicality where kinaesthesia is at the centre.
Legrand (2007) notes that it is not that dancers interrogate pre-
reflective experience and movement habits all the time—dancers also have
the capacity to ‘experience the world in a bodily way’, as she states, and
let bodily actions ‘fall to the background’. For instance, a dancer can
walk down a street and not have to think about how to walk as well.
Also, a dancer can learn choreography so well that attention to the move-
ment becomes less necessary. For instance, a dancer can perform complex
choreography and think about a shopping list at the same time. Legrand
points out that the dancers’ attention to pre-reflective experience is not
completely alien to the non-dancer experience, but is a specialised skill
that grows out of dance experience. What is most relevant to my discus-

sion of a kinaesthetic mode of attention is Legrand’s suggestion that, in
dancing contexts (although possibly at other sporadic times in ‘every-
day’ life too), dancers often experience their body pre-reflectively, which
means the bodily, kinaesthetic, experience is foregrounded to the dancers’
consciousness, in the way the dancers and authors cited above express.
Another important aspect of Legrand’s (2007) analysis, to touch on
briefly related to a kinaesthetic mode of attention in contemporary dance,
is her point that following Merleau-Ponty’s (1945) discussion of two
hands touching is that the touching hand is conceived as representing
pre-reflective consciousness and, as such, not about the ‘objective’ hand
being touched, but the ‘subjective’ hand which is experiencing touching
the other hand. Thus, directing consciousness to pre-reflectively conscious
bodily experiences directs attention more towards the subjective end of
the consciousness spectrum. She writes, ‘At [the pre-reflective] level,
the body is not an object of experience, it is the subject of experience
and it is experienced as such’ (Legrand 2007, 499). This argument for
directing attention towards the subjective end of the consciousness spec-
trum, related to a kinaesthetic mode of attention, is problematised in
performing situations where the dancer is simultaneously aware of being
the object of an audience’s gaze (Bleeker 2008; Ehrenberg 2012, 2013;
Purser 2018), as will be discussed in subsequent chapters. Neverthe-
less, for the purposes here, it is important to emphasise that Legrand’s
point supports the potential underlying purpose of directing attention
to the pre-reflective for contemporary dancers, which would be to rein-
force subjectivity and thus agency for dancers in their experiences in the
practice.
As stated, a kinaesthetic mode of attention is important to help
propose, and further consider, the various modes of conscious aware-
ness that are employed in dance experience. However, how might a
kinaesthetic mode of attention vary among different contemporary styles,
such as release or Graham, or across dance styles such as ballet and be
conceived as a continuum across dance forms? Although speculative, I
want to address this question briefly below.
Legrand’s (2007) concept of the transparent body is useful to expand
on the idea of a kinaesthetic mode of attention on a continuum (504).7
7 With thanks to Susanne Ravn for suggesting this reference.

120 S. EHRENBERG
Legrand theorises the transparent body as a bodily state of being between

sensing and acting in the world. It is bodily consciousness that is between
the body being invisible (e.g. I attend to picking up my cup and do not
have to think about every move to do so) and the body being opaque,
or the object of conscious attention (e.g. I attend to every movement I
make as I pick up the cup).
The body is transparent in the sense that one looks through it to
the world. At this level, pre-reflective bodily experience is precisely the
experience of the world as given through the ‘transparent body’. The
latter is not perceived as an object but experienced specifically as a subject
perceiving and acting, that is, as in the world (Legrand, 2007, 504).
For example, the transparent body can refer to those times when
dancers have gained a certain capacity to consciously reflect on pre-
reflective experience of very complex choreographic movement and thus
be able to attend to elements such as emotion, subtle dynamic variation,
individual expression, in addition to ‘simply’ doing the movement and/or
perceiving what the body is doing, as Mads indicates in his description
above. It is to clarify a spectrum of experiencing and acting, related to
a kinaesthetic mode of attention, which refers to times when dancers are
in a ‘sharp and physical state’ (Hermans 2003 as cited in Legrand 2007,
501).
This discussion also recalls the complexity of attention proposed by
Depraz et al. (2002), as mentioned in Chapter 1. They discuss meditation
practices wherein a person is reflecting on pre-reflective experience while
they might also be trying to ‘let go‘ of whatever they are noticing in that
experience. They also argue that a phenomenological approach includes
a reflection on the lived experience at the same time as experiencing.
Therefore, they distinguish the double-act or unique approach in these
instances of lived experience in which reflection is not separate from lived
experience in-the-moment. Rather, reflection and/or taking on a kind
of ‘otherness’ of in-the-moment experience is one of the ways that lived
experience includes reflection, thus complicating pre-reflective conscious-
ness in certain contexts once we begin to investigate lived experiences in
more depth.
Purser’s (2018) research likewise aligns ‘inhabited transcendence’ with
when the contemporary dancers discuss ‘being in your body’ and ‘being
in the moment’, particularly relevant to what dancer Willow discusses
below. Contemporary dancer Louisa, from Purser’s research, for instance,
describes ‘being in your body’ this way: ‘You have to get to a point
where you, you’re in your own body and you’re, you’re not doing
shapes, you’re finding out where it comes from’ (46). As noted above,
Purser (2018) finds the contemporary dancers interviewed place great
value on inhabited transcendence in their praxis, what she defines as a
third in-between state ‘characterised by elements of transcendence, such
as feelings of freedom, communicative efficacy and self-determination,
and by elements traditionally associated with immanence, such as the
subjective experience of a groundedness in and attentional focus on the
here-and-now’ (p 48).
Willow supports the argument for how the kinaesthetic mode of atten-
tion might sit on a continuum, related to Legrand’s (2007) transparent
body, Depraz et al.’s (2002) ‘becoming aware’, and Purser’s (2018)
inhabited transcendence, in her discussion of ‘inhabiting movement’,
‘filling movement out’, and ‘really living movement’.
Willow: Yeah. I guess that’s what I meant when I was referring to

something being filled out before, it is that, it’s becoming…three-
dimensional or more dimensional because it has extra layers.
Shantel: It’s almost to me, in your explanation, and our talking about
this phrase, and performance, that in performance, you can direct your
kinaesthesia; you have some, you know, where you want to expand it,
where you want to take it, and then you shift it to another place in
your body, and when you are learning, it’s more that you’re being led
in some ways…or…
Willow: Mmhmm. Yeah, I have a hard time immediately inhabiting some-
thing. For instance, I need to know where my body is going before
I can fill it out. Before I can…really, ‘live in it’. If, that makes sense?
Probably not. But, yeah, I think that has been a part of it, where I am
finally starting to feel a little bit comfortable in our technique classes,
because I am getting the general flow of the class, and the teachers’
style, and all those things, under my belt, so, now I feel like, ‘ok, I’m
kind of getting this way of moving, I can add a little bit there…’; it
feels more like, I’m inhabiting that movement, instead of just trying to
imitate a movement, if that makes sense? (interview 2)
The point Willow reiterates with her description is that there are varying
aspects in which a kinaesthetic mode of attention can be employed and
felt as working optimally for Willow ‘as a subject perceiving and acting,
that is, as in-the-world’ (Legrand, 2007, 504). In the above description,
Willow indicates that she first needs to feel a certain competency with a
122 S. EHRENBERG
style of moving before feeling more exploratory in her mode of kinaes-

thetic attention, which then allows her to feel like she can ‘inhabit’ and
‘really live’ movements. In other words, Willow indicates that there is a
need for a certain level of feeling of mastery, with the particular kinematic
competency of the movement, environment, and/or choreography, for
example, which impacts on her employing a kinaesthetic mode of atten-
tion to varying degrees. This anecdote from Willow further supports the
argument, related also to Jiles above, which is that part of the pursuit
of virtuosity for contemporary dancers is not so much a perfection of
outward form; rather, there is a kind of feeling of virtuosity, which comes
with a certain level of movement familiarity. That is, a certain level of
movement competency can allow a feeling of kinaesthetic explorative
attention when dancing.8
My use of the term virtuosity is in relation to the dancers’ feeling of
competence, since a kinaesthetic mode of attention cannot be conceived
in the same way as other types of technical virtuosity seen from the audi-
ence perspective (e.g. spectacular flips and jumps). The dancers’ accounts
above indicate a repeated kinaesthetic mode of attention, which indicates
helping them feel virtuosic in the technique of contemporary dance—
for instance, Willow’s description above about her experience of ‘really
living’ the movement. There is another kind of feeling of virtuosity a
dancer might experience when she executes a difficult technical move or
step. However, this is not the same kind of feeling of virtuosity I am
suggesting here, though there might be similarities in the feeling of self-
competency and feeling a kind of ‘mastery’ with a certain way of moving.
This is not to suggest this mode of attention is a technique on its own
either. As mentioned in the introduction, this chapter aims to elaborate on
one important part of dancing intelligence. I am trying to establish how
the research suggests a kinaesthetic mode of attention as crucial to the
dancers’ experience of this technique and writing about it more explicitly
to help better understand what it ‘is like’ to more concretely value and
critique this aspect of contemporary dancer knowledge and experience in
the practice. Purser (2018) similarly supports this claim from interviews
8 It is interesting to note that Sklar (2000) writes about ‘dropping down into the
body’, redirecting, as she says, Csordas’ phrase ‘somatic mode of attention’, which has
some resonance with Willow’s descriptions here as well (72). In addition, Purser (2018)
discusses how contemporary dancers’ descriptions of ‘being in the body’ relate to levels
of competency of the choreography.
with contemporary dancers. She argues for how dancers describe ‘the
importance of staying focussed on or immersed in the immediate context
of the movement’ and that failure to sense the movement, instead of
‘making shapes’, ‘detracts from the communicative experience of dance’
(47), indicating how central this way of attending is for the dancers in her
research. She argues that the contemporary dancers’ descriptions indicate
that ‘[…] the real expertise of dance is in the ability to have an imme-
diate and ‘sincere’ experience of the ‘essence’ of the movement as an end
in itself’ (47, emphasis mine). I explore further below the issue of moti-
vating structures with these descriptions. At this point, it is important
to distinguish that the dancers indicate a kinaesthetic mode of attention
which has a variety of application in the practice, but that is not to then
mistaken a kinaesthetic mode of attention as a fixed graspable form of
knowing as might be the case for memorising text or, indeed, memorising
choreography.
At this point, I also hope that a ‘kinaesthetic mode of attention’, which
the contemporary dancers indicate, has a descriptive shape. The above
excerpts are meant to give a sense of what this mode of kinaesthetic
attention, particular to the contemporary dancers interviewed, ‘is like’
and how these UK-based dancers were echoing other descriptions in the
discourse. The descriptions below (including descriptions from dancers
working predominantly in other dance styles) will continue to give more
shape to what a kinaesthetic mode of attention ‘is like’.
There is a broader function to this way of attending in contempo-
rary dance, which is related to a particular valuing of the kinaesthetic,
as discussed in Chapter 2. I reserve for the next chapter a dissection of
contemporary dance practice and values, and how and why dancers might
develop and nurture this way of attending.
A Kinaesthetic Mode of Attention by Contrast

The kinaesthetic mode of attention indicated by the contemporary
dancers did not emerge in isolation; something particular about kinaes-
thetic awareness in contemporary dance stood out in the interviews with
the dancers interviewed working predominantly in ballet, hip hop, and
breaking.
Emil, a highly skilled ballet dancer with the Royal Ballet in London,
UK, is one dancer who provides a prime contrast to the contemporary
dancers’ descriptions in the fieldwork. When I ask him in the interviews
124 S. EHRENBERG
to talk about his kinaesthetic experiences after doing a ballet movement

sequence, he responds in a distinctly different way to the contemporary
dancers.
Shantel: […] can you just describe in your best way, what that movement
feels like for you.
Emil: Hmmm.
Shantel: And if you need to walk through…
Emil: Um……this would be like a combination I would do in
class…um….so this is the kind of thing I-……sorry out of breath….[…]
um…I don’t know how I would….describe it but….it’s a sort of
a……um….small jump….you know not too small, not too big….sort of
medium…so……it’s kind of not too hard because you’re….using two
legs, through most of it…you know you’re not jumping off of….one
leg or lunging or….just one leg……um……. the steps I chose are kind
of….easy because its stuff that you can help with your body….where you
put your weight, will help you jump, up and down, you see…um…….I
don’t know, feels nice because there’s a bit that moves…to the side and
that’s nice, I need to cover….a bit of ground. (interview 1)
There are a number of unsaid, non-verbal responses from Emil which

should be noted because they ‘said’ just as much. For instance, there
are long pauses (marked by ellipses), which suggest that what I ask Emil
to do is not a practice of describing or thinking about dancing which
comes quickly to him or is particularly familiar. In contrast, when I ask
Erdem and Mads to talk about what their movement kinaesthetically feels
like they do not take much time to consider what I mean, indicating
we share assumptions and ways of talking about kinaesthetic experience
which Emil and I do not. Emil literally says he does not know how he
would describe the movement in the way that I am asking him to and
goes on to foreground the description of what he was doing, rather than
what he was feeling or attending to kinaesthetically.
The point I am highlighting is how the context can, as much as the
movement itself, impact on the dancer and their kinaesthetic descrip-
tions. It is a way of thinking beyond the movement itself to the broader
social context, or thinking about dancer perception from a different angle,
to come to understand the distinction of a kinaesthetic mode of atten-
tion that reflects values in the practice. It is important to briefly re-visit
the issue of language and how I am implicated in the dancers’ different
descriptions in this part of the fieldwork.
Emil is a highly contemplative and intelligent reflector about feelings

and experiences. Emil is likewise a highly technically skilled, articulate,
and beautiful ballet dancer. Thus, there is a distinction to Emil’s reply to
my question about the context and interrogating kinaesthetic experience
related to his described dancing experiences. Emil suggests, as do the
other ballet dancers interviewed, that this mode of exploring movement,
foregrounding kinaesthetic awareness (in the ways described above), is
not a dominant one for him, at least not in the same way it is for the
contemporary dancer interviews. While this is not surprising in itself per
se, it is interesting to then consider why this is the case, and how the
contemporary dancers have come to have the descriptions of kinaesthetic
experience that they do.
In the interview, I probe a bit further to find out whether different
metaphoric language might apply, or if his response changes if I frame
the question differently.
Shantel: mmm….um….if you give some adjectives to it, what do you think
you describe it, you know if you see a painting and you, well that’s
looking, but um…..maybe um…I don’t know say I was doing adagio
and I feel like its gooey or something like that
Emil: uh-huh [long pause; scrunching face]
Shantel: does that fit?
Emil: Um…….I’d say springy? You know, sort of bounding
Shantel: You’re feeling [overlap]
Emil: So [does a small jump to show it]. (interview 1)
Emil’s responses to this further questioning, in particular his puzzled

look, again, suggest this way of thinking and talking about movement is
not ‘normal’ to the way he frames his dancing experience in this context.
The style-specific assumptions of my concept of the kinaesthetic and his
experience in the same type of discourse are evidently frustrated when
he answers by doing the movement again. He seems to be indicating
between the lines: ‘it’s in the movement, the movement is enough, it’s a
jump, it’s bouncy, and it’s fairly straightforward’!9
9 There are a number of different values in ballet that might be argued to impact on
Emil’s response to my questions. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to consider, to the
full extent, those values that also impact on ballet dancers’ experiences. However, one can
contrast my discussion here with works by Markula and Clark (2018) and Aalten (2004),
for instance, which offer comparative value distinctions.
126 S. EHRENBERG
The hip hop and breaking dancers interviewed also indicate a differ-
ence with a kinaesthetic mode of attention. The following interaction with
Candace, after doing her chosen movement phrase, is one example:
Shantel: […] can you talk about if you were, so you know some of this is
about kinaesthetic feeling, like can you try and describe, it’s probably
going to take a while, but try and describe how some of the…like the
chest popping, and…what that feels like for you…
Candace: Feels like….um………….
Shantel: So, if you had to teach me how to do it, say I didn’t really
know…how would you start talking to me about how I could do it
like you
Candace: Ok but now I might do the real teacher talk (interview 2).
Similar to Emil, I sense a difference in asking Candace about kinaesthetic

awareness early on in the interviews. As the ellipses indicate, Candace
pauses for a long time after my question about ‘what that [movement]
feels like for you’. I ask about how she might teach the phrase as a way
to try to facilitate description, in thinking that re-approaching the topic
might help, although to her ‘teacher talk’ is something quite specific. The
point is that Candace indicates, even as ‘teacher talk’, the description of
her experience of dancing seems distinctly frustrated from my questioning
about what dancing feels like.
Candace: Ok…well usually what I explain, to my students, is…you know,

it’s about isolating your body, so for example my strength is really this
part [indicates her ribs]…you know I can really isolate this in bits
Shantel: From your chest to your hips
Candace: Yeah…so…I start with doing exercises where you actually split
your body in 3 parts, actually 4…you’ve got 1, which is moving shoul-
ders…2, which is moving chest..then there is all of this, that is like your
core…and then there is your hips….because otherwise if you move…-
like if you split your body in 2 parts…if you split it here you can start
moving your hips and your chest…so you start doing circle…but if you
split it in 3, 1-2-3…you can move all your chest, without moving the
rest…if that makes sense?…so we do a lot of exercises around that. …
(interview 2)
Candace’s description indicates attention to focus on body sections and

breaking the movement into physical parts, with emphasis on how to do
the movement, rather than internal and kinaesthetic exploration. Echoing
Emil, Candace describes her experience of the movement in terms of the

physical mastery and execution. In contrast to Erdem and Mads, Candace
does not suggest how to kinaesthetically attend to the subtle nuances of
how the body responds to splitting one’s body into parts.10
It is important to restate, as discussed in Chapter 1, that dancers’ expe-
riences between different dance styles are complex, particularly because
dancers often have experience in multiple styles. For instance, Candace has
experience with contemporary dance as well. She provides the following
metaphor to describe her movement at another point in her interview,
where she describes working with a contemporary choreographer for a
time.
Candace: Um……ok…I think when I’m dancing what I feel a little bit is,
you know those […] balls on a rope […]…and then when you pull one
ball, doonk-
Shantel: Oh yeah yeah on a string
Candace: Yeah. I think that’s a bit what the body roll feels like. You know
like one ball…you swing it, doonk the other ball, does that make sense,
so when you’re…[…] one part that moves….it sends like a link to
another one and then….does that make sense? (interview 2)
Candace’s teaching experience (and the skill of describing movement) also

helps her articulate her experience of a body roll in a particular way.
I want to re-emphasise that these two descriptions from Emil and
Candace are not evidence that the movement they did was simple or easy,
or again that their dancing does not have its own kinaesthetic properties
and intelligence. These interview excerpts do not represent all of Emil’s
or Candace’s dancing experiences, but one angle on their descriptions and
experiences.
However, what is noteworthy in this contrast from the fieldwork is
how it highlights my assumptions about kinaesthetic attention from a
contemporary dance perspective and how reflections on a shared (or
not) language revealed this theme in the interviews. What this contrast
10 As above, values within the contexts of hip hop and breaking dance styles also impact
on Candace’s descriptions and there is a wealth of scholarship emerging in this area.
For instance, Rosemarie A. Roberts (2013) discusses hip hop dance pedagogy, providing
focused analysis on this style, including methods of transmission and how one ‘reads’
this dance form. Naomi Bragin (2014) offers another perspective of dancers’ kinaesthetic
experience of Waacking/Punking. Thomas DeFrantz (2014) discusses a wide range of hip
hop and breaking corporealities, moving with Bourdieu’s writings on habitus.
128 S. EHRENBERG
in descriptions from the fieldwork, from dancers working predominantly

in ballet, hip hop, and breaking styles, indicates is that which is poten-
tially unique to the contemporary dance context and hence, indicates that
there are principles and structures in contemporary dance that support
the argument for a shared valuing, development, and nurturing of a
kinaesthetic mode of attention for the contemporary dancers.
Roche (2015) and Rothfield (2008) discuss their experiences, while
working with two contemporary choreographers, explicitly in contrast to
their experience of classical ballet, which brings another set of dancer-
perspective contrasts related to the idea of a kinaesthetic mode of
attention in contemporary dance. Roche writes about ‘the myriad negoti-
ations’ she engages in working with contemporary dance choreographers
such as Rosemary Butcher and Liz Roche. She explicitly aligns her
experience with Rothfield’s (2008) writings about working with chore-
ographer Russell Dumas. Rothfield (2008) argues, from her experience,
that dancers need to be open and responsive to ever-changing performa-
tive environments. She states that Dumas, for instance, cultivates dancers
to be ‘available’ and ‘adaptive’, which is different for her and her expe-
rience of performing classical ballet, which she argues is about making
subtle adaptations with highly defined movement vocabulary. Roche picks
up on this idea of being ‘available’ and ‘adaptive’ with her own experi-
ence of contemporary dance, also in contrast to her experience of classical
ballet. What distinguishes the difference for them, then, between working
across the two different styles, is this element of surprise or being ‘ready’
to find ‘new’ ways of moving, echoing the ‘crash to create’ idea from
Jiles above. Roche (2015) likewise indicates that in contemporary dance
one is often trying to stay ‘in the moment’ and/or find unstable, uneasy,
and non-habitual places of being physically. The centrality of kinaesthetic
experience to this openness, surprise, and breaking of habits, though not
always stated, is key. This kind of approach to movement requires a partic-
ular experienced attending to kinaesthetic awareness, which includes a
familiarity and skill of reflecting on pre-reflective experience in a specific
way. Roche (2015) writes: ‘By oscillating between stability and change,
[contemporary] dancers demonstrate an intensified ability to repeatedly
incorporate and integrate new motor skills that are imprinted on the
central nervous system’ (97).
One thing that is shared across the contemporary dancer descrip-
tions is a repeated approach to movement. Roche (2015) indeed goes
on to argue that dancers form corporeal maps in different choreographic
contexts, recalling the mapping description discussed by Markula and

Silk (2011) in Chapter 1. The forming of these maps is the process of
mixing together new motor skills, choreographic instruction, and strate-
gies, which then make up a ‘plan’ that the dancer can adhere to in
performance. However, and crucially for my point, Roche (2015) writes
that this plan is ‘located in body sensation’, ‘internalised choreographic
instructions’, and anchored into the body’s tissues (my emphasis). All of
these terms point to kinaesthetic experience at the centre. A focus on
kinaesthetic experience allows for the perspective, for the contemporary
dancer, of both a stable dancing identity, that becomes embedded from
a practice of continuing to approach movement in this way, and an iden-
tity that is purposefully also continually destabilised, because of values
and practices such as trying to attend to unpredictable in-the-moment
experience, ‘crash to create’, and/or attend to pre-reflective experience.
A Disposition of Contemporary Dancers’ Habitus

How might we address the argument one might raise, which is whether
it is simply that the choreography in contemporary dance makes this
way of attending possible, and even inevitable? How might the social
context, as much as the movement itself, impact on the dancer and kinaes-
thetic experiences? These questions address the broader function to this
way of attending in contemporary dance, which relates to a particular
valuing of the kinaesthetic as an incorporated sociality of the culture of
contemporary dance.
Delineating the shared practices and values of contemporary dance, as
it relates to a kinaesthetic mode of attention, is thinking about contempo-
rary dance as a type of culture in the way Kealiinohomoku (1970/2001)
argues for ballet as a form of ethnic dance and Novack (1990) argues for
ballet and contact improvisation. One of Novack’s main premises is that
there are shared practices, language, and behaviours in ballet and contact
improvisation, which distinguish them and affect the people practising
them. Novak’s argument in part follows Marcel Mauss’ (1992) ideas of
techniques of the body and also follows a premise of Bourdieu’s concept
of habitus.
Bourdieu’s (1980/1990) habitus argues that social contexts, such as
the training and working environments of contemporary dance, have
‘[systems] of cognitive and motivating structures’ and ‘procedures to
follow’, which impact on persons’ behaviour (53). As Crossley (2001a)
130 S. EHRENBERG
interprets: ‘… dispositions and forms of competence are acquired in struc-

tured social contexts whose pattern, purpose, and underlying principles
they incorporate as both an inclination and a modus operandi’ (83).
The premise is that people in part incorporate dispositions, or ways of
behaving, from their social context to the extent that it can go unnoticed,
even if these dispositions become fundamental to who they are, what they
do, and indeed, how they move. However, as Cynthia Jean Cohen Bull
(1988/2001) writes in another publication, conceiving of dancers’ incor-
poration of a dance style (as a type of culture) ‘is not to say that dancers
conspicuously plan these changes; like all participants in a culture (to para-
phrase Marx), they make their own dances, but within a set of rules they
do not always personally create’ (412).
Bourdieu (1980/1990) uses a game analogy to express his idea of
habitus. With this analogy, he argues that social contexts (or fields) have
a game-like structure ‘played’ by the people living and/or working in
those fields. He argues that social contexts, like games, have rules that are
learned and incorporated by the players in order to play the game. That
is, there are distinct norms to every social field or context (the game) and
only if people incorporate these norms and logic will they be able to live
and work in these social fields (or ‘play the game’).
For the case of dancers, they must ‘incorporate within their corporeal
schema’ those stakes, patterns, and logic of the practices they work in to
feel and be considered competent in them. Crossley (2001b) provides a
useful description of the artist, using Bourdieu’s game analogy, for which
the dancer can easily be substituted:
Each field, like a distinct game, has its own norms and logic; a specific
‘point’ and stakes, which players must incorporate within their corporeal
schema if they are to play. To liken fields to games is to invite sociolo-
gists to explore and discover the unique configurations of norms, stakes,
patterns and logic that comprise each one…to discern…the sense at work
within the hurly burly of practice. (96–97)
One of these stakes in contemporary dance is the particular type of kinaes-

thetic mode of attention described above. This stake is confirmed when it
is found to be distinct to contemporary dance; for instance, a kinaesthetic
mode of attention is not potentially ‘at stake’ in ballet, or at least not
predominantly, although there are other practitioners working against the
ongoing clarity of this distinction (e.g. Jackson 2005).
What Bourdieu’s idea of habitus allows is for us to think about how

a seemingly private internal bodily experience, such as a contempo-
rary dancer’s focused attention on their kinaesthetic experiences when
dancing, is tied to a larger social context. Or put another way, how certain
norms, patterns, and logic affect dancers’ embodied ways of being in the
practice (and/or because of the practice). As Morris (2006) writes:
Bourdieu’s…concept of bodily theorizing is important for a social analysis

of dance because it makes it possible to see the social…as embedded in the
practice of dance, in the dancers‘ comportment and the steps they do…and
in how dancers are trained and developed. (xxv–xxvi)
The kinaesthetic mode of attention employed by the contemporary

dancers can thus be conceptualised as one of the dispositions and forms
of know-how that make up contemporary dance as a dance style and
distinguish it as such. The dancers, as agents of this practice, take on this
disposition to be expert and work in contemporary dance but in and by
their practice, dancers maintain this feature in the field. The disposition
to attend to the body in a ‘kinaesthetic mode’ has come about because of
a particular learned way of attending to dancing in this context. By incor-
porating the structures, or procedures, pattern, purpose, and underlying
principles upheld in the practice of contemporary dance, the dancers have
acquired this certain way of attending to their dancing, and they have
taken it on as their own.
However, the suggestion of ‘motivating structures’ brings up the
problem about what purpose, on a broader scale, this kinaesthetic mode
of attention is serving the contemporary dancers. What is it about this way
of attending kinaesthetically that appeals to contemporary dancers and
makes it what is important to them about dance? This way of attending
kinaesthetically is crucial to the dancers valuing the kinaesthetic and
thus also valuing issues of individual creativity, openness of form, dancer
agency, and feeling over visual display; or, as dancer Erdem expresses in
her interview, the value of ‘connecting to yourself and your emotional and
physical expression’, but in a particular stylistic way. A kinaesthetic mode
of attention not only fits what the dancers need to do to be able to work
and be professionals in the field, it also fulfils some fundamental beliefs
about dance and the dancers’ function in the world. Unpicking the prac-
tices and values of contemporary dance helps clarify what function this
mode might serve. This will be at issue in the following chapters.
132 S. EHRENBERG
A Habituated Mode of Attending Kinaesthetically?

Conceiving of a kinaesthetic mode of attention as a ‘modus operandi’ is
complex considering that contemporary dance is not a codified form in
the sense of movement vocabulary (Crossley 2001a, b). In other words, a
point of departure from Bourdieu’s concept of habitus is that the contem-
porary dancers’ kinaesthetic mode of attention is neither incorporated via
repetition of a set movement vocabulary, nor through making movements
habitual in the same way that it can be argued might be the case for ballet,
or indeed other physical expertise, such as football (Crossley 2001a)
or weightlifting (Chow 2019).11 Instead, might a kinaesthetic mode of
attention become a habitual way of attending to movement and thus
conceived as integral to the contemporary dance habitus in these terms?
Rather than conceiving of a kinaesthetic mode of attention as ‘below the
level of consciousness’, it seems to be a way of attending which can be
conceived as part of contemporary dancers’ pre-reflective and reflective
consciousness. As noted above, pre-reflective consciousness is defined as
‘an intrinsic feature of what is conscious and of what might enter into
our reflective realm’ (Ravn 2010, 28, emphasis mine), and pre-reflective
experiences are defined as ‘initially like nothing for us, and…only enter
the realm of phenomenality when subjected to a reflective process that
allows us to become aware of them’ (Zahavi 2011, 9). Repetition is part
of how this mode of attending becomes ingrained, nurtured, and devel-
oped, because the dancers seem to repeatedly use, and are taught and
encouraged to use, it in the practice of contemporary dance.
The issue of repetition, and learning a mode of attention through
training, again recalls the discussion of Depraz et al.’s (2002) research
on ‘becoming aware’. Depraz et al. (2002) argue that ‘becoming aware’
in mindfulness meditation is both a passive attending and a skill that
is learned and developed in meditation practice. They argue there are
different types of ‘becoming aware’, and that it is both a structured,
active experience and a kind of passivity and open attending. Likewise,
Koch et al.’s (2013) taxonomy of bodily memory identifies a matrix of
possibilities when thinking about consciousness in embodied activity. The
11 Though there is more to explore with other parts of Chow’s (2019) research in
future, e.g. ‘The lived experience of repetition, in training, while building towards what
might be thought of as uniformity – the ability to consistently repeat a movement –
actually produces difference and variation, since kinaesthetic experience is rarely uniform
day to day, moment to moment, body to body’ (153).
concept of a kinaesthetic mode of attention that the dancers indicate in

this study can be linked with Koch et al.’s (2013) discussion of both
explicit and implicit memory. That is, the dancers indicate having acquired
a disposition of attending to movement and reflecting on kinaesthetic
experience in-the-moment that is habitual, to an extent, and yet they
explicitly are also attending to these experiences to find ‘new’ ways of
moving and/or experiencing their movement. The contemporary dancers
blur those distinctions between what is explicit and implicit when they are
intentionally reflecting on implicit body memories/habits/style and also
trying to explicitly break those implicit memory patterns.12
The issue of movement habituation is a spectrum in contemporary
dance and care must be taken for over-generalising the complex terrain
of contemporary dance and thus, contemporary dancer experience(s).
For instance, some contemporary dance choreography crosses over to a
predominantly physical virtuosity with some works (e.g. Akram Khan,
Wayne McGregor, Mark Morris, Jasmin Vardimon, Pina Bausch) and
some hip hop dancers crossover to the kinaesthetic (e.g. Candace above)
ends of this spectrum. Indeed, as noted above, there is of course a degree
of movement habituation and external physicalised virtuosity demanded
in contemporary dance. For instance, in one of the quotes from Mads
above, he talks about how he has learned the choreography, repeated it
so many times in rehearsal, that now he barely has to think about the
sequence of the steps anymore, or as he says, ‘I’ve already got it in my
body’. In contemporary dance, there is a degree of complicated, even
seemingly impossible, movements, similar to those found in gymnastics or
in other movement skills which similarly require ‘expert’ flexibility and/or
strength.
Hence, it is not to state that contemporary dance is completely void
of movement repetition, and/or physical virtuosity, but to explore how,
based on the dancer interviews and descriptions that inform this research,
there is an emphasis on repetition coming from a diffuse philosophy of
moving. This aligns with discussion in the discourse, such as Reynolds
(2007) writing about retraining dancers’ ways of walking as a basic
starting point of contemporary technique, and thus, how contemporary
technique might aim to train dancers’ movement at the most mundane
level. This re-training of something as seemingly simple as walking is
12 For a more on the issue of kinaesthetic memory, in addition to these references, see
also Sheets-Johnstone (2012). See also Rothfield (2019).
134 S. EHRENBERG
often, in principle, to get rid of the old habitual way of moving and to
let the new ‘contemporary dance’ way of moving, valued by that tech-
nique, grow and flourish. In the case of Martha Graham, this retraining
through walking was so that the dancers would learn, and make habitual,
an emphasis on a ‘downward thrust’ (Reynolds 2007, 191). Similarly,
I remember training in the Hanya Holm techniques during my BFA at
Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University, and ‘simply’ walking
across the studio for hours. My professor and previous assistant to Holm,
Claudia Gitelman, continually cued us how to embody this certain way of
walking with a downward thrust, just as Reynolds describes, and also a lift
through the centre, an open chest, and with a weighted earth-bound yet
forward-moving sense to it. Doing this walk over and over in my training
began to reshape my way of moving at a very basic level and was crucial
groundwork in my training to move ‘as a contemporary dancer’. Values
diffused in this training were about grounding into the earth, suspen-
sion and release, and learning how to embody different types of energies
with movement, even with movement that was very basic and familiar
(i.e. walking). Or we can look at how Roche (2015) describes her ‘transi-
tion’ from classical ballet to contemporary dance in relation to falling. She
states that the only way she could achieve an ‘intentional’ fall in contem-
porary dance was to close her eyes and ‘lose control’ (87). She states
that because of her classical ballet training, she did not know how to
‘fall instinctively’ in her earlier encounters with contemporary dance and
so she says she ‘forced [herself] to fall through creating a kind of sensory
blackout’ (2015, 87). She alludes to this ‘sensory blackout’ leading her to
embody a more diffuse approach, as discussed above, instead of a directed
sense of movement experience via set movement vocabulary repetition:
‘Ballet had taught me to drive the changes in my body and this aware-
ness [needed in contemporary dance] took many years to cultivate to the
point that it felt natural’ (2015, 87). Roche supports the argument that
contemporary dance requires, nurtures, and develops a way of attending
that takes years to cultivate, thus train, make habitual, and make seem-
ingly ‘natural’ as she says, as a way of approaching movement, as a kind
of disposition and habitual way of approaching dancing.
To clarify, the distinction I am making is that a kinaesthetic mode
of attention is exploring how contemporary dance training and practice
nurture and develop something like a kinaesthetic mode of attention to
such an extent that it becomes a ‘modus operandi’, a way of attending to
movement which has, in part, become habitual. But, I am not exploring
how this becomes automatic via repeated codified vocabulary. It is also

argued that contemporary dancers share a certain style of moving (across
all iterations), such as giving a particular weightedness to movement
(Ravn 2010) or moving with a suspension and release (Potter 2008),
or the importance of breath (Karreman 2017). Or one might look to
Rudulf Laban’s movement categorisations and choreological studies as a
way of classifying movements and demarcating the aesthetic of contem-
porary dance. However, as noted above, I am not focusing on the specific
ways of moving, or vocabulary, which comprise contemporary dance, or
disputing these explorations either. It is both/and; my focus is on how
the style ‘wash[es] over the entire dance’ in contrast to looking at the
details of the vocabulary (Foster 1986, 91).
Croce’s (2015) discussion of Wittgenstein’s rule-following and Bour-
dieu’s habitus is useful to clarify the subtle distinction, and how habitus is
useful as part of a methodological tool of analysis of social conditions.13
In sum, Croce (2015) argues that the core aspect of Wittgenstein’s
rule-following, which intrigued Bourdieu, was that, ‘[…] taking into
account the nontransparency of rules at both a first-level and a second-
level perspective is a crucial stepping-stone for a sound methodological
approach to social action’ (337). Bourdieu was more concerned with
second-level perspective with habitus, Croce argues, thus a methodolog-
ical concern for how the researcher identifies patterns in a social context.
Croce (2015) argues that habitus is a ‘[…] conceptual [device] that urge
the theorist to adopt a specific attitude to practices, one that histori-
cizes current performances and reads them against the background of
past ones’ (341). Thus, habitus, as a lens, invites one to interpret (either
in relation to an other and/or of herself) regularities not as unreflexive
patterns of behaviour but ‘ongoing negotiations that ratify and naturalize
a specific interpretation of them’ (Croce 2015, 341).
Another reason for clarification is because, as discussed above, a kinaes-
thetic mode of attention in contemporary dance is a mode used by
dancers to interrogate their own movement habits and question, physi-
cally and philosophically, their own individual ways of moving—a means
to intentionally explore their unique ways of moving, which can also
‘fall below the level of consciousness’. As Legrand (2007) argues with
13 Croce (2015) also addresses some of the critiques of habitus which align with those
in dance studies and other fields (e.g. Crossley) cited, such as how habitus does not, by
itself, properly account for agency and reflection by the subject.
136 S. EHRENBERG
the performative pre-reflective body concept, the dancers indicate that

they direct their intentionality, or kinaesthetic awareness, towards pre-
reflective consciousness, or those qualities of their movements that usually
fall ‘below the level of consciousness’. This aspect of a kinaesthetic mode
of attention makes the issue of habit, and thus habitus, especially tricky.
Because, on the one hand, the dancers are indicating a habitual way of
directing attention, mostly towards their kinaesthetic awareness, on the
other hand, this way of attending is precisely to interrogate their habitual
ways of moving, as one might interrogate habitual thinking patterns in
meditation (Depraz et al. 2002). One does not need to exclude the other;
it is a complexity of dancing experience that can be unpicked further as
others have done, and I also try to do here.
What is useful to note at this point is how the triangulation of the
UK-based dancers interviewed, dance experiences expressed in available
sources, and my own experiences indicate that a key part of the virtuosity
in contemporary dance performance lies in the ability to be kinaestheti-
cally sensitive. What aspects of the practice are feeding this development
of a kinaesthetic mode of attention in contemporary dance, if it is not via
making certain movement habitual, as Bourdieu theorises with habitus?
In other words, if we agree that practices within social contexts have a
distinguishable logic that impacts on individual behaviour, what are some
of the principles and structures in the style which develop and nurture
this overarching approach? The next chapter will address these questions.
Conclusion
This chapter explores one of the themes which emerged from the inter-
views, which was that the contemporary dancers had a particular way of
attending kinaesthetically to their movement which the ballet, hip hop,
and breaking dancers did not share to the same extent. Using the lens
of habitus, this chapter explores the potential for a kinaesthetic mode
of attention as a type of disposition, which the contemporary dancers
incorporate by training and working in the practice. This chapter gives
a descriptive shape to a kinaesthetic mode of attention expressed by the
contemporary dancers.
The contemporary dancers indicate that their specific way of attending
kinaesthetically is precisely to interrogate habits and there is a virtu-
osity in their particular, trained, kinaesthetic sensitivity. While, on the one
hand, the contemporary dancers’ way of attending can be conceived as an
acquired disposition that is a habitual mode, it simultaneously challenges

the idea that it is made habitual in the same way as habit is conceived in
other styles and bodily practices.
This chapter explicitly works towards one of the main purposes of
this research, which is to add to the discourse the ways that dancers’
kinaesthetic experience is highly complex and multi-layered (i.e. not only
internally-directed attention). Subsequently, this chapter provides other
angles from which dance practitioners (i.e. students, artists, teachers) can
think about their self-relations in practice. Conceiving of dancer’s kinaes-
thetic awareness in dance practice in this way, can help dancers explore
how what is valued in different dance contexts, might have a signifi-
cant impact on how they individually (and seemingly privately) approach
and feel their dancing. Dancers’ kinaesthetic experience can be conceived
as both a private internal experience—no one can feel what an indi-
vidual dancer feels—and yet, this seemingly private personal experience
can simultaneously be affected and shaped according to outside contex-
tual factors. As mentioned in the introduction, this chapter relies on the
premise proposed by Csordas (1993) of the concept of ‘somatic modes of
attention’, which is that: ‘to attend to a bodily sensation is not to attend
to the body as an isolated object, but to attend to the body’s situation
in the world’ (138). In this way, the contemporary dancers’ kinaesthetic
mode of attention is a particular way of being situated in the style of
contemporary dance, which has its own principles, practices, language,
and values.
The next chapter will continue with this premise and outline key prac-
tices and values of contemporary dance, as a social context, which make
it distinct and thus nurture, structure, and encourage these dancers,
training and working in contemporary dance, to develop and incorpo-
rate this particular kinaesthetic mode of attention. The next chapter will
more explicitly explore how and for what reasons a kinaesthetic mode of
attention is, or becomes, valuable for these contemporary dancers.
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(2): 9–19.
CHAPTER 4
Practices and Values Which Develop

and Nurture a Kinaesthetic Mode of Attention
Introduction
As summarised in the previous chapter, Bourdieu argues, as a central
premise for his concept of habitus, that social contexts have ‘[systems]
of cognitive and motivating structures’ and ‘procedures to follow’, which
impact on people’s behaviour (1980/1990, 53). He argues that there are
structures to social contexts, and logic to the practices within them, which
can impact on people’s behaviour.
…my whole effort aims at explaining, via the notion of habitus for instance,
how it is that behaviour (economic or other) takes the form of sequences
that are objectively guided towards a certain end...the habitus, a system of
predispositions [are] acquired through a relationship to a certain field….
(Bourdieu 1987/1990, 90)
In sum, people do not just take on ways of physically behaving randomly,

mechanistically, or without will; rather, people become enmeshed in social
contexts and collectively incorporate certain values that make up, and are
important to, that context. People acquire dispositions, including phys-
ical bodily practices and ways of being, because they have learned, and are
impelled, to do so to maintain a position within that context, or are moti-
vated towards certain ends established as important to that context. As
Jenkins (1992) summarises: ‘… the habitus disposes actors to do certain
things, it provides a basis for the generation of practices. Practices are

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144 S. EHRENBERG
produced in and by the encounter between the habitus and its disposi-
tions’ (78). In turn, practices and values produce, and maintain, fields
with which people have relationships via their physical dispositions. Or as
Wainwright et al. (2005) summarise:
…our social practices as agents are usually the result of various habitual
schemas and dispositions (habitus), combined with various types of
resources (capital) that we have accrued. These forms of capital are then
activated by certain structured social conditions (field) that they both
belong to, and reproduce and modify. (62–63)
As discussed in the previous chapter, Bourdieu asserts that the structure

of social contexts or fields can be viewed as a game, according to rules,
stakes, and values. Just as a game can be dissected for its rules, stakes,
and values, so too can social contexts be dissected for their rules, stakes,
and values. As Crossley (2001b, 101) describes: ‘Each field, like a distinct
game, has its own norms and logic; a specific “point” and stakes which
players must incorporate within their corporeal schema if they are to play’.
Players in a game become disposed to behave in certain ways because they
want to play the game, just as people in social contexts behave in certain
ways because they want to play in that field and want to ‘win’ within it
in a similar way. A similar logic applies if someone wants to fit within
another culture as an expatriate, they too might want to learn the rules
of conduct and over time, become skilled at embodying the rules, stakes,
and values of the other culture to fit in (or ‘play’). Croce (2015) provides
further methodological clarification of habitus as methodological tool on
this point, ‘An analysis of habitus […] contributes to understanding that
the different fields constituting the social domain emerge as crystallized
negotiations meant to establish what counts as “the natural” and “the
normal,” that is, as a correct and adequate conduct within them’ (342).
The field of contemporary dance can also be conceived as a social
context, which has pattern, purpose, and underlying principles, many of
which can be conceived to contribute to developing and incorporating a
kinaesthetic mode of attention. The previous chapter shows that a kinaes-
thetic mode of attention is shared and has descriptive shape, and is, to an
extent, habitual as a way of approaching movement in the style. But what
might be the rules, stakes, and values specific to contemporary dancers in
the fieldwork which suggest development and nurturing of this mode of
kinaesthetic attention as key to their ‘game’ of contemporary dance?
4 PRACTICES AND VALUES … 145
The literature featured thus far, particularly those that share in the
discussions of something like a kinaesthetic mode of attention (e.g.
Rouhiainen 2003; Potter 2008; Ravn 2009, 2010, 2017; Ravn and
Hansen 2013; Brandstetter 2013b; Roche 2015; Purser 2018a, 2018b;)
support the argument for shared particularities of attending in the prac-
tice. This approach to movement foregrounds bodily in-the-moment
experiencing, values getting beyond habit, open discovery modes of
movement exploration, repetition of not only movements but of ways
of approaching and executing movement. The bringing together of these
resources, and finding their similarities, reveals a pattern, but might also
lead to historicising of this as particular to contemporary dance aesthetics
of this current time, particularly in the UK where the majority of the field-
work took place. In addition, the accumulated and shared discourse to
date supports the argument for how dance studies, as well as other fields
such as sociology and phenomenology, are in a place to bring together
these embodied ways of knowing, in ways that were not possible in rela-
tion to dancers’ experiences in modern and contemporary dance before
now. We do not have the range of contextualisation of what Duncan
dancers experienced, for instance, or Graham or Cunningham dancers,
to the same extent, to be able to do that analysis; we do not have that
kind of complexity of other types of kinaesthetic modes of attending in
contemporary dance historically that we do today.
This chapter helps to contribute to understanding dance experience
complexity, alongside the above authors; but it does so by presenting how
the kinaesthetic mode of attention relates to a set of cultural practices and
values that seem particular to contemporary dance in the current moment.
Put in another way, if dance styles are social contexts which are structured,
to an extent, then this chapter outlines some of those structures—specific
patterns, purposes, and underlying principles—which develop and nurture
a kinaesthetic mode of attention in this time. The premise is that there are
identifiable patterns, purposes, and principles found in the field of dance
(more precisely current contemporary dance practices), which help shape
the interviewed, read about, and my own contemporary dance bodily
dispositions and one of these dispositions is a kinaesthetic mode of atten-
tion. As noted in the previous chapter, Bull (1988/2001) conceives of
dancers’ incorporation of a dance style (as a type of culture); however,
she clarifies that this ‘is not to say that dancers conspicuously plan these
changes; like all participants in a culture (to paraphrase Marx), they make
146 S. EHRENBERG
their own dances, but within a set of rules they do not always personally
create’ (412).
Depraz et. al. (2002), in discussing ‘becoming aware’ in relation to
meditation practice, do not discuss the concept of habitus following Bour-
dieu; however, their discussion of training, and building of fine habits of
attention via training, is useful to touch on again since it expands on the
above discussion of habitus related to embodied practice. They argue that
‘becoming aware’ is a practice; therefore, it takes work and it is trained
(99, original emphasis). However, they distinguish that, with meditation,
becoming aware is learned ‘on the job’ as they say, or through expe-
rience, much like the kinaesthetic mode of attention I describe in the
previous chapter. A kinaesthetic mode of attention, like the skill of reduc-
tion discussed by Depraz et al. (2002), is not a birthright but needs to
be built up by expertise acquired step-by-step (99). And again, like their
discussion of reduction, the experience is available to anyone, but, ‘you
have to work at it, […] there are degrees of expertise which condition
the possibility of access to certain aspects of subjective experience that,
without them, would remain inaccessible’ (100). They thus support the
argument for how introspection is trained; for instance, there are differ-
ences in the types of introspection found across mediation, psychology,
and indeed dance practice.
A few key texts in dance studies, also discussed in the previous chap-
ters, are particularly crucial to the thinking underpinning this chapter.
Although these texts do not explicitly cite Bourdieu, I find they implic-
itly advocate the application of the above premise to dance contexts,
which is that dancers’ experiences are in part constructed in and by
specifiable dance practices and values (Foster refers to them as ‘features’,
‘metaphors’, or ‘tropes’) of the dance styles within which they train and
work. Cynthia Novack’s (1990) text Sharing the Dance outlines the prac-
tices and ‘core movement values’ of contact improvisation and argues that
contact improvisation is a type of ‘dancing culture’, and thus a specific
social context, which impacts on those who train, rehearse, teach, and
perform in the style. She argues that dancers of contact improvisation
eschew certain values upheld in the field, primarily identified by their
engagement, physical commitment, shared exercises, language, and bodily
dispositions (115). Susan Foster (1997), in her essay Dancing Bodies,
likewise argues that ‘key features of [several Western theatre dance] tech-
niques’ reinforce certain principles of each dance style and subsequently
impact on dancers’ training and bodily knowing in each (241). She argues
that training practices create the type of dancer that is valued in that
style. Similarly to Novack, Foster (1997) suggests that each dance style
has institutionalised practices, and thus values, which impact on dancers’
behaviour and experience and help ‘connect the dancing body to its
aesthetic project’ (252). For instance, she argues that: ‘The restrained
successive movements of Graham’s contraction and release build a sinewy,
tensile, dynamic body that symbolizes a self full of turbulent feelings and
the struggle inherent in expressing those feelings’ (252) and that prac-
tices like this for students of Graham introduces them ‘to the set of
metaphors out of which their own perceived and ideal bodies come to
be constructed’ (253).
However, I also heed the criticisms of ‘disciplining the body’, voiced
by dance scholars, such as Gardner (2007) and Morris (2006). I identify
in this chapter that in contemporary dance in particular, dancers are often
asked to improvise and choreograph and thus engage in (and value) inter-
personal relations in the choreographic process. Interpersonal relations in
practice instil a sense of agency for the dancers and advocates that they
can be at times de-centred in relation to the fixed roles of choreographer
and dancer (Gardner 2007). I similarly focus on kinaesthesia and kinaes-
thetic descriptions to address the materiality of the dancers’ bodies and
their sense of agency, rather than reading their bodies solely in terms of
texts and discipline (Morris 2006).
As discussed in Chapter 1, it is important to identify the practices
and values which develop and nurture a kinaesthetic mode of attention
because these identifications can more concretely help dancers, peda-
gogues, and those working in other fields such as cognitive science,
philosophy, and sociology understand how dancers might come to incor-
porate a way of attending. Doing so specifically argues for the ways
that kinaesthesia is socially implicated for the case of dancers, as much
as kinaesthesia is also a physiological, personal, and private aspect of
dancing experience. Identifying these values demystifies dancers’ kinaes-
thetic perceptions. As Croce (2015) argues:
[…] the social theorist comes into play with her theoretical devices (like
the habitus ) that accentuate the issue of temporality and tease out the
relationship between past and current accounts of practices. […] how the
schemes of perception that led to the production of past accounts of a
practice affect and/or constrain current ones. Only the examination of
the specific nature of the different fields, in conjunction with the study
148 S. EHRENBERG
of the strategies employed by the agents therein and of the lexicon that
they adopt to provide accounts of what they do, allows deciphering the
relationship between competing accounts. (342)
This chapter serves as a kind of deconstruction of current contempo-

rary dance practices. These identifications can address the social aspects of
the practice within which dancers are disciplined and yet, question those
very social aspects because contemporary dance values a questioning of
disciplinary practices. It is applying the thinking which Morris (2006)
summarises of Bourdieu’s critique of the artists of nineteenth-century
French Modernism: ‘even as they ridiculed [the bourgeois] and battled
against it, they could not completely sever their ties from it. Some part
of them still yearned for acceptance’ (xvi). These identifications serve as a
potential point of resistance within the field for contemporary dancers as
well (e.g. do we want to think of other ways to approach training, tech-
nique, artistry, and positioning in the field?). This chapter is one response
to a problem Roche (2015) raises in her book, related to working with
several contemporary choreographers: ‘how dancers operating within the
contemporary dance milieu might experience themselves as agents while
being subject to the instabilities of a career path that is built on, often,
random connections with choreographers and is difficult to intentionally
direct’ (52). The centrality of kinaesthetic experience, and the practices
and values that nurture this centrality, discussed further below, is one of
the central features of the practice that might help anchor dancers or at
least help them ‘find ground’, even if only at times, with an ever-shifting
practice also rich in multiplicity, instability, and unpredictable-ness. In
addition, it might help to be aware and further explore contemporary
dance’s ongoing resistence(s) to its own institutionalisation (e.g. Diehl
2018; George 2014, 2020).
The practices of somatics, improvisation, and choreography are
presented below as key features to the contemporary dancers’ developing
and nurturing a kinaesthetic mode of attention. Educational practices
impacting on contemporary dance contexts are discussed, likewise, for the
importance in developing and maintaining a kinaesthetic mode of atten-
tion. A demand for contemporary dancers to be versatile, along with the
value and demand of versatility, is presented as it necessitates a kinaes-
thetic mode of attention. The values of freedom and mutual feelings
between dancer and audience are highlighted for the ways that they too
function towards the dancers’ acquisition and development of a kinaes-

thetic mode of attention. I acknowledge, as Quinlan (2017) points out
in relation to Gaga, that many approaches in contemporary dance blur
the lines between what is understood as somatics, improvisation, chore-
ography, and other sub-sections of this chapter (28). Nevertheless, the
practices and values are outlined to explore what some of the domi-
nant practices in contemporary dance are which support the argument
for the development of a kinaesthetic mode of attention, summarised in
the previous chapter. It is beyond the scope of this work to encapsulate
all practices and values in contemporary dance and also critique how they
are practised. It is hoped this research is read alongside existing research,
as discussed in the previous chapters, and future research will continue to
address this.
As stated, one significant aspect of contemporary dance practice, and
developing and maintaining a kinaesthetic mode of attention, is the
incorporation of somatics.
Somatic Practices
A number of somatic practices, and their integration within dance
training, foster dancers incorporating, and thus valuing, a kinaesthetic
mode of attention.1
As discussed in Chapter 2, dance and somatics have developed increas-
ingly in tandem since the 1960s. As Eddy (2009) points out, many of the
2nd generation somatic pioneers were predominantly dancers (7). George
(2014) argues, in summary, that twentieth-century contemporary dancers
revolutionised their training under the influence of somatics and ‘by the
end of the twentieth century, [somatics-informed contemporary dance
training] had found its way in the worlds most venerable dance education
programs’ (ii). Mangione (1993) likewise contends: ‘Somatics and the
[post]modern dance are linked. Both movements were born of the same
time and possibly for many of the same reasons’ (27 as cited in Eddy
2009, 9–10). Fortin, Long, and Lord (2002) report that: ‘Many authors
have claimed that somatics influences dance teaching , choreography,
performance, dance medicine and more recently epistemology’ (156).
Eddy (2009) evidences the slow merging of dance and somatics in her
1 A synopsis of the many practices, which fall under the umbrella term ‘somatics’ can
be found in Eddy (2009).
150 S. EHRENBERG
discussion of Irmgard Bartenieff . Bartenieff fled to the USA from Nazi

Germany in 1936 and as a dancer and practitioner of ‘Bindewebegung
Massage’ (aka ‘Connective Tissue Therapy’) ‘did not feel welcome in the
[New York] dance community, which was then dominated by Martha
Graham’ (15). But ‘in time’, Eddy reports, Bartenieff was working with
some dancers and, today, Bartenieff Fundamentals is part of a complex
history of contemporary dancer training, particularly release technique
(see also George 2014, 2020). Further evidence to the linking of these
two practices, Roche (2015) discusses Release Technique and the somatic
practice of Ideokinesis and likewise notes the history of UK contempo-
rary dance in the 1970s and other somatic practices such as Body-Mind
Centring and the Alexander Technique (6).
The kinaesthetic mode of attention described in the previous chapter
is similar to the explorative process of awareness and ‘listening to the
body’ written about with somatic practices. The crossovers can be read,
for instance, in the International and Somatic Movement Education
and Therapy Association’s (ISMETA) ‘scope of practice’, in which they
state that the ‘purpose of somatic movement education and therapy is
to enhance human processes of psychophysical awareness and function-
ing’. According to their descriptions, the value of somatics is learning
to ‘focus on the body’, ‘refine perceptual, kinaesthetic, proprioceptive,
and interoceptive sensitivity’, and ‘recognize habitual patterns’ (ISMETA
2003 as cited in Eddy 2009, 8). These stated values are similar to those
expressed in contemporary dance related to a kinaesthetic mode of atten-
tion, such as listening to the body’s sensations or problem solving with
the body, as discussed in the previous chapter (Schupp 2017). As Gabriele
Brandstetter (2013a) writes in discussion of somatic practices (such
as Body-Mind Centring, ‘ideokinesis’, and Feldenkrais), contemporary
dance, and contact improvisation:
Here, as in all works of kinesthetically oriented practices, it is not a “beauti-

ful” bodily form resulting from a course of training dictated by an esthetic
style or movement code that is the guiding principle of the idea of dance
and choreography, but the question posed by Linda Rabin: “What would
dance performance be like if dancers drew from this essential source?”
(172)
Rabin’s ‘essential source’ refers back to Brandstetter’s description of

‘kinaesthetic orientation’, which refers to practices not focused on the
aesthetic or movement code of dance and choreography, therefore, refer-

ring to practices not foregrounding the look of movement. Or as Whatley
et al. (2009) distinguish in their editorial of the first issue of the Journal
of Dance and Somatic Practices:
These [dance and somatic] practices are characterized by a return to the self
and sensorial awareness, to cultivate a new consciousness of bodily move-
ment; hence the term ‘soma’ (of the body) and ‘somatic’ as a reference to
the first-person perception, and the balance between first and third-person
perspective, which underpins these experiential practices. (3)
The emphasis on ‘sensorial awareness’ and ‘a new consciousness of bodily

movement’, or a kinaesthetic mode of attention, is at the heart of their
description of both of these practices. George (2014) addresses this point
in greater scope, including summarising their experience of somatic prac-
tices and contemporary dance education, predominantly in Europe: ‘In
contrast with emulating a visible kinetic form, teachers argued that in a
receptive state, students recover functional movement patterns related to
evolutionary development’ (3).
Many somatic practitioners hold that refining one’s kinaesthetic sense is
central to the skill of the practice, central to the task of exploring an imag-
ined ‘internal landscape’, which is easily likened to (if not the same as) the
approach in contemporary dance, particularly that of release technique.
Fortin, Warwick, Long, and Lord (2002) contend, for instance, ‘One
way somatic education links with dance education is through learning to
direct attention to movement on an incrementally fine level’ (166). In
the dance classroom, inclusion of somatics practices is used to empha-
sise the importance of physical sensations versus reproduction of forms
(Ginot 2010;George 2014, 2020). Or as Ravn (2009) describes, ‘in
general [aiming] at initiating a process of movement re-education of the
dancer...[Somatics] tend to emphasise constant exploration by avoiding
repetition of specific exercises as is characteristic for training in ballet ,
Graham, and Limon techniques’ (102).2
The two disciplines—contemporary dance and somatics—sometimes
employ similar movement exercises, which further links the ways they
2 There is overlap here with Legrand’s (2007) pre-reflective performative body and
dancers focusing intention on pre-reflective consciousness, as discussed in the previous
chapter.
152 S. EHRENBERG
define and value kinaesthetic awareness (Schupp 2017). For instance,

yoga postures are used by some dance teachers in contemporary classes,
although the links between the two practices are not always explicitly
acknowledged. It was while taking a yoga class in New York City in the
1990s, after my university dance training, that I realised I had done many
yoga positions throughout my contemporary dance training. I realised I
had done the position of ‘downward dog’ (an upside-down V position
made with the arms and the legs pushing against the floor) countless
times before but only until I attended a yoga class did I learn of the
connection.3
Improvisation
Being ‘in tune’ with one’s own particular way of moving is important
in somatics as much as it is in improvisation, another commonly found
practice in contemporary dance . Improvisation, alongside somatics (or
possibly because of), began to proliferate in contemporary dance around
the 1960s and 1970s.4 All dance requires some kind of improvisational
practice (Bresnahan 2014). The type of improvisation I mean here is
a particular practice in which dancers are moving purposefully to find
their own way of moving in the moment, develop a unique move-
ment vocabulary, challenge habits, and finding movement that comes
out of foregrounding physical impetus versus pre-set movement vocabu-
lary (Kloppenberg 2010; Albright and Gere 2003; Minton 2007; Biasutti
2013). Lynne Anne Blom and L. Tarin Chaplin’s (2000) book The
Moment of Movement: Dance Improvisation is one example of the impor-
tance of improvisation to dance education and practice I am referring to.
Blom and Chaplin (2000) describe contemporary dance improvisation as:
3 There is much more to this history that Gottschild (1998) astutely points out, also
touched on in previous chapters, ‘Unlike modern and postmodern decisions to appropriate
imported elements from Zen Buddhism , yoga, T’ai Chi, or other Asian disciplines, the
Africanist presence comes to Americans from home base, from the inside’ (p 23).
4 For a more in-depth history of improvisation, contemporary dance, social landscapes,
please see Danielle Goldman’s (2010) book which ‘explores improvised dance as a vital
technology of the self-an ongoing, critical, physical, and anticipatory readiness that, while
grounded in the individual, is necessary for a vibrant sociality and vital civil society’ (22).
See also Midgelow (2019).
…the dancer simultaneously originates and performs movement without

preplanning. It is thus creative movement of the moment.[…] Improvisa-
tion in movement is analogous to free association in thought […] Improv
implies a lack of constraints, a diversity of possibilities to follow in any
direction for as long as the mover pleases. (x)
The value of not reproducing a form, and the emphasis on dancers’

creativity, is central to this practice of improvisation, and as such also
develops and nurtures dancers’ incorporation of a kinaesthetic mode of
attention.
Improvisation practices are often infused throughout various contem-
porary dance contexts. For instance, contemporary dancers might learn
the skill of improvisation in university or conservatoire training, as a
distinct module as a part of their coursework, separate to choreography or
technique class. Improvisation is found in creative choreographic practices
as well, as a way of generating choreography. As Roche (2018) points out:
Leena Rouhiainen (2011: 45– 47) proposes that the turn towards ‘perfor-
mative choreography’ in the late twentieth century has altered the focus of
the dancer from developing acuity in ‘specific [dance] regimens’ towards
developing skills in exploring ‘sensation, perception and kinesthesia for
dance-making’. Furthermore, this includes the capacity for dancers to
‘utilize their immediate experiences as material for performing.’ (156)
The point is that the practice of improvisation reiterates the values of

openness to the dancer’s particular way of moving and exploring habits,
versus, for instance, the valuing of shapes and positions executed by imita-
tion of a choreographer. The practice of improvisation reiterates some of
the descriptions about listening and awareness in the previous chapter,
such as Parviainen’s (1998) description of bodily knowledge in dance
technique: ‘Listening to bodily movements and the body’s answers in a
movement pattern, various dimensions emerge from the same movement’
(52), or dancer Mads talking about listening to how his body responds
to the space and awareness of how the space ‘is’, ‘what’s around me’, as
he dances.
The idea of ‘crash to create’ brought up by Jiles, discussed in the
previous chapter is an example of current choreographic practice which
further affirms the argument for the value that improvisation holds. As
discussed, Jiles talks about how the valuing of mistakes in improvisation
and choreographic practice reiterates the importance of his creativity and
154 S. EHRENBERG
own movement style. This practice of ‘crash to create’ requires a fore-

grounding of his kinaesthetic sensations in his practice, because it aids
the creation of new material and attention to what he senses in a sponta-
neous moment of movement. But Jiles also indicates a general valuing
of mistakes in contemporary dance practices, as does Roche (2015)
throughout her text in working with Melnick and Jaspers. The valuing,
or ‘heralding’ as Jiles says, of mistakes puts less emphasis on a perfec-
tion of form and more emphasis on the dancer’s unique contribution
through improvisation, and thus their own kinaesthetic experiences. Crash
to create is important in endorsing the value of the dancer’s discovery
of new ways of moving via a kinaesthetic mode of attention, ways that
surprise the dancer as well as the teacher, choreographer, and/or audi-
ence member. As also mentioned, several of the dancers, such as Willow,
likewise talked about their experience with this type of choreographic
approach.
The emphasis on improvisation and mistakes is highlighted by contrast
with an emphasis on perfection of form expressed by the ballet dancers
in the interviews. Both styles, at the professional level, require perfection
and mistakes (or risk); however, the type and amount of emphasis are
expressed differently in the interviews. In contrast to the above, ballet
dancers interviewed emphasise perfection as important to their practice.
For instance, Eugenie indicates how being in the ballet corps includes
the pressure to get everything perfect: ‘…you just make sure you know
everything perfectly…because obviously if you stand out and you do the
wrong steps and everybody is on the other side, you’re like “oh my god!
What am I doing?!”’ (interview 1). Eugenie, James, and Lena also refer
to ballet as ‘the perfect technique’. For instance, Lena says, in distin-
guishing what she likes about ballet versus contemporary, that she likes
the challenge of trying to make the movements ‘right’, proclaiming that
ballet is ‘perfect technique…it’s like perfection’, indicating that she enjoys
a pursuit of perfection, a value of it, in her ballet experience (interview
1). Dance scholar Angela Pickard (2012) likewise found in her research
with young ballet dancers that perfection of the aesthetic was an issue
for young dancers in training. She argues: ‘The development of the ballet
aesthetic, of beauty and perfection for others to see, is powerful and is
entrenched in the schooling and training of the dancer’ (34).
This particular way of working with improvisation demonstrates the
use of a kinaesthetic mode of attention because the dancers aim to
generate material from their own bodies and/or work through a chore-
ographer’s verbal direction in a kinaesthetically foregrounded and bodily
way. The dancers are actively involved in the process of generating mate-
rial; thus, the dancers’ private kinaesthetic experiences are brought more
to the fore and given more importance (Gardner 2007). The ideas of
kinaesthetic exploration and discovery, as also noted in the previous
chapter, are affirmed by improvisational practices.
Contact Improvisation
Contact improvisation, as a sub-style within the broader form of improvi-
sation, also noted by Jiles, distinctly foregrounds touch or tactile feedback
(as do many somatic practices) and provides yet another point of how
a kinaesthetic mode of attention develops and is nurtured in contem-
porary dance practices. In contact improvisation, the skills of movement
from feeling and creating movement with another person, rather than
an emphasis on how movement appears, are often a strong value. Thus,
contact implicitly foregrounds a tactile, kinaesthetic, relationship and
intentional focus for dancers. Bull’s (1997) description of contact impro-
visation supports this point: ‘the sense of touch, which guides the
dancing, assumes importance both technically and symbolically…”the
point of contact” provides the impetus for movement’ (276). Another
way in which touch is important is in contact with the floor: dancers
‘sense, feel, experience , notice, and give in to the changing patterns
of their own bodies on the floor’ (Bull 1997, 276). In sum, the prac-
tice of contact improvisation foregrounds the sensation of weight and
momentum, which also foregrounds the feeling and nuance of move-
ment; as Ravn (2009) notes, improvisation is often included in training
as a way of ‘increasing the dancer’s groundedness in the body’ (106).
Or as Bull (1997) describes: ‘[contact improvisation is a] resulting duet
[which] intertwines two bodies in a fluid metamorphosis of falls and
suspensions, propelled by the momentum of the dancers’ weight’ (275).
Likewise, Foster (1997) describes contact improvisation as teaching, ‘not
… a set vocabulary of movements … but [students] are … encouraged
to “listen” to the body, to be sensitive to its weight and inclinations
and to allow new possibilities of movement to unfold spontaneously by
attending to the shifting network of ongoing interactions’ (250). Gabriele
Brandstetter (2013a) echoes many of these descriptions in a book chapter
exploring kinaesthetic experience(s) in contact improvisation and cites
156 S. EHRENBERG
veteran contact improvisers, such as Nancy Stark Smith; she writes about
how Smith constantly stresses the spatial orientation created not only by
vision but by the entire physical perception as a condition Smith calls
‘telescoping awareness’ (166).
Again, the practice of contact improvisation is less about perfection of
external form and more about a value of finding one’s own way of moving
with another person/people and about creatively generating movement
material in the moment of experiencing it kinaesthetically (Foster 1997).
In contact improvisation, the polarisation of the kinaesthetic and the
visual is more distinct because of this. As summarised above with Brand-
stetter (2013a), contact improvisation, similar to somatic practices within
contemporary dance, is less dictated by aesthetic style, viewed from an
outside eye, than it is by the ‘guiding principle’ of kinaesthetics (172).
To argue that contact improvisation develops and nurtures a kinaesthetic
mode of attention in contemporary dance, in contrast to other styles such
as ballet, Ravn (2009) writes that during an interview she asked one of
the Royal Danish ballet dancers about improvisation and the dancer said
that ‘… she was very impressed by the dancers in modern/new dance who
could improvise and then added that she herself was much too conscious
of how she looked to improvise’ (83). Ravn further notes: ‘The body is
not framed in the improvisation in relation to how it looks but in relation
to how it relates and interacts with the bodies of other dancers’ (83).
Choreography
There have not often been distinct fixed roles between choreogra-
phers and dancers in contemporary dance practice across its history.
For instance, in very early modern dance, Isadora Duncan danced
her choreography as well as choreographed on other dancers (Gardner
2007,36–37). Copeland (1993) points out: ‘It is significant that…we
continue to refer to artists such as Martha Graham or Mary Wigman as
modern dancers – not modern dance choreographers ...[these choreogra-
phers] didn’t stand apart from the choreography and view it as external to
themselves’ (139). Or as Foster (1997) reports of the Cunningham tech-
nique, ‘…with its emphasis on composition, [Cunningham] encourages
dancers to interest themselves in making dance as well as in performing’
(252, emphasis mine). Gardner (2007) argues, likewise, that contempo-
rary choreographic practice today is a ‘complex process of transmission
where authority might remain with the choreographer but also belong to
the dancers’ (50). The fluid relationship between dancer and choreogra-
pher can also be found in Roche’s (2015) working processes with several
contemporary choreographers where either she is asked to develop mate-
rial in tandem with the choreographer and/or she is asked to respond
to movement anew at each performance, thus putting a good deal of
emphasis on her input as a dancer to how the choreography is performed,
executed, and makes up what is ‘the dance’.5 Quinlan (2017) argues that
as a ‘metatechnique’ Gaga ‘integrates the practice of choreographing’ (as
well as improvisation; 33). Indeed, several of the contemporary dancers
interviewed for this study, such as Erdem, Mads, Willow, Jasper, and Jiles,
were either in the process of choreographing and showing their own work
and/or creating material for a choreographer as part of the choreographic
process (mentioned in the section on improvisation, above).
Learning the skill of choreography, and/or working in an intersubjec-
tive framework in which a divide between choreographer and dancer is
blurred, reinforces the kinaesthetic mode of attention because, as with
improvisation, the dancers need to be skilled at generating movement
from/with their own bodies. Thus, they develop and nurture a keen
understanding, and creativity with, how their movement kinaesthetically
feels and imagining, through kinaesthetic feeling, movement they want to
project.6 Choreographic skill includes trying to find new ways of moving,
and kinaesthetic sensitivity is central to this because the dancer must have
a felt sense of what their body does, as well as imagining and discovering
new ways of moving to create material.
Choreography includes the skill of thinking about how movement is
structured in a larger framework, outside of the body, and thus about
being able to take a more objective ‘bird’s eye view’ on movement mate-
rial created on one’s own body. As Quinlan (2017) summarises, chore-
ography in contemporary dance today requires understanding of how the
term is used in dance studies literature, as, generally, ‘an organizational
and structural system of movement’ (32). Choreographic skill supports
the idea of feeling the logic of the body, as Ravn (2009) describes above,
and seeing/feeling how movement maps on to an external choreographic
framework and being central to collaborative dance-making processes, as
5 See Roche (2018) for more on this perspective with experience from dance artists
Rahel Vonmoos and Henry Montes as well.
6 See also Butterworth and Wildshutt (2018).
158 S. EHRENBERG
Roche (2015, 2018) explores. It is being able to understand how the

feeling of the movement fits into the larger whole, which eventually will
be viewed by an audience; to be able to transfer the bodily sensation,
kinaesthetically felt as much as imagined, into an ‘artistic product’, and
vice versa.7
Describing Movement
One aspect of the skill of choreography, particularly in the field of
contemporary dance, is an ability to describe movement in a wide range of
idiosyncratic ways, for instance to tell other dancers how to do movement
and make the choreography look a certain way. Finding one’s own way
to describe movement is often necessary in contemporary technique class
as well; for instance, the teacher often has to use a number of different
descriptive words, images, and directions to convey to students what the
movement should look and feel like because the style is not codified.
This descriptive aspect of the practice creates a distinct link for contem-
porary dancers between language and movement, as also touched on in
previous chapters. Description of movement is an important aspect of a
kinaesthetic mode of attention, because these dancers often hear move-
ment described in a number of different ways, by a number of different
teachers and choreographers, and they eventually also find their own
way to describe movement themselves, particularly when choreographing
or teaching. Roche (2015) provides further evidence for this claim. In
discussing her work with Liz Roche, for instance, she dedicates a section
of the chapter to show how she and the two other dancers worked with
writing about their experiences of the same fifteen-second piece of move-
ment. Roche (2015) thus shows, through this example, that the practice
of writing and moving, together, is not completely foreign amongst
contemporary dancers. She distinguishes, however, how written reflec-
tion is a useful part of the process as ‘movement-initiated writing’ and
developing personalised language-specific narratives with choreographic
phrasing. She aligns the process of doing so with the idea of a Deleuzian
line of flight ‘which extends knowledge beyond the territory of the
7 Contemporary dance choreography is also much more than this brief summary related
to a kinaesthetic mode of attention, see, for instance, Foster (2009), Protopapa (2013),
Butterworth, and Wildschut (2018).
studio and the inherent power dynamics surrounding the choreographic

production to establish alternative creative and critical outlets’ (94).
This particular symbiosis with language, or a type of languaging, is
crucial to the contemporary dancers’ ability to describe their kinaesthetic
experiences, as featured in Chapter 3. As will be discussed more under
the heading ‘Versatility’ below, the contemporary dancer encounters a
number of different movement styles, and thus, many different words
must be used to describe movement. A ‘contraction’ in Graham tech-
nique, for instance, has a different nuance than a ‘contraction’ in Horton
technique. Thus, other words are used to describe these different contrac-
tions. In release technique, as another example, most teachers and/or
choreographers have their own movement style and their own way of
describing movement; thus, different words are used to describe the many
different ways of moving.
A specific example from my fieldwork backs up the issue of different
movement descriptions found between a contemporary and a ballet class,
both taken in London, UK. In my ballet class, the teacher emphasised
the display and the doing of the movement. Her directions about turning
out from the hip, showing the heel in my tendu, keeping the arm upheld
rather than drooping, opening the chest, making movements clearer and
sharper. The movements themselves needed less description because I,
and everyone in this intermediate-level class, already knew them; indeed,
in some instances, she only had to list out a string of words and we knew
what to do, such as ‘Tombé, pas de bourrée, glissade, assemblé’. The
rest of her description could be focused around the doing and execu-
tion of the movement, because the movement vocabulary was set and
learned many years prior to this class. By contrast, in my contempo-
rary release-based class, the teacher showed movements as well as used a
myriad of descriptions and metaphors to communicate what the chore-
ography was. For example, as she taught a movement phrase, one I
had never seen before done in that particular way, she described one
of the arm movements, which went in a clockwise circle at the side, as
‘swooping’. This description gave me information to both identify the
movement, since it was relatively unfamiliar, but also as a direction about
how to do the movement. The word swooping facilitated my proper
execution, learning, and dancing experience. The contemporary teacher
used a great deal of metaphoric imagery in teaching the movement as
well. For example, she said at another point a scoop of the arm into the
torso was to be performed as if scooping ice cream out of a bucket. I
160 S. EHRENBERG
was not simply executing a scoop of the arm, but was layering my expe-
rience with descriptions of ‘scooping ice cream’. There was a binding of
that verbal description and my imagination, anticipation, and execution of
that movement. My dancing was intertwining with language and descrip-
tion (and memories) in my experience in a very particular way which was
distinctly different to my ballet class experience.
Other examples of the particular kind of engagement with idiosyn-
cratic language in contemporary dance are provided by Roche (2015)and
Karreman (2017). Roche (2015) writes, in relation to creating a solo
with Rosemary Butcher, that an important part of the choreographic
process was ‘[finding] a number of body positions on the ground that
evoked a sense of freefalling’ (38). Butcher then introduces words from
which Roche was to ‘create a movement code’. Some of the words were:
moving out, eliminating, burning, throwing away, and breaking. Roche
(2015) goes on to describe how words continued to evolve in the process.
Laura Karreman (2017) provides rich description from a workshop with
Rosas dancer Elizaveta Penkova, evidencing the variability of language
used in transmission of contemporary dance repertoire:
Move your hands away from each other as if you’re stroking a water
surface, then lift them up and let the water fall from your fingertips.
Now you put pressure on your arms and you move upwards. Not only
your breath is moving, all your muscles are breathing. Your arms keep
pushing into the floor. Then your head suddenly moves: ‘Somebody turns
on a light’. Then you realize: ‘Nothing is there’ and you sink down, while
letting go of the breath. (Penkova 2013 as cited in Karreman 2017, 38)
The point here is, again, how the idiosyncrasy with movement and
language facilitates a particularity for the contemporary dancer . Verbal
description(s) become linked with the experience of movement from the
contemporary dancers’ perspective in a particular way. In learning and
mastering contemporary dance , dancers will therefore associate move-
ment with a variety of description, and the descriptions often focus
around the kinaesthetic sensation of the movement. This is another reason
why contemporary dancers develop, and value, a particular movement-
language relationship which informs a kinaesthetic mode of attention.
Education and training

The educational structures and contexts of contemporary dance
contribute to a kinaesthetic mode of attention. Taking a wider view of
this chapter, it might be argued that the sub-sections delineated in it
outline some of the distinct values and practices that inform a contem-
porary dance education today. Generally, contemporary dance training
values contexts in which practice and theory, or movement and philos-
ophy, intermingle. This section on education focuses on some aspects of
current training contexts to offer specific support on this point from the
fieldwork and thus argue how values within dance education and training
also develop and nurture a kinaesthetic mode of attention.
Throughout modern and contemporary dance history, the contexts
in which dance training happens have changed and thus subtle shifts of
the philosophy and movement practised together can be traced histor-
ically. George (2014, 2020) provides a compelling argument for the
repeated rebellion(s) against institutionalisation across modern, contem-
porary, and postmodern dance training history. As discussed in Chapter 2,
Isadora Duncan is often attributed to have rebelled against the institu-
tion of ballet, for instance (Daly 1995; Copeland 1993). In the 1940s,
Katherine Dunham’s school curriculum is argued to have resisted the
norms of dance aesthetics via education practices, by including training
in other courses such as general anthropology, introductory psychology,
and Caribbean folklore (Risner no year). Cunningham is argued to have
rebelled against Graham’s psychic energies and psychological impera-
tives (Foster 1997).George (2014) argues for how dance artists rebelled
against Cunningham-era aesthetics and approaches: ‘[…] jaundiced by the
institutionalization of modern dance, [late 20th Century contemporary
dancers] augmented or critiqued existing vocabularies with progressive
era Somatics’ (6; see also Franko, 1995; Morris 2006). George (2014)
goes on to argue how a rebellion can be seen to be formalising again
with more recent pedagogical approaches.
The key point is that, while from one perspective contemporary dance
training offers feelings of freedom and open expression, from another
perspective also repeatedly nurtures and sustains a firming of dominant
practices and values, through its educational systems, which contem-
porary dance (aesthetics, training, discourse) then historically tries to
rebel against (e.g. George 2014, 2020).As Shepherd (2009) states, dance
training can be argued to be:
162 S. EHRENBERG
a mechanism that prepares both body and subjectivity to absorb and

embody value and to practise its liturgy. ... Training can be used to support
the dominant and to oppose the dominant, to sustain those values that
seem ’natural’ and to promote that which deviates from the ’natural’. … its
distinctive power is that it can prepare individuals and groups to embrace
value…. (14–15)
Indications of current questions regarding the institutionalisation of

contemporary dance training are evident in work discussed by Ingo Diehl
(2018) for instance, where he discusses how, from a European perspective
(contemporary) dance knowledge is continually asking/exploring ‘what
technique is in a subject which is constantly reflecting and analysing
its own references’ (n.p.). He indicates parallel questions about delin-
eating certain practices, which are institutionalised in contemporary dance
training, within a style which encompasses such a wide range of diver-
sity and hybridity in methodologies and practices (n.p.). George (2014)
also provides critique related to the institutionalisation of contempo-
rary dance training, but focuses on the ideology of the ‘natural’ in
relation to somatics practices. By the twenty-first century, they write,
with somatics in many of the ‘most major dance training institutions
within and beyond the West’, ‘[…] great numbers of dance educa-
tors invested in the idea that extra-cultural motile capacity provides a
foundation for unfettered individual creative freedom’, thus nurturing
a dominant value of ‘extra-cultural motile capacity’ through the educa-
tional contexts (George 2014, 5). From another perspective, Emilyn
Claid (2016) questions the impact of ‘excessive measures of health
and safety, government-defined research frameworks, over-attentiveness
to students’ welfare and form-filling, excessive managerial constructions
[…]’ on contemporary dance training based in UK universities and
conservatoires, thus questioning current mechanisms of institutionalisa-
tion through current educational systems (153–154). Raquel Monroe
(2011) raises further crucial questions about contemporary dance training
in US university systems and reinforcing ideologies that might reduce the
contribution of West African dance styles and dances from the African
diaspora; Monroe’s article signals a larger global shift in contemporary
dance towards decolonising dance curriculums, which I address again in
Chapter 6 (see also Fensham 2008).
One way current education practices impact on the dancers’ kinaes-
thetic mode of attention interpreted from the fieldwork is through the
intertwining with movement description in technique classes, as discussed

above. Another way that current education practices impact is the implicit
ways that university and conservatoire settings, and the degrees and
knowledge systems they work with(in), support the value of a ‘thinking
dancer’, and thus a certain level of emphasis on reflexivity and logic along-
side physical mastery (Bunker 2013). Albright (2011) helps to support
the argument for this crossing of the academic and the physical in contem-
porary dance training when she writes about her pleasure teaching in a
dance department in a liberal arts college: ‘…for the first time in my
academic life, I could teach intellectual analysis and physical training in
the space of one class session. Engaging students across the traditional
mind/body divides of dance studio and academic classroom…’ (7–8).
The dance school P.A.R.T.S. (Performing Arts Research and Training
Studio) trains dancers in ‘a broad range of techniques’ but also ‘[…]
provides students with reflection tools that support the development
of critical views on their own individual paths’ (Karreman 2017, 27).
Karen Schupp (2017) writes about education as a means of transgres-
sion, communicating how contemporary dance education in university
and conservatoire settings imbues values of freedom, discussed below,
and those found in somatics, as discussed above. She writes, for instance,
‘[…] when students have the opportunity to sense their values and them-
selves in their movement practices, they begin to emancipate themselves
as dance artists’ (Schupp 2017, 164).
The practice of training dancers in theoretical (or philosophical)
perspectives, alongside technique training, within many university and
conservatoire environments, creates a context in which dancers’ crossover
between academic and physical (or practical) domains, and thus the
value and practice imbued to ‘think’ kinaesthetically. As Schuh (2019)
summarises, from the European perspective, although relevant to many
institutions which train in contemporary dance:
Today, education in dance often requires numerous competencies, which

move far beyond the traditional requirements of formal dance training,
involving cross-media capabilities, discursive and conceptual skills learned
by reading and discussing critical or postmodern theory, and managerial
skills for administrating potential funding and setting up a marketable
personal profile. (85)
164 S. EHRENBERG
In these contexts, dancers’ simultaneously experience and develop skills

in both practice and theory, or indeed, question the value systems which
define what is ‘theory’ and what is ‘practice’, while at the same time being
implicated in systems (e.g. universities) which also continue to perpetuate
theory and practice as separate endeavours. This crossing-over of theory
and practice knowledges has a knock-on effect, particularly for the use of
language, as discussed above, related to a kinaesthetic mode of attention.
In sum, educational contexts contribute to a valuing of reflexivity that
is based on not only studio-based practices, such as technique, but also
the practices discussed above (e.g. choreography), as well as a wide range
of other coursework and methods of study. Schuh (2019) goes as far to
claim that, despite not all contemporary dance ‘emerging artists’ having
formal contemporary dance training, they nevertheless continue to follow
similar principles of a bricolage training approach and ‘eclectic training’
which Bales and Nettl-Foil (2008) write about (84). ‘In fact, there is
just about any kind of “training package” you could imagine going on
these days’ (Bales 2008, 15 as cited in Schuh 2019,84). Schuh (2019)
argues that Bales and Nettl-Foil’s claims still resonate and the type of
training and practices taught in workshops, as much as in universities and
conservatoires (84).
Current educational practices summarised above reflect complexities
of contemporary dance aesthetics more broadly, which Lepecki (2016)
discusses in more depth. Lepecki (2016) argues that the past decade has
seen dance taking ‘an increased critical function in scholarly publications
in performance studies, cultural studies, disability studies, black and crit-
ical race studies, queer theory, and in contemporary art history’ (16).
Lepecki (2016) argues that dance has ‘[…] become one of the most
relevant critical-aesthetic practices’ (16, emphasis mine), indicating the
crossing of discourse and practice that I am trying to argue for here from
the dancers’ perspective. It is hoped that this summary, on some of the
current approaches, helps to support the argument that the intermingling
of practice and theory, particularly with the alignment of contemporary
dance training in universities and conservatoires, also significantly impacts
on something like a kinaesthetic mode of attention in the field. The issue
of education also relates to the issue of versatility discussed more below.
Symbolic Capital
There are practical as well as social reasons for contemporary dance educa-
tion structures and contexts, as summarised above, that reflect wider
issues of the economic landscape of contemporary dance which also
impacts on a kinaesthetic mode of attention. For instance, training in a
university degree programme might provide more options of employa-
bility in a precarious contemporary dance economy, at least in ‘Western’
contexts, such as the USA, Europe, and Australia (e.g. Rouhiainen 2003).
Enhancing multiple skills is therefore related to the symbolic capital
of contemporary dance, because maintaining multiple skills, as dancer,
teacher, and choreographer, and often other skills, such as curator, lawyer,
and/or administrator, can help professionals survive in the field. By
symbolic capital, I am referring to Bourdieu’s (1980/1990) use of the
term as a way of conceiving status as something set by members of a
field according to what they deem valuable, in both an economic and
social sense. This standard motivates individuals towards certain practices
to maintain or progress their position within the field (112–121). It is
applying the model of economic capital, or money as a symbol of value,
to other aspects of culture, such as educational qualifications . As Crossley
(2001a) summarises:
Anything may count as capital that is afforded, however tacitly, an exchange

value in a given field, and that thereby serves both as a resource for action
and as a “good” to be sought after and accumulated. The implication of
this is that forms of capital are multiple; each field defines its own species
of capital (87)
There is direct economic benefit to pursuing a dance degree, for instance.

In sum, many contemporary dancers cannot support themselves on dance
expertise alone and need other means for financial stability. Having a
dance degree, or a particularly located dance training, can also carry
symbolic capital in allowing a contemporary dancer a certain economic
and social position, which is valued by the field as well. That is, contem-
porary dancers might utilise a degree, and the education it provides, to
get other employment to support their ‘independent’ dance career, or to
do other jobs if their ‘dance job’ does not pay enough, or if they need
work between touring. Subsequently, contemporary dancers might gain
or maintain a certain status within the field when they have more than
one job.
166 S. EHRENBERG
There is also the issue of the social exchange value of remaining

‘independent’, even when dancers perform with well-known companies,
discussed further in relationship to freedom below (Rouhiainen 2003,
183; Roche 2018; Quinlan 2017; Schuh 2019). During the fieldwork,
two of the dancers interviewed, for instance, were dancing with Lea
Anderson’s The Featherstonehaughs and the physical theatre company
Punchdrunk, relatively well-known and established contemporary dance
companies in the UK. However, neither of these dancers were employed
by these companies full-time. The dancers instead identified themselves as
‘independent contemporary dancers’ and supplemented their income with
work from other sources. Quinlan (2017) further supports the argument
for the social capital of something like a kinaesthetic mode of attention,
particularly in the way that they argue for how neoliberalism and other
contemporary dance training approaches, such as Gaga, share values of
‘developing efficient workers and privilege the individual as the primary
agent for one’s own destiny’ that dancers also might find a sense of agency
with (36).
The important questioning of enduring assumptions in our educa-
tional contexts, such as via scholars and practitioners addressing issues
of decolonisation (e.g. Kerr-Berry 2012; McCarthy-Brown 2014, 2017;
Davis 2018; O’Shea 2018; Walker 2019; Prichard 2019), will undoubt-
edly shift the nuances of this value, including as symbolic capital.
Versatility
Not only is having multiple skills related to symbolic capital in contem-
porary dance; the value of being versatile, flexible, and multi-skilled
also manifests in a particular physical way, mainly because contemporary
dancers in many cases need to be versatile to adapt to many different
ways of moving in the style. Another part of the practice that affirms the
argument for an acquisition of a kinaesthetic mode of attention, again
more relevant today than for modern dance before the 1960s, is that
many contemporary dancers are expected to be able to adapt to many
different choreographers and teachers. In addition, many contemporary
dancers train in several different dance styles and usually have compe-
tence in more than one style, though contemporary dance technique
might remain at the core of their practice. As Jasper states in an inter-
view excerpt below, contemporary dance is considered by him as dance
with the big ‘D’—any movement can fall under contemporary dance if
framed in a particular way. Foster (1997) indicates this valuing of versa-

tility under the term of ‘multi-talented dancer’, wherein a ‘new cadre of
dance makers, called “independent choreographers” has emerged’ and
as such they ‘encourage dancers to train in several existing techniques
without adopting the aesthetic vision of any. They require a new kind of
body, competent at many styles. The new multitalented body…’ (253).
Roche (2015) further summarises that there is a ‘dissolution of canonical
modern dance practices in the 1990s’ that led to ‘the more diversified
and democratic topography of twenty-first century contemporary dance’
(9). She identifies other writings and terminologies regarding contempo-
rary dancers’ encapsulation of many styles, as put forth in the literature,
such as ‘the body eclectic’ (Davida 1992) and ‘hybrid bodies’ (Louppe
1996). Indeed, Jennifer Fisher (2014) suggests the term ‘versatile body’
might better ‘indicate the positive aspects of “embodied multiplicity”’
that Roche addresses (332).
Schuh (2019) argues that as the economy of contemporary dance
continues to foreground freelance work and short-term projects, contem-
porary dancers ‘have to show a high tolerance for flexibility and mobility’
(84). Foster’s ‘hired body’ Schuh argues ‘remains true today when it
comes to the role of the dancers’ (Schuh 2019,84). Schuh describes
the necessity for ‘metatechnique’, following Meghan Quinlan’s defini-
tion: ‘the ability to negotiate multiple bodily techniques embedded in
techniques, such as Gaga, which blur the line between technique, chore-
ography, and improvisation’ (Schuh 2019,84; Quinlan 2017,35). Schuh
further supports the argument for the foregrounding of versatility and
adaptation for contemporary dancers today, stating, ‘[…] it is crucial to
note that contemporary dancers are constantly asked to find support to
navigate the field in which they are working’ (Schuh 2019, 84–85).
Contemporary dancers training and working in these ‘versatile’ frame-
works encounter a wide range of idiosyncratic vocabulary across classes
, auditions, and/or rehearsals (Roche 2018). Contemporary dancers are
required to adapt quickly to new ways of moving, just by the nature of the
huge variation of movement styles in the field. Thus, if the dancer can be
keenly kinaesthetically aware and attentive, s/he is more likely to be able
to navigate new choreography quickly in contemporary dance practice,
because the sensitivity enables greater skill in taking on different ways of
moving. Instead of mastering a certain vocabulary, contemporary dancers
are often challenged to master agile adaptation to a variety of movement
styles or, put another way, be skilled with a kinaesthetic mode of attention
168 S. EHRENBERG
to precisely facilitate an agile and open approach to take on a variety of

different kinds of movement. In turn, learning and mastering a number
of different ways of moving expands the dancers’ physical capacity and
thus expands their kinaesthetic experience. Contemporary dancers often
explore a variety of different ways of moving which likewise exposes them
to a variety of kinaesthetic sensations and attentive possibilities and in turn
develops a varied kinaesthetic capacity.
The concept of kinaesthetic empathy is particularly relevant to the
value and practice of versatility in contemporary dance. For example, the
concept of kinaesthetic empathy can be employed to argue for how it
helps contemporary dancers take on movements of another and enact
it in their own bodies (Parviainen 2002; Ehrenberg 2010). By kinaes-
thetic empathy I mean ‘…the capacity to participate [via a type of
resonance] with another’s movement or another’s sensory experience of
movement...’ (Sklar 1994, 16). It is conceptualised as a type of ‘virtual
participation’ with another’s movement which is particularly useful if the
type of movement to be adapted continually changes (Reynolds 2007,14).
Foster (1997) likewise describes this as ‘the capacity for kinaesthetic
empathy’:
Dancers…strongly sense what other persons’ bodily movements feel like.

Walking down the street, they register the characteristic posture and gait
of passers-by…. (240)
In the case of dancers, they can take virtual participation with another’s
movement and make it ‘real’, translate another’s movement through their
bodies, and perform it in their own way. Kinaesthetic empathy can have a
particular purpose for contemporary dancers in their training, rehearsing,
and performing if encountering a number of different teachers and chore-
ographers, i.e. a number of different ‘others’. However, they must also
maintain a sense of their own way of moving, as was discussed regarding
improvisation above—a particular balance between incorporating others’
way of moving while maintaining a strong sense of their own unique
movement style.
‘Freedom’
The value of ‘freedom’, or more precisely the value of the idea of
freedom, came up often in the interviews, my experience, and the
discourse when analysing the values and practices of contemporary dance

which might impact on a kinaesthetic mode of attention. For instance,
dance scholar Sondra Horton Fraleigh (1987) declares the idea of
freedom as the existential core of modern dance, explicitly declaring its
inherent value:
As a witness to the times of modern dance – from its theatrical begin-

nings as expressionist modern dance, through late modern formalist dance,
through nonexpressionist dance, full circle to neoexpressionist works – I
have observed and experienced its similar rootedness in freedom and indi-
viduality. I view freedom and individuality as the existential context of
modern dance. (xxxii)
Fraleigh supports the value of freedom in a number of other ways in

her text, such as the ethical right of having free will (following Aris-
totle), being free from habitual movement, and being free in the sense
that she moves herself. She is free to ‘create [her] body through [her]
choices and [her] actions, in this [she] also create[s herself]’ (17). Fraleigh
(1987) expresses here what I found in my fieldwork as well, that the idea
of freedom is a central premise of the contemporary dancers’ practice and
this idea of freedom weaves through a number of aspects of a kinaes-
thetic mode of attention. However, I discuss it as a ‘value of freedom’
following the ideas of Michel Foucault of ‘practices of freedom’ (Foucault
and Rabinow 1997) and that it has an ideological status versus freedom
being an ‘desired endpoint devoid of constraint’ (Goldman 2010, 3).
The dancers and others (e.g. teachers) indicate that the focus on
kinaesthetic experience is a way of valuing what the dancer deems impor-
tant to attend to, instead of foregrounding the demands of others. Thus,
this valuing of being free from habitual movement might be interpreted
from the practice of continually interrogating one’s own movement
habitus and those movements that they have made automatic via their
dance training and being disciplined in a specific social practice (Bour-
dieu 1980/1990). This continual interrogation of habits, theoretically,
‘frees’ the dancers from an imposed structure and hierarchy. A kinaesthetic
mode of attention helps dancers to feel ‘free’ to move as they intend,
not strictly according to a set technique. It is also related to focusing on
present, in-the-moment experiencing as discussed with somatic practices
above. Feelings of freedom is a value that carries political meaning, in
that contemporary dancers should be free from institutional structures,
170 S. EHRENBERG
norms, and dominant practices, as also touched on above—‘free’ from

those disciplining structures that Bourdieu often proposes for his idea
of habitus. The contemporary dancer values being ‘free’ to create dance
and to dance in ways that are theirs alone, or, taken to an extreme, to
go against expectations of what dance is and should be. It is the belief
in the idea that if dancers focus on what they feel, and part of that
being what they privately kinaesthetically experience, more so than what
they externally project, then dancers will remain free as individual artists
and people. It is a value Fraleigh (1987) declares, ‘I realize my freedom
when I move as I intend. Then I experience my movement powers as
personal powers. I experience such freedom most intensely when I solve
challenging movement problems that extend my skill and imagination’
(21).
The complex nuances of this feeling of freedom and choice can be
increasingly found in the dance studies literature related to kinaesthetic
experience. Figuerola (2009), in her study of release technique, similarly
declares that ‘freedom of choice’ in terms of dynamic qualities was impor-
tant to the release-based teachers she interviewed (62). For instance, one
of the teachers she observed ‘encouraged the students to individually
decide which dynamics they would like to explore…the students did not
have to conform either to a pre-set range of dynamics…[or the teacher’s
idiosyncrasy]’ but could explore their own unique dynamic possibilities
(62). Purser (2018a) declares that a ‘physical openness or responsiveness
of the dancer who is in his or her body and “in the moment” is thus
experienced as freedom to act…’ (48, my emphasis). She clarifies that
the feeling of freedom, for the dancers she interviews, happens distinc-
tively when the dancers are ‘in-the-moment’, when they ‘did not think
ahead of or beyond the here-and-now’ (48). Quinlan (2017) writes about
how Gaga is marketed for ‘freeing’ dancers from ‘conventional technique’
and yet, argues for how gaga also ‘enforces norms and ideals even within
the improvisational, open-ended structure of its classes’ (28–29). George
(2014) provides further evidence to this pursuit of freedom in tracking the
various rebellions against institutionalisation across modern, postmodern,
and contemporary dance history.
Several of the dancers interviewed elucidated the value of the idea of
freedom, more specifically freedom of choice and individuality, in their
descriptions related to a kinaesthetic mode of attention, also echoing
some of the research cited above. For instance, when Jasper is asked what
interests him in contemporary dance, particularly in contrast to hip hop

(as he does both), he said ‘creative and stylistic freedom’ was key for him:
Jasper: What interests me in contemporary dance? [pause] I would

say….[sigh]…I would say it’s the dance with the big ‘D’…you can put
anything in it, because you don’t define contemporary dance, it’s really
open to anything…..to me it’s just dance, like you can put any style
[in it] and I think it’s the most creative one because you’re free to do
anything…(interview 1).
Jasper echoes Fraleigh’s point of view that contemporary feels free

because there is an openness to many different ways of moving. This
openness again returns to the idea of a kinaesthetic mode of attention
related to there being little codified choreographic structure to define
the style generally. Therefore, the dancer can feel they utilise kinaesthetic
attention to adapt to the variety of ways of moving that they encounter
and also remain free to move in various different ways as they feel they
want (rather than feeling disciplined to only move one kind of way). A
kinaesthetic mode of attention relates here again to the approach of open-
ness to the various ways of moving and the dancer’s feeling of creativity
and individuality in different movement styles. The kinaesthetic becomes
valued in this way because of its usefulness to adapt to many styles and
also for the dancers’ sense of agency in their dance practice. There is no
need to accept the value of the kinaesthetic per se, but the kinaesthetic
is valuable to many dancers’ practice because it facilitates a freedom of
exploration into many ‘others’’ ways of moving along with their own way
of moving.
In a subsequent interview , Jasper clarifies this idea of freedom in
contemporary dance practice for him, in contrast to his experience in
other styles:
Jasper: But I’ve found….this relation… that’s why I love contemporary

dance…it can be anything, as I told you, I love that free….you’re
really free, with music, with space, with intention, with….well when in
jazz....breakdance, hip hop, ballet…you’re not that free…or even ball-
room dancing, […] it’s more [in contemporary] the body feeling, like
the, sort of….to me [breakdancing is] less arty in a way….cause you’re
not that creative in it….that’s it […] but the traditional, sort of…break-
dance....hip hop…jazz…I put them all together, they’re really…to me
172 S. EHRENBERG
[…] they’re influences are rather traditional, where, you know, […] you
feel less, you do more….yeah. (interview 2)
Here, Jasper more explicitly indicates the ‘body feeling’ as a difference

in focus in the style, and that this is crucial to this idea of freedom for
him; by focusing on body feeling, he feels free to be creative with many
aspects of the style, such as music (more on this below), space, and inten-
tions, whereas in his practice in other styles, such as breakdance or jazz,
he experiences an emphasis on moving on certain counts of the music,
which limit his idea of freedom. Crucially, Jasper indicates that he loves
these aspects of contemporary dance and also that he highly values the
feelings of agency and individuality. The above-expressed values related
to a feeling of freedom are crucial to what he wants to be as a dancer and
what he wants to do in dance.
Jasper also discusses the difference in what is considered virtuosic in
different styles and how the doing dominates for him in his experiences
of jazz and hip hop; he says that in these practices, ‘you feel less, you do
more’ (my emphasis). By this, he indicates that, by contrast, in contem-
porary dance practice, not that he necessarily physically does less, but, as
noted above, the focus for his attention is focused more on feeling than
doing. Importantly, Jasper notes that freedom is not necessarily a value
only upheld by contemporary dance but is at times shared with other
styles, such as breakdancing, depending on the dancer and the perspective
they are coming from.
Jiles emphasises the idea of freedom when contrasting his experiences
in contemporary dance and ballet practices.
Jiles: Contemporary is a very free…in a lot of what they do…certainly a

lot of the professional processes I’ve been in which are merely… I don’t
know maybe it’s the style at the moment, to be sort of task-based, but
there’s a lot of freedom, creative freedom, and um...in ballet…again,
I’m fairly ignorant of the whole, ballet…but…it seems to me there’s
only freedom in the expression…of how you do these very set certain
patterns and timings and things… (interview 1).8
8 When Jiles says he is ‘fairly ignorant to ballet’ here, I think it is worth noting that
he is indicating that it is ignorance in contrast to professional-level ballet dancers, and so
compared with them he does not claim to be a ballet expert. However, Jiles trained at
a conservatoire which he said emphasised ballet, and he was still taking professional-level
Part of this idea of freedom expressed by Jiles, in contrasting the prac-

tices of contemporary and ballet, is a greater emphasis on an individual
dancer’s way of doing the movement and individuality, as also discussed
above. That is, a freedom to express the choreography in the way he wants
to, which requires kinaesthetic sensitivity to his unique way of moving,
in a way which is unique to the form. In addition, Jiles perceives ballet
practice to be prescriptive because the choreography is codified and, in
his experience, the ballet dancers are rarely asked to give their creative
input into the work, outside of, for instance, the personal way that they
might express a character, at least in his knowledge of ballet practice. In
his comparison, creativity stands out as the core of his interpretation of
freedom in contemporary dance practice.
Lena echoes some of Jasper and Jiles’s comments on freedom and its
relationship to the kinaesthetic mode of attention, but because she identi-
fies as a ballet dancer with some contemporary dance experience, she also
uses ballet as a contrast.
Shantel: And contemporary…what do you like about performing?

Lena: I don’t know why, I feel more free to express and…it’s like…a
[relief] doing contemporary […] I can do whatever I want to in
a way…because…we feel our movement in a special way, it’s not
the same…if I do the same movement for two persons, they will
do…differently, so…I think that’s the good thing about it…
Shantel: There’s, ok, so you’re sort of hinting that in ballet, it has to be
very much similar the technique.
Lena: The shape I would say, the technique and the shape…and…of course
each person does [it] in her style and…expresses different things too,
but it has a story…has its very…mmm I don’t know how to say it, it’s
not basic but it’s… it makes sense always, you know…like the story of
a performance, it’s…it’s always there…and in contemporary I think it’s
different… (interview 1).
Lena indicates that, for her, this valuing of the idea of freedom impacts
on the active engagement with the choreographic process and greater
emphasis on how she uniquely moves and expresses herself in movement,
rather than trying to look uniform with her fellow dancers, as she does in
ballet classes occasionally at the time of interview, so his ‘ignorance’ is relative to a very
high standard of ballet technique.
174 S. EHRENBERG
ballet. Lena feels free to interpret set choreography in her own way more
than she feels free to do so in ballet, and, because of this, she foregrounds
her unique kinaesthetic experiences rather than mastering the set move-
ment. She indicates that the valuing of her unique way of moving, again
being creative in how she does the movement, helps her embody this idea
of freedom. But Lena also notes that contemporary dance is free from the
narrative structure that is more often the case in her experience of ballet,
and as such, there is more freedom in what the dance is and what she
does in it.
It is important to emphasise that it is an idea of freedom, rather than
arguing that the dancers are free. Contemporary dance also demands
years of training and as I try to set out in this chapter, to an extent, the
kinaesthetic mode of attention the dancers indicate is a learned way of
approaching dancing and it is a style-specific disposition, so in these ways,
actually the issue of freedom can be explored further in future research.
This is a contradiction that Danielle Goldman (2010) addresses in much
more theoretical depth, though her position is one I am trying to also
advocate for here. That is, it is a myth to think that one can ever achieve
freedom, principally because, if so, then this would support two miscon-
ceptions: (1) that it is possible to eradicate difference in the imagination
of freedom between people and (2) that ‘if one could overcome a partic-
ular set of oppressions, all would be well’ (3). Nevertheless, the idea of
freedom in the way of creativity, personal style, and set movement vocab-
ulary is very important to contemporary dancers in the fieldwork and thus
the kinaesthetic attention valued in the practice.
‘Freedom’ from Music

The importance of dance to stand alone as its own art form and practice,
separate from music, also came up often and deserves special mention
because the dancers’ relationship to music emerged as a point of distinct
contrast between dancers interviewed and their experience across different
styles. I return to Jasper’s quote above, where he distinguishes this
freedom from music in contemporary dance in contrast to other styles
(of which he had experience) as one example:
Jasper: But I’ve found….this relation…that’s why I…that’s why I love

contemporary dance…it can be anything with your, as I told you,
I love that free….you’re really free, with music […]….well when in
jazz....breakdance, hip hop, ballet…you’re not that free…or even ball-

room dancing, you have to start on the 2 or….put the 4 in the 8, like
salsa… (interview 2).
Jasper talks about the ability to move to a wide range of music as free-
ing for him. In addition, following the discussion of improvisation above,
freedom from music reiterates the kinaesthetic mode of attention because
of finding ways of moving to the feeling of one’s own body, or moving to
one’s own ‘rhythm’. As Jasper states, contemporary dancers do not have
to move lyrically to classical music, or move on a certain rhythm, though
this can sometimes be the case. Contemporary dancers might instead be
encouraged to ‘listen’ to their kinaesthetic sensations and, via kinaesthesia,
be in a sense independent from the music. Doris Humphrey (1959)
supports the argument for this as a historicised value in contemporary
dance practice in her book ‘The Art of Making Dances’:
...for dance can dispense with sound almost entirely and be done in silence.
This approach was particularly popular in the twenties and thirties, when
many were intent on proving the thesis that dance was an independent art
and could stand alone. But these techniques still exist, and have a particular
power and fascination of their own. (142)
Humphrey goes on to state that this is not the only approach valued in
contemporary dance in regard to music, but it is an important approach
of the style.9 One of the modern dance pioneers, Mary Wigman, likewise
wrote in her diary: ‘To become free of music! That’s what they should all
do! Only then can movement develop into what we all hope from it: free
dance, pure art’ (as cited in Reynolds 2007, 51).
The idea of freedom and dancing without music came up during
the fieldwork. In almost all of the contemporary dancer interviews, the
dancers did their movement phrases without music. Only a few of the
dancers mentioned any awkwardness of doing their phrase without music,
and if so it was only briefly. The dancers indicated, by the relative lack of
9 Strangely, Humphrey (1959) also emphasises dance and music as collaborative (and,
problematically, gendered), seemingly contradicting herself she states, ‘[Dance] is not an
independent art; it is truly female, needing a sympathetic mate, but not a master, in
music’ (132).
176 S. EHRENBERG
comment about the absence of music, that they were comfortable and
familiar to dance without it.
By contrast, the dancers working predominantly in ballet, hip hop, and
breaking dance styles indicate a different relationship with music and a
general discomfort in dancing without it in the interviews. In fact, it could
be explored whether these dancers indicate a foregrounding of something
like a musical mode of attention. Toni is one of the ballet dancers who,
when asked how the movement she just did felt, brings up music straight
away.
Shantel: Do you feel any um….like I’m- do you feel any qualities when
you’re doing it [the Movement]
Toni: Yeah…..and that comes also from the music as well, like… if I like
that music and I can more enjoy myself doing it, and I can more relax
and…..yeah….
Shantel: Why do you think that is?
Toni: I think…… if the music is beautiful, I can…..feel like I’m dancing…-
more….if you get what I mean….I can… oh [sigh]…it’s hard….[little
laugh]….it’s hard to describe.
Shantel: Yeah
Toni: [pause] like you know if you don’t like that music… you feel more,
it’s not uncomfortable, but you don’t really enjoy yourself do you….like
maybe you’re, for example when you’re in the club and…..and if
the dj played the music that is your favourite, then you’re more like
‘wee, yay!’… if you didn’t like that music you would feel more, um,
‘whatever’… (interview 2).
Toni indicates how central the connection with the music is for her in her
ballet dance practice and how much of a collaborative place it has in her
experience of her dancing. It is not that this way of dancing with music
is completely alien in contemporary dance, but that it is the frequency in
which ballet and music came up as synonymous from the dancer perspec-
tive in the interviews, particularly when discussing kinaesthetic experience
of their dancing.
Candace, one of the hip hop dancers, likewise talks about the impor-
tance of music for her and her dance practice. Particularly for freestyling in
hip hop and breaking, Candace states that music is central to the mastery
of the style. In other words, to be good at freestyling, Candace indicates,
you have to know how to ‘feel the music’, or as she describes in one part
of the interview:
Candace: I think inspiration in terms of…I think the music brings you a
quality of movement…you know what I mean, like a beat can make you
groove, a beat can make you strong, a beat can make you slow, a beat
can make you soft, a beat- yeah it’s just getting…something…you know
that makes you dance….but here [in silence] its dancing empty…so it
feels like…I’m dancing…like I’m moving but [dancing empty]….does
that make sense? […] Because you’re reacting to the music you know,
it’s a response… (interview 2).
Santana, a b-boy dancer, echoes Candace’s comments about feeling the

music and his relationship to it in his practice:
Santana: […] if I really like the track I’ll…go mad. I probably look better
too. If I really hate a track, or if I just can’t…get into it, it’s like you
almost have to ‘fake the funk’ as they say, you have to kind of go out
and pretend that you’re into the music, but really you’re not, you’re
just….kind of, almost, acting…so that definitely affects…. performance
(interview 2).
Like Santana, Mads also comments on his attention to music in his

experience of breaking. However, because Santana has experience across
contemporary , hip hop, and breaking, he articulates explicitly the differ-
ences in these practices. Similar to Toni, Mads is not prompted to talk
about music but brings it up on his own.
Shantel: Does hip hop feel different to you than contemporary?

Mads: Um……..[pause]…. in some ways yes…smaller ways
no….because…um…..I think…..if I do hip hop classes, with other
people, I feel like oh there’s, there’s quite a restricted thing that you
can do and you need to follow the music, and you need to react
to the music in this and this way and they’re telling you how to
move in that direction and if I do improvisation I will react to the
sounds…and…answer in a way…or…….make it look like I can show
the music for you, in a way, like an equaliser……..and then you have
contemporary where…you can actually go…oh there’s a structure here,
you can follow that…or suddenly they just go…ok there’s nothing
here now there’s no counts you just have to…..do movement, and
there’s music there but you really just have to follow yourself, and
when it changes that’s when you go into the structured area…again,
178 S. EHRENBERG
so there’s….it’s a completely different way of looking at…the music

(interview 2).
Therefore, while the contemporary dancers often foreground a kinaes-

thetic mode of attention in the interviews, which makes the absence of
music less noticeable, the ballet, hip hop, and breaking dancers indicate
that a musical mode of attention is often foregrounded in their dance
experiences, by contrast. This contrast helps bring out the differences in
the dancers’ experiences to propose how a contextual value about music
also impacts on the dancers’ experiences, thoughts, and behaviour when
dancing.
Mutual Feeling(s) / Affect

Another important value related to a kinaesthetic mode of attention from
the fieldwork relates back to prevailing issues of authenticity and affect
related to performance, such as when Leslie Kaminoff states ‘you can’t
fake release’ (as cited in George 2014, 57). Although this value can be
argued to be changing with the ‘conceptual turn’ (e.g. Cvejic´ 2018),
and a wider review of global contemporary dance aesthetics (e.g. Lepecki
2016), the value is still up for debate from the contemporary dancers’
perspective. What came out in the fieldwork is a prevailing, if not always
explicit, belief that the contemporary dancer’s kinaesthetic feeling(s) can
match what the dancer is projecting to an audience.
This practice can be conceived in parallel to acting techniques such
as Stanislavsky and Method (which combines Stanislavsky’s techniques
with his pupil Eugene Vakhtangov’s work), in which the actor aims to
imbue a character through simulation or ‘working from the “inside out”’
(Krasner 2000, 131). Indeed, Stanislavsky designed his entire ‘System’ of
acting around the idea of ‘experiencing’, which he likened to ‘the sensa-
tion of existing fully within the immediate moment – what he calls “I
am” and what Western actors generally call “moment-to-moment” work’
(Carnicke 2000, 17).10 Elia Kazan reports that with Method acting, ‘the
10 Further strengthening the parallel approaches of Stanislavsky and contemporary dance

as I propose in this chapter: Stanislavsky encouraged actors to practice the somatic tech-
nique of Hatha yoga much like contemporary dance has increasingly included somatic
practices, including yoga, in its approach (Carnicke 2000, 17). See also George (2014,
2020).
actor must be going through what the character he’s playing is going
through; the emotion must be real, not pretended; it must be happening,
not indicated’ (as cited in Krasner 2000, 131). To do this, the actor
must be in the ‘immediate present’ or working ‘moment-to-moment on
impulse’ (Krasner, 2000, 131). The actor ‘draws from the self, from his
or her emotional, psychological, or imaginative reality, bringing into view
aspects of one’s memories, life experiences and observations that correlate
with the role’ (Krasner 2000, 131). In other words, the actor aligns their
‘self’ with the ‘life’ of the character; s/he tries to be the character and feel
the character’s feelings in order to convey the character to the audience.
Jasper, for instance, expresses how abstraction, feeling, and/or affect
are central to his experience of contemporary dance and indicates how it
requires him to be kinaesthetically invested in the movement in a partic-
ular way. He indicates that there is some other kind of kinaesthetic feeling
to contemporary dance than in his experience in other styles. Jasper here
emphasises the emotions involved in feeling movement or kinaesthetically
feeling a certain emotion and trying to convey that to an audience which
recalls particular acting techniques as discussed above. In jazz, he indi-
cates it is more a rhythmic feeling, and in hip hop, it is more an idea of
presentation.
Jasper: […] its really good to connect the actual feeling...the feeling, the
emotions, to something….to the body, and to the brain, and I think…
those three things really connects [in contemporary], whereas in jazz
its really, body and mind and not too much the emotion, you would
really go bah, kah, kah, you know....and hip hop is really showing off,
so same thing, body and mind, but you don’t really…you would put
the emotion on top of it… (interview 1).
It is not that these other dance styles cannot have an emotional element to
them or that Jasper’s internal engagement in one style is more important
than another, or indeed that contemporary dance cannot have a narrative
or rhythmic focus. Rather, what Jasper expresses is the degree of emphasis
for him as a contemporary dancer on the abstract emotion or idea and,
thus, the kinaesthetic mode of attention as central because it facilitates
the ability to execute this abstracted approach. As Jasper continues, he
emphasises that in contemporary ance a feeling, emotion, or idea has to
be at the centre of his movement, and he also reiterates here that the
180 S. EHRENBERG
dancer is supposed to feel what the audience is feeling—conveying what

is ‘true’ rather than ‘fake’:
Jasper: […] that’s why I love [contemporary dance company] mostly, um,
having the emotion being first, and [emotion] giving the movement,
and so that’s really true, what you give is true, it’s not something
like...fake…that’s why I’m interested in contemporary dance [light
laugh] (interview 1).
It is important to reiterate where this approach in contemporary dance

sits historically, as also discussed in Chapter 2, which is that the type of
kinaesthetic attention valued for today’s contemporary dancer (including
those interviewed) comes out of a more recent dance history in which
the physiology of the body is more in the foreground of dancers’ process
than before (Foster 2011; George 2014, 2020). Morris (2006) describes,
for instance, that the various abstract ideas for dancers’ impetus for
movement go from the ‘dramatic tension’ of Graham to the ‘periph-
eral emotions’ of Nikolais (183). For Nikolais, for instance, ‘Peripheral
emotions such as sorrow, joy, and rage were exchanged for primary
emotions that were abstract feelings of heavy, light, thick, thin, large,
small, fast, slow, and so forth’ (Morris, 2006, 183). Instead of an ‘emo-
tional point of view toward action’, the dancer is asked to be ‘sentiently
and kinetically involved in its unfolding’ (Morris, 2006, 183). Shortly
after the 1960s and up to today, the influx of somatic practices on contem-
porary dance, as already discussed above and in Chapter 2, likewise shifts
the dominant focus for dancers’ kinaesthetic attention to this more diffuse
kinaesthetically-directed explorative focus and projection (George, 2014,
2020).
A surge of research related to affect in dance studies supports the argu-
ment for how this value in contemporary dance persists in relation to
contemporary dance aesthetics which, in turn, impacts on the dancers’
experience(s). The concept of kinaesthetic empathy, also discussed above,
is one example. Discussion of this concept in a wide range of discourses
substantiates what dance and performance studies scholars have known
for a long time, for example that movement experience impacts on what
we see and that watching dance performance is much more complex
than is generally recognised (e.g. Reynolds and Reason 2012; Brand-
stetter 2013b; Foster 2011). Summarising the research on affect crudely,
contemporary dance aesthetics can be analysed in terms of affect, and the
highly complex and diffuse audience experiences they provide. Reynolds

(2012) describes it as ‘the choreographing of energies, ‘‘kinesthetic
empathy” as a mode of relating to choreographed movement in a
performance can be described as engagement with kinesthetic intention-
ality, which inheres in the choreographed movement, rather than in the
psychology of individual dancers or even the characters they may embody’
(124). With this motivation, a contemporary dancer focuses less on the
precise look of the movement, but also is not necessarily concerned with
a distinct character, narrative, or shape per se (though this issue of ‘the
look’ is explored further in the next chapters).
Conclusion
This chapter outlines some of the dominant practices and values of the
style of contemporary dance, which contribute to the dancers’ developing
and nurturing a kinaesthetic mode of attention—a mode of attention
described in the previous chapter. By outlining some of these practices and
values, the aim is to encourage closer thinking about how contemporary
dancers might come to incorporate a certain mode of attending which is
both highly personal and yet simultaneously tied to external social factors
outside of one’s control.
It is worth noting again that the practices and values discussed in this
chapter emerge principally from fieldwork conducted in the UK begin-
ning in 2008, and this context impacts on the discussion. However,
the dancers interviewed reflect a relatively international community of
contemporary dancers based in the UK at the time—that is, dancers
working in the UK, some with training and working backgrounds in the
USA, Russia, Norway, and Brazil. In addition, as discussed in Chapter 2,
the research takes a triangular conversational analysis approach, inter-
preting the dancer interviews with my own experience as a contemporary
dancer—principally training and working in US and UK contexts—and a
range of dancer experience found in the available sources coming from
a range of geographical contexts as well, although predominantly from
European, US, and Australian contexts.
There are various practices and values outlined in this chapter to
support the argument for how they develop and nurture a kinaesthetic
mode of attention. Somatics is featured as a group of practices that have
been important to contemporary dance for at least the last fifty years.
Somatics practices have become integral to contemporary dance and the
182 S. EHRENBERG
nurturing of dancers to explore kinaesthetic awareness in a particular way,

a way that often features a kinaesthetic mode of attention. Improvisa-
tional practices are also important to contemporary dance and likewise
train and nurture dancers to focus on their own movement style, trying
to be free from habit, and to encourage a certain emphasis on the feelings
of weight and , especially in contact improvisation. The value of chore-
ographic skills and being creative with one’s own movement similarly
feeds a kinaesthetic mode of attention crucial to contemporary dance.
Choreographic skills further help dancers to articulate kinaesthetic expe-
rience of movement with language, which is distinct for the style and
a kinaesthetic mode of attention. Educational and training contexts for
contemporary dance impact on a distinct crossing between practice and
theory, or movement and philosophy, that nurtures a reflexivity related
to a kinaesthetic mode of attention. The value of the idea of freedom
attributes importance to individuality and dancer agency. The value of
contemporary dancers’ projection of affect to the audience—the audience
being able to feel what the dancer feels in an abstract and diffuse way—is
also linked with a kinaesthetic mode of attention.
The next chapter aims to examine further the premise that seem-
ingly ‘external’ contextual elements affect dancers’ private kinaesthetic
experiences. Following the same line of thinking—that external social
factors can impact on seemingly private kinaesthetic experiences—the next
chapter zooms in on the problem that these dancers are performing artists
and explores what the dancers think they look like for how this also feeds
into the dancers’ kinaesthetic sensations. The next chapter tackles how
this kinaesthetic mode of attention is sometimes posed in opposition to
the visual, and yet for trained professional-level contemporary dancers, an
element of the visual will impact on their kinaesthetic experiences, because
they are trained and working in a performing art form, which includes
performance to a degree, at the professional level.
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CHAPTER 5
Kinaesthesia and Video Self-Image(s):

Foregrounding the Imagination
Introduction
The previous chapters addressed a ‘kinaesthetic mode of attention’ indi-
cated by the contemporary dancers’ descriptions in the interviews. I argue
that the dancers’ kinaesthetic attention is not arbitrary, but is directed
according to acquired practices and values upheld in contemporary dance.
A primary aim is to explore, in conversation with existing research, the
fieldwork, and in my own dance experience, how seemingly ‘external’
factors (e.g. training structures) impact on seemingly ‘internal’ and private
perceptions (e.g. kinaesthetic attention).
Given this understanding, this chapter will focus in on ways dancers
indicate and express intertwining and disruption between dancing kinaes-
thetic experiences and video self-image(s) recorded and viewed in the
interviews, leading to a foregrounding of the imagination. This chapter
addresses the problem that contemporary dance needs to look a certain
way despite a prevailing emphasis on kinaesthetic experience for dancers
in the practice which might at times polarise the visual and bodily
felt experience from the contemporary dancers’ perspective. Different
ways of conceiving contemporary dancers’ engagement with perfor-
mance and dancing self-image(s) are explored, with perspectives from
phenomenology, feminist and critical theory to address prevailing assump-
tions about dancers’ engagements and use of visual-based self-reflections,
particularly considering those contexts which do require contemporary

Switzerland AG 2021
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73403-9_5
190 S. EHRENBERG
dancers to reflect on what they look like (e.g. rehearsal towards perfor-
mance). Below I utilise Merleau-Ponty’s concept of reversibility to explore
how the video self-images both intertwine and yet disrupt dancers’ kinaes-
thetic experiences of dancing. In this way, this chapter attempts to address
what Purser (2018b) advocates, ‘[…] to further contribute to a philo-
sophical understanding of skill acquisition from the phenomenological
perspective through a detailed empirical exploration of the lived expe-
rience of learning new movements, styles, and techniques within the field
of professional dance’ (319). This chapter can be read alongside other
publications addressing dancers’ particular engagement with visual self-
image and corporeal schema to add to the complexity of understanding
professional-level dancers particular embodied knowledge (e.g. Montero
2006; Ravn 2017; Ravn and Høffding 2017; Purser 2011).
In addition, this chapter focuses on a problem often found in dance
practice and experienced by dancers but rarely put under the micro-
scope; that is, those moments when dancers experience discontinuity and
disruption between their kinaesthetic experiences and what they see on
video. This chapter explores what role disruption, discontinuity and gaps
with video self-images play in a group of dancers’ practice and becoming
professional-level dancers, building on understandings of kinaesthetic
destabilisation in the practice. Exploration of video self-images indicates
layers of complexity to the dancers’ experiences with them. Following
from the previous chapters, this chapter supports the argument that
dealing with video self-image disruptions is one way to challenge that
this group of dancers are servants to a habitus, which also opens up for
the potential to decentre the human within these experiences, explored
more in the next chapter. The fieldwork indicates that these dancers offer
ways to continue to think and practice critically with video self-imagery,
particularly as video technology becomes more accessible and frequently
used.
The issue of disruption and discontinuity with video self-images, for
a group of professional-level contemporary dancers in the practice, is
a problem in particular because these moments disturb an important
historicised value which prevails in contemporary dance practice, which
is that kinaesthetic exploration is a way to discover one’s ‘true’ self and
that kinaesthetic experience is always ‘true’. Martha Graham professes
this value in the statement: ‘Movement never lies’ (Graham 1991, 4).
This value of truth and kinaesthetic experience is also implicit in Claid’s
(2006) description of ‘new dance’ in Britain in the 1970s: ‘Letting go of
5 KINAESTHESIA AND VIDEO SELF-IMAGE(S) … 191
the mirror we became real people, with back, front and sides, thinking
dance movement from the inside out’ (83). This phrasing implies that, at
the time, ‘feeling the body’ from all its dimensions, was feeling the ‘real’,
thus ‘true’, body. This ideology of the natural continues in release tech-
nique in the 1990s, as noted in Chapter 2, such as when Leslie Kaminoff
declares in a 1999 Movement Research issue, ‘You can’t fake release’
(George 2014, 57) However, as discussed in the previous chapters,
neither kinaesthetic experience nor visual self-reflection are necessarily
‘true’.
Nevertheless, a belief that dancers need to be suspicious of visual self-
reflection still persists, including video self-reflection, following arguments
of how video objectifies. Dancers are often taught this opposition implic-
itly throughout the practice without necessarily further considering how
this way of thinking might be implicated historically, or question what
such an engagement with video offers (or not).
Therefore, what is addressed in this chapter are some of the multiple,
even contradictory, reactions that a group of dancers have with video
self-images, particularly considering that one predominant goal as a
professional-level dancer is to become skilled at presenting movement
which looks a certain way to an outside eye. How do moments of
mismatch with visual self-images impact on the dancer and their dancing
experiences? What purpose might disruptions and discontinuity serve
for a group of contemporary dancers, particularly when they want to
‘successfully’ perform for an audience? Building on the phenomenolog-
ical perspective of reversibility with the dancer interview descriptions, I
explore the concept of Kaja Silverman’s (1992, 1996) ‘productive look’ to
consider how dancers might pragmatically work with instances of disrup-
tion with video self-images which might be akin to the alienation they
find in the experience of performing. The aim is to explore senses of play
and agency, but also continuity and discontinuity, between kinaesthetic
experiences and video self-images, which might be further explored in the
practice, from the dancers’ perspective. Put in another way, there is great
emphasis in the practice, such as is found in the fieldwork for contempo-
rary dance training in the UK, on attending to kinaesthetic sensation, not
necessarily focusing on the visual aspect of this kinaesthetic experience,
which can leave the problems of being a performer, and being watched,
for the dancers themselves to figure out with little reference to the visual
192 S. EHRENBERG
image or aesthetic that they create, or the dancers are left to negotiate the
challenges of being a dance performer in this regard relatively alone.1
The dominant value of a kinaesthetic mode of attention, as discussed in
depth in the previous chapters, has been integral to modern and contem-
porary dance across its history, and this chapter does not aim to subvert
this value. As also discussed briefly in Chapter 4, there is a value in
contemporary dance aesthetic that the dancer can produce a feeling or
affect through their dancing. I focus on one underexplored problem that
complicates this value, which is that performance is a significant part of
a contemporary dancers’ practice, and yet the importance of how move-
ment appears and dealing with this, from the dancer’s perspective, remains
relatively underexplored.
It must also be noted that the focus of this chapter is on the field-
work interview descriptions from the contemporary dancers; however, the
theme of this chapter was not found to be exclusive to the contemporary
dancers. Negotiating how movement feels and how it looks was shared
by all the dancers interviewed. However, the degree of emphasis of the
dancers’ attention to how movement looked was different, an issue which
authors such as Foster (1997), Ravn (2009), Purser (2011), and Aalten
(2004) also discuss. The focus here is on contemporary dancer descrip-
tions, as contemporary dance is the primary focus of the book overall.
This chapter addresses this by focusing on certain contexts and contem-
porary dancer descriptions which support the argument of the continuities
and discontinuities between the imagined visual appearances of one’s own
dancing, via video imagery and kinaesthetic feeling.
1 In addition to myinterviews, during my fieldwork I encountered other veteran profes-

sional contemporary dancers who expressed a problem of learning how to perform during
their careers. For instance, dance practitioner Lauren Potter, during a talk at Independent
Dance in London, UK on 12 October 2010 titled the ‘Performer’s Perspective’, said that
she learned how to perform with DV8 ‘by default’ and her practical performing experience
developed by learning on the job and with the help of an informal mentoring system.
Similarly, dance practitioner and scholar Sue Hawksley, at the 2011 Dance and Somatic
Practices Conference at the University of Coventry, commented on a continual unease
in her performance career in which many times she felt she was achieving something to
be told by the choreographer that she was not. Dance practitioner and scholar Jennifer
Roche agreed with Hawksley that dancers need more tools to deal with the feeling of
‘destabilisation’ in the choreographic process (see also Roche 2015, 2018).
Intertwining
Several dancers’ descriptions suggested that kinaesthetic experiences
include a ‘folding in’ of video self-image(s) viewed. ‘Folding in’ refers to
Merleau-Ponty’s (1945) idea of the ‘double horizon’ of present percep-
tion and the idea that past experiences impact on present perceptions.
Merleau-Ponty illustrates ‘double horizon’ with the example of perceiving
a house. He argues that in looking at a house, we perceive that house
but the present perception of that house is also wrapped up with previous
perceptions of that house and other houses. He thus suggests a crucial
temporal idea about present perceptions, which is that present perceptions
are wrapped up with previous experiences: ‘…past time is wholly collected
up and grasped in the present….Thus, through the double horizon…my
present may cease to be a factual present...’ (Merleau-Ponty 1945, 80).
Or in another part of the text as he states more generally:
At each successive instant of a movement, the preceding instant is not

lost sight of. It is, as it were, dovetailed into the present, and present
perception generally speaking consists in drawing together, on the basis of
one’s present position, the succession of previous positions, which envelop
each other. (Merleau-Ponty 1945, 162)
The premise I want to highlight is his argument that present perception

includes a folded up of the past into that present and also that the present
perception gets folded up into future perceptions.
Merleau-Ponty is not alone in his ideas about the intertwining of past
and present perceptions. Henri Bergson (1912/2004) likewise argues
for how memories always impact on present perceptions, sensations and
experiences. Bergson’s commitment to this position is found in many
places in his text Matter and Memory, but he most closely provides
links to Merleau-Ponty’s ideas of the double horizon when he declares:
‘Memory thus creates anew the present perception; or rather it doubles
this perception by reflecting upon it either its own image or some other
memory-image of the same kind’ (Bergson 1912/2004, 123).
Merleau-Ponty distinctly takes the above claims for vision and applies
them to kinaesthetic perceptions. For instance, he argues that present
kinaesthetic perceptions can also be tied to previous kinaesthetic percep-
tions. In addition, he argues that because perceptions are multi-sensorial,
194 S. EHRENBERG
present kinaesthetic perceptions can be tied to past visual perceptions as

well (e.g. Merleau-Ponty 1945, 175; 1968, 134–135).
At first glance, such is the case for the dancers in my research, which
brought out the idea of ‘folding in’. The dancers’ present kinaesthetic
perceptions can be interpreted as dovetailing previously seen video self-
image(s). Or, in the way I discuss it here, the dancers’ present kinaesthetic
perceptions include a ‘folding in’ of previously seen video images. Exam-
ining some of the interview excerpts demonstrates the different ways the
dancers indicate a folding in of video self-image(s) into their corporeal
schema and reveal some of the ways this theme came out in the dancers’
descriptions.
Mads provides a prime example of the ‘folding in’ of kinaesthetic expe-
riences and visual self-image(s) seen on video. In one part of his interview,
he articulates that the previously seen video self-images had an impact on
his present kinaesthetic experiences. As the issue of video image memo-
ries ‘folding in’ to present experience arose in previous dancer interviews
before the one with Mads, I chose to ask him about this problem directly.
Shantel: …..did you think, just now doing it, did the image of the video
just watching it come up at all?
Mads: Uh…yeah it came up….um……….. it was more of a…um…warning
signs…that is, ‘oh this part you did it really hard on the video’….and
‘this part, you did it….in this way, keep that…still, and, emphasis in this
part’…… (interview 2).
After having watched the video, Mads suggests that video comes back in
another, imagined, form as he does the phrase again—as a set of imagi-
nary reminders, or as ‘memory traces’, as he does the phrase the second
time. I use the term ‘memory trace’ to capture the idea that the ‘folding
in’ of the video previously seen is partial; the video does not impact on
all of his present kinaesthetic experiences but does so at thinly marked
moments. Watching the video makes a mark on Mads, and as such he
goes lightly back over the video in his next ‘present’ kinaesthetic experi-
ence. He traces back over that video as he kinaesthetically experiences the
movement again. Continuing from above, Mads says:
Mads: […] I had [the video] more, in the back of my head, so [I] kind
of…pictured it in my head… I didn’t see myself though [laugh]…….I
was seeing movement and…a silhouette of…..a person doing it, and
then..kind of pointers of…here, this part…that part…careful… (inter-
view 2).
Mads suggests the memory trace of the video is a kind of reincarnation

of the image(s) previously seen, and these ‘memory traces’ re-direct his
kinaesthetic intentions the next time he does the phrase.
Other dancers give similar examples of previous video image(s) inter-
twining with their next kinaesthetic intentions of the movement. Tineka,
for instance, talks about watching the first video of her movement and,
noticing the dynamics are a bit flat, she wants to change that aspect of
the movement the next time she does the phrase. She too affirms that the
video comes up as ‘memory traces’ the next time she does the phrase.
Tineka: No its just….I didn’t tell you before, but I remember now, as
I was [dancing]…that I thought that my dynamics were crap [in the
video], […] And I was paying attention to it now [dancing]….quite
consciously…..[…]…it wasn’t like, I’m going to work on my dynamics
now, but I think as I started doing it I was like…oh yeah I can [work
on my dynamics]… (interview 2).
Similar to Mads, Tineka describes that she did not start the phrase with a
conscious choice of changing the dynamics, but that, as she starts to do
the phrase again, it is that the ‘memory trace’ of the video comes up and
serves as a faint reminder of exact places she wants to change. It is only
when she starts to do the phrase again, experiencing it kinaesthetically,
that the video ‘memory traces’ are summoned up.
Jasper also describes a simultaneous process of dancing and reflecting
on the previously seen video image(s). He states that the video memory is
something that ‘just keeps coming up’ the next time he does the phrase:
Jasper: Yeah you remember….I don’t know, when you’re doing it, if you’ve
got time…enough brain space to be like ‘ok that’s what you look
like…..that’s what I want…that’s what I feel…that’s what I-, that’s what
it’s supposed to be…’ (interview 1).
Jasper flags up an important point with his description, which is that I

am not claiming conclusively that the previously seen video will always
feed into the next time the dancer does the phrase, or at least not in
a way that the dancer might always be able to reflect consciously. For
instance, sometimes movements are so fast that the dancer can do nothing
but attend to executing the movement. Sometimes the choreography is
new so the dancer’s attention is focused on the sequencing of the phrase.
Reflecting on a previously seen video image is therefore in some cases
196 S. EHRENBERG
nearly impossible for the dancer to do consciously, because there is not

enough ‘brain space’, as Jasper refers to it, for the dancer to attend to,
for instance, both remembering the new choreography and the previously
seen video image.
Nevertheless, Jasper, similarly to Mads and Tineka, indicates that
sometimes, while dancing, he simultaneously executes the choreography,
what he calls ‘the performance’ and also reflects on various intertwin-
ings between performative elements, such as, ‘how did the movement
look’, ‘how did it feel’, ‘how should it look’. He likewise suggests that
the memory trace is crucial to a relation-ing between his ‘present’ and
‘past’ experiences of dancing. As he continues, Jasper states more explic-
itly that like Mads, ‘he has the video in mind’ as he dances the phrase
after having seen the video.
All three dancers’ excerpts suggest the ways, from the dancers’ expe-
riential perspectives, that they engage in multi-faceted yet contextually
specific kinaesthetic awareness while dancing. Their kinaesthetic experi-
ences are multi-layered, but more specifically in this case, multi-layered in
relation to previously seen video self-image(s), which complicate micro-
relations in the practice, particularly between the dancer’s fleshy bodily
and seemingly private experiences in relation to a ‘hard,’ ‘external,’ ‘other’
video two-dimensional image object.
Unless consciously and purposefully reflected on, as in the case of
these interviews and research, these types of relations, between video self-
reflection and kinaesthetic awareness for instance, might go unnoticed by
the dancer. Therefore, repetition of these kinds of experiences can become
automatic and ‘unconscious’ to the dancer’s dancing experiences, in a
similar way that Pierre Bourdieu (1980/1990) conceptualises that muscle
memory can become automatic and ‘unconscious’ in terms of habitus.
For instance, movements can be repeated so often that eventually the
mechanics of the movement fall below the level of the person’s conscious-
ness and become part of their muscle memory, shaping their habitus. That
is to say that a practice can become so habitual that a person can no longer
articulate how or why she/he does the movement that way, because ‘that
way’ of moving has become so automatic through repetition, that even-
tually they simply just do the movement that way. A dancer might also
repeatedly ‘fold in’ previously seen video self-images into present felt
dancing experiences until these previous self-images become part of their
kinaesthetic and mind’s eye memory as part of their dancing experience
and knowledge. In other words, if a dancer repeatedly sees themselves
dancing many times over their career, those self-images might settle into
the dancers’ imagination, but they might do so eventually below the level
of consciousness.
The above discussion is informed in part by Barbara Montero’s (2006)
philosophical discussion of aesthetics, dance experience, and what she calls
‘proprioceiving aesthetically’. That is, philosophical discussion about the
idea that self-image(s) previously seen or imagined, ‘what I look like danc-
ing’, might intertwine with proprioceptive experiences, ‘what I feel like
dancing’, in a particular ‘non-conscious’ way, over time, which leads to
something like ‘proprioceiving aesthetically’.2
Montero (2006) claims that dancers can proprioceive when movements
are ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ in the same way that a person can visually assess a
painting. She writes:
A dancer, during a rehearsal onstage...may claim that a certain movement

or position is beautiful or...complain that the beauty, or whatever other
aesthetic quality he or she is aiming at producing, is lacking: ‘The move-
ment is too abrupt’; ‘The line is ugly’; ‘I’m not feeling the connections’.
(232)
In sum, Montero suggests that a dancer can judge the projected image
of their body through proprioceptive feeling; that a dancer can process
the aesthetic of the movement via bodily sensations and perceptions, or
proprioceptive experience. One of the dancers, Tineka, supports this claim
when she says in one of her interviews that she can sense when a move-
ment is right or wrong in the same way that a choreographer judges her
movements from the outside.3
2 Montero (2006) uses ballet examples, such as arabesque and port de bras, to substan-
tiate her claims, thus there is some unpicking to do further in terms of differences for
ballet versus other styles with the concept of proprioceiving aesthetically which I am
unable to pursue here in-depth.
3 It is important to distinguish again between the terms proprioception and kinaesthesia.
Montero (2006) defines proprioception as ‘the sense by which we acquire information
about the positions and movements of our own bodies, via receptors in the joints, tendons,
ligaments, muscles, and skin’ (p. 231). She does not reference this definition, however
her definition is in accordance with physiology and motor control and learning textbooks
(Tortora 2002; Magill 2007). Proprioception is thus conceived as distinct to kinaesthesia
in that the latter includes the other sense modalities, such as vision, whereas the former
refers primarily to one’s bodily sensation via the central and peripheral nervous systems,
such as for sensing limb position when eyes are closed.
198 S. EHRENBERG
Montero (2006) allows the consideration for how the training of

dance performers, and a developed (versus innate) intertwining of how
movement feels and how it looks, impacts on this ability to proprioceive
aesthetically, particularly for the case of professional-level dancers who are
repeatedly exposed to visual self-reflection, be that images, verbal descrip-
tions or other imaginations. Montero (2006) argues that the visual and
proprioceptive work together uniquely for the case of dancers and that
dancers can understand movements to be proprioceptively graceful in part
because they can also judge the movements would be graceful if seen
(236). Montero’s (2006) purpose is to argue how proprioception can be
as important as is visual information in the case of being and becoming
dancers, particularly considering the issue of aesthetics historically from a
philosophical perspective.
Building on Montero’s (2006) discussion, it can be argued that dancers
training and working in Western theatre styles, such as ballet, contem-
porary, hip hop and breaking, face numerous representations of what
their dancing looks like in practice, such as from watching video self-
reflections on ‘smart’ phones, which inform or impact on this ability to
‘proprioceive aesthetically’ in the way Montero argues for. These dancers
repeatedly hear, see, and imagine how their dancing appears from the
outside and these repeated experiences end up intermingling with and
informing dancers’ proprioceptive experiences in ways that can fall to the
back of present and conscious experience once the visual self-image(s)
becomes a part of the automatic habitual behaviour. In other words,
dancers in these styles are often encouraged to utilise self-reflection and
feedback from teachers, choreographers, and fellow dancers, to get a
sense of how their movement appears. This is not to deny becoming a
professional-level dancer without ever receiving visually based feedback
from a mirror or video (i.e. Montero writes about the example of visu-
ally impaired dancers, such as Alicia Alonso). However, even in the case
of visual impairment, it is likely that dancers training and working in
Western theatre styles will be concerned with visual display in some form;
put another way, dancers working in these styles often face the issue that
understanding how their movement appears is important, to an extent,
to be successful in the field; hence, mirrors, video, verbal, and/or tactile
feedback about how movement appears are used in the practice. Many
dancers encounter the problem of trying to understand how their move-
ment appears, primarily because dance is a visual art made up of dancers’
performing bodies. Visual representations of their dancing come up in
the practice and inevitably, over time, these visual imagined self-images
get incorporated into dancers’ seemingly private kinaesthetic experiences.
Michela Summa (2018) supports this claim in her elaboration of Fuchs’
(2017) work on bodily and cultural memory, touched on in Chapter 2.
Summa argues against all memory being conceived in terms of habit as
fixed, such as in the case of an experienced organist who can adapt to
different type of environments to play (Merleau-Ponty 1945).4 Fuchs
(2017) argues, according to Summa, that body memory is bound to
the ongoing dynamic coupling between body and environment (emphasis
mine). Fuchs precisely describes the body in connection with environ-
ment as the carrier of habits and skill. Body memory is in the body’s
interaction with the environment as well as in the flexible re-actualisation
through similar interactions later on. As Summa (2018) summarises later
in her presentation: ‘There are some capacities of body memory which
mean body memory is coupled with the capacity to grasp the novelty of
each situation, possibly of taking some distance from the acquired patterns
of experience through a form of bodily reflexivity or about adaptation or
transforming previously acquired patterns of experience (body memory)
in a productive way’ (n.p.).
Thus, for the case of dance performers, such as those working in
contemporary, ballet and hip hop styles, proprioception and imagined
visual projected dancing develop hand and hand, in a context-specific
(not universal) way, and many dancers, to an extent, incorporate a way of
perceiving movement according to an external aesthetic of the style they
work in. Montero’s (2006) argument for dancers’ proprioceiving aestheti-
cally supports the argument that dancers develop an intertwining between
‘what my movement looks like’ and ‘what my movement feels like’, so
that eventually dancers might be able to feel when something looks ‘right’
and/or have a visual imagination of something looking ‘right’ when
movement feels ‘right’. These aspects of feeling and imagining the look
of movement can also be separated, but the focus here is how they are
intertwined for the case of dancers.
Referring back to the issue of repetition from Bourdieu’s (1980/1990)
idea of habitus, so too can self-images previously seen or verbal feed-
back about how one’s movement appears fall to the background and
the proprioceptive come to the foreground, especially over the dancers’
4 See Purser (2018a) for discussion of Merleau-Ponty’s organist and dancer experience
and Ravn and Høffding (2017) for discussion of violinist perspective.
200 S. EHRENBERG
training and as their skills improve. Indeed Montero (2006) argues that
‘a dancer often trusts proprioception more than vision’ (231). However,
Montero does not address in detail how this might develop over time.
That is, as the dancer becomes expert, the coupling of the visual and
the proprioceptive can become such that the dancer can, with reliable
certainty, imagine what movement they felt might look like from the
outside. In addition, from the dancer perspective, this attention to the
external visual display of their dancing can fall to the background and
the kinaesthetic come to the foreground. Looking at it from yet another
way, a professional-level dancer might say they perceive something ‘right’
proprioceptively because they have had plenty of previous experience of
seeing and hearing how their movements look, in tandem, so that even-
tually they can rely only on kinaesthetic sensation to imagine how their
movement looks.
The interviews serve as examples of how this idea of developing the
ability to proprioceive aesthetically comes up in practice for a group
of contemporary dancers. The descriptions by the dancers indicate that
becoming dancer means learning how to join visual self-image(s) with
proprioceptive experience, and develop a skill of knowing how a felt
movement might appear.
Double Sensation
Merleau-Ponty’s (1945, 1968) writings on the idea of ‘double horizon’
can be linked with his writings on reversibility and ‘double sensation’,
largely to be found in his later works, primarily The Visible and Invis-
ible.5 The framing of the above terms, ‘folding in’ and ‘memory trace’,
serve as precursors to thinking further about the dancer interviews with
Merleau-Ponty’s concept of reversibility, particularly his ideas around the
intertwining of seer and seen.
Merleau-Ponty uses the example of two hands touching to illustrate his
idea of ‘double sensation’, which is crucial to his idea of the intertwining
5 Elizabeth Grosz (1994) writes about the idea of ‘folding in’ in her discussion of
Merleau-Ponty’s reversibility, ‘double sensation’, and intertwining, supporting the argu-
ment that these ideas are linked. She writes, ‘Flesh is being’s reversibility, its capacity
to fold in on itself, a dual orientation inward and outward...the flesh is reflexivity, that
fundamental gap or dehiscence of being that Merleau-Ponty illustrates with a favourite
example, the “double sensation”’ (100).
side of reversibility, as also discussed with Legrand (2007) in the previous

chapter. In sum, he argues that when I touch my own right hand with my
left, I both feel the left hand touching my right and I am the left hand
which touches the right. In this sense, touching and touched are one
and the same. As Grosz (1994) interprets: ‘My left hand has the double
sensation of being both the object and the subject of the touch’ (100).
Merleau-Ponty (1968) argues that the same model for touching-
touched can be applied to seer-seen. He argues that seer and seen have a
reciprocal, intertwined, and circular relationship:
Since the same body sees and touches, visible and tangible belong to the
same world...he who sees cannot possess the visible unless he is possessed
by it, unless he is of it, unless, by principle, according to what is required
by the articulation of the look with the things, he is one of the visible,
capable, by a singular reversal, of seeing them – he who is one of them.
(134–135)
He claims with intertwining, as one side of reversibility, that my body and

the world come from the same place. Flesh intertwines the physical object
that reflects, such as a mirror, and the eyes that see. The body ‘is made
of the same flesh as the world’ and ‘this flesh of my body is shared by
the world, the world reflects it’ (as cited in Parviainen 1998, 63). Flesh
(the material person who perceives and feels) acts between the physical
object that reflects, such as a mirror or video, and the eyes that see. Thus,
subject and object intertwine in these acts of seeing oneself. As Susan
Kozel (2007) puts it, ‘Flesh is inserted into the relation between the one
who sees and the thing seen’ and ‘I am both subject and object through
the act of seeing’ (35 and 36).
When we apply the premise of reversibility of being and world to self-
reflection via an object, such as a video camera and self-image, we come to
a way of theorising how the video self-image(s) become intertwined with
the dancer’s seemingly internal and private proprioceptive sensations. For
instance, the video image is made up of my body dancing, it is a recording
of my dancing, and thus my dancing is shared with the object, the object
202 S. EHRENBERG
becomes my dancing. The dancing in the video is, on the one hand, me
and my being in the world.6
Paradox
All of the dancers interviewed had moments when they watch the video
and the self-image also seems incongruent with their kinaesthetic memory
and/or imagined idea of the previous kinaesthetic experience. In other
words, all the dancers at times experience a paradox or disruption between
what they see on video and what they previously felt of that same move-
ment. A few of the dancers give particularly poignant descriptions to help
indicate the ways disruption happens for them.
Jasper, for instance, talks about experiencing disruption while watching
back a contemporary dance phrase he just performed:
Jasper: I really felt like my back was really round, rather than flat, and…….I
feel [laugh], I feel longer than I look….usually. And, because I’m really
rurgh….and… I’m short, so I’m really trying to look, to feel, big and
long and… I never do look like it [light laugh], but…..[…]…yeah pretty
much, I look sort of…maybe the first one of the first big jump… usually
would travel much further back…and I thought it could travel more,
but it was almost on the spot on the video so…. (interview 1).
One instance of disruption here is Jasper kinaesthetically feeling his back

was round when he dances the movement, but then visually perceiving
his back is flat when watching the video. Another instance of disruption
is when Jasper says that he thinks he never looks as big and long as he
feels, yet he always aims for looking big and long and believes he attains
it at times. Jasper also indicates, more specifically regarding the move-
ment phrase, that his kinaesthetic and imaginative experience, ‘the first
big jump’, is not matched with the video image shown back to him just
after: ‘I thought it could travel more’, ‘but it was almost on the spot’,
indicating that on some level he has an imagined idea of how the move-
ment might appear from the camera’s point of view. Watching the video
back he realises the imagined idea is not matched for him.
6 Please see Ehrenberg (2012) for a case-study discussion of other kinaesthetic-visual

intertwinings that came up in the fieldwork, such as verbal descriptions from teachers and
choreographers and from watching other dancers.
Willow expresses a familiarity and frequency in encountering disruption

with video self-reflection in a similar way that Jasper describes:
Willow: […] yeah I’m pretty sure if I watch myself on video I’d go, mmm
alignment there, oooo, you know things that you wish…you’re trying
to incorporate, you’re going, ahhh….definitely not coming through the
way you’d like them to (interview 1).
Willow talks specifically in this part of the interview about her spinal
alignment, stating that it is a part of her kinaesthetic experience of her
dancing body in which she frequently experiences disruption with video
self-images. She indicates that she intentionally focuses on making her
alignment appear in a certain way and in some cases (but not all) imag-
ines she attains this alignment. However, when she watches video footage,
her alignment often does not appear to her how she intends and imagines
based on her kinaesthetic experience—the alignment does ‘not [come]
though the way you’d like [it] to’.
Santana also comments on the frequency with which he confronts
video disruption when he watches himself dancing. Interestingly, Santana
indicates that sometimes disruptions that happen in a positive direc-
tion and movement can sometimes look better on video than he had
kinaesthetically felt, or imagined, they would.
Santana: Yeah…I get that a lot…I watch…you know when I practice and
I train, even if I train moves…they’ll feel really nice…and I watch back
the clip and …[inaudible]….it’s just like what we did now [in interview;
did movement and watched it back on video]… some of the stuff I did
I thought ‘oh that felt really nice’ and then I look-…and it works the
other way around as well, sometimes I think ‘oh that didn’t feel good’
or…’that probably didn’t look right’…and I watch back and actually,
you know, actually it’s ok!… (interview 1).
Santana is not a contemporary dancer and is relatively new to breaking

compared to the other dancers in the study. Thus, one might argue
that disruptions happen more frequently for Santana because he is newer
to training and that video disruptions are related to the amount of
training one does, or that Santana has a different relationship to video
because hip hop and breaking have a different historical and performa-
tive relationship to screens than other styles, such as contemporary dance.
Although the degree of disruption might relate to training level and style
204 S. EHRENBERG
to an extent, the overwhelming responses in the interviews across all

of the dancers were that disruption with video self-reflection happens
no matter what level and style. The variation across training is minimal
compared to the problem of why disruptions come about and what is at
stake for the contemporary dancers’ experiences of disruption with video
self-reflection.
So, generally, in certain moments of watching the video self-reflection,
the dancers indicate experiencing disruption, or a gap being thrown open,
between the kinaesthetic feeling of the movement, what they imagine,
and what they see on video. There are distinct connections made by the
dancers between the kinaesthetic feeling of the movement and an imag-
ined way the movement should appear. The visual video self-reflection,
however, stands distinctly apart in these instances of disruption. There is
therefore a distinct gap between kinaesthetic experience and imagination
and the appearance of the video self-images.
Simon Ellis (2013) echoes the theme discussed among these aspects
of the dancer interviews in his ‘playfully experimental’ description of
encountering his own video image as part of a performance practice:
I see them – the audience – watching me. And him–me. And I am me

watching me–him, and them. Who is this person I have become ... or
am about to be? Who is that person on that screen to me? I think this
might be how I know that conceptual problems are not just understood,
but felt (Ryerson 2011). Which version of me is which in this case (as
I reflect)? This projected me is acting, I am watching. But the distance
feels vast. We talk the talk of how technology is shrinking distances, but
my solitude is acute in this digital (projected) divide. I am experientially
and perceptually different over there on that screen. Or rather, audiences
understand that person there on-screen to be me, but recognize that it
is a me from another time–space. A him-but-not-him. I suspect, though,
that they-you enact judgments about my performance as if it were me, and
are probably unconcerned with the chasm between my various performing
selves (251)
Ellis, with notable analytical and philosophically informed reflective

writing skill (including making note of the frequent use of first-person
pronouns in the above quote), expresses a spatial and temporal gap in
watching himself on video dancing. He articulates his trouble with never
truly being able to see what the audience sees. He feels a distancing from
himself and communicates a negotiation between the him that is not him
and yet he knows it is him on the screen. A vision of a person that he

understands is a part of his performing self and yet also rather separate
from it. Ellis (2013) echoes Susan Kozel’s reflections on her experience
with motion capture: ‘[The motion captured figure] exists, it is not exactly
the same as me, but it is also not irrevocably different from me, and, in a
broader sense, we cannot pretend that the digitisation of our bodies and
social relation is going to evaporate or even diminish. Like it or not, we
have digital twins’ (250, also cited in Karreman 2017, 112). Ellis’s (2013)
underlying thrust here is a distrust for that image, however, emphasising
its otherness. The essay leans towards the ‘real’ felt and experiencing body,
rather than the visual image. For instance, earlier in the essay he quotes
Carsten Höller, also in reference to video: ‘It makes me unsure of what
really is … It is about losing certainty … And then the real film starts, the
inner film’ (249; also cited in Aitken and Höller 2006, 165).
Chiasm
Merleau-Ponty’s (1968) concept of chiasm is a useful way of bringing
back in thinking in phenomenological terms about how these dancers
experience disruption with video self-reflection, to then later move
in other directions. The argument for chiasm follows the concept of
reversibility, discussed above, in which Merleau-Ponty argues that, on the
one hand, human beings are bodies of flesh, which are things like other
things. My body and the world come from the same place, as Parviainen
(1998) interprets: the body ‘is made of the same flesh as the world’ and
‘this flesh of my body is shared by the world, the world reflects it’ (63).
The same premise of reversibility of being and world can apply to objects
like a video camera and its image, as Ellis (2013) alludes. The dancing in
the video is, on the one hand, me and my being in the world.
However, another key part of reversibility is that being and world, or
self and other, do not melt into each other. At the limits of reversibility,
Merleau-Ponty (1968) argues, is where a gap, chiasm, or écart takes place.
Applying this idea to a dance context, this means that a dancer’s dancing
experience and perceived video self-image likewise do not melt into each
other (Parviainen 1998, 65). As discussed above with ‘double horizon’,
it is for the same reason I cannot ‘truly’ touch myself that I also cannot
‘truly’ perceive my own movement in visual self-reflection. A mirror, for
instance, is only an extension of my body so it cannot help me escape the
relation I always have with my body either. The mirror is a reminder
206 S. EHRENBERG
of the otherness that already exists in oneself and that ‘every percep-
tion is doubled with a counter-perception’ (Merleau-Ponty 1968. 264).
Merleau-Ponty (1945) alludes to the concept of chiasm in Phenomenology
of Perception:
I can see my eyes in three mirrors, but they are the eyes of someone
observing, and I have the utmost difficulty in catching my living glance
when a mirror in the street unexpectedly reflects my image back at me. My
body in the mirror never stops following my intentions like their shadow,
and if observation consists in varying the point of view while keeping the
object fixed, then it escapes observation and is given to me as a simulacrum
of my tactile body since it imitates the body’s actions instead of responding
to them by a free unfolding of perspectives. My visual body is certainly an
object as far as its parts far removed from my head are concerned, but as
we come nearer to the eyes, it becomes divorced from objects, and reserves
among them a quasi-space to which they have no access, and when I try
to fill this void by recourse to the image in the mirror, it refers me back
to an original of the body which is not out there among things, but in my
own province, on this side of all things seen. (105)
The gap between seer and seen resides within the self, because the body-
self is also an other to itself and the mirror (or video) only reminds me
of this problem, or adds another layer, of the same kind, to the layer of
fissure I experience within myself (Parviainen 1998, 64).
In short, taking what Merleau-Ponty suggests, we might argue that the
problem, of disruption with the dancers’ experience watching themselves
on video, is that the dancers’ eyes are in the very body which moves and
is perceived. Thus, they cannot ‘see’ outside of their body or see their
own movement in a purely objective way, because those with which they
see—the eyes—are also part of the body which moves. When Merleau-
Ponty tries to examine his body in the mirror to examine the object-
ness of his body, he realises that he can only see his body from where
he sees. He cannot examine his body ‘objectively’, from the outside, or
removed from his experience of his body and his previous experiences.
For the same reason, the dancers will never be able to view the video
image removed from the previous lived, or kinaesthetic, experience and
the previous experience will always colour the viewing of their self-images.
Parviainen (1998) likewise applies Merleau-Ponty’s ideas about chiasm
and self-reflection to dancers (mainly in the context of dance educa-
tion) and insists that the problem of dancers being on the same side as
their bodies will mean that they will, at times, experience disruption with
video self-reflection: ‘There is always an écart between moving and moved
(visual) to the dancer her/himself. This implies that a certain body move-
ment may look strange when it is seen by the dancer on the video’ (66).
Utilising Merleau-Ponty, Parviainen (1998) argues that chiasm takes place
for the dancer in two ways: ‘1) in the dancing body itself and 2) between
the moving body and the one who perceives it’ (66).
Disruption, Discontinuity, Gaps

These instances of dancers’ experiences of disruption, between kinaes-
thetic experience and visual self-images, are a catalyst to explore produc-
tive ways of thinking about dancers’ unsettling experiences with video
self-image in the practice. All of the dancers claim to use video feed-
back and find video self-reflection in dance useful, although to varying
degrees. They thus indicate that, to an extent, video self-reflection in
dance practice can be productive, even if also disturbing.
By ‘productive’ I do not mean working towards a product, but
in contrast to it being destructive, in a theoretical sense. Historically,
video self-reflection has been conceived suspiciously in contemporary
dance discourse principally in terms of objectification, which is in line
with poststructuralist concepts such as ‘the male gaze’ and the camera
as mechanical object (e.g. Weiss 1999). The dancer interviews indeed
support this argument. For instance, one of the dancer’s interviewed,
Tineka, indicates quite strongly the anxiety that the video can bring up.
After filming her movement phrase, Tineka immediately reflects on a
sudden rush of anxiety in hearing the camera being turned on, relating it
to experiences she has felt at auditions.
Tineka: I got a bit nervous [the second time]! I was like ooh! […] It’s
just like....’I’m recording’, you know, this is your chance, kind of
thing…..I didn’t, yeah…….it’s not an assessment or audition, but I
felt my heart beat go rising up…[little laugh] […] ‘here you are I’m
recording you’…I don’t know......performing….even though you’re not
saying that, you know….[…] Yeah….I just felt a bit my heart rate come
up a bit like, ah ok ok…ah ah..ok I’m performing! [talking to herself,
internal dialogue]…you know… (interview 2).
Tineka explicitly describes her reaction to the camera ‘eye’ not as a

conscious reaction, but a sudden rather unconscious feeling of her heart
208 S. EHRENBERG
beat picking up pace—what a physiologist might call an autonomic

‘fight-or-flight’ response. Tineka was not the only dancer to discuss
this relationship to video self-image. Erdem likewise recalled a ‘horri-
ble’ time when she ‘was genuinely shocked’ to see herself dancing on
video (interview 2). Candace talked about a time when she wanted to
cry because the experience of seeing herself on video was so awful.
Robert Bingham (2018), working with Sondra Fraleigh and writing from
a phenomenological perspective, also reflects on a similar experience with
video self-reflection, ‘I recollect my quickening awareness of being filmed
and the possibility that my dancing may become a composition for other
eyes […]’ (43). The anxiety which Tineka and Robert encapsulate evokes
Jean-Paul Sartre’s (1943) concept of ‘the look’ and how these dancers
might be indicating the alienation processes and shame in internalising
the gaze of the other in being and becoming professional-level dancers.7
Purser (2018a) implicitly supports a similar reading from dancer
descriptions of visual self-images as ‘distracting’ in discussion with
Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology. She summarises, from the contempo-
rary dancer descriptions from her research, that there is a distinction
between ‘the body as a source of transcendence’ and ‘the body as a source
of immanence’, but that, as such, an ‘over-reliance on the mirror (or
photographic) image of the dancing body was understood by the dancers
to focus too much attention on “making shapes” and on the objec-
tive positioning of the body in space’ (Purser 2018a, 41). She likewise
describes this experience as alienating for the dancers (41). As discussed
in Chapter 3, Purser (2018a) goes on to explore the dancers’ descrip-
tions as they relate to ‘inhabited transcendence’ (45) and how the dancers
descriptions bring out the body-focus in their practice. However, whether
or not we agree with how these experiences are philosophically framed,
what I would like to explore here is the aspect of body-as-object, or tran-
scendence interrupted by immanence, when dancers focus on their bodies
which renders the body an object to them and their experience reduced
to a being-for-others (Purser 2018a, 40), as something that might also
actually be a necessary part of a professional-level performing dancer expe-
rience, which one will never be ‘free’ from entirely and, thus, an area
of the practice we can further explore. That is, to explore the multiple
7 There is much more to unpick here to rigorously explore Sartre’s ‘the look,’ though
feminist philosophy and the power of the visual is a part of this philosophical lineage (e.g.
Ehrenberg 2019).
layers of this problem of visual self-reflection and being-for-others for

the context of performing contemporary dancers, and how this place of
discomfort in the practice might actually be understood as inherent to
being a dance performer and a space of creativity as much as a space of
alienation. This means also to question how much the dancers’ discussion
is also a reflection of a discourse and ideology within the style.
What I am trying to emphasise here is that these emotional responses
to disruption and negative readings of body-as-object in dancer experi-
ence provide another rationale for exploring productive ways of thinking
about dancers’ experiences with video self-images in the practice. That
is, by exploring a productive approach, without negating the arguments
of the power of the visual and body-as-object, and arguing that there
are a multitude of responses possible, is to affirm the multiple ways
dancers work with video self-reflection and work between kinaesthetically
feeling one’s dancing and imagining the visual apprehension of that same
dancing. Doing so might allow for more pragmatic means of responding
to times when visual self-images are emotionally disturbing and/or alien-
ating within the practice. One current response is to avoid the ‘critical
eye’ of the camera entirely. Indeed, Tineka suggests in other parts of her
interview that she principally focuses on the feeling of movement rather
than how the movement looks, and almost never looks at herself on video.
However, as mentioned above, with the proliferation of handheld video
devices and platforms featuring dance performance such as YouTube and
Vimeo, and the as yet unknown full impact of the pandemic and prac-
tising over zoom and other online platforms, it will become more difficult
to avoid video self-images as a contemporary dancer, as might have been
done previously. There is an ethical problem here, which I address in
another publication (Ehrenberg 2019) and in the next chapter, building
on feminist philosophy and the problem of the power of the visual as well.
This is a particularly rich time in the discourse to explore multiplicity
between dancers’ kinaesthetic experience and visual self-images. There has
also been increasing scholarship (critical thinking technology) to build on
the productive potential of seeming object-subject relations, supporting
the interpretation that, though disruptions may at times be experienced
by these dancers as troubling and/or reveal a troubling issue about power
and difference with the visual, disruptions might also be a necessary
aspect of becoming a professional-level dancer in the current contem-
porary dance economy. This perspective of multiplicity builds on the way
that identity formation, or processes of becoming, is theorised to include
210 S. EHRENBERG
moments of shift and change, as much as continuity and stability (Butler

1990).
Returning to Merleau-Ponty’s (1968) writings on chiasm, there can
likewise be found the call for a productive account of visual self-image and
becoming. He argues that chiasm is the very point at which we create our
Being, or in which our imagination helps us make connections between
self and other, which shapes who we are. ‘…there is not only a me-other
rivalry, but a co-functioning (Merleau-Ponty 1968, 215). As Gail Weiss
(1999) argues, Merleau-Ponty offers ‘the development of an intracorpo-
real spatiality … that provides a more positive and productive account of
the formation of the body image…as anintersubjective phenomenon that
need not be grounded in deception’ (13).
Weiss’ (1999) writings on body image as intercorporeality, utilising
Merleau-Ponty throughout, and her more recent work on normativity
(Weiss 2015), helps to begin to conceive how disruptions for these
dancers is productive. She writes about the multiplicity of body image(s)
we encounter that impact on a continual process of re-construction of
our body images and our identities, which when applied to dance also
suggests that dancers need to be conceived of as agents in the relationship
with chiasm and video self-reflection.
…the multiplicity of body images that we possess, rather than signifying a

fragmented or dispersed identityis paradoxically, precisely what helps us to
develop a coherent sense of self. More specifically, insofar as these multiple
body images are themselves generated out of the variety of situations
in which we find ourselves, they enable us to develop fluid and flexible
responses to them. Moreover, I would add, it is the ongoing exchange
that occurs between body images, an exchange that unfolds at the very
moment that one body image imperceptibly gives way to another, which
provides us with a sense of intercorporeal continuity, a continuity that is
reinforced through our concrete relations with others. (167)
Applying this thinking to the dancer interviews, what Weiss (1999,

2015) suggests is that the videos can offer the dancers other images of
their dancing—a multiplicity of dancing self-images—that might aid the
dancer in imagining something like a ‘dancing identity’. However, in this
chapter the focus is primarily on visual aspects of that identity, such as
‘that’s what I look like dancing’ or ‘that’s what I want to look like danc-
ing’. In other cases, it might be a dancing identity based around tactile or
auditory feedback. Put simply, isolating the visual aspects of these dancers’
dancing identities, if the video self-images were to always match how the
dancers imagined, then there would be no creative potential with these
interactions. As Weiss (2015) suggests, body images are not static viewed
things in themselves, but instead contribute to a ‘generation’ of other self-
images. Thus, video self-image disruptions pose potential to re-imagine
how the dancers want to project movement and re-imagine how they
want their dancing to appear to others. Video self-image disruptions are
thus also conceived as part of an ongoing evolving imaginary project for
the dancers with this re-framing, rather than a complete break of a flow
of wholeness which ruins them completely (significant discomfort might
happen at times and for some dancers, but it does not always have to
be the case). The dancers’ viewing of the dancing self-images on video is
intercorporeal in that it is in conjunction with a concrete thing—a video
image—but also in conjunction with an imagined ‘other’—the audience.
Parviainen (1998) indeed argues that dancers should study carefully
the gap between dancing and video image, as it is similar to the gap
between dancer and audience, which is often faced by the dancer during
performance. The disruptions between dancing and watching on video
might be useful in learning how to become more comfortable with gaps
that also might be felt between dancer and dancing for an audience. As
Parviainen (1998) states, the ‘mirror image [or video image] itself makes
possible contemplation of the self’ and likewise one’s dancing as oneself
being perceived by an ‘other’ (72). The video reminds the dancers that
‘I am also the image and impression of myself that is given to me by the
other person’, an other which is not my self (72), and this might help the
dancer to grapple with the otherness of performing and being watched,
especially at the professional-level. Confronting video reflection resem-
bles confronting audiences because it offers an ‘opportunity to learn to
understand the other’ (or the other’s perspective) ‘and construct one’s
own [dancing] identity’ via communion with otherness (73). Parviainen
(1998) poses this problem as a ‘responsibility’ for dancers, but this seems
particularly relevant to those working to be professional in the context of
contemporary dance, which makes the working through disruption more
palatable:
Dancers, in order to express meanings through movements experientially

lived, have to study the abyss between the experiential movements and
their visual appearance, the moving-moved. How are their lived move-
ments perceivable, since their experiential body is never totally visible to
212 S. EHRENBERG
the other? What do their movements actually reveal? Are they the same as
they experience doing them? (66)
Dance artist and scholar Susan Kozel (2007) echoes Parviainen’s senti-
ments and argues that self-reflection via technological devices (which
include video, although she writes more often about motion capture)
can serve as ‘a destabilization of identity that is fundamentally creative’
(39). By positing it this way, the dancers’ experiences of disruption can
be conceived of as part of their creative act of dancing and dance tech-
nique, and a continual re-construction of their dancing identity more
broadly. Kozel (2007) argues for a relational beingness with technology
for dancers and that they can re-construct relations with others in a
positive way. ‘Through technologies our relations with ourselves shift
(our movement, our perceptions, our thought processes) and inevitably
our relations with others shift too...’ (215). Reynolds (2007) likewise
identifies disruption as an essential aspect of creativity, especially in her
discussion of kinaesthetic imagination. She argues that one ‘[act] of
kinaesthetic imagination’ is disruption, ‘Movement events that disrupt
normative, habitual ways of using energy in movement and produce inno-
vations in production, distribution, expenditure and retention of energy
in the body…’ (4). Kinaesthetic imagination has a reflexive potential with
the use of technology, such as the moving-image on video (Reynolds
2007, 197) and ‘technology can itself extend the possibilities of kinaes-
thetic imagination’ (Reynolds 2007, 201). Aalten (2004) likewise found
with a group of ballet dancers that, though the visual ideal prevails in
their descriptions about dancing, ballet dancers are not left empty by the
gap, but work with it in a similar way to what I found for the group of
contemporary dancers:
But within the confines of these ideals, there were other stories. In these
stories the distance between the material and the ideal body was not only
a source of frustration, but also a challenge and a reason to work even
harder. In these other stories the body of the female dancer was not only
the clay that was necessary to mould a dancer’s body, but also a source of
worthy experiences and possibilities. (271)
Simon Ellis (2013) likewise, in his postulating of his digital self-reflection

as a kind of friend discusses the self-video images as a representation, or
confrontation, of the various identities through the lens of an expanded

notion of choreography:
If art is, as Brian Eno suggests, “the place where you become what you’d
like to be” (1996: 225), then perhaps these mediated choreographies –
with such distinct contexts (stage of career, audience numbers, economies,
ambition, complexity, narratives, etc.) – somehow reflect a confrontation
with the various identities I experience or imagine as a choreographer:
limited, open, closed, egotist, communicator, visionary, uncertain, confi-
dent, dogged ...“Strangely, the foreigner lives within us: he is the hidden
face of our identity ... by recognizing him within ourselves, we are spared
detesting him in himself. (Kristeva 1991: 1)”. (256–257)
This gap is addressed by performance theorist Susan Broadhurst (2006)

as liminal thresholds for new experimental practices:
It is also my belief that tensions exist within the spaces created by the
interface of body and technology and these spaces are “liminal” in as much
as they are located on the “threshold” of the physical and virtual. I am
suggesting that it is within these tension-filled spaces that opportunities
arise for new experimental forms and practices. (137)
In her study into the movement of the Tortugas, in which she immersed
herself in learning the movement, Sklar (1994) writes that distancing,
similar to disruption, was important for her to be empathetic, and to
see things from another’s perspective, and this helped her shift her
imagination and learn a new way of moving.
Once I made the change in imagination and watched myself synchronizing

with the other women’s performance, I could step back inside it and expe-
rience with pleasure the heat, the contact, and the waves of movement
and joking passing through the group. But first it took creating distance,
or dissociating from my body, to create the possibility of empathy. It had
been necessary to disembody, or “get a new perspective,” as the old folk
wisdom has it, to enable a different kind of embodied experience. (18–19)
Distance, dissociation and disembodiment are posed by Sklar as neces-

sary kinds of disruption to open up her empathic potential and thus
her experience of ‘other’ modes of embodiment. Albright (2011) like-
wise argues the position that moments of disorientation open up
new ways of doing contact improvisation and being a contact dancer.
214 S. EHRENBERG
Summarising a key argument from Sarah Ahmed’s (2006) book Queer

Phenomenology,Albright writes: ‘…these moments of disorientation, while
frequently disturbing at first, can also become “vital.” Indeed, being lost
can open up new directions and sensibilities that otherwise would escape
our attention’ (16).
How might these relatively well-established perspectives and argu-
ments from the discourse lead to more pragmatic ways to explore this
problem, towards this productive conceptualisation in practice? Below I
offer a possible response to this question, building on the previous work,
through discussion of the idea of ‘the productive look’ and foregrounding
the imagination.
The ‘Productive Look’

Film and feminist theorist Kaja Silverman (1992, 1996) proposes a way
of reflecting on self-reflection, foregrounding the imaginary, which she
refers to as ‘the productive look’ (1996, 5). With this idea of ‘the produc-
tive look’, Silverman (1996) argues that there can be ‘circumstances [in
relation to a screen] under which we nonetheless manage at times to
see productively or transformatively’ (3). Following Silverman’s thinking
and applying her idea to the dancers, she allows the possibility that even
if the dancers at first find their response to a video image disturbing,
they can reflect on that reaction and have what Silverman calls ‘an ethical
or nonviolent relation with the other’ (Silverman 1996, 3). Dancers can
appropriate a way of engaging with video self-reflection in the way which
Silverman suggests for other types of visual representations (e.g. narrative
film), as a sort of layered reflecting on reflection: ‘Although we cannot
control what happens to a perception before we become aware of it, we
can retroactively revise the value which it assumes for us at a conscious
level. We can look at an object a second time, through different represen-
tational parameters…’ (Silverman 1996, 3). Although the dancers initially
may be disturbed by what they see, they can reflect yet again on this reac-
tion of shock or view the video self-image again, reflecting on the initial
perception and how it shifts with the second viewing.
Silverman builds on Lacan’s (1973) idea of the gaze (and the screen)
for her analysis and, through Silverman, I find Lacan’s ideas about the
screen particularly useful to foreground the imagination and its role in
disruption for the dancers.
In his book Four Fundamental Concepts in Psychoanalysis, Lacan

(1973) conceives of the screen as a type of mimicry with which the subject
can play, precisely because the subject can be aware of their specularity—
he conceives of the subjects’ relation to a screen which foregrounds the
active imagination of the person seeing him/herself (Silverman 1992,
152). Lacan argues for an idea of play with the image, which is specif-
ically made as an extension to Merleau-Ponty’s productive conception of
chiasm above.8 Lacan gives this play metaphor a particularly performative
slant, as Silverman interprets it:
...the subject [unlike the animal]…is not…entirely caught up in this imag-

inary capture. He maps himself in it. How? In so far as he isolates the
function of the screen and plays with it. Man, in effect, knows how to play
with the mask as that beyond which there is the gaze. The screen is here
the locus of mediation. (107)
Silverman argues that there is a juncture in Lacan’s oeuvre with his ideas
of the gaze and the screen, more specifically he allows the subject agency
with these ideas (Silverman 1992, 149).9 She writes,
...consciousness as it is redefined by Lacan hinges not only upon the inter-

nalization but upon the elision of the gaze; this ‘seeing’ of oneself being
seen is experienced by the subject-of-consciousness-by the subject, that is,
who arrogates to itself a certain self-presence or substantiality – as a seeing
of itself seeing itself. (127)
8 Lacan explicitly states that Merleau-Ponty’s problem of reversibility and seeing-seen

from The Visible and Invisible are important to his ideas of the screen (Lacan 1973,
71; he states he only just received a copy of Merleau-Ponty’s ‘posthumous publication’).
Lacan claims to extend Merleau-Ponty’s idea of reversibility (and thus chiasm) to what he
calls ‘the gaze’, which expresses the idea of seeing-seen more as a multiplicity of factors
than a dialogic relationship. Lacan takes into consideration here Sartre’s the look too, but
foregrounds the imagination, ‘...the gaze of which Sartre speaks, the gaze that surprises
me and reduces me to shame…is, not a seen gaze, but a gaze imagined by me in the
field of the Other’ (Lacan 1973, 84).
9 See also Purser (2011) for analysis of Merleau-Ponty’s mirror stage with Lacan’s anal-
ysis of ‘negative alienation’ in the mirror phase, this being, I think, the oeuvre Silverman
refers to here. Purser likewise finds a negative sense of alienation not the ‘norm’ in
Merleau-Ponty’s account of mirror image perceptions and discusses this further in relation
to professional-level dancer experiences (189).
216 S. EHRENBERG
To play with the image gives dancers agency because they are given
the potential to see themselves being seen and to reflect on reflection
in the way Lacan describes. This last passage, as above with Silverman’s
‘good enough’ paradigm, allows for a paradox in self-reflection which also
reinforces the metaphor of play; the gaze, she argues,
reiterates the defining and structuring role of the screen, while at the
same time makes it possible to consider that it might be possible for a
subject [the dancer] who re-conceives of his or her necessary specularity [or
indeed how specularity is predominantly conceived] to exaggerate and/or
denaturalize the image/screen. (Silverman 1992, 149)
The dancers indicate by their descriptions that when watching the video,
they utilise disruption to imagine anew their dancing, re-imagining what
they want to do the next time they dance, re-reflecting what they kinaes-
thetically felt and what they want to kinaesthetically feel in the future.
They all reiterate the metaphor of play in that they suggest that, rather
than become entirely subservient to their self-image and passive under
their ‘power’, they also play with the image as it plays back at them, i.e.
mimics what they previously did. To ‘play with the image’ indicates a light
and experimental perception of one’s video self-image and re-affirms the
illusory properties of image (rather than supporting it as ‘reality’). This
is precisely what Ellis (2013) offers us above in his engagements with his
video self-image. We can see how this potential to see oneself being seen
can help to look again, and again, looking other ways each time.
Lacan’s metaphor of masking is also poignant for thinking about
dancers’ engagement with video self-reflection because the dancers are
performers and, even in contemporary dance, with its emphasis on kinaes-
thetic experience, dancers are playing with a type of masking via the
movement and image they are trying to project to an audience. When
there is disruption, something is not yet quite right with the masking
process for the dancer and they use disruptions to fine-tune the mask(s)
to be projected, or at least the dancer’s imaginative experience of the
mask(s).
The ideas of play and masking I find akin to a way of thinking encoun-
tered with social anthropologist Tim Ingold at a talk he gave at a Crossing
Borders at Independent Dance in London, UK on 15 November 2011
(Ingold 2011). In this talk, Ingold claims that how we conceive of objects
constrains our engagement with them. He argues that when we see things
only as ready-made ‘objects’, that they stay just that, ‘objects’. We in turn
treat these ‘objects’ as if they cannot be manipulated, changed, and played
with—they remain static as ‘objects’. For instance, he argues that if we
are given a glass of water and asked to study it as ‘object’ that we might
examine and admire it as a glass of water. However, when we start to
conceive of things as ‘material’, things take on a different meaning, simply
by re-conceiving them as such. For instance, if we conceive of the glass
of water as material, we might smash up the glass and use the shards to
make something else, or we might dump the water over our head and use
it as a shower, or put the glass in a recycling machine and make some-
thing else out of it. In essence, his point is that conceiving of things as
‘material’ gives things a playful and constructive meaning and as such we
engage with these things differently.
The same kind of thinking can be applied for video self-images to help
show how imagination can play a more central role in dancers’ engage-
ment with it. This is to address how predominantly video self-images are
conceived of as ‘objects’—static things fixed in time and space. One of
the dancers, Tineka, for instance was anxious about the video ‘capturing’
her dancing, implying that she felt it held her dancing in that video image
in time and space once it was made, that it became an image, and thus a
static object, only. This is not an uncommon view and I believe it comes
out of a predominant thinking, among many people, not just dancers,
that video self-images are objects, and ‘objectifying’, only. Again, I do
not want to exclude this interpretation because I think it is one facet of
video self-image engagement and think that it is indeed one other way to
respond to video self-image.10 However, if dancers can also, at the same
time, think of video self-images as ‘material’, as Ingold frames, dancers
can be open to explore further this other facet of video self-reflection as
part of (a series of) processes of being a dancer, and as something they
play with in the same way as smashing the glass above. In sum, the play-
fulness with video self-images and its ‘material’ quality can be brought
out more in practice.
Thinking of the video as one kind of imagination, rather than a fixed
entity, is one way to conceive of video self-images as more an interpre-
tation of ‘material’ than a fixed meaning of an ‘object’. The video must
be viewed for it to have meaning. The video does not have meaning in
10 Please see Ehrenberg (2019) for a more detailed exploration of the power of the
visual from feminist theory and the fieldwork informing this research.
218 S. EHRENBERG
the way the dancers describe by itself. As Haraway (1988) argues in her
discussion of feminist potential of scientific objectivity with the metaphor
of vision, ‘There is no unmediated photograph or passive camera obscura
in scientific accounts of bodies and machines; there are only highly specific
visual possibilities, each with a wonderfully detailed, active, partial way of
organizing worlds’ (583). Indeed, a video of someone dancing will have
a very different meaning for a random spectator versus the dancer who
did the movement. So, following Lacan via Silverman, the meaning of
the video essentially lies in the dancers’ perception and interpretations
of it. The dancer’s imagination in viewing and interpreting that image is
what gives that image meaning. The dancer’s memory of that video image
and re-creating that image in their memory signals the imagination. This
perspective also helps to foreground the imagination in the productive
intercorporeal potential of experiences of disruption and disorientation
between kinaesthetic experience and visual self-images, from the dancer
perspective, as discussed above, as well.
Video Use as Skill

There are other more concrete aspects of the dancers kinaesthetic and
video self-image relations that provide further perspectives of the mate-
riality of the video and these encounters, and pragmatic approaches to
foregrounding the imagination in the practice.
Mads is one of the contemporary dancers who suggests (though other
dancers hinted at this idea as well) that over time a dancer becomes
skilled at using video as a feedback tool, in the same way as one might
develop skills using any form of technology, such as contemporary dance
technique, hand–eye coordination with video gaming, or kinaesthetic-
animation coordination with motion capture. Video use as skill offers yet
another refinement of discussion about body memory in skilled experi-
ence, as discussed with Summa (2018) above, and how it couples with
our environment and has, in some situations, the capacity to grasp the
novelty of a situation at the same time as using sedimented habituated
skill. Video use as skill, as Mads describes, also begins to address what De
Jaegher (2015) notes as the ‘intricate, multi-layered complexity of daily
life intersubjectivity’, particularly for the case of contemporary dancers in
dance contexts (n.p.). Or as Zanotti (2019) summarises of the work of
Lisa Nelson and dancing experience and video, ‘A second viewing of a
film often reveals something that was not visible the first time around’
(n.p.).
With the increasing availability of video camera technology and the
increasing emphasis of video as a performance platform, such as YouTube,
Vimeo, and a wide array of social media, the current and subsequent
generations of dancers are more prone to (or need to at least think about)
their developing dancing relationship and technical skills with video tech-
nology. The global marketplace will continue to impact on dancers in
this way, continuing to re-shift dancers’ engagement with various types of
visual self-reflections in the practice.
Mads used video self-reflection and investigated his improvisational
skills via video feedback for his BA dissertation at a performing arts
conservatoire in London, UK. He indicates when talking about this expe-
rience that the relationship with his video image changed as the project
progressed; more specifically, the more he saw himself on video, the less
troubling it became to watch himself, as he became more familiar with
how his dancing appeared:
Mads : […] in the beginning, when I started doing that dissertation thing, I
was looking at myself, going ‘oh my god’, it was actually uncomfortable
watching, but it got to a point where I went, ok let’s just use it, it’s a
tool to…see and analyse movement in a way…and…if I just look at it
as if..I was a teacher teaching myself…so….you look at yourself going,
you’re actually not using that much of your feet when you’re doing
it, you’re not stretching out…you’re too tense and you need to relax
more…so it’s kind of like telling myself…..you know…
Shantel: Corrections and that…
Mads: Yeah….so it’s as if the choreographer was there…but you’re trying
to be in the same mind-set as the choreographer… (interview 1).
Although Mads principally talks about what’s missing when he watches

video, ‘you’re actually not using that much of your feet’ or ‘you’re too
tense’, what he indicates in a productive direction is that he learns to
watch himself with a more pragmatic approach and a more consciously
analytical lens, in the same way as a teacher or choreographer would
view another dancing in certain contexts. As mentioned in the previous
chapter, contemporary dance values training dancers as choreographers,
so this training in particular greatly helps Mads take that different point
of view. Mads suggests he learns in this project to consciously put himself
220 S. EHRENBERG
into certain ‘outsider’ positions when watching himself on video, in

contrast to a passive viewing of the video self-images.
Time = Distance
Time away from doing the phrase and filming it helps the dancers engage
with the video differently too. Several dancers in the second interview,
when we watch the video filmed from the first interview, indicate that the
time away from actually doing the movement helps them view the video
self-images differently. In other words, if the dancers view the videos right
after making/recording them, they have a significantly different response
to viewing the videos a week or more later. Several dancers in the research
indicate that time has a significant impact on viewing video self-images
and whether they are or are not able to use the video self-reflection
constructively as part of the processes of becoming professional-level
dancers.
The theme of time, between recording and viewing, reveals another
level of malleability of the video self-images for the dancers and another
way that the context is critical to how the dancers view the images
as material.11 Time, between recording and watching the video self-
recordings, reveals multiple relationships possible, between the dancer and
their perceptions of the video. Some of this issue of time is evident above
in the dancers descriptions already, however, there are other moments in
the dancer interviews where this issue of time came up more explicitly.
The research methodology is crucial to this theme because it allowed
time between making and watching the videos. What this process reveals
are the difference between how the dancers are more kinaesthetically and
emotionally attached, sensitive, and critical of the videos, when movement
is just performed, versus when watching that same video a few weeks later,
in a subsequent interview.
Erdem, for example, discusses her experience in terms of feeling less
critical of the image.
11 This issue of context and viewing is a point also given in the historical account of
mirrors by Sabine Melchoir-Bonnet (1994, 5), ‘Men of the eighteenth century, by then
familiar with household mirrors, did not look at themselves in the same manner as men
of the twelfth century, for whom the reflected image went hand in hand with the devil’.
Erdem: It is easier to watch it after time, because you become less critical,
I think, or I think I do. Because your expectations have changed and
when you watch it back in the moment, or, in the same timeframe,
for instance in rehearsal or something like that, I feel like you have
more control over it, in that you can change it in the moment. And
I suppose you have an expectation of yourself, at all times. Whereas, if
you are distanced from it, then you have kind of moved on. So it does
not matter what it was, it just was that. Does that make sense?
Shantel: What do you think makes it more difficult to watch it the last
time, when we were in [the other] studio [during previous interview]?
Erdem: I think because I was closer to [the movement experience], my
expectation was different, my expectation of myself was different to what
I saw. Of course, as it always is, pretty much, but there’s a sense of
frustration in not achieving that and also potential to achieve that, at
that time. Like, you have more [potential for] effect. And, I suppose,
watching something back, straight away, it is very much…I am used to
using [video] as a rehearsal tool, or something like that, in which case
you watch it in order to improve on it, or choreographically improve
it, I suppose, to see exactly what it looks like. And I was just in a very
judgmental frame of mind to view [the video in that moment] […] So,
I suppose, when you see something later, you are definitely not in that
process….
The way that Erdem talks about this impact of time with watching the
video self-images does not give power to the image, rather it places
the power with the viewer and the temporal context that the viewer
is watching the video. The critical intensity and power of the image
decreases as time away from the experience of performing that movement
increases. Or put in another way, the video might have a distinct power
and/or a critical reading when first viewed, particularly after just videoing
the movement, but then there are these other readings as Erdem watches
the video a second or third time, particularly if she is out of the rehearsal
process.
Mads likewise addresses the issue of time and the perception of the
video self-images in his interviews. Related to the dissertation discussion
highlighted above, for instance, Mads indicates how he became aware of
an explicit familiarity with his video self-image as he watched himself on
video many times. His description above indicates there was a first viewing
that was more destructively critical, but then a second and possibly more
viewings over time of the same video images which revealed a more
222 S. EHRENBERG
constructively critical teacher and/or choreographer perspective in rela-

tion to them. Again, as with Erdem, Mads indicates how his relationship
and perception of video self-images changes over time along a spectrum of
different types of critical self-viewings in the project of becoming dancer.
Jasper, a contemporary and hip hop dancer, talks about watching video
several times as a way of ‘exhausting himself of all the different criticisms’
he sees on the video and to be able to get to a constructive engagement
with it. He indicates that this multiple viewing helps him drain the needs
out of the video, as he says, until there is no need for that video image
any more. Instead of the image capturing him, he expresses a power in
his ability to ‘exhaust the image’ through multiple viewings.
Jasper: I think the more you watch the video, the more you get out of it,
until you are really drained of all the needs [of the video]…
Shantel: Or drained yourself?
Jasper: Exactly.
Jasper supports the argument for the multiple viewing and critical or
constructive eye similar to Mads above. In another part of the interview,
Jasper says that video is something he gets used to because he has seen
himself on video so many times. In other parts of his interview, like Erdem
above, Jasper talks about how his ‘mindset’ impacts on his viewing as well.
That is, sometimes he is watching the video detached from it because he
is tired or has a different working intention for the day. The idea of being
more constructive and seeing oneself as another would, with time, Jasper
also talks about. In his second interview, for instance, Jasper talks about
viewing the video recorded in the first interview as ‘not me’, and that he
was correcting his own video image as he would another dancer, echoing
Ellis’s (2013) writing above. Again, like Erdem, he says that if he watches
a video straight after recording it he is probably more worried about it.
He also talks about how the week in-between the first interview and the
second interview impact on his viewing, talking about how he had taught
the movement and that teaching and doing the movement again over the
week made him view the video differently, similar to Willow above and
her experience between the two interviews.
I am not encouraging dancers to watch video self-recordings over and
over to get rid of the power of the image with this interpretation. Mads
also talks about the importance of dancing away from video and paying
attention to kinaesthetic sensations when dancing. Rather, I am arguing
here for how we can understand videos temporality as much as their

means of capturing and fixing as one of the more concrete elements of
exploring the productive look and foregrounding the imagination. The
risk of becoming too absorbed with the video image remains, particularly
in the age of selfies and easy access to video recording. But I do not think
it is one or the other, but both—the impact of time and the risk of narcis-
sism—that dancers can explore. The former has been discussed less than
the latter in dance discourse related to visual self-reflection to date.
Conclusion
In this chapter, I address the problem that contemporary dance as a
performing art has a visual aesthetic and therefore needs to look a certain
way despite a historical discursively constructed and nurtured polarisation
of the kinaesthetic and the visual. Different ways of conceiving of contem-
porary dancers’ engagement with kinaesthetic experience, performance
and dancing video self-image(s) are presented to argue for the multiple
and complex relations for dancers’ with visual-based self-reflections and
to argue that some contexts require contemporary dancers to reflect on
what they look like dancing from the outside. Principally, I argue that
dancers intertwine an imagined idea of how their movement appears to
the outside with their kinaesthetic experiences. This became evident as
a theme during the fieldwork when the dancers indicate that previously
viewed video self-images intertwine with their next kinaesthetic experi-
ence of the same movement. The dancers suggest by their descriptions
that the video images previously seen at times ‘fold into’ their next
kinaesthetic experience.
However, as much as there is intertwining there are also disrup-
tions, discontinuity, and gaps in these contemporary dancer descriptions
between kinaesthetic experience and visual self-images recorded in the
interviews. This chapter also discusses the issue that what the dancers
do not see in the video can also impact their kinaesthetic perceptions.
In other words, this chapter focuses on those moments in the inter-
views when the dancers indicate disruption between what they previously
kinaesthetically felt of movement and how they perceive that same move-
ment on video. Merleau-Ponty’s (1968) chiasm is utilised to explore the
problem that dancers will always experience disruption between kinaes-
thetic experience and video self-reflection, because the dancers will always
224 S. EHRENBERG
be on the same side as their body, and never be completely removed to

be able to objectively perceive themselves in video self-reflection.
One response to this problem is to foreground the imagination in
these experiences. Kaja Silverman’s discussion of ‘the productive look’
building on Lacan’s ideas about the gaze helps to explore how these
moments of disruption and mismatch are an opportunity to play with the
dancing being projected back and experiment with the masking processes
in becoming a professional-level dancer. This opens up a discussion about
the materiality of objects discussed by Tim Ingold and expanding poten-
tial in thinking of video self-images as material, which dancers might
continue to play with. Put in another way, how these dancers might
continue to explore how their imagination is central to how they view,
perceive, and play with the video self-images of their dancing made in the
interviews, and in the practice.
Building on the foregrounding of the imagination and its potential
in the liminal space between kinaesthetic experience and dancing self-
image(s), some of the dancers indicate they have a particular skill in using
video self-reflection. Understanding and exploring this skill might chal-
lenge and problematise the intensity of a critical eye when watching video
self-images, and moving beyond judgemental aspects of watching oneself
dancing on video for these professional-level dancers. Nurturing video
self-reflection as a skill in contemporary dance practice might be particu-
larly useful in learning to work with the alienating aspects of performance
and of being watched by an audience, which can provoke a similar kind of
anxiety. Time away from the direct and immediate kinaesthetic experience
of the movement seen on video might also help, since in the interviews,
it appears that there is a distinct temporal impact to these viewings for
the dancers. In addition to these suggestions, the dancers can also think
beyond their initial reflections and not fall ‘victim’ to the power of the
visual. Merleau-Ponty, Lacan, Silverman, and others above inspire the idea
that dancers can re-reflect on dancing self-reflections and that, in dance
practice, dancers can thus play with how the imagination lies at the centre
of engagements with video self-reflection, even in cases of disruption and
alienation.
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CHAPTER 6
Concluding Diffractions | Diffracting

Conclusions
Diffraction is a mapping of interference, not of replication, reflection, or

reproduction. A diffraction pattern does not map where differences appear,
but rather maps where the effects of differences appear. (Haraway 1992,
300)
Differential, grounded perspectives are the motor for differential patterns

of becoming. (Braidotti 2019, 19)
In the previous chapter, I conclude on the idea that what is at work

between dancers’ kinaesthetic attention and video self-reflections is the
imagination. In conversation with Silverman, I propose how dancers look
at their video self-images a second (and more) time(s), through different
representational parameters (Silverman 1996, 3). Instead of seeing video
self-images as fixed objects, video self-images can also be conceived as
material with which dancers can play, as Lacan (1973; Silverman 1992)
and Tim Ingold (2011) inspire.
The dancers indicate many layers of dancing imaginations in relation to
recording and watching video self-images in the interviews, some imag-
inings emerging in response to intertwining with the memories of the
video images, such as the videos leaving marks on kinaesthetic imagina-
tion the next time they do the phrase, other imaginings emerging out of
disruption via the video images, and what was not seen in the video in
relation to the dancers’ kinaesthetic experience. Encountering a number

Switzerland AG 2021
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73403-9_6
230 S. EHRENBERG
of different ‘others’ enables these dancers to continually think through

different approaches to performance, and different ways of becoming the
dancer in the style that they want to be expert in as performers, including
contemporary dance.
Knowledge is situated
The research informing the previous chapters lead to other considerations,
questions and concerns. As addressed in Chapter 1, this book is grounded
in the position that all experience—and all knowledge—is situated (e.g.
Haraway 1988). I want to return briefly to this issue and explicitly reflect
on how the research informing this book is situated. That is, this book
represents a research project that spans a particular time in contempo-
rary dance and dance studies, which includes significant paradigmatic
shifts across a wide range of fields (e.g. performance studies, sociology,
psychology, philosophy) particularly on the subjects of reflection and
human-technology relations. This book, from a bird or drone’s eye view,
reveals a UK-based white able-bodied cis-gender dance artist-scholar
working across a time of considerable change in ontoepistemological
frameworks, as Karen Barad (2007, 43) puts it, including discourses
addressing human-technology inter/intra-action(s). The previous chap-
ters are principally grounded in phenomenological, ethnographic and
poststructuralist critical perspectives related to self/other relations, disci-
pline and power, and ideologies and values which principally empha-
sise the social and foreground human experience and (human) agency.
However, within the last themed chapter there is a slight shift towards
issues of materiality and the malleability of human-technology relations,
such as with kinaesthetic experience and video self-images. I find this shift
to reflect the research’s historicised context and signal a move towards
posthumanism and new materialism, though the research in the previous
chapter does not do so explicitly. It is useful to explore briefly the histor-
ical situatedness of this research in this regard to then open up to some
final diffractions that the research leads to, as a means to more explicitly
address the research situatedness and limitations, as well as affirming that
no research is finished or fixed.
As mentioned in the introduction, I began the fieldwork informing
this book in 2008, working between Manchester and London, UK. This
is a time in dance studies when there is a distinct bringing together, and
yet building critique, of ‘the natural’ and the social principally across
6 CONCLUDING DIFFRACTIONS | DIFFRACTING CONCLUSIONS 231
poststructuralist and scientific perspectives. For instance, as discussed in

Chapter 2, the topic of kinaesthetic empathy emerges with a distinct
currency at this time, with neuroscientists, sociologists, psychologists,
and dance studies scholars grappling with similar questions and problems
relating to this concept (Foster 2011; Reynolds and Reason 2012). This
is a time of paradigmatic shifts with dance and technology in performance
and practice as well. Butterworth and Wildschut (2018) state, reflecting
on contemporary choreography from 2009 to 2018, ‘New developments
in technology have inaugurated a new era for dance archives, education,
research and creation […]’ (5) and bring in a series of new chapters
addressing perspectives on contemporary dance choreography and tech-
nology. Bleeker and Delahunta (2017) evidence this in their overview
of a number of projects informing the edited collection Transmission in
Motion: The Technologizing of Dance. They argue for the interconnected-
ness of technological change and dance as a discourse: ‘The descriptions
of these projects coming into being testify to how the ways in which
they took shape are intertwined with the emergence of new technolog-
ical possibilities they could draw on’ (Bleeker and Delahunta 2017, 7).
Most of the projects in their book span from early 2000 to 2016. Across
the projects featured, the incredible boom in social media platforms and
portable ‘smart’ technologies is evident. The project Synchronous Objects,
for instance, started in 2005 when, as Zuniga Shaw states, ‘YouTube
was a new phenomenon […] and the potential for sharing great quality
video online was still emerging’ (7). Dance practice and dancer expe-
rience in the practice is impacted on by these paradigmatic shifts. As
Bleeker (2017) succinctly summarises in the introduction, ‘What we know
and how we think therefore cannot be understood separately from the
technologies we use to process, store, and transmit information’ (xix).
Bleeker argues for how the shift occurring at this time impacts on how
we conceptualise and philosophise cognition and movement, crucial to
dance.
The research informing the current book occurs over the time when
Karen Barad (2007) publishes Meeting the Universe Halfway, and larger
shifts can be seen historically in the critical theory and philosophy
discourse, in particular the relatively new fields of new materialism and
posthumanism. Other critical publications that inform new materialist
and posthumanist perspectives include Donna Haraway’s (2016) Cyborg
Manifesto, Rosi Braidotti’s (2002, 2011) Nomadic Subjects and Meta-
morphoses: Towards a Materialist Theory of Becoming, just to name a few.
232 S. EHRENBERG
This shift can be argued to continue with Braidotti’s (2013, 2019) The
Posthuman and Posthuman Knowledge. More recently, the larger shift at
play is summed up more broadly by Bayo Akomolafe (2020):
In a world where intentionality, agency, causality, learning and memory

can no longer be safely ensconced away in the fleshy caverns of human
be-ing – and at a time when modern civilization, our cherished binaries,
our institutions, and our cultural lexicons are unfurling at their seams,
grappling with resolute impasses and spinning black holes... (n.p.)1
Akomolafe indicates in this description, in particular with the terms they

use, such as intentionality and agency, and also writing from a philosoph-
ical point of view, that this ‘world’ that is unfurling and facing resolute
impasses and spinning black holes includes the academic institution and its
historicised frameworks. Bleeker (2017) likewise indicates this paradigm
shift as transformative/in a time of transformation, in her summary of the
edited collection discussed above: a ‘wide variety of fields that point to
meaning as something that is performative and comes into being’ is ‘now
at odds’ with meaning as something that ‘transforms, is relational, and
emerges from the interplay between our cognitive perceptual practices and
the technologies used’ (xix). More concretely, Bleeker (2017) states that
the projects explored in her book ‘offer a complex image of knowledge
cultures in transformation’ (xxi).
Adapting what Bleeker argues, this book cannot be understood sepa-
rately from the technologies used to process, store, and transmit infor-
mation, such as language, dance technique/discipline, and, as explored in
the last chapter, dancers’ engagements with video self-images in the prac-
tice (Bleeker 2017, xix). Rapid technological developments impact on the
access of hand-held video devices which impact on the dancers’ experi-
ence discussed in this research. But also, critical theory as a technology,
with its own innovations, such as via postmodernist and new materialist
thinking, also impacts on the processing and transmitting of informa-
tion. As Akomolafe (2020) proposes above, this book comes at a time
full of unknowing, grappling, and spinning. Braidotti (2019) refers to the
current moment as a ‘posthuman convergence’ which I find succinctly
summarises a position in which this book is situated. Braidotti (2019)
communicates this position of not knowing and paradox with great skill,
1 With thanks to Stefanie Sachsenmaier for referring me to this material.

providing a position of affirmative acceptance for ending on an opening

in these posthuman times:
We are not in a position yet to fully grasp the complexity of these internally
contradictory phenomena. We need much more research on the material
aspects that compose those phenomena, on their assumptions and impli-
cations. […] Yet, this process of transformation towards the posthuman
should not be taken for granted, like a sort of evolutionary destiny or
socially inevitable goal. It is more useful to approach it instead as an exper-
iment and ensure that it becomes the focus of public discussions, collective
decision-making processes and joint actions. […] All the more reason to
acknowledge that the posthuman convergence is already here, being the
prime marker of our historicity (38)
The research informing this book is predominantly embedded in notions

of poststructuralist and constructivist subjectivity, such as in the conver-
sations with Bourdieu, Foucault, Merleau-Ponty, and Silverman—and,
importantly, the wealth of dance studies building on these perspectives,
and others. And yet the research informing this book also leads me to
question, grapple and spin with some of the flow and complex assem-
blage Braidotti describes. Her elaboration of the above position, related
to agency and consciousness, is highly relevant to the research informing
this book as well:
Firstly, that the agency commonly reserved for subjects is not the exclusive
prerogative of Anthropos. Secondly, that it is not linked to classical notions
of transcendental reason. Thirdly, that it is de-linked from a dialectical
view of consciousness based on the opposition of self and others and their
struggle for recognition. The knowing subject is not Man, or Anthropos
alone, but a more complex assemblage that undoes the boundaries between
inside and outside the self, by emphasizing processes and flows. Neither
unitary, nor autonomous, subjects are embodied and embedded, relational
and affective collaborative entities, activated by relational ethics (Braidotti
2019, 39).
I acknowledge that this research does not yet fully achieve a de-linking
from the ‘dialectical of consciousness’. For one, this text does not explic-
itly interrogate its situatedness in my interpretations as a white female
able-bodied cis-gender dance studies scholar working principally from
European and US points of view. Despite this limitation, the research
234 S. EHRENBERG
informing this book aims to move towards what Braidotti advocates

for and there is an understanding of previous philosophical perspectives,
ontologies and epistemologies, that bring the research to this place, in
part. Hence, although Braidotti’s call is not fully fleshed out in this book,
I conclude on final diffractions to address what Braidotti (2019) argues
for in terms of working towards a more sustainable future:
[…] there is much to be gained by approaching the posthuman present

along the parallel plateaus of the actual and virtual […] because by positing
a time continuum as a process ontology of becoming, the practice of social
and cultural criticism of the current crises can be supplemented by the
more affirmative project of constructing sustainable alternatives (51).
For instance, there is an ethical problem in the currency that video self-
imagery is gaining in our capitalist neo-liberal-driven Western-dominated
worlds. As Haraway (1988) writes, ‘Vision is always a question of the
power to see – and perhaps of the violence implicit in our visualizing
practices’ (585, italics original). This chapter aims to begin to address
questions such as: How might rapid changes with video recording devices
be seen as creative and relational in becoming dancer (as discussed in
Chapter 5) without losing sight of the problem of the politics and power
at play? Or as Braidotti (2019) asks: How can we continue ‘approaching
time as a multi-faceted and multi-directional effect [enabling] us to grasp
what we are ceasing to be and what we are in the process of becoming ’ (51
italics original)?
Dancing with new materialism and the posthuman

One of the issues explored in the previous chapter is those experi-
ences of alienation of being watched (by oneself on video, though
this also includes choreographer(s), teacher(s), audience), as a part
of being/becoming a professional-level contemporary dance performer,
which fieldwork with video self-images helps to explore. Dancing with
new materialist and posthumanist thinking offers further interpreta-
tions related to this alienation, building on the previous explorations.
New materialist and posthumanist perspectives, in conversation with the
fieldwork and my own experience, offer additional considerations and

questions, in an open-conclusion.2
The dancer interviews suggest that despite a foregrounding of kinaes-
thetic awareness in contemporary dance practice and discourse, the
issue of projecting a visual aesthetic with one’s own body neverthe-
less brings feelings of alienation because of the very nature of being
a dance performer. As Purser (2011) also argues, putting in conversa-
tion Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology and a group of professional-level
dancers’ discussion of mirror use in their practice: ‘[…] as both Massumi
and Merleau-Ponty predict, the feeling that the mirror image somehow
interrupts movement and in doing so produces feelings of alienation and
objectification […] is central to the dancers accounts of their experi-
ences of using mirrors in learning dance’ (190). Purser (2011) likewise
goes on to write about how the mirror alienation signals a complex
necessary interaction of inside and outside in the lived-experience of the
professional-level dancers she interviews.
Focusing attention and intentionality on kinaesthetic awareness in
contemporary dance mitigates the sense of alienation in being a contem-
porary dance performer, who is the dancing that is the art, to an extent,
from the dancers’ perspectives, as well as addresses a political problem
of dancer as spectacle/object/shape only. Previous research explores the
concept of the of the visual in feminist philosophy related to the fieldwork
(e.g. Ehrenberg 2019). I argue in this publication how the dancers indi-
cate the power of the kinaesthetic as a means to undermine the power
of the visual in their practice, thus, as in the previous chapter, discuss
dancers’ foregrounding of the imagination related to visual display and
the video self-images in the practice.
What new materialism and the posthuman perspectives help to begin
to explore here is agency as multiplicity and, as such, come back more
explicitly to issues of politics, namely power and ethics, in these relations
2 Incidentally, as I work on this chapter, a call for papers (cfp) for a Performance
Research special issue ‘On Diffraction’ circulates. The cfp expresses related concerns and
potential for the concept of ‘diffraction’ in new materialist (e.g. Barad) and posthu-
manist (e.g. Haraway) thinking and performance studies. They argue: ‘So far, although
posthuman and new materialist theories have begun to sound across various conceptual
playing-fields and educational landscapes, strikingly less attention has been paid to how
these might affect the development of performance and performance studies. How might
new considerations of posthuman and new materialist concepts of diffraction become part
of the way we envision, create and practice in the twenty-first century?’ (n.p).
236 S. EHRENBERG
with video self-images in ways that are important for future inquiries
in this area of study.3 That is, if agency is conceived in its multiplicity,
not just residing with the dancer, this conceptualising offers even more
to ‘play’ with. I will explore this briefly conceptually below, however,
in sum, the point is that the dancers’ descriptions can further be inter-
preted as working at an intersection of multiple agencies, such as a
dancer’s individual sense of dancing agency, but also the agency of the
audience, the agency of the technique, or the agency of any other mate-
rial (e.g. video self-images). There are multiple moving materialities and
agencies at play, though my interest below is focused on the contem-
porary dancers’ point of view, in the dance studio, before the curtain
rises. Dancing with new materialist and posthuman perspectives below
begins to expose some subtle shifts in future interpretations related
to this group of dancers’ experiences and knowledge in the practice,
particularly related to kinaesthetic experience, video self-images and the
fieldwork. As Rebecca Schneider (2015) addresses, despite the work
of incredible performance studies scholarship, ‘[m]ost scholars consider
living humans to be the only agents with their fingers on the puppet
strings […]’ however new materialism helps to reverse that perspective, in
part (10). ‘The dominant (scholarly) Western imaginary still rigorously
polices borders distinguishing live and nonlive, human and non’ (10).
Intra-action
Karen Barad’s (2007) concept of agential realism, more specifically the
concept of intra-action, extends the sense of play and materiality in the
previous chapter, while also addressing issues of non-linear time, non-
dualism, and the Anthropocene.4
3 This might be usefully contrasted in future research with other dance studies scholars
who take up new materialism and environmental crisis in their work, which seem to
indicate a complicated matrix for the discourse, particularly in terms of complexities of
‘nature’ and ‘the natural’ (e.g. Kramer 2012; Fraleigh 2018).
4 It is beyond the scope of this chapter to go into critiques of new materialism
(e.g. Ahmed 2008). While I find specific ideas and concepts discussed under the
umbrellas of new materialism and/or posthumanism useful here to expand understanding
of phenomenologically informed discussions of reversibility and the dancers’ described
engagements with video self-reflections in the interviews, I do not suggest that all of
the answers are ‘new’ or to now be found within these more recent umbrella fields
alone. I engage with these concepts with the understanding that there are going to be
One of the first key points about agential realism Barad argues is that
intra-acting is phenomena. As Barad (2007) states:
A phenomenon is a specific intra-action of an “object ” and the “mea-

suring agencies ”; the object and the measuring agencies emerge from,
rather than precede, the intra-action that produces them. Crucially, then,
we should understand phenomena not as objects-in-themselves, or as
perceived objects (in the Kantian or phenomenological sense), but as
specific intra-actions (128, italics original).
Importantly, intra-acting focuses on relations and emergence.

To begin to explore this slight shift in engaging with ‘intra-acting is
phenomena’, I return to the Mads’ discussion in the previous chapter
about video self-images impacting on his kinaesthetic experiences when
dancing the same phrase seen on video recorded in the interviews. As
stated in the previous chapter, I ask Mads about the video coming up in
the excerpt below because it came up in other dancer interviews and in
my own experience. Below is after having viewed himself dancing a phrase
on video and doing the phrase again.
Shantel: …..did you think, just now doing it, did the image of the video
just watching it come up at all?
Mads: Uh…yeah it came up….um……….. it was more of a…um…warning
signs…that is, ‘oh this part you did it really hard on the video’….and
problems left unaddressed philosophically and critically, beyond the scope of this chapter.
There are relationships to be found between discussion of Merleau-Ponty’s intertwining
in the previous chapter and intra-acting to provide some evidence of a logical reasoning
as to why intra-acting extends some of the thinking in the previous chapter, however.
For instance, Barad explicitly states that her discussion of the concept of intra-action is
distinct to intertwining: ‘To be entangled is not simply to be intertwined with another,
as in the joining of separate entities, but to lack an independent, self-contained existence.
[…] individuals emerge through and as part of their entangled intra-relating’ (Barad
2007, ix). Intertwining, according to Barad, implies an inherent separability, subject and
object remain distinct. Intertwining, she argues, problematically centres the experience
and examination on the human, thus limiting the potential for emergence through intra-
action. She argues that, through each intra-action, it is ‘impossible to differentiate in any
absolute sense between creation and renewal, beginning and returning, continuity and
discontinuity, here and there, past and future’ (Barad 2007, ix). Intra-acting, by contrast
to intertwining, helps to rethink how historicised conceptions of space and time impact
on our discussion of how things come to be, challenging existing conceptions of social
and material relations. See also Kissmann & van Loon (2019) in which it is argued that
Merleau-Ponty’s discussion of visibility and invisibility impact on the development of new
materialist concepts.
238 S. EHRENBERG
‘this part, you did it….in this way, keep that…still, and, emphasis in this
part’……(interview 2).
What phenomena is this intra-action? What is becoming dancer in this

intra-action of Mads’ flesh, video self-image, memory trace, and imagina-
tion? What is the dancing that is becoming here?
Before addressing these questions directly, its useful to touch on how
Barad clarifies the concept of intra-action, arguing for how agencies are
entangled. Entangling agencies helps to avoid re-instating subject/object
binaries. In contrast to phenomenological discussions of agency where
intentionality might be critiqued for centring on human experience,
Barad argues that intra-action considers intentionality ‘as attributable to
a complex network of human and nonhuman agents’ (Barad 2007, 22–
23). As Barad clarifies further, ‘[…] it is less that there is an assemblage of
agents than there is an entangled state of agencies ’ (Barad 2007, 22–23,
emphasis mine). In other words, when human and non-human entities are
in relation, their agencies and different directed intentionalities, entangle.
Barad (2007) writes:
Agency is a matter of intra-acting; it is an enactment, not something that

someone or something has. Agency cannot be designated as an attribute
of subjects or objects […] Agency is a matter of making iterative changes
to particular practices through the dynamics of intra-activity (including
enfoldings and other topological reconfigurings) (214).
Critical here is that agency is not something that someone or some-

thing has, rather, agency emerges in intra-action, which is found through
dynamic, reconfiguring, and changing practices. As Domm (2019) like-
wise interprets: Barad’s ‘[…] notion of agency is reworked insofar as it
cannot be conceived of as a property of an individual subject; instead,
agency is to be identified in the world’s ongoing intra-activity – the
world’s “dynamism is agency” […]’ (69).
With Mads description above, there is an enfolding of the video and
the kinaesthetic imagination, as well as an enfolding of Mads experiences
into the video and the video responding to Mads. Mads is entangled
with the video enacting agency in this intra-action. In contrast to the
previous chapter, agency, according to a new materialist perspective, is
not only attributed with Mads as (human) dancer. The agency emerges
in the dynamic intra-action of dancer and video self-images. Enfolding
therefore is slightly different to the interpretation in the previous chapter

of ‘folding in’, in that enfolding centres more on the intra-action, the
in-between. This slight shift helps to decentre the human in these dancer-
video self-image intra-action dynamics and consider what might become
in and with these intra-actions.5
As Barad clarifies: ‘Agency is about the possibilities and accountability
entailed in reconfiguring material-discursive apparatuses of bodily produc-
tion, including the boundary articulations and exclusions that are marked
by those practices’ (Barad 2007, 214). Boundaries are not absent; in
this example, there are the boundaries between the dancer, video device,
and video self-images. Instead, there is a slight shift in the perspective
on how boundaries are conceptualised that in turn impacts on different
perspectives which can further impact on the practice. As Barad clarifies:
‘Agency is “doing” or “being” in its intra-activity. It is the enactment of
iterative changes to particular practices—iterative reconfigurings of topo-
logical manifolds of spacetimematter relations —through the dynamics of
intra-activity’ (Barad 2007, 178, italics original). Mads and the touch of
another dancer, a costume, a mirror are all different forms of intra-action
and changing possibilities entailed in reconfiguring material-discursive
apparatuses of bodily production (Barad 2007, 178). It is beyond the
scope of this chapter to explore all of the possible intra-actions and these
final diffractions only touch the surface of what agencies are enacted in
the ‘topographical manifolds of spacetimematter’ of a dancer’s described
kinaesthetic experience with video self-images. Some of this has been
explored in the previous chapter. Here I aim to extend and expose further
methodological and theoretical questions, in dancing with Barad’s new
materialist concept of intra-action which might begin to decentre the
human, which the previous chapters do not address explicitly.
5 For parallel analysis of dancer experiences see recent writings of motion capture (e.g.
Hutchison and Vincs 2013; Karreman 2017). Exploring other dancer-technology experi-
ences raises interesting questions about the familiarity of technology(ies) and what might
be noticed and/or what might be made habitual because of the familiarity in experience
with how the technology operates. Karreman’s (2017) discussion of Hutchison’s meta, a
performance which seems to make motion capture’s impact on the artist visible through
its absence, raises questions as to whether video’s impact might be similarly revealed in its
absence, or whether video technology is so embedded in our everyday that its untangling
in this way is not possible?
240 S. EHRENBERG
Barad’s discussion of agency has a critical sense of movement, which

is particularly useful to the discussion of dancers’ kinaesthetic experi-
ences and visual self-images in the practice—what happens there, what
this might mean, and what this knowing might signal for how contem-
porary dance develops more broadly as a form, especially in the context
of burgeoning technologies that are increasingly impacting on contempo-
rary dance practice. Barad’s discussion of entangled states of agency builds
on what I find with Silverman in the previous chapter in relation to the
potential for change, e.g. re-reflecting on reflections. As Coleman (2018)
interprets: ‘For Barad, “agency” is […] the process of cause and effect
in “enactment” (p. 214) […] Like Braidotti, Barad’s position argues that
in and through the entanglements of matter, agency also refers us to the
“possibilities for worldly re-configurings” (Barad 2012, p. 55)’ (n.p).
The concept of performativity is crucial to Barad’s ongoing sense of
movement and relation. Performativity, as part of intra-action, helps to
focus attention on the ‘practices of engagement with, and as a part of,
the world’ in ways that work against binaries that position the human as
central to understanding relations in practice (Barad 2007, 133). ‘[…] a
performative account insists on understanding thinking, observing, and
theorizing as practices of engagement with, and as part of, the world in
which we have our being’ (Barad 2007, 133). Barad takes seriously the
concept of performativity as something that all material has access too.
Performativity is not only a way of conceiving of socially constructed ways
we engage with gender (Butler 1990), for instance, but also provides an
opportunity to question our epistemological and ontological assumptions,
and, as she puts it, unexamined habits of considering how the social and
material intra-act.
Agential cuts
While the foregrounding of the imagination, as I explore in the previous
chapter, is one way of conceiving of dancers’ kinaesthetic experience and
video self-images, and how one might understand how this particular way
of working with video self-image can be productive, it is still principally
centred on the underlying principal of the human. The centring of the
human is clear, for instance, when Lacan gives the video a sense of play,
in discussing how the human plays with the mask of the screen (Silverman
1992, 149). Lacan argues that this is what differentiates ‘man’ from ‘ani-
mal’, this ability to play with the self-image. And thus, my building on
this point of view in the previous chapter means the conclusions drawn
are also partially implicated in an anthropocentric view.
I write ‘in part’ because Silverman’s feminist philosophical position
might also be interpreted as part of the philosophical history of new mate-
rialism and posthumanism, in their indebtedness to feminist philosophy.
Barad (2003), for instance, expresses her ‘more limited goal’ with her
seminal essay on posthumanist performativity, ‘[…] is to use the notion of
performativity as a diffraction grating for reading important insights from
feminist and queer studies and science studies through one another while
simultaneously proposing a materialist and posthumanist reworking of
the notion of performativity’ (811). Braidotti (2013) supports the argu-
ment for a similar historicisation for her posthumanist perspective: ‘…the
posthumanist position I am defending builds on the anti-humanist legacy,
more specifically on the epistemological and political foundations of the
post-structuralist generation, and moves further’ (38).6 The links between
feminist philosophy and poststructuralism, which Silverman’s work is a
key part of, are thus critical to the thinking that links the previous analysis
to the preliminary explorations here.
In Barad’s discussion of agential cuts, the issue of apparatus is impor-
tant because of how it helps align, as well as help to subvert and queer,
the concept of apparatus as both material and social.7 For instance, to
consider the video as apparatus and the contemporary dance technique
as apparatus, or recognising as Haraway (1988) does ‘our own “semi-
otic technologies” [as well as the more obvious ‘physical’ technologies]
for meaning making’ (579). The use of the concept of apparatus is one
of the ways that Barad (2007) helps to ‘[…] theorize the social and the
natural together, to read our best understandings of social and natural
6 It might also be argued that some of my critical discussion of phenomenology in

Chapter 2 signals a move away from other positions that echo Lacan. For instance,
Sheets-Johnstone (2018) argues, ‘Humans are uniquely gifted through the practice of
phenomenological methodology […]’ (6). I do not argue against this claim per se;
however, the central positioning of the human perspective does raise question which I
find perspectives critical of the anthropocentric view help to reflect on, particularly related
to historical lines of thought that might need to be reconsidered.
7 Apparatus is of course a term frequently used by Foucault & Deleuze, see, for instance,
Lepecki (2007): ‘As Gilles Deleuze explains Michel Foucault’s major contribution to a
political theory of signification, the concept of apparatus is one that foregrounds percep-
tion as always tied to modes of power that distribute and assign to things visibility or
invisibility, significance or insignificance’ (120).
242 S. EHRENBERG
phenomena through one another in a way that clarifies the relationship

between them’ (25). Barad’s discussion of apparatus explores how cuts
are essential to relation. Again, Barad’s framing of apparatus related to
agential cuts is to try to move beyond historically predicated binaries.
And as Braidotti (2013) argues in her discussion of the posthuman, ‘The
technological apparatus is our new “milieu” and this intimacy is far more
complex and generative than the prosthetic, mechanical extension that
modernity had made of it’ (83). Where might agential cuts signify the
boundaries of the phenomena, and yet are also a necessary part of any
resolution perceived in this intra-acting that is phenomena because of
the boundary-making function of apparatuses? In Barad’s (2007) words:
‘In short, the apparatus specifies an agential cut that enacts a resolution
(within the phenomenon) of the semantic, as well as ontic, indetermi-
nacy. Hence apparatuses are boundary-making practices’ (148, italics in
original).
The critical point here is that agential cuts determine the boundaries
between the components that are intra-acting. However, boundaries are
indeterminate. Indeterminacy is an essential part of every intra-action. We
perceive boundaries because the components of what we are investigating
are intra-acting. Thus, phenomena will always reveal boundaries, because
it is these boundaries that are necessary for there to be intra-action. The
gaps need to be there for the intra-action to resolve something. But that
resolving is not finite or towards a whole. Rather, the intra-actions reveal
how there are an indeterminant amount of possible entanglements to
enact a multitude of possible resolutions because of the multitude of
apparatus which are relating in any given enactment.
There is the multiplicity of apparatus in the exploration of Mads’
experience in the example above for instance. There is the apparatus of
his kinaesthetic experience, dance technique(s), bodily affordance, video
device, and video self-image, to name only a few apparatuses at work in
this example. Barad argues that agential cuts refer to the boundaries that
are articulated and made meaningful via the apparatus under examination
of the phenomena. This brings in the indeterminacy that is argued to
always be present with any apparatus enacting phenomena. Agential cuts
are made meaningful in my examination of the apparatus of Mads’ kinaes-
thetic experience which I relate to the apparatus of his dance training and
the apparatus of the video and self-image. There is an indeterminacy with
these entanglements of apparatus; there are an indeterminant number
of boundaries to be articulated and made meaningful in the particular

instance of Mads and his experiences with his dancing self-images.
This discussion of apparatus by Barad resolves a problem for me in
the previous discussion in Chapter 5 of Merleau-Ponty’s reversibility
and ‘double sensation’, such as explored with two hands touching. For
Merleau-Ponty two hands touching is one hand touching another, I can
feel my right hand touching my left, as much as two hands touching to
make one intertwining experience; as much as there is an intertwining,
there is also a gap between them which my various perception-ings of the
hands brings up. What is different, however, is Barad and Merleau-Ponty’s
implicit conceptualisation of time with intertwining and intra-acting.
Folding in related to Merleau-Ponty is a linear sense of time. As Kissman
(2019) argues, referring to Phenomenology of Perception, ‘Merleau-Ponty’s
sense of the virtual [past folding in to the present into the future…] is
entirely embedded in the classical rectilinear structure of time’ (23).
Barad’s (2007) discussion of quantums helps to further illustrate the
both/and of intra-acting and agential cuts, to re-consider the interpreta-
tions above in terms of time. Barad’s discussion of quantum leaps also
helps to expand on the sense of play brought in with Silverman and
Ingold in the previous chapter. Barad (2007) summarises,
Quantum leaps aren’t jumps (large or small) through space and time. An
electron that ‘‘leaps’’ from one orbital to another does not travel along
some continuous trajectory from here-now to there-then. Indeed, at no
time does the electron occupy any spatial point in between the two orbitals.
But this is not what makes this event really queer. What makes a quantum
leap unlike any other is that there is no determinate answer to the question
of where and when they happen. The point is that it is the intra-play of
continuity and discontinuity, determinacy and indeterminacy, possibility
and impossibility that constitutes the differential spacetimematterings of
the world (182).
The discussion of quantum intra-action is crucial to Barad’s discussion

of new materialism overall and the epistemological and ontological shift
related to historicised concepts of how we conceive of space and time that
inform the new materialist perspectives Barad is offering. This ‘discovery’
of quantum leaps helps to challenge fundamental positionings about what
might be fixed within our perceptions of material and phenomena; more
specifically, bringing to question significant positionings about how we
conceive of our perceptions and previous ‘truths’ coming out of social
244 S. EHRENBERG
constructivism and/or scientific positivism. Put in another way, Barad’s

discussion of quantum leaps asks us to question some of the embedded
frames through which we understand phenomena, particularly related to
materiality. To question fundamental aspects of how we think the world
works, such as how time ‘works’ in our perceptions of dancing bodily
experience and video self-images. As Kissman (2019) puts it:
Time is conceived in the sociology of, for example, Max Weber as a linear
course of events. Within this framework, the present becomes the past
and the future turns into the present. The linear structure of time was
long considered as a precondition for action and causality. However, in
the current discussion of “new materialism” this concept of time is ques-
tioned by authors such as, for example, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari
(1997), Bruno Latour (e.g. 2005, 2008) or Karen Barad (2007). The
former authors each draw upon the sociology of Gabriel Tarde in order to
develop a concept of nonlinear time. In this perspective, time is understood
as imitation and differing repetition (21).
Crucially, then, is the point that as much as there is continuity to allow

us to perceive phenomena as intra-acting, as discussed above in rela-
tion to video self-images and the dancers’ kinaesthetic experiences, there
are also always discontinuities, indeterminacy, and impossibility. Differen-
tial spacetimematterings are crucial to the world and it is the intra-play
between any components of agential cuts, continuity, and discontinuity
or indeed subject and object, which is crucial to intra-action. In short,
agential cuts are necessary and will always be there. Paradoxically, then,
while dancers might work to make sense, make relatable, their kinaesthetic
experiences and video self-images, they might also always encounter these
gaps, these cuts. This is, as Barad (2007) puts it, the indeterminate nature
of existence. As she goes on to argue:
Or to put it another way, if the indeterminate nature of existence by its

nature teeters on the cusp of stability and instability, of determinacy and
indeterminacy, of possibility and impossibility, then the dynamic relation-
ality between continuity and discontinuity is crucial to the open-ended
becoming of the world which resists a causality as much as determinism
(182).
In sum, the dancers in my fieldwork support the argument that they are
creative and ‘play’ with these marks—the cuts, gaps, and chiasm that
they face in experience in the practice. As technology proliferates, such

as video access on hand-held devices, critical and practical resistances to
these forces is continually necessary, not least coming out of the continued
re-valuing of digital technologies that will undoubtedly continue to occur,
and impact on dancers’ experience and frequency of encounter with visual
self-reflections. Barad (2007) helps to articulate the creative potential with
discontinuity, cuts, gaps:
The re-working of exclusions entails possibilities for (discontinuous)

changes in the topology of the world’s becoming. But not everything is
possible at every moment. Interior and exterior, past, present, and future,
are iteratively enfolded and reworked, but never eliminated (and never
fixed). Intra-actions reconfigure the possibilities for change. In fact, intra-
actions not only reconfigure spacetimematter but reconfigure what is
possible (182).
The cuts and exclusions which the video self-reflections provide the
dancers entail possibilities for (discontinuous) changes in the topology
of the dancer’s becomings as part of the world. But it is not only the
dancer’s agency that might work to make these discontinuities contin-
uous, as in the way the dancer’s play with the video images the next
time they do the phrase and/or the videos ‘come up’ in the dancer’s
memory and directs their intentions towards a certain becoming related
to these video self-images. There are other possibilities to consider and the
extent to which discontinuities are as important as intra-action. There are
indeterminate agencies and discontinuities to consider, entangled within
seemingly simple everyday intra-action(s) of a dancer dancing, recording
their dancing, and then watching a video self-image of that dancing.
Becoming (contemporary) dancer

The above discussion of indeterminacy, gaps, and cuts hints back to the
previous chapter discussion about dancers’ knowing and intelligence in
the practice, as Parviainen (1998) and others argue. Dance knowledge,
like all knowledge practices, entails indeterminacy, gaps, cuts. Knowledge
is simultaneously and paradoxically an entangling and differentiating.
Knowing is not about seeing from above or outside or even seeing from a
prosthetically enhanced human body. Knowing is a matter of intra-acting.
246 S. EHRENBERG
Knowing entails specific practices through which the world is differen-

tially articulated and accounted for. In some instances, ‘‘nonhumans’’ (even
beings without brains) emerge as partaking in the world’s active engage-
ment in practices of knowing. Knowing entails differential responsiveness
and accountability as part of a network of performances. Knowing is not
a bounded or closed practice but an ongoing performance of the world
(Barad 2007, 149).
The point Barad is helping to consider, with her exploration of agen-

tial cuts, and a point continually grappled with in the discourse in
terms of dancers’ practice, is how we might, in the configuration of
entangled agencies, consider further the ethics, and power dynamics,
between the contemporary dancer and video self-image in these partic-
ular intra-actions. As Domm (2019) summarises of Barad (2007), ‘[…]
the entanglement of phenomena points to ethical implications: insofar as
the unfolding of the world’s becoming produces both connections and
boundaries, inclusions and exclusions, it requires an ethical engagement
with the range of configurations that can be realized’ (69). Entangled
agencies entail response and responsibility to the particular boundaries
and phenomena being configured (Domm 2019, 69). Or as Barad puts
it, it ‘entails an ethical obligation to intra-act responsibly in the world’s
becoming, to contest and rework what matters and what is excluded
from matter’ (Barad 2007, 178). This discussion is not new, but it
does keep metamorphosing as technology changes; indeed, others offer
rich analysis on becoming dancer (e.g. Manning 2009; Rothfield 2021)
and critical and practical developments with(in) the dance and tech-
nology discourse, which includes performance, aesthetics, and practice
research (e.g. Parviainen 2011; Blades 2015, 2017; Jennings-Grant 2017;
Karreman 2017; Blanco Borelli and Monroe 2018; Butterworth and
Wildschut 2018; Defrantz 2019a, b; Duke University 2020a, b; Bench
2020; Katan-Schmid 2020). Harmony Bench (2020) sums it up well:
Dance makes visible how cultural processes recruit participants at the level
of their embodiment, offering an opportunity to consider the various polit-
ical, cultural, and technological projects into which we are enlisted without
our full awareness or knowledge. Dance scholars thus have an opportu-
nity— perhaps even a mandate— to contribute their deep investments in
bodies as sites of knowledge and practice to such analyses of digital cultures
[…] (12).
Ongoing consideration of ethics, and power, in dancer-technology rela-

tions, especially those increasingly found in ‘everyday’ contemporary
dance environments, will in turn contribute to better awareness in bodies
as sites of knowledge.
Ethics and power

‘Recognizing the embodied and embedded, relational and affective posi-
tions of humans is a form of situated knowledge that enhances the
singular and collective capacity for both ethical accountability and alter-
native ways of producing knowledge’ (Braidotti 2019, 16).
As mentioned above, a key reason I find the concepts of intra-action
and agential realism useful is for how they lead to re-considerations of
ethics and power in terms of the contemporary dancer and visual self-
image experiences discussed, and in the light of current technologies
(including theoretical ones) in which this research is situated. However, as
also noted above, there remains an underexplored centring of the human,
and anthropocentricism, in the previous analysis.
One problem central to the above discussion is how contempo-
rary dancers are currently exploring, critiquing, and complicating (or
not) their increasing work with video self-image(s), with the continuing
proliferation of hand-held recording devices and video performance plat-
forms, including social media. Exploring (or not) to what extent dancers
might be ‘becoming machine’ (Braidotti 2013) in the practice at the
same time as they are ‘becoming dancer’ as video technology prolifer-
ates. Or put another way, explore how becoming dancer might include
becoming machine, as much as it might include multiple other becom-
ings, such as becoming choreographer as Roche (2015) argues in detail,
also focusing on the dancer’s perspective in the practice. Andre Lepecki
(2016) addresses the concern I am trying to address here, in specific
reference to choreographic analysis:
In the context of ever-expansive cyber-industrial and cyber-stately policing

apparatuses in Western democracies— where the unprecedented surveil-
lance of the citizenry, the privatization of cultural activities, the econo-
mization of artistic expression, and the movement of sociality as mainly the
movement of Self(ie)-images disseminated through controlled and mone-
tized cyberplatforms are the rule— the unruly promises of performance
and performativity must be reckoned with by power. Thus, performance
248 S. EHRENBERG
and performativity find themselves a primary target for surveillance and

for being (ab)used by surveillance and for being (ab)used by economic
and state power. Faced with this situation, the choreopolitical question
becomes: how to act under such predicament and propose something else,
a “differential and differentiating process of materializing and mattering,
which remains uninsured and unanticipated, persistently and interminably
susceptible to the spectral forces of eventness,” to quote Athena Athana-
siou’s definition of the performative (Butler and Athanasiou 2013, 140)?’
(19)
It is beyond the scope of this book to fully address the problem of

surveillance and all that Lepecki addresses,8 however the above discussion
with Barad and Braidotti moves towards this, by exploring differentiating
processes of materialising and mattering. My hope in moving towards
diffraction helps to complicate previous movings with reflection (Haraway
1992), towards a critically informed perspective on repetition, between
dancer kinaesthetic experiences and video self-images for instance, that
continues to put difference at its core (Bench 2020, 49); disruption,
gaps, and chiasm as necessary shifts in ongoing cohesions with(in)
one’s contemporary dancing experiences and in becoming contemporary
dancer. Or as Bench (2020) writes in discussion of restaging, reperfor-
mance, and hyperdance, ‘Unworking refers to the interruption through
which cohesion as completion is disrupted’ (53).
Barad (2007) writes that the indeterminate nature of existence and
causal intra-actions refers to ‘marks left on bodies’, which recalls the idea
of ‘folding in’ discussed in the previous chapter and how the video makes
a ‘mark’, or memory trace, on the dancers’ kinaesthetic experience the
next time they do the phrase. Except here, in contrast to the discussion
in the previous chapter, Barad (2007) refers to bodies in relation to all
materiality, she is not referring to bodies as solely human.
Either way, what is important about causal intra-actions is that ‘‘marks are
left on bodies’’: bodies differentially materialize as particular patterns of the
world as a result of the specific cuts and reconfigurings that are enacted.
Cause and effect emerge through intra-actions. Agential intra-actions are
causal enactments (176).
8 The (in)fertile territories project is precisely trying to grapple with this and related
issues. I will continue to pursue this thinking in/through the project, in the capacity I
have to do so. Please see Ehrenberg (2020) and https://shantelehrenberg.weebly.com.
With the Mads example, I discuss how the video self-images leave a
mark on Mads the next time he does the phrase. This idea comes out
of conversing with the concept of ‘folding in’ with Merleau-Ponty. But
bringing in Barad’s perspective, marks are left on all material ‘bodies’,
marks are left on the video bodies too. The marks on the video might
not be perceived in the same way as we do the marks left on the dancers’
bodies. Marks are left on the videos in the sense of economy and use,
for instance. Indeed, Laura Karreman’s (2013) research on video annota-
tion tools supports the argument for technologies developing specifically
with contemporary dance and the dancer in mind, some of them since the
1980s (122). These technologies intra-act with technologies emerging for
other purposes, extending the idea of the video technology and agency.9
Barad’s (2007) proposal of materiality of all bodies and the call to
consider the agency of the non-human in some ways parallels Braidot-
ti’s (2013) discussion of Deleuze and Guattari’s ‘becoming machine’, as
mentioned above, more specifically her discussion of Guattari’s ‘machinic
autopoiesis’. She states that machinic autopoiesis radically redefines
machines as both intelligent and generative because machines, like organic
matter, self-organise (2013, 94). Machines also aim to create meta-
stability and their own forms of alterity, as individual humans do (2013,
94). As with Barad’s (2007) discussion, machinic autopoiesis likewise
helps us to question mediated subjectivity (Braidotti 2013, 94).
‘The relationship between the human and the technological other has
shifted in the contemporary context, to reach unprecedented degrees of
intimacy and intrusion’ (Braidotti 2013, 89). This intimacy, Braidotti
argues, links becoming machine to the posthuman predicament. It makes
it very difficult to distinguish boundaries between flesh and metal for
instance, thus indeed dancer and video recording device. Becoming
machine moves beyond metaphor and imitation. Instead, we now have ‘a
more complex political economy that connects bodies to machines more
intimately, through simulation and mutual modification’ (Braidotti 2013,
89–90). The ‘visual modes of representation’, she argues, are replaced
by ‘sensorial-neuronal modes of simulation’ (Braidotti 2013, 90). And,
importantly for the point for becoming dancer and becoming machine
related to video self-image, she argues that ‘all technologies can be said to
have a strong bio-political effect upon the embodied subject they intersect
9 Forsythe’s (2011) discussion of Choreographic Objects might be considered a parallel

exploration of the object and issues of agency (see also Karreman 2017).
250 S. EHRENBERG
with’ (Braidotti 2013, 90). The video self-image has a strong bio-political
effect on the dancer. Bringing in the issue of ethics more concretely to
this problem of bio-political effect upon the embodied subject (than done
in the previous chapter) she argues, ‘technological mediation is central to
a new vision of posthuman subjectivity’ and ‘provides the grounding for
new ethical claims’ (Braidotti 2013, 90). Furthermore, the idea of play
is a key part of this ethics: becoming machine is a process which intro-
duces ‘a playful and pleasure-prone relationship to technology…’ (2013,
91). ‘[A] political dimension [which sets up] the framework of recom-
position of bodily materiality in directions diametrically opposed to [or at
least becoming more aware of] the spurious efficiency and ruthless oppor-
tunism of advanced capitalism’ (Braidotti 2013, 92). Becoming machine
helps ‘to rethink our bodies as part of a nature-culture continuum in
their in-depth structures’, which is what engaging with Barad’s agen-
tial realism above does as well (Braidotti 2013, 92). Re-considering the
proposal of agency and the video, with what Braidotti discusses and
the Mads example above, there is a political dimension to re-explore.
For instance, to consider how Mads is entangled with a video device
driven by capitalist desire and function, and also neoliberal forces which
complicate or disguise senses of agency in/with/through these devices,
and consider what becoming contemporary dancer emerges from these
ongoing, potentially daily, entanglements. In a re-framing of Braidot-
ti’s (2013) words, video self-images in this example ‘are…devices that
both capture and process forces and energies, facilitating interrelations,
multiple connections and assemblages. They stand for radical relationality
and delight as well as productivity’ (92).
Exploring this reframing, even if only briefly here, helps to move
towards new modes of subjectivity in relation to visual self-image tech-
nologies in contemporary dance. As Braidotti (2013) argues, ‘The
merger of the human with the technological results in a new transversal
compound, […] radical transversal relations that generate new modes of
subjectivity’ (92). There is a multiplicity and entanglement which the
exploration with Barad’s agential realism offers. Braidotti’s discussion
of becoming machine likewise considers transversal crossing, and assem-

blage, of the multiple layers of the subject, ‘from interiority to exteriority
and everything in between’ (Braidotti 2013, 92).10
Future questions can continue to address what emerges in the intra-
action between dancer and video self-images, as entangled agencies,
therefore addressing further the problem of what contemporary dance,
and the contemporary dancer as a part of this larger field, becomes
in these transversal crossing and assemblages. Particularly since, in the
case of dancers and video self-reflection, differing and emerging agencies
contributes to each body having, or imagining and feeling it having, its
own currency and power-relations particularly in prevailing Westernised
profit-oriented capitalist frames.
This open-ending exploration of agential realism and the posthuman
acknowledges an ongoing problem of difference and the risk of ‘techno-
transcendence’ (Braidotti 2013, 97). As Braidotti (2013) argues, a need
to continue to be careful how a focus on indeterminacy might relate to
the political economy of advanced capitalism.
In the electronic frontier, […] the technologically mediated point of

reference is neither organic/inorganic, male/female, nor especially white.
Advanced capitalism is a post-gender system capable of accommodating
a high degree of androgyny and significant blurring of the categorical
divide between the sexes. [The technologically mediated] is also a post-
racial system that no longer classifies people and their cultures on grounds
of pigmentation (Gilroy 2000), but remains nonetheless profoundly racist
(98).
How might the assemblage of dancers’ kinaesthetic experience and video

self-images in the practice as a part of this electronic frontier continue to
be problematised? Considering this question I am led to further questions
about the repetitive nature of dancer and video self-image intra-actions
10 Philipa Rothfield’s (2019) discussion of Deleuze’s reading of Nietzsche and force

seems to have potential here, though more research is needed. In the presentation, Roth-
field’s discussion suggests that the idea of force (‘forces as virtual tendencies’) might have
some cross-overs with Barad’s agential realism; indeed, Barad is informed by Deleuze as
well. Rothfield’s discussion of corporeal formation, Master’s Ripose, and specific prac-
tices within postmodern dance which decentre the self seems particularly relevant to my
speculations with Barad’s work. See also Rothfield (2021).
252 S. EHRENBERG
which might signal what Bench (2020) discusses as ‘indifferent differ-

ences’ (42). Are these disruptions ‘only differences that cannot make a
difference’ (Bench 2020, 42)? Future research will continue to pursue this
concern and address Braidotti’s call for ‘a strong theory of posthuman
subjectivity’ to re-appropriate these processes of racism and sexism and
also offer ‘alternative ground for formations of the self’ (Braidotti 2013,
98).
While this research and its focus on the lived, felt practice is indebted to
a history in the discourse that Alison Phipps (2019) discusses as ‘“leaning
in” to indigenous contexts and being reconstituted dialogically’ (2), as
discussed in Chapter 1, it does not explicitly address and problematise
relationships to indigenous practices or indeed other issues of difference
such as race, sexuality, and dis/ability. Phipps (2019) argues that focusing
on the lived, felt practice is a ‘creative practice’ which attempts to ‘break
with colonial, epistemic ways of seeing in order to open a space for a
way of writing between philosophical prose, personal story and poetic
activism’ (2). As I complete this manuscript, I understand that while on
the one hand I aim to contribute to better understanding of contem-
porary dance(r) experiences as knowledge in its complexities, there is still
much more work to be done to achieve what Phipps (2019) advocates and
what Held (2019) discusses as a coproduced ‘multiparadigmatic space’. I
hope that in questioning contemporary dance as a homogenised form,
coming from the dancer’s perspective, the work might be useful towards
other issues of difference in its analysis of contemporary dance values, the
‘natural’ and ‘social’ of the kinaesthetic, and dancer-visual self-image rela-
tions. I hope that the work contributes to what Gail Weiss (2015) argues,
which is that Merleau-Ponty’s ‘phenomenology of embodiment legacy’,
and critiques of it (e.g. Young, Butler, Fanon, Garland-Thomson) can
help to overturn accepted notions of normalcy, naturalness, and norma-
tivity (77). However, I also remain keenly aware of Schneider’s (2015)
warning:
If we are not careful to attend to intersectional histories of how matter

has materialized differently or unevenly for different people and things in
different places and times, the new materialism threatens to ignore the
important difference between Beckett’s and Foucault’s modes of posing
the [questions: ‘What does it matter who is speaking?’ (Beckett) and ‘What
difference does it make who is speaking? (Foucault)’] (13).
There are a number of dance studies scholars whose work is and has
been addressing questions considering norms and normativity, in partic-
ular race and the decolonisation of contemporary dance, in ways that are
critical to new modes of subjectivity that Braidotti (2019) calls for. The
2019 Dance Studies Association Conference at Northwestern University
in Chicago, IL, USA, featured a wide range of international scholars
whose work is leading in this regard. One of two ‘Gatherings’, titled
‘Decolonizing Dance Discourses’, on the specific topic of ‘training’ and
‘technique’, was emblematic of issues contemporary dance is grappling
with (Croft et al. 2019; see also Banerji and Mitra 2020). The panel,
including academic/artists/scholars Anthea Kraut, Clare Croft, Imani Kai
Johnson, Janet O’Shea, Munjulika Tarah, Shanti Pillai, and Royona Mitra,
gathering to decolonise key terms, such as ‘technique’ and ‘training’,
in dance studies ‘in its universalising, Eurocentric, and English-language
modes’, which take for granted competing cultural perspectives. This
session (and the research and practice discussed, including during the
Q&A) addresses ongoing essential questions for contemporary dance,
such as how we might be upholding whiteness through ignoring transmis-
sion of whiteness in our practices, the never-ending process of decoloni-
sation we need to address, questions about how we discipline in dance
training/possibly giving up the fantasy of mastery, and how to continue
to be critical of the terms ‘decolonise’ and ‘decolonisation’ (Banerji and
Mitra 2020). Parallel to events such as this gathering, other dance scholars
address how ongoing decolonisation of university and conservatoire dance
curriculums will impact on contemporary dancers’ experiences in the prac-
tice in significant ways (e.g. Kerr-Berry 2012; McCarthy-Brown 2014,
2017; Davis 2018; O’Shea 2018; Prichard 2019; Walker 2019). More
movement towards citation, teaching, honouring, contributing, and allo-
cating resources to black and global south dance scholarship will impact
on important discussions and change related to contemporary dancers’
practices and the kinaesthetic and the visual (e.g. Ahlgren et al. 2020).
As will further understanding through the research from eminent prac-
titioners and scholars exploring African diaspora dance, in particular
Afrofuturism, such as has informed the last several years’ Collegium for
African Diaspora Dance (CADD) gatherings, events, and publications
(2020).11 In the UK, recent work, such as the Contemporary Dance and
11 See also a number of sources by Thomas DeFrantz (e.g. 2016, 2019a, b).
254 S. EHRENBERG
Whiteness project (Mitra, Stanger, and Ellis 2020), and other publications
(e.g. Burt and Adair 2017; Adesola 2018, Sörgel 2020), signals impor-
tant movements across both theory and practice to better address issues
of race and decolonisation in and through contemporary dance; not only
examining what we experience on the stage, but also what happens in and
around the studio, before the curtain rises.
A response to the above summarised concerns in dance studies and
practice might be to utilise contemporary dancers’ specialised ability
to respond kinaesthetically; that is, being kinaesthetically sensitive, as
discussed with a kinaesthetic mode of attention, as a productive way to
address difference in and through contemporary dance practice(s). For
instance, kinaesthetic awareness might be the tool to sit with, decon-
struct, and respond, to anger, frustration, discomfort, and pain that might
come with trying to productively address anti-racism in contemporary
dance, to build new practices, and to work towards taking action, not
simply thinking and talking about the problems. While from one perspec-
tive there seems potential in this idea, that something like kinaesthetic
sensitivity, as a value of the practice, field, and discourse is a way to ‘stay
with the trouble’ (Butler 1990).12 Indeed, it seems Sara Ahmed (2007)
suggests, writing about a phenomenology of whiteness, is to pay attention
to that which falls below our attention, to notice those habits of white-
ness that inhabit our spaces and our actions. This is part of how ‘whiteness
holds its place’, she argues (2007, 156). ‘It is by […] attending to what
is habitual and routine in “the what” of the world, that we can keep
open the possibility of habit changes […]’ (Ahmed 2007, 165).13 Ahmed
(2004, 2007) is not concerned with a contemporary dance context in
these analyses, however. There are questions that remain as to whether
the practices and values, within the sub-culture of contemporary dance
more specifically which point towards a kinaesthetic mode of attention
as it is discussed in Chapter 3, might need a much more radical re-
thinking/doing. This re-thinking/doing can take into action the work
already done by a number of scholars, including Sara Ahmed (2004,
2007) as well. ‘Racism would not be evident in what “we” fail to do, but
what “we” have already done, whereby the “we” is an effect of the doing’
12 This was offered as part of the conclusion by event co-chair Adesola Akinleye at ID’s
2019 Higher Education Roundtable (Independent Dance 2020).
13 See also Weiss (2015) and Fanon (2008) related to the ‘white gaze’, body schema,
and (kinaesthetic) empathy.
(Ahmed 2004, n.p). She specifically offers important critiques of the

transformative potential of self-reflection, such as might be critiqued with
focusing on kinaesthetic awareness as the ‘answer’ to anti-racism, which
recalls some of the scholarship that critically analyses somatic practices and
questions of universalist ideologies (Ginot 2010; George 2014, 2020).
‘The term ‘self-conscious’ has its own genealogy; its own condition of
emergence’ (Ahmed 2004, n.p). Ahmed (2004) goes on to caution how
a self-conscious subject is ‘classically a bourgeois subject, one who has
the time and resources to be a self, as a subject that has depth which
one can be conscious about in the first place’ (n.p). Elsewhere Ahmed
(2007) calls us to consider the ‘the effect of accumulations’ and what
we inherit, which the above-cited dance studies scholarship seems to
also be addressing (160).14 As Akinleye (2020) alludes in a provoca-
tion commissioned on the subject of contemporary dance, UK HE dance,
and anti-racism, the issue of discipline, including wanting to be a ‘good’
anti-racist self-conscious subject, might be part of deeply embedded issues
central to dismantling structures towards anti-racism.15 There are crucial
yet challenging indications related to disciplining in contemporary dance,
such as issues of (maladaptive) perfectionism, a ‘tyranny of niceness’,
and/or limited aesthetics of beauty, which are part of the problem, despite
well-intentioned efforts towards multiplicity, difference, freedom, and
resistance, which some of the values and practices in Chapter 4 aim for
within the practice (e.g. Wang, Castro, and Cunningham 2014; Akinleye
2020; Banerji and Mitra 2020; Erickson 2020; George 2020; Lewis
2020).
14 See also George’s (2014, 2020) in-depth exploration of the history of contemporary
dance related to somatics, sexuality and race. Through their work one can begin to
understand the importance of Pooh Kaye and Ishmael Houston-Jones and Fred Holland’s
work historically in this area.
15 See also Banerji and Mitra’s (2020) discussion of mastery (23) and Kraut’s discus-
sion of ‘techniques of transmission’ (47). See also Sörgel’s (2020) interrogation of
‘un-suturing’ white spectatorship in response to contemporary African dance theatre
performance; in particular she potently writes, ‘[…] when I open myself to fully experi-
ence the affective quality of contemporary African dance theatre politics, I allow myself
to touch some of the pain and anguish of my complicity with white ideological systems
that have hurt black lives historically for too long. To stay in that pain is to acknowledge
that in confrontation with my own discomfort and pain over white guilt and exploitation,
I can begin to un-suture and change’ (157).
256 S. EHRENBERG
In considering the situatedness of the contemporary dance research

more broadly, although speculative, the above seems to align with ques-
tions about the failure of liberal politics in the light of important global
movements, such as #BlackLivesMatter, #MeToo, the climate crisis, just
to name a few of the significant life-changing concerns of this time.
The research indicates that contemporary dance is also grappling with
how current global concerns all too readily suggest the argument that
our experiences are not only within the neurons, sinews, and sensations
(and the potential good intentions) of our individual bodies. The struc-
tures, technologies, and ways of thinking-being, are inside us as much
as outside of us. The coronavirus pandemic illustrates this all too well,
evidencing how the agency of a microbe is impacted on by globalisation,
and also how the agency of globalisation (e.g. freedom to move) impacts
on microbial cellular structures of an individual human.
There is on the one hand a kinaesthetic mode of attention in contem-
porary dance, particularly as discussed in relation to chiasm and agential
cuts, that resonates with ‘staying with the trouble’ (e.g. Butler 1990)
and acting from an in-between positioning that seems productive in
foregrounding process, failure, not-knowing, and critiquing how contem-
porary dancers are disciplined. On the other hand, more research and
action are needed regarding (kinaesthetic) experiences related to issues
of difference, such as race, specifically in the context of professional-level
contemporary dance training and rehearsal contexts. As mentioned above,
I move more explicitly towards these concerns in this final chapter as
concluding diffractions/diffracting conclusions, and yet I recognise that
there is a great deal more to be done.
If independent (contemporary) dance risks exclusion from the repro-
ductive economy as Roche (2015) argues, mainly because of its attach-
ment to the power of the visceral transaction between performer and
audience—a historical attachment which I try to argue continues as a
value in the practice through a kinaesthetic mode of attention—then
how might the apparatus of video self-images—particularly with their
increasing use in the practice, impact on issues of access and/or exclu-
sion, or not? Are contemporary dancers employing Braidotti’s position of
becoming machine as a part of becoming dancer in an affirmative and
productive direction? If not or if so, how might this impact on dancers’
‘everyday’ relations, explorations, and creative challenging(s) with these
technologies? How can we further consider all of this as material, to play
with, dismantle, deconstruct, see, hear, and touch in different ways than
the one that predominates, which is often driven by neoliberal and capi-
talist power, and also racism, sexism, and still limited bodily norms? What
might contemporary dancers continue to offer in terms of power differ-
entials in conversation with intra-action, and discontinuity as central to
that, particularly in terms of kinaesthetic and visual ideologies, and also
in considering the historicised resistive potential of contemporary dance?
Ending on these questions explicitly acknowledges the limitations of
the research informing this book and yet also supports ending on an
opening as an affirmative position: that no research is finished and fixed,
but an ongoing process of discovery, opening up new possibilities of
becoming.
In summary
In this book, I explore the multiple, specialised and, in part, situated
aspects of contemporary dancers’ kinaesthetic experiences in training
and work contexts. I support the argument that contemporary dancers’
kinaesthetic attention is, in part, constructed by practices and values
upheld and perpetuated in the style and in particular explore how these
are conceived in relation to visual self-image, particularly for the case
of professional-level performing contemporary dancers. I aim to show
how the kinaesthetic is situated in a larger social context, which includes
the visual for contemporary dance. Put in another way, how contempo-
rary dance includes a situated knowledge of how movement is supposed
to look, which continues to challenge a historicised polarisation of the
kinaesthetic and the visual in the style. By presenting dancers’ experi-
ences in practice as multi-sensorial and multi-layered, even contradictory
at times, I argue that a small group of dancers’ kinaesthetic experiences are
distinct to the context and situations they work in, and develop according
to the unique demands of their profession. I utilise dancers’ descriptions
of kinaesthetic experience and their interactions with video self-reflections
to flesh out this point of view further in relation to ideas from Maurice
Merleau-Ponty, Jaana Parviainen, Michel Foucault, Susan Foster, Dee
Reynolds, Kaja Silverman, Susanne Ravn, Karen Barad, Jennifer Roche,
Rosi Braidotti, among many others.
I endeavour to contribute to better understanding of contemporary
dance knowledge and its production with this inquiry, affirming the call
by Sklar (1994) which is to take ‘seriously the ontological status of
258 S. EHRENBERG
immediate bodily experience in the production of knowledge and epis-

temologies’ (12). I put the dancers’ descriptions, and reflections on my
own practice, in dialogue with theoretical concepts to interrogate dancers’
described experiences and the meaning making of these experiences by
the dancers. I do not question the validity of philosophical and theo-
retical concepts in themselves, rather I engage with philosophical and
theoretical concepts as a conversational partner with which to re-reflect
on, re-think-with, and re-conceive of dancers’ practice. Analysis of the
dancers’ described experiences, in tandem with my own experiences and
theory and experience from available sources, is intended to contribute
to the developing discourse about dancers’ experiences in practice, in
parallel with existing dance scholarship, which aims to integrate theory
and practice without prioritising one over the other.
In the above summarised ways, this book aims to contribute to
understanding contemporary dance’s development of a ‘metalanguage’
or ‘metatechnique(s)’ (e.g. Gough and Shepherd 2009; Bleeker 2017;
Schuh 2019). It aims to do so through contributing to the accumulation
of rich description from dancer voices in the discourse. My explorations
affirm the position that contemporary dancers maintain a complex balance
between being historically, culturally, and socially situated, and yet having
ongoing sense(s) of agency, freedom, and indeterminacy in their creative
pursuits of becoming contemporary dancer(s).
Ultimately, I hope for dancers, educators, and academics to continue to
critically reflect and diffract about where contemporary dancers are posi-
tioned, particularly as trained performers within a specific discipline, at
times situated between the dancing they are kinaesthetically feeling and
the dancing they are projecting. The problems, arguments, and themes
raised throughout this book aim to stimulate dancers, educators, and
academics to continue to explore continuity as much as discontinuity,
indeterminacy and alienation in contemporary dance practice from the
dancers’ perspective. The problems, arguments, and themes raised are
meant to encourage ongoing questioning with processes of becoming
dancer, such as by critically reviewing the roles that style-specific ideolo-
gies and values concerning kinaesthesia and visual self-reflection play in
contemporary dance practice and the feelings, imaginings, and ongoing
dancing conceptions emerging in and through their relations.
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Index
A Albright, Ann Cooper, 9, 67, 74, 78,

Aalten, Anna, 30, 62, 63, 125, 192, 81, 163, 213, 214
212 Alexander technique, 57, 150
absence of music, 176, 178 alienation, 83, 191, 208, 209, 215,
acting, 120, 121, 178 224, 234, 235, 258
aesthetic(s), 30, 33, 48, 57, 99, 118, angelology, 72
147, 156, 161, 180, 192, 197, Anthropocene, 236
198 anthropocentricism, 247
contemporary dance, 145, 164, anthropocentric view, 240–241
178, 246, 255 anthropological, 64, 74
affect anticipation, 107, 160
affective relation, 63, 235 anticipatory quality of attention, 33
agency(ies), 6, 48, 71, 76, 77, 79, 80, anti-racism, 254, 255
82, 119, 135, 172, 215, 230, anxiety, 207, 208, 224
232, 233, 235–239, 249, 250, apparatus, 241–243, 256
256. See also sense of agency appropriation, 66
of dancer, 75, 129, 180, 214, 243 assemblage, 233, 238, 250, 251
agents, 12, 20, 75, 131, 144, 148, attention, 50, 56, 58, 84, 87, 99–137,
210, 236, 238 146, 151, 154, 172, 195, 200,
agency as multiplicity, 235 214, 229, 235, 240, 254. See
agential realism, 22, 236, 237, 247, also kinaesthetic awareness;
250, 251 kinaesthetic mode of attention
agential cuts, 240–244, 246, 256 open attention, 100, 110, 117, 127,
Ahmed, Sara, 13, 214, 236, 254, 255 132, 145
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive 265
license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73403-9
266 INDEX
way of attending, 123, 129, 131, being-for-others, 208, 209

132, 134, 147 being in body, 120, 122
attuning, 106 being in the moment, 120
audience, 8, 26, 30, 33, 86, 113, 122, being-in-the-world, 83
148, 154, 158, 178, 179, 182, being watched, 35, 59, 86–87, 88,
191, 204, 211, 216, 224, 234 211, 224, 234. See also audience
audience experiences, 69, 71, 181 Bel, Jérôme, 71
audience’s gaze, 74, 119 Bench, Harmony, 24, 26, 246, 248,
audition(s), 167, 207 252
authenticity, 52, 113, 178
Bergson, Henri, 193
authentic bodily experience, 50
biases, 21, 23, 24
automatic habitual behaviour, 198
binaries, 16, 232, 240, 242
awareness, 5, 27, 47, 50, 54–55,
85, 102, 104, 106, 110–111, bio-political effect, 249, 250
113, 150–151, 153. See also Bleeker, Maaike, 27, 31–33, 59, 71,
kinaesthetic awareness 79, 119, 231, 232, 258
bodily affordance, 242
body, 3, 5–7, 9, 12, 13, 27, 32, 33,
B 35, 48, 50, 56, 63, 74, 115, 210
ballet, 7, 46, 57–58, 63–64, 66–68, body as object, 54–57, 208, 209
71, 77, 81, 105–106, 119, 123, body as subject, 55, 57
125, 128–130, 132, 134, 154, body eclectic, 29, 167
156, 159, 160, 171–175, 178, Body-Mind Centering (BMC), 57,
197–198, 212 150
Banerji, Anurima, 253, 255
boundaries, 239, 242, 243, 246, 249
Banes, Sally, 48, 49, 64
Bourdieu, Pierre, 22, 29, 63, 65, 75,
Barad, Karen Michelle, 22, 25, 103,
76, 127, 129–132, 135, 136,
230, 231, 235–246, 248–251,
143, 144, 146, 148, 165, 169,
257
170, 196, 199, 233
Bartenieff fundamentals, 50, 52, 150
Braidotti, Rosi, 25, 82, 229, 231–234,
Bartky, Sandra Lee, 30
240–242, 247–253, 256, 257
becoming
becoming dancer, 35, 82, 114, 190, brain, 67–70
198, 208, 210, 218, 220, 222, Brandstetter, Gabriele, 101, 108, 109,
230, 246–249, 256–258 112, 145, 150, 155, 156, 180
becoming diffraction, 25 breaking/breakdance, 10, 101, 105,
becoming machine, 247, 249–251, 106, 126–128, 136, 171, 172,
256 175–178, 203
becoming socialized, 77, 98 bricolage, 164
dancers’ practice, 190 Brown, Trisha, 49, 51
becoming aware, 83–85, 121, 132, Bull, Cynthia Jean Cohen, 10, 130,
146 145, 155
being Butcher, Rosemary, 114, 128, 160
INDEX 267
Butler, Judith, 30, 210, 240, 248, cognition, 28, 104, 129, 231–232. See
252, 254, 256 also consciousness
Butoh, 7, 77, 100 cognitive science, 67, 68, 70, 74, 85,
Butterworth, Jo, 72, 157, 158, 231, 98. See also neuroscience
246 collaborative dance-making processes,
157
consciousness, 45, 53–54, 58–59,
C 61–62, 83, 109, 115, 119, 132,
Calvo-Merino, Beatriz, 67–69 135, 136, 151, 196, 197, 215,
camera, 26, 207–208, 218 233
canonical, 50, 166–168 pre-reflective, 53, 55–56, 83–84,
capital, 144, 165 106, 115, 118, 129, 132, 136,
capitalism, 234, 250, 251 151
capture, 27, 215, 250 reflective consciousness, 53, 55, 61,
chance, 105 106, 115, 132
chiasm, 22, 205–207, 210, 215, 223, contact improvisation, 10, 52, 61, 64,
244, 248, 256 65, 78, 85, 101, 102, 108, 129,
choreographer(s), 7, 24, 36, 46, 48, 146, 150, 155, 156, 182
49, 51, 61, 63, 70–72, 81, 87, contemporary dance practice(s), 30,
100, 103, 114, 118, 127, 147, 34, 36, 53, 58, 77, 99, 100, 102,
148, 153, 154, 159, 165, 202, 116, 123, 129, 145, 148, 149,
213, 219. See also choreography 154, 156, 167, 172, 192, 224,
contemporary dance, 7, 128 235, 240, 254, 258
choreography, 29, 50–53, 63, 70–71, context(s), 31, 54, 59, 85, 87, 124,
76, 84, 87, 110–111, 113, 117– 128, 143, 192, 220, 257. See also
118, 122, 129, 133, 148–150, dance styles
153, 156–159, 167, 173, 174, contextual factors, 137
195, 196, 231. See also dance
dance contexts, 3, 19, 59, 104,
composition
115, 205, 218
choreographic imaginings, 108
continuity, 190, 191, 243, 244. See
choreographic method, 48
also discontinuity
choreographic objects, 249
conversation (method), 14, 27, 35,
choreographic perspective, 103
36, 110, 113, 181
choreographic process, 147, 157,
160, 173, 192 Copeland, Roger, 30, 46–48, 156,
161
choreographic skill, 157, 182
expanded notion of, 213 corporeal
Claid, Emilyn, 51, 57, 58, 74, 162, corporeal formation, 251
190 corporeal lived experiences, 80
Clark, Marianne I., 7, 36, 64, 81, 125 corporeal maps, 128
codified, 46, 52, 135 corporeal schema, 130
codification, 73 corporeal turn, 64
268 INDEX
crash to create, 116, 117, 128, 129, decolonisation of ethnographic

153, 154 practices, 14
creativity, 153, 171–174, 182, 209, decolonising dance curriculums,
212 162
critical eye, 209, 222, 224 deconstruct, 254, 256
critical theory, 189, 231, 232 DeFrantz, Thomas F., 127, 246, 253
Croce, Mariano, 135, 144, 147 De Jaegher, Hanne, 17, 218
Crossley, Nick, 12, 28, 60, 129, 130, Deleuze, Gilles, 79, 81, 82, 158, 241,
132, 135, 144, 165 244, 249, 251
Csordas, Thomas, 3, 6, 12, 64, 69, demonstrative body, 61
104, 122, 137 Dempster, Elizabeth, 46
culture, 5, 6, 10, 18, 23, 29, 64–66, denaturalising the notions of the self,
78, 80, 129, 130, 144, 145, 165, 60
251 denaturalize, 60, 216
cultural codes, 3, 29 Depraz, Natalie, 9–11, 15, 19, 20, 34,
cultural perspectives, 253 59, 83–85, 103, 109, 120, 121,
cultural trope, 34 132, 136, 146
Cunningham, Merce, 33, 48, 49, 51, description(s), 8–13, 15, 21–23,
61, 62, 105, 156, 161 29, 51, 53–58, 61, 70, 75, 84,
curiosity, 28, 99, 101, 106, 108 85, 101, 104, 108, 109, 111,
Cvejić, Bojana, 60, 70, 71, 178 115, 117, 121–130, 133, 147,
151, 153, 158, 160, 163, 170,
D 189–195, 198, 200, 223. See also
Daly, Ann, 46, 82, 161 experience
dance composition, 55, 60 contemporary dancer descriptions,
dancer perspective, 7, 18, 32, 64, 67, 115, 123, 128, 192, 208, 223
72, 75, 100, 103, 104, 115, 176, descriptive approaches, 11
192, 200, 218, 235, 236, 252, descriptive horizons, 15
258 descriptive qualities, 101
dance styles, 7, 8, 10, 29, 30, 32, 35, descriptive shape, 136, 144
36, 52, 61, 64–66, 68, 77, 97, phenomenological description, 55,
99, 101, 103, 119, 123, 127, 61, 78, 84
130, 131, 145–147, 162, 166, destabilisation, 192
176, 179. See also technique(s) of identity, 212
dance theatre, 37 determinacy, 243, 244. See also
Davida, Dena, 29, 167 indeterminacy
Davies, Katherine, 27, 62 diasporic, 66, 253
Davis, Crystal U., 166, 253 Diehl, Ingo, 148, 162
decentre, 63, 190, 239 difference, 24, 33, 51, 59–61, 132,
decentre the human, 239 229, 248, 251, 252, 254–256
decentre the self, 251 differential patterns of becoming,
decolonisation, 166, 253, 254 229
INDEX 269
diffraction, 25, 35, 229, 230, 235, E

239, 248 écart, 205, 207
diffuse, 99, 109, 134 Eddy, Martha, 49, 50, 149, 150
digital, 204 education, 59, 148–149, 151,
digital cultures, 246 161–165, 207. See also technique;
digital devices, 27 training
dis/ability, 24, 67, 252 conservatoire, 51, 58, 172, 219
discipline, 60–62, 64, 85, 147, 148, educational and training contexts,
169, 171, 230, 253, 255 182
disciplinary perspectives, 72 education and practice, 152
disciplinary shifts, 74 education in higher education, 36,
docile bodies, 7, 62 77
discomfort, 254 electronic frontier, 251
discontinuity, 190–192, 223, 237, Ellis, Simon, 26, 204, 205, 212, 216,
243–244, 257 222, 254
discourse embodiment, 3–6, 15, 37, 59, 73–75,
contemporary dance discourse, 46, 81–83, 100, 246, 252
99, 207, 209 embodied, 10–12, 27, 45, 60, 65,
dance discourse, 223 66, 79, 80, 83, 101, 104, 131,
discursive context, 66 146, 167
discursive determinism, 74 embodied experience(s), 11, 12, 45,
discursively constructed, 223 60, 79, 104, 213
disembodied postmodern readings, 63 emotion(s), 46–48, 50, 73–75, 83,
disembodiment, 63, 213. See also 120, 179, 180, 209
embodiment empathy, 213. See also kinaesthetic
disorientation, 213, 214, 218 empathy
disposition, 83, 84, 99, 129–131, empathic resonance, 20
134, 136, 143–146, 174 enmeshment, 106, 108
disposition of attending, 133 entangle
disruption, 189–191, 202–207, 209, entangled agencies, 246, 251
211–214, 216, 218, 223, 224, entangled states of agency, 238,
229, 252 240. See also agency(ies)
diversity, 72, 74, 162 entanglements, 242, 250
Domm, Daniela Perazzo, 238, 246 ephemeral, 13, 56
double sensation, 201, 243 epistemology(ies), 8, 9, 13, 15, 149,
double horizon, 193, 200, 205 234
dualism, 5, 236 ethics/ethical, 7, 17, 75, 169, 209,
dualist perception, 62 214, 233–235, 246–247, 250
Duncan, Isadora, 46–49, 61, 156, 161 ethics and ontology, 2,
Dunham, Katherine, 161 240–241, 243. See also
dynamics, 195 onto-epistemological
270 INDEX
ethnography/ethnographic Foster, Susan Leigh, 1, 29, 32, 33,

methodology, 64, 73, 79 47–49, 51, 52, 60–62, 65, 72,
expert/expertise, 17, 19, 34, 67–69, 74, 75, 104, 135, 146, 147, 155,
72, 77, 80, 104, 115, 116, 123, 156, 158, 161, 167, 168, 180,
131, 132, 146, 165, 172, 200, 192, 231, 257
230 Foucault, Michel, 61–63, 75, 81, 101,
explorations/explorative/exploratory, 169, 233, 241, 252, 257
107, 114, 150, 151, 256 Fraleigh, Sondra Horton, 1, 28, 56,
exteriority/external, 48, 58, 199–200, 57, 60, 65, 74, 75, 79, 169–171,
251 208, 236
Franko, Mark, 48, 77, 79, 101
freedom/free, 107, 121, 148, 153,
F 160, 162, 166, 168–175, 181,
failure, 254, 256 182, 255, 256, 258
fake(ing), 52, 177, 180, 191 freedom from music, 174–175
fall, 134, 155 freedom of choice, 170
Fanon, Frantz, 252, 254 freelance, 76, 167. See also
feedback, 198, 210, 218 independent contemporary
feeling, 13, 35, 48, 50, 124, 125, dance
131, 137, 147, 148, 155, 171, Fuchs, Thomas, 59, 74, 83, 84, 199
172, 178, 179, 192, 199, 235, Functional Magnetic Resonance
258 Imaging (fMRI), 67, 69
audience, 180
Feldenkrais, 49, 150 G
felt sense, 51, 100, 157. See also Gaga, 100, 103, 108, 149, 157, 166,
kinaesthesia; proprioception 167, 170
feminism/feminist, 4, 48, 61, 189, Gallagher, Shaun, 115
241 game analogy, 130, 144–145
feminist philosophy, 24, 82, 208, gaps, 200, 204–207, 211–213, 223,
209, 235, 241 243–245, 248
feminist studies/theory/writing, 27, Gardner, Sally, 61–63, 74, 75, 80,
30, 78, 100, 217 147, 155, 156
Figuerola, Luisa, 51–53, 170 gaze, 56, 224. See also male gaze
first-person, 8–11, 19, 20, 65, 66, 73 gender, 6, 49, 61, 240
first and third-person, 151 genealogy, 49, 50, 255
first-level and a second-level, 135 genealogy of somatics, 104
Fisher, Jennifer, 66, 167 George, Doran, 4, 28, 49–52, 67,
flesh, 200, 201, 205, 238, 249 104, 148–151, 161, 162, 170,
folding in, 193, 194, 200, 223, 239, 178, 180, 191, 255
248, 249. See also entangled gestures, 6, 12, 14, 59
Forsythe, William, 117, 249 Geurts, Kathryn Linn, 75
Fortin, Sylvie, 50, 149, 151 Ginot, Isabelle, 28, 104, 151, 255
INDEX 271
Gitelman, Claudia, 134 history, dance, 2, 29, 47–48, 53,

globalisation, 256 150, 180
Goddard, Jonathan, 51, 73 Høffding, Simon, 76, 199
Gottschild, Brenda Dixon, 4, 48, 66, Holm, Hanya, 134
152 Horton technique, 159
Gough, Richard, 73, 74, 258 Humphrey, Doris, 46, 61, 175
Graham, Martha, 46–49, 51, 61, 62, hybrid bodies, 29, 167
119, 134, 145, 147, 150, 151,
156, 159, 161, 180, 190
Grau, Andrée, 4, 8, 72 I
gravity, 7, 109 ideal, 54, 56, 57, 60–62, 82, 83, 170,
Green, Jill, 16, 24, 25, 30, 62, 73 212
Grosz, Elizabeth, 30, 82, 200, 201 idealised images of femininity, 30
Guattari, Félix, 82, 244, 249 identity(ies), 80–82, 129, 209–213
gymnastics, 133 ideokinesis, 150
ideology(ies), 46, 55–56, 74, 86–88,
H 104, 115, 162, 191, 209, 230
habits, 53, 65, 80, 83, 111, 116–118, idiosyncrasy/idiosyncratic, 51, 160,
136–137, 145, 152, 153, 169, 167
182, 199, 240, 254 illusion, 54
habitual, 239 image(s), 33, 48, 57, 194, 195, 198,
habituation, 83, 84, 114, 117, 118, 202, 205, 210, 211, 216–218,
132–134, 136, 137, 144, 196, 220, 232, 237
212, 218, 254 imagination, 5, 29, 107, 160, 170,
habitus, 22, 28, 29, 63, 99, 127, 197–198, 216–218, 229, 235,
129–132, 135, 136, 143, 144, 238, 240
146, 147, 169, 170, 190, 196, cultural imagination, 31
199 imagine(d), 26, 34, 57, 110, 116,
hand-held devices, 209, 232, 245, 151, 158, 192, 199, 200, 203,
247 204, 211, 213, 215, 216
Hanna, Thomas, 50 immanence, 80, 121, 208
Hansen, Helle Ploug, 74, 76, 105, immediate moment, 123, 178. See also
145 presence/present
Haraway, Donna J., 4–6, 25, 27, 218, implicit, 83–84. See also explicit;
229–231, 234, 235, 241, 248 knowledge(s)/knowing; memory
hip hop, 10, 13, 23, 28, 101, 103, improvisation, 26, 59, 103, 116, 148,
105, 106, 123, 126–128, 133, 149, 152–157, 175, 177, 182,
136, 171, 172, 175–179, 198, 219
199, 203 incorporate, 87, 129–130, 136, 137,
hired body, 29 147, 181, 203
historicisation/historicised, 2, 54, 73, incorporation, 99, 145, 149, 153
175, 232, 237, 257 incorporative body memory, 83
272 INDEX
independent contemporary dancers, 122, 123, 125, 127, 131, 136,

29, 72, 165, 166, 256. See also 192, 200, 204, 207, 220, 235
freelance intra-action, 236–240, 242, 244–249,
indeterminacy, 242, 244–245, 251, 251, 257
258 introspection, 146
indifferent differences, 252 invisible(ity), 74, 115, 120, 237, 241.
Ingold, Tim, 216, 217, 224, 229, 243 See also visible/visibility
inhabited transcendence, 80, 101, inwardly, 58
113, 114, 120, 121, 208
inside out, 58, 178
instability, 148. See also destabilisation J
institutionalisation, 4, 148, 161–163, Jackson, Jennifer, 62, 130
169–170, 232 Järvinen, Hanna, 28, 50
intelligence, 7, 36, 58, 65, Jay, Martin, 31, 33
80, 109, 117. See also jazz, 171, 172, 175, 179
knowledge(s)/knowing Jola, Corinne, 32, 68, 69
intentionality, 20, 56, 106–107, 133, Jones, Amelia, 33
135–136, 148, 155, 181, 232,
238
intention, 50, 111, 151, 222, 245 K
interactions, 17, 26, 230, 257 Karreman, Laura, 135, 160, 163, 205,
intercorporeal(ity), 31, 74, 81, 83, 239, 246, 249
210–211, 218 Kealiinohomoku, Joann, 66, 129
interdisciplinary, 7, 80, 100 kinaesthesia, 5–8, 28, 31–33, 37,
interlocutors, 15 45–50, 55–58, 66, 75, 77, 82,
intermediate, 35 85–88, 99–100, 114, 118, 147,
intermediate processes, 35 153, 175, 192–194, 197, 258
internal/interiority/internalised, 35, kinaesthetic, 1, 3, 4, 7, 8, 10,
49–50, 53, 55, 86, 87, 100, 129, 13, 64, 111, 114, 123, 168,
179, 189, 200, 207, 251. See also 190–191, 195, 222, 253, 257.
exteriority/external See also kinaesthetic mode of
interpretations, 9, 10, 13, 14, 16–18, attention
20–25, 55, 135, 218 kinaesthetic attention, 50, 82, 84,
interpretative paradigm, 21, 73 101, 103, 104, 111, 114–115,
intersubjective(ity), 5, 10, 17, 21, 26, 122–123, 127, 136–137, 171,
63, 78, 210 174, 180, 189, 229, 257
intersubjective validity, 15, 24 kinaesthetic imagination, 118, 212,
intertwine(s)/intertwining, 3, 10, 12, 229, 238
13, 29–32, 86, 160, 163, 190, kinaesthetic awareness, 24, 28, 32,
194, 201, 223, 237, 243 48, 49, 51, 58–59, 100–102,
interview (method), 9, 10, 13–15, 104–106, 109–111, 116–117,
17–26, 104, 106, 110, 113, 116, 123, 125–128, 136, 152, 157,
INDEX 273
178–180, 182, 196, 202–204, L

209, 216, 235, 254, 255 Laban, 49, 61, 135
kinaesthetic empathy, 65, 66, 69, laboratory, 7, 112
168, 180, 231, 254. See also Lacan, Jacques, 214–216, 218, 224,
empathy 229, 240, 241
kinaesthetic mode of attention, language, 10–13, 24, 59, 64, 103,
8, 15, 28, 29, 32, 36, 84, 104, 124, 127, 137, 146,
99, 101–109, 113, 115, 117, 158–160, 164, 182, 232
119–124, 126, 128–137, Legrand, Dorothée, 13, 74, 86, 101,
144–151, 153–158, 160–162, 111–113, 115, 116, 118–121,
164–167, 169–171, 173–175, 135, 151, 201
178, 179, 181, 182, 189, 192, Lepecki, Andre, 2, 3, 64, 72, 105,
254, 256 164, 178, 241, 247, 248
kinetic, 12, 50, 64, 112, 151 life-world/lifeworld, 9, 19, 76
Klein, Susan, 109, 111, 112 liminal, 213, 224
knowledge(s)/knowing, 4–8, 15, 17, listening/listen, 51, 101, 106, 108,
18, 21, 24, 28, 36, 57, 60, 70, 109, 111–113, 115, 117, 150,
73, 81, 83, 84, 99, 104, 108, 153, 155, 175
111, 145, 158, 190, 196, 233, live, 27, 132
236, 240, 245–246. See also live audience, 26
intelligence lived experience, 9, 55, 77, 81, 99,
bodily experience, 1, 3, 15, 32, 100, 110, 114, 120, 190, 206,
33, 54, 59, 60, 68, 80, 85, 235, 252
102, 106, 116, 119, 131, 145, logic (kinaesthetic), 110–112, 118,
189, 258. See also kineasthesia; 131, 157, 163
kinaesthetic awareness Long, Warwick, 50, 149, 151
bodily knowing/knowledge, 6, 78, look, the, 151, 208
80, 83, 107, 109, 110, 112, look like, 55, 58, 182, 190, 195
153 look of the movement, 181
forms of knowing, 123, 129, 131 Lord, Madeleine, 50, 149, 151
knowledge, dancer, 67, 75, 108, Louppe, Laurence, 29, 167
109, 116, 122, 257
knowledge(s) cultures, 232
knowledge(s) is situated, 230 M
knowledge(s) production, 71 machinic autopoiesis, 249
knowledge(s) systems, 163 male gaze, 48, 207
Koch et al., 132, 133 Manning, Erin, 114, 246
Koch, Sabine C., 59, 74, 83–85 Manning, Susan, 4, 48, 66, 72
Kozel, Susan, 27, 74, 79, 201, 205, map, 18, 22, 29, 129, 215, 229
212 mapping, 18, 129, 229
Kuppers, Petra, 67 mapping of interference, 25
Kvale, Steiner, 17, 24 marks, 229, 244, 248, 249
274 INDEX
Markula, Pirrko, 6–8, 16, 18, 20–22, mindfulness, 85, 132

36, 63, 64, 74, 80, 81, 85, 125, mindfulness meditation, 51
129 mind thinks/feels, 85
masking, 216, 224 mirror neuron(s), 67–69
mask of the screen, 240 mirror(s), 30, 31, 50, 58, 61–62, 87,
Mason, Jennifer, 17, 27 191, 198, 201, 205, 206, 208,
Massumi, Brian, 31, 82, 235 211, 215, 220, 235, 239
mastery, 122, 163, 176, 253 mirror alienation, 235
materiality/material, 63, 75, 82, 103, mirror stage, 215
147, 224, 230, 236, 241, 244, mistakes, 116, 117, 154
249 Mitra, Royona, 72, 253–255
matrix, 83, 132 modern and contemporary dance, 33,
matter, 246, 252 46–48, 103, 145, 152, 161, 169
Mauss, Marcel, 129 modern dance, 46–50, 61, 156,
McCarthy-Brown, Nyama, 166, 253 161, 166, 169, 175
meaning making, 10, 13, 258 modus operandi, 130, 132, 134
mediation, 81, 146, 213, 215, 249 Monroe, Raquel, 4, 162, 246
meditation, 85, 120, 132, 136, 146 Montero, Barbara, 30, 115, 190,
memory, 14, 19, 83, 84, 108, 179, 197–200
193, 196, 199, 218, 229, 232, Morris, Gay, 63, 131, 147, 148, 180
245–246 motion capture, 205, 212, 218, 239
bodily, memory, 132 motivating structures (habitus), 28,
kinaesthetic, memory, 133, 202 123, 129, 131, 143
memory frameworks, 84 movement analysis, 65. See also Laban
memory trace, 194–196, 200, 238, movement code, 150–151, 160
248 movement principles, 51–52
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 1, 9, 16, 21, multiplicity, 29, 45, 54, 57, 104, 148,
22, 31, 75, 76, 78–80, 82, 114, 215, 236, 255
119, 190, 193, 194, 199–201, multiplicity and complexity, 76
205–208, 210, 215, 223, 224, multi-sensorial, 86, 193, 257
233, 235, 237, 243, 249, 252, multitalented body, 167
257 Mulvey, Laura, 33
metalanguage, 73, 74, 258 music, 69, 172, 174–178
metaphor(s)/metaphoric, 85, 107,
109, 125, 127, 146, 147, 159,
216, 218 N
metatechnique, 157, 167, 258 narcissism, 223
methodology/methodological, 10, 27, natural, 28, 46, 48, 49, 104, 134,
51, 65, 69, 87, 99, 135, 144, 144, 162, 230, 236, 241, 252
162, 220 nature and culture, 82, 250
mimicry, 215–216 value and ideology, 50
mimics, 216 neoliberal and capitalist power, 257
INDEX 275
neoliberalism, 166 P
Ness, Sally Ann, 60, 64 pain, 102
neurochoreography, 70 Pakes, Anna, 55, 60, 68, 71, 104, 163
neuroscience, 5, 70. See also cognitive paradigm(s), 8, 21–22, 80, 85,
science 230–232
new dance, 57, 58, 190 paradox, 202, 216, 232
new materialism, 25, 34, 230, 231, participation (method), 23, 65
234–236, 241, 243, 244, 252
participatory sense making, 17
new technologies, 27, 78
Parviainen, Jaana, 1, 6, 32, 74, 75,
Nikolais (Alwin), 180
86, 104, 107–109, 112, 153,
Noland, Carrie, 6, 14, 75
168, 201, 205–207, 211, 212,
non-dancer, 24, 116, 118
245, 246, 257
non-dualism, 79, 236
passive, 85, 109, 132
non-linear time, 236
pattern(s), 10, 80, 84, 108, 111, 118,
non-spectacle, 48
130–131, 135–136, 144, 145,
non-verbal, 10, 13, 14, 21, 27, 72,
150, 155, 199. See also habits;
104
habitus
norms/normativity, 62, 67, 130, 131,
perception(s)/perceive, 3, 32, 33,
144, 170, 210, 253, 257
50, 61, 68–69, 84, 106, 108,
Novack, Cynthia J., 1, 10, 49, 64–66,
111–113, 116, 120, 121, 153,
68, 74, 78, 101, 129, 146, 147
189, 193, 197, 211–212, 214,
216, 220–222, 241, 243–244
perfect/perfection, 46, 116, 117, 122,
154, 156
O
objectifying/objectivity, 4, 34, 48, Performance Philosophy, 71
217 performance(s), 29–31, 33, 36, 69,
object(s), 4, 30, 35, 56, 57, 69, 116, 71–73, 79, 87, 129, 149, 177,
119–120, 137, 201, 205–208, 178, 181, 182, 189, 190, 192,
214, 216, 217, 224, 229, 235, 196, 204, 211, 219, 223, 224,
237, 244, 249 230, 231, 235, 239, 246, 247
Ochs, Elinor, 14, 20, 21 performative, 33, 113, 115, 232,
ontology, 2, 8, 9, 15, 50, 234, 257. 240, 248
See also epistemology(ies) performance studies, 64, 71, 85, 235,
onto-epistemological, 75, 230 236
opaque, 120 performative pre-reflective body, 115,
openness, 85, 106, 114, 115, 128, 116, 136
131, 153, 171 performing, 4, 27, 82, 87, 104, 119,
O’Shea, Janet, 166, 253 168, 204–205, 207, 211
other(s), 66, 69, 81, 171, 205, 206, performer/performing, 34–36,
210–212, 214, 215, 230, 233 198–199, 221, 235
276 INDEX
phenomena/phenomenon, 18, 22, 54, power of the visual, 208, 209, 217,
231, 233, 237, 238, 242–244, 224, 235
246 practice and theory, 36, 80, 161, 164,
phenomenality, 106 182
phenomenology, 7, 9, 17, 19–23, 36, practice research, 71, 246
53–54, 59, 60, 74–83, 85, 101, practice(s), 9, 14–15, 19, 29, 99–100,
114–115, 120, 145, 189–191, 136, 143, 146–151, 155,
230, 235, 238, 241, 252. See also 161–165, 168–169, 172–174,
description(s) 177, 181, 231, 254. See also
phenomenological accounts, 45, 57, styles; technique; training
60, 75 bodily, 36, 63, 137, 143
phenomenology and ethnography, practices and values, 49, 131, 137,
76 146–149, 181, 189, 254, 257
phenomenology and performance, pre-reflective, 53, 55–56, 84–85, 106,
79 115, 118, 128, 132, 136, 151
phenomenology and sociology, 7, 9, pre-reflective performative body, 101,
10, 77, 101 151
phenomenology of whiteness, 254 presence/present, 57, 105, 108,
philosophy, 5, 80, 85, 100, 231 193–194, 196, 198. See also
play, 251–217, 224, 229, 234, 236, immediate moment
240, 243–245, 250, 256 bodily (presence), 113
polarisation of kinaesthetic and the Prichard, Robin, 66, 166, 253
visual, 45, 46, 53, 82, 86 principles, 128, 130, 131, 136, 137,
politics/political, 234, 235, 241, 250, 144–146
256 problem solving, 101, 106, 112, 150
postcolonial theory, 61 process, 58, 69, 107, 118, 234, 256
productive look, 191, 214, 223, 224
posthuman, 34, 232–235, 242, 249,
proprioceive aesthetically, 197–200
251–252
proprioception, 32, 33, 86, 88, 112,
posthumanism, 25, 101, 230, 231,
197–200
236, 241
psychology, 5, 6, 17, 47, 74, 80, 85,
postmodern dance, 48, 49, 51,
146
149, 251. See also modern and
Purser, Aimie, 14, 30–32, 79–81, 85,
contemporary dance
101, 113, 114, 119–122, 145,
poststructuralism/poststructuralist, 7,
170, 190, 192, 199, 208, 215,
22, 45, 60–61, 66, 71, 74–75,
235
81, 207, 231, 233, 241
postmodernist, 232
Potter, Caroline, 77, 86, 87, 100–102, Q
109, 113, 135, 145 qualitative research, 8, 79–80
power, 22, 24, 62, 80–81, 159, 216, queer theory, 61
221–222, 230, 234–235, 241, Quinlan, Meghan, 34, 100, 108, 149,
247, 248, 251, 256–257 157, 166, 167, 170
INDEX 277
R resistance, 34, 148, 255

Radell, Sally, 30 reversibility, 190, 191, 200, 201, 205,
Rainer, Yvonne, 48, 105 215, 243
Trio A, 48, 49 Reynolds, Dee, 32, 47, 66, 68, 69,
Ravn, Susanne, 7, 13, 23, 30, 32, 116, 118, 133, 134, 168, 175,
36, 52, 53, 74–77, 81, 85, 86, 180, 181, 212, 231, 257
100, 102, 103, 105, 111–113, rich description, 8, 10, 80, 160, 258.
115, 119, 132, 135, 145, 151, See also ‘thick’ description
155–157, 190, 192, 199, 257 Roberts, Rosemarie A., 14, 127
Reason, Matthew, 17, 18, 66, 68, 69, Roche, Jennifer, 7, 8, 29, 30, 32, 36,
180, 231 52, 72–74, 81, 82, 85, 100, 114,
rebel/rebellion, 4, 161 115, 117, 118, 128, 129, 134,
record, 26, 222, 223, 237 145, 148, 150, 153, 154, 157,
recording, 35, 201, 207, 220, 222, 158, 160, 166, 167, 192, 247,
229, 245 256, 257
recruitment, 105, 106 Roche, Liz, 128, 158
reflecting on reflection, 214, 216 roles of choreographer and dancer, 72
reflection(s)/reflective, 4, 15, 17–19, Rothfield, Philipa, 2, 32, 60, 75, 85,
22–26, 34–36, 54–59, 61, 82, 101, 128, 133, 246, 251
85, 100, 107, 120, 127–128, Rouhiainen, Leena, 12, 28, 32,
132, 135, 209, 224, 229, 230, 74–76, 100, 102, 109, 110, 145,
248, 258 153, 165, 166
reflective writing, 69, 204 Royal Ballet, 26, 123
reflexivity, 199–200 rules, 130, 135, 144
types, 54
rehearsal, 29, 31, 87, 113, 133, 167, S
190, 197, 221, 256 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 1, 208, 215
relation(s)/relational, 51, 62, 74–76, schema(s), 12, 75, 80, 130, 144, 190,
84, 85, 201, 205, 212, 233, 237, 194, 254
238, 240, 242, 247, 258 corporeal schema, 130, 190, 194
release technique, 50–52, 62, 102, Schneider, Rebecca, 236, 252
119, 134, 135, 150, 151, 159, Schuh, Anne, 163, 164, 166, 167,
170, 191 258
repertoire, 160 Schupp, Karen, 150, 152, 163
repetition, 84, 99, 111, 132–134, screen, 203–205, 214–216
145, 151, 196, 199, 248 second-person perspective(s), 19–20,
representation, 27, 60, 61, 64, 86, 65, 135
212 seeing of oneself, 201, 215, 222
representational parameters, 214, 229 seeing-seen, 201, 215–216
re-reflecting/re-reflections, 24, 25, self, 6, 25, 46, 47, 57, 61, 66, 80–82,
214, 216, 240 105, 113, 151, 179, 190, 205,
researcher, 135 206, 210, 211, 233, 252, 255
278 INDEX
self-awareness, 110, 112, 116 Silverman, Kaja, 191, 214–216, 218,

self-conscious subject, 255 224, 229, 233, 240, 241, 243,
self(ie)-image(s), 189, 196, 197, 199, 257
201, 202, 206, 210–211, 216, simulacrum, 206
223, 224, 243, 247, 251–252. simulation, 33, 67, 68, 178, 249
See also visual self-image; visual situatedness, 5, 16, 18–19, 60, 81–83,
self-reflection 87, 233, 256, 258
self-reflection/self-reflective, 26, 29, cultural situatedness, 64–65
63, 64, 110, 151, 198, 201, 203, situated knowledge, 247, 257
206, 208, 212, 216, 219, 223, skill(s), 85, 132, 199, 218, 219, 224
224, 245, 255, 257 skill acquisition, 80
video self-reflection, 18, 22, 26, 27, Skinner Releasing Technique, 52
82, 191, 196, 198, 204, 205, Sklar, Deidre, 1, 11, 12, 15, 21–23,
207, 209, 210, 214, 216, 217, 32, 64–66, 68, 69, 74, 75, 78,
220, 224, 229, 236 109, 112, 122, 168, 213, 257
visual self-reflection, 8, 30, 31, 34, Smith, Nancy Stark, 156
36, 37, 56, 58, 87, 88, 191, social context(s), 28, 124, 129–131,
198, 205, 212, 219, 223, 245, 135–137, 143–147, 257
258 social conditions, 76
semiotic(s) analysis, 60, 62, 241 social construct, 34, 63, 99
sensation(s), 3, 6, 32, 50, 108, 111, social constructivism, 244
112, 116, 129, 150, 153, 178, social domains, 12, 104
256 social factors, 181, 182
bodily (sensation), 100, 109, 158, social network, 20, 80
193 social media, 219, 231, 247
sense of agency, 28, 29, 34, 51, 147, social’ of the kinaesthetic, 252
166, 171, 191, 250, 258. See also sociocultural, 16, 64
agency(ies) sociological approaches and perspec-
sense of movement experience, 134 tives, 7, 10, 21, 63, 64, 74, 76,
sense(s), 6, 33, 64, 109, 110, 116, 78
123, 155, 163, 197 sociology, 5, 7, 17, 36, 66, 75–77,
sensory, 5, 19, 27, 66, 102, 108, 134, 79, 80, 85, 100, 145, 244
168 somatic modes of attention, 3, 69, 75,
seselelame, 75 122, 137
sexuality, 24, 252, 255 somatic(s), 1, 12, 48–52, 55, 87, 88,
shame, 208, 215 101, 104, 110, 148–152, 155,
shared practices, 27, 64 156, 161–163, 169, 178, 181,
Shea Murphy, Jacqueline, 4, 66 255
Sheets-Johnstone, Maxine, 1, 13, 28, space, 102, 153
31, 53–60, 64, 75, 133, 241 space and time, 243
Shepherd, Simon, 73, 74, 161, 258 spacetimematter, 244–245
Silk, M., 8, 18, 20–22, 80, 129 spatiality, 78
INDEX 279
spectacle, 30, 48, 235 technology(ies), 3, 4, 25–27, 34,

specularity, 216 36, 59, 190, 204, 212–213,
Srinivasan, Priya, 4, 66 218, 219, 231–232, 239–241,
staying with the trouble, 254, 256 245–247, 249–251, 256
Stinson, Susan W., 16, 24, 25, 73 telescoping awareness, 156
structure(s), 85, 131, 137, 143, 145, temporal/temporality, 5, 34, 147,
255, 256 193, 223–224
structuring structures, 28, 36 themes, 15, 18, 21, 22, 24, 25, 127,
subject, 4, 6–7, 30, 35, 61–62, 78, 136
121, 135, 201, 215, 216, 233, theory and practice, 14, 16, 71, 78,
237, 238, 244, 251, 255 164, 254, 258
subjectivation, 105 ‘thick’ description, 25
subjectivity, 48, 74, 80, 119, 162, third in-between state, 80, 113, 121
250, 252, 253 third-person perspective/reflections,
dancer/dancing subjectivity, 3, 13, 31, 65
29, 51, 61 Thomas, Helen, 64
subjective experience, 19, 56, 82, 121,
three-dimensional, 121
146
time, 220–223, 234, 243, 244
subvert, 241
topography(ical), 18, 167, 238–239
surveillance, 62, 247, 248
suspension (consciousness), 19, 23 topology, 245
suspension (movement), 52, 135, 155 touch, 108, 155, 181, 199, 201, 205,
239. See also tactile
touching-touched, 201
T training, 6, 10, 29, 31, 36, 61, 62,
tacit know-how, 84 73, 76–77, 82, 86, 100–102,
tactile, 66, 155, 198, 210 105, 114, 118, 129, 131, 132,
134–136, 146–148, 151, 154,
tango, 7
155, 161, 163–165, 168, 169,
taxonomy, 83, 84, 132
174, 182. See also education;
teacher(s), 12, 34, 154, 158, 159,
technique
165, 168, 169, 198, 202, 219,
234 contemporary dance, training, 13,
teaching, 10, 36, 101, 118, 127, 134, 150, 152, 161–164
146, 155, 158, 163, 222 dance training (general), 12, 62,
technique(s), 29, 51–52, 57, 61–63, 81, 114, 149, 152, 161–162,
72, 77–78, 87, 101–102, 148, 165, 242, 253
153, 164, 167, 169, 173, 212, transcendence, 4, 80, 114, 121, 208
232, 242. See also practice(s); transcriptions/transcripts, 14, 18,
styles; training 20–22
contemporary dance, technique(s), transparent body, 119–121
23, 36, 133, 158, 166, 218, triangulation, 10, 14, 15, 19, 24, 136
241 Turner, Bryan S., 63, 144
280 INDEX
U 131, 182, 189, 194, 198–200,

unconscious, 106, 196, 207 207, 223, 235, 253, 257
unfolding, 18, 114, 246 visual image, 12, 27, 192, 205
unity, 54, 56 visual modes of representation, 249
universal/universality, 10, 22, 45, 51, visual self-image, 24, 26, 29, 86,
59, 60, 63, 75, 82, 104, 255 105, 190, 191, 194, 198, 200,
universities and conservatoires, 164 207, 209, 210, 218, 223, 240,
university, 25, 162–165 247, 257
V
W
validity, 15, 19, 20
Varela, Francisco J., 114, 136 Wacquant, Loïc, 23
verbal description, 65, 160, 198, 199 Wainwright, Steven P., 63, 80, 144
Vermersch, Pierre, 59, 136 Warburton, Edward C., 6–7, 68
versatility, 148, 159, 164, 166–168 watching dance, 69, 180
video, 26–28, 30, 33, 35, 36, weight, 102, 108, 109, 135
105, 190, 191, 194–196, 198, Weiss, Gail, 3, 4, 6, 30, 31, 207, 210,
201–212, 216–224, 229, 234, 211, 252, 254
237–242, 245, 248–250, 257 Western theatre dance, 4, 7, 32, 62,
video image(s), 15, 26, 34, 190, 193– 72, 105, 146, 198
196, 201, 203–204, 206, 211, whiteness, 66, 253, 254
214, 219, 221–223, 229, 230, wholeness, 45, 54, 55, 87, 105, 115
232, 234–240, 242, 244–251, Wigman, Mary, 46, 61, 156, 175
256 Wildschut, Liesbeth, 72, 157, 158,
view, 218, 220–222, 224 231, 246
Vimeo, 209, 219
virtual participation, 168
virtuosity, 46, 73, 105, 113, 122, Y
133, 136 yoga, 50, 152, 178
visible/visibility, 34, 201, 211, 237, Young, Iris Marion, 30, 78, 252
241 YouTube, 209, 219, 231
vision, 27, 31, 86, 193, 197, 200,
234
visual, 28, 30, 31, 33, 45, 46, 48, 49, Z
55, 57, 66–68, 82, 83, 86, 87, Zahavi, Dan, 106, 132

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COGNITIVE STUDIES IN LITERATURE AND PERFORMANCE

More information about this series at

Cognitive Studies in Literature and Performance

Cover credit: Britta Knappmann/EyeEm (Photographer); Swane Küpper and Jonathan

There are a number of people I want to acknowledge in the produc-

There are a wealth of colleagues, peers, and friends that inform,

Taylor, David Waring, Dawn Crandell, Breakin’ Convention, One Dance

1 Introducing, Situating, Positioning(s) 1

Introducing, Situating, Positioning(s)

In 1992, when I began a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) in Dance at

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

I believe critical theory also provides tools for a synchronous-critical prac-

1 I understand ‘contemporary dance’ to be a widely used, though complex, term (e.g.

The above history and Lepecki’s perspective on it lead me back to

Experience is Always Situated

describes as ‘the experience of being embodied’, in the preface to her

the experience of being embodied is never a private affair, but is

Weiss’ perspective can be linked to Donna Haraway’s (1988) seminal

2 I understand ‘Western theatre dance’ to be a contentious term, at the same time I am

to de-construct contemporary dancer experience in ways that might go

Increasing Interest in Embodiment

‘discourses’, as ‘worldviews’ or ‘pictures’), and challenging conventional

Markula (2014) evidences this shift in relation to the literature from

The Richness of Dance Studies

historically, culturally, socially, spatially, temporally, kinaesthetically – all

Indeed, professional-level dancers’ experiences in dance practice are rich

be produced’ and for contemporary dance that is in a way that moves

This book is differentiated by its specific interrogation and conceptuali-

Ontological and Epistemological Positionings

Phenomenological and Sociological Approaches

However, none of this is to claim access to a universality of experience

Language and the Non-Verbal

sociological approaches are interested in how embodied experiences are

expressions would comprise performances, representations, and objectifica-

I do not believe in a sharp opposition between language and experience.

Words remain permeable to their somatic reverberations. It is possible to

Thus, an underlying assumption of this book is that professional-level

movement. These are brought in from notes taken during or immedi-

Neither party in the conversation is held to hold intellectual priority over

data(practice)-driven, but is rather driven by the desire to open up a space

The dancers’ interviews serve as the primary fieldwork. Reflections on

with theoretical concepts to interrogate dancers’ described experiences

I am [not] seeking to use the experience of dancers to prove, test or falsify

Analysis of dancers’ described experiences in conjunction with my own

As stated earlier in this chapter about experience being situated, I am

However, just because this research is an ‘account of subjective experi-

The issue of research validity here follows Depraz et al.’s (2002)

go into detail about the transcription procedures as Ochs (1979) does,

meaning was appropriately being designated to the expression. Although

the interview period or re-reflecting on interpretations after several years.

experientially on issues about the culture(s) of dance and the distinctions

Becoming Diffraction: Re-reflections on Reflected on Reflections

frequency of use, Kozel (2007) notes that performers’ interactions with

Using non- (or semi-) verbal techniques...photography or video recording,

The video, as a re-presentation of the dancers’ dancing, helped focus

Sometimes, it is because photographs only capture an instantaneous and

The limitation of video, such as only capturing a durationally fixed

Chapter by Chapter Summary

imagining their dancing, thereby challenging a predominant value in

sensations and perceptions. Sociologist Aimee Purser (2011), for instance,

experience can be an intertwined part of the felt and imagined dancing

14 I maintain here that kinaesthesia and proprioceptionare separate terms, as summarised

neurons had afferent (receiving information from the environment) and