Index 6 8 2023

DEDICATION & THANK YOU
ABSTRACT
2ABSTRACT: 2aHYPOTHESIS/CORE THEMES
(from PFS Symposium 2023 paper)
By separating the mind from the body, logic from art, and theory from practice, we continue create
seemingly opposing entities that, by act of categorization, demand further delineation, thereby
curtailing academic learning experiences and by extension splitting human nature and human
beings into fragments of their whole selves.
This bistouryan/dissective approach is reminiscent of a deterministic way of knowing that prohibits a

much needed look at the tensegritous enmeshments of all of life's expressions. I propose a
softening of these borders and contemplating co- and inter-being-ness, or at least to allow walls to
turn into membranes that serve as important intersections of communication, function, and
'nutrient' exchange.
I attempt an exploration of the idea that these delineations are only getting us away from
understanding education and life in general. I propose that we find more accurate vocabulary for
describing various parts and phases of an act, as opposed to dividing the various phases into separate
acts and qualifications of their own.
“TRACING GESTURE: REVISITING MEANING AND REDEFINING IT'S PLACE IN
CHOREOGRAPHIC PRACTICE AND ACADEMIC CONTEXTS”
By trying to justify practice as a viable academic field, or by demoting it to an appendicular

existence, we might be further solidifying the ideas of a binary and thereby further pushing practice
into the margins and allowing specific kinds of practice and not others . By means of analyzing my
choreographic practice, and the approaches of other current and historical choreographers, I seek to
open a point of view that illustrates the deeply intertwined nature of what we call theory and
practice - two categories that, I believe, belong to the same spectrum of human activity that Alva
Noe calls “re-organizational practices”, indeed that moving belongs to thinking and thinking to
moving.
(from Bilinski application)

My dissertation topic results from this breadth of interests and focuses on the converging points
that underlie the nature-texture of the kinship between movement and meaning. How is it that
we create or distill meaning from the expressiveness of our moving bodies? How do we make,
transmit, and experience meaning in art and performance; in improvisation or in engagement with
specific narratives or topics? What conclusions may we draw from the constellation of these elements
and interactions, and how do they transfer onto other areas of life? Through the lens of choreography
and a 'hermeneutics of dance' I seek to make visible the specificity, and complexity of non-verbal
communication in kinaesthetic expression.
2ABSTRACT: 2bNARRATIVE
(from PFS Symposium 2023 paper)
From every-day gestures to sign language and dance performance, our bodies experience,
express, and communicate. I believe that something is always expressed, something is always
extractable from how we hold our bodies,how we gesture, how our bodies are oriented in space.
Meaninglessness does not exist. Within artistic, psychological, and socio-cultural frameworks, the
processes and experiences of meaning-making are deeply embedded in being human.
Choreographers work with this expressiveness in very specific ways. The choreographic process exists
at the changeable intersection of improvisation, deliberation, intuition, cognition, and embodiment.
Choreographers materialize feelings and affect, cultural and psychological mechanisms, the
unknown, and the spontaneous. Through this detail-oriented engagement with the moving body
they initiate social and personal change. There is a vast knowledge to be gained from looking at the
unique and specific ways choreographers work with meaning-making, and I anticipate offering
important conclusions that will resonate into education and sociology. In Linguistics, much
research has taken place on gesture and how it accompanies and complements speech, and in
Philosophy there has been a lot of research around gesture. I am not aware of any research that
illuminates these topics from quite the angle that I am taking: viewing dance as full-body gesture,
examining how dance relates to speech, expression, and communication.
DISSERTATION 2024 * Performance Studies * PAR * University of California at Davis * Karola Luttringhaus
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I am hoping that my work will add new facets to the ways we define embodied creativity as integral
part of scholarly practice.
ABSTRACT: 2cARTICULATION THEORY

Embedded in this research is the formation of an articulation theory. Explored here are the notions
that articulation is taking place at motion centers, places that facilitate movement, ie at oints; that
articulation is built into the system, that movility and free form articulation is intrinsic to the
complexity and nature of the system; that articulation facilitates communication and translation
both literal and metaphorically speaking; that articulation is intrinsic to being. I am seeking to paint a
multi-dimensional picture of choreography as a process of 'reorganizing' the world and
communicating with audiences through a reciprocal and oscillatory process of analysis and intuition.
ABSTRACT METHODOLOGY:
Pina Bausch
Luis Bunuel
film theory
art theory
In order to speak to the enmeshment theories behind the complexity of the assembling an eclectic
mix of practitioners and critics to investigate how they engage with and talk about choreography and
practice research or practice based research.
Format: my choreographic practice
The dissertation in its format and structure reflects my artistic choreographic process, which should
serve to illustrate how the methodology that applies to choreography also applies to and parallels
other processes of cognizing, thinking, analyzing, processing, and knowing.
Multi-modal engagement
I am planning to, as much as possible, be leading the reader through an inter-disciplinary, full-bodied,
process that integrates images, videos, audio samples, interactivity of the dissertation format, and
exercises that engage the reader in creative, generative, and generally more kinaesthetic ways.
Examples are physical practice exercises that explore specific choreographic tools, drawing,
journaling, brainstorming, watching videos, engaging with an interactive website, and more tbd.
This multi-modal approach to engaging with the dissertation material will highlight the collaborative
aspects of meaning making as well as support my theories around enrichment and a more thorough
understanding if more than one mode of engagement is offered to the reader, thereby the reader is
more consciously becoming audience, collaborator, co-contributor. I am hoping to render this
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dissertation in two main formats: a written dissertation as typically expected and a film version that
adds artistic film elements and most importantly provides all the written text in an audible format. It
is my hope that this way of engaging audiences will make the work more accessible to non-
neurotypical audiences and will further eradicate the hierarchical compartmentalization of the
various modes of engagement.
Also, to re-trace the applicability of my choreographic practice to reading and writing. I want to lead
the reader through a landscape of experiences, exercises, analyses, prompts, arguments, and
suggested thought experiments.
CONVERSATION
I am seeking to conversations between the fields of choreography, philosophy, psychology,
indigenous thought and practice, sociology, communication, linguistics, Performance
Studies/Theatre/Dance Studies, Film Theory, and design and others in order to approximate toward a
more realistically complex experience of the phenomenon of articulating and the role of movement
in that.
Thinkers and practitioners are therefor no longer considered within these separated categories, but
merely pertaining to one big effort of reorganization, understanding, exploring and engaging.
Practitioners and academics are seen as equally informative, wise, knowledgeable and contributory.
I am move-thinking with the following people:
“Pina bausch” as the expert of intuitoin and expression in german dance theatre, groundbreaking and
intricately detail oriented in her choreographic work and verbal expressions about meaning in
choreography.
By interviewing and bringing in artist-scholars from diverse points of view, I seek to map some areas
of the landscape of choreography and communication. My focus lies on choreography and how it
amplifies what we process in daily life and how this amplification in turn alters what and how we act
and experience life. It is my wish to bring choreography to the fore and show the sophistication that
goes into this practice.
PAR PRACTICE RESEARCH CONSIDERATIONS

By highlighting the ways in which choreography has overlap with academic practices, I am not
attempting to push choreography into the mold of academic requirements, but rather I am hoping to
show that the practice is already at the academic level, that choreography is under-estimated and
that academia is not aware of all of its blind-spots. Academic models have their limitations.
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INTER-AFFECTING
things are inter-affecting one another, all things. I seek to trace a model of being of one another
undoing divisions and blurring lines.
INTRODUCTION
"I ask that film discover something for me."1
Luis Bunuel
The conundrum begins with the way we name things. Words suggest relationships,
compositions, agency, social context, history, and so much more.... "My body" for example.
How can I talk about my body? meaning a) how can I possibly put all that which goes on in the
body and what the body does into words; and b) which words do I use then talking about "the
Luis Bunuel, find which of his writings this quote is from
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body"? I ask the reader here to more so be aware of the words that are chosen and what they
might mean, as opposed to jumping on preconceived notions about what these words mean,
leaving more room for interpretation of my words. I would like to open things up and see a
multitude of the possibilities before perhaps narrowing down the words eventually to
attempt some more specific definitions.
"My body", at times, feels like an entity, an "I". At other times "I" become acutely aware of my body's
collective nature, the symbiosis, the co-and inter-dependent groupings of billions of individual agents
that all keep "my body" running without "me" having to micromanage or really "do" anything.
Movement has meaning...
For this statement to stand:
I will have to clarify how I define "meaning".

I will have to clarify how I define movement".
I will have to clarify what sorts of linkages and interactions or co-dependencies I see between
the two.
My body desires to move, to express 'it'-self fully. What does it mean for the body to express
itself fully? In the manner that my body is constructed, that all the individual components
connect and move with one another to produce movement what I crave is complete
response-ability. The ability of all parts to compensate, respond and contribute to movement
tasks. Hence, these moving parts want to be moved, regularly. once some of them seize to
articulate, their stiffness will affect movement possibilities, movement range at other sites,
inhibiting or asking for greater flexibility and for greater responsibility on those other parts to
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make the desired movement happen. The goal is for all parts to be able to play their role so
none of them have to work harder than they should.
Emotions are connected to movement. Everything is connected to movement. Our

physicality is wired in such a way as to support circulation, heartbeat, breath and digestion.
Without movement some of these will lag. The calf is considered the second heart for its role
in supporting the return of blood back to the heart. Walking supports breathing and breathing
supports movement. The wringing motions around t-12, the 12th thoracic vertebra, support
the pumping of air into the lungs. To name just a few examples. Likewise will emotion and
narrative affect my movements. Depression will most likely cause me to look towards the
ground, happiness will most likely cause me to be more acutely aware of the world around
me, open my lungs and inhale, maybe sigh and sing. Emotional needs are connected to
physical needs, and vice versa.
I will be discussing how bodies find meaning in movement. The parts of us that bend seek to
bend and extend. The parts of us that breathe seek to inhale and exhale. The parts of us that
stretch seek to stretch and recoil. The parts of us that sense through smell, seek to detect
what surrounds us. The parts of us that cognize crave to ponder and understand. Why would
we assume that these parts and actions aren't connected. Why would we assume that these
processes could be separate or separable?
Movement and thinking are part and parcel of one another. It is rather our propensity to
delineate categories that create these distinctions and separations. We see difference where
there is none, and at the same time we reduce articulation where there should be distinction.
The first line of action when refining our movement and expression skills is to listen. And by
listening, I mean sensing with all our senses for what is going on in and around our bodies.
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Emotion, cognition, culture, sociality and communication are embodied phenomena. Our
experience of the world is embodied. It is through embodiment, through choreography, that I
learn about and engage with the world. Again, I do not believe in the separateness of "I" and
"world" but I have not found another way of talking about this. Or, in order to explain and help
my reader retrace my steps in these following arguments, I will be talking in ways that are
familiar to us and slowly develop the emergence of new vocabulary and ways of thinking.
Everything we do and experience has meaning whether we are aware of it or not, we are
wired to detect and create meaning, or to deny it, or change it. No matter which way we turn
it; life is meaning. It is tremendously important to understand what I mean by "meaning".
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"I think that every thing is significant...

... every thing...
... everything is a language...
.. actually, it's possible to read it all...
if one is capable of reading these things."
(1)
(quote translated by Karola Lüttringhaus) Pina Bausch
INTRODUCTION: 6READING BODY LANGUAGE

Is there such a thing as a language in the sense of linguistics, a set of symbols used to describe
something? How do we read, use, and learn this language that Pina Bausch describes in the quote
above? What does she mean by 'language'? How do I define language? What are the similarities
between so-called body languages and spoken/written languages? There are dictionaries to refer to
languages and definitions of words. But nevertheless, between and around and through these
definitions the meanings of words are affected and ever changing, through time, from person to
person. Etc. In that sense, dance and language are both hoping to arrive at a message, at
communication. What is lost in translation? How do language and choreography compare as far as
precision of pointing to meaning are concerned? What is gained or lost in each one?
INTRODUCTION: 6a) MY MOTIVATION – Why I choreograph and

create social critical pieces/social critical performance
I am fascinated by the mind. And by that I mean the things we think, the rules and beliefs we, people
of the western world, generate and follow. Generally speaking, I think of my artistic work as an
interrogation into the why's and how's of life. The first hurdle to take before getting to understanding

life is understanding (and overcoming) the violence of our society. Social critical work is what has
been lying at the heart of my work for the past 30 years. I am interested in the phenomenology of
choreography.
INTRODUCTION: 7Situating myself - outlining my practice

I create interdisciplinary expressions in choreography, theatre, scenic design, visual art, lighting,
sound design and film. I think about life, society, and politics through performance and embodied
practice. I think of my choreography as embodied psychology. It is intuitive. It is analytical. And it
practices empathy.
In order to understand what my dissertations aims to achieve, I need to describe what I have been
doing as an artist. I am very briefly summarizing the topics of my pieces: "Letter to water" engages
with how we become neglectful of our environment, and neglectful of ourselves. How we live in
delusion and denial around issues of importance, such as environmental pollution. It investigates how
we prefer denial over inconvenience and simply look away instead of acting to solve our problems.
"Always water everywhere" researches the importance of water to our lives, to our togetherness, and
to our individual psychological wellbeing. "Hippolyta's Disappearance" looks at internalized
misogyny. "Midsummer Dissected" deals with sexism, authority, and autonomy. "Adam-mah" looks
at our relationship to earth and nature, our inability to listen to what our bodies tell us, and at the
complicity that we carry in the violence through our everyday actions. "Seelenschmiede" examines
the life of controversial late author Karl May and examines his attempt to find meaning, purity,
innocence, and spirituality in a world that focuses on deceit, shame, and greed. His life was expressed
through the imagined and he identified with the characters of his novels to extreme degrees. "Keel"
takes a step back, away from the personal to gain a view of our collective approach to life as a
struggle against forces we can not battle; the dancers create a peremable border along the shoreline
of the ocean, staking out their territory, in stillness which depicts the passing time, falling prey to the
tides of hopes, efforts, and violent relationships. "Stillicidium" looks at the audience-performer
relationship and our expectation of one another and of the performer as constantly giving and

producing for the consumption of the viewer, who pays to see the performer. Commercialized and
neo-liberal narratives are questioned in an inner dialogue that is audible to the audience and
depending on distance allows for their responses to engage the performer. "Inertia" is a community
project and performance that examines several individuals' experiences during and in relation to the
Nazi Holocaust, thematizing embodied generational trauma and complicity. "Rooms" tells the story
of mental illness and magic as a tool for mental balance. "Light of the Water" was created in
collaboration with young children that examines our relationship to the ocean and plastic pollution.
"Terra Nullius" expresses thoughts and experience around place, place-making, and home. "Hydra"
simultaneously criticizes and celebrates love and questions the reasons for self denial. "Spaniel" deals
with strength through vulnerability, elevating oneself through becoming the dog of another. "Swim
baby!" and "Hey!" are self portraits and love letters to myself.
INTRODUCTION: 8SITUATING myself - geography

I wish to not speak for everyone in this world and I believe there to be many different ways of
knowing, being , and practicing art. This dissertations draws from and reflects on my personal
experiences. When I speak of 'us' or 'we' in this dissertation, I refer to the Euro-American cultural
realms that I grew up in: Germany, and have lived and worked in, Germany, USA/North Carolina, New
York/California/Virginia/South Carolina/Georgia/Mississippi/Florida.
INTRODUCTION: 9SITUATING myself - Nothing exists out of

context
Underlying to my theories is the supposition that nothing exists out of context. That context changes
meaning, that context translates. For this reason, my dissertation will span a large arc around
expression in art in general, to narrow in on directing, and further zooming in on choreographing
movements for movement performers within the context of larger works of multi-disciplinary
theatrical experiences, to finally focus in on the intuitive process of generating movements

improvisationally and discussing my methodology for uncovering or assigning meaning to

movements and subsequently working with the nuances of what to think and experience while
moving in order to achieve specificity in the expression of emotions and life situations.
INTRODUCTION: 10Hermeneutics of Dance - Bergson - Bausch -

Authentic Movement
The dissertation aims to attempt a hermeneutics of movement, largely based around ideas of
"intuition" as defined by Henri Bergson and (???therapeutic research in movement therapy???).
INTRODUCTION: PAR - thought experiments -Psychology -

Philosophy - Theory
Choreography and performance are my ways of doing thought experiments, actual mind embodied
experiments into our psychology. Through art I engage with trauma, with violence, and emotions.
Choreography for me is both psychology and philosophy. There is a connection between our bodies
and the way our world is. We abuse one another, we hurt one another. I employ dance to help me
make sense of these things.
INTRODUCTION: 12Collective processing and healing - catharsis

Theatre is the place for us to collectively face our woes and wounds and address them together.
Healing takes place in the individual, change takes place in a community healing. It is only now that I
use the words healing. Art is the primary focus of my work. But complex, meaningful art is cathartic
and creative; for all involved.
INTRODUCTION: 13Play - the imagined helps process the real

The theatre, the stage, the performance is a hypothetical playground. Audiences and performers are
play acting, testing imagining situations, conflicts, and solutions; hypothetical and imagined
scenarios are thought experiments. In performing and witnessing we are daring to live and say things
we instinctively know we need and that need addressing. I think we go see performances to witness
process. And in some cases: in order to deal with and process pain.
INTRODUCTION : Knowing
Many things move us to choreograph. Tradition, religious belief, rebellion, self expression, therapy,
social critique and activism, community building, a fascination with what the human body can do,
rhythmicality, musicality, desire and need for beauty. The list is endless. Motivation does not
necessarily shape form, expression, effect, and affect. So my motivation does not necessarily reflect
on my work and why I use the methods and practices I do. At the core I do everything in life in search
for some form of what I at the moment can only call "enlightenment". I am curious to understand
relationships, causes, effects, inter-dependencies, causalities, purposes. I want to understand. I want
to know: bring something from a place of obscurity to a place of clarity; philosopher Alva Noe would
say art "brings life into focus". I want to become sensitive to the details. I am not saying that it is
possible to understand everything and fully, or become enlightened. I am merely saying that I am
driven by this desire to become wiser, more responsive, and more response-able, in general, and
Choreography has been a valuable and reliable tool for me to think through life situations, concepts,
and relationships.
INTRODUCTION 15Dancing to Fly - Full-bodied expression

I wanted to dance so I can "fly", expand my movement abilities, explore them to their fullest
articulation potential. I believe that our physicality and acting "in" the world is "of" the world, IS "the"
world, and therefore my full-bodied expression can illuminate relationalities. I believe that I can learn,
and experience, sense, so much more if I use my entire body for this inquiry into life; if I ask what
movement offers us, what it explores, reflects, and contributes to the socio-cultural "network" of
interbeing.
INTRODUCTION 16IMAGE CREATION - the image speaks and acts

I come from visual arts, so my work is very much concerned with image creation, but I believe that
the image is an experience, a sensation, an imagination, a chain of effects/affects and embodiments.
I often work with performances being comprised of many small still images. Similar to film. Each
image should speak what I intend to express. The image acts upon the viewer and also upon those
that make it up, the performers. The image channels and provokes action.
Eckhart Tolle2 Says "This world is not designed to make you happy, it is designed to challenge you."
("All your expectations are delusionary.")
Eckhart Tolle, talk,` youtube "Discovering Freedom Through Challenge" https://youtu.be/zgXhEImYvb4 @15:25 (note: this talk
has a lot of important aspects to be parsed out. There are connections to social critical art, in waking up, becoming
disillusioned, awaking from the conceptual mind, etc is comparable to the artist pointing out the social ills, the
arbitrariness of social construction. So my goal is to illuminate the unnecessary suffering, the acts of cruelty that we
engage in that take us away from life, the experience and appreciation of life, the "truth" - truth could also be that there
is no truth: illumination recognizes what is, and how what is changes, etc - becoming aware - becoming sensitive to
what is happening to us and why)
INTRODUCTION 17BEING AWAKE
I am fascinated with why we make our lives unnecessarily more difficult.
Art is a process tool for identifying our feelings and needs, then for expressing them, and engaging
one another in discussions around them for the purpose of change.
Choreography is embodied thinking.
All space is psychological space. All movement is expression. Expression is expansion. Expansion is
breath. All of it is transformation.
ePSYCHOLOGICAL SPACE. EXPANSION. TRANSFORMATION. BREATH.

Interdisciplinary expressions in choreography, theatre, scene design, visual art, lighting, sound design, and film.
Thinking about life, society, and politics through performance and embodied practice.
My work is based on the connection between movement, image, sound, and meaning. Hereby I
mean the interplay of theatrical elements such as scenery, costuming, lighting, sound design,
movements/bodies and the act of witnessing and performing.
Everything is about what something means and how it affects my thinking and being.
I want to understand and I want to find solutions and make a difference. I believe that the way to
healing is through recognizing the issues, to making people aware of their complicity in their own
hurt and in the hurt of others.
I make dances to talk to you. I expect you to talk back to me. You don't get to come to the theatre to
just sit there. "Learning how to tell the truth is critical." Bessel van der kolk ( interview on "The Body
keeps the score")

Primarily, this dissertation examines the creative process as I experience it in my own choreographic
methodology, which I am comparing to other choreographers' methodologies and practices. What I
am particularly interested in is the moment in which new choreography/movement emerges from
the body; movement that is considered to be linked to a narrative, movement that is imbued with
meaning and serves the purpose of carrying meaning to an audience. This meaning is discovered in
rehearsal through an improvisational, intuitive practice. The meaning is held-on to, and developed
throughout the rehearsal process and further refined and/or maintained throughout the
performances. I am interested in discussing how meaning emerges: for myself, and for other
choreographers and dancers and how meaning shapes movement and vice versa. Is there a body
language? How unique or universal is a body language? How do we decipher meaning from
movement? How do we translate meaning into movement?
The dissertation is divided into chapters (this list needs to be updated. The most current list of
chapters can be found at www.klphd.weebly.com):
INTRODUCTION: BEING AWAKE:18ATTENTION
Attention is what I refine. Attention is what I pay when I seek to channel movements.
Attention is where and how things take place in creativity.
I am investigating the process of paying attention; how it takes place, what it is. What
am I paying attention to: the unknown. Something exists, but has not been found yet by
my attention. Sometimes it takes an audience's attention to help me find out what I
found.
INTRODUCTION 19IMPROVISATION
The process of attentionpaying is defined by an activity called improvisation. What is

improvisation? How is it possible? What takes place in improvisation?
INTRODUCTION : IMPROVISATION: 20DECISIONMAKING

Related to improvisation and attention. How do I make decisions? Why do I choose this
movement over that movement? What changes if movements change? What causes me
to change my mind and go another route? Will the same meaning still come to me in the
end? Examining desicion-making is related to attention. Would becoming more attentive
to the decision-making mechanisms affect my ability to intuit, to channel 'honest'
movement?

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FOUNDATIONS
FOUNDATIONS 27METHODOLOGY OF THE DISSERTATION
- Dissertation format: make documentary art film as dissertation (transcript is also dissertation)
My research process oscillates back and forth between intuitive and analytical processes. One feeds
the other and makes progression possible.
I cannot write this dissertation without it actually being a practiced, embodied, project. My words,
the dissertation are the result of my way of thinking, which consists in large part of 'doing'.
I think that the problem is not that art is not, or could not be, research. I think the distinction lies in what kind of
practice one engages in, but in the quality, depth, level of detail and time spend on something, whether it be
academic, scientific, or artistic. The critical investigation, the focus, the perseverance and insistence on sticking
with this practice is what makes it research. Good research is a practice. Good research includes a broad range of
ways of knowing and investigating, and experiencing. Yes, there is practice that is not research, because it does
not seek to find anything out. practices vary greatly. Anything can be a practice,as long as it is practiced. The term
practcie does not describe the underpinnings, the motivations and goals of the practice. All practices are still
lumped together under one term, merely because they are not focusing on cognition alone. Similar to how we
define the human and then all other beings are animals. These definitions are insufficient, obviously. Furthermore,
we resist the fact that we also are animals; that researchers are also practitioners. I will be looking at
choreography. Within this field, the variations are extremely diverse and the goals and practices differ greatly. But,
everything we do is marked by a desire to understand and master something. Some choreographic works and
methodologies are research, because they are related to academic and scientific inquiries. Categorization depends
on the quality, goals and methodologies of the research or the practice, not the broader genre/category that they
fit into; if we want to get into the endeavor of attempting to compare them. Furthermore, art is too broad a
category to be of any value or meaning in itself for the purpose of bringing forth the binary between practice and
research, or art and research, or embodiment and cognition.
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I would argue that the intent defines the research, not the actual methodology.
The term research delineates an artificial, arbitrarily defined, standard set by one group of people who assert their
own methods as superior over those of others. I believe that without having practiced the kind of choreography I
am investigating in this dissertation and spending extensive amounts of time with this inquisitive process one is
not sufficiently able to decide or judge whether it is a valuable method for inquiry or not. It is my goal to explain in
words as good as I can how the choreographic process is yielding insights comparable and supplemental to
traditional academic research methods.
- describe my process of research: specific highlight/case study: language to movement (my process), - full-body-
gesture, Tracing gesture
- (Who do we really speak to?: ourselves, I am the one seeking change), dance theatre through the film theory
lens(my approach)
- project of critique: social critique, sociology lens, subcultures/mainstream (my understanding of being of main
stream culture, and critique being of mainstream culture (post WWII/Holocaust as essential practice, coming to US
and being pushed into subculture, struggling to communicate with audiences, being absorbed into
reactionary/regressive main steam/neoliberalism, censorship/self censorship - sarus festival - silencing through
academia (through the very outright practice of critique the silencing has been completed - I no longer practice as I
used to (Agata Kulkowska: taming the inner artist)
- Foucault, violence, social critique, project of unlearning,effortlessness: finding effortlessness, non-performativity
in performance, doing things differently, searching for new ways of sharing/knowing/being/not-
knowing....changing perspectives - zooming out
-articulating - full body articulation, full body thinking, full body expression
-audience interaction as "opening doors for future cogitation" (Housefield, in conversation).
FOUNDATIONS: 28THE CORE: my choreographic process

I want this dissertation to reflect my artistic choreographic process, in part to allow the reader to go
through this process, engaging in the reading in more ways than one. Also, to re-trace the
applicability of my choreographic practice to reading and writing. I want to lead the reader through a
landscape of experiences, exercises, analyses, prompts, arguments, and suggested thought
experiments. In a good performance the viewer although often tethered to their chair, will travel far
in their mind. Many small components of an performance event will move their mind in an eloquently
choreographed fashion to ignite creative pathways of experiencing, thinking, analyzing and
associating. Everything is a work in progress, ever evolving, uncertain, and transient. The meaning
although as clear to me as I can possibly make it, is up to the individual reader and their conscious or
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unconscious contribution. I hope that I can incite conversation through this reading, and, by
expanding the notion of reading, also expand the notion of choreographing.
FOUNDATIONS CONTEXT
I am primarily looking at movement, but the context within which the movement is
placed greatly affects its meaning. How do I negotiate what to say with the body and
what to say with the context, the clothes, the environment, stage design, location,
lighting and the sounds within which everything takes place?
FOUNDATIONS: 29CONVERSATION
I am seeking conversations between choreography, philosophy, psychology, indigenous thought and
practice, sociology, linguistics, and design in order to approximate to a more realistically complex
experience of the phenomenon of articulating and the role of movement in that.
FOUNDATIONS: 30REBALANCING
By interviewing and bringing in artist-scholars from diverse points of view, I seek to map some areas
of the landscape of choreography and communication. My focus lies on choreography and how it
amplifies what we process in daily life and how this amplification in turn alters what and how we act
and experience life. It is my wish to bring choreography to the fore and show the sophistication that
goes into this practice.
FOUNDATIONS: 32INTER-AFFECTING
things are interaffecting one another, all things. I seek to trace a model of being of one another
undoing divisions and blurring lines.
FOUNDATIONS: 70EXERCISES SUMMARY AND REASON FOR HAVING THEM

ABOUT EXERCISES
21
Exercise (2) is the word for: bringing something out, stepping away from, physically
manifesting something from within into the outside, to carry something into effect. We step
away from the page and the writing continues in the doing. Not only I can write something
here, you too, as you feel, move, experience and engage, you bring your very own personal
viewpoints into the story and it becomes something even furthermore unique and experiential
to you.
As I am writing, I stop for walking, dancing, sensing verbal and physical articulations in my
body. I don't do this anywhere near often enough because I fall prey to the pressures of what I
think I should be doing, or achieving. By not taking breaks, I actually break the flow. By
worrying about it, by having deadlines and the pressure of proving success, I become
stagnant. So I try to build movement and embodiment into this essay, for us to experience,
together, and to practice the holding of attention and immersion that I am talking about in
this essay.
The movement catalyses ideas, thoughts, and I can jump ahead into imagination and
backward into experience, or vice versa. I think that possibly, in movement exists a loss of
time, that can be perceived when fully engrossed in the presence of moving. A temporal
displacement where time can be stretched or sped up becomes part of the experience and
again speaks to the interference patterns I mentioned. I am searching for unexplored paths
and ways of perceiving.
Because I believe that some meaning can only be received via embodied practice, I am adding
sections that contain exercises and scores for the reader to do.
FOUNDATIONS 71It is important to experience and move while reading this dissertation,
as information is conveyed in this manner that otherwise will be lost
FOUNDATIONS 72Somatically/experientially/phenomenologically tracing my oscillatory
and iterative process
22
FOUNDATIONS: - 38DEFINITION OF CHOREOGRAPHY:
FOUNDATIONS: - 38DEFINITION OF CHOREOGRAPHY:39directing
FOUNDATIONS: - 38DEFINITION OF CHOREOGRAPHY: c40omposing bodies in

space
FOUNDATIONS: - 38DEFINITION OF CHOREOGRAPHY:41assigning movements to
bodies, asking for specific kinaesthetic orchestrations of soft tissues .
FOUNDATIONS: - 38DEFINITION OF CHOREOGRAPHY: 42Authoring/co-authoring
a piece
FOUNDATIONS: - 38DEFINITION OF CHOREOGRAPHY:43Devising concepts and
narratives
FOUNDATIONS: - 38DEFINITION OF CHOREOGRAPHY: 44determining the goals of
the piece
FOUNDATIONS: - 38DEFINITION OF CHOREOGRAPHY: 45defining the
meaning/narrative/goals/messages and taking choreographic and design action accordingly
https://choreographicinterfaces.org/about: “CRCI UNDERSTANDS CHOREOGRAPHY AS
A FUNCTION OF PROCESSING AND COMPUTATION ranging from gestural human /
computer interfaces (such as the “swipe” and “pinch-to-zoom”) to more subtle interplay
between bodies and surveilling technologies such as social media, drones, robots and satellites.
At times, these technologies coerce our movements through space and time, extracting scads
of data in the process, and implicating our bodies in the well-documented abuses of
surveillance capitalism.” quote from their website
23
“TRACING GESTURE: REVISITING MEANING AND REDEFINING IT'S PLACE IN CHOREOGRAPHIC
PRACTICE AND ACADEMIC CONTEXTS”
FOUNDATIONS: - 38DEFINITION OF MEANING: current understandings of Meaning

FOUNDATIONS: - 38DEFINITION OF MEANING:my understandings of Meaning
FOUNDATIONS: - 38DEFINITION OF MEANING: Meaning versus intent
FOUNDATIONS MOVEMENT FORMS WITH MEANING
A SERIES OF PHENOMENOLOGICAL EXPERIMENTS

WITH DIFFERENT MOVEMENT MODALITIES THAT WORK
WITH MEANING
TRAJECTORY:
·Engaging with the statement that "Movement has Meaning"
·In which ways do these modalities connect with meaning
·This is neither an introduction of the below modalities now a comprehensive description in the ways
that these modalities engage with meaning. I am picking out a few noteworthy aspects in which each of
these modalities engage with meaning in a specific/different way than the other modalities. The goal is
to illustrate the breadth of possibilities for engaging with meaning through movement.
DAOIST MOVEMENT PRACTICE: Tai Chi/Chi Gong

I am moving to connect with the energies of the world, seeking to ride the flows of the energy
lines that connect cosmos and body, breath of mine and breath of life of others
·Situating: practicing form a few years, on and off
·Gung Fu, Tai Chi, Chi Gong
·What is DAOIST MOVEMENT?
·How is meaning connected with movement?

·imagery:
·
YOGA
Yoga means union. It is a spiritual practice.
·Situating: very new to Yoga
·
·What is DAOIST MOVEMENT?
·How is meaning connected with movement?
·imagery:
AXIS SYLLABUS
I am moving to improve my proprioceptive capabilities, connect to myself as a microcosm and
mini-model of the larger systems of the planet and universe
·Situating: Practicing intensively since 2011
·
·What is the AXIS SYLLABUS?
·How is meaning connected with movement in this modality?
·imagery:
·
Afro-Latin Dance, Candomble, Yoruba

I am moving to connect with the divine.
·Situating: new to this study
·...
·What is this MOVEMENT modality?
25

·imagery:
ETC
I am moving to ...
·Situating: ...
·...
·imagery:
·
NATIVE AMERICAN DANCING

I am moving to ...
·Situating: ...
·...
·imagery:
·
BALLET
Ballet is....
·Situating: part of my education as a dancer, practiced for a decade in my twenties and influenced much
of my other movement practice as a choreographer for many years
·part of university education in 'concert dance'/'dance'
·
26
·What is ballet
·What s ballet teaching?
·imagery:
GYMNASTICS
Gymnasitics is a competitive practice that adheres to strict rules and guidelines of duration,
execution, form, style, rank, body-condition (weight), etc.
·Situating: Used to do intensively as a child in elementary school
·Gymnastics team with competitions
·Part of regular physical education classes
·What is Gymnastics
·What s gymnastics teaching?
·imagery:
·
INTERNATIONAL FOLK DANCING

I am moving to ...
·Situating: been folk dancing since I was a kid, on and off, but still sort of outsider to the practice
·...
·imagery:
·
27
FOUNDATIONS: SOCIAL CRITIQUE

341) "Insights Into Body-based Practice as Research: Methodologies in Euro-American Theatrical
Dance
28
FOUNDATIONS: 94SOCIAL CRITIQUE

FOUNDATIONS 95Choreography as critical practice
FOUNDATIONS 96meaning-making to upset the status quo
FOUNDATIONS 97Choreography is a response to, part of, and embedded into western
european cultural practice and heritage. It can only exist in its
current/particular manifestation in this particular context. It does not
necessarily translate to other cultures, other
choreographic practices.
29
FOUNDATIONS: SOCIAL CRITIQUE – make a new subtitle here

"..."3
Walter Benjamin
FOUNDATIONS Choreography as social critique
I have created works of performance because I felt compelled to do so. It came naturally to me
from an early age.
I learned to dance in order to learn to fly. I think now, that flying is that feeling you get when you
have freed yourself from the restrictions of the arbitrary and violent rules of our society. These
are exemplified in so many areas: colonialism, Kreuzzuege, witch burnings, rape, prisons,
sexism,gender, child abuse, trauma, environmental destruction, slaughterhouses, exploitative
agriculture, wars.... A lack of listening.
My efforts as a choreographer have been to discover and uncover social idiosyncracies, injustices,
illogicalities (what is the English word?). Our society doesn't make sense. I was brought up with
many sexist and racist beliefs. These beliefs lead to war, genocide, rape, social inequalities. yet,
people do not change what needs to be changed. Through art I explore what the mechanisms
are. Through art I practice staying with something for longer, with listening. I create a piece, that
is like an essay on a topic, and I share it with an audience. I expect my audience to have some
Walter Benjamin
responses to my multi-sensory/multi-media essay. It is this discussion I am after on the one hand

and the discovery on the other.

My works are critical mostly on smaller spectrum levels, such as individual lives, individual stories.
I have staged some of Shakespeare's pieces through my current day lense. I have analyzed what
he might have been wanting to say with his work and what it says and what can be said with it
today. I never considered myself to be a political choreographer or an activist, but I wanted
freedom from irrational social restrictions.
Therefore, my work reflects critique throughout all aspects of its elements: movement, gesture,
visual images, sound and utterances, lighting, audience position. All these elements contribute to
my thematic investigation. I am not saying that I am creating a language, I am saying that the
language changes for each thing that wants to be expressed. I can say one thing in a number of
ways and I can choreograph something specific in a number of ways. But in the end the piece
consists of elements that express specific things. Not all things that I am saying are known to me:
therefore I ask dancers, colleagues, musicians, etc what they perceive and I ask audiences what
they see. Together we unpack these issues.
My work is not entertainment. Although it I try to make it captivating to the audience.
IV
32
PAR:
PRACTICE RESEARCH
CONSIDERATIONS
PAR: 31PAR PRACTICE RESEARCH CONSIDERATIONS
By highlighting the ways in which choreography has overlap with academic practices, I am not
attempting to push choreography into the mold of academic requirements, but rather I am hoping to
show that the practice is already at the academic level, that choreography is under-estimated and that
academia is not aware of all of its blind-spots. Academic models have their limitations.
33PAR 2023 – CONSIDERATIONS FOR PRACTICE RESEARCH
PAR 2023 – CONSIDERATIONS FOR PRACTICE

RESEARCH
33
34
"MOVEMENT HAS MEANING – Arguments for the Validity and Utility of Practice as Research in
Academia and Methodological Examples”
Chapters
1) "Insights Into Body-based Practice as Research: Methodologies in Euro-American Theatrical Dance

Forms"

(this is at the moment the most fitting title, as I delve deeper into centering the idea that what I am engaging in as a
choreographer is a research practice: investigating specific topics and communicating specific ideas, for the purpose of discussing
and provoking social and personal change. The choreographic process is a process of inquiry, enlightenment, revelation, discovery,
uncovering, revealing, understanding, meaning-making, etc. Creating movements is done in ways that see movement as a form of
language (see 2) Full Body gesture); the creative process and the outcome, i.e. the performance/showing/discussion, is a project of
social research and, most likely, critique. Micro elements of the choreographic process for example are the creation of movements
and movement sequences. Macro elements are the staging of the message/the piece and its world-building, which includes sound
design, lighting, costuming, etc. Another macro element is the crafting of the encounter with the audience, which includes,
audience seating relationships, proximity and distance, sight lines, duration, etc. The choreographic process at large consists of
the assembling of the arrangements in time-space, the research for the topic and concepts, casting, rehearsing, performing, etc.:
the whole production. I see the choreographic process as an act of sociological, psychological and political inquiry and expression,
Theatrical methods are preferred to academic or scientific ones because of the emotional and imaginative components therein,
which help reach people in more empathetic ways.
·knowing?
2) "FULL BODY GESTURE: the relationship between movement and language"

(this is focusing on my process of working with dance choreography and my belief that movements carry meaning. It is focusing on
the body. The process here is comparable to making a "film with subtitles": the film are the images: the moving body and the
subtitles are the language, the subtext, that I assign to each movement in order to form sentences and narratives for the dancer in
order to get the dancer to move in specific ways that communicate specific ideas/messages as well as to create energetic, and
dynamic coherence.)
·methodology in the rehearsal studio
·the moment of finding movement
·rehearsing and refining expression and meaning
·performance at discovery of meaning
·audience feedback
·subtitles for movement: narrative as tool
·film theory approaches
·ANALYSIS AND TRANSLATION
PAR/RESEARCH

Alfredo Jaar 4wrote: “My work is 99% thinking and 1% making” (Shtromberg5, 2013, para. 12)
So the question in PAR really is if non-verbal methodologies can constitute for research/academic research.
The practcie itself is not in question as such, it is in question as sufficiently fulfilling the requirements for academic
research and communicability/comprehensablility, understandability, standardization potential, etc.
The work in PAR culminates in the areas of expanding our ways of knowing and transitioning from language based
methods to embodied methods, or how to merge the two. This, in my opinion, requires a new university, an advanced
level of academic structuring. Language is more easily understood than non-verbal expression (perhaps because it has
been the go-to method for centuries). Language spells things out more. Practice in that sense then changes the
definition of research and academia entirely.
Goals:
Dr Kate Wall6 distinguishes between practitioner research and practitioner inquiry but in my opinion, we need to look
at what the practice is, what it aims to achieve and how it is structured in order to define whether it is research or
inquiry, and what the differences might be. Wall defines practitioner inquiry as "... professional learning, first and
foremost. It is about practitioners engaging with their practice and striving to understand better what is going in their
setting, in their context, in their work."
Alfredo Jaar Alfredo Jaar, “Context Is Everything.” December 8, 2013. http://lareviewofbooks.org/essay/i-will-

not-act-before-understanding-context-is-everything-the-work-of-alfredo-jaar. Published, 12/08/2013.
http://lareviewofbooks.org/essay/i-will-not-act-b...
5
Shtromberg, Alfredo Jaar, Alfredo Jaar, “Context Is Everything.” December 8,
2013. http://lareviewofbooks.org/essay/i-will-not-act-before-understanding-context-is-everything-the-work-of-
alfredo-jaar. Published, 12/08/2013.
http://lareviewofbooks.org/essay/i-will-not-act-b...
6
Professor Kate Wall (University of Strathclyde), December 8, 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0k-S-qW0cMc
practitioner inquiry approaches in pedagogy, interview/talk at PAR
37
There are different kinds of research. There are different kinds of inquiry. My goal with this dissertation is to expand
and refine the definitions of research, outlining the methodologies of a certain kind of practice based research, and
highlighting its benefits and potential outcomes for academia. But I am not trying to roll practice into academia,
which is what has been happening so far. Instead I seek to open academia up to embrace practice more acceptingly
and expand on the ways of knowing and researching.
To Do/goals/structure ideas:
- research into PAR journals, articles, books
- beginning:
- practice as research: this is how I have understood my work from the beginning - project of
'enlightenment': desire to understand, process, verbalize, change
- not knowing/improvisation/intuition: methodology, entering into embodied spaces as form of inquiry
and revelation into topics, issues/problem solving - draw similarities to authentic movement
- define my practice as research, inquiry, investigation, curiosity, not entertainment, not for aesthetic reasons
although aesthetics are a language to communicate specific things through,
- define/outline my specific practice as research methodology
- part pseudo-spiritual quest (mostly psychological), part intellectual endeavor: the long process of disentangling
the machinery of the status quo, the goal is to find what is actually meaningful, useful, honest, authentic; do do
something and be in a way that feels worth while, not like you are wasting your life on it. Mostly though to
understand and see through the mechanisms of social life/psychology.
object : what do you want to examine in your research
question: what do you want to examine in your research?
lens: whose work is informing your thinking?
"something about having to define the differences between a process and an outcome, a creative process,
and research. not communicating to an audience... communicating ideas in ways that should have meaning,
that call for a public audience to make meaning..." (fix this quote....)
Cymbeline Buhler (7)
7
detail about who said this quote and where and how it is relevant to my chapter and research.
38
88PAR 2023 – Considerations for Practice Research
36PAR/RESEARCH
37Goals:
46PAR: thoughts on practice as research PAR: thoughts on

practice as research
47INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
I would argue that everything we engage in is embodied. This includes the act of thinking. So it seems to
me that it would be doing great disservice to our research to not include all of the body's ways to engage
with material or approach complex concerns. Generally speaking, moving and thinking are not truly
separate. The only exception here are claims by people in the world of spiritual growth, who claim that
there is a state of non-thought that can be achieved. This is a complex claim and it is not the field I am
addressing here with this dissertation, as it only tangentially affects my inquiry, and potentially not at all,
since most of us are not striving for spiritual enlightenment when going about our research or practice.
So, thought and movement are intertwined. We move out entire bodies when we speak, we even
performquite specific movements in the process of gesturing, which has been researched extensively.
Studies show that movement and thought are intricately linked (detail, 8)
8
detail about research that shows how movement and speech/thought are related
39
In an interview (details) from February 2022, Cymbeline Buhler/her interviewer states:

"...differences....between practcie and research, there is a difference between the art for the research
sake and the art for the art sake....(fix this quote)... art is just for people's enjoyment...." leaves
interpretation open.... "
Furthermore, I entirely disagree that there is, could be, or should be a difference between the art for
research and the art for practice. I think the embodied research is only meaningful if it is conducted to
the level and requirement, the standards, of artistic inquiry and performance. Art and performance is the
definition of thorough research, if you ask me. Professional art is a term for a very detailed process and
ability/virtuosity.
I really don't see what the difference is here. Why insist on the biased definition and division between
research and practice? What doe this do? How does this serve us at all?
It seem to me that everyone, including the artists believe that what art/performance is doing is not
analytical, quantitative or quantifyable. How come creativity has gotten this rep that is tied to non-
specificity and entertainment?
Dr Lulkowska9 lays out how the research proces and the creative process are folliwjng very similar
parameters.
48LINKS & Transcripts LINKS & Transcripts
Practice Research Conference

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7osXtLkTFC0&t=616s
Anthony Downey asks:
“How does Practice based Research disrupt epistemoloigical utilitarianism?”
“How does Practice question the use value and application of knowledge as a form of research?”
9
Dr Agata Lulkowska from interview in PAR seminar series on yourtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZBY9lCfU5k
40
“How we understand research in the context of academia, how can such questions expand upon the
radical capacity of research within academic settings.
:Key specific points: KTP's knowledge training partnerships
49IMPACT IMPACT
“How does practice based research play into how we idealize or position the notion of impact specifically
aroun the politics of epistemology and of knowledge production.
“How we understand the context of practice based research through the privatixed, corporate research
sectors....
“Why do we look to PBR or art practcies as a means to produce knowledge.
why do we look to practice to produce knowledge? Where are these demands coming from?
See otter recording for transcript
the determinisms of colonial discourse
My response: It seems to me that much of these discussions around Practcie research orbits around the
notion and movement to bring arts based practices into the service of other sectors and how to milk arts
based practices for some kind of creative or other capital.
I particularly felt and witnessed this move, as well meant as it was, born out of a mi-understanding of the
arts, to an attempt to validate the arts, to explain their value to non-arts inclined circles, and to elicit
funding from them. However, in the process, the arts were prostituted and the arts councils sold out their
integrity to rich business owners and foundations that sought to keep alive some philanthropic status
symbol. Meanwhile, the understanding of and for the arts did not go up, instead, I believe they went down.
Espeically in NC. I felt that this move caused the depth of artistic production to flatten out into artists gone
highly censored teachers. Actual artmaking was discouraged.
What is 'actual art making' and how does meaning intersect in this question and in art practice?
Actual art making is concerned with the topics it engages with and centers around. Conflict of interest
ferments when funding is given by organizations that have political and social, educational and business
agendas.
41
Actual artmaking, in my definition, is the act of raising questions in society through artistic expression of any
kind. Actual Artmaking is expression that is not censored in any way shape or form. Actual artmaking
manages to express even through the veil of censorship. Art is suppose to be radical in some way.
50Anthony: Anthony:
art brought forth into the arena of knowledge production
potentially a new field of research whereby we question these research methodologies, as opposed to
applying our own research practices toward them.
51Michael Schwab: Michael Schwab:

“Expositionality disturbing facts”
difficult point to respond to:
from his article in Jurnal for artistic research JAR, he is a co-founder of the journal
facts, latin factum, can disturb some of this epistemic fabric that we're in
research/scientific research
'reinstituting research” research is a dirty word in the indigenouse community. Tied to colonialism,
exploitation, extraction, domination, etc.
research: google definition: “ redefinition of research, and redefinition of what art is. the systematic
investigation into and study of materials and sources in order to establish facts and reach new conclusions.
Normative art that contributes to research
we would be excluding a lot of stuff
vaccines before proper testing: a moment of actualization is happening before we arrive at proper knowledge
52Artistic versus Art Artistic versus Art

“a problem that arises from collaboration between art institutions and academic institutions. Definitions of
what art is is entrenched and normative. Excluding a lot. What artists are able to do and are interested in doing
does not dovetail into what is represented within art institutions. It has to do with the institutionalization of the
42
notion of art that comes in a hierarchical form. Artistic research in a way by looking at minor practices, by
looking at the kind of … are not necessarily able to connect with high definitions of art. That's a problem
because we might be in a situation where academia tells us we have to write in particular ways and
cpntemporary atr tells us we have to make art in particular ways. So we have a very empoverished middle
ground whilst the opposite is true.”
final point: “expositionality creates very small articulations . There are not big claims about the world. It's
instead this particularly limited arrangement of stuff, “that's how art may be identified”, “that's how research
might be”, that's how I'm thinking here, this is the resistance of the materials here, these are the possibilities,
that's how you're affected by it, and so on. Very limited, individual, singular articulations, that are not yet
connected up within a transcendental sphere of what epistemology of artistic research might be and hopefully
will never be connected in this way. How do I connect the specific with the specific. How am I instituting and
keeping the value of singular articulations... that don;t have to go through some artificial construct....create a
patchwork that show the protocol and interfaces....
Rather get into the complexity of what they are doing rather than shortcut it into explanation.
Michael has raised at least 6 individual points about how this relates to epistemological systems.
------------------------------------------
“Art” does not exist
book by the guy that points out that art is a relatively new invention
V
43
PROCESS
PROCESS - GENERATING MOVEMENTS in the
studio
Describing and analyzing one Specific Aspect of my choreographic process
(Methodology and Point of View?)

GENERAL ABOUT PROCESS
In this Dissertation I am examining one specific choreographic moment, or aspect, that is part of a diverse
range of methodologies i use in the overall process of crafting a new piece.
I like to work in an open space, a dance studio or theatre. I need the light to be low, so I do not get distracted
by too many visuals. I prefer a wall of mirrors so I can see what our movements look like from an outsider's
point of view. I prefer a vinyl dance floor.
In the beginning of the rehearsal process I usually work with one other dancer (in the case of vita5 it was Lena
Rose Magee), even if the piece is for more than two performers. Later we will both present the movement
material to the group. We are facing a mirror. We communicate with each other through the mirror, usually,
instead of turning our heads to one another; we are only standing 8 feet apart.
What we begin here is later continuously shaped in an ongoing lingo-somatic conversational process in
rehearsals, performances and beyond. So this is the root, or the seed of the movements and the movement
material, or movement vocabulary, of the entire piece.
Performances are an important part of the choreographic process down the line.
This specific methodology consists of efforts to both assign meaning to movement as well as derive meaning

from movement.e
MORE SPECIFICALLY ABOUT PROCESS

Listening is the basis for this process (and the basis for a henceforth resulting philosophy of
embodiment)
This process is a form of speaking/language and communication.
This process is an improvisational-memorial-interpretational partnership between the dancer and
myself. The goal is to generate movements to be arranged in a specific sequence that I refer to with
44
motifs of language, words and sentences that can support the act of repeatedly expressing a specific
narrative/story.
The sentences are spoken again and again, not by repetition or copying, but by process of re-living the
development of events.
In the initial creative process I am improvising intuitively with or without clear understanding of the topic
that the piece is about.
I am attempting to enter a state of focus/heightened awareness that allows me to tune in to a bodily
sense, in combination with motivation from visual imagery (from dreams, or waking state
thoughts) to become receptive to emotional/kinaesthetic urges to move in certain ways: in other
words, I am trusting my body to speak what it needs to speak.
The movements that flow out of me are then translated into language/narrative, and 'meaning' is deducted
1Or, vice versa: if I wish to express a specific narrative, I try to find the emotional/kinaesthetic forms and
the corresponding movements.
2This process of creation/translation is an ongoing process, each time entering deeper, more
heightened, states of awareness.
3The movement/meaning is crosschecked for meaning by the movers and the viewers
Re-Living/Copying
each dancer works differently. Lena learns movements from me by copying my shapes, dynamics, angles of
flexion and degrees of rotation, etc. Lena says: "Copying movements is........... (note: insert quote)" So at first
it is a visually driven activity. I accompany her for a long while but will eventually give the material over into
her responsibility. This transfer usually never happens completely, as we will have feedback sessions after
performances, but in the moment of performing, she needs to take complete control over the story, by
making the movement hers entirely.
?I usually videotape them for memory and the desire to capture/archive the original version, that I presume is
as close to the intent as possible; although sometimes it turns out that I was meaning to say something else
and we change the original movement. It is an intuitive approach, or in other words, it is a process that does
not rely on words and cognitive thinking in that sense. Other mechanisms are at work here.
We rehearse the sequences together, both moving. At some point I will switch to watching the dancer. I ask
her:"Can I see that, please?" This happens often at moments where I get stuck, where the flow is interrupted.
This does not usually happen to check on how a dancer is interpreting my movements, unless I am worried
about their ability. With Lena, that is not the case. She can 'copy' and retain large amounts of information and
remember details. With some dancers I have to work differently. If they are not able to copy, I work more with
intent and improvisation, entirely relying on the physicality of the dancer, on her movements and her ability
to express the ideas and the overall narrative. If I work with students or total beginners, often I let go of story
and detail and follow their flow, while trying to guide them as much as possible into a general direction. With
this I am beginning the process of excavating the proper meaning for myself and explaining to her what I
mean with the movement, ergo, how I want them to be danced, with what kind of dynamic, how much
torsion, tension, expression, etc. This process becomes refined as I observe and also dance the movement
45
again and again. Within this process I translate my 'subconsciously' created movements into sentences of
content. Each movement, each gesture, has a meaning and represents something that is very specific to me.
Sometimes, movements stand unnamed for very long periods of time, even entire scenes, and eventually,
usually in performance, when I am in an altered state of mind that is closer to the creative one and has
greater access to deeper layers of 'speaking', I will discover why I made one choice or another in a piece.
Ice bergs and the blurriness of peripheral vision

My contention is that there is a vast pool of knowledge, of ideas, of thoughts and possibilities below the
surface of that which is made simpler through cognitive thought processes. The complexity
below/behind/around the epicenter of awareness is a part of our everyday lives. We live from this vastness,
we express from this complexity but we are not consciously aware of it most of the time. Some activities
enhance complexity, others enhance simplification and specialization. I believe in a language that is intrinsic
to everyone and comes directly from inside us, or in more spiritual terms, it stems from consciousness, from
that which everything is made of and articulates with. This intrinsic language can be used and refined or
ignored, or worst: discouraged. It is a language of expression that is unique to each person with some
commonly shared parameters, similar to the human body, which is an "individualized commonality".
Individuation
We share a structure and the concepts and laws that govern its locomotion through the world, but joint
angles, tissue composition, muscle tone, and many other factors are uniquely composed and therefore
require unique adaptations. Many movement training protocols are ignorant of this fact.
individuation plays an important role in movement as well as in communicating with our non-verbal language
vocabularies. We are always learning within the context of one another and also by ourselves.
?Dark Spaces
For many years I spent my life in dark spaces. Dark spaces are comforting, quiet and facilitate focused work. I
had a dancer who would go crazy and have to leave the rehearsal in need of some sunlight. When you get
totally overloaded with information: try sticking your head into small dark spaces, like laundry hampers,
shelves, washing machines... it's funny, but it does really work to calm you down. (note: insert photo of head in
washing machine, if I can find it) When I get ready for choreographing I prefer a quiet, dark, dance studio. Not
pitch black, I have to be bale to see, but I don't like working in artificial light, or bright light. It is distracting.
Too many details catch my attention and keep me from entering that state of mind I like to be in when I pull
ideas out of the air.
Opening doors
The name of the band from the 60's and 70's, "the DOORS", stands for "the doors of perception". It is
interesting that this phenomenon seems to really exist. I talked with friends, fellow cohort at UC Davis about
how I have to open the approximately 6" square double doors at the back of my head to ensure creative flow.
The surprising reaction was not that they couldn't relate to the idea of these doors in their heads, but that
they had them too, and that for each person these doors seemed to be located to open the head to different
direction: some to the back, or to the front, or to the top. My doors are wooden and a bit weathered. I didn't
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ask them what their doors looked like and I should investigate this whole thing a bit more. The doors at the
back seem to work as in finding something that is there and to bring it 'up to speed' and out through focusing
it through the brain and face, through thought, analysis, speech and vision. When the person talked about
the doors in the front, her movements were accompanied by a falling forward, as into a space that allowed
for a different reality, for a freedom, perhaps, to move and create, to discover. The person indicating that the
doors opened up towards the sky, felt to me like he indicated a sense of spiritual connection and
enlightenment, a revelation of sorts. (note: do I need to mention who they are?)
Busybraining
I often find myself creating while doing simple obsessive things like playing solitaire or sudoku. It is as if the
activity of scooting numbers around busies a part of my brain so that other kinds of thinking can take place,
other thoughts to happen in the background, or foreground, or in the 3-dimensional network. Or maybe I just
tend to make things complicated for myself by creating extra challenges that produce multitasking and
multi-thinking.
When I choreograph, I have to connect with something to achieve a kind of flow. What this something is, I
will try to describe.
?
I prefer to choreograph in cooperation with another dancer present in the studio in the moments of
creating. In this portfolio I am describing this process and focus on analyzing what happens within
me, what happens within the dancer, and what happens between us and how we extract meaning from
movement and how meaning changes movement and vice versa, how we practice so that we gain
knowledge from our activities and how we develop and keep alive that which we excavated and
sculpted in these initial moments in the studio.
1. Mirroring and Mirrors
1Lena and I both face the mirror. I generate movements by improvising. I am simultaneously in my body,
sensing and expressing as well as watching myself as if I were another person. I am making choices based on
what I see and what the audience presumably will see, while I am also sensing what particular movements feel
like. While I am creating movements, the dancer, in this case Lena Rose Magee, is next to me learning the new
movements on the spot. I see her move with me. It is almost like she is me, and I am her, because after all, I am
making movements for her. I see how my movements look on her and if she will be able to dance them in the
way I imagine (or better). By 'better' I mean that it is possible for her movements to be even more expressive of
my intent than mine, or that she adds a dimension of content to it that I had not previously thought of, which
often translates into a more visceral, physically engaging and mesmerizing way of executing the proposed
material.? We communicate largely through the mirror; even though we are right next to one another, we look
at each other in the mirror. It's a bit like puppetry. We are speaking through our mirror images. We mirror one
another as well as we engage with the mirror and the mirrored person. Sometime I wonder if I am the mirrored
person more than the real person, or if the mirrored person has taken on other identities from our selves.? We
work simultaneously in front of the mirror, me generating, her memorizing and translating into her own body. I
need her to learn it right away, or I will forget.
2. Complementary Players
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?
1?While improvising I will be imagining the space in which the dance will take place, the lighting, the
audience's point of view, the costumes, etc. It is like meditation. Not all elements are always clear to me,
but once they take shape they become a player in the choreographic process. Choreographing is a
complex amalgamation of activities and analyses. The dancer for me is a sounding board, the perfect
tennis partner, not out to beat you and able to keep the ball in the air. She is an essential partner in the
generation of movements. ?
2??She is a guardian of memory. She is an instant translator. She is the mirror and the extension to my
source movements. Her personality plays an important role, confident, open, steadfast. I need her to be
extremely perceptive, intuitive and capable of expressing the ideas that are being born right there. I think
that she thinks and understands the movement with her body, not her cognition. The knowledge of my
body is transferred into her body. She absorbs the information and archives it for some time. I look at her
and analyse what I see. If I don't see it, I ask her what she feels like.
3. Presence
1The choreographic process I am describing here is a process of intensive presencing (as in being in the
present moment). We are playing with being in the moment, while we are also bringing subconscious
knowledges into the foreground, bringing the past, or future, or alternate realities or potentialities into the
presence.
2I require the dancer to have an ability to enter a state of mind that is marked by a complete focus for the
activity and the narrative that is being created. Technical virtuosity is complemented by theatricality,
honesty and presence. Presence is focus. Uninterrupted focus is flow. Both are essential to me. I have
worked with Lena for many years and a relationship has developed that consists of trust, mutual
admiration, and responsibility to one another.
1We rehearse the sequences together, both moving. At some point I will switch to watching her. I ask: "Can I
see that, please?" This happens often at moments where I get stuck, where my flow is interrupted.
Sometimes, when I work with dancers that do not have the movement qualities I am hoping to see, I stop to
see how the story is reading on them. With Lena, that is not the case. She can 'copy' and retain large
amounts of information and remember details. I ask her to show me what we have to help me find that
loose end of the red thread again so I can continue creating movements. I might need to see it several
times, for things to kick into gear again. ?I will observe her critically and determine where I might want to
refine things later, where I could go more in one direction or another, and I might ask her to change or
improvise in places where I am not sure what needs to happen. I watch to see if her movement is creating
the feeling I was having when I generated the movement. When the two match, more or less, it feels like an
achievement. With this alternation of doing, watching and doing, and only watching, I am beginning the
process of excavating the proper meaning for myself and explaining to her what I mean with the
movement, ergo, how I want it to be danced, with what kind of dynamic, how much torsion, tension,
expression, struggle, ease, emotional entanglement, etc, etc, etc. This process becomes refined as I observe
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and also dance the movement again and again.? A slight increase in for example torsion will change the
meaning. In order to help Lena reconnect to the movement, and in order for me to develop the story
properly, I rehearse by giving a text to the movements that I use in rehearsal. It's a bit like writing a book.
4. Creating Worlds
1I bring worlds out of the imaginary into a reality. (Arguably, imagination has a realness to it, beyond the
hallucination or the unrealistic, but imagination itself has a value of justification, it exists in its own right and is
in its own way REAL.) Together with dancers, musicians, and occasionally other artists, we create, we birthe,
we bring an imagined world into reality.
5. Narrative
1For me narrative is any "story" that surrounds a choreography. Narrative can be literal, illustrative,
intellectual, linear, but also abstract, multidimensional, elusive and otherwise not easily described with
words. It is any body of meaning surrounding the choreography or emanating from it.
2Within this process I then begin the for me essential process of translating my 'subconsciously' created
movements into sentences of content. Each movement, each gesture, has a meaning and represents
something that is very specific to me. Sometimes, movements stand unnamed for very long periods of
time, even entire scenes, but eventually, usually in performance, when I am in an altered state of mind that
is closer to the creative one and has greater access to deeper layers of non-verbal 'speaking', I will discover
why I made one choice or another in a piece. I usually videotape rehearsals for memory and the desire to
capture/archive the original version that I produced, and that I presume is as close to my original intent as
possible.
6. Intuition
1Intuition plays a vital role in my process. Intuition is the ability to trust my non-verbal, non cognitive ways
of knowing. Intuition is the path that leads me out of the unknown. I enjoy being in the unknown,
choreographically speaking, because I know, intuitively, that there is a solution, a shape to the randomness
of the multitude of possibilities and thoughts, ideas, elements that first shape the creation of a piece.
2Intuition in choreography emerges as I open a set of double doors at the back of my mind, to allow for
energetic and creative flow to take place. The doors open and sometimes it takes work to keep them open,
sometimes they want to remain opened for long periods of time. I feel like i am directing my gaze inward, de-
focusing my vision, to take a step back inside my head, to the back of my head and take a seat there,
enveloping myself with flow, ideas, movements, and I am allowing my body to be moved by this flow like the
branches and leaves of tree in the wind. There is some cooperation there. Perhaps my stepping back
displaces the ideas from inside to the outside. I have to decouple the brain as the master controller and allow
the entire body to lead in an orchestrated manner that I might not understand but also don't have to, like my
heartbeat or my breathing, I just have to allow them to happen. I give space. I probably release endorphins.
3Intuition is much underrated and much discredited. Intuition is a super power that should be trusted.
Unfortunately, western patriarchal and science obsessed society has all but eradicated our trust and
appreciation of this way of knowing.
4Generating movements is an intuitive process, or in other words, it is a process that does not primarily rely
on words and cognitive thinking. Other mechanisms are at work here...
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*
MY PROCESS: MORE... on My Process
Generating, memorizing and forgetting - the liminal
I pull things out of the liminal. out of a realm of fleetingness, of non articulatedness. Everythung is already
there, I just have to find the puzzle pieces and put them together. I think that the part of forgetting comes
from the state of mind that I am in when the material is generated. It is one of fleeting existence and one that
emphasizes the current moment. These three are part of my life and part of my choreographic process. I will
generate a sequence, then often I will forget it. If there is a sequence I have to dance as well, I will usually
generate it in the above described manner and then after working with the dancers extensively I have to ask
them for their help to relearn the phrase I made. Then, usually, after I have learned it again, I will remember
most of it for many years. I remember it by going back in time to the moments of performance or rehearsal
and reliving the sensations of dancing this sequence. By physically engaging with the movement I can
recover their meaning and their order.
* How is this way of choreographing different from other ways of choreographing?
I don't always work this way, although probably all my methods are somewhat methodologically related.
If I work collaboratively with an artist, then more time is spent on discussing the concept and allowing
each collaborating artist to contribute what they feel is appropriate. of course, we have to reach an
agreement, so that what we all feel that the goals of the project are achieved. A million new questions
open from here, which i will ignore for now....
... Back to the "non-collaborative" piece, where I pretty much call all the shots and I decide what will be
danced, how, when, etc... This is perhaps closer to a dictatorship, but I will not reinforce it. if a dancer can
not relate and is not enjoying the process, I will not be able to get out of it what I need. So there is a
partnership aspect that is collaborative in some ways. I need to further define the collaborative aspects
of my rehearsal process with Lena in "vita5".
If a dancer can not dance what I am imagining, for example: the dancer can not remember sequences, or
has very different physical abilities, is a beginner or has a very different physical expressiveness, or the
dancer can not implement corrections, then I work more with structured improvisation. Not being able
to do something is not necessarily a problem. each dancer is different. Structured improvisation allows
the dancer to bring more of her own movement vocabulary into the piece and establish her own
sequences. We do make sure that what she is expressing with her choreography is in line with what I
want it to say within the framework of the piece. If the piece is collaborative, I do not have such strong
editing power and desire. I don;t prefer either way of working, but I do need the rules to be very clear. It
has to be clear whether we are trying to realize my imagination, or someone else's imagination or if we
create something unpredictable, or new, out of our mutual collaboration.
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WHO'S TALKING
?Also, the dancer changes the piece. Lena dancing the piece is very different from me dancing it. Her lines are
clean, her hair is short, nothing flows or frays, she remains composed and she is precise. My lines are not
clear, my hair flies all over the place, I gradually become disentangled from order, falling into chaos. I wanted
to refine and emphasize this effect of abandon and loss of control and worked with Lena on finding her own
way of falling into that state. Through working with her in this way, achieving a narrative as opposed to
particular steps, I was able to add new layers of sound and breath work, bordering verbalizations, which had
never occurred to me before. I found them to be really strong additions to the story as they highlighted yet
another layer of separation and another opportunity to break through.
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PROCESS 21INTUITION
David Lewis writes,

Our “intuitions” are simply opinions; our philosophical theories are the same. Some are
commonsensical, some are sophisticated; some are particular, some general; some are more
firmly held, some less. But they are all opinions…. (1983: x)
on·to·log·i·cal
adjective
11.
relating to the branch of metaphysics dealing with the nature of being.
"ontological arguments"
12.
showing the relations between the concepts and categories in a subject area or domain.
"an ontological database"
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/intuition/
INTUITIONS AS BELIEFS
INTUITIONS AS DISPOSITIONS TO BELIEVE
Intuitions as Sui Generis States
PROCESS INTUITION
I agree with Bergson when he writes "...an absolute could only be given in an intuition whilst
everything else falls within the province of analysis. By intuition is meant the kind of intellectual
sympathy by which one places oneself within an object in order to coincide with what is unique in
it and consequently inexpressible." To me, this means that there is greater precision in intuition
52
than in analysis. However, I am working with analysis when I am trying to develop the intuited
information into a dance piece.
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PROCESS 22EFORTLESSNESS
A feeling of effortlessness accompanies the finding of meaning. Some artists say that they
know when a movement belongs into the piece they are making. That sense of assuredness
happens in effortlessness. I want attention to be effortless, not a struggle. Sometimes the
struggle can not be avoided, but when we find the meaning and the step and the context in
which a dance lives, fully blossoms, expands into meaning, that is a moment of
effortlessness.
PROCESS 23(ALLEGORY) ?
No text yet for this... see Lynette Hunters article allegory happens
PROCESS 24GESTURE & FULL-BODY GESTURE

Gesture is examined as being what communicates meaning in movement/dance. A gesture
can be dynamic or static. I will not go into detail of stillness being impossible. Even the most
static of gestures is still imbued with movement. What I mean though is the sequencing of
gestures into phrases that expand through time as opposed to gestures thats eek to
maintain the same position/pose through duration. A gesture is usually tied to a vector of
movement. the stop motion extends the arm from the body toward another, creating a
barrier between the two people. Make a gesture: Gesture is the dynamic expression of
moments. I think of dance as a full-body gesture.

PROCESS: 25CONTEXT 83CONTEXT
84SEXUALITY, RELIGION, CONTEXT
85CHOREIA ( relates to space,projection, empathy, and context within which dance takes
place/scenic design/site specificity)
86“Space and non-human actors as collaborative dance partners in meaning making -
receiving/imposing meaning through the eye of the camera”, created in relationship to
the practice research project: Filmshoot, “20 minutes for the Sun to Set” - Topic:
, released 3/22/23.
87“Spontaneity in response to environmental stimuli, non-narrative concepts, and
collaborative cross-disciplinary improvisation”, created in relationship to
the practice research project: Performance "Solstice Cycles" on
9/22/22, Wilmington, NC, Topic:
*************************************
98ANALYSIS & TRANSLATION

"I can see love."
Jean Epstein, from "Magnification"
“We do not learn from experience. We learn from reflecting on

experience.” – John Dewey (1933)
99ANALYSIS & Translation - a hermeneutics of dance?
LANGUAGE &
93LANGUAGE AND COMMUNICATION
COMMUNICATION
"The limits of my language mean the limits of my world."
Wittgenstein10
"I ask that film discover something for me."11

Luis Bunuel
TRAJECTORY:
·Situating myself among the theories of language and communication
·what do theorists say about the relationship between language and knowing
·how do I think of and use language as part of choreography, what is the role of language
10
Wittgenstein, find where this quote came from

11
Luis Bunuel, find which of his writings this quote is from
·in choreography:
·putting words to movements helps focus the choreography topic and 'narrative'

·use of language helps evoke imagery and qualities of moving, as well as focus (literal focus of
where the eyes are directed)
·in analysis:
·putting words to movements helps psychologically realize the message that the
movement/choreography carries
·engaging with definitions/theories of analysis
·hypothesis: movement has meaning
·(Methodology and Point of View?)

·case studies/theorists/people:
·Wittgenstein, Bunuel, Bausch, Chomsky, Derrida (expressability;no-one ever gets to clarity),
·
·comparing movement and language
TITLE
text
ANALYSIS & Translation - a hermeneutics

of dance?
TRAJECTORY:
100Choreography is an act of translation Choreography is an act of translation
Choreography is an act of channeling some “thing” from some “where”
101Choreography is an act of channeling some “thing” from some “where”
Situating myself among the theories of analysis/meaning making/hermeneutics

ANATOMIES OF MEANING
engaging with definitions/theories of analysis
hypothesis: movement has meaning
(Methodology and Point of View?)
case studies/theorists/people:
Pina Bausch
Ben Spatz
Isadora Duncin: "If I could tell you the emaning, I wouldn't have to dance it." find the exact quote
Alva Noe
Henri Bergson
Rumi
Hunter, Lynette
Chomsky, Noam
102TRAJECTORY:
103Situating myself among the theories of analysis/meaning
making/hermeneutics
104ANATOMIES OF MEANING
105engaging with definitions/theories of analysis
106hypothesis: movement has meaning
HYPOTHESIS: MOVEMENT HAS MEANING

"There is a language that does not use words."
Rumi (5)
My main inquiry in this portfolio orbits around the postulation that there is meaning embedded in
movement and that there can be great specificity in communicating intent or narrative. I compare
movement with language. As with any language, we have the capacity for expressing and
understanding body language embedded within us, but that we also have to learn it, that we can
continue to refine it, and that we can also lose it. I argue that there are unique as well as collective
ways of speaking with movement; that there are dialects within different sets of languages and some
amount of individuation. Just like the human physiology, we all share the same paradigm, but we are
all continuously improvising around the structures given to us in unique ways; we recognize one
another and we also distinguish from one another. I argue that movement is no more or less precise
at communicating than words, considering the many theories of communication and the prevalence
of misunderstanding.

Many of these ideas and theories are changing as I am writing about them, they are constantly in a
state of change and becoming. But the core belief that movement is instrumental in the
communication of meaning remains steady. I have always worked form this premise and it has been a
driving force for me to communicate very specific things through choreography and to discover and
find meaning through physical and creative engagement around specific ideas.
"When I first began choreographing, I never thought of it as choreography but as

expressing feelings. Though every piece is different, they are all trying to get
at certain things that are difficult to put into words."
Pina Bausch (6)
107(Methodology and Point of View?)

108case studies/theorists/people:
109Pina Bausch
110Ben Spatz
111Isadora Duncin: "If I could tell you the emaning, I wouldn't have to dance it."
find the exact quote
112Alva Noe
113Henri Bergson
114Rumi
115Hunter, Lynette
116Chomsky, Noam
121HYPOTHESIS: MOVEMENT HAS MEANING
130MOVE-THINKING
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MOVE-THINKING
Ben Spatz (***7)writes: "...art, practice, creation, performance, and even embodiment itself are no
longer framed as objects of research but instead become the methods, methodologies, and forms
through which knowledge is generated and shared."
How is this done? in my case I am arguing for the translation process from movement into word;
analysis of meaning.
Alva Noe....
TOOLS FOR FINETUNING: MOVE-THINKING
"(es ist) Sowas praezises.... wir fuehlen's ja..."
Pina Bausch (10)
("(it is) Something precise... (I mean) we ARE feeling it....)
It is my goal to become more eloquent and expressive in 'move-thinking'. I use different tools for
refining my vocabulary and abilities, precision and my changing states of mind. As a dancer, I play
with movement: I explore playfully, improvisationally what my body can do, what it feels like to move
in certain ways, to find different ways of moving, different paths and how these affect me. For me,
practicing choreography, is about the swiftness, depth and duration of changing and remaining in
alternate states of mind, or entering other states of consciousness, other places of knowledge; other
places of emotion. It feels a bit like changing my state of aggregation (Aggregatzustand). It's a bit like
becoming more liquid, longer, reaching into smaller branches and alveoli, like adding sensory nerves
for other kinds of feeling and attending.
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I also have to do. In order to feel something, assess if it is the right movement/the right expression: I
have to do it; like Pina, I need to sense into the feelings that my body produces with each nuanced
change in movement. She says that we know through feeling, and I agree.
MOVE-THINKING
How much do we really need verbal language and how much are we taught to rely on it? I feel that
we are learning to reduce, rather than refine and expand. Is language a process of reduction? it
shouldn't have to be. But if we ignore that meaning is held and communicated in the body then we
have to admit that words alone aren't the sole containers for meaning.
I don't want to postulate that either verbal or body language are better or more eloquent or more or
less precise than the other. Rather, I seek to sensitize us to the potential and importance that body
language holds in our lives. Fascia is a ubiquitous tissue that is instrumental in movement. It is only
now being recognized for its tremendous contributions. Similarly with movement and intuition.
Dance reaches beyond an alphabet, and just like an author, a choreographer/dancer seeks to tap into
the intuitive nature of life and channel something and evoke something that emerges in the reader
through words, and through which it exists beyond the words and beyond the mechanics of the
steps.
“To understand what I am saying, you have to believe that dance is something
other than technique. We forget where the movements come from. They are born
from life. When you create a new work, the point of departure must be
contemporary life -- not existing forms of dance.”
- Pina Bausch (11)
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MEANING, SIGNIFICATION, & SENSEMAKING

I use words in rehearsal. I connect words to movements to work with my dancers to arrive at some
specificity. I believe in investigating why a certain word, or movement, seems to be the right one to
express something. Meaning is a complicated, problematic word, but in so many ways I would like to
stick with it. Firstly because it is what most, non-academic, people will understand. And secondly,
Meaning is something that has "me" in it. The person understands a meaning to be something that
connects and deeply resonates with them, that they know something about this thing, or term, or
concept that they can relate to what it stands for. The meaning also carries something of me, the me
that wants to be recognized and not misunderstood.
Another important thing is that I believe that there are different forms of meaning, and one form is
created between people, through a series of verbal and somatic dances, gestures, and exchanges
that bring about a picture, an experience that carries with it a sensation of comprehension, of
alignment. Meaning, the mean between two things...is a powerful metaphor, in combination with the
"me". Both combine to create an effect that fuels a conversation or thought to go on. Without this
effect, an emotion, a thought, etc the process would stop. Lynette Hunter expressed in a
conversation with me that "the mean" is not the average, but a consensual point between two points.
Going back to the problems around the word meaning,she said that meaning leads to representation
and signification leads to a field of potential. The way I think of meaning relates to something
personal. I want us to think of the word meaning as something that can lead to potential, it is
undeniable. However, I use it because I am very determined to reach a specificity in my
choreography. I want to get very specific messages across, without disallowing the potential, or the
variation, or the complexity of interpretation by different people watching my dance. I have a
meaning for my dance, which I want them to pick up on, and I am aware that they have their own
meanings, which I am very interested in getting to discover. If the piece has an all around logic, then
the meaning should come through, despite the individuated interpretations. I would be able to get
individual viewpoints on the message I am putting out there, which is what I am after.
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CLARITY
In my work I seek clarity. However outdated the idea might be, I seek meaning. I seek to understand.
Is it impossible to define the specific within the field of potential, just like the red blood cell has a
specific job in the field of potential that the body represents? The point resonates with the whole. If
the whole and all parts resonate with one another in agreement and response-ability, then
connection emerges.
SPECIFICITY & IMPROVISATION

When I choreograph I have a specific story in mind. Sometimes this story is planned, sometimes it
emerges, and sometimes parts remain unknown, but there are always specific landmarks that are
definite. I have a piece that I would like to translate into a book. I wrote elaborate maps and an essay
to accompany the performance. In each piece there are always very particular imagery, emotions,
motivations for moving or not moving. The process works in both ways, from thought to movement,
or from movement to thought. Hence improvisation can help bring about specificity and specificity
can bring about improvisation. And I choreograph ideas that are channeled by methods of
improvisation and working within a state of not knowing. Improvisation is the tool to enter and
remain in the state of mind that allows for artistic flow.
THE PLACE OF NOT KNOWING

I remember a moment very clearly where I became aware of the not-knowing, as if it came out and
faced me to say 'hi!'. I was in the theater at UNCW, a good size stage, nobody else was there, just me,
on stage, on one of the first days of working on "Light of the Water". I was writing ideas on little
pieces of paper and laid them all out in front of me. It was dark. Some work-lights were on, the
backstage area was laying there in waiting, it seemed. I felt supported by the silence and the
darnkess, the floor, the rigging, the house. The buzzing of the lights. I began to move around to warm
66
up, running circles in the space and I had the thought "I love this moment of making a piece, where I
know nothing, where I swim in the unknown, in the not knowing, willing to pick up elements that
float by to assemble a piece. Trust. I am not nervous at all. I love the solitude where I am surrounded
by friends at a distance.
Lynette Hunter (5a) writes "...conventional interpretations of Western philosophy encourage us to

ignore the impossibility of fixed knowledge, and indeed work toward fixity as the modern definition
for truth." We want facts, absolutes, truths, but perhaps that is a futile attempt. And hence our
obsession with being precise keeps us from understanding and keeps us from listening.
The place of not knowing. It is a lovely place to be, in the beginning of rehearsals when I don't know
yet what will emerge, when I feel it coming to me and I can't name it yet. When it is obscure it is
beautiful. When it becomes known it is cathartic. It is in these moments that the working with the
other participants/players brings closeness. The intimacy between people who work creatively
together is unique from any other kind of intimacy. It is as if you are setting out on an expedition and
seeing landscapes together no-one else has seen before. This implies a journey into one another's
realities and perceptions.
The way I work with the unknown, sometimes, is by building a general intention and then
improvising to facilitate subconscious emergence of movements that hold meaning. This meaning is
evaluated and assessed, analyzed and discussed, refined or changed, and maintained as specific
parameter until the context of the piece requires it to change. I ask my body to speak and my body
does. I love listening.
117SEEING THOUGHT
SEEING THOUGHT
I am watching a rehearsal recording. I am watching young dancers, trained in ballet, execute the
choreography of my colleague and friend,Till Schmidt-Rimpler. We are working o a production of
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"The Little Prince". I can see what people are focusing on, I can see "what they think". Some are open
to his direction and allow their bodies to execute his movements and the spoken word that goes
along with it. Others are insecure, uncomfortable with the task; it is unusual, they are young,
concerned with so many things that go along with being and becoming dancers in this art form.
Many watch themselves in the mirror,concerned with shape. Some concerned with following orders,
others concerned with being themselves within their roles. Some are counting inside their heads. You
can all see it. Sometimes you can't name what it is that they are concerned with, but I can tell if they
are focused on the right thing, the story, the piece, to each other, with themselves. Are they
experiencing this movement or are they copying it. The essence of focus is not accuracyof shape but
accuracy of presence. The presence can be non-thought, non-language, but it has to be embodied on
the right thing, on that which the story is telling.
Presence has a thought component to it. What is a dancer present with translates to what a dancer is
thinking about. Thinking and presence have to be wholebodied. The gesture isn't enough as a hollow
shell, it has to permeate the entire body-mind. Then I will be captivated by the dancer's presence,by
their being. This absolutely translates to virtuosity,if virtuous movements are required. But virtuosity
is not a requirement forexcellence or for fascinating or moving an audience. In one section the
dancers execute movements that are taken from senior exercises, sitting in chairs, doing ankle rolls,
arm circles and the simplest of movements possible. Other parts of their bodies, mostly their heads
and torsos, begin other types of movement, they initiate a juxtaposition of meaning. There is an inner
conflict of movement continuity. These movers are not seniors, they are young. One part of them is
"being" old and another is commenting or processing this state. The scene is absurd, and so is life. the
movements create tension in the viewer, an unfulfilled anticipation of change. A curiosity rises. I keep
watching them. Theya re all doing the same movement. This holds meaning for me, unison, army,
togetherness and fate. Shoving old people into simplistic experiences because of a lack of energy to
engage them individually, uniquely, in their suffering. watching suffering is difficult.
The dancers gradually engage in more and more beautiful and contorted variations of the simple
movements, changing chairs and orientation i =n the room. For me, the quesion always goes back to
"why"? I get distracted immediately if I get the sense that a dancer doesn't know whay they are doing
something, or if they are occupied with the space or their performance, such as checking themselves
in the mirror. These are normal parts of rehearsal, and I can parse those out. But my inquiry about
"why" is the guiding principle behind my work and my process with dancers. "Why" is what guides my
choreographic choices, even if I work intuitively and I donlt know yet why I am deciding for this or
that movement. The why is the deciding factor. If the dancer doesn't know why, then the dancer
should listen to the movement and find the why. Find their why. Or ask to be given a why to help
them focus their efforts into presence.
This is beautiful work, finding meaning(narrative or abstract, both work) with the entire body is
beautiful to me. It speaks of a dedication and curiosity, of focus and passion. Of taking time to fully
understand or fully experience something. The dancer in this way gives themselves to the
conversation fully. The conversation is with themselves, with each other as they rehearse and
perform together, with the choreographer, and with the audience. To show yourself in this way is very
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special and treasured. It means we give fully and accept fully. It gives me goosebumps to see their
presence. This to me translates to love. Their movement and presence in rehearsal are treasured
gifts.
118FINDING MEANING
FINDING MEANING
in order to find meaning, in anything, in a painting, a piece of music, a dance you watched, a posture,
you have to open something up to allow the impressions to enter and move you in some way. Wait
for the thoughts, they will come if you allow yourself to go into the details of what you saw. The
meaning can be found in what you experience, in what you think. but you have to think it through,
feel it through all the way. You can misunderstand something if you do not think it through all the
way, because that is equal to leaving bits of words out of sentences.
I watched someone move in a AM session and I thought I didn't see anything. They were standing a
bit, then laying down a bit. Almost falling asleep. Nothing happened? I have to listen to what it
means and feels like to stand, pay attention to their breath, subtle swaying, orientation in the room,
posture, when and how did they lay down, slowly, fast, comfortable, contemplative, awkwardly... and
I know a lot. What does their presence, their shape, silhouette, persona require from me? Are they
taking space, hiding, revealing, leaving, dividing, point to or away from something else or
themselves? There is so much in a single moment!
119Exercise: present in position:

Exercise: Present in Position:
With partner. each pick a position to be in. This can be simple. Anything. You are free to change this
position, of course, but try to stay with it for about 10 minutes. Just be. The mover is present with this
position and their relationship to it. The witness observes. Afterwards talk about your experiences, one at
a time. The mover begins. then the witness. Then feel free to engage in conversation. What did you see?
How much was there hiding in this so called "nothing". What did the mover do by not doing "something"?
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Then do it again with reversed roles.
183LISTENING
184"Tracing Gesture - knowledge acquisition beyond listening",

created in relationship to the practice research project: UCD Performance Studies
Symposium presentation 4/22/22 Chapter headline:
185TRANSLATING
131SOLOS from Pina Bausch's "VOLLMOND" (*9b)
SOLOS from Pina Bausch's "VOLLMOND" (*9b)

132>>> STICK MAN @ 00:02:12
I am writing these movement analyses without having tried to learn the pieces. I am
writing only from observation of the video.
>>> STICK MAN @ 00:02:12

He becomes the stick. He becomes the weapon. He swooshes through the air, he is precise,
powerful, clear, and deadly. His movements are derived from martial arts stick forms. A lone
fighter. His frenzy drives him all over stage, but nothing happens in response to his
attacks/defenses. Sometimes he goes to rest briefly at the rock. The solid, unyielding,
massively large rock allows no shelter, no hiding place. If he seeks rest, then he only thinks
about it briefly, he never really seeks it.
He takes space, he slides into extended halts. Limbs stretched. Defined. Determined. Elegant.
The weapon is elegant. It never strikes a victim. But it constantly wields. The inner dialogue is
restless.
Like so many pieces in this work, he seems to be dealing with not being able to stop, an
energy drives them like they he is fighting for his life, but perhaps he forgot what he was
fighting for. His enemy long gone. Invisible.
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The music constantly builds. It is an unsettling, un-personal, flat sort of sound-score. It is

electronic ally generated. Not by a human instrument. It is played over the god speaker, no-
one knows where it comes from and how it got there. A climax is never reached. I just goes on
and on and on. Bodies tire out. I see desperation. Haste. Multi-directional address. As if
surrounded by several opponents.
To become the weapon means to embody the attacks, the strikes, the violence, the focus, the
reverberation of the impact, the precision, the power, the material: wood. Over time he
becomes more and more rigid and when the next dancer comes into his space, his whole body
has become stiff.
His solo forcefully merges into a duet with another man, similarly dressed, who, with little
effort, can make our stick dancer fall over, only to catch him and repeat the falling and
catching several times, which makes both displace towards stage right.
His dance is one of the first in the piece. He winds up the energetic coil, he feeds the room
with energy, electricity, the music continues to build. An urgency becomes palpable and
overbearing. Actions repeat. The changeover into the next scene is particularly strange, the
driving music fades out and romantic relationships play out. The underlying drive remains in
our bodies, resonates long after the beginning is over.
Movement narrative:
·he beats the air with his stick (4 feet long, wooden fighting stick)
·directly from the beat he drops the stick and runs upstage towards the rock. He takes the
speed and energy of the stick with him, internalizes it.
·at the rock he changes direction, turns around to move from stage left towards stage right
by rolling backwards over his shoulder into a dolphin shoulder roll, with a slight suspense at
the top, his toes reaching high into the sky, his legs stretched up
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·I think what he is doing is becoming everything he practices with his martial art, the power,
the speed, the potential violence. I think he is taking a stick form and he exaggerates it to
become a dance. His body becomes the weapon. he himself might become the victim. Bausch
has victims in her dances, and everyone isa victim of the absurdity of society.
133>>> BLACK DRESS ARM GESTURE WOMAN @ 01:14:00
>>> BLACK DRESS ARM GESTURE WOMAN @ 01:14:00

Violin. Repetitive violin, short intervals. Always the same and variations on the short theme.
This gives the impression of suspension, of halted change. The whole thing is in a melancholic
key.
The dance is very quiet, silent, it is not addressing anyone in the same way that the stick man
solo does. She is more introverted. Episodes of coming and going. I get the sense that she is
shedding something or someone from her body. At some point she gestures to remove a ring
from her right hand ring finger, where wedding rings are worn in Germany.
We can not see how she enters because the camera is filming something else at the moment
of her entering, but she seems to gradually appear , not rushed. I assume she gently allowed
herself to "slide" onto the stage with her gestural movements of touching her own face and
cradling her head in her arms.
I get a sense of self love and peeling layersof emotion, experiences, memories or scents, etc off
her skin and out of her breath, being, She enters the scene to go through this change and slowly
disappears out of the scene backing out
Her gestures appear to express a silent shock of sorts. A resolution after a long struggle, after
a tiring time. Her right arm is wrapped around the left side of her face, her hand supports the
head. The fingers of her left hand seek her face, tracing the skin around her eyes and the
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bridge of her nose, in a manner that reminds me of what we do when we think, and when we
have to begin speaking about something that is difficult. It's almost like rubbing tired eyes
and nose after wearing your glasses for a long while. She needs a break.
122WAYS MOVEMENT HAS MEANING WAYS MOVEMENT HAS MEANING

123LIFE
LIFE
The walk I mentioned in the exercise is alive. And a piece, similarly, is a being that is born and kept
alive. Making this emergence happen is what my process is all about. In choreography I seek to find
lives, make lives and keep them alive, to follow and engage with them, to live with them, play and
grow with them.
124RECOGNITION AND SYNTAX
RECOGNITION AND SYNTAX
As an essential part of my choreographic process I diligently recognize meaning in movements,
sometimes striving for audiences to understand clearly and at other times, fewer times, I am more
interested in inspiring free associations. Even in the latter case, there is always a likelihood that these
free associations are related to one another and a common signification might be discovered. Even
contradicting ideas might have common roots. However, for the clarity of expression, and for clarity
in the rehearsal process, I am stringing movements together, as 'words', to form movement
sequences, 'sentences', 'chapters' and eventually 'books'. I argue that thinking takes place in many
forms and that the vocabulary of language and cognition applies to the languages of movement, ...
and art in general.
125CHOREOGRAPHING
CHOREOGRAPHING
In an attempt to describe the particular process of choreographing as I mention it in the journal and
documentation part of this portfolio, a process which I experience as being initiated and facilitated by
my entering a particular state of mind, I resonate with Henri Bergson's (07) theories around intuition.
I am referring to the moment of working in the studio with Lena, both of us facing the mirror, me
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channeling movements which I dance improvisationally and she observes and simultaneously learns
and memorizes. Together we hold that which emerged and also discuss verbally and kinetically the
meaning and the qualities of these movements. In Bergson's essay "Introduction to Metaphysics". He
describes intuition as a process, a piercing through the quantitative multiplicity of the rationally
cognitive, the deterministic, categorizing, analytical ways of thinking and seeing the world, to enter
into the qualitative multiplicity, an experiential complexity of being in the world, or more of: being the
world. Boundaries dissolve. Engaging with and becoming the multiplicities of durations experienced
through intuition, which stops the habitual ways of labeling and thereby reducing that which we
encounter, allows for a process of knowledge acquisition, of experiencing the world in all the present
complexity and seeming chaos, of glimpsing something and gaining insight.
I entrust my presence to a reciprocal process of intuitive emergence and analytical contemplation

that leads to a rearranging of choreographic material and the making and discovery of meaning
along the way. Intuiting is a very fulfilling act. I find it to be extremely important and intrinsic to who I
am.
Bergson writes on page 2: "...an absolute could only be given in an intuition whilst everything else
falls within the province of analysis. By intuition is meant the kind of intellectual sympathy by which
one places oneself within an object in order to coincide with what is unique in it and consequently
inexpressible." To me, this means that there is greater precision in intuition than in analysis. Our
'problem' perhaps might be that we are not fully aware of our intuition and that which happens in
that state. This is funny. Because it therefore renders my lifelong-desire to gain awareness and
knowledge as silly and I could just be doing life instead. Many people wait for some point in the future
where their lives will finally fall into place, or where there life will presumably start. People long for
something which often manifests as a vague feeling of incompleteness. The answer is sought outside
of the person, in achievement, relationships or other landmarks in their lives. Many philosophies try
to tell us that while we are seeking something of which we are not sure, we already have it. That
which gives us the feeling of unfulfillment is an inability to see that we don't need anything else, that
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we have already arrived, that we are where and how we are and that that is beautiful. We spend more
time on changing ourselves than on learning about who we are; more time on where we should be or
want to be, than on where we actually are. What we long for really lies in the experience of life. In
living. It's tragic, really. Choreography can be a tool for being where we are. As everything else, it can
be misunderstood, or used in many different ways. I believe though that it is a tool for self discovery,
for finding and creating meaning and for being in the moment. I have practiced all of these. But
largely I have been using it for the creation of alternate realities, of worlds, of stories that somehow
relate to my life experiences. Going forward, I will possibly attempt to use choreography specifically
for presencing, but that is not part of this essay, and more so finds manifestation in my work around
effortlessness.
126ENTERING
ENTERING
I relate to Bergson's idea of placing oneself inside something in order to intuit, in order to engage, in
order to become and more fully, more complexly understand. The viewer will never have the same
experience of the dance, never know the meaning as fully as the dancer does. in order to
approximate the knowledge of the dancer one would need to take the place of the dancer, become a
participant in the performance, or in rehearsals in the process of making this life. The experience of
the viewer approximates the one of the dancer. I create pieces for both, the dancer and the viewer. I
need the viewer to tell me what they see. And I need the dancer to tell me what they experience. I
also become the dancer, and I also become the viewer. As choreographer/dancer I hold both
positions. But through this I never fully see what the audience sees. I have too much background
information. So I want their feedback and unique viewpoints. From this process I hope to gain the
knowledge I seek; some insight, some revelation, or catharsis.
127SHIFTING PERSPECTIVES - (NOT REAL) DETOURS
SHIFTING PERSPECTIVES - (NOT REAL) DETOURS
Even though both viewpoints are unique and important, I wanted the viewer to get more of the
experience of the piece and the topics explored. I felt that sitting audiences were too passive, too un-
involved, too un-affected. I wanted to make them face the issues I brought into the theatre. As
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representatives of our society and our socialization mechanisms, I wanted to 'attack' them, because I
felt that by their position as spectators they were accomplices in the societal ills I was critiquing. We
all are. I wanted them to understand that I was not trying to entertain them, which is a dominant
view of the performing arts in North Carolina, USA where I was working most of the time. I felt used
by a sort of voyeurism and attitude of expectation. (Note 6/22/2022: I just realized that I had been
holding expectations of my audiences. I was upset that they have expectations of me and Iwas doing
exactly the same. Jess Curtis12 was saying that forcing meaning on people is an almost violent act.
And I do admit that I have been very angry with people, society, audiences and that my pieces at
times have been violent towards them and my expectations led to my own disappointment.
Vita 5 does not include audience interaction, but I find it important to mention here because,
audience interaction, for me and my process, lies at the heart of what i am trying to achieve with
performances: critical exchange and discussions of the topics of my pieces. I think that the
'incomplete' spectator-only experience of the viewer is what ultimately brought me to interactive
performances. It took a really long time for me to get from choreographing everything out to the
12
see interview with Jess Curtis, page tbd
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tiniest detail, to improvisation, to audience interaction. By immersing them into the life we created I
wanted them to feel what it was like to be this life. I also wanted audiences to realize the impact that
their presence has on the moment and on the piece, no matter how much they are an active
participant or not. By becoming performers, they could perhaps empathize with the precarious
position of the performer that seeks a tangible relationship with the viewer. The degree of
unpredictability increased incrementally from choreography to improvisation to interaction. The
degree of direct in-your-face connection increased, in order to sensitize them to the more 'delicate'
roles where they were just sitting, watching, and translating. However, by changing the level of
audience engagement, I realized the importance of the communicative parts of my work and the
discussion that I want it to evoke. This 'detour' sensitized me to the slowness of social change and it
helped me realize that I have to be patient and find multiple ways of facilitating a trust in audiences
to discuss that which they saw and experienced and to find ways to ignite an engagement with the
unfamiliar. Discussing body language and how movement has meaning is intrinsic to this desire.
Allowing audiences to alter the work by participating in these unpredictable ways was challenging,
because it sometimes upended my narrative. Working with interaction is a very different process and
the ways of achieving the goals of communicating specific messages is very different to me. It
ultimately amplifies my frustration around issues of being misunderstood or not understood in
general. I think that making pieces is an attempt on my part to be better understood and seen by
people.
128ANALYSIS
ANALYSIS
I consistently experience choreography as an alternation between going inside something and
coming out of that something to analyze what I have found there. Bergson further writes: "Analysis,
on the contrary, is the operation which reduces the object to elements already known, that is, to
elements common both to it and other objects. To analyze, therefore, is to express a thing as a
function of something other than itself. All analysis is thus a translation, a development into symbols,
a representation taken from successive points of view from which we note as many resemblances as
possible between the new object which we are studying and others which we believe we know
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already. In its eternally unsatisfied desire to embrace the object around which it is compelled to turn,
analysis multiplies without end the number of its points of view in order to complete its always
incomplete representation, and ceaselessly varies its symbols that it may perfect the always
imperfect translation. It goes on, therefore, to infinity. But intuition, if intuition is possible, is a simple
act."
He is clearly delineating two separate states or 'places'. What he is not touching on in this paragraph
is the possibility of both states or places belonging to one another and informing one another. There
is the possibility that reality consists of converging states, which describes a pulse, a moving
presence, that requires adaptability and flexibility on the part of the being. I am sure Bergson did not
write about dance improvisation or choreography, rather about everyday life and whatever was
important to him phenomenologically speaking. In art observing and art making, intuition becomes a
technique. In my process I am constantly 'swimming through' intuition and analysis.
I also question his statements about analysis consisting only of reducing the object to elements
already known. Analysis, the way I am exploring it, has something to do with the generation of new
information through the oscillatory process of intuiting and analysis. Even in analysis alone, I am
attempting to find new words, new definitions, and to describe the "new" in ways that allow for
empathy and creation.
129I LOVE DETAILS
I LOVE DETAILS
My work is very specific. I intend very particular ideas and goals and work very detail oriented with
my colleagues. Some practical things to be specific about are timing, gesture, posture, inner
dialogue, narrative, environment, lighting, clothing, movement quality, audience position,
musicality, sound, etc... Everything adds to the story. There are less tangible things to be specific
about as well.
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Pina Bausch said (8):

"Ich weiss was ich suche. Aber ich weiss es eher mit meinem Gefühl ganz genau, als mit meinem
Kopf....... also, wenn ich diesen Moment erkenne, also diesen Moment treffe, weiss ich ganz
genau, ich weiss ganz genau: das gehoert dazu. Das ist ein ganz, ganz genaues Gefuehl."
"I know what I am searching for. But I know it more precisely with my feeling than with my
head.... therefore, when I come upon that moment, when i meet this specific moment, then I
know exactly and with certainty: that is part of it. This belongs. It is a very exact feeling."
Pina Bausch (9) also says

"Ich denke jedes Ding ist sehr wichtig....Cafe Mueller... in diesem Stueck habe ich ja auch
mitgetanzt...und es ist ein Stueck wo immer die Augen geschlossen sind. und denn irgendwann
ham wir wieder Cafe Mueller gemacht. Ich konnte mein Gefuehl nicht finden, also das, ... ein ganz
bestimmtes Gefuehl, was ich eigentlich... was fuer mich so wichtig war. Ich habe das gefuehlt,
aber trotzdem etwas ganz bestimmtes konnte ich nicht fuehlen, also nicht finden. Und es lag
nicht an der Musik oder an irgendetwas...ich hab probiert und ich konnte dieses Gefuehl nicht
wiederfinden, was fuer mich so wichtig (war)... das kann gar keiner sehen, es war fuer mich. Und
dann habe ich irgendwie auf einmal, das hat aber ne ganze Zeit gedauert, da habe ich dann
fetgestellt, dass es 'n grosser Unterschied ist ob ich meine Augen geschlossen habe, ob ich zum
Beispiel meine Augen, also hinter den so (points at her eye lids) ob ich nach unten gucke oder ob
ich so (gestures straight ahead) gucke. Und das war der ganze Unterschied. Also das Gefuehl
hatte ich total, auf einmal war's wieder richtig; nur weil meine Augen, also dieser Unterschied von
dem zu dem (points down and then straight ahead), eben dieses, das ist ja unglaublich nicht, dass
das so entscheidend ist. ja muss man erst mal finden nicht?, also ich meine, daran kann man
sehen wie wichtig... Also alle Kleinigkeiten sind ja wichtig. Jedes Ding... alles ne Sprache...man
kann eigentlich alles lesen, wenn man in der Lage ist es zu lesen, ne!"
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Again, I am translating her words myself: "I think every thing is very important...Cafe
Mueller...in this piece I also danced... and it is a piece, yes, where the eyes are always closed. And
then some day we did Cafe Mueller again...and I couldn't find my feeling, well this... , a very
specific feeling... which I used to... which was so important for me. I felt it, but still something
very specific about it I couldn't feel, well, I couldn't find it. And it wasn't because of the music, or
anything...I tried and I couldn't find this feeling again that had been so important ...nobody could
see it, it was just for me... and then suddenly I realized, but it took a good while, that there is a big
difference, if, with my eyes closed, behind my (eyelids) if I look down or like this (she gestures
straight ahead). And that was the whole difference; and I totally had that feeling again. Suddenly
it was right again; from this (points up) to this (points down) ... just this, isn't it unbelievable, no?,
you have to be able to find something like this, yes?!, I mean, this shows how important,... all
little details are important. Every thing ... it's a language ... one can read all of it, if one is
capable of reading it..."
She describes the difference between the straight ahead or downward positions of her eyeballs
behind closed eyelids, which allowed her to find the feeling that she was describing with her dance. I
can relate to this deeply. I can feel what she is talking about. We don't just dance steps, we dance
feelings, experiences, and thoughts, moments. These are linked to specific orchestrations of the
body's tissues and that is what the audience will also 'read', the orchestrated complexity, not the
movements per se, or the shapes. Although arguably, the difference in this example is minute and
probably, as she says herself, not detectable for the audience, ... who knows. Who knows on what
level we do register that difference. I believe that we empathize with the bodies we observe in a
performance. That we are able to feel what they are feeling, or at least we can approximate to the
observed experiences. The audience "reads" the movements, even the small details of where the eyes
are pointing behind closed eyelids. I do believe that we pick up on all of this. It is a matter of how well
someone is attuned to allowing these empathized feelings to register or becoming aware of the fact
that we do engage with the world in multiple ways of knowing beyond cognitive awareness and
lingual engagement. It is strange that we need to have a grounded rapport with this brain of ours that
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likes to think so much and analyze so much. It can become a tyrant and rule our lives. Societally
speaking, I think we learn to think of art and especially dance as being vague and inaccessible. We
learn to look away, and to not empathize. We learn this by allowing it to happen, and by practicing,
by going to see dance more often and by dancing ourselves. We often would do well to allow the
other ways of knowing to stand equally among reasoning.
Pina Bausch rightly says: "Dance! Dance! otherwise we are lost."
PROCESS: IMPROVISATION
92overlap with image analysis and text analysis

73PROCESS THE CHOREOGRAPHIC PROCESS -
IMPROVISATION
57PHASE ONE I IMPROVISATION: ENTERING INTUITION
IMPROVISATION: DEFINITION OF IMPROVISATION
·PHASE ONE
·“Introspection in improvisation: Can/How do improvisation and states of not-knowing lay the
foundation for specific narrative content?”, created in relationship to the practice research project:
Film “Reflectionssnoitcelfer”, released 12/21/22
58“Introspection in improvisation: Can/How do improvisation and states of not-knowing

lay the foundation for specific narrative content?”, created in relationship to the practice
research project: Film “Reflectionssnoitcelfer”, released 12/21/22
81
PROCESS: ANALYSIS & TRANSLATION

PROCESS: 140INTRINSIC LANGUAGE & CONTEXT
Having worked from the clear motivation of discovering and portraying a specific meaning through
the specific combination of movements and the detailed focus on how these movements are
executed to affect their meaning, I believe that a movement language is intrinsic in each person. This
language lies deep within our beings beyond the realms of culturally and socially assigned
significations. I think that this language is subtle, that our emotions are intrinsically linked to the
ways we move, and the movement choices we make. I don't think that we learn to reach for
something we are interested in, we withdraw the hand when something is potentially scary. The way
we do these actions, the reaching and the withdrawing, will be effected by our thoughts and
emotions about the circumstances surrounding these actions. Are we trying to not be seen, are we
shy, do we feel guilty, overly joyous, angry, frustrated, hungry, etc... These states/circumstances will
affect how we execute these movements. I think that there isn't an intrinsic language in the sense of
a sign-language, but there are qualities that translate directly into the tone, speed, direction,
swiftness, hesitations, pathways, amount of energy used to produce the movement. And this
translates into meaning. I don't think we learn to love. I think we love. Love has movements that
express love and the need for love. I think of these qualities as seeds. The seeds are there, it depends
on the environment whether the seed will grow and how strong it grows. If we discover in a
conversation that we are suddenly hesitant, or feel rejected or disheartened, we will have a physical
response in the body that is inevitable. An exhale, or a held breath, or a stepping back, a closing of
the heart, a tear emerges, eye movements that avoid and perhaps search aimlessly for just a split
second. I don't believe that we learn everything about these reactions. Our entire body reacts to what
we encounter, always. The body is intelligent and acts. The fact that we react is our language. The
fact that reactions differ is our language, that certain experiences come with gentle, slow, fast,
jarring, irratic, controlling, halted, expanding, or contracting movements. That's our language. We
read this language as we empathize and understand each moment to emerge uniquely. Just like a
verbal conversation. Meaning can emerge in (relatively) repeatable specificity of movement and can
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be understood more or less universally. Meaning also always emerges in context. Slapping your wrist
in the direction of someone's face is not always aggressive. It can be funny, requested, done willingly
or unwillingly, I might be meant for someone else to see, etc... It depends on the context. So the
context is explored through dialect and language, personal experience, and the current moment and
situation. Dance picks up on these actions. This language is an emotional breathing of the body's
tissues. We can learn to ignore this language. Our brain can give us tools for neglecting these
responses. We can learn to change them to some degree. We can learn to be more sensitive to them
as well. Dance amplifies and makes visible. It evokes, provokes and challenges. It celebrates and it
connects us to ourselves and to the world around us. Dance communicates meaning. Choreography
sets the action into context. Everything has an impact on the meaning.
PROCESS: 141LANGUAGE & DIALECTS

LANGUAGE & DIALECTS
This intrinsic language will be affected by cultural and regional habits and interpretations, and our
ability to 'read' and communicate through this language will be effected by culture and societal
priorities. I argue that, generally, foundationally, we move to express, that by moving we inevitably
express, and that others inevitable analyze and 'read' us, and last but not least, that movement
makes diverse and refined expression possible. With movement here I mean body-language and this
can contain large gestures, and movements that translate substantially from one place to another, as
well as minute muscle changes in posture or face.
Communication is possible across cultures, but as with any language, there can be
miscommunication even among speakers of the same language and dialects.
Noam Chomsky (5) asks: "Why are there languages at all, why are there so many? How did they
suddenly emerge in the evolutionary framework? ... The apparent diversity (among languages) is pretty
superficial... (rather there is) fundamental(ly) one language with minor deviations..." Of course,
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Chomsky is talking about verbal languages. What he calls deviations, languages, I here call dialects.
For now I draw comparisons between body language and spoken language, because of the obvious
common goal to communicate and express. I might find along the way that the structures of body
language and spoken language are quite different and that my metaphors do not hold up. This would
then probably evolve around how the language emerges from our bodies, how it is learned or not,
and how it is processed. The mechanisms for processing might be very different, might take place in
other areas of the body, or follow different chains of action, etc. But I work with language in
rehearsal. Movements are given words, sentences and vocalizations. So language remains inherent in
my work with movement.
I presume that body language, since it originates in the same system, the human being, is in many
ways similar to verbal language, a physical manifestation of something to be expressed in a manner
more or less universal and shared by all human beings; of course, also across species. It depends here
on our ability to go to these roots of communication and allow for listening at a level beyond our
superficially acquired, biased understanding of particular roles and rules. Grunts and breaths are just
as important as silences, enunciation, melody, syntax and choice of words.
PROCESS: 142ACCESSING
ACCESSING
I can see what a dancer is thinking, or, ... well.... , I can see what kind of narrative they are engaged in.
If they are not engaged with the narrative of the dance it is as if my conversation partner is looking at
her phone while I am talking to her. If a movement is danced differently, it means something
different. If the attention is on something else, the meaning of the entire piece is changed. If the
context or the music, the environment changes then the body language might still mean the same,
but the piece carries a different meaning. Context and dance play with one another. I always
choreograph with the context in mind and I always have the audience's potential viewpoint in mind.
As in gesture, thinking and doing are intuitively entwined. A perceptive audience member will know if
the dancers that dance the piece know what the meaning is or not. Genuine focused engagement is
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important to me. Disingenuous engagement could fall under the category of 'over-acting' for
example. Saying things unnecessarily often to make sure the viewer gets it is static, things don't flow;
I, as the audience member, often get nervous, or eager at that point to leave the performance.
135MOVE-THINKING
136MEANING, SIGNIFICATION, & SENSEMAKING
137CLARITY
138SPECIFICITY & IMPROVISATION
139THE PLACE OF NOT KNOWING
PROCESS : AUTHENTIC MOVEMENT
AUTHENTIC MOVEMENT
177AUTHENTIC MOVEMENT
178short introduction to AM, history, approaches, philosophies, psychology
179Verbalizing experience and observation of personal movement
meditation”,
180“AUTHENTIC MOVEMENT LOGBOOK: examples”
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The word "body" includes the brain and what it does, including thinking. But the parts of the
body that are everything but the brain also make decisions and think. in Authentic Movement,
and in choreography, this is something I strive to perfect: a balance of brain and non-brain
thinking. The term "intuition" comes to mind, and I do like this term and will speak to it in other
chapters 13
Choreography and AM seek to allow embodied thinking to take place. These embodied thoughts
then are analyzed in order for our brains to make sense of the things our bodies do and
experience, and in order to become informed about things that our bodies are processing and or
that might pose problems for us emotionally/psychologically. the goals are awareness and
understanding so we can live more balanced, peaceful lives and make choices that help us
achieve this 'happiness'. We strive to be happy, to feel good, to not worry, to sense openly and
give openly. Not everything that goes on becomes cognitive awareness, some of it, much of it
happens in what I would call the subconscious.
13
Intuition: see chapter tbd, see Bergson p.x

I don't like the term unconscious because it suggests that consciousness is not possible, or
perhaps the person is in a coma. Subconscious holds a potentiality for recognition. parts of us are
aware, but not the brain.
Authentic Movement has many things in common with my choreographic process and it is a
practice for non-dancers and thereby a good entry-point into explorations in meaning.
OVERVIEW
THE LOGBOOK AND IS CHAPTER are based on A SERIES OF PHENOMENOLOGICAL
EXPERIMENTS and their analysis.
TRAJECTORY and temporary plans for this chapter:

·AM as one of several (highlighted in the list below) entry-points into the supposition that
movement and meaning are intricately connected. Each entryway examines a way in which
movement and meaning are engaged with one another.
·(1) authentic movement:
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·entering a state of mind in which movement emerges from the body's desire to express itself, physically
and emotionally, psychologically.
·Movement is expression of emotion and physical need
·Movement is therapeutic
·Meaning causes movement
·Movement unlocks memories and experiences that were "stored in the body"
·Meaning does not have to be verbal
·Meaning does not have to be understood cognitively
·Movement can be understood cognitively
·Movement inspires thinking and making connections
·2) Somatic psychology, psychology/therapy: Menakem, Jung, Freud, Hannah
·movement is therapeutic, movement tells stories about a person's history, trauma and experiences,
movement gives clues about personality
·3) linguistics, communication, language, translation
·examining potentiality of a non-representational body language, looking at gesture in ways that see
body language as changing and adaptive yet 'readable'; everyone's language is unique, and still we can
understand each other. (note: the guy from Leiden14 university about philosopher derrida and language
theories)
·4) other modalities (Daoist movement practice, Yoga, Axis Syllabus, Tango, Candomble, FolkDancing,
native american powwow dancing.
·what are reasons for moving and dancing and how are they related to meaning?
14
Leiden University (*14) Chapter 4.1: The hermeneutic circle; Faculty of Humanities https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIEzc__BBxs&feature=youtu.be
possibly one of the other talks he holds on youtube...I have notes, but need to find them.
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·5) my way of engaging with movement

·how do I relate to movement? What are my theories and beliefs?
·other choreographers' relationships to meaning
·how do they relate to movement? What are their theories and beliefs?
·AM serves as an entry point into understanding my particular methodology for choreography
·AM is an entry point for discussing the specific choreographic process of intuiting movements that have
meaning
·How are the processes of intuiting movements in AM and Choreography similar to one another?
Note: headlines are mini summaries to help me structure the chapter and to help me
discuss specific sections with professors. These headlines can later be removed.
THESIS #1
Movement and meaning are intricately, inseparably, connected.
REASONING #1
We gesticulate, change posture and facial expressions, and generally move about in various ways
when we communicate. Even if the person can not see us, for example when we are on the
phone. Even blind people do this. Even thoughts that are not expressed out loud will at times
provoke movements.
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INTRODUCTION - Situating myself in relation to AM
PHENOMENOLOGICAL APPROACH & METHODOLOGY

I am writing about Authentic Movement from a phenomenological perspective. The purpose is
not to explain Authentic Movement, but to follow AM along and gain an entry way into the
hypotheses many of its practitioners claim which also play a role in my choreographic work. For
this chapter I document and analyze my own experience, I conduct interviews with AM
practitioners and choreographers, and I research existing literary and videographical material.
For the purpose of this research I have been recording the verbal exchanges that take place
during the sessions.
THESIS:
The language of movement has to be "decoded", understood, and created through sensing. The
way movement feels to the mover is what is connected to its meaning. So, the viewer has to
empathize with the mover, has to have some form of reference from their own experience with
movement, in order to understand what their movements represent and mean.
GOALS
What I am interested in discovering is how practitioners of AM describe their relationship 15
between movement and meaning and how this compares to other frameworks 16 where
movement and meaning emerge and how it compares to my own experience in choreography. I
describe what it is I am sensing, hoping to give the reader an empathetic co-response to my own.
Specificity is the goal; to understand ever more minute and detailed units of movement and
15
See "Discussion & Interviews" chapter, which includes the AM logbook.
16
See "Movements that hokd meaning" chapter, which examines what some other modalities add to our relationships
between meaning and movement. Modalities I am investigating include: The Axis Syllabus, Candomble, Yoga, Gymnastics,
international Folk Dancing, Ballet, and others
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thinking. The goal is to fine-tune our awareness of bodily action. i include thinking in bodily
action because it is done by the body.
WHY A PHENOMENOLOGICAL APPROACH?

I am choosing a phenomenological 1st person approach to describing AM because my intention is
to trace the expression of an embodied experience. Authentic movement and choreography both
primarily, if not only, exist as embodied practices; their knowledge and theories are rooted in
kinaesthetic action.
MY EXPERIENCE WITH AUTHENTIC MOVEMENT

I have only come to Authentic Movement relatively recently, about 3 years ago, and it had not
been part of my choreographic practice over the years.
In the fall of 2021 I began practicing AM within a group setting regularly as part of my research for
this dissertation. In preparation for writing about Authentic Movement I engaged in the practice
regularly, recorded our verbal exchanges in AM sessions, conducted interviews with facilitators
and participants, and I assembled literary and video research.
AM AND MY CHOREOGRAPHIC PROCESS

When introduced to AM, I realized that some of the practices of AM and the experiences that
emerge from it relate to my choreographic process in a number of ways. Writing about AM serves
as a jumping-off point for this dissertation and my research into the relationships between
movement and meaning. AM is also another angle, a more ubiquitously accessible point of entry,
into talking about my choreographic process, its socio-political outcomes goals. (note: link this to
"Brecht on Theatre" later)
HOW I FEEL
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Here are a few reasons for linking AM practice to explorations around my ways of
choreographing. Firstly, the way I feel in an AM session is similar to how I feel when I
choreograph.
MOVING MEDITATION & fine-tuning

Secondly, I came to conclude that, also, I have been engaging in something like AM by myself for
years, alone, as a form of research, and as therapeutic, meditative actions of self expression and
emotional release. Some key words I connect to this personal practice are 'moving meditation'
and 'fine-tuning my listening and response tools'.
ACCESSIBILITY
Thirdly, in my opinion, AM is more accessible to readers that have no experience with somatic
practice or dance. AM does not require any special physical skills or features.
RELATIONSHIPS TO OTHER PRACTITIONERS/DANCERS

Fourthly, the way I interact with people in an AM session is similar to the ways I interact with
dancers and audiences. AM serves as one of the bridges for unpacking my choreographic
methodology.
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INTRODUCTION: (Definition/Description of Authentic

Movement)
The Authentic Movement Institute17 describes AM as follows:
"Authentic Movement is a completely self-directed form in which individuals discover a

movement pathway that offers a bridge between the conscious and the unconscious. Authentic
Movement explores the relationship between a mover and a witness, being seen and seeing.
With eyes closed, the mover listens inwardly and finds a movement arising from a hidden
prompting, a cellular impulse. Gradually the invisible becomes visible, the inaudible becomes
audible, and explicit form is given to the content of direct experience.
The witness brings a receptive quality of clear attention to the mover. The witness is mindful of
the inner world of sensation and meaning, judgment and criticism. Though personal shadow
issues may emerge, the witness accepts the mover without analysis or direction and speaks only
when the mover asks for a response. The mover and witness together can achieve a level of
perception of self and other that evokes deep respect and empathy."
AM, first of all, is a somatic practice. Somatic practices aim at gaining awareness and often strive
to either heal or maintain physical/mental health through kinaesthetic activity and training focus.
The term somatic is derived from the greek "soma", meaning "body". Although "somatic" very
17
Authentic Movement institute https://www.authenticmovementinstitute.com/authenticmovement
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generally simply means "relating to the body" only movement practices with aspects of
mindfulness training or therapeutic goals are considered somatic practices.
GENERAL FORMAT
An AM practice consists, generally speaking, of a group of people who all remain in the same
space/room and in visual tactile reach throughout the entire session. The core work of AM is done
in pairs. Each session is a focused exchange that focuses on soma, the body. One person is
designated as the 'mover' and the other as the 'witness'. The mover moves in any way they want,
usually with their eyes closed, and the witness observes the mover. The witness also has the role
of protecting the mover from running into other people or objects while they move about with
their eyes closed.
MY AM PRACTICE
The AM practice I have been attending for my research is led by Stefan Fischer at Ponderosa, e.V.
in Stolzenhagen, Germany. Here AM is done in a group setting, some participants come regularly,
others are guests in the area and only attend once or twice. We always begin with an opening
circle, which consists of a name-round and the opportunity to focus and arrive in the space and in
the situation with one another. It is an important part of any group activity that people come
together to do something specific, and to stop doing other specific things, such as work, worry
etc. The process already begins at this point. Sometimes Stefan gives a warm up that is aimed at
helping the participants focus inward, releasing tension or otherwise tuning into the present
moment, our own presence, breath, body sensations, and the people around us. Then, people
form pairs and decide who wants to be the mover and who wants to be the witness first. All
movers start together, as indicated by a bell that Stefan rings. We have 15-20 minutes for the
moving/witnessing part and 10 minutes for a verbal exchange. Then mover and witness change
roles and the same process begins again. At the end everyone gathers again in the circle and
people are free to share anything they wish.
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MOVING AND WITNESSING

The moving can consist of anything that the mover feels compelled to do, or not to do. Rocking,
shaking, walking, exploring or touching, listening, vocalizing, slow motion, dancing, engaging
with other movers or witnesses, sitting still or even sleeping. Usually, the moving evolves over
time, shifts from slow to faster and back. Sometimes these shifts are obvious and strong and
sometimes they are hardly noticeable. There are no mistakes, no wrong moves. In her 1988 film
about AM entitled "Still Looking" Janet Adler (*7*) says " As the witness I have no directions for
the movers, there is no way I can know what they must do." (@4:10). This suggests that
the idea exists that there are things that need to be expressed or movements that need to be
moved.
VERBAL EXCHANGE
After 15-20minutes, the mover and the witness verbally exchange anything they wish to
communicate or ask of one other. Usually the mover speaks first. Usually, the witness only speaks
upon invitation by the mover. But speaking is not required.
Then the roles reverse and another round of 15 minutes of moving and witnessing begins,
followed by another verbal exchange. The feedback formats range from describing the
movement journey to free form associative brainstorming to retelling of emotions, thoughts,
memories, etc or even drawing, writing poetry, etc. Janet Adler (*7*) says:
"After the mover speaks, the witness speaks only of her own experience, not
of how she imagined her mover's experience to be. The witness carefully
chooses what to share and what to contain." (@16:31)

This is important. The witness does not speculate on what the person was experiencing, the
witness speaks of what they themselves experienced, what they were thinking and feeling. (see
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headline "AUDIENCE" for related thoughts) Judgment is attempted to be minimized or at least

recognized as unavoidably present.
Sometimes I find that words are building up while I am moving and I have a million things to say right
away. And at other times, I don't know what to say. I feel empty. I moved, but I don't know what it
meant. Not yet, because it always means something. I have to give in to the not knowing, go back
into my movements, re-imagine what I just did and begin to describe the movements and the
feelings I had, and pretty soon other thoughts arise in accompaniment to my movements. Narratives,
analogies, metaphors, and insights come up. So far, each session I have done has provided me with
insight about something that was going on in my life and that subsequently helped me cope or
understand what mechanisms are at work that complicate or simplify my situation. Allowing myself
the time and the focus to spend with myself, with focus but also with abandon, always brings up
insights for me. It is like a therapy session. Afterward I feel more in flow, more in agreement with life
and calmer. AM helps me to slow down.
VARIATIONS ON THE FORMAT

There are variations on the constellation: sometimes there is a third person, called a supporter, or
instead of the partnered work there is a group witnessing scenario where all sit around the
perimeter of the space and up to a certain number of people are moving on the inside; also the
size of the group can vary greatly and the duration of the rounds; rules can change according to
goals or specific therapeutic processes; etc.
IMPROVISATION
AM is an improvised practice. There are no rules on how to move or on what kinds of movements to
do.
PARALLELS BETWEEN THE ROLES OF WITNESS/MOVER AND AUDIENCE/PERFORMER
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This concept translates to how an audience can engage with a performance, or how an audience
member can 'analyze' a performance; not by trying to figure out what was going on on stage, but by
paying attention to what happens within them while witnessing the performance.( See "Audience".)
A SHORT HISTORY
The Authentic movement Institute further states that: "Authentic Movement is informed by
developmental psychology, somatic epistemology, Jungian thought, dance ethnology, and mystical
studies. The Institute provided an opportunity for investigative studies in Authentic Movement. A
reader and bibliography supported the course work and learners contributed to the body of
knowledge through narrative research."
Generally speaking AM evolved out of, among other influences, the Ausdruckstanz of Mary
Wigman and Jung'ian psychology. Notable names in the field, additionally, are Mary Starks
Whitehouse who is credited with the founding of AM, Joan Chodorow, and Janet Adler who
formed and developed the practice. There is also famous dancer and choreographer Martha
Graham, who shows up at the front of the lineage, with Mary Wigman who was Graham's
teacher, as two of the deeply emotional and expressive choreographers that engaged with the
idea of a language of the body. One of Graham's (*22*) most famous quotes reads:
"Dance is the hidden language of the soul."
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We have this culturally held belief that dissecting a detail out of the body, or that there is a key
bodypart that reveals all hidden meaning, that does the thinking, the expressing, like the face,
and the close-up, we understand how 'more'. But I think that we need to see the detail in the
context of it's greater network, the face needs to be considered as part of the body, the gesture is
part of the body, and part of the movement context within which it emerges in order to
approximate more closely to a meaning or motivation that underlies it.
"Dance is the hidden language of the soul". This statement by Martha Graham has influenced me
deeply and still rings true to my experience. Not expressly, I didn't have the quote hanging on my
wall, but I held it inside my thinking as a belief. And i still do. I seek to challenge this statement so
as to finally being able to prove it true. In my early years as a dance student (from age 19-22) I
studied Graham technique for three years, a dance form that, I think, consists of very structured,
dramatic, religiously practiced exercises that feel to me like they want to initiate a cathartic
process that consists of first the internalization of an energy, its churning and processing, and its
finally, sometimes forcefully resulting externalization as emotions or statements, many of which
feel like embodiments of some form of resistance and struggle.
More about history....lineage.... one short paragraph to express the motivations and application
of the practice in therapy, etc, as well as philosophical/psychoanalytical influences (Jung). Mary
Starck Whitehouse, Martha Graham, Mary Wigman, .Janet Adler, ..
INTRODUCTION: my relation to AM
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FEELING
I mentioned that I feel in a similar way when I choreograph or when I do AM. This is a very special
feeling and it is difficult for me to describe. I am mentioning feeling this early in this chapter
because I think it is essential to everything else. Feeling is an action, a process, something
changeable. It is the expression of an experience. (question for Kriss: what are suggested
readings about 'feeling'? (question for Kriss: what are suggested readings about 'feeling'?
passions overhwelm feeling: Darwin, emotions. Descartes is talking about passions. What is it
that produces feeling per se. William James. DeMasio. Alva Noe. Andy Clarke, philosopher.
Prince: gut reactions. philosophy to cognitive science. Merleau-Ponty, phenomenologist. Brian
massumi, Sobcheck, Laura Marks, Elizabeth Povinelli anthropologist, economies of
abandonment, social belonging and endurance, "empire of love", karherine malibou, "plasticity"
"morphing intelligence" she thinks about the brain as being able to sort of heal itself, if you have
huge kinds of traumas, UC Berkely name starts with L.... ) ) Choreographer Pina Bausch talked
very intricately about feeling. During an interview where she described the details of a movement
that was puzzling her when re-staging an old piece. When recovering her movements for this role
and, she was searching for the feeling she had had when originally dancing the part. She was
struggling for a while with this and in the end she realized that the missing part was the direction
of her gaze, even behind closed eyes. I mention this moment in more detail in the 'Analysis'
chapter.
Feeling is a compass that can guide me through movement choices and I think that feelings are a
large part of the decoding and translation process from movement into language and meanings.
This is not to say that meaning is only transmitted through language. Absolutely not.
The feeling I have is one of searching, of spreading out, of alertness, clarity, focus, and tapping
into an energy of some sort. I feel that I am touching space. I am feeling that I am alive with all
the parts of my body. I am ore aware of all the parts of my body. I am feeling a bridge between
movement and meaning.
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But what exactly is feeling? What am I talking about? What do I mean when I say 'I feel'?
Feeling must be a mix of thought and experience. Or a pre-thought state. Or a more-than-
thought state.
Feeling happens in the skin, in the sense of connectivity. Feeling is a moment when I am alert to
my 'tensegrity', the tension compression network within my body and into the space and
energies around me.
INTERACTING WITH OTHERS

The way I am asked to interact with others in an AM session is similar to the way I interact with
my dancers throughout the rehearsal process. I will describe these 'Ways of Interacting' in this
chapter.
Furthermore, I think the relationships between 'movers' and 'witnesses' parallel what I seek in an
audience-performer relationship. There is a mutual and reciprocal, intertwined relationship of
listening and exchanging both verbally and non-verbally as part of the same practice. As
something that lends itself to becoming ritual, AM directly reflects the cultural custom of making
and attending performances; seeing and being seen, acting and witnessing, sharing and
discussing; and thereby changing together. AM and Performance are forms of 'grooming'.
INTRODUCTION - LONGING TO EXPERIENCE CONNECTION

I think our bodies express degrees of connection. Our experience is insular. Or so we are often
told. Or we might feel this way at times, or often. We can not be certain what the others are
thinking or experiencing. I do not know what it feels like to be another person, a tree, a cat, or
even water.
My Daoist teacher Dr. Alex Feng, I am paraphrasing, said: "You need not look outside. Everything
you need to know is within you." This can be understood in a number of ways. I see it this way:
Our experience might be insular at times, and it might be one of great connectedness at other
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times. To me it is fact that we are connected, if only by the shared paradigm of the world we live
in which is expressed in the biology, chemistry and physics of our bodies and the similarity of the
biological tissues that make up our bodies. What we think is not only of us, but of what we have
learned, felt, been given through genetics, etc. So by looking inside, especially after a longer life,
and Taoist often practice their introspective practices in older age, who we are is an
amalgamation of everything and everyone that ever touched our lives. So, we can stop
accumulating, searching. We have it all already within us. We also have the silence and the
nothingness that connects us all. But this is a bit spiritual for this paper. By this philosophy, my
audiences can gain knowledge of my intentions and my experiences by looking at what they
experience within themselves while in one of my performances. Collective solitude, as practiced
in AM and other embodied practices, such as Yoga, is then a communal looking inward to see that
which connects us all, or how we are connected, all the options, opinions, possibilities we have
encountered. It is in taking the time to focus and attend to that which we have accumulated, or
that which is present within us that we can clarify things for ourselves and find new pathways.
This transfers over for me into choreograph, and movement research where I am engaging with
anatomy and biomechanics. This also then ties in with the taoist concept of wu wei.
INTRODUCTION: (Collective Solitude) whole chapter on collective solitude?)

I love the term collective solitude, which I heard first used in a talk by Dr. Michal Pagis (1!) on
'somatic modes of attention' where she analyzes Vipassana Yoga and the connections among
people who silently meditate in a room together and the kind of sociality a particular practice
might create.
WHAT IS COLLECTIVE SOLITUDE?

In AM, we are all collectively listening to our own selves, while being aware of each of us doing
this, while being observed by our witness and the other witnesses in the room. The inward focus
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of the others and the alert energy in the room helps me calm down and focus on my present
moment.
WHAT AM DOES FOR ME

I believe that practicing AM can both enhance my choreographic skill and thereby refine how and
what I present to an audience as well as how I communicate the meaning that underlies my
pieces to my audience. AM helps me to re-evaluate the relationship to myself and the
relationships between others and myself. I do this by engaging with the processes that make me
aware of how I make decisions. I practice witnessing, others and myself. In other words I refine
my "seeing" and my "listening". Thereby I am practicing feeling and being attentive.
MULTIPLICITY OF SENSES
I think of "seeing", for example, as not restricted to the visual sense, but as intrinsically connected
to a number of other senses and processes, such as feeling, thinking, analyzing, guessing,
intuiting, empathizing, hearing, touching, remembering, speaking, etc. "Seeing" has something
to do with making connections, with becoming aware and sensitized. I think of seeing, similar to
listening, as full-bodied seeing and full bodied listening, expanding the notion of the singularity
of a sense. AM is typically practiced with closed eyes, so as to focus on the inner stirrings of
movement, but I find myself often needing to open my eyes in order to allow a flow between the
inner and the outer "worlds". Alva Noe said
"Seeing is the exercise of embodied, active skills." implying that seeing is first of all
an action, a process and secondly that it is embodied, requiring the complexity of
the body and all its concurrent actions and structures." (Alva Noe (*8*, @21:36)).
So is thinking, in my opinion. Likewise, movement is intricately connected to, and is part and parcel
of, the cognitive. My thinking can fool me into believing that it is separate from moving, but that
is not so. Because the body can, although they are never quite separate from one another,
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prioritize certain activities or sensations over others, or focus in on one aspect and blurr-out
others, hence we have separate words for smelling, thinking, breathing, tasting, etc, the idea of a
body and a mind as separate entities persists stubbornly. There are no terms that i am familiar
with that specifically give one word for the unity of body and mind; the body-mind, or the mind-
body still hold within the separation, made possible by a thin hyphen. (question for Kriss:
literature or ideas on this body-mind discussion:Kriss feedback: see also the feeling people from
above Kriss feedback: notion of causality)) The entanglement however is much thicker, much
more substantial, to the point where there is no hyphen. There are no transitions between
movements. There are only artificially determined landmarks that we highlight and accentuate.
Moving and thinking are such two theoretical landmarks that we realize are not exclusive of one
another . We are so used to hearing them as separate 'things'. We, in the Euro-American cultural
realms, are brought up around ideas of separation and separateness. We speak of us and others,
of us and the environment, of inside and outside, of with and against. I will attempt to highlight
the entanglement by using the terms move-thinking and think-moving, body-mind and mind-
body, hoping to, by the end of the dissertation, having found a new word that is better at holding
the unity beyond the sum of its parts.
MOVE-THINKING & THINK-MOVING

What I mean by these two inter-referential terms is that moving and thinking are intertwined,
that one is the other and that one can affect the other, refine, define and change the other. Tom
Myers (*33) made the suggestion that we should regard all the different muscles as one muscle
with different strands that contract and cause actions in different directions . The Deltoid muscle
is considered to have anterior, middle, and posterior fibers. They are one muscle and the different
sections have different actions: the anterior fibers flex, the medial fibers abduct, and the
posterior fibers extend the arm at the shoulder joint. The hand moves differently from the foot,
but nevertheless they are connected and of the same network and materiality, and usually of
common goals. Even if they act as antagonists, they pursue the common goal of balancing or
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locomoting. Antagonism is part of the process. Opposition is needed to progress in a sensible

manner. Are thinking and moving antagonists? And how so: do they stop to facilitate the other
or do they mutually become activated to support one another? From my experience in AM I
would say that both are correct and that movement and thinking can not be seen as antagonists.
They are partners.
What are the differences between move-thinking and think-moving?

I define think-moving as moving that is infused with or initiated by thinking and move-thinking
as a kind of thinking that is infused with and initiated by moving. Moving has thought. Thought
has movement. I assume that there are an uncountable number of ways to move-think, think-
move, and combinations of thinking and moving. This is a chicken or egg sort of question. It is
however quite possible that within the wholistic paradigm, neither thinking nor moving come
before the other and that they are simply part and parcel of one another. I will dedicate a
separate chapter to this. (questions for Kriss: any suggestions on literature here?Kriss feedback:
causality, not one entry point, authenticity in terms of time: being the first, chronological
question. and that becomes much more difficult to answer. interpretation of other dancers:
experiment about insularity, how you produce authentic movements, how to produce these
moments to an audience, futurists threw rotten food at the audience, dada would insult the
audience and make nonsensical statements, surrealists would come up with visions that
somehow tapped into stream of consciousness they thought that were reachign soemthign
authentic. james Joyce had already done this and gertrud stein 'tender buttons', stream of
consciousness is a collector of stupidity along with epiphany. Somethign interesting in the
juxtaposition, 'finnegans wake' the rhythm of the language, another texture to language
itself is its musicality, or the sounds of words...
experiment, what have I gotten out of this experiment: have I found an epiphany in myself,
aha, this is authentic, then I perform that difference and you think about the reaction to
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what that difference is. advertising, renting, type of backing. never a solo in an of itself.
always convince someone of the importance of the thing that you're doing.
it ruins my relationship to the audience.
building subcultures. dissemination of ideas, renting out places, etc. generalization, some
level of it, simply because you are reaching an anonymous group. DADA knew hostile
reactions. Punk was hostile gesture. art was confrontational.
epic theatre could call it avant garde. has very specific message and political urgency to it.
that isn't necessarily that other movements have. fluxus is more liberation of imagiantion.
epic theatre. Brecht.
far more often than not critique reinforces the social order, not society. insularity,
individuality, crappy captalist, captialism has appropriated art. Who is the hot new artist to
invest in. Authenticity has been monetized. Baudriard "simulations".
B and EBB MOVEMENTS

The 'everything but the brain' thinking and the 'brain' thinking can happen simultaneously. We
can have multiple thoughts and opinions at the same time. If our worries about our day at work
seemingly overshadow our AM session, most likely, the 'EBB' thinking is still happening, the ebb-
body is still expressing itself, the question is if we can either ignore or calm down the brain to pay
more attention to ebb.
Brain focused movement and EBB focused movement.
SILENCE - THOUGHTLESSNES
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AM 'lore' has it that we want to move from some place of authenticity and not premeditate our
actions. Sometimes this might evoke ideas about movement taking place without thought. Is
kinetic authenticity thoughtless? Is thoughtlessness possible?
There are many spiritual approaches to thoughtlessness, and I might go into some of these at
some point. For now, I want to leave this issue aside and begin with differentiating premeditated
thought and spontaneous thought, or presencing. In choreography as well as in AM I try to get
from premeditated to spontaneous thought. I try to not plan or anticipate what will or should
happen, but rather stay in the current moment and listen to the options that open themselves up
to me. However, premeditated thought is often an important aspect of both practices. Certainly,
it is hard to stop thinking, especially the way we are taught in Euro-American culture. Thinking
and the formation of an ego holds the focus of our existence, intentionally or not. This also is
complex in ways that might lead me too far away from my actually topic, but I might get into this
at a later point in time as seems sensible.
I find that thought and movement often go hand-in-hand and that as far as AM goes, we come to
realize that everything is valuable, important, and has the potential to reflect meaning back to
us. It largely depends on your goals. If you want to enter a trance-like state where you do not
remember what you did and you feel like you were able to stop the ceaseless train of thoughts
that plagues your daily life, or if you want to gain insight about or release some trauma. Here it
might be that we shift the way we attend to our experiences, high-lighting some and blurring-out
others. But who is to say that they are not all always taking place somehow? The issue might be
that we highlight our thinking putting ourselves into an imbalanced position for experiencing and
processing the world. The point of AM is to put the focus on movement and kinaesthesia.
MY THINKING
There are different kinds of thinking, but let's start with the 'annoying kind, which, I think,
constitutes the first layer, the outermost layer of my thinking: judgment and self awareness; the
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constant commentary. I am calling it 'outermost' also because it seems the most foreign,
superimposed, imprinted. This layer contains all the societal judgments and insecurities, all the
nagging thoughts about whether I should or should not do this or that, what others think, etc.
This constant layer of cognizing is the one I seek to shed through AM. I am hoping that AM can
help me distinguish between thoughts that reflect on my needs and feelings and those external
thoughts that inhibit my connection to those needs and feelings.
AM helps me engage with my own movement choices and my ability to intuit about the
movement choices of others. by 'engage with' I mean: It helps me observe the processes of
analysis, deduction, and conclusion within myself. I attempt to be 'myself' and I get to watch
other people attempt to be 'themselves'. This is a fascinating practice.
Back to Move-Thinking: EBB dominant THINKING

Philosopher Alva Noe (17) sees "sensory motor skills as a kind of conceptual skill." I further agree
with him when he says: "Both, artistic practices and philosophical practices, are
themselves species of a common genus. There's a common project, which neither
one is the rightful owner of... and the term I came up with to refer to this common
project of which both philosophy and art are genuses is the phrase:
re-organizational practices." (Alva Noe, *9* @7:30).
I approach choreography and performance as re-organizational practices. AM certainly presents

itself as a re-organizational practice. Here is what Janet Adler (*7*), one of the notable names in
the world of AM says about what happens during a practice: "Patterns emerge. They are
expressions of unresolved aspects of personal development. ..... what had once
been unconscious becomes conscious as people explore, sort through, and try to
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describe where they've been... being seen by another helps us to see ourselves
differently ... personal consciousness develops... embodiment of our own truth
brings us to a clearer place in the presence of each other." It is my understanding now,

that the whole point of AM is some form of reorganization of the self and of the relation between
the self, the world, and one another. Some people have very clear goals for this reorganization
and other are more interested in surprises, or in the indescribable, unfamiliar. Same with
choreography.
It is my assumption that merely with cognizing will I not understand the complexity of life, but
that I will need to focus my attention on different ways of knowing, feeling, experiencing and
doing. Choreography seeks to explore some untrodden paths...I mean seeks to discover
untrodden paths. These paths only show themselves when engaging in unfamiliar, unusual
activities or when exaggerating familiar actions in amplitude, magnitude or duration.
offloading, downloading, and holding memory

Choreographer Wayne McGregor (*1*) is improvising. Behind him, two dacners are moving with
him. He explains: " (The dancers are ) going to interpret (my movement), snapshot it, take
aspects of it. It's almost like I'm offloading memory and they are holding on to memory.... "
I work like this as well. This is the moment when movements are generated for choreography. For
example, when working with Lena on 'vita' (*8) in the dance studio, I am offloading movement
information, which she simultaneously "copies" and retains. In my improvisational-intuitive
process of choreographing I am, however, not interested in archiving movement to the same
extent that she does; I am interested in the generation and in the discovery of movements "from
within" my "subconscious". This is the part that I find to be similar to AM. I am putting these terms
into parentheses in order to highlight the need to refine my definitions of them, which I will do
throughout the dissertation and in specific chapters. With subconscious I mean: I am looking to
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reach to a place that holds movements that belong to something, the present moment, the
character that Lena dances or the topic of the piece I am working on. I hope to reach beyond that
which I know into something 'new', 'other', 'different', informative', 'expressive',... I seek to
involve not only the brain into this choreographic decision-making progress, and find something
like 'fully orchestrated' body-mind-move-thought contribution.
This brings me back to the term 'tensegrity'. I had mentioned it earlier on. This process of
'reaching' happens along/within something similar to the movement research concepts of
tensegrity. Here we have the biotensegritous nature of the physical body, where semi-rigid
components are floating within a visco-elastic tensional net of fibers that delineate joint surfaces
from one another to reduce friction and enhance movement potential, and distribute forces
evenly onto all members of the structure so as to share and reduce the effort.
Choreography takes place within a network of such interlinked, inter-affecting elements. One has
to become aware of the pathways along which emotion and movement happen and follow one
another. The choreographic process I am describing refines our ability to see these relationships
of movement and meaning; like kinetic chains the unravel, never copied, never exactly the same,
but there are existing relationships that are set within the structure and biology of the body. As
re-organizational practice, Authentic Movement also looks at understanding the tensegrity of
movement and meaning, attention and action. From movement to thought, to meaning, to
question, to idea to changes in direction, my attention glides along this network.
THE PRESENT MOMENT

Stefan Fischer (2!!) often explains AM sessions to newcomers as an opportunity to take time for
themselves, to enjoy themselves and that there are no rights or wrongs. Authentic Movement
seeks to encourage the mover to explore their very present moment and what is true for them.
One of the goals can be to allow movement to help bring certain emotions, states or situations to
light, first into embodied and then into verbal consciousness.
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Authentic Movement does not require an analysis of the movements, as it is believed that the
person will gain positive effects from moving and releasing emotions through movement without
necessarily being cognitively aware of what these emotions are or what brought them about.
in some sessions discussions emerged around this so-called 'present moment'. It seems hat the
present moment is often clouded by the past or the future. And it also seems that often AM is not
actually seeking to work with or help people find the present moment but to release something
from the past or future to help the person become more able to be in the present moment. I
think the present moment is peace. It is sensory. Always new. Never predictable. The present
moment in AM is whatever comes up for us from past and future. Those things inform our
present moment. So there are two conceptually different ideas of a present moment: the actual
present moment, or that which appears for us in the present moment as true.
RE-ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICE: CATHARSIS,

TRANSFORMATION, CLARITY/ILLUMINATION, AND
CHANGE
In AM, as both a therapeutic and spiritual practice, I do always experience some form of catharsis.
I am using the term 'therapeutic' not only in regards to dealing with pathologies or trauma but
also, and perhaps primarily, as a general sort of emotional maintenance practice, a practice that
helps us process stress and other regular every-day-life events and tensions. AM shows
similarities to katsugen-undo18" (3!), a practice that serves to help people release 'unexpressed
movement impulses'. It is taught in Germany, for example, within the context of Dance Therapy
education programs.
... Insert quote from Janet Adler's film "Still Moving" here....
18
Katsugen Undo info here
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"..., so that we can bring ourselves into focus. ((*9*) Alva Noe @16:52)
"...thouhtful looking or listening, making the effort to find the words to
describe what you perceive and to say why you respond as you do, does not
merely illuminate your own experience for you, it also, and this is the key
thing, changes your experience. It lets you perceive new things or lets you
perceive what you perceive in a new way, it alters how you respond. " ((*9*)
Alva Noe @18:07)
Kriss feedback: think about what the trajectory is and what am I going to present.
subconscious is that which is below the surface, you can draw on it, it's not quite there.
Freud's "interpretation of Dreams" incorporating the alarm clock into the dream.
unconscious is the thing that you can't tap into except indirectly.
The Subconscious ... and back to choreography one more

time
AM does not require a verbal analysis. My choreographic practice, however, aims at such an
analysis for at least two reasons: a) learning about myself and the world, a topic or how to be in
the world and how to be with myself; and b) for the purpose of clarifying the qualities of
choreographic material. In rehearsal, I develop a clear narrative that underlies the conversations
that I wish to ignite through my pieces. I seek to help dancers dance specific movements in
specific ways by giving them an underlying meaning or narrative; highlighting the body-mind
enmeshment, the inter-connectedness of the senses. I use the term subconscious to describe a
place or part of a mechanism that we are motivated by. Many actions we do are not consciously
planned out, but rather spring from habitual, mechanized, or otherwise internalized or (semi-)
automated workings that we are not aware of in the moment. It seems that our "bodies" make
decisions faster than we can "think" about them.
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Add more info about the subconscious here....Habitus/Bourdieu, Deleuze repetition, Reesmaa
Menakem, generational trauma, philosophers and psychologists, etc....
Generally speaking I am interested in why we, people of the cultural realms I am familiar with and
that I can speak for and with, Euro-American, are the way we are. Why we behave certain ways.
Why we enforce certain laws and police certain actions. I engage psychoanalytically and
philosophically through movement and the making of dance-theatre pieces. The idea behind the
concept of the subconscious is that I believe to know more than I am aware of. Knowing in this
case does not refer to actual facts, but rather to beliefs, opinions, experiences, memories, etc.
Back to Authentic Movement

I think of AM as embodied improvisational brainstorming. It's like a movement Rorschach picture.
I see something emerge and I begin to analyze it for its meaning; both as the mover and as the
witness. I can not separate movement and thinking and therefore as I dance I also begin to think
about things and about my moving body. The two, thinking and moving, are intricately
intertwined; but this does not mean that the movement is illustrating the thought or vice versa.
These relationships between thinking and moving are more complex than a simple one to one
translation or than a monoplanar process of mirroring. How exactly they are relating to one
another and what some of components of the network ecologies or meaning are is what I am
interested in exploring with my dissertation.
Components of my choreographic process

My choreographic practice consists of several parts, of which I am only able to consciously parse
out a few here:
·improvisation
·getting into and remaining in a topic/area of interest/sticking with an idea
·focusing, "getting in the zone"
· a dancer translating/archiving/remembering/learning the movements I create
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·a reciprocal feedback-loop between the dancer and myself as I watch her pick up what I am trying to
express and checking it for her accuracy (this does not mean that she does it exactly the way I am doing
it, but if she does it in a way that I believe is capturing the essence and meaning I was after; even if I am
not cognitively/linguistically aware yet of what it is I am after, and also if her movements get altered
from mine in that process. However, we first start by attempting to copy.).
·etc... complete this list...
The Accuracy of 'Subjectiveness' (Kriss feedback:point to certain ways it has

been defined, situate myself in regards to these people's definitions. Gabriel Tard: subjectivity is
an illusion. that we tend to absorb things. it's never insular. How have I come about
understanding that: who did I read, who did I talk to, how have they situated themselves. not
closed, always open to be modified. exercise in insularity: Descartes. shutting himself in a
cupboard, is there existence outside the mind. the avant garde: theya re rejecting all inheritance.
trying to get to the authentic self through the unconscious. why am I fixated on authenticity?
Does that give them something, does it give claims? Is it a notion of fear that I am so
manipulatable.
start by saying: "this is an experiment" coupled with an exercise in trying to think if
insularity/absolute singularity/authentic movement can actually exist. is there a possibility to
strip away so much that you get to something that has no influence to it. and why a lot of people
who have influenced me have tried to achieve this. This what they have done, this is what I have
tried to do in their footsteps.
John Cage: sensory deprivation tanks. complete darkness. psychedelics, tap into parts of their
mind that weren't being used. from the 1960's and 70's.
anti-aesthetic: DADA is anti-DADA. a movement that really is duchamp changed the gallery,
changed capital, insularity: people pay thousands of dollars to go to an ahsram. It's more about
money than the self discovery. putting oneself against he established values. the futurists:
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Nazis, war is the only hygiene of the world, revolutionary rupture, destruction is celebrated. we
get some radical different ideas at the turn of the century.
Germany: questioning the parent's generation. the Italians, the spanish: they are questioning
why is it that you not only complied with the fascists and then with the US and british...
anger... lots of anger... moments of anger: people think that they can control or direct it...
Taoist: you have all the answers within yourself: something they have been taught. notion of the
master. what kind of movement is inside as opposed to outside? What does that even mean?
assumption: psychoanalysis: surface and depth. botany: attention. Depth: Heidegger. how are
we measuring, what's the ration? Where is the measurement. depth is superficial , something
superficial in this arbitraryness, ... placeholders that avoid deeper inquiry. pseudo-intellectuals
that use terms that don't mean anything. Freud: people hate him, but they don't read him
anymore. they use his thinking, and they trash him. Without really understanding.
hence: use terms not understanding where they came from. this is lack of depth. far more often
than not this is Deleuze: we mistake representations for thinking.
how do you strip away all of those forms of representation to get at a kind of thinking that get rid
of all the crap that's on you. It takes a lot of work. Belief: there is something lazy about that.
sacrifice without god, only true belief in the world. that's an authentic act, if you will.
why is it ... Artaud, "the plague." it's a radical form of communication. it can communicate
without touching people. It communicates without touching. Super radical.
Authentcity: there is sometihing kind of extreme in the way that we try to touch upon it. What is
extreme?: embracing something that is painful, a form of suffering, deprivation, Cage, acts of
thinking, somatic rhythms, Descartes: what is pire thinking, the mind, etc? these are radical acts,
extreme, they separate themselves from the world. Artaud: experimenting with hallucinogens,
on the edge, manic episodes, artist, Deleuze and Guattari pick up on him,
Fear of contamination
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authenticity: problem with the avant guarde: the purity
"Beyond Piety": Jeremy Gilbert Rolfe
what am I actually writing about: I need to start from a place that I am going to understand a
trajectory.
I have a destination, and a series of stops that I am going to make.

Exercise influecned bya notoin of autheticity that coesm from a series of exercises like graham,
bausch, etc...notion that notion of authenticity, kernel of similarity ebtween Baushc, Adler,
Graham, not onof spirituality in all of them and I am wondering where that comes from. if
authentic is connected to spirituality, where
gestures produce a particular type of meaning
actors training: stanislavski method where a gesture is supposed to produce a character/... see
recording on this...
Gratowski/Stanislavski how are they so different?
Goffman
: is making an argument that gestures are a part of a kind of language, and that we are trained a
particular kind of gestures, habits. some are repeated, and through that we see other gestures within
them. martin Arnold, austrian media artist, uses found footage, gestures, creepiness in these gestures,
horrificly different ... see recording. Jerome Bell. I have a rethinking of gesture. amplification of gesture,
full body gesture.
What I mean here is a singularity of experience. Solitariness. I can never know if another person
has the same experience or opinion of any given event as I do or as any other person does.
Objectiveness, as the counterpoint to subjectiveness, is the claim, often made in science, that
there is an absolute truth or narrative that underlies all experience and that this objective truth
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can be found and experienced. I assume that everyone is having 'subjective' experiences that are
situated, and specific to their person, to their being, moment, history, etc. This situated
subjectiveness however belongs with or exists alongside the other experiences, thereby
rendering what i call 'subjectiveness' just as accurate as some hypothetical objectiveness.
Approximation, negotiation, intuition, multiplicity, complexity, mutual influencing, and intuition
are as accurate as anything, since it all goes through some filter of 'self'. Processes of intuition are
as accurate as the familiar and perhaps taught processes of reasoning and analysis. Really, at this
point I feel like capitulating before the impossibility of it all.
However, I carry on, because I have no other choice. The audience member's intuition needs to be
informed, sensitive, aware, curious, alert and experienced in order to end up in the ballpark of the
other choreographer's expression. If i express myself to the best of my ability and the audience
member senses to the best of their ability, we can come together. But, of course, as with
everything, the margins of error and the likelihood of misunderstanding is very real.
Every work reflects on its choreographer. Every performance watched reflects on its viewer. The
viewer's experiences are mediated by the choreogapher's intuition and clarity of expression. If
the expressed is expressed then the viewer can experience something close to the heart of the
choreographer, because we all share at least some common signifiers of language and coding of
experience. Something is common or something is relatable. Some people are good listeners and
empaths, meaning they can pick up on what a person means.
I feel like this is going nowhere. However. I do make some expressions, with a narrative and they
are being picked up by an audience. Depending on the audience's education they will approach
the viewed differently. Their attitude will tint the experience and the emssage.
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Ways of Interacting: How to communicate within a

turbulent sea of subjectiveness (edits from Lynette were suggested for this
section)
Although i am trying to get a specific narrative across to my audience,
which they would then be 'objectively' picking up on, I don't think that this objectivity exists.
I don't think there is one single truth that underlies everything. Which is the story of science. Well
I do and I don't. I suppose that there is a relativity of objectivity.
By 'subjective' I mean (Das Subjektive' 'Die Subjektivitaet'), a personal insular experience.

Popular, (or, should I call it hegemonic ?) discourse suggests that there is a subjective and an
objective experience; that one person can be dissociating 'themselves' from their experience,
their biases, their filters of perceptions and interpretations and engage in an objective, unbiased
observation and deliver objective judgment. Subjectivity stands in opposition to objectivity.
Popular discourse suggests a position of struggle, of contradiction and the need for choice.
Usually also, in my experience, this objectivity is believed to get closer to the 'actual truth' than
the subjective experience.
This way of categorizing is founded on mind-body dualism. On the idea that the mind can be
pure and reasonable, and that the body is always unreliably messing things up.
One could conclude that Authentic Movement is practiced from this same body-mind split. We
are leaving our thinking behind and want to tune into our bodies, which hold the wisdom, store
memories, trauma, experiences in physiological form (muscle tension, postural changes, etc). I
do believe that one can practice AM from this point of view.
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One could also do away with the body-mind divide. There is no body, there is no mind. There is
only the 'collective'. In that case, the insular experience is the only thing there is. In that sense the
insular experience is shared with others who also have insular experiences. I assume that others
have insular experiences that are similar to mine. I also assume that there are some insular
experiences that are quite different.
The choreographic moment

What is happening in this particular moment in the choreographic process is similar to what is
happening in the authentic movement session. I am channeling something from my
subconscious to take a shape in dynamic form I am channeling something from my somatic
complexity (Hilary Bryan's way of saying this) and another dancer, or several dancers, witness,
then they also learn, repeat, and hold. While improvising I (my processual self) am attempting to
attend to a current subjective (non-autonomous) truth (thruths), my momentary
feelings/attitudes towards a topic (not towards but in the presence of topic) . My pieces are
ultimately about me (myself and the context that I'm in); reflecting on my attitude (engagement
with the topic; my engagement with another energy), towards a subject. My pieces are
ultimately pieces about my dancers as well, of course. I do not propose any sort of objectivity and
I enjoy the accuracy of the subjective (singular, the self). This point of view comes to bear later,
when I engage with audiences with whom I share my work, to whom I present my messages (to
whom I make present my messages) and from whom I am eager to gain feedback as to what they
saw in the piece... for the purpose of discussing specific topics as well as related/unrelated
important issues that the pieces raises into conversation. The discussion should not primarily be
about the piece, but about what the piece seeks (seeks to evoke) to bring to light and evoke or
emerge.
The accuracy of the subjective is perhaps also where the audience experience comes back on the
scene. I have given up on the idea of objectivity. There is no true objectivity possible in human
beings. However, of course there are degrees of reactivity. Or maybe I could call it lucid and
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clouded subjectivity. One is a more open and the other is a more closed circuit. The subjective
experience of the audience member is the only experience that the audience member can have.
But the subjective experience can tap into the experience or the intention of the performer. The
two can meet and mutually inform one another. This is the process I seek in the post-
performance talk-back. I seek the feedback of the audience member. What they saw and
experienced that slipped my attention. The audience member has therefore the ability to see
something that I intuited but did not consciously have become aware of yet. I trust the format to
reveal a truth that will be visible to the openly subjective audience member. Insert quote from
Adler here.
Dancing and Talking - An example of a Misunderstanding

The following describes a misunderstanding. I might edit this out but for now I want it to stand
here as is, and hopefully lead me to further scrutinize my own process.
What I find fascinating in Wayne McGregor's TED performance was when he seemingly
unintentionally talked during an improvisational moment. When he was translating the "T" of the
TED logo into movements (for the dancers to pick up and archive in their bodies) he spoke a couple
of times. He said " to bear a cross of my own". The words came out under his breath. To me, what
happened there is that engaging with the T caused a physical experience which He also said "get
myself in the zone" before he started improvising. This suggests a moment of focusing,of changing
gears both cognitively and physically. When he said "...bear a cross of my own" he made strong
gestural movements with the hands of slapping, wiping, swooshing his hand across the horizontal
part of the T. It had a split moment of anger. The T became a cross. It became something to bear.
Where did that come from? Why did he say that? The 'T' reminds him of this and it triggers an
emotional response.
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However: TED subtitles the remark as "it's a bit a cross of my arm". So perhaps I am merely hearing
what I am associating with the T and the cross and the bearing... The dance of subjectivity is not a
hindrance to me here. Does it ruin my argument?
He never mentions this again; it was not important to the choreographic process he was
demonstrating to the TED audience. This is where my process hooks in: I keep the words, I continue to
use them when helping the dancers learn the movement and when refining the movement in the
coming rehearsal process and performances.
I asked several other people to tell me what they heard McGregor say and I got many different
versions.
Alva Noe suggests that misunderstanding could be integral to the conversation. Perhaps similar
to the balancing act of the body, constantly working and readjusting to having over-adjusted just
before. Perfect balance can only be achieved for a few micro instances, as either the body or the
environment changes the relationships and the whole dance goes on. Steve Paxton examines the
physicality of balance in his "small dance", where one merely tries to stand still and observes all
that goes on in the so-called 'stillness' of balance.
Alva Noe (17) says: "Presence is fragile.... Misunderstanding each other, failing to
understand what the other means, re- articulating what was actually meant, offering
definitions, correcting usage, those are all things we do within language. Linguistic
mistakes, linguistic misunderstanding, linguistic conflicts don't force us to step outside of
language..." Is that true? When I was transcribing the AM sessions, I noticed that many
sentences were indeed incomplete sentences, and that gestures and movements took
over for conveying the message. Noe continues: "... In other words, it is part of our very
practice, that the practice itself is vulnerable to slippage and to mistake. .... The thought
is this, ... When we are perceivers or when we are thinkers, or when we are
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communicators, our achievement of presence is always an ongoing work in progress. it's
always something we're doing. And the possibility of it's failure is part of the project itself
not something which forces the project to end. ...This is important when we think about
the big concepts, the concept of intentionality because the possibility of the non-
existence of the object of our thought is built in to what it is to think. And i think one of
the pernicious offenses of logic... is somehow the idea that if an object should not exist
that we are thinking or talking about, that this is crisis, that this is the end of civilization
that this is the break-down of consciousness. But really it's just an opportunity to clarify
ourselves and readjudicate our relationship to the world in which we find ourselves in. "
What I find fascinating and I went back to the moments a

There is something else going on though.
I am a dancer, so I dance. What is dance? What makes a dancer? How am I approaching this
channeling of authentic movement differently than a non-dancer might do?
It is worth a very close look at authentic movement in order to describe what I am doing in my
choreographic process.
Turning our embodied knowledge 'off '

Kriss feedback:Lacan unconscious is deeply connected to the imaginary, simply because its
the place that's a designation for things we can;t process. we don;t have access to it. only
access through seeing it through something else. privileged things that allow us to tap into
the unconscious. desires and feelings we don;t recognize in ourselves, but that are acted
out. art brings epiphany, recognition. never touch it directly, only comes through
displacement, such as dance.
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for the subconscious: use preconscious? the unattended, the ignored, the overlooked.
psychoanalysis interesting experience and process physoiologically, processing of the brain,
in a material sense. stimuli and how stimuli are procesedd or cannot be processed. trauma
(Freud) doesn't tend to get processed. or we have automatic recall to it. intergenerational
trauma.
create some limits here. I want it to be worth reading, have something to say.
limits: whata re the terms and who are the interlocutors. Draw out a map. stick AM in the
middle and see what intersects. midsummer nights dream could be part of this project. I
have a text there: shakespeare. I can work within the framework of that. We are taught to
turn our bodies off. Movements are heavily censored through societal, cultural, behavioral filters
of appropriateness, social rank, gender, etc. I believe this is due to two reasons, mainly: not
developing the potential of the body's expressibility and also through intentional covering up the
body's urge to explore and express through movement. Dr Gerald Hüther (*2*) argues that ...we
are taught to cover up our desires to move and explore because it is usually socially not accepted
to behave in those ways. Popular school models force children to sit still for prolongued periods
of time, etc... Similar to Dr. Gabor Mate, he argues that the conflict between authenticity (the
desire to express and explore) is quandered by the need for a good relationship with their
attachment person. Children will self-censor for the benefit of the relationship and the detriment
of personal need and development of selfhood. @33:30 he says "..so dass man also gegen die
Wand laeuft mit seinen wunderbaren Ideen und diesen beduerfnissen, die man da so hat. Und
was bleibt einem dann uebrig? Weil jedes Kind will ja auch gemocht werden und will ja dazu
gehoeren, und wir koennen ja auch gar nicht alleine leben. Also, wird sich jeder auf seine Weise,
und das haben wir alle gemacht, bemuehen, dass das, was da stoert, wo die andern sagen das
wollen wir nicht so richtig, oder wo man selber merkt dass das nicht geht... (man kann ja nicht
seinen bewegungsbeduerfnissen (folgen) wenn man da sitzen soll)... also muss das weg. Das
muss man hemmen. Da muss man im Hirn hemmende Netzwerke drueber bauen, damit sich das
nicht mehr so bemerkbar macht. Und das heisst: das wird dann sozusagen im Hirn eingewickelt.
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Die Gestaltungslust wird eingewickelt und die Entdeckerfreude wird eingewickelt auch diese
wahnsinnige Faehigkeit von Kindern zum Mitgefuehl wird auch eingewickelt, weil: das kann man
ja da draussen auch nicht gebrauchen, dann kame man ja an keinem Bettler mehr vorbei... Und
die Offenheit wird eingewickelt, und dann hat man sozusagen alles einigermassen so gut
eingewickelt und da passt man dann in Schule, oder in die Familie und dann in den Kindergarten
und dann in die Schule, dann in die Universitaet, und ins Berufsleben. und die, die sich am besten
einwickeln konnten,...oder andersrum, denjenigen, die sich sozusagen am staerksten
eingewickelt haben die sind dann auch noch die Erfolgreichsten. Die passen ja am besten rein.
Das bloede is nur, wenn man so verwickelt is, kann man sich nicht mehr entfalten. Deshalb sind
die alle nicht gleucklich. Die funktionieren wunderbar aber denen geht's nich gut. Da kommen die
Selbstheilungskraefte, verwickelt, wie se sind auch nicht in Gang.....die muessten sich ent-
wickeln. ... Entwickeln geht nur wenn ich das auch will....Man muesste mit diesm verwickelten
Anteil in sich wieder in Beruehrung kommen.... wenn man sich entwickelt, dann ist man frei."
translation of his text... here...
Socially driven movement patterns reduce the body's practice of receiving and expressing and
exploring. Watching McGregor talks to the audience, he has them imagine reaching into space,
he moves, he talks about movement and nobody in the audience moves.
I have noticed often that when I teach class to people with little dance experience, and even
dancers sometimes, they will leave their bodies out of the experience. I have to encourage people
to move, to copy, to explore instead of talk about something. It feels to me like their bodies are
bound to proper behavior, which translates to moving in very specific ways or not moving at all.
When performing for children, the reactions of pre-schoolers is very different from the reactions
from older students. The older the person is the less they respond with their full bodies, the less
do they express excitement with their full bodies. I found the difference in outwardly expressed
physicality between 5 year olds and 11 year olds to be truly unsettling.
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Sensory Motor Amnesia

Thomas Hannah works with the idea of sensory motor amnesia.... his first of all speaks to the
body not remembering 'proper' posture and having lost the ability to move all joints in accord
with oen another and simultaneously to achieve a sequential, chronological architecture of the
body's moving parts; gait patterns will be off or postures have become very imbalanced and a
hindrance to daily function. The idea of amnesia coudl play into my investigation of meaningful
movement as well. It is a common belief in the movement and healing arts worlds that the body
holds memory, even memory that we are not consciously aware of. Past events or emotions,
shock, trauma, etc are supposedly stored in holding patterns or muscle tension of the body. The
idea is that emotion/psychology shapes the body as much as our movement habits do. In AM I
have heard it discussed often that a movement will come up for a person over and over again.
The mover might not know what the movement means and it is practice to allow the movement
to be expressed under the premise that the body wants to express this movement, that 'it' wants
to be expressed, and that meaning might occur at some point and that it might not, and not to
force the creation of meaning. However, there is 'a reason' for the movement in the first place.
Reasons for movements could be at it's most fundamental layer the need of the body to move in
that particular way, because it otherwise never gets to move this way and without this the body
would develop an imbalance of some sort, or an atrophy of function or tissue, amnesia. Perhaps
we desire to do the things we do not get to do in daily life, run around silly, express odd angles
and timings, etc. The element of play is important here, as I believe we all can use more play in
our lives and movements. I do also believe that movements carry specificity, and that by
expressing the specificity of the movements will eventually lead to psychological/cognitive
recognition and interpretation of meaning.
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WHAT IS AUTHENTICITY?
"all meaning is a human construct" (J.P. Sartre (*01))
There are many definitions of authenticity.

For me, in choreography, in movement, authenticity describes the presence of moments of embodied
expression matcheing the inner motivation for the movement. When the body feels that every tiny
crevice of the body space that the cognitive mind and the sensory network can reach is addressed and
allowed to express itself to a point that feels complete. It also means that each body, by virtue of our
individuized anatomy, moves differently. We can regognize each other by our unique ways of moving. To
dance authentically, means that the body channels this uniqueness and brings forth a movement or
choreographic vocabulary that is an amplified extension of this physicality, plus whatever emotionality,
intention, message etc are added to that. Authenticity involves a, in that sense, 'unique' take on an
already otherwise explored topic. It means that the artist brings us something truthful from inside their
person, their experience, their phenomenology. It carries something nobody else can do in quite that
same way. Authenticity for me is related to truthfulness, and innocence
Is authenticity what emerges from some sort of essence, some sort of gesture of a person, where you
say: "that is absolutely me."?
Wikipedia (*12) says: "Authenticity is a concept of personality in the fields of psychology, existential
psychotherapy, existentialist philosophy, and aesthetics. In existentialism, authenticity is the degree to which a
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person's actions are congruent with his or her values and desires, despite external pressures to social
conformity. "
We discussed authenticity after an AM session. It was not clear to any of us what exactly authenticity is,
or how to define it. We talked about the subconscious/unconscious and how many choreographers are
seeking to reach into that. Insert quotes from Tiago about the absurdity of the unconscious.
Today, November 26th, 2021, I think that authenticity has to do with surprise: with the unexpected. In an
AM session with Assia, I, at some point, laughed and tickled myself from how I was tapping my whole
body and I started to laugh and enjoy that, it was like I could surprise myself. And I was surprised that I
could surprise myself. I did not expect that.That feels like it is connected to the kind of authenticity I amt
alking about.
What am I searching for in AM? Some of what I am seeking to experience could perhaps be likened to
what Erving Goffman terms as spontaneous psychological involvement, which is describing a mechanism
or state when performance and experience align and 'negative experience' which is an incongruency or
asynchrony between the performed and the experienced is prevented. So the experience of me
observing myself, feels like such an incongruency. The moment when everything falls in line and all
actors, roles and situations move in the same direction and 'dance' in synch and orchestratoin with one
another. However, I am not looking for delusion, which spontaneous psychological involvement could
very well become. How do I know what is real and what is imagined? nevertheless, I am seeking the
feeling of this congruency/alignment, plus, I am seeking for this to be as unperformed as possible.
Goffman furthermore distinguishes between the performed Self and the existential Self. It is easy to
identify with the idea of a performed self or a multiplicity of performed selves. it certainly feels that way
often especially if we have to embody roles that we are utterly uncomfortable with. But.... What is this
existential Self? How do we feel when we are 'alone' with the existential Self? What does the ES feel like,
act like, think? Does the existential self perform itself? Or is there no performance? Is that what we are
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looking for in AM? I noticed several times in AM sessions that I am tired of performing. of being at once,
the mover and the witness. Holding two roles, surely must mean that one isn't as true or original as the
other?
In choreography I am at once mover and witness. I use a mirror to observe myself and think about what
something might look like to an audience. While trying to "authentically" dig up something that can
surprise me.
In performance I am at once mover and audience. It is the moment when the audience becomes
unimportant and I am immersed in the experience of being the Self on stage. Whether it is the role or the
self that experiences the role being played.
Lynette Hunter (*03) describes the moment that a performer recognizes the feeling of the not-known in
their materials as "(rest".
To be authentic is related to avoiding codification. Bausch (3) said: "I didn't want to imitate anybody. Any
movement I knew, I didn't want to use."
WHAT IS PERFORMANCE?
Lynette Hunter said to me in a conversation which I thought was interesting"performance, very simply,
is watching someone change."
Goffman thinks of performance as something that needs to be maintained, a state is established, a script
is agreed upon, a gesture is made and now everyone continues to uphold this game.
I think of performance as an agreed gathering of people to think, explore, experience, discover and
change together. Performance is ritual and therapy.
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WHAT IS DANCE?
Assia (*02) commented on my AM session: "That (what you just did) is not Authentic Movement, that's
Authentic Dancing." At length we discussed the difference between movement, dance, and everyday
movement. We came up with more questions than answers. There's 'movement' and then there's
'movement', meaning: different kinds of movement: the intentional kind as in authentic movement and
the casual kind as in doing the dishes. And what is dance? Where does dance begin and movement end?
Does dance begin where we become attentive to our movements?
A thought popped into my head: love. Does love turn movement into dance? Is love attention? A desire
to pay attention to something or someone?
I think I find something beautiful when there is a feeling of love. When I love something, I say "that is so
beautiful, you are so beautiful".
Perhaps emotions are what makes things, makes them what they are. I think Gabor Mate talks about
this. I forgot the details (find specific quote from Mate), he argued something like 'reason without
emotion is not possible'. 'Emotion makes intelligence possible'. Something like that.
Emotion is another contested term. By emotion I means something not predetermined, but more like
affect. Affect always feels non-personal to me, hypothetical, cold. Emotion, is personal, it is the
knowledge out self-body-mind-move-thinking has before we can put words to it. Like Pina bausch says: "
Georgio Agamben defines art as 'pure means'. Without an end. I disagree. Art absolutely has an end.
Anything can be as Agamben describes without and end, pure means, and everything can be done with
an end in mind. He judges art from an outside singular point of view such as 'This one Ballet performance
I am familiar with = Dance'. To me, Agamben's ideas seem removed from their experience. It sounds to
me like Agamben is thinking of dance as 'technique'.
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-Pina Bausch (11)
Bausch's quote here also points at dance being, not only but definitely also, a means to an end.
Dance is what allows us to speak authentically.
HERMENEUTICS OF DANCE
I pulled the following quotes from a Leiden University (*14) video on Hermeneutics:
"Hermeneutics is the study of interpretation... Meaning is holistic. ...it is not the sum of the meanings of
its parts. Meaning is determined by the whole as a whole. ... Specific components are assigned meanings
in the context of the whole. ... the context which determines something's meaning is limitless. ... In
principle, there is no limit to the amount o f material that you could study in order to refine your
interpretation of one word in one text. ... The Hermeneutic circle: is a Process of interpretation in which
we continually move between smaller and larger units of meaning in order to determine the meaning of
both.... Classical hermeneutics would say: yes, there is a perfect interpretation, it is what the original
author intended or thought. ... However, you can never know that you have reached that perfect
interpretation. It is always possible to go once more round the hermenaeutic circle.... while it brings us
closer to the right interpretation, we can never know for sure that we have gotten there."
Wikipedia defines: Hermeneutics is the theory and methodology of interpretation, especially the
interpretation of biblical texts, wisdom literature, and philosophical texts. Hermeneutics is more than
interpretative principles or methods used when immediate comprehension fails and includes the art of
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understanding and communication. Modern hermeneutics includes both verbal and non-verbal

communication[7][8] as well as semiotics, presuppositions, and pre-understandings. Hermeneutics has
been broadly applied in the humanities, especially in law, history and theology.
Is there a hermeneutics of art? What are the methodologies and which have influenced my thinking?
Am I doing a sort of Hermeneutics of Dance/Performance?
PROCESS: 66EMOTIONS
PROCESS EMOTIONS - AFFECTS - FEELINGS
PROCESS Engaging with the proposition that movement has meaning

PROCESS short history of emotions, affects, feelings and their emergence and transmission (*1)
PROCESS situating myself within this paradigm, network, field of thought
It is my experience that meaning is closely linked to emotion.

One could ask if we understand meaning through emotions or through logic? Is some meaning closer to
emotion and another type of meaning closer to logical processes? I think that either one is intricately
interwoven with the other. And that emotion is always a factor in any kind of state of mind. I suppose
that the field of emotions is too broad to make such a statement. For the moment, I would like to let this
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stand as is in order to hint at an intuitiveness or a form of knowing that draws from a knowing that is not
nothing or everything and not thinking and not feeling, but a mix of all of these.
It is the interplay of intuition, affect, feeling and emotion and analysis and reasoning that gives us
positionality and meaning.
PROCESS DANCE AND EMOTIONS
PROCESS MOVEMENT AND EMOTIONS

If a word is just a word then a movement is just a movement.
I don't believe that words are neutral. Or in other 'words', we are not usually perceiving words, or
movements, as blank, abstract things. Different cultures think of words, speaking, uttering, and
vocalizing very differently. Whereas western thought might say that the word is empty, a mere
placeholder for something that cannot truly be expressed, Margaret Drewal (***1a) quotes Ayoade
about how in Yorubaland "to the initiated the sound of the words is the audible manifestation of its
innate force." (Drewal 200 quoting Ayoade from 1979:51) Objects,people and deities, perhaps even
situation can have ase, a form of innert/intrinsic power, life force, perhaps similar to chi in traditional
chinese medicine or martial arts. The sound itself is a movement, imbued with the power to invocate a
deity or to even change the material world. "In certain contexts voicing action verbs literally activates
dynamic forces." (200) Evocative words use, "what Babalola calls word-pictures, words which by their
very sound and intensity evoke mental pictures or images". (Drewal 202) example kikan/jeje. Kikan is
short and sharp and jeje is round, lulling and wavelike. The sounds are linked to physicalities. I absolutely
agree that the body holds qualities of sound, of rhythm. Each body part resonates at its very particular
resident frequency. This depends on weight, shape, nature of attachment or embeddedness in other
tissues, nature of the joint, condition of the skin, etc. An endless list of networked items and conditions
affect the oscillating and swinging of the tissues of the body. Together, in movement, they play
polyrythms. So the body has within it qualities. These qualities are linked to actions. Panting is
emotionally different from taking a deep long breath. Different physicalities will elicit different states of
mind, different emotional states. Physicality can elicit stress or relaxation, opening or closing. Spending
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all day, all week, all year in a hunched over, closed off position will have an effect on the psychology of
the person.
We can imagine what a movement feels like, close enough, or it might elicit ideas about it feeling good
or hurting. Movements might cause an audience to remember something, or go try something new.
PROCESS: 66 EMOTIONS
PROCESS: 67 Emotions are essential to logic, cognition
PROCESS: 68 Emotions are essential to articulation/expression
PROCESS: 69 Gestures are outlets for emotions
78RHYTHM
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RHYTHM
The body expresses itself rythmically. Rhythm is music. Music is an expression of emotion and
music influences emotion. Is meaning tied to rhythm? Does the rhythm of movement shape its
meaning?
TRAJECTORY:
·Rhythm as one of several (highlighted in the list below) entry-points into the supposition that
movement and meaning are intricately connected. Each entryway examines a way in which rhythm
and meaning are engaged with one another.
·(1) West-African dance/music:
·no separation between dancer and musician in language.
·
IV

THEORIES OF
MEANING
120ANATOMIES OF MEANING: a visual map
ANATOMIES OF MEANING
·outer layerscultural meaning
·political environment
·time
·style
·the Zeitgeist that the performance is embedded into
·?gender/race/class
·human rights
·political systems
·educational systems
·belief systems/religion
·history
·dance style: ballet, breakdancing, tanztheater, etcintermediate layersthe piece and it's voice
·overarching topic
·ambiance
·setting
·audience/stage relationship
·my directing/design techniquescenic design
·lighting design
·sound design
·costume designdeep layersthe movements themselves conveying meaning
·this is the layer I aim to write about in most detail
·my choreographic technique
·gestureAuthentic movement
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·dance therapy
·my choreographic process
·costume design (affects movement)
·sound design (vocalizations, speaking, breath, movement sounds)
upbringing
THEORIES OF MEANING: 89current state and philosophies/approaches

90how my approach differs
text.....
THEORIES OF MEANING: 54 and 55WE CAN NOT NOT EXPRESS –

case study 1: 56'Estados de Vulnerabilidad'
'States of Vulnerability'
January 18th, 2018

7pm
Arena Theatre, UC Davis
'Estados de Vulnerabilidad' was a performance created by Victor Viviesca, Professor of Universidad

Nacional de Colombia, in collaboration with Research-Creation Group Pensar Sonido Universidad
Nacional de Colombia and Teatro Vreve. The piece was live performed by Victor Viviescas (main actor),
Javier Giraldo (Light performance) and Federico Viviescas (sound performance).
Description – The Scene

When entering the space, Victor Viviescas was already on stage, sound was playing. The audience flows
into a blackbox space that is reduced in size by a black curtain that transforms the space into a square,
which, by division of audience and performance space creates a playing field for Victor that is a
rectangle, wider than deep, about 50' x 30'.
The scenery suggests a landscape, everything is arranged in parallel lines to one another: three rows of
audience seating run parallel to the downstage edge, conjuring imagery of a street, or a landing strip.
The audience's feet are only 12 inches away from the first set element: a chain of light-bulbs, like those
used at yard parties. After about 20' a second row of lights, also laying on the floor, stretches across the
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entire space. Upstage of those are two long sheets of construction paper, the ends turned up and the half
full rolls standing on edge upstage right, next to two or three rolls of black Marley flooring, also standing
on edge. Next to them are several plant containers with shrubs and grasses. Upstage center on the
paper, downstage of the black curtain and upstage of the upper row of lights are two approximately 1sft
rocks, next to that two metal buckets. Upstage left are a pink towel, a blanket, a water bottle, and other
items we can not see at the moment that will be revealed later (makeup and gauze for wrapping his
head). The downstage floor is black. Two lights are positioned on boxes to shine across the middle
section of the space at about chest height.
Description – The Action

The main action area is the downstage playing field. As we enter, the actor is within this space. He is
dressed in white underwear type pants and shirt, a white jacket, under a dark leather jacket, under a
brown or green felt coat. He wears big boots. Two buckets are in his space, one filled with dark potting
soil, the other with a light gravel or salt-like material. He takes handfuls of either and spreads it
throughout the space, dividing the space into smaller sections, dark and earthy on one side, light and dry
on the other.
Reflection
Although the creators of this piece said that there is no one meaning that they intend to get across, I
attached a number of narratives to the actions I witnessed. It is nearly impossible not to assign meaning
and connect supposedly random events with one another.
Mostly I saw a human's, or to be more precise, a man's relationship with materials, earth, water, light,
glass; and with us, the audience; immediate accomplices and witnesses to his unfolding. He begins
heavily clad in boots, pants and thick felt coat. Over time, he sheds layers, individual items of clothing
get meticulously placed within the space, and rearranged numerous times. He begins with spreading
earth and rock, crushing the rock with his boots. He covers his head four times, twice with one of the
buckets, once with a blanket and once with gauze that he wraps around his head. Upon the blanket and
the gauze he paints crude eyebrows, eyes, cheeks and a mouth with makeup, by scooping the paste out
of a small makeup container and smearing it onto he general areas of the eyes and mouth. He seems to
be searching for these parts of his body; blinded. Alone.
He crushes a light-bulb and later, although barefoot at that time, has no regard for the danger or the
likely sensation of shards in his feet. But his encounter with sharpness and injury does not make me feel
offended. I simply witness. Trust.
The Nature of Things

He disguises himself; and reveals himself. He vocalizes, perhaps speaks simple words. His voice and all
sounds from the stage become echoed at one point, evoking a valley surrounded by mountains.
Suggesting cause and effect. He disappears behind the black curtain to drag a dead Christmas tree (I
suppose he found it on the streets of Davis and recruited it to become an actor in his play) to the
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downstage area. He interacts with the uncooperative tree as if he is trying to get it to sprout roots and
hold itself up again. It keeps falling over. He begins to shake the tree, the branches; he extends his efforts
from the center out; he shakes all the props the clothes he has shed, the socks. Nothing continues to
move on its own everything simply absorbs and embodies the passively inflicted movement. Limp.
Vulnerability
Gradually, he becomes more vulnerable, more meticulous, feet bare, underwear, t-shirt, his left hand
bleeds from handling the tree and the rocks. He interacts with these things, perhaps in no specific way,
perhaps with no specific intention, but he ultimately interacts with them like a human being does. He
does what his nature demands of him he do? He animates, changes, moves, destroys, rearranges, yells
at, longs over, coordinates, thinks, seeks to form connections, meaning within us. And in the end, he
takes the big, long rolls of flooring and covers up the entire, messy, devastated scene. He 'paves' over the
tree, the clothes, the rocks, the dirt, the make-up, the plants. Everything disappears underneath an
artificial layer of shiny vinyl flooring.
I can't help but be moved by the destructive forces of our species, our tendency to change, destroy and
exchange natural things with our own inventions, our own materials. We make everything foreign and in
the end the space is completely devastated.
Mechanics
His sense of timing was excellent, repeating actions, envisioning, wanting, and miming actions before
doing them, showing intent and execution, desire, the physical and the ethereal, the labor. The cause for
it all is unclear, seems utterly arbitrary and simply based in opportunity.
Futility
Such it is human nature to continue to try something until it works or we have another idea to replace
the old one, and to get what we want some other way. Our will always succeeds. We rule. Yet there is
nothing left to rule over.
Innocent evil
He plays with space, with lighting, with audiences. He incorporates and notices everything, each morsel
of dust, our gaze, the air behind the curtain. He opens and closes the space, he creates and destroys
distance. He segments the space into smaller compartments, little territories, lines to step over, little
barriers to build, reconfigure, or destroy and rebuild. He plays with light, shadow and darkness, stepping
in between the lit objects and the source, his shadow getting bigger, his shadow darkening the space,
darkening our own space, the audiences space, our common space. He connects all elements in the
room, makes eye contact with the people repeatedly and distinctly. We get drawn in further and further
into detail, closer to the epicenter of his living flesh, only to leave us alone with the devastation of his
actions and our complicity. Was he expecting us to act? To prevent, to help? We just sat and let it all
happen. Such is our nature, too.
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Final thoughts
In the Q&A, the artists revealed that the concept behind the performance was that everything was
random. That there was no planned or definite meaning behind the performed actions. The main
performer tells us that the elements used are always the same, but the order of them changes with every
performance.
I have to admit: I do not understand what they mean. Do the elements used on stage not have any
meaning? Or does the arrangement of the different elements on stage, which in themselves have
meaning, not combine to a pre-determined narrative?
I never could relate to the 'Oh, it means whatever you want it to mean' statement. I know that ultimately
I will only be able to view and interpret things through my own subjectivity, but I am interested in the
intent of the artist. It's a conversation, no? Between the artist and the audience. Perhaps the artist is not
aware of what they are saying. This could be; very valid, a sub-conscious process.
Perhaps there is now the need to discuss narrative and story. Does narrative suggest a linearity of
events? Does a story or a narrative get created by doing actions in a specific order, or can the same
narrative be conveyed out of order? Do elements hold narrative or story? I could follow the fate of the
white gravel like material and write it's narrative. Is it possible to not have narrative? Does narrative
include logic?
The artists here are using elements that remain the same with each performance. They seem to connect
logically, meaning, they do not appear to be selected randomly and are quite archetypal: trees, dirt,
water, clothing, make-up. I suppose, it could have been that the artists decided to use the first 50 items
they encountered upon setting foot on campus. I don't know. I think that the selection of elements is
strongly narrational, and interconnected. Either way, I think the message is that we cannot not express,
or maybe, to be more precise, that we can not not interpret.
Inevitably, meaning is assigned; at least to some of the elements of the performance. Then those
elements that have meaning are combined to create a narrative by the audience.
A quote from Diana Taylor's book 'The Archive and the Repertoire: performing Cultural identity in the
Americas” reads:
”instead of focusing on patterns of cultural expression in terms of texts and narratives, we might think
about them as scenarios that do not reduce gestures and embodied practices to narrative description.”
This is a different way of looking at the same thing, with different possibilities, and a different level of
involvement on the part of the audience, who in the narrative is supposedly an observer, hence
'removed', and in the scenario a 'participant' and a creator of narrative. We always are creators of
narrative, except in this approach, the agency of the audience is known and intentionally applied. I would
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say that the audience needs to know in advance that that is their role to really fully engage in the
meaning of the piece; otherwise it will lead to confusion, such as on my part. I am confused about the
intent and the meaning of the piece. But not because of the actions on stage, only because of the
statement that there was no meaning.
So in this experiment on narrative, the artists offered options that could be combined in any random
way, but really were about as random as putting a knife, some blood and a dead body into the same
room. Surely we are not talking about a fashion show. The actor manipulates, moves, sheds, destroys,
bleeds, etc. My opinion is that if the narrative is truly random then the choice of elements needs to be
completely random as well, the staging different every night, audiences in different places, maybe even
different performers, different sound, etc … otherwise by giving archetypal elements that lend
themselves to specific/common interpretation, it just seems like self deception to proclaim that there is
no meaning.
By the way; I absolutely loved the performance.
THEORIES OF MEANING: 35 2) "FULL BODY GESTURE: the relationship between

movement and language"
THEORIES OF MEANING: 91THEORY OF ART
The way I practice choreography is in accordance with the definition of art that understands art
to be a creative practice that solicits imagination and intuitive engagement with topics and
situations for the purpose of expressing something in a full-bodied manner.
TRAJECTORY:
·Situating myself among the theories of art
·engaging with definitions/theories of Art
·expressive
·formalist
·
·Leo Tolstoj about what is art "transmit this feeling so that others experience this same feeling",
Clive bell,
·deposit of emotional experience"
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·sublimation
·how to sustain an emotion or state or idea for an extended periods of time to choreograph, paint
it, work on it, perform it repeatedly...
·
WHAT IS ART?
Art is...
EXPRESSIVE THEORY OF ART

I am writing about Authentic Movement from a phenomenological perspective. I document and
analyze my own experience, I conduct interviews, and I research existing literary and
videographical material. What I am interested in discovering is how practitioners of AM describe
the relationship between movement and meaning and how this compares to other frameworks
where movement and meaning emerge and how it compares to my own experience in
choreography.
I am choosing a phenomenological 1st person approach to describing AM because it is the
expression of an embodied experience that I am after. I can describe what it is I am sensing to
begin the conversation
Every work reflects on its choreographer. Every performance watched reflects on its viewer. The
viewer's experiences are mediated by the choreogapher's intuition and clarity of expression. If
the expressed is expressed then the viewer can experience something close to the heart of the
choreographer, because we all share at least some common signifiers of language and coding of
experience. Something is common or something is relatable. Some people are good listeners and
empaths, meaning they can pick up on what a person means.
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I feel like this is going nowhere. However. I do make some expressions, with a narrative and they
are being picked up by an audience. Depending on the audience's education they will approach
the viewed differently. Their attitude will tint the experience and the emssage.
THEORIES OF MEANING: WHAT IS ART?

Larry Shiner (***1) writes: "Art as we have generally understood it is a European invention barely 200
years old....Yet, like so much else that emerged from the Enlightenment, the European idea of fine art
was believed to be universal, and European and American armies, missionaries, entrepreneurs and
intellectuals have been doing their best to make it so ever since. Scholars and critics ascribed it to the
ancient Chinese and Egyptians, and once the European colonial grip was firmly established, Western
artists and critics discovered that the conquered peoples of Africa, the Americas, and the Pacific had all
along possessed something called "primitive art". This assimilation of the activities and artifacts of all
peoples and all past epochs to our notions has been around for so long that the universality of the
European idea of art is taken for granted."(Shiner 3,4)
I feel like I am not able to arrive at anything true or substantial at all here....this isn't going anywhere...
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I certainly have subscribed to this hierarchical and elitist notion of art for the majority of my life. This
involved notions of the genius choreographer, uniqueness, and good and bad art. I still see the
differences but I seek to change the labels.
Where does this idea come from that there is art that is different from craft, high from low, fine from
primitive? Shiner continues: "The English word "art" is derived from the latin ars and greek techne ,
which meant any human skill whether horse breaking, verse writing, shoe making, vase painting or
governing. Some of the older sense of art
Art is the red thread, that weaves through the many forms of expression that it touches, painting, music,
dance, theatre, cooking,... really anything we do, could be done as art. Whether what I do is art or not,
isn't really important. What is important is how what I do manifests in the physical world and what it
seeks to do or what it seeks to avoid. Theories of art lend themselves to be applied to anything that can
be done or made. So dance also falls under the potential categorization of art. In organizations of
education one will find formalist approaches to dance: learning the geometry of space and time,
deciphering formulas for creating and composing. This is not what I am taking about. each expression,
each action comes with its own formula. A formula that changes depending on the moment and its
constellations. So one could say that there is no formula at all. I think there is an underlying 'formula' a
mechanism of translation that we apply to connecting with the multiplicity of meanings that are
attached and embodied in dance.
According to Matthew Milliner (***1) from Wheaton College, the word 'art' evolved in the 19th century.
Before that it didn't exist. Milliner believes that we definitely can not apply the category of art or "fine
art" indiscriminately to other cultures; he says: "definitely don't try to do that with native american art,
they didn't have a word for it (art) either, because aesthetics pervaded their entire cosmos in the way
that they lived their lives."
THEORIES OF MEANING: WHAT IS DANCE?

Assia (*02) commented on my AM session: "That (what you just did) is not Authentic Movement, that's
Authentic Dancing." At length we discussed the difference between movement, dance, and everyday
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movement. She insisted that there is a difference between 'movement' and 'everyday movement'. This is
something I can relate to from a perspective of movement research; the body moves by expressing its
potential and desires. In the sense of Agamben, one could say, in this case that movements are pure
means. Although I still disagree, because the body moves out of distinct and important motivation for
survival , maintainenace, reactions to the physical and emotional paradigm it exists in, and out of growth
as well as decay.
Assia and I came up with more questions than answers. There's 'movement' and then there's
'movement', meaning: different kinds of movement: the intentional kind as in authentic movement and
the casual kind as in doing the dishes. And what is dance? Where does dance begin and movement end?
Does dance begin where we become attentive to our movements?
A thought popped into my head: love. Does love turn movement into dance? Is love attention? A desire
to pay attention to something or someone?
I think I find something beautiful when there is a feeling of love. When I love something, I say "that is so
beautiful, you are so beautiful".
Perhaps emotions are what makes things, makes them what they are. I think Gabor Mate talks about
this. I forgot the details (find specific quote from Mate), he argued something like 'reason without
emotion is not possible'. 'Emotion makes intelligence possible'. Something like that.
Emotion is another contested term. By emotion I means something not predetermined, but more like
affect. Affect always feels non-personal to me, hypothetical, cold. Emotion, is personal, it is the
knowledge out self-body-mind-move-thinking has before we can put words to it. Like Pina bausch says: "
Georgio Agamben defines art as 'pure means'. Without an end. I disagree. Art absolutely has an end.
Even if it doesn't have an end, the lack of an end is perhaps the end. Anything can be as Agamben
describes without and end, pure means, and everything can be done with an end in mind. He judges art
from an outside singular point of view such as 'This one Ballet performance I am familiar with = Dance'.
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To me, Agamben's ideas seem removed from their experience. It sounds to me like Agamben is thinking
of dance as 'technique'.
-Pina Bausch (11)
Bausch's quote here also points at dance being, not only but definitely also, a means to an end.
Dance is what allows us to speak authentically.
Dance is a play with the timing of movements.

Dance is the distortion of movements along time and amplitude and direction.
Dance results from the body expressing itself.
Dance results from the desire to express and communicate.
Defining art and dance might be impossible and also unimportant. Art describes the way the world
works. According to Matthew Milliner (***1) the word "art" emerged
"art will be completely flipped depending on the context that you place it in"
THEORIES OF MEANING: WHAT IS PERFORMANCE?

Lynette Hunter said to me in a conversation which I thought was interesting"performance, very simply,
is watching someone change."
Goffman thinks of performance as something that needs to be maintained, a state is established, a script
is agreed upon, a gesture is made and now everyone continues to uphold this game.
I think of performance as an agreed gathering of people to think, explore, experience, discover and
change together. Performance is ritual and therapy.
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THEORIES OF MEANING: HERMENEUTICS OF DANCE
I pulled the following quotes from a Leiden University (*14) video on Hermeneutics:
"Hermeneutics is the study of interpretation... Meaning is holistic. ...it is not the sum of the meanings of
its parts. Meaning is determined by the whole as a whole. ... Specific components are assigned meanings
in the context of the whole. ... the context which determines something's meaning is limitless. ... In
principle, there is no limit to the amount o f material that you could study in order to refine your
interpretation of one word in one text. ... The Hermeneutic circle: is a Process of interpretation in which
we continually move between smaller and larger units of meaning in order to determine the meaning of
both.... Classical hermeneutics would say: yes, there is a perfect interpretation, it is what the original
author intended or thought. ... However, you can never know that you have reached that perfect
interpretation. It is always possible to go once more round the hermenaeutic circle.... while it brings us
closer to the right interpretation, we can never know for sure that we have gotten there."
Wikipedia defines: Hermeneutics is the theory and methodology of interpretation, especially the
interpretation of biblical texts, wisdom literature, and philosophical texts. Hermeneutics is more than
interpretative principles or methods used when immediate comprehension fails and includes the art of
understanding and communication. Modern hermeneutics includes both verbal and non-verbal
communication[7][8] as well as semiotics, presuppositions, and pre-understandings. Hermeneutics has
been broadly applied in the humanities, especially in law, history and theology.
Is there a hermeneutics of art? What are the methodologies and which have influenced my thinking?
Am I doing a sort of Hermeneutics of Dance/Performance?
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THEORIES OF MEANING: 59 EMERGENCE
THEORIES OF MEANING: 59 EMERGENCE: 60HOW THIS ESSAY IS COMING ABOUT
The structure of this essay follows the structure of my choreographic process. It all begins with a huge
amount of information, ideas, images, and associations, gathered to have around me and become 'the
soup I swim in'. Slowly I work my way in to individual scenes. I edit, I add, I edit. There is no forcing it, it
has to come about on its own time. Some major topics appear and get pushed aside, others persist or
become more important. What remains now is a continuously dynamic network of complex, intertwined,
three-dimensional, and experiential elements. Together these create something that was not there
before and that lives on in our minds and bodies for an indeterminable duration and in a multitude of
ways.
All movements have their own emotional or narrative companions. For me, the movement and the
meaning can not be separated, and creativity and the body can not be separated. I liken the structure of
my pieces and creative process to the bio-tensegrity of the body, which is characterized by a visco-elastic
contiguous web of interconnected tension and compression elements, arranged in fractal organization
of larger and smaller connections. Movement in one area causes movement at all other areas. Like
hypertext this essay links forth and back and across into the other parts of the portfolio, which I suggest
you view before reading this text.
This essay is a representation of my way of working and it is also a piece. By 'piece' I mean the structure
that serves as the basis for the emergence that takes place when it is shared in a performance. As you are
reading and engaging with this essay, it is a performance, which is also part of what makes a piece, that
it has come into existence. A piece is an organism, more than the sum of its parts.
THEORIES OF MEANING: 59 EMERGENCE: 61WHY I ALWAYS WRITE SUCH SHORT

PARAGRAPHS (for Lynette)
146
Headlines are like scene titles. They are broader gestures, that can linger for longer than the detailed
content of the little chapters they create, and hold their content in tangible ways in our memory while
reading. Headlines and smaller gestures then, together, orchestrate in the ways that the body does as
well. In complex, multi-directional waves, dealing with timing, interference patterns and negotiating
togetherness. The essay emerges from the play of its parts, which don't really exist as separate parts, but
do indeed have identities and a will of their own. As I write, I fill in the smaller gestures, like cells and
particles, that make up the more easily perceivable groupings, to reveal the endless complexity of the
whole, which also doesn't stop at the skin, but includes you, as you read... So we are dancing together
across time.
Really short paragraphs also help me find my way in something complex. If I didn't have headlines, i
would get lost in all the little letters.
THEORIES OF MEANING: 59 EMERGENCE: 62DISCOVERY AS WELL
Generally speaking, things show up for us as we are ready for them. By listening more closely to specific
moments in choreography we enable discovery, understanding, and emergence. Something new is
created that couldn't exist in this way before. It is made of parts that we discovered along the way, of the
energies that are released in the making and in the performance of it, and the personal and interpersonal
resonances it evokes long after the actual experience is over. The dancer dances a dance with body parts
and narratives that are components of a paradigm, a landscape, and existence. But what they make
together is new, manifests only for a brief instance, exists in its becoming, and makes way to something
else that wasn't there before and never will be there again. And so life births itself.
THEORIES OF MEANING: 59 EMERGENCE: 63LINEARITY, TIMING, TRUST & CHAOS
This emergence can not be done for everyone at the same pace within the same linear continuity.
Linearity can be a burden and skew the picture of the whole and how it functions. Yes, linearities do exist,
they are directional multiplicities, such as the many kinetic chains within the body: but while being
147
chains that react in a chronological fashion, they also interact and effect one another across vectors, and
form cross-undulations that present more of a picture of 'chaos'. I don't really like the term chaos,
because to me it expresses a sort of victimization in the face of events that are beginning to push and
pull us around and we become undone. Using the term chaos here is misleading perhaps, but I will use it
in the understanding that while over time we do become undone, life is a series of agreements that
resonate with one another in unpredictability that is entirely trustworthy. The whole thing is trustworthy,
all of life and death. But this is hard to grasp for someone like me who has learned to resist reality at all
cost. The above mentioned linear multiplicities provoke a complexity beyond our conscious control. To
fight this state would become chaos, to emerge and flow with it, would be effortlessness. So, instead of
reducing the magnitude, and inhibiting the complexity, trust and abandon can be a method for flowing
within.
Chaos is only that if the full picture is inaccessible to us in cognitive analysis and we insist on
understanding and dominating the events. The problem is a learned response of rejection of anything
that is not easily reducible to cognition. The complexity can only be grasped and aligned with in fully
embodied ways. Through experience. Through living.
A scene that we see in a dance performance resembles more a simultaneity than a linearity. It speaks to
us clearly and we struggle only to translate it into words, although we do not struggle to connect to it in
'other' ways. I will leave this statement vague, as I have no explanation at the moment. But these other
ways are part of my interests in writing this essay. We struggle to recognize that there are other ways of
connecting, feeling, knowing, because we have rationalized ourselves to one way of knowing. To remain
open to these other ways and to practice recognizing and living with and operating through them is an
inherent action of choreography. Intuition falls into this category. We are the complexity. And we can
trust that it is the method to achieve clarity and to walk, dance, or live cohesively.
THEORIES OF MEANING: 59 EMERGENCE: 64HOME
"I didn't want to imitate anybody. Any movement I knew, I didn't want to use."
148
Pina Bausch (3)
I find it hard to see the new, to find the unknown and distill something out of the hardly perceptible, out
of the habitual, into a new piece of insight, into a realization of formerly unknown relationality. How is
something new, exactly? Am I telling the same story over and over again in my choreographies and in my
dancing? Am I succeeding in emergence? There is newness of form, of pathways of actions, and there is
newness in experience. Maybe newness in form is not as important. as society makes us believe in its
insatiableness for cutting edge work and arts - technology collaborations and so on. What is more
important perhaps is being fully, and responding fully, and moving fully, which allows the habitual to be
discovered in more refined ways which could lead to discovering new pathways into new form. By
refining the ability to immerse oneself into the other ways of knowing one creates possibilities for such
discovery.
What Pina Bausch mentions in the above quote is something I have lived for the first then years of my
life as a choreographer. I wanted to be isolated, un-distracted by other opinions, to find something true
to my vision. To find what it was that came from deep inside me, my very own language and things to
say. Would this discovery be something new or something utterly familiar? This did not exclude artists
from bringing their creativity into my process, but it meant being very perceptive to what these ideas
were. I had a very strong sense of right or wrong during those times. Bausch hints at this in a later quote
when she says that she clearly and viscerally knows if something belongs or not. I tried to leave as little
up to improvisation as possible. And I made decisions about every little element. I usually see the piece in
its entirety, the lighting the space, the costumes, the sounds. I know what's right for this piece, it is like I
am searching for the puzzle piece it takes to make it come to life.
Certainly, as a choreographer, this is where my specificity in choreography comes from. Even though I
am guided by intuition and the trust in its wisdom, I attach myself to that which emerges, hold it, pass it
on to dancers and we play with it. I have to be attentive to the sensation of whether something belongs
149
or doesn't. All of this takes place somewhere in a nowhere. A locality I can not describe. But it feels like
home.
THEORIES OF MEANING: GESTURE

143GESTURE
144gesture is intrinsic to language
145Gesture is the foundation for dance
145aGesture is part of communication
146paralinguistic
147iconic
148metaphoric
149deictic
150pragmatic, offering someone the floor
151beat/rhythm along the natural stress patterns of speech
152emblems: has meaning outside the context of
speech, thumbs up, the form of gesture is tied to the established meaning,
Scott, Tom, Why Do We Move Our Hands When We Talk?

categories of gesture in linguistics: introductory video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=gGMkHzWXjI8
(**1) panel
SusanGoldin-Meadow The role of gesture in communication and thinking
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364661399013972
153TRACING GESTURE
154How gesture is traced, enacted, embodied, generated... where gesture “lives”
150
'TRACING GESTURE'
"TRACING GESTURE" is the practice component of my dissertation research.
There was an initial work-in-progress presentation

@ the PFS Symposium April 23rd, 2022
Spring Quarter 2022
"TRACING GESTURE" is a complex project with the purpose of verbalizing various steps of the
processes of meaning making.
The project consists of the practice of translating movement to meaning and vice persa.
INTER/MULTI-DISCIPLINARY
The project is ultimately inter-disciplinary, because my body is multi-disciplinary so if my
expression. All aspects of a creative work are part of it. All aspects effect its meaning.
AUDIENCE FEEDBACK
Please give feedback on the short videos here: https://www.karolaluettringhaus.com/tracing-
gesture.html
***

The program description that accompanied the Symposium performance:
TRACING GESTURE
I am relative constancy - I translate - my many voices slither along landmarks through blood,
through muscle, through skin... from one to the next - igniting intuitively - responding
without question - naming this or that along the way - resting here or there - sending
thoughts to you.
The meaning of this project is slowly crystallizing into language. I am working intuitively,assuming
that my EBB already knows what my language wants to express eventually.
***
***
beginning notes: Dude talking about Derrida/trace
Difference:
Trace: the trace of a thing is what the thing isn't.
Tracing: following intentionally, with intent, intention, with attention the sensations of the gesture
through the body. The traces of the gesture reverberate through the body, changing, and also
expanding, translating. translation is a trace of the original spark. The ignition. The fire is not th ignition.
end notes
***
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beginning notes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwdqB5FXenc

trace: the trace refers to the necessary and irreducable component of absence, or an irreducable
component of otherness of every structure of reference.
Saussures theory of sign
derrida insists that there is always this component of the trace: a component of uncertainty. that is
woven into the very texture of every sign. any gesture, any word, a stop sign, etc markers of
identity, etc... the concept refers to the only structure of reference that exists. there are only traces.
most of which become occulted, hidden into the appearance of a sign, signifiers and signifieds. he
refers to the operation ofa trace that becomes hidden and seems to announce itself as evidence,
present meaning, evidence, it is allure. the trace is not just a supplement to sausures philospohy,
rather it is teh complete displacement of that recipe, it's a substitute for the sign. leaving behind a
system of traces at play. (this is from "the grammatology" book)
trace minerals
tracing outlines
tracing: holding on to
displacing through the body
traces in the sand
phenomenological
coloquial common word:remainder of somethign that is past or absent.
to leave no trace: no material evidence of soemthign that happened.
a a trace is something that's been left behind, that's no longer here and no longer now.
I want to by tracing hold on, prolong, extend and deepen, stay with this something.
tracing is a derivative outline of an original image. it can refer to the image ina straight forward
way, like written words refer to spoken words, but can also be modified, altered and laid over the
original image,a tracing possibalizes an alteration, a transformation or the original,
I say: what else can we find out by tracing the gesture.
This is complex in two ways: it is a complication to speak of gesture and also to speak of trace.
153
trace in french carrries with it the connotation of following a pre given pathway. a trace is the
pathway, not just following the pathway. a potential pathway that leads elsewhere. gather
denotations and connotations. trace is footprint, imprint, path but also a verb-y word: to outline, to
mark, to draw, to track. the tracking of the footprint.
keep all the connotations and denotations in mind.
5 moments of chapters 2 and 3: where he slips into long paragraphs: into sth that looks like a
definition of trace.
Derrida p.46: "where the relationship with the other is marked"
Derrida p.62: "the 'pure' trace is difference"
Derrida p.61: " (trace is:) a non origin which becomes the origin of the origin"
Derrida p.74
"the trace is nothing...."
p.84: the trace is "the unity of a double movment of retention and protention" where the relationship
with the other is marked. a spatial connotation, a temporal connotation, that every attempt to make
some kind of meaning or reference present here and now will always contain within it these pathways
and references to elsewhere, and elsewhen, etc... that's retention, that there are pathways or tracks of
various paths that I may or may not be aware of or may or may not have lived. there are always tracks of
the future... he calls this protention. no matter how much we secure the meaning of something, family
name, identity, meanings of words, cocnepts, icons, etc...there are always , these tracks are traces,
which makes it both possible to operate as a sign and also impossible to act ina centralized, stable way,
that it will always eb vulenrable to the relationship to the past and potential variations in the future. it's
never just here and now, it always has roots branching out to other traces, times, places...
spatial and temporal component, also I am adding a phenomenological component. and a translational
component.
relationality, otherness, alterity, difference.
154
traces and the trace
traces point to other places, times, relatinships, meanings... to relationships that are not 'it'. marking a
space of difference.
keeps the things from coalescing into a present meaning.
I seek to communicate something to others. by means that are impossible to copy, but by deferring, by
translating, by entfremden. Verfremden. This is what Brecht is doing: through Verfremdung he tries too
lead audiences back to his original intent.
by marking the difference, the otherness, it operates as a non-originary, it verfremds inherently, in its
core, the intent leads away from the intent. Only by bringing people to retrace, to discover somethng for
themselves, do we arrive at the same denominator.
any origin to a question is really found only in traces. there are only boot prints, murder weapons, only
traces left. there is no fully present structure of reference that can guarantee guarantee or present the
full meaning of what happened, what the intent was.
I can trace this back to an event.
audiences participate by on their own following the logics, the events of a event, of a concept, an idea, a
statement that has been alluded to by the artist.
any communication is only traces. traces are the only source of origin. but because of how they work,
traces, they can not be oriniary, they are not a single ause that brought about te events. there is only a
set of traces, that lead outward. p.75: the trace is nothing, meaning traces weigh nothing, they aren't
substances, they can't be pointed to or weighed on a scale. traces are not necesssarily material. But what
can we learn from feeling the traces, from traces put into question the very verb of this sentence: to be.
to be, what is and presence. the answer to that question can only be somethng that is full realized. the
trace can never be [resent. the trace is always complicit in other things. complicit as opposed to trace.
complicated traces. complexities, approximations.
155
pull out landmarks. trace the trace.
end of notes
***
thinking about gesture with Derrida:
(notes from Leiden University) , Chapter 5.4: Jacques Derrida, no one ever gets to clarity
I make pieces for lots of reasons, but one of them is the goal to have discussions with my audiences and
collaborators around the subjects of my performative investigations. I get really interested in a topic and
through dance and theater-making I seek to illuminate it, dissect it, feel it, learn to understand
something more about it. My creating a piece is equivalent to my writing a thesis which I present
publicly. I am proposing something that I wish for people to consider and give feedback on. My topics are
diverse, eclectic. What is more consistent is the process. Much of my process evolves around
communication, dialogue. Much of rehearsal is talking. About experiences, opinions, theories, goals.
Performances are a tool in my process, about which I will write more in another chapter (note: which
chapter? Analysis perhaps). I am asking my audience to tell me what they saw I did, or just tell me what
they saw. I am asking my dancers what they felt and thought while dancing. I craft to refine my thesis to
be as specific in my expression as possible. I know that they can perceive things that I missed or brushed
over. It is like I am laying out a point f departure from which they can go on a multiplicity of voyages. At
the same time, I am trying to convey my intention, my thesis, my questions. I am hoping for
convergence, for being seen and heard and for being enlightened beyond my scope of vision.
Jacques Derrida questions the possibility of what I would call 'conscious authorship': having clear
intentions and goals, creating something the choreographer is fully conscious of and knows deeply.
(note: where is a good quote for this in his writing?) As a choreographer, I am investigating. I am
engaging with the unknown, with the not-knowing and I enjoy this state of free falling. But I also work
with what I perceive to be intentions and knowing. Derrida says that one can never reach the right
interpretation of an original intent, and furthermore, he proposes that even the original author does not
156
fully know what they are trying to express. I agree with him. Otherwise, why would I need the
conversation with the audience and colleagues at all? Fundamentally there is the impossibility of full
comprehension, fully grasping, fully knowing, but in practicality, we live this messiness and our
understanding manifests in the multiplicity of possibilities amid the vagueness of possibility. My
audience not fully grasping my intent, can still bring me closer to something I was trying to get at, or
distill. Not having clarity might not be as important as we think. Many of the body's functions take place
without our conscious interfering or management. We live and function quite well. Not being aware
might not be the indicator of the thing not being so, not being clear. Art and art-making might be the
intuitiveness we need in order to touch clarity. Cognition might not be the tool to experience clarity with.
Among the vast complexity of phenomena that make something as apparently simple as walking across
the stage, so many things take place, so many decisions are made, so many situations are handled, we
couldn't possibly keep track of them all. But we are walking across the stage and as such it can be
defined. We are operating on multiple layers of clarity. I call this layers of complexity. On the surface a
piece might be beautiful to look at. Peeling away layer upon layer, one can see further enmeshments of
cohesiveness, forming statements, ideas, logics, etc. I keep being inspired by the statement that Alva
Noe19 made about that art and philosophy being "re-organizational practices" that aim to "bring life into
focus". He says: "philosophy aims at that kind of self disclosure or unveiling of oneself to oneself
and moreover, in this example (art, looking at a painting), it does it in the setting of the exercise
19
(**&&^Alva Noe): Strange Tools: Art and Human Nature/Alva Noe? Talks at Google
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcidL9uXw6A&feature=youtu.be
video on youtube
157
of our abilities to look and think and see, that is in the setting of our real lives, in the setting of
our lived experience. So, the ways in which we reorganize and the ways in which we transform
ourselves have to do with perception and consciousness."
De Saussure says that "the meaning of a concept is determined not by an example of something to
which the concept applies, but by its relations to lots and lots of other concepts in the language. ... In
order to understand the concept of owning a Ford Focus it is little help to just be shown a Ford
Focus ....rather what I need to do is explain the differences between owning a Ford Focus and another
kind of car.... Only by knowing about the realtions between this type of car and all other types of car
would you get to know about the cultural meaning of owning a Ford Focus. in fact, you would need to
know more. you would need to know the cultural difference between owning a car and owning another
kind of vehicle. Knowing what the ownership of this type of car tells you about (its owner) involves
knowing a huge amount of differences. Derrida concludes fro such examples and other considerations
that the traditional theory of language can not be right. that it can't be true that hearing a word makes
the concept belonging to that word present in your mind. ...once you have understood that the meaning
of concept is not determined by such an example but by their place in a sturcture this stops making
sense. ... The structure that determines the meaning of any concept is far too big to ever think of at one
instant. You just can't have it clearly in mind. You cannot have the full meaning of any concept present to
your consciousness. we have seen that thinkers like Nietzsche De saussure and ruorty believe that the
world does not have a language-like structure but that language projects structure into the world... this
means that meanings, concept, don;t exist in the objects. a tree does not in any way carry with it the
meaning 'tree'. it could be described using infinately many concepts in infinately many, totally different
languages. (note: dance is such a language) But waht Derrida adds to this is that meanings also don't
exist in our minds. When I think about trees I don't have "the meaning of tree" in my consciousness. All I
have is some knowledge, partly conscious, partly unconscious, and never complete about the relations
between the concept of tree and other concepts in my language. meanings are not in their things, well,
they're nowhere, really. because concepts consist of references to other concepts. Which in turn consists
158
of references to yet other concepts, and so on. Language is a bit like a dictionary: any word is defined in
terms of other words, which themselves are again defined in terms of other words. Determining the full
meaning of something would involve tracing all these relations, until you have mapped them all. But, of
course, our conceptual worlds are far too big and rich for that. And they are also constantly changing. We
can never determine the full meaning of anything because we can never grasp our entire language in one
single thought . " Derrida wrote: "Il n'y a pas de hors-text." The speaker from Leiden University explains
that what Derrida is trying to express with this statement is "when you are trying to determine the
meaning of something you are always following relations from one item of language to another because
meaning IS those relations. You always remain within the structure of language. You can never escape
from having to do even more interpretation by finding a perfectly clear meaning either in a thing or in
someone's mind. But that means, Derrida points out, that traditional hermeneutics was based on a
fiction. For traditional hermeneutics wants to interpret a text so well that it rediscovers the original
intention of the author. Now that makes sense only if the original intention of the author was clear, if the
author really knew perfectly well what she was saying. But her original intention can't have been clear.
Nobody ever knows with perfect clarity what they're saying, because nobody can have the full structure
of their language fully in mind. (note: moving is a form of knowing that exists partially outside of
language and logos. Knowing can be possible on that level perhaps without being able to fully
materialize the knowing into language.) When I say somethign, or write something, or even just think
something, I am using a language that I can never fully understand. (note: so an addition to linguistic
understanding might be needed here, that opens up the possibility of focused action, that opens the
possibility of changing hierarchical structures of thinking to collaborative structures, where not knowing
cognitively does not mean I, in my entirety, do not know. Frey Faust says: "...there are many systems in
the body that are not directed by the brain. ...At the moment, the heart and gut are thought of as brains
as well, given the high cocneptrations ofneurons in each of these places. Not to forget, spindle fibers are
muscle cell strands within the appendicular muscles that are composed of brain-like tissue.... neuron
rich. So we have three large brains scattered throughout our bodies as ligament and muscle. To do
something... anything at all... is an engineering miracle, which is mostly a collaborative effort where the
brain in our skulls has a relatively small role."
159
Derrida is right, but Derrida is not accounting for other ways of knowing. (note: who fills this gap? Which
writers start at embodied knowing?)
Derrida says that you can never reach the right interpretation at all. That there is no right interpretation
possible to be had. The starting point is incomplete, shifting, vague. The original author, in this case me
as the choreographer am not fully capable of verbalizing and thereby cognitively comprehending the
original intent. This is exactly why I make art. the process of choreography helps me understand; through
experience, through embodiment, through conversation with others, participants and viewers. So, yes, I
am expressing something that I need an audience to help me translate into language in order to more
fully grasp this thing, to grasp life, to go into further reflections of manifestations. The mirage that I
create on stage is a translation of something that exists somewhere for some time that I wish to hold,
see, understand. Does that mean I do not fully understand what I am trying to say? it means that I can
not say it.
What does it mean to know? maybe I know, but I can't say it. I get the sense that other cultures are more
able to know in other ways and not rely so much on the logo-centrism of my cultural realms. If we aren't
able to describe something, it practically doesn't exist. And vice versa, if something exists in plain sight
we are often, all too often, denying its existence by superimposing language that denies its existence
and thereby convinces people to believe the lie. Examples of this are: internalized sexism, racism,
anthropocentrism. The proof is out there in plain sight and yet we believe in constructs that deny reality.
Choreography can be a tool for anarchy, for investigation instead of looking for pre-formatted
explanations and definitions. yet as much as I want to free myself, I am making constant effort to name,
define, categorize etc, only to try to break that category again.
In the performance, the audience is observing nuances that I wasn't aware of, that I hadn't paid attention
to. Things that belong will remain present. Whether we see them or not is another question. if something
comes up ina rehearsal it has validity, justification. Where it belongs is to be figured out. other eyes see
160
what I didn't see. They see from other viewpoints. Other viewpoints are what we seek to gain, through
engaging with one another and through going to or by making performances. The viewpoint of the other
to enlighten us out of our confined view, to bring that which is in the periphery into focus.
That thing that comes up in rehearsal, it might be correct or not correct, it might help me understand
something or it might distract me. Either way, there is that something else in there that others see that I
didn't and it is somehow valid. Even in the gravest misunderstanding there is a lesson, a value, a truth
that relates to it, to life. one thing can mean completely fdiffrernt thigns to people. This is often
upsetting, infuriating, frustrating to me. I feel cheated, abused in my 'original' intent for my piece. How
can you say I am an anti-semit when I am clearly making a piece about the Holocaust, working through
and engaging people into the mechanisms that makes us, in my opinion, all into potential perpetrators,
and facilitators of genocide, racism, abuse. maybe this person saw what I saw, this potential in me and
he yelled at me, for the violence I exhibited. maybe his response wasn't bad also becasue it showed his
held bigotry and sexism, hist racism, he was the mirror of the societal debate and war that still lives on
today, not in the past alone. If everything applies, and everything is valid, then it erases meaning, no?
or does it.
What defines the parameters of meaning midst this shifting iridescent enmeshment of past present and
future? it is the relation between all these things. The fascia of all interaction. This reminds me again of
Bergson's idea of intuition.
In western philosophy language is often discussed as having the ability to help us make present in our
minds concepts and situations that are absent. This can also be done with dance, with choreography,
with gesture. We often say that an image is worth a thousand words. it conveys a multitude of concepts
in one instant. No, we can never grasp them all cognitively, but maybe for a split second we can fall into
the embodied experience of wholeness? When dancing I sometimes feel enlightened, I get a sense of
feeling connected, connected to a kind of knowing. It is beautiful. Thinking is part of being. but only
part. It can be sad when thinking becomes the tyrant of a person. Depression. Egocentrism. Delusion.
Thinking needs to be part of a whole not the leader of a whole. Touching something more clearly
161
through intuition than through language is indescribable. it is a sense all unto its own. (note: quote
authors Lois Ellfeldt and Eleanor Metheney20 p.267: "A picture can never be completely described in
words; it conveys its meaning in non-discursive visual symbols. Similarly, dance is recognized as a non-
discursive art form which symbolifies concepts in movement. The recognition of presentation [non-
discursive] symbolism as a normal and prevalent vehicle of meaning widens our conception of rationality
far beyond the traditional boundaries, yet never breaks faith with logic in the strictest sense. Wherever a
symbol operates, there is a meaning: . • . No symbol is exempt from the office of logical formulation(note:
only because we do that. I am sure there are cultures that put less emphasis on interpretation), of
conceptualizing what it conveys; however simple its import, or however great, this import is a meaning,
and therefore an element for understanding. Such reflection invites one to tackle anew, and with entirely
different expectations, the whole problem of the limits of reason, the much-disputed life of feeling, and the
great controversial topics of fact and truth, knowledge and wisdom, science and art. (4, pp. 78-9) "
My theory that "we can not not interpret" only applies to my mind, and to perhaps others of the western
cultural realms, because of our obsession with knowing. Knowing is justification for all kinds of
atrocities. But I do think that we constantly express meaning. All of us, every thing expresses some
meaning, some concept. Every thing is constantly in exchange with other things.
20
Lois Ellfeldt and Eleanor Metheney "Movement and meaning: Development of a General Theory"
p.267
162
the text:
No words are needed right now - no explanation will ever be enough for this moment - no question is
asked in order to fall toward something, everything falls on its own, everything lives independently with
each other in constant connection - I am tracing sensations through my body's tissues - I am listening
with eyes closed to the responses, the calls of some tissues and the responses of others to come with or
hold against - I am following along my body's invitation - my body creates lines of thought - lines of
transfer, highways, deer paths through the woods that my cats take, habits we form together, all of us,
all my tissues and fluids and my surroundings and my friends and all the other people that like or do not
like me, or that I like or do not like - lines of connection are where my messages slide along, my
messages, whose messages? I am listening to my body's messages. I stand at the oversight and the cul
163
de sacs of my body - If I go, you follow - if not, I come back - distance is tissue, skin, gooey, viscous,
elastic, liquid, muscular, tendonous, sheeths of tracts of collagen - detours are the direct path and direct
paths are our ideas, our imagination is direct, and live is indirect - we, me and the tissues that call me
theirs, we expand and we contract - emerge - become - return - reinvent - reexperience - recycle what
has been there, recycle what there will be again and again - in resonance with - in response to - I am
understanding through diversion, through detaours, through listening along the path. There is no
destination. designation is the game. Naming... - through translation - through translating I connect
with the complexity - I translate from one body part to another a movement travels - I travel across the
floor and translate across the floor - my relationships are what makes me define myself -
I am relative constancy - I translate - my many voices slither along landmarks through blood,
through muscle, through skin... from one to the next - igniting intuitively - responding without
question - naming this or that along the way - resting here or there - sending thoughts to you.
the poem:
no words - no explanation - no question to fall toward - tracing - listening - following along - lines of
thought - lines of transfer - lines of connection - If I go, you follow - if not, I come back - distance is tissue
- detours are the direct path - we expand and contract - emerge become return - reinvent - reexperience
- recycle - in resonance with - understanding through diversion - through translation - translating - across
the floor - relationships - relative constancy - as you change you become - slithering from one to the next
- igniting - responsive right away - everyone -
thinking out loud:

tracing gesture - into body - out of body - through body - into space - from one person to another - what
sticks - what moves through - what passes by - finding flow - finding inspiration - finding source in re-
source - finding ripples - reaching - bodying -
164
165HYDRA with Breanne

166Findings from 'Tracing gesture' movement studies with Breanne
interview, recreating some of the movement from video and re-establishing
what the meaning was during rehearsal.
171Nomadic College Residency October 2023 Tracing gesture research and

presentation
project description, outline, activities, discussion topics, goals
172findings from discussions
173audience feedback form, audience observations
174participant processes and feedback/philosophy
165
175THE LITTLE PRINCE, with the Moving Poets Theatre of Dance, Charlotte NC, 10/27-
30/22
176“Processing common logistical restrictions and creating meaning under
time pressure", what are the go-to mechanisms, the pillars of meaning
making and transmission: working from the outside in. Setting the structures, defining the themes,
improvising around movement material and to find themes and necessary structures. Simultaneous
approach from two sides.
166
GESTURE & FULL-BODY GESTURING: EMBODIED KNOWING
"For the man of visual culture is not like a deaf mute who replaces words with sign language. He
does not think in words whose syllables he inscribes in the air with the dots and dashes of the Morse
code. His gestures do not signify concepts at all, but are the direct expression of his own non-rational
self, and whatever is expressed in his face and his movements arises from a stratum of the soul that
can never be brought to the light of day by words. Here, the body becomes unmediated spirit, spirit
rendered visible, wordless. ...
But the language of gesture is the true mother tongue of mankind."

Bela Balazs21, Visible Man, Introduction
“I'm not so interested in how they move as in what moves them.”

Pina Bausch22
21
Bela Balazs, Visible man, from the introduction

22
Pina Bausch
·define 'gesture'
·engage with how gesture relates to expression through embodied action
·etymology of the word gesture:
·tracing gesture from hands to toes and viscera
·examining dance as analogous to the kind of gestures that are described as: " informal, non-
codified (hand) movements, fleetingly generated during the course of speaking " (**1 Susan
Goldin-Meadow). These gestures are created spontaneously, are improvised and accompany
speech for a number of reasons.
·history and outlining of types of currently recognized gestures:
·https://nancyannroth.com/?page_id=421 vilem flusser's book "gestures" (***7)
gestures are paralinguistic, they accompany language
·iconic gestures: represent a literal object

·metaphoric: symbolizing an abstract cocnept

·deictic: pointing to things, positioning yourself to people of places or things
·pragmatic: offering the floor to someone, or "don't bother me right now"
·beat: rhythm of gestures alongside the natural stress-patterns of speech, often beat category gestures also
fit into another type of category
·emblems: have meaning outside the context of speech, the form of the gesture is tied to the established
meaning, the meaning is learned, depends on culture, context changes it,
Gesture is a participant in the game of communication.
My hands are tentacles for my thinking. My hands reach into space, to others, block and shield me.
I think that gestures are often thought of as only involving the hands and arms because that's where
the emphasis lies, but I observe that gestures are always soliciting the entire body. Some gestures are
smaller, some are larger. All body parts contribute to the meaning of the gesture.
Definitions of Gesture: movement that represents meaning, that carries information,
abstract, contextual, sensical, non-sensical. All movement is gestural.Generally we think of gesture as
a movement that is not done to achieve a goal, such as drinking water, or opening one's car. If the
glass or the car are removed and the movement is executed as if they are still there we have
pantomime and also gesture.
Canadian illustrator Alex Chow (artofchow.com) says (*9) "Gesture is the foundation of every
character, object and literally everything that you do will consist of. it's the foundation. Gesture is the
essence of movement in any character or object or anything that you draw. gesture exists in every
lifeform possible, even synthetic lifeforms, even if you have a plastuc ibject thats man made, you're
gonna have gesture in them. (gesture) captueres the essence of what something is."
MATCHING
What I attempt in choreography is to channel movements that are true to the person expressing the
narrative. The movements have to match the person. Unless I want to depict an inner struggle, then I
might deliberately explore movements that the dancer struggles to execute. The question is often "How
can I get you to experience what I am hoping to bring onto the stage? So that the audience member
observing you can get the feeling I was after, not the movement I created."
Geoffrey Beattie (6) highlights: " The traditional assumption in both the academic and the popular
literature is that they (non-verbal communication and speech) are separate systems of communication.
But when you study people closely, you can see immediately that the two systems are very closely
connected..... ".
The gesture alters the meaning of what is said. The word alters the gesture as well. The two inter-exist,
and inter-are.
According to Beattie, emblem-type gestures are repeatable. The iconic/metaphoric gestures I am talking
about have no absolute standard form of lexicon, although there are underlying rules, as I described
earlier in the text. In talking, hand gestures are complex. They are generated spontaneously. And they
change. They are unconsciously produced. They have different phases, preparation phases where
meaning is sought, and then expressive phases where they support or ad meaning to that which is
verbalized. Beattie says that these gestures will tell us a lot about whether a person is genuinely verbally
aligning with what they are thinking about. Because there is this underlying intrinsic language,
contradictions can be detected. This concept has become very popular on TV with shows such as "Lie to
me" and others.
These gestures are not just an evolutionary relic of pre-language times, they are part and parcel of our
communication system, and they often connect to something like 'truth' more directly than language
does, perhaps because they are more intrinsically embodied. Language, because we spend a lot more
time with it, has perhaps become more rehearsed, more planned, crafted, and learned, used as a social
tool. Gesture is more immediate. There are attempts by differnet people throughout history to harness
the communicative power of gesture in rhetoric, politics, etc. Books are written on how to convince your
audience of your honesty and reliability, and how to make people do what you want from them. But the
craftedness and artificiality of rehearsed gestures can be very offensive, as this shows dishonesty. Just
like in a dance performance, people will pick up on the messages to varying degrees, which connects to
their training and ability to intuit connection to the body language. This is where I think dance, and
theatre, inserts. The actor/dancer learns to "repeat" gestures in such honest ways that we believe their
story. It is therefore in my process important that the dancer be involved with the narrative, with the
emotions and the experience of the message while dancing the movements, otherwise the incongruities
will become visible.

Dance, the way I dance, taps into amplifying gestures, into exaggerating, embellishing, furthering and
elaborating on the messages. Dance allows the entire body to gesture. It can provoke language and it
can express things not captured in language and it can work with or against language to tell specific
stories.
READING GESTURE - FEELING GESTURE: an example

embodying someone else's gestures
experiential experiment
155TRACING GESTURE PROJECT ANALYSIS

156TRACING GESTURE with Lena
157Findings from gesture studies
158THE RIVER HOME 2023, created in relationship to the practice research project:
159Performance performance at Cameron Art Museum, 4/22/23
160Findings about translation, when it happens, how it happens
161When speaking occurs/pre-speaking states
162“Discovering meaning in community improvisational performance around a
specific topic”
163VITA5 with Lena
164MOMENT BY MOMENT
THEORIES OF MEANING: 74 ARTICULATIONS THEORY

THEORIES OF MEANING: 74 ARTICULATIONS THEORY 75 what is articulating
THEORIES OF MEANING: 74 ARTICULATIONS THEORY 76 we always articulate

THEORIES OF MEANING: 74 ARTICULATIONS THEORY 77 we need to articulate


TOOLS
79TOOLS
80 Tools for becoming audience
81tools for engaging audiences into conversations
82tools for educating

134TOOLS FOR FINETUNING: MOVE-THINKING
CONCLUSION
BIBLIOGRAPHY


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DEDICATION & THANK YOU

This bistouryan/dissective approach is reminiscent of a deterministic way of knowing that prohibits a

By trying to justify practice as a viable academic field, or by demoting it to an appendicular

(from Bilinski application)

ABSTRACT: 2cARTICULATION THEORY

PAR PRACTICE RESEARCH CONSIDERATIONS

Luis Bunuel, find which of his writings this quote is from

Movement has meaning...

For this statement to stand:

I will have to clarify how I define "meaning".

Emotions are connected to movement. Everything is connected to movement. Our

"I think that every thing is significant...

(quote translated by Karola Lüttringhaus) Pina Bausch

INTRODUCTION: 6READING BODY LANGUAGE

INTRODUCTION: 6a) MY MOTIVATION – Why I choreograph and

“TRACING GESTURE: REVISITING MEANING AND REDEFINING IT'S PLACE IN

INTRODUCTION: 7Situating myself - outlining my practice

“TRACING GESTURE: REVISITING MEANING AND REDEFINING IT'S PLACE IN

INTRODUCTION: 8SITUATING myself - geography

INTRODUCTION: 9SITUATING myself - Nothing exists out of

“TRACING GESTURE: REVISITING MEANING AND REDEFINING IT'S PLACE IN

improvisationally and discussing my methodology for uncovering or assigning meaning to

INTRODUCTION: 10Hermeneutics of Dance - Bergson - Bausch -

INTRODUCTION: PAR - thought experiments -Psychology -

INTRODUCTION: 12Collective processing and healing - catharsis

INTRODUCTION: 13Play - the imagined helps process the real

“TRACING GESTURE: REVISITING MEANING AND REDEFINING IT'S PLACE IN

INTRODUCTION 15Dancing to Fly - Full-bodied expression

INTRODUCTION 16IMAGE CREATION - the image speaks and acts

INTRODUCTION 17BEING AWAKE

I am fascinated with why we make our lives unnecessarily more difficult.

Choreography is embodied thinking.

ePSYCHOLOGICAL SPACE. EXPANSION. TRANSFORMATION. BREATH.

“TRACING GESTURE: REVISITING MEANING AND REDEFINING IT'S PLACE IN

INTRODUCTION: BEING AWAKE:18ATTENTION

The process of attentionpaying is defined by an activity called improvisation. What is

INTRODUCTION : IMPROVISATION: 20DECISIONMAKING

“TRACING GESTURE: REVISITING MEANING AND REDEFINING IT'S PLACE IN

FOUNDATIONS: 28THE CORE: my choreographic process

FOUNDATIONS: 70EXERCISES SUMMARY AND REASON FOR HAVING THEM

FOUNDATIONS: - 38DEFINITION OF CHOREOGRAPHY:

FOUNDATIONS: - 38DEFINITION OF CHOREOGRAPHY:39directing

FOUNDATIONS: - 38DEFINITION OF CHOREOGRAPHY: c40omposing bodies in

FOUNDATIONS: - 38DEFINITION OF MEANING: current understandings of Meaning

FOUNDATIONS MOVEMENT FORMS WITH MEANING

A SERIES OF PHENOMENOLOGICAL EXPERIMENTS

DAOIST MOVEMENT PRACTICE: Tai Chi/Chi Gong

·How is meaning connected with movement?

Afro-Latin Dance, Candomble, Yoruba

·How is meaning connected with movement in this modality?

NATIVE AMERICAN DANCING

INTERNATIONAL FOLK DANCING

FOUNDATIONS: SOCIAL CRITIQUE

FOUNDATIONS: 94SOCIAL CRITIQUE

FOUNDATIONS: SOCIAL CRITIQUE – make a new subtitle here

FOUNDATIONS Choreography as social critique

responses to my multi-sensory/multi-media essay. It is this discussion I am after on the one hand

“TRACING GESTURE: REVISITING MEANING AND REDEFINING IT'S PLACE IN CHOREOGRAPHIC

My work is not entertainment. Although it I try to make it captivating to the audience.

33PAR 2023 – CONSIDERATIONS FOR PRACTICE RESEARCH

PAR 2023 – CONSIDERATIONS FOR PRACTICE

1) "Insights Into Body-based Practice as Research: Methodologies in Euro-American Theatrical Dance

“TRACING GESTURE: REVISITING MEANING AND REDEFINING IT'S PLACE IN