0000 Tracing Gesture Chapter Summer Fellowship

DISSERTATION TRACING GESTURE: Revisiting Meaning & Redefining its Place in Choreographic Practice and Academic Contexts
Chapter 2: TRACING GESTURE Karola Lüttringhaus 2023
Last updated: 10/17/2023
CHAPTER 2: TRACING GESTURE

1) Introduction
2) THINKING WITH BÉLA BALASZ1's “Visible Man” p.3 (foundational and still prevalent belief
in body revealing soul and the romanticization of recovering lost abilities)
3) WHAT IS A GESTURE? ETYMOLOGY AND PERSONAL POV . . . . p.29 (my personal
experiences and beliefs around gesture)
4) WHAT IS A GESTURE? PHENOMENOLOGICAL POV: Merleau-Ponty and others p. (looking
at gesture through the lens of phenomenologial ideas and philosophies)
5) WHAT IS A GESTURE? GESTURE RESEARCH POV: BEATTIE, GOLDYN-MEADOWS,
LESIC, Bogdanka, and others (account of current gesture research, western scientific view on
how thinking and gesturing connect to one another)
6) LYNETTE HUNTER – CRITIQUES OF KNOWING (& POLITICS OF PRACTICE) (broadening
the view onto gesture, foundation: critique of western ways of knowing, shortcomings,
blindspots)
7) DO YOU SEE WHAT I MEAN? - Thinking with BRENDA FARNELL, indigenous sign
language and non-verbal communication (inquiring about some indigenous views of sign
language and gesture and evaluating how this could inform my ways of working with gesture in
dance and support my theories around dance as full body gesture )
8) READING JUDITH BUTLER'S “When Gesture Becomes Event” (philosophical inquiry into
gesture and socio-critical activism and thought)
9) Thinking with Georgio Agamben “Notes on Gesture” (more philosophy, not sure yet how he
fits in)
10) The trace: tracing the trace (parsing out the words trace, etymology, and current western
philosophy around tracing, repetition, knowing, remembering, habit, etc)
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Thoughts on Bela Balaz's “Visible Man and The Spirit of Film”
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>>>>> Each sub-chapter chapter begins with a bullet-point summary of all major points
>>>>> ALL BLACK text is not properly assigned to a chapter yet, or it hasn't gone through a second
edit! Half way through this document things get messy.
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INTRODUCTION SUMMARY: TOPICS BY
PARAGRAPH:
 methodology:several lenses: kinesics, linguistics, choreographic, phenomenology, psychology, dance
theory, dance practice, non linear appraoch
 CONFLICT:
METHODOLOGY
I will look at gesture through several lenses: I am working with a phenomenological premise,
centering all experience in the body. Since I work with language and notions of dance being gesture,
ventures into linguistic research and kinesics are foundational. With dance theory and practice I will
inquire about specific choreographic processes and approaches to gesture. Psychological research
and concepts are paramount in my work as I am investigating how emotion, affect, and intellect
manifest in embodied form within the context of dance-making and performance. Philosophical
ponderings tie together the various viewpoints and speculate on the impact of this practice onto
other areas of life. I am here engaging with speech act theory, theories of meaning, theories of
embodiment, and many others. My approach is not necessarily linear and I think that it could be read
in any order.
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THINKING WITH BÉLA BALASZ
SUMMARY OF TOPICS BY PARAGRAPH:
* Balasz has a theory on gesture

* goal: how to situate dance in theories of gesture
* photo of carrotopia: I made silent film performances, am affected by film and early film
theory
*the man of visual culture versus man of aural culture/word culture
* soul has distinct areas that feed specific arts/expressions
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* mourning the loss of visual culture
* the silent movie actor
* the soul is channeled
* different kinds of gestures
* simultaneities
* decorative expressions of the dancer are generated in a different realm of the soul
* silent film plays an important personal, interpesonal, societal and cultual role, bringing us
back to visual culture
* culture is the penetration of ordinary life by the soul
* expressing the non-rational, the un-known
* speaking gestures are illustrative and clumsy
* shortcomings of conceptual culture
* behind the nostalgia: something trasncendent: expressing life itself
* What was lost with visual culture: full bodied expression, empathy, tapping into life itself, the
source
* the soul retreated from the body into the face and into the word, rendering the body empty
and incapable
* the immediacy between experience/emotion and gesture
* Language can not express things the way gesture can: simultaneities, complexities,
contradictions, losses in translation, takes too long to speak
* my choreography starts from the gesture of everyday life, what Balasz would call the visual
culture's gesture, and I trace it further into space, abstraction, etc
* my definition of a dancer
* it is special to express oneself through gesture/full-bodied gesture
* Balasz has not analyzed speaking gestures enough, he dismisses them entirely
* If we never spoke we would develop a visual culture (again)
* to be nature, to improvise to be life when gesturing
* Picasso, Pollock: painting like a child, intentionality
* connection to the source, Spirituality, authenticity
* becoming a man of visual culture, becomein a dancer/choreographer of full-body gesture
requires practice, letting go of fears, judgment, listening, allowing, decentralization,
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* all art comes from the spiritual realm, from silence, from the soul
* language can evoke simultaneity
* gestures also express what the person is physically experiencing, proprioception
* matching postures, connect, empathy, somatically experience the other, agreement (touch)
* dualistic separation between body and soul
* What is the soul for Balasz? rational/irrational
* what is to be gained from the irrational?
* what is art?
* does gesture bring the unknown into our proprioceptive experience?
* ditinction between logos and intuition, but they are inseparable sides of the same coin: in-
breath and out-breath
* choreography can refine our ability to express and communicate through the body, i.e.
become a man of visual culture
* the walk of the protag=onist tells of his fate
* how to watch a walk
* how does the actor achieve the telling of a destiny through walking? What are the acting
methodologies: these are not clear
* culturally established behavioral performativities
* working with narrative
* definition of a dancer
* a movement study: waving hello: what can we do with this movement? What can we learn
from engaging with it?
* crafting narrative requirescognotion and intuition, the rational and the irrational
* the narrative affects the movement
* movement affects the narrative (to be addressed later in the chapter)
* Exercise: execute the same movements through the lens of several different narratives, slow
motion
* polyphonic physiognomy
* directing/acting methodology: a good
never surprises us
* the complexity of the character
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* whatever man is capable of becoming, he already is, quote from Hebbel
* how reliably are we able to read facial expressions?
* film methodology: facial closeups as climax to films
* differences between silent film actor, dancer, stage actor, spontaneity, simultaneity, close-
up, gestures as focal point, close-up as focusing tool
* how dance "zooms in": by tracing gestures into the periphery, abstraction,
larger space, elaborating, morphing, exaggeration, spreading the expressions of the face out
over the body
* the close-up is film's essence and true terrain
* dance movements can tell stories, can express the soul
* becoming visible again
* how does one become visible?
* examples Joan of Arc
* dancing with the close-up, example Midsummer "the daughter", politics of detail, realness,
embodiment
* shakespeare's social critical plays, Midsummer: authenticity, authority and autonomy
* culture of words is dematerialized and overintellectualized, degrades the human body
* yearning to be human beings with our entire bodies, from head to toe
* reclaiming gestures and ways of moving
* only film can reclaim the visual culture? because dance is more difficult than the everyday
gestures of film?
* differences between the language of gestures and gestures of language
* dance is a language of gestures.
* how dance differs from silent film gesture "they operate on an entirely different plane"
* Anita Berber dancing in silent film
* music is not just an accoustic matter, gesture is not just an optical matter
* the sould is expressed somewhere between the dancers movements and the speakers
gestures, another "third" realm
* speaking and dancing as opposite ends of the spectrum
* the plot is unimportant; what tells the story is the lyricism of the gestures and facial
expressions of the actors
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* facial expressions are vastly more numerous than words. here the poerty of film is revealed
* multiplicity and polyphony of facial expressions
* what the actors portray can not be put into words. translating into words would cause the
complexity to crumble.
>>> End of headlines/paragraph summaries <<<
"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. ..."
Bela Balazs2, Visible Man, Introduction
Balasz has an interesting, emotional and passionate, theory on gesture that inspires contemplation
around how we perceive gesture and our ability to express ourselves through gesture, as well as
where dance and choreography could be situated on the continuum of non-verbal expression.
In the above quote, Balasz speaks about the 'man of visual culture', a term that becomes more clear
throughout his essay “Visible Man...” and that raises some distinct thoughts in me around how to
approach finding definitions for and theories of gesture. With Balasz I am venturing back to 1920's
Germany and into the world of silent film. Much of my work entails film and most of it is silent. I often
think of my choreographies as films and several pieces are amalgamations of live performance and
film art.
2 Bela Balazs, Visible man, from the introduction
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Photo by Bryan Snipes “Carrotopia” a silent movie performance3.
According to Balasz, this man of visual culture, as opposed to a person of a speech or language
culture, has the ability to utilize long forgotten abilities to express himself with his entire body,
through body gesture and facial expressions. In the quote above, Balasz mentions a 'non-rational'
'self' and a 'soul' that produces gestures that are indicative of deeply rooted and situated aspects of
personality that can not be translated into words. I think it is safe to say that Balasz is of the opinion
that meaning is created within the soul. Balasz furthermore points to a soul that has several clearly
3 Carrotopia, photo by Bryan Snipes, dancer Dawn Shropshire Swaim, Choreography by Karola Luettringhaus.
"Carrotopia", a silent movie performed live, tells the story of two polar opposites, both lab-workers in a carrot lab - one
loves her job the other hates it. In bizarre and humorous ways this work touches on the topics of solitude, poverty, envy,
honesty, deception and genetic engineering. Supported by The Winston-Salem Foundation, Salem College, Salem
College Dance Department, The Arts Council of Winston-Salem and Forsyth County, The Mary Duke Biddle Foundation,
Margaret Scales and Graydon Pleasants,The Academy of Dance Arts and Wanda Plemmons, Bob and Florence Turner,
Dawn Shropshire Webster, H.D. Lüttringhaus, Studio 'Fit & Well' (Berlin, Germany), mad duck productions Graphic
Designs, O'Kelly Design Studios, The Vintage Theatre, Swiftwater Media, URBAN ARTWARE, PATINA, WILDFLOWER,
and many others, private donors and business sponsors.Premiere: January 19, 2007
Salem College, Winston-Salem, NC
Duration: 30 minutes
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delineated areas and pathways that allow for different sources and modalities to take the lead in the
business of expression: for example music, dance, communication/regular speech, or acting are all
using uniquely different areas and are also entirely distinct from the full-bodied gestural ability that is
so indicative of the man of visual culture. Because of his critique of the printing press and how man
has come to focus primarily on the word as opposed to visual and embodied expression, I assume
that these various potentialities of the soul are maintained through practice and use, which is
essentially culturally determined. Life has begun to focus around the printing press, the word and
communication via the word.
Focusing on the silent movie actor, the man of visual culture, Balasz theorizes, gestures in a direct,
unfiltered way that has the power to express their soul. I am wondering to what degree the soul that
is channeled through these gestures is the soul of the actor him/herself or if Balasz thinks of the
character that is portrayed by an actor as also having a soul. What is the nature of the amalgam of the
two? I suppose that I think of a character as a concept that is only brought to life by an actor through
some form of impersonation. However, each character only exists as a reflection of real life human
possibilities and experiences. Each character bears within them the real actor. In acting the two
become a third entity. To stick to Balasz concept of the soul: do actor and role merge so completely
that the soul of the actor changes? Or is what the character merely a stand-in for what we all
experience or are subject to endure? The methodology of acting here is not discussed.
Balasz is precisely differentiating the gestures of the silent movie actor in scenes where the actor is
not speaking and the focus of the camera is on their body, and, as he later focuses on, the close-up
and their face. Balasz is in love with facial expressions. He regards them as the utmost expressions of
the soul, much more capable of depicting simultaneities and multiplicities than any other art form or
mode of expression of every-day-life. He claims that talking gestures are produced in another
register (of the soul) and are more, what I would call 'illustrative'. They are accompaniments to that
which is being spoken, merely emphasizing or mirroring that which is uttered. Balasz states that in
regular speech, as well as in theatre acting, the soul does not express itself through embodied
gesturing. Or at least, man is no longer able to express himself in that way. This is where film is
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offering the salvation. In film, the soul is expressed in non-verbal movement of the entire body,
without the use of words. This reminds me of Martha Graham's famous quote: “Dance is the hidden
language of the soul”4. However, Balasz separates gestures of the dancer from the gestures of the
man of visual culture. He categorizes them into two different camps that are facilitated from within
different areas of the soul. It is unclear to me what kind of dance Balasz is referring to when he says
that “...the decorative expressive movements of the dancer,...” belong to, or are generated in, a
different realm of the soul “... and this realm has its own form of interiority.”(Balasz p. 99) “For the
speaker brings to light a different stratum of the soul from the one evoked by, say, the musician or
dancer. Dependent as he is on language, the gestures that accompany his words spring from the
same source as them. Optically, they may seem similar to a dancer’s, but they are informed by a
different spirit. A speaker’s gestures have the same emotional content as his words, for the
dimensions of the soul cannot be mixed. It is merely that they refer to words as yet unborn.” I don't
understand why Balasz believes that expression is compartmentalized in the soul in this manner.
Silent film, for Balasz, fulfills an important personal, interpersonal, and social role: the recovery of
visual culture. “Culture means the penetration of the ordinary material of life by the human spirit,
and a visual culture would have to find new and different forms with which to express people’s
behaviour in their daily intercourse with one another. The art of dance cannot do this; it is a task that
will be accomplished by film. ...” He has high hopes for film. Unfortunately, I don't think it has done
what he was hoping it would do. I wonder what he thought the effects of such a regaining of
expressive properties would have done for society. I will speak to the effects of gesture in a separate
chapter5.
That which is expressed is the non-rational. What is rational and what is non-rational? Are emotions
non-rational? I would disagree with that statement. Emotions are very logical to me, there is usually a
4 Martha graham, “Dance is the hidden language of the soul” find where this quote came from. For more info on Martha
Graham visit: https://marthagraham.org/history/
5 “The effects of gesture”: write a separate chapter on that or a paragraph in this dissertation. What does gesture and
gesturing mindfully incubate and set in motion in people and societies? Why is engaging with gesture a worthwhile
endeavor? What modalities can be utilized to achieve this engagement with gesture?
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reason for any behavior., just some are easier to understand than others. Some require inquiry,
others are obvious.
Is the non-rational that which has not become word yet? I think Balasz would say it is that but also
that which will never become word. Because the speaker uses gestures that stand in for words. The
silent film actor expresses that which can not be put into words. What can not be put into words at
all, ever, and what can not be put into words easily? Is he saying that the non-rational is accessed
through a gestural process that is instinctive, intuitive, involuntary, and entirely unrelated to
cognition? Cognition then would be understood as the process of translating phenomena into
thinking and eventually language. He basically says that in the process of translating the non-rational
messages that are coming from the soul into written and spoken language something important gets
lost. He writes: “In this way, the visible spirit was transformed into a legible spirit, and a visual culture
was changed into a conceptual one. ...Since the advent of printing the word has become the principal
bridge joining human beings to one another. The soul has migrated into the word and become
crystallized there. The body, however, has been stripped of soul and emptied.”(Balasz p.1) He further
details: “The expressive surface of our bodies has been reduced to just our face. This is not simply
because we cover the other parts of our bodies with clothes. Our face has now come to resemble a
clumsy little semaphore of the soul, sticking up in the air and signalling as best it may. Sometimes,
our hands help out a little, evoking the melancholy of mutilated limbs.” Gesture does not equal
gesture. For Balasz there are significant differences in meaningfulness. If words do not suffice and the
man of word culture can not express what the soul can express through this special kind of gesture
then, essentially, communication and connection between people has been lost as well. There would
be less understanding, less intimacy, and less empathy.
His nostalgic longing for abilities that man might have once had is a bit confusing and appears not
really logical, but he is trying to express something quite ethereal, transcendant, or metaphysical
with this theory, I think. In a way, I am walking alongside Balasz for a few steps, agreeing that there is
indeed this special expression of the body that requires a dedication and focus and practice to
develop and maintain, but I am then quickly disagreeing with him on account of the dancer not being
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able to tap into what the man of visual culture is supposedly able to tap into, or that speech would
potentially prevent the soul from expressing itself. However, some cultures, philosophies and
religious practices believe in the benefits of silence and or consider not-knowing to be far more
valuable than knowing. I think that it is important to consider these and Balasz's beliefs and theories.
By focusing on constantly naming and pulling things from the complex into an explainable linearity is
problematic. Logocentrism is problematic. But logos is not the enemy. I think it is more a question of
balance. All aspects are part of human existence and expression and decentralization is generally
speaking more advisable than centralization, control and oversight. Culturally, socially, and
politically.
Continuing to reminisce about the lost ability to express oneself through one's body, he writes: “The
back of a headless Greek torso always reveals whether the lost face was laughing or weeping – we
can still see this clearly. “ I wonder how he knows this. After all, the face is gone and his claim can not
be confirmed. “Venus’s hips smile as expressively as her face, and casting a veil over her head would
not be enough to stop us from guessing her thoughts and feelings. For in those days man was visible
in his entire body. In a culture dominated by words, however, now that the soul has become audible,
it has grown almost invisible. This is what the printing press has done.” Somehow the printing press
has changed the very nature of our souls: from visual to audible. How exactly the printing press has
caused these changes is not sufficiently explained. Somehow a mixture of cognition and perhaps
mass production caused us to lose touch with our embodied expression? That does not seem all too
far off current sentiments around new technologies, cell phones, entertainment, consumerism,
capitalism, etc but it is also gravely oversimplified. Similar to Martha Graham, Balasz expresses: “But
the language of gestures is the true mother tongue of mankind.” Both are very emotional, and
melodramatic in their passion for the expressivity of their preferred medium.
And it is interesting that he thinks that the soul has retreated from the body into the face and into
the word. Why would the soul do that? Would it not just die, if it needs to express itself through
gesture but is no longer able to do that? If the soul moves into the word, into the audible, isn't then
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the audible imbued with the special powers of the soul and take over our communication just fine?
Would we still need embodied expression if the soul has moved into the realm of the word? Balasz
believes language to be inferior to visual embodied expression. Balasz remarks that gesture is in
several ways better at expressing emotion and feelings than words ever could be. He writes: “The
effect of this play of facial expressions lies in its ability to replicate the original tempo of her (the
actress's) emotions.” Supposedly, there is an immediacy between experience and gesture that is not
present to that degree in speech and language. Language requires further processing and translation
which removes the interlocutor further from the source, and further from meaning. Balasz seems to
express that the gestures that are created by the man of visual culture are more immediate and
closer to the source than any of the other gestures and expressions. Dancers, theatre actors, and
speakers do not place quite as much emphasis on these types of every-day-life gestures, and not in
quite the same way, as the silent film actor does. They do not practice this expression and they do
not concern themselves as much with gestures as the silent film actor inevitably has to do in order to
tell their story. In choreography I start from the gesture of every-day-life. As a dancer, my gestures
are already sometimes larger and could be considered 'dance'. In an Authentic Movement session my
witness said to me “that wasn't authentic movement; that was authentic dancing”. It hadn't even
occurred to me that dancing isn't 'movement'. Was I supposed to not dance? What is dance? I just
wanted to express myself in that way and someone else identified it as 'dance'. To me, really there
isn't that difference. That categorization isn't that helpful. It would serve us better to describe the
movements than to label some of them dance and some movement, or every-day gestures etc.
I am partial to Balasz's opinion that it is quite special to express oneself through gesture alone. This
working with gesture underlies my choreographic practice in many ways, although not entirely in the
ways that Balasz theorizes. My process takes what he might call a 'gesture of the soul' and allow it to
travel and morph throughout the body.
I am going to experiment with calling what Balasz terms the 'non-rational' the 'un-known', that which
has 'not been named yet', that which 'has not entered the verbal', or 'conscious' realm yet.
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I agree that gestures express the linguistically un-known. I don't think that the specific gesturing that
Balasz values so highly and passionately is shut off during speaking. He says that it has become
rudimentary. That the body has been left empty. I think that he has not analyzed speaking gestures
enough. He has written them off before engaging with them on a deeper level. If we could not speak,
I agree we would use our gestures much more and inevitably become more eloquent and effective at
communicating and expressing ourselves in that way. But I think he is after something more
profound here. It is not just communication he is talking about but some form of tapping into
something that the body does through gesture that is quite special; it is like tapping into life itself.
Jackson Pollock, when asked whether he still painted nature through his abstract drip paintings,
replied that he does not paint nature but that he is “... nature painting”. He is nature. Nature is
painting. Life paints trough him. I am sensing some form of connection to the source, the mystery of
life, its beauty, and complexity that the body is capable of doing through gesture, sidestepping
cognition and following improvisational intuition and instinct. By listening rather than imposing,
responding instead of deciding, we can witness emergence within us and follow along. Picasso said
“It has taken me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.” Later
when ...insert name of researcher from art philosophy here.... talks about that we can see
intentionality in painting and she claims that elephants and children do not paint with the same
intentionality as professional, famous abstract painters, I wonder if this statement is ignoring the fact
that elephants and children might be nature while painting, like Picasso and Pollock were trying to do
all their lives. I think it is presumptuous to assume that elephants, and children have less
intentionality when creating art.
This connection to the source is a form of immediate relationality that Authentic Movement calls
“authenticity”. We express ourselves through movement and gesture without questioning, but by
allowing these gestures to appear. This ability is dependent on practice, on letting go of fears and
judgment. There is a focus that is required to be present in order to allow gestures to speak through,
or emerge from, oneself. Decentralizing the art making process is a spiritual practice and Eckhart
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Tolle6 says that all art comes from the spiritual realm. The realm of silence. From inner listening and
making way to what comes through...( paraphrasing, find the quote... ) I would translate 'spiritual' to
'intuitive' and 'response-able'. I agree that speaking is more linear and not adequate for complex
simultaneities. However, language and particularly poetry can evoke simultaneity in thought.
Gesture is added automatically: we tell several things at the same time, because we think and
experience several things at the same time. The gesture is an expression of cognitive thought and
also of the non-cognitive, pre-cognitive, and paracognitive un-known, of emotions, affects, and of
sensations that all feed into the process of generating communication: some of this communication
comes out in speech, some as vocalizations, and some of it is released as movements, facial
expressions, and postures, etc. This also very much depends on the individual, the culture, etc.
Gestures also express what a person is physically sensing in their body at the time of speaking.
Gestures express phenomenological, proprioceptive, sensory experiences. We are not going to shut
our lived experience out of our communication. Wiping one's forehead when sweating. Crossing the
legs when feeling cold or vulnerable, rubbing one's eyes when needing a break, stretching when
stressed or tense, etc. Gestures help the interlocutor empathize with the speaker. And vice versa. I
believe that gestures help the speaker connect with the interlocutor. There are many layers of
gestures and reasons for gesturing that all take place at the same time. We sometimes match
postures, and I believe, although this would need to be backed up with some research, that people in
conversation can sometimes take on each other's gestures for various reasons: to feel what the
person is expressing, to signal agreement or engagement, to sense the other more somatically,
experientially, and to enhance communication, clarity, learning, retention of information, and again
empathy.
The dualistic belief that there is a soul and a spirit that are separate from the body, i.e. that there is a
soul that expresses itself through the body seems to underlie Balasz's statement. I can not answer
what this soul is. Perhaps the more useful question here is: what does Balasz believe the soul and the
spirit to be? The body has been emptied of soul through the invention and popularization of the
6 Eckhart Tolle on art, see his talk....find this video...
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printing press; through logo-centric attitudes and practices. Balasz distinguishes clearly between the
rational and the irrational. Is the irrational the soul? Why does the irrational want to or need to be
expressed? What does it contribute to our lives to live with the irrational and not allow the rational to
explain it away? Do all our human emotions remain rooted in a sense of awe and abandon at the sight
and sense of the unknown? Is art an engagement with the unknown? Does art then bring more of this
unknown into our consciousness, does it point to its many facettes, does it explain them? Are we
better off not knowing and rather sensing the complexity of life without trying to explain it? Is
gesture a play with the unknown? Do gestures directly render the unknown, the irrational, the non-
linear, the stuff of life, visible to the eye? Does the gesturing bring these irrationalities into our
proprioceptive experience?
It is my experience that yes, we can draw a clear distinction between the action of logical
thinking/analysis and intuiting, but I find them to be non-separable acts. They belong together. In
order to take an action one has to engage in both of these processes. Both states (cognition and
instinct/intuition) are intelligent and have agency and they are two phases of the same act, much the
same as in-breath and out-breath are two distinct aspects of breathing. I agree with Balasz that
people struggle to understand the body and I believe that choreography can be a way of sensitizing
this ability.
Through silent film acting, Balasz believes we have the opportunity to find those lost aspects of our
expression within ourselves. He does not talk about how the director works with the actors to achieve
these deeply profound gestures he is clearly mesmerized by. By watching dance and silent film we
can learn about embodied gesturing.
What is it about these gestures that speaks to Balasz so profundly? On page 106 of 'Visible Man”
Balasz writes: “And in general, the way a protagonist walks expresses the gesture governing his
destiny.” I find this extremely interesting. Walking is a highly complex movement and within it many
emotions are held and expressed. I have often asked dancers to simply walk across the space and
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based on how they are doing that I have been able to gain insight about what their dancing and their
ability to work theatrically will be like. I observe their posture, suppleness of coordination, their focus,
timing, gaze, fluidity or coordination, responsiveness to small adjustments, their sounds or silence,
etc. I wonder how Balasz thinks that this phenomenon of telling the destiny of a character through
their walk is achieved. Does it happen automatically, involuntarily? Or deliberately? How does the
actor do this? Does the director guide this? Does this take years of practice? What is it that they are
doing when their walk reflects on a character or potential fate? I don't think that Balasz ever wrote
anything about the 'mechanics'7 of producing gestures that express specific things. Is all that the
actor has to do achieve the mental identification with the role they are playing? Can anyone do this?
Can anyone become such an actor? Is the walk really indicative of these characteristics or are we
simply agreeing on this by means of some culturally established behavioral performativities?
Generally speaking, I have been employing in my choreographic process the method of asking the
dancer to identify with a certain emotion, situation, narrative, etc. The dancer is an actor of a
particular scene, or state of mind, or affect, emotion, statement, etc. I am asking the dancer to enter
a mindset that facilitates imagination of actually going through the experience of a specific situation,
and movements are channeled through this filter of identification/imagination. The subtext that I
assign to the choreographic movements influences them and causes their execution in specific ways.
My dancers are actors. But, I would choose not to make this linguistic differentiation at all, actually. A
dancer, in my work, is an actor that focuses on how to channel emotions into movements and
how to trace them out into larger space, into abstraction, and exaggeration in order to pursue
further aspects of these emotions and situations and narratives. Costumes are 'textile
expressions of character in context'.
A simple movement: waving hello. What else can I learn from waving hello? Where does this
movement come from, which body parts support this action? Where can this movement go? How can
the leg wave hello, or the whole body? What is communicated when the entire body is waving hello
and what does it say about the state of the relationship with the person they are waving hello to, and
7 Mechanics of movement: I don;t like the term mechanics, because we are not machines and movement is not machinic.
When I find a better term, I will replace this one with it
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about their own mental state, and history? Crafting this narrative is a process that requires cognition
and intuition. It requires intuitive improvisation and analytical reflection. Language, translation into
words brings the process forward by helping us become aware of what is happening. By naming
things we can realize connections we were not aware of and this can then bring us further into
exploration and discovery.
The narrative affects the movement. Later I will talk about how movement affects the narrative as
well8. Timing, rhythm, orientation, amplitude and many other factors change according to the way
the dancer is “feeling”. In order to express this in embodied terms I will offer an exercise to try out
here. You can also just read it and imagine doing the exercise.
EXERCISE:
Imagine you are asked to dance a simple 'score', a series of movements: a reach of the hand, a spin
around your own axis, and then a lowering down to the ground to lay down. Just try that out without
thinking much about how that is done or in which direction the hand reaches out, etc. Imagine to be
asked to do these same movements because you are 'in love', then again because you are 'confused'
about something, and several more renditions ( being angry about something, being in a rush, being
sleepy, feeling oppressed, feeling old, etc... ). Even though the movements more or less remain
recognizably the same, changes are happening in dynamics, speed, amplitude, direction, maybe
even repetition, etc. One could then take these movements and change them more according to a
specific topic or story one wishes to work with. Then try to become aware of some of the thoughts
you are having as you are moving. Give each movement a specific subtext.
Another method could be to start with a text/narrative. For example the narrative could be: reach out
for a person you remember that is no longer in your life, experience the loss and allow that to travel
into your legs, faint to fall back which initiates a spin around your own axis and allow this momentum
to draw you down to the ground in sadness and exhaustion. Another version could look like this:
8 Movement affects narrative. How do movements bring meaning with them? How are movements imbued with meaning
already?
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reach out to try to get a butterfly to land on your hand, chase the butterfly around your body, which
makes you dizzy and fall down to the ground and watch the butterfly above your head. These
movements will be very different from one another.
Then try doing one version in slow motion. Observe what that does to the narrative. What might an
audience member think about, or experience when watching this short sequence?
Balasz is in awe with what he calls “polyphonic physiognomy” of the body, the speed and
simultaneity with which emotions can change and be immediately expressed through gesture, facial
expression, or posture. Language is not fast enough to catch up with the immediacy of the
experience. Any word would be a delayed response to what's actually going on. He says “A good film
actor never presents us with surprises.” I think what he means is that gestures do not lie and an actor
that does not portray the full complexity of emotion and traits of the character, or that is entirely
flipping character is breaking their character's continuity, their role. Certainly I have seen films where
a sudden change of character was completely out of context and seemed to have been the result of a
script or acting incongruity. All of our aspects are always there, unless we suffer from mental
conditions that allow us to break with one aspect and pivot to another extreme instantaneously. A
complex character is more relateable, more realistic, than a character that is a one-track character.
Their complexity is what's intriguing. There can be change but not to the degree that stuns us into
disbelieving the character that has been set-up this far. Change hence is not a break or a
contradiction, which is a simplified concept of what change really is. Balasz writes: “What is exciting
is to discover a hidden quality, in the corner of the mouth, for example, and to see how from this
germ the entire new human being grows and spreads over his entire face.” He reaches for a quote
from Hebbel9 to explain this concept: “Whatever a man is capable of becoming, he already is’” and
continues: “The possibility of a change in personality must be plainly written in an actor’s face from
the outset.” The change is not an arbitrary plot driven exercise but a psychologically well developed
9 Hebbel, find first name, quotes by Bela balasz on page 101 of “Visible man”
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re-traceable process. These emotional struggles and simultaneities bestow the characters with
“vitality”.
I wonder how Balasz perceives the reliability to read facial expressions because he says “...no
statement is as utterly revealing as a facial expression.” (Balasz, p.101) How do we know that we did
not misinterpret the gestures of the actor? How do we know? He mentions that a truly artistic film
will always portray the highpoint of an emotional duel between two actors “as a dialogue of facial
expressions in closeup.” Zooming in is believed to give us more information about the internity of the
actors. Balasz compares theatre actors and silent film actors and, in my opinion, fails to take into
consideration that both are fiction (fiction itself is not real but engaging in fiction is real 10) and both
make compromises in order to get their point across. In theatre the actor has to speak loudly and
enunciate and face forward so as to be heard, and that compromises spontaneity. In film we have to
zoom in or show an action from different viewpoints, which is unrealistic as well, as we would never
be able to have these experiences in real life. He says that “... because in the theatre we listen to the
words and so (both we and the actors) fail to concentrate on the characters’ faces and notice only the
crudest, most schematic, expressions.” I very much disagree with this statement. But I do agree that
silent film put a lot more emphasis on gestures and made them the focal point. The Temptation of
Joan of Arc is certainly one of the most obvious examples for this. What is shown is very deliberate.
That is the case as well in theatre, but certain limitations on scale are inevitable in technologically un-
mediated live theatre, which Balasz notes but does not seem to see as an argument for contradicting
his statements. The closeup is supposed to be isolated, showing no context so as to fully
understand/decode the facial expressions. At least so as to be able to fully focus on the expressions.
Now in dance, since we can not zoom in, and make a body larger, we can amplify the facial
expressions and gestures to become dance. In this way, I would argue, dance is translating small
movements into larger ones and into spatial relationships that amplify that which is expressed. It
spreads the movements of the face out over the entire body.
The closeup, Balasz says is the “... lyrical essence of the entire drama.” and “... film's true terrain.”
10 I am speaking to this here in this chapter on page...???
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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.
Through the medium of (silent) film, Balasz says, man will once again be given the opportunity to: “...
relearn(ing) the long-forgotten language of gestures and facial expressions. This language is … the
visual corollary of human souls immediately made flesh. Man will become visible once again.”
How does one become visible? How does one learn the “long-forgotten language of gestures and
facial expressions”? How do film directors and actors utilize this language if it had previously been
forgotten? Is it discovered through embodiment? Through being rendered silent? Forced to withhold
speech? Much of silent film uses very emblematic gesturing, clear symbols and large gestures so as to
translate without misunderstanding. But then there are other films like “The Passion of Joan of Arc” 11
11 “The Passion of Joan of Arc” 1928, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Passion_of_Joan_of_Arc
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that choose the closeup to zoom into the minute expressions of the actors. What this film does not
do though is show much of the full body. It largely rests on the face and what it can convey. Often the
bodies of the clergy and lawmen are clothed in spacious garbs up, merging their bodies into a larger
oppressing unity against the single face of the believer (Joan). Choreography the way I employ it
democratizes the body, giving all body parts equal say and equal expressive potential. The face is not
dominant, but part of a whole, where the toes, the spine, the head, the eyes all contribute and
collaborate. Generally speaking; because I have used close up film in choreography or highlighted
specific body parts to make specific points, but the starting point and underlying premise is that all
parts are created equal.
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“Midsummer Night's Dream – Dissected” by Karola Luettringhaus and Alban Elved Dance Company,
2014, Cucalorus Campus, Wilmington, NC. Photo by KL
The above photo from “Midsummer Night's Dream – Dissected” shows a scene where a body is set
against a face and chest/arms. It is a gendered image and one that speaks of hierarchies and
dependencies. It signifies the entrapment of the female within the ever lasting role of the daughter to
some form of a powerful male. What is not visible in the photo is that she has to stand on a trashcan
to reach the face. The scene evolved around historical western notions of the daughter being made of
the father's flesh and seed, carried in the vessel of the female body, an empty container, forever
indebted and belonging to any male authority. The character that Breanne dances here is Hermia,
daughter of Theseus. She speaks up, she is the main focus of Shakespeare's play and much of the
story is told through her eyes, her suffering, and her resistance. Her body is the female body, kin of
wilderness and nature, unpredictability, sexuality, and moods. But Shakespeare offers a more critical
view on these cultural norm, raising his heroines to the forefront of experience, expression, critique,
25
action, and communication with the audiences. Hermia is full of wisdom and the male characters lack
insight, flexibility, wit, and comprehension as they act in downtrodden ways, and make hard-hearted
fools of themselves, reenacting and struggling their hardest to maintain the old hierarchies and the
severely policed status quo.
Hermia in this scene is set against the domesticity, the house, the trash can, but she seeks the
outside, the forest, the unknown, following her own heart's path. Unfortunately, as the world will
have it, for now, and since progress is slow, she gets married off and becomes entirely silent for the
rest of the play. At least she gets to marry the person she chooses. Shakepeare, in this rendering on
authenticity and autonomy entitled “Midsummer night's Dream”, if nothing else, gives a critical
account of the plight of women in patriarchy.
Balasz writes: “... The culture of words is dematerialized, abstract and overintellectualized; it
degrades the human body to the status of a biological organism. But the new language of gestures
that is emerging at present arises from our painful yearning to be human beings with our entire
bodies, from top to toe and not merely in our speech. We long to stop dragging our body around like
an alien thing that is useful only as a practical set of tools. This new language arises from our yearning
for the embodied human being who has fallen silent, who has been forgotten and has become
invisible. ...” I like his optimism, that we are to become less logocentric yet again and embrace the
beauty and intelligence of the body, or at least that embodiment shall become an equal player to
cognition, speaking, and writing. I think we all know that we have still not achieved this goal. But
choreographers do work with the body and its expressiveness. The field of choreography and dance is
littered with people that seek to express themselves with their entirety, to allow the body to go
beyond the usual, culturally defined, every-day gestures and extend them into space and experience.
Speaking with dancers I often hear them agree with me that dancing is like nothing else and that the
connections one makes with fellow dancers are beyond and different from other friendships and
intimacies, Equally deep or perhaps deeper, because of the complete involvement of the body
through creative movement and of course touch. We touch in dance. One another, ourselves, the
floor, objects. Part of our bodies touch and receive the world in ways that never happen in every-day
26
societally approved, ways. But we touch not only physically, we touch also emotionally, spiritually, if
you will. Our cognitive touch is also remarkable: we discuss and embody, we watch each other move
and become, change, affect, express. The things we talk about are not talked about in so-called
'regular' life. This is stuff only dancers do. When I dance I feel as if I am reclaiming ways of expresing,
feeling and behaving. I am reclaiming my ability to express certain gestures and to indulge in sensing
the body and its tactile, sensory relationship with life this way.
Somehow Balasz believes that the re-education of humanity to become once again visual can not be
accomplished by dance, only film can do it. Perhaps this is because film does not use the larger
movements of dance that often require specific training. Silent film uses every-day gestures that
anyone can perform.
He writes: “The screens of the entire world are now starting to project the first international language
... the language of gestures which has become standardized in film.” He assumes that 'body-
language', for lack of a better term, is universally understood and 'spoken' by all people in the world.
He believes that gestures of an actor are “optional extras” additional to the main vehicle of
communication: speech. He makes a clear and important distinction between the “gestures of
language” and the “language of gestures”. This is most interesting. Language hence, according to
Balasz, produces gestures, but gestures stand on their own, forming their own kind of language that
is independent and distinct from the gestures that language produces. Why then does he believe that
the dancer is not in command of this gestural language, mute as they are? I think of dance as a
language of gestures. Balasz does not specify what kind of dancer he is talking about or if he knows
different kinds of dancing and if he believes that these different forms of dancing bring forth or utilize
even different forms of languages. The film actor's gestures “operate on an entirely different plane.
For the speaker brings to light a different stratum of the soul from the one evoked by, say, the
musician or dancer. Dependent as he is on language, the gestures that accompany his words spring
from the same source as them. Optically, they may seem similar to a dancer’s, but they are informed
by a different spirit. A speaker’s gestures have the same emotional content as his words, for the
27
dimensions of the soul cannot be mixed.” Why can the dimensions of the soul not be mixed? He says
the speaker's words “... refer to words as yet unborn.”12 The dancer's gestures “have their origins
elsewhere and they have a different meaning. They are the characteristic expression of a
characteristic human being and hence the characteristic material of a characteristic form of art. They
are as unrelated to the gestures of a speaker as they are to his words.” Let's assume that he is talking
about either a ballet dancer or a modern dancer, such as Anita Berber, who actually dances in a film
scene in this clip13: https://youtu.be/dI7CyEqiJRs
Balasz further explains “ … music is not just an acoustic matter; it is a separate sphere of the soul. And
indeed, facial expressions and gestures are themselves no mere optical matter. “ He clearly
delineates the origins of gesture to come from the soul, different parts of the soul. “There appears to
be a third realm between the speaker’s world of gestures and the decorative expressive movements
of the dancer, and this realm has its own form of interiority. The gestural language of film is as far
removed from the linguistic gestures of theatre as it is from dance.” He describes the movements of
the dancer as “decorative”. Arguably, some dance is decorative. I don't like decorative movements.
They seem to me sometimes like a superfluous dishonesty and just derived from the same source as
the overacted gestures of an actor. But I am not going to judge or discuss the validity of certain styles
of dance.
Putting speaking and dancing at seemingly opposite ends of the spectrum, Balasz continues: “There
appears to be a third realm between the speaker’s world of gestures and the decorative expressive
movements of the dancer, and this realm has its own form of interiority. The gestural language of film
is as far removed from the linguistic gestures of theatre as it is from dance.” He says that the story of
a film can sometimes only be a pretext for what is really conveyed in and through it: the emotional
facial expressions and experiences of the actors. The “story” is therefore potentially not the main
12 Bela balsz, “Visible Man”, p.98 Screen 48:1 Spring 2007 . Translation; D o w n l o a d e d f r o m h t t p s : / / a c a d e m
ic.oup.com/screen/articleabstract/48/1/91/1699537byKing'sCollegeLondonu
s e r o n 0 5 M a y 2 0 1 9, Livingstone 2010, p.98
13 Anita berber dancing on film, https://youtu.be/dI7CyEqiJRs youtube video entitled: “Anita Berber,
Epitome of 1920s Weimar Republic Excess - Two Sequences of Her Dancing on Film”
28
focus of film: “...what matters in film is not the storyline but the lyrical.”(Balasz p.99) Seeing the
gestures and facial expressions are a form of “...lyricism that is incomparably richer and fuller of
nuance than literary works of whatever kind. Facial expressions are vastly more numerous than
words!” They are unique to each actor and can not be expressed in words, because words are
signifiers that are used by everyone. Here the “poetry of film”is revealed. He continues: ”A person
who judges a film by its storyline seems to me to resemble someone who says of a love poem:
‘What’s so special about this poem? She is beautiful and he loves her!’ Films, however wonderful,
frequently have little more to say. But they say it in a way that poetry cannot match.” Seeing the
human body express itself in this soulful truthful way, is what makes the essence of film for Balasz.
Film is special as it revives our lost ability to express ourselves this way. He compares words to linear
stringings of concepts, whereas the actor's face has the ability to portray multiplicity and
simultaneity. The “organic development of her (the actor's) feelings” and the resulting “emotional
development cannot be depicted in words” and gives us what he calls “the chords of the emotions”,
calling facial expressions “polyphonic”. (Balasz p.100) He reiterates that the essence of these chords
of emotions are “in fact their simultaneity” which, again, is not achievable with words. The following
statement is crucial: '”... by formulating what happens in words, we just cause a single expression to
crumble. And as soon as we begin to speak, we somehow say something different.” By assigning
words to the complexity of expression, we lose it, we change it, even destroy it.
>>> End of Thinking With Balasz <<<
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30
3
31
WHAT IS A GESTURE?
ETYMOLOGY AND
PERSONAL POV
SUMMARY OF TOPICS BY PARAGRAPH:
 Etymology : Latin, medieval Latin, french, German
 gesture in pop culture (mainstream culture, TV shows, Ted Talks) control over others
 Religion and spirituality: holy gestures, mudras, performative gestures, christian religion
 BACK TO ETYMOLOGY: relationship to movement

 MOVEMENTS vs GESTURES movement is overarching term for bodily displacement and
change of spatial relationships between with body parts and joint angles, gesture is a
subcategory of movements: a movement with meaning or intent
 WHAT IS A GESTURE? INQUIRY THROUGH ART & INDIVIDUIZED RESULTS: goal to
define/refine the definition of gesture through the lens of dance, embodied appraoch allows
for deepening of understanding, descriptions of experience versus defaulting to dictionary
definitions
 LESSONS FROM PRACTICE/GESTURES OF LOVE: conclusions from practice, from making a
new piece about gesures, about the process of making a piece, of tracing gestures through
the body, description and analysis here: http://klphd.weebly.com/case-study-gestures-of-
love.html
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 GESTURES OF LOVE SUMMARY (under construction): incomplete section: conclusions will be

added here when the [piece is fully analyzed, description and analysis here:
http://klphd.weebly.com/case-study-gestures-of-love.html, keep meaning alive through the
body, transfer expression from one body part to another, trasnfer expression from
relationship with self to relationship with floor, wall, audience, other people, repetition, back
engineering meaning by copying gestures, improvising around topics and gestures emerge
that carry linkages to the topic, locations of emotion in the body, decolonize the body from
other meanings and from restricting full expression, cooperation among body parts/anarchy,
mind over matter still prevalent attitude over body, declonize hierarchy model,
 Audience survey: What is a gesture?: facebook survey, list of responses, dictionary,
mythology, imagination, academic, teacher attitudes, no long thought about or tried things
out kind-of-responses but rather quick intuitive brainstorming type responses or seeking
other authority ie dictionary, since I know most of the people that responded, their responses
reflect on their overall life philosophy: people seem to run the term through their filters of
experience and interests, questions arose: what is an empty gesture?, letting go of societal
norms: how is that done?, how does a mime gesture? Why would this person perceive a mime
to be letting go of societal norms (in my eys they are the focal point of showing and
expressing through societal norms, how does a mime communicate?, overall consensus is
that a gesture is a movement with meaning
 A RESPONSE: gesture is a response to something the body/person experiences, enmeshment
with everything else, automatic response, thought is slower than kineaesthetic or emotional
or affect response
 USE IT OR LOOSE IT: walking, speaking, thinking, makign art, gesturing, etc has to be
practiced and can be developed and refined. We can practice to improve accuracy and
reactionspeed when reacting to events and verbalizing what goes on in us. problematic un-
training through society/trauma, gesture experiment with Lena: copy gestures from a
youtube video and perform only the gestures for one another: have to guess who the person
33
is and what they were talking about - conclusions: learning about motivation and person's
intention by copying and repeating their gestures
 MOVEMENT: body is made for movement, evolved in response to movement,
decentralization of body functions: brain is not in command of everything, but brain can
become extremely dominant. Improvisation practice: anarchy of agents: brain observe and
not dominate, contribute, not only the brain thinks, learns, and communicates; review Balasz
loss of visibility/ability to express through gesture (brain has become dominant and
tyrannical)
 REBALANCING: rebalancing the logocentric body through dance and improvisationa nd
through learning to refine descriptions and analysis of gestures, surprise yourself, things will
be more balanced, mor in flow and easier when nobody is leading, Gabor Mate bio-psycho-
social model, decolonize body from oppressive systems and concepts, gesture is motivated
by the need to express, move, facilitate bodily functions (cloof flow, oxygen, etc), These
functions are not separable and therefore gesture is both an instigator of experience as well
as a path to recovering them as memories, meaning, and intention.
 A GESTURE: ALWAYS INCOMPLETE?: taking a more philosophical tunr here to Derrida, and
others, limitations of comprehension, critique of knowing, animal experiments in the name of
knowing, ignoring gestures of despair and suffering in other-than-human beings, hierarchy of
suffering, absolute versus flexible/fluid/moving knowledge, knowledge as the converging of
multiple meanings/viewpoints, individual perceptive fields have overlap because we evolve in
similar environments, choreographic process as investigation/creation/searching for the
meanings that are embedded in my gestures, needing audiences/dancers/others to give
fedback about my gestures' meaning (covering some blind spots or challenging towards other
meanings and above all discovering how various meanings inter-exist and inter-affect us and
one another), engaging with and practicing gestural moving (tracing gesture) creates the
potential for change, gesture is a continuously moving target, psychological approach like a
roarschach picture: anything that comes up is somehow related. paragraph about Deleuze
and the impossibility of knowing (note: this needs to be worked out, the quotes are a mess...)
34
this section basically talks about how not even the speaker or dancer/the person gesturing can
be sure to fully know what they mean (hence I ask audiences, etc), logocentrism
 GESTURE AND WORD: gesture is as complete as the word, gesture ahs been ignored, logos is
centrally valued, Balasz quote about the printed word destroying the visible spirit,
 GESTURE AS PROTAGONIST: gesture expresses something, gesture expresses itself, gesture
as access to the world (Alva Noe), gesture as mediator between worlds/modes of
access/communication, idea of gesture as gesture in itself:l'art pour l'art (la geste pour la
geste") gesture for gesture's sake, still we don;t know who this gesture really is: qui est
madame geste? (I say madame, because I am sick of defaulting to the male pronoun/gender
and we don;t have another option that is neither male nor female nor a object: gesture as
personhood)
 GESTURE A TOOL FOR RECOVERING A CONNECTION TO THE SELF: this is touching on
aspects of what will be discussed in the AUTHENTIC MOVEMENT CHAPTER in more detail,
Bessel van der Kolk: the mind can hide the body and the self, mind as a
screen/interface/translator/editor/membrane to allow some things and not others to come
through, Damasio: core of our self-awareness rests on the physical sensations that convey the
inner states of the body, Damasio: "It tends to prevent us from sensing the possible origin and
nature of what we call self", Damasio: "All feelings of emotion are complex musical variations
on primordial feelings", gesture as pre-mind, Gesture has the potential to cut through to the
self, to regions of the brain and regions of the body that store sensations, memories, etc. .
 MERELY A GESTURE: Butler and Benjamin, Butler says that benjamin sees the gesture as
'merely' a gesture, a fragment of an action, a disjointed remnant, rendering gesture as
intelligible. conflicting gesture and action (stop/come), illustrative gesture (match),
contradictory/complex gesture (mis-match),
 GESTURE AS EVENT: Butler "when gesture becomes event", mismatches leading to greater
insight and complexity, like changing the music to a dance (which alters its meaning), Alva
Noe: "presence is fragile", misunderstanding is part of it "In other words, it is part of our very
practice, that the practice itself is vulnerable to slippage and to mistake",
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gesture/movement/pantomime, puting on clothes never just tells us about putting on clothes
(gender, society, mental state, emotion, motivation, hostoricity, etc), can't find a movement
that is not a gesture. gesture is meaning embodied. Experience)
 A GESTURE: ALWAYS INCOMPLETE? EXERCISE: getting dressed
 ENACTING GESTURES: Gestures of love analysis (forthcoming), what did I learn from tracing
gestures?
 COMPLETE/INCOMPLETE: arteries of perception: what makes something complete?, my
works are not complete, increasing complexity, increasing dpi of perception and insight,
coming back to the same topics: water, quick analysis of how water shows up in my work over
the years (more detailed analysis forthcoming), getting closer to water, meeting water the
person, meeting myself
 FULLBODY APPROACH: closer to completeness if the entire body engages with a topic,
mempory knows, eyes know, hearing knows, muscles know, joints know, thinking knows, etc.
 A GESTRE: ALWAYS WHOLE? - The lives of gestures: commonalities among definitions of
gesture, or etymology of gesture: action,movement, moving toward something. Is a gesture a
partial fragment, a gesture toward something, is the gesture a 'gesture'? or is the gesture
complete in itself? How is a gesture complete? comparison with body: red blood cells are part
of the body but in themselves also complete, they have needs, life cycles, actions, relations,
etc. What is the life of the gesture? Interrelatedness is not negating autonomy of the part.
gesture is not broken, or incomplete. No more incomplete as anything else that is part of
soemthing else, which is everything...fragments are wholes. A Gesture is an individual.
Analogy to theatre: theatre is imagined, but theatre is real, it is in itself what we engage in
and get together to experience. Brecht Verfremdungseffekt. We cannot not express. Wired for
meaningmaking. Spiritual practices: the goal is to not think, not associate, not name things.
 CREATIVITY AS SPIRITUAL PATH: side thought. might be edited out...
 EXPERIMENTS: GESTURE AS AGENT, GESTURE AS PERSON, GESTURE AS WHOLE – THE
LIFE OF A GESTURE: gesture personified, how do we interact with gesture? What can gesture
evoke in us? Can a gesture act upon the enactor of this gesture, or is the gesture always a
36
result or 'child' of the enactor? Do some,or all, gestures exist outside of the enactor? Is hte
gesture like the microbiom of the gut? A stranger that is also us? or is the gesture an
'inanimate' result, a performance of our actions/bodies, thoughts, intentions? Chicken or egg
question. Philosophy of self. gesture as acidophilus? Are non tangible, non-physical, non-
material thigns also body parts?
 GESTURE AS BODY PARTS HAVING A CONVERSATION WIHT ONE ANOTHER: tracing one of
my gestures while writing this chapter.conversations between various body parts. Oscillatory
nature. Zooming in and out of focus, touch to analysis. paralleling my choreographic process.
 IN DANCE: GESTURES TAKING SPACE, expanding, giving gesture a bigger voice, elaborating
onthe gesture, following it and allowing it to play. in dance the focus is on the gesture, not the
text (the text is not spoken), mime: replication of the every-day, dance: expansion of and play
with what is expressed. expansion of meaning.
 DE-CATEGORIZING and RE-ASPECTING: changing definitions for thinking, doing, dancing,
desire to undo categories and attempt to replace with aspectization: descriptions of
experience without assigning actions/experiences to one or another category.
 SUBTEXTING in CHOREOGRAPHIC PRACTICE: I translate gesturing into a Paralinguistic
subtext14, paraexperiential gesture as foundation for dance; goal/inquiry into: the role of
gesture in my choreographic process and what it translates to in other areas of life.
14 Goals and thesis/hypothesis, put into abstract/summary/introduction, back up with argumentation, back up with
research/philosophy
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ETYMOLOGY
When researching the etymology and definitions of the word gesture, various sources15 mention that
it is derived from and related to the medieval latin word 'gestura' which is translated as 'bearing',
'behavior', 'mode of action' and the latin word 'gerere' meaning 'bear/bearing', 'wielding', 'behavior',
'mode of action', 'perform','carriage', 'posture'. Definitions pop up around gestures being movements
of the body or body parts to express thoughts or feelings, or around gesture being an act that points
toward something. Some add that gestures are undertaken in good which implies a certain type of
action. These special types of actions done in good will are very different from the gestures I focus on
here.
POP CULTURE: Gestures that accompany speech, co-speech gestures, are largely thought of by the
general public as uncontrollable or subconscious movements, although there is the belief that a
certain amount of control can be exerted over them and that this control over one's gestures will in
turn grant the speaker an equal amount of control over an audience or interlocutor, by tapping into
the subconsciously received messages from the non-verbal communication referred to as gesturing.
When doing an online search for gesture or non-verbal communication, a lot of material will pop up
that engages with this idea of tapping into their audiences' or interlocutors' subconsciousness, for
example in marketing or during public speaking or with the goal of finding mates, business
opportunities or for the purpose of detecting and identifying liars. At some point in the 90's this idea
about the hidden secrets revealed by gesture became popular in entertainment, for example with the
TV show “Lie to me”.
RELIGION & SPIRITUALITY: Another realm of gesture studies investigates cultural and religious
aspects: holy gestures and performative gestures for example. These gestures are thought of as
carrying messages from devine sources or representing or channelling spiritual beings. The Indian
15 https://www.etymonline.com/word/gesture,
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mudras16 come to mind here or gestures from wiccan spellcasting or other religious ritual, such as
blessings or baptizing gestures in Christian religions.
BACK TO ETYMOLOGY: The similar word 'jest' brings in associations of a "famous deed, exploit,"
more commonly "story of great deeds, tale of adventure,". The Old French word geste, jeste aside
from meaning 'gesture' brings in connotations of "action, exploit, romance, history" (of celebrated
people or actions), from Medieval Latin gesta "actions, exploits, deeds, achievements," noun use of
neuter plural of Latin gestus, past participle of gerere "to carry on, wage, perform," which de Vaan17
says is considered to be from the same root as agere "to set in motion, drive forward, do, perform"
(from PIE root *ag- "to drive, draw out or forth, move"). “Just” as well reminds me of gesture,
indicating a certain immediacy, or partiality. Merriam-Webster offers two definitions for “gesture”:
“a movement usually of the body or limbs that expresses or emphasizes an idea, sentiment, or
attitude” and “the use of motions of the limbs or body as a means of expression”. A gesture can also
be understood to be “something said or done by way of formality or courtesy, as a symbol or token,
or for its effect on the attitudes of others”18
MOVEMENTS vs GESTURES: A gesture is a movement with meaning. When describing a movement

that conveys meaning of some sort we use the word gesture instead of the word movement. The
word movement does not indicate meaning, but merely speaks of bodily displacement, that bodies
or body-parts are moving. The word gesture is a discriptor, defining what type of movement is being
executed: a movement that expresses something.
WHAT IS A GESTURE? INQUIRY THROUGH ART & INDIVIDUIZED RESULTS: I have this question
printed out, big, on a page hanging above my desk. I don't know that I will ever fully be able to define
what a gesture is, but it is my goal to do this in as much detail as possible, through the lens of dance
and choreography. What exactly does a gesture want? What does a gesture desire or cause? What
does a gesture set into motion? What does it require? What's so wonderful about art is that through
16 Mudras offer definition, links, etc
17 De Vaan, find this source
18 Find source
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the embodied engagement with something as seemingly obvious as a gesture, we allow for the
deepening of inquiry and the deepening of our understanding and appreciation of the mystery and
complexity of our understanding of a thing such as gesture. Of the world. If I ask a hundred people
what a gesture is, will I get a hundred answers? A hundred nuances, viewpoints, and different
experiences? Not if they do not fully engage with the question. Then the answers will default to the
dictionary definitions I listed above. But if we each really take time to think about and enact gestures
what will we come up with what a gesture is and what it connects to and how many different
variations of definitions and how many unique nuances of gesture.
LESSONS FROM PRACTICE/GESTURES OF LOVE: What did I learn about what a gesture is from
the process of creating “Gestures of Love”19 ?. I created a piece that, for lack of a better term,
“illustrated” the concept that dance is full-body gesture. That dance is gesture on overdrive, or
gesture in amplification, gesture under the microscope, gesture in the spotlight, etc. I attempted to
decipher how I trace gesture through, with, through and from my body to embody, express and
articulate meaning. A detailed description and analysis of the piece and its movements and gestures
can be found on the TRACING GESTURE website at http://klphd.weebly.com/case-study-gestures-of-
love.html
GESTURES OF LOVE SUMMARY (under construction)
19 “Gestures of Love” at Cameron Art Museum was created as part of the tracing gesture dissertation research and for the
“love” exhibit at Cameron Art Museum in Wilmington, NC. The performance took place on September 9 th, 2023 to a
public audience. Karolaluettringhaus.com/gesturesoflove...add the actual link here..
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I attempted to keep alive the meaning, feeling, emotions of gestures in the dance movements as
they are traveling through my body. Two hands cupping one another, gently touching. What does it
feel like if the ribcage is allowed to do this movement, the legs, the elbows the face? What if we take
off the cultural or whatever other restrictions from focusing our gestural expression on our hands and
involve the rest of the body more fully, how do we relate to a gesture to an expression with our entire
bodies? What happens if we amplify our gestures? Does this translation onto another site inspire
action, reaction and further insight? Yes! Most definitely. By repeating the movement, by allowing it
to morph, by allowing myself to listen to what the rest of the body is doing while this gesture is
happening in my hands, by allowing other body parts to join in the conversation with more emphasis,
I am listening to the complexity and the broader implication of the gesture for myself as a person in
relation to myself and to others, including more than human relations. My hands gently touching one
20 Video still from performance of “Gestures of love” at Cameron Art Museum, September 9 th, 2023
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another, my hands gently touching my ribs, my face, the wall, the air, the imagined, my arms joining
in and following the suggestion of the hands, forearms gently touching, and arms becoming like
fingers, legs and toes also doing this gentle movement, touching one another, I realize that I am in
love with myself, that I care for myself, that I care fully for my entire being, and that which I am
connected to, the space, the air, the others, my relations. By realizing the nature of the connection
between hands and arms and ribs and face and legs and toes, I become aware of the relationships
between my body and its parts and my body and the other bodies, bodies of air, materiality,
spirituality, time, memory, associations, and the imagined. The tingling I feel in my hands, is it
present also in my other bodyparts as they are poised to sense and express? Yes. We overwork our
hands by not allowing the other parts of the body to also listen and express. What we crave is
cooperation, togetherness, expression, extension. Who says how we have to use our bodies? We are
actually being told how to experience the world and how to engage with it, and much of it is filtered
through the lens of what native studies calls the settler colonizer lens. A reductive way of
experiencing the world. A hierarchical methodology of oppression. We could be experiencing the
world through dance, through creative embodiment, but that is not what we learn from our parents
(unless they are dancers themselves), from society, from TV, or in school. On the contrary. We learn,
still, to dominate our bodies and how to make them our mind's tool, bend them to our will, which
isn't really ours but formed by an ideology that sees the body subordinated to the mind, to cognition,
even to non-corporeality, to spirituality. We are completely desensitized to the fleshiness of our lives,
to our embodied emotions, and our whole being. Through engaging with movement practice and
embodied ways of knowing. (I am starting to dislike the word and the idea of “knowing”, because it
stems from a colonial point of view that promises authority and control over nature that often also
translates to categorization and a reduction in experience. Hopefully I will find better terminology
along the way.)
Audience survey: What is a gesture.

I ran a simple survey on facebook, asking people to write down their definitions of gesture. The
responses I got were:
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 “A gesture can be an expression of the face, the body, the hands which projects something. That
something can be kindness, rudeness, love, no love, humiliation and many more. “
 A gesture can be an expression of the face, the body, the hands which projects something. That
something can be kindness, rudeness, love, no love, humiliation and many more.
 A small movement with the body or a kind action that honors another.
 Amovement of part of the body , especially a hand or the head, to express an idea or meaning. I
cheated and looked up the definition, but I am in full agreement with OED on this.
 A 'gesture' can also be a non physical action, such as “giving a donation to the poor is a kind
gesture” is a 'kind gesture'
 A language so ancient it crosses all cultures
◦ or at least a great many
 I think in the context of dance, when teaching it specifically to beginners it is easy to start by
defining it in contrast to the abstract, so I usually start the conversation with something that is
pedestrian and communicates an idea or feeling. That is a VERY simplistic beginning, though!
 Action
 Movement
 Why ask when you are the bringers of gesture. You move and so doing file currents of gesture
in the dust motes in the air. Are then the shadows you make double gestures… ask yourself
what you are….gestures of flesh in motion.
 In music, it is a small expression that ties into the motif. (a gesture, a figure )
 An intentional reflection of self.
 Gesture (includes a gif or a baby waiving it's index finger)
 it has to be expressive, or it doesn't count… (even if it is an empty gesture, it is still expressive)
◦ my response: what is an empty gesture?
▪ Their response:
 A letting go of established norms to communicate directly like a mime.
◦ My response: How is a mime letting go of established norms? What do you mena by 'letting
go of established norms'? How does a mime communicate?
▪ Their response:
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 An offering
 So of course this shows up today from Boston Ballet... (adding to the discussion)
https://youtu.be/5crTr2BWtLA?si=R_k1lmq6t6qH1kkx Form and Gesture | Chapter One
 A movement, physical or other, that has intended and/or perceived meaning.
◦ Yep. That's essentially how I teach gesture.
 A gesture can be an expression of the face, the body, the hands which projects something. That
something can be kindness, rudeness, love, no love, humiliation and many more.
A RESPONSE
A gesture is a movement that happens in response to an inner motivation or process. Gestures
emerge in response to emotional, physical, psychological stimuli and states. Some people gesture a
lot, some less. We amplify or restrict our desire to gesture in accordance to how we have been
socialized. I seek to explore some of the relationships between gesture and expression, translation,
meaning-making, and communication. Our bodies are enmeshed into the experiences of life, in
whatever situation we find ourselves in we will have some form of gestural response. This is
inevitable, I believe. Our bodies express themselves in response to situations automatically. Thinking,
experiencing, feeling, and acting are connected intrinsically. A gesture is a reaction. A gesture is an
expression. A gesture carries meaning. A gesture can take place in any body part and usually does not
take place in only one. Our physical reactions to and interactions with life are immediate and not
entirely manipulatable. Jungian psychology for example is based on the notion of the subconscious,
that we act subconsciously. This is also where the idea that is commonly encountered in contact
improvisation is connected to, that thought is slower than affect or reaction.
USE IT OR LOOSE IT
In going to museum, in writing about our feelings, about artistic processes, in engaging with art
theories and practicing expressing ourselves verbally, we improve the speed and specificity of our
thinking. Everything has to be practiced and everything needs to be used in order to receive energy
for growth: muscles and bones need to be used and challenges in order to maintain strength or grow.
Use it or loose it, is actually true. Osteoblasts will only build more bone if the bones are put under
44
stress. If they are not used they will take calcium from the bones to use elsewhere, and osteoporosis
eventually results. The body is efficient and only invests in the growth of structures that are needed
regularly. I suppose that we can lose our ability to gesture or understand gesturing if we do not
practice it or if we superimpose concepts onto gesturing that falsifies our interpretation of it. We can
begin to put “mind over matter” so to speak and un-train our bodies to understand these instinctive
processes. It is possible to un-train reflexes, and it is possible to doubt oneself, or lose touch with
one's gut feelings etc.
In a research experiment with one of my dancers, Lena, we discovered that copying the gestures of
others would give us more understanding about what they were saying. We experimented with
copying the gestures of a person in a youtube video. We performed these gestures for each other and
we had to guess who the person in the video was and what they were talking about. I assume that
this can be a helpful practice in understanding gesture. It most definitely helped me put words to
some of the feelings I had regarding some of the speakers, when something felt like their words and
their gestures were mismatches, for example. By working through their gestures, and describing
them, and describing how they felt to me and what they made me feel like, I was able to better
describe the apprehensions I had intuitively had, or to be more precise: cognition and language,
verbalization, is slower than the intuitive knowledge and the feelings and affects we experience in
split seconds. But again, the more we practice these things, the more proficient we get at verbalizing
more accurately and more immediately. Geoffrey Beattie21 said: “When they (speech and gesture)
don't match it's always psychologically interesting.”
MOVEMENT
We are alive, we move. Movement is intrinsically connected to all other functions of the body. No
body functions are possible without some form of movement. They will benefit from movement or be
negatively affected by a lack of movement. Our bodies have evolved in response to movement,
movement evolved in response to the circumstances and environment that we adapted to. We are
built to move. The contractions of the calves support the pumping of the blood back to the heart, the
21 Geoffrey Beattie, Talk on youtube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nyxuiua-JM&t=1782s, published by Gresham
College, How Spontaneous Gestures Connect to Thinking - Professor Geoffrey Beattie
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counter-torsional movements of the torso (note the similarities of terminology in torso: torsion) in
walking support breathing, digestion, and circulation of lymph and blood. Movement supports blood
flow and thinking. The brain is not the central command-station for all functions of the body. The
body is not an autocracy, it is more democratic, and I would go so far as to calling it an anarchy:
Individual autonomous, but interconnected, actors contribute to the function of the entire system.
Not only the brain thinks, not only the brain makes decisions. The brain is a system that allows us to
monitor and oversee functions, to check in, to analyze, to make certain decisions for specific action
or to learn and communicate. But not only the brain learns and communicates. The brain and its main
function: cognition is one of many equally important entities that contribute to the whole of life's
experience. Just like it is impossible for only the hands to express a gesture without involving action
and cooperation of the entire rest of the body, why would thinking, talking, and creating be solely an
action of the brain? Creativity and decision-making happens in all other systems of the body as well.
And they all are connected with one another and solicit from one another to optimize their own
function and support the whole system. Arguably, our system is out of balance. Our brains take
themselves too seriously and disregard the agency of the other body parts. This is what Balasz is
saying when he blames the printing press for man having lost the ability to express himself through
gestures. In the western world, and some others, we disproportionately value logos.
REBALANCING
In improvisational movement/dance practices it is my goal to allow the brain to take a more relaxed
position, to not guide, decide, manipulate or in any form determine what I will do and how. The brain
can observe the decision-making of the other parts and to contribute to decision-making but not
dominate it. The goal is to surprise myself and do things and move in ways and along pathways that I
have not experienced before. It is the most wonderful feeling when that happens. And what comes
with it is a freeing of my body, a releasing of tension in various structures and an increased range of
cooperation among the body's tissues and a greater ease of movement in my joints. Everything flows
easier when I surprise myself.
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The cognitive function of the brain can be very dominant over the rest of the body. We experience
everything through the filter of our thinking. The mind can fool us into thinking, feeling, or
experiencing just about anything. It is possible, and common, to constantly have an inner dialogue
going on. But, of course, we are thinking beings. We have brains. Brains love to think. Especially in
the western world, we are raised to cherish and value thinking and reason above all. “I think,
therefore I am”22. We can become slaves to our ways of thinking. Thoughts can induce physical
symptoms such as pain or increase physiological responses, such as heart palpitations, etc. Western
medicine slowly catches on to what Gabor Mate and a good number of other physicians by now term
the “bio-psycho-social” model: biological, psychological, and sociological factors equally affect us
and are inseparably interconnected where our experience or expression of illness and health are
concerned. Linearity and simple causality are replaced by more complex multi-modal and multi-
directional enmeshment theories.
It has become a goal to decolonize the body from hierarchical and oppressive systems and concepts
that ignore the autonomy, importance, and agency of all parts of the whole. What does this mean for
gesture? To me, it means that gesture takes place in all fibers and in all systems of the being and that
it reaches into time. Gesture is as much a manifestation of thinking as it is of our need to stay healthy
and keep things flowing, or of our emotional experience. These functions are not separable and
therefore gesture is both an instigator of experience as well as a path to recovering them as
memories, meaning, and intention.
A GESTURE: ALWAYS INCOMPLETE?

Is anything ever truly complete and clear23? Science tells us that what we perceive is not the complete
and actual reality, but the fiction that our body, by means of sense perceptions and reasoning,
assembles for us as experience or as a “picture” of the world. We know for certain that we do not
consciously comprehend everything. Our perception does not allow for grasping the complete truth.
We will always fall short of complete understanding and complete knowing. But is completeness
even a goal? Do we need full understanding and for what? Why? Much suffering takes place at the
22 “I thikn, therefore I am” quote from Descartes, yes????

23 Derrida, Leiden University talk, find quote from Derrida, difference and repetition
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hands of those that seek to know everything. Why are knowledge and cruelty seemingly connected?
What exactly is knowing? What does it manifest as in our bodies? What is the nature of this knowing
that justifies animal experiments? How is the knowledge and the act of knowing tainted because of
the suffering? And how does it affect the minds and bodies of those that know the things that this
violent path to knowledge affords?
People who work in such labs must ignore the gestures of those that are being experimented on, or
they must not see them as gestures of despair and calling for help. Their minds must be telling them
other stories about why these people (mostly beyond-human people) are acting like they suffer but
are not really suffering, or suffering is ok for them, or whatever the reasoning is that allows the
thoughts about the inflicted pain override the lab worker's desire to intervene and help. Or in factory
farming. What “knowledge” allows us to not recognize, and deny, the person-hood and the suffering
of beings?
The knowledge that I seek is not an absolute knowledge. It is not this kind of knowledge. It is a more
gentle knowledge that shifts and varies from one to another, and I am interested in finding the
landing points where our experiences converge, where we understand one another and where our
associations of an event opens something up for another. Meaning is also fluid in this way. It
converges, diverges and generally is affected by other meanings continuously. We find meaning by
describing what we experience. By verbalizing what we see for example in a dance piece, we can
gather knowledge about how this dance rubs up against people's perceptive fields. It is because we
evolve and adapt in similar paradigms that our responses overlap. And much like the body is made up
of many individual actors with agency, all of us together are part of a larger being, this group, area,
society, culture, planet, etc so we inform one another and are changed by one another. When I sing to
my dog and he is frozen in attention, I learn something about him, me, singing, emotion. There is no
formula that comes out at the end that decodes gesture, but our perceptions are heightened to the
possibilities of meaning within gesture.
In my choreographic process I am investigating, creating, and searching. I am making the piece and I
have an idea about what some of the meanings are that are embedded in my work, but I have only
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my viewpoints. I need dancers and audiences to add their impressions, analyses, and associations to
begin to draw a mental picture of the meanings within the piece.
I am arguing that by spending time with gesture, we can derive information from it, knowledge,
insight, enrichment, fulfillment, that goes beyond the knowledge we gain from looking at the
function that it serves. A thing is never only expressing itself in one role. There are multiplicities in
everything. The practice of engaging with gesture changes our viewpoints. Nothing is ever stable.
Life is dynamic. And so gesture is a continuously moving target. However, whatever I see in a certain
moment in a gesture does mean something and it can be very specific, cathartic, informative, eye-
opening, therapeutic, intellectual, etc.
go back into the video about this part of the text: leiden university:
Gilles Deleuze, argues that everything in the universe is connected. Articulate the ontological
foundations. Derrida argues that language is unstable and meaning is deferred. Deleuze and Derrida:
universe is in flux, moving, changing. We can never be sure that we have reached the right
interpretation. Derrida claims that you can never reach the right interpretation and maybe ther eisn't
a right interpretation. Even the original author was not sure about what they were claiming. There
could be multiple competing equally good interpretations. Presence and absence. With language you
can talk about things that are not here. Language can make concepts of things appear in our minds.
Derrida says this idea is wrong. Saussure: meaning of the concept is determined by it's relations to
lots and lots of other concepts in the language. Meanings are not in things but 'everywhere'. Any
word is defined in terms of other words, which again are defined in terms of words. Hearing a word
would mean to have to trace all these concepts. We can never grasp the entire world in one single
thought. There is nothing outside of the text: Il n'y a pas en dehor le mot.”Derrida: metaphysics of
phonetic writing. Logocentrism: borrows from emphasis on speech, truth, law that all relate back to
the word of gods.
GESTURE AND WORD
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In my experience, the gesture is no less complete than the word, it is just that we have spent a whole
lot more effort on understanding and defining words than gestures.
“The discovery of printing has gradually rendered the human face illegible. People have been able to
glean so much from reading that they could afford to neglect other forms of communication. Victor Hugo
once wrote that the printed book has taken over the role of medieval cathedrals and has become the
repository of the spirit of the people. But the thousands of books fragmented the single spirit of the
cathedrals into a myriad different opinions. The printed word smashed the stone to smithereens and
broke up the church into a thousand books. In this way, the visible spirit was transformed into a legible
spirit, and a visual culture was changed into a conceptual one. “ Bela Balasz24, “Visible Man” p. 1
GESTURE AS PROTAGONIST
It is with my choreographic practice that I actively engage with gestures as the main protagonists.
The gesture expresses itself, expresses something, and is subject to analysis, interpretation and
understanding like everything else in the world. Engaging with gesture and communicating through
gesture presents us with yet another, what Alva Noe25 calls, “...different style of access to the world”.
Noe highlights perception and thought specifically in his talk as two ways of achieving this access. I
think of gesture as the mediator between these two modes, as well as a form of thought, and a form
of presence, and also as something entirely different and unique and justified in itself. Who is the
gesture in itself. La geste pour la geste: gesture for gesture's sake. Who is Madame Gesture? If
gesture was given a personality and a persona and agency unto itself, who would this gesture be?
Gesture speaks without being asked? Gesture responds honestly to anything we say. Gesture hates to
lie. Gesture is beautiful. Gesture constantly moves and sometimes uses pauses to feel itself expressed
properly, gesture enjoys dancing, gesture is revived in dance as it can fully flow, gesture can be
abused in dance and forced into rigid templates. Gesture has personality. Gesture constantly learns.
Gesture is a person. Gesture is person-hood. Gesture is alive. Gesture is dependent on the person
it/she inhabits. Gesture is there because it is needed. Gesture fulfills a role in life.
GESTURE A TOOL FOR RECOVERING A CONNECTION TO THE SELF
24 Bela balasz, from “Visible Man”, opening sentence and p.1

25 Alva Noe, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOt4vcBV_fk, @37:58 in the talk
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This is touching on aspects of what will be discussed in the AUTHENTIC MOVEMENT CHAPTER in
more detail.
On page?? of “The Body keeps the Score...” Bessel van der Kolk26 quotes Antonio Damasio27
“Sometimes we use our minds not to discover facts, but to hide them. . . . One of the things the
screen hides most effectively is the body, our own body, by which I mean the ins of it, its interiors.
Like a veil thrown over the skin to secure its modesty, the screen partially removes from the mind the
inner states of the body, those that constitute the flow of life as it wanders in the journey of each
day.”28 He goes on to describe how this “screen” can work in our favor by enabling us to attend to
pressing problems in the outside world. Yet it has a cost: “It tends to prevent us from sensing the
possible origin and nature of what we call self.”29 Building on the century-old work of William James,
Damasio argues that the core of our self-awareness rests on the physical sensations that convey the
inner states of the body: [P]rimordial feelings provide a direct experience of one’s own living body,
wordless, unadorned, and connected to nothing but sheer existence. These primordial feelings reflect
the current state of the body along varied dimensions, . . . along the scale that ranges from pleasure
to pain, and they originate at the level of the brain stem rather than the cerebral cortex. All feelings
of emotion are complex musical variations on primordial feelings.8
It seems to me that Gesture could have the potential to cut through to the self, to regions of the brain
and regions of the body that store sensations, memories, actions, etc. Authentic Movement taps into
this mediator capacity of gesture: by moving and allowing movements to become gestures: by
repeating them, by investigating their meanings, by verbalizing what else accompanied the
movements in terms of feelings, thoughts, experiences, etc, gestures can help us discover what we
are not cognitively aware of. It could be useful to become aware.
26 Bessel van der Kolk, “The Body Keeps the Score”

27 A. Damasio, Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain (New York, Random House Digital, 2012), 17.
28 Damasio, Feeling of What Happens, p. 28.
29 Ibid., p. 29.
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MERELY A GESTURE
Walter Benjamin30, according to Judith Butler, seems to define gestures as what results from a
citation becoming separated from its everyday context, which leads to the quotation becoming
intelligible leaving behind merely a gesture. This idea of gestures being incomplete is pervasive, and
expresses itself nowadays in notions around the intelligibility of dance or its lacking potential for
clarity.
If I call out to you 'come here' but I gesture to you to 'stay away', the meaning is not lost, the
message is confusing and the meaning is one of contradiction, perhaps of a game, perhaps of a
warning. The message is not clear, but it is not lost. It is harder to read. If the combination of gesture
and speech reinforce one another they are matching, which I would call illustrative. If they are a
mismatch, they tell another story or several layers of meaning simultaneously. Similarly, it is not the
role of gesturing to illustrate utterances and it is not the role of dance to illustrate music. Illustration
happens and can be effective and pleasing, but the body's movements are not merely a tool for
illustration, or entertainment.
GESTURE AS EVENT
I am arguing alongside Butler here that gesture is an event. In speech, in conversation, the words
contain their meanings and messages, and the gestures contain theirs as well, and together they
create a amalgamation and emergence of a multiplicity of meanings and new identities and
potentialities, which begs for the active analysis and capacity on the part of the interlocutors who
have to guess/interpret/translate what the other person might be trying to convey. Of course, gesture
and words can also be contradictory, which is not a disaster necessarily, merely, as with speech, it
needs to be interpreted, and might indicate that the speaker perhaps is not sure about what they are
saying or one might be able to pick up on inherent contradictions themselves or the speaker's
conflictedness. A mismatch of speech and gesture, a seeming contradiction, might not lead to
intelligibility, but to the discovery or more complex possibilities/meanings. An “unrelated” gesture
30 Judith Butler “When gesture becomes Event” p. tbd Walter Benjamin, “What is Epic Theater?,” in Illuminations: Essays
and Reflections, ed. Hannah Arendt (New York: Schocken, 1976), 151.
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adds new information that changes the meaning of the spoken. It is like changing the music to a film
scene.
I think that communication is not clarity but the beauty of poetry, a game of association, an interplay
of improvised impressions. A dance.
Alva Noe31 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 ... In other words, it is part of our very practice, that the practice itself
is vulnerable to slippage and to mistake.” Life is subject to slippage and mistake. We call it a mistake, but
that is marked by our desire for comprehension, constancy, and clarity, which is not what the world offers
us.
A gesture is movement that mediates toward some form of meaning, that carries information, abstract,
contextual, sensical, and non-sensical. Gesturing is not a movement that is done to achieve a goal such as
the movements that we perform when drinking water, or opening a car door. If the glass or the car are
removed and the movement is executed as if they are still there we have pantomime, a form of gesture that
makes us acutely aware of specific absences and of the movements we perform while interacting with their
presence, their form. Pantomime allows us to investigate what a movement means to the body, how it
affects it, how it is generated. It shifts the focus onto the body and asks us to contemplate the significance of
the body in our interactions with the world. Our relationship to the thing that is missing. But even those
pantomimic movements can become gestures when we remember a person and pick up the book they gave
us. That movement is no longer merely practical. It could become a gesture of emotion or thought, of
remembrance, or love, etc. Is every movement a gesture in some ways? When I pick up the pen it is a gesture
to write. When I put on an outfit it is a gesture of performing a role, or a gender, or a statement, or a need to
protect myself. No two ways of putting on clothes are ever the same. I could choreograph an entire piece
around people putting on their clothes and tell a multitudes of stories with these vignettes. The act of putting
31 Alva Noe, talk on youtube, https://youtu.be/HOt4vcBV_fk @ around 22:00 or later - find this quote,
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on clothes never just tells us about putting on clothes, but about the inter-relational, situational,
psychological, and historical as well.
I have yet to find a movement, an act, that isn't somehow a gesture. I have yet to find a dance movement
that is not a gesture in some way, that does not carry any message, intent, or purpose with it somehow.
Gesture is meaning embodied.
A GESTURE: ALWAYS INCOMPLETE?: Exercise: I invite you to take some time to observe yourself
when putting on clothes. How do you choose clothes? What goes through your head? What are
your movements like? Describe the scene in a written text as if they were to become a play or scene
in a movie.
What would you tell the actor/actress how to get dressed. What goes through the person's head
while getting dressed? Where are they going? Why are they wearing these kinds of things or have a
hard time deciding between one kind of an outfit and another. Are they going to a dinner with a
friend. Contemplate what some of the associated meanings could be, where clothes reach into
other areas of life. How far does the choice of clothing ripple? What would the audience interpret,
or what do you want the audience to get from this scene? How would they be able to tell what the
actor's state of mind is? How would they have to move in order to tell that particular story? How
would you go about directing this scene? Would you focus on narrative or one shaping movements
and dynamics in space? Or both? Why are you drawn to certain kinds of moving in this scene?
ENACTING GESTURES
A thorough analysis of the performance and the creative process is in progress. The below text is
incomplete and therefore highlighted in yellow.
in the making of “Gestures of Love” I made the following observations:

 Did I discover things about myself through the process?
 Did the process support my dealing with my relationship?
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 Did my gestures reveal something to me? What?

 Did the structure of the piece reveal something to me? What?
 Was working on the piece therapeutic for me?
 How did audiences react? Emotional. Personal. Appreciative. Several women brought up
women's rights/gender issues and societal pressures.
 How did dancing the piece feel like? What did I feel, when, how, why?
 Why did I make this piece? Do get movement into a stuck situation. To express and think and
talk, express something that was important to me at that moment. Most pieces I have done
were made because I needed to deal with something, because something was causing me
mental distress in some way.
 What did people get out of attending this piece? For their personal well-being, growth, etc?
 What were some habits I fall into?
 What was new?
 was reaffirmed that creating this work gave me insights I most likely would not have gotten
had I only been engaging with the topic in philosophical ways, through thinking or talking. By
acting, repeating, by moving, sensing, and allowing my brain to observe and analyze my own
movements, by allowing myself to improvise around the topic, I was able to find new
gestures, bring gestures through the body, trace their movements and connections through
the various tissue structures and make connections that I was not aware of before. I was also
able to express and share my thoughts around the topic with an audience.
What do I know now that I didn't before, and can all of this new knowledge be put into words? And if
so, will all these words capture and describe everything that was experienced or learned? How can I
describe the indescribable?
COMPLETE/INCOMPLETE: arteries of perception
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What does it mean if something is complete? Completeness is a concept that is defined by the
accomplishment of set goals as well as some set of emotions, thoughts, or feelings about what it
means for something to be 'complete'. I suppose that the sensation or perception of completeness
depends on the context within which it is experienced. In psychology, I assume we speak of
identifying facts, bits and pieces of information, filling memory gaps or having a sense of closure on
an issue. If something feels complete, then it has all or most of its necessary parts. If it is completed,
there are no loose ends that need addressing. I think none of my pieces are ever 'complete'. But
completeness is not what I am after. I am after bringing up and beginning a discussion of a topic, a
social critique, a personal matter, a political issue. I am after continued curiosity and deepening
insights, mostly in broadening my horizon and adding alternate points of view to allow myself to
grow in wisdom and understanding, to become less judgmental. It's like I want to increase the dpi of
my perception and insight. Things are closer to complete when their individual parts are known in
greater complexity, when the complexity of something is explored and the approach is no longer
superficial. We might never get to the bottom of something, but I want to dig as deep as I can to at
least open the perspective into other realms, and that includes continuing to ask beyond the feeling
of completeness. In reality that isn't always possible or happening, but I suppose this is why certain
topcis keep reappearing in my work, which I see in other artists works as well. For example the topic
of water or home keep reemerging in my works. It is worth it to me to analyze why that might be and
what I gain from engaging with the topic repeatedly and over time. A quick analysis of the
appearance of water in my work throughout the years offers the following insights:
 Alban Elved Dance Company: the name of my company translates to “the Light of the water”,
reflections, light play, reflections, moving lights, water emanating its own light
 Gestures of Love: rain, tears (implied), personal relationship
 “Traces of the Enmeshment: The River Home”: imagery and motif of water leading home,
personal relationship with nature
 KEEL: takes place at the ocean shoreline: society against the forces of nature, mental storms
and currents, following the water's edge and living in it's presence
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 adam-mah: lack of water, plastic waterbottles, drying and heating of environment,

agricultural practices that lead to drying of soil, sparcity
 The Light of the Water: water is life, bioluminescence, plastic ocean pollution, underwater
scenes, ocean life, water dripping, IV bag with water, plastic water on a string
 letter to water: writing a letter to the person that water is
 vita, vita1-6: digital life, rain, tears, swimming, droning, sinking to the bottom of the sea
 lightfalls: rain drop, water dripping sounds in a basement setting, condensation
 stillicidium: the dripping of water from eaves
 Midsummer Nights Dream: 'Spaniel', washing away aspects of oppression, dowsing oneself,
cleansing, releasing, messiness
 Hydra: long walk to water, water rationing, multi-headed personality
 Hydra Tempted: allowing love in, temptation, water snakes, poisonous fish,
 Inch by Inch: relationship by the ocean edge, delicate fragility within or alongside a rapturing
ocean
 Pier: aerial dance above the water, moving more and more like the water
 Last Night: party by the ocean, a boat in a museum, interpersonal relationship stories about
love and passion
 WATER: water falling through downspouts onto the sidewalk, duet against a wall and getting
soaked by the water, the wet clothes drawing temporary traces into the hot stone wall of the
building, relatioship struggles
 Lena's bath: about fear of water, fear of leaving the safe and familiar, taking risks, trio in and
around a water pool and buckets filled with water, increasing someone's temptation to fall
into the water
 The Suitcase garden/The generous fish: stylized set design of waves and fish costume, water
is another world to live in, worlds meeting, understanding and caring for one another even if
very different
 Alternate Reality: tragic comic aerial duet on two tall boxes above an imagined black sea
below
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 Aurora, Always Water Everywhere: about water, water as a painted floor, water jugs, drips of
water, water as metaphor for rivers of emotion
 Swim baby!: dance film in swimming pool, about following your dreams, loving to be in water
and continuing to follow your dreams, keep floating, keeping afloat (about financial
difficulties as an artist)


Re-engaging with water over and over, seems to me, is an attempt at getting closer to water. I have a
water phobia and so water is a fascination of mine. I am at the same time afraid and feel my most self
in water. Water is “my” element. I want to be like water, be in water, with water, talk to water, be
water's friend, honor water. I see water as another person. A much bigger, more adaptable, gentler
and more powerful, and wiser person. I seek connection with the other beings and a sense of peace
and belonging. I seek to understand, to get to know water. Since I am also made of water, I seek to
get to know myself better. Love myself. Be at ease within myself.
FULL BODY APPROACH

I assume that completeness is more achievable if I employ all my faculties to explore a topic or
phenomenon, if I approach it with my full body. Then the parts of me that know will know in their
way, the parts of me that sense will sense in their ways and perhaps there will even be a cross-
pollination of knowledge, sensation, and analysis. Completeness has a sense of “growth” (not
expansion) or refinement, ever more finer arteries of perception can inform me about who and where
I am.
A GESTURE: ALWAYS WHOLE? - the lives of gestures

All these definitions/etymological landing points of the term gesture (gestus, agere, jeste, etc) have
in common a certain activity level, an action, partial action, or intent to act, and a something that is
intentionally or intuitively communicated that is conveyed by the changing or static orchestration of
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body parts. Is the gesture only a partial thing, a sort of promise toward a fuller manifestation, toward
an actual thing? Or is it whole and complete in itself? A red bloodcell is part of the body, but alos
complete in itself. It has a life, needs, actions, relations. I believe that everything is inter-related and
points to another element within the multiplicity of an organism, such as this world. But, we can also
look at each individual element and see it as its own complete thing. The arts interrogate the
interconnections, cause and effects of interrelatedness, but they also investigate this wholeness,
which can reveal further information about the object studied, ourselves, our relationships to this
object and about further interconnections. Interrelatedness is not negating autonomy and agency of
the part.
A gesture, in my experience, is not merely a liminal or broken, incomplete thing, it also needs to be
seen for what it IS. A gesture is a physical, and sometimes metaphorical, movement, a snapshot, a
moment in time of something unique and particular to that moment, and the person enacting it. The
gesture is an expression of desire or positionality in relation to some thing or situation. It is in and of
itself a fragment, yes, but even fragments are whole things if we do not know the larger context
within which they operate. If we narrow our lens, we will look at the gesture itself, not as a servant,
but as an actor and living entity. So, in this section, I will be delving into a thought and movement
experiment called “the lives of gestures”.
We are individuals but we are all parts of something larger, of a family, a culture, an ecology, a
universe, etc. And we ourselves are communities of tissues and organisms who in themselves have
their own lives and can not merely be regarded as functions. A gesture is an individual and as such it is
complete.
I would like to draw a parallel, an analogy, to the practice and tradition of theatre: in theatre we are
playing something out, we are rehearsing potentialities, we hypothesize, abstract the world outside
of the theatre and bring a version of it onto the stage. But, theatre is also what I term 'real'. Theatre
in itself is not a copy, a reproduction, or an abstraction. Theatre is itself theatre, something we do for
the sake of doing theatre, and for purposes I hope to analyze and theorize more clearly in this
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dissertation. Theatre has a purpose. And theatre is a purpose in itself. Brecht reminds us of this with
the Verfremdungseffekt: reminding the audiencethat we are not in an alternate reality, but here
together in a theatre. Theatre, and dance, are actions that we do. They are not merely means to
ends. Walter Benjamin32 wrote that (Franz) Kafka’s literary work “divests the human gesture of its
traditional supports and then has a subject for reflection without end.” In removing the context, the
speech that accompanies a gesture, and by focusing and allowing that gesture to morph and grow in
expression, we now have a gesture without means. I would say that we then have a gesture without
any accompanying illustrative words. The gesture is the means. However, the aspects of
communication can never be fully eradicated from a gesture, in my opinion. We are wired to
construct meaning. Meaning is lost only when people no longer have the capacity to understand
things. As far as I am concerned this is rarely observed. People with brain injury or dementia can lose
the ability to connect to meaning. But other than that, meaning33 is always somehow present,
because we are, in my opinion, for the most part, incapable of dissociating meaning from things.
Spiritual practices claim the possibility for non-thought, but they also recognize the difficulty to
achieve it. Spiritual enlightenment largely evolves around the ability to not assign meaning, not to
judge, not to associate. Most of life does exactly that, however.
CREATIVITY AS SPIRITUAL PATH

I am not sure what the word spiritual really means, what is a spirit, or soul,...? but to me the word
expresses an inquiry in an area beyond everyday existence. Something about who I am and where
and why. So this inquiry I do through art.
EXPERIMENTS: GESTURE AS AGENT, GESTURE AS PERSON, GESTURE AS WHOLE – THE LIFE OF A

GESTURE
How do we interact with gesture? What can gesture evoke in us? Can a gesture act upon the enactor
of this gesture, or is the gesture always a result or 'child' of the enactor? How does the gesture affect
the enactor (the producer of the gesture)? Do some,or all, gestures exist outside of the enactor? The
32 Walter Benjamin, Benjamin, “Franz Kafka: On the Tenth Anniversary of His Death,” in Illuminations, 122.
33 See definition for/of 'meaning' in chapter 1, page...tbd
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gesture only exists because the body executes it. A gesture is brought into the world through the
coordination of a multitude of parts. Can a gesture cause the body to move? Or is the gesture the
result of movement? Are we situating the gesture in the realm of fleshiness and materiality or in the
realm of the non-visible, of intent? Intent causes gesture. Can gestures change the enactor? How do
they do this? Fake it till you make it gestural instructions claim that performing certain gestures will
boost confidence and success. Basically. So the gesture is a movement that is imbued with meaning
and that also has the power to evoke, and the power to invoke ( both in oneself and within an other
that the gesture is being performed on or toward). But do spontaneous unplanned non-codified
gestures change us? Do they precede 'us'? I suppose that if we see a person as an assembly of
conscious and subconscious or unconscious parts/aspects, then, something from our subconscious,
like a gesture, can change our conscious parts and therefore change us. But is the enactment of a
subconscious gesture still done by 'us'? Do gestures arise, like independent agents, like mitochondria
or gut microbiota (foreign but still part of us)? The definition of self is changing: we are multiplicities
and so we are never just ourselves and foreign agents are us as well. We are strangers and selves.
Strangers do not exist. Selves do not exist.??? The experience of a self is created in which parts of the
body? Is a gesture like an individual life on earth, part of an uncountable number of lives over
millennia? Will the gesture lose its gesture status when looked at in this way and become an
acidofilus? Are non tangible, non-physical, non-material things also body parts?
GESTURE AS BODY PARTS HAVING A CONVERSATION WIHT ONE ANOTHER:

My hand comes in to touch the front base of my neck, sliding up and back down my sterno-cleido-
mastoid muscles, fingertips and thumb are gently sliding over the medial ends or the collar bones.
Part of the movement caresses the thyroid cartilage and the muscles that attach to it or lay along-
side it. Why do I touch my neck when I write?
Let me capture this gesture, prolong it's life, attend to it by repeating it over and over, performing it
anew every time, paying attention to it, what it feels like, what the movements are that are part of
this, how the rest of the body supports this movement. What does this movement evoke in me?
What do I feel, think? How does it make me feel? Thyroid cartilage is near my voice. It is a vulnerable
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area. The touch focuses my attention on my body. Quickly pulls my attention from the screen to my
body-perception. I feel like the back of my head fills ever so slightly with pressure or fluid. I do it after
I have written a few sentences and am thinking about what comes next. Sometimes the hand moves
up onto the jaw and near my mouth. The sterno-clavicular joint is where the arms are attached to the
axial body, the torso. While writing on the computer this area holds lots of tension. My shoulders are
slightly raised up, the entire time. Does the tension get in the way of my writing flow, and does the
gentle touch remind me to ease up? Body parts meet body parts and there must be a reaction of
some sort, whether I am consciously aware of it or not, tissues react to touch: slight compression,
stretch, increased warmth, tickling, proprioceptive information comes rushing in. It seems that
gestures talk to “me”, to my thinking, perceptive fields of thought. In between all the gesturing and
writing I am also eating, putting food in my mouth. I didn't “decide” or plan to do any of these things.
These actions happen almost habitually, automatically. Maybe the musculo-skeletal system is trying
to get the attention of my conscious mind to get me to stop ignoring parts of myself that are working
too hard. Or my musculo-skeletal parts are supporting my thinking parts in their actions. The touch
comforts me. Soothes me. Calmness helps with focus. With the flow of words. The touch also focuses
my attention back onto my physical experience, not the things I think about or the act of writing that
I am currently engaged in. The diversion, the oscillation must be necessary, the going in and
withdrawing back out, gathering focus and releasing it into words or eating. This reflects the non-
linearity as well as the oscillatory nature of the choreographic process, an intuitive deep dive and a
withdrawal away from the experience into the observation and analysis of it. Breathing in and
breathing out. Zooming in and zooming out. Touching and thinking.
IN DANCE: GESTURES TAKING SPACE

Expanding. Expanding on an idea. Expanding on a movement. In dancing I am allowing my gestures
to follow through and travel along the body's tissues, wringing, winding, chopping, sliding, placing,
spiraling. Playing. I am tracing connections and networks of support. When dancing, I am allowing
my gestures to take space, to take flight, to express themselves much more fully. Because now my
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focus is not on writing, or speaking, but on gesturing itself. Like the mime that focuses on the
movements of everyday actions, replicating the gestures of every-day-life, I am focusing on the
gestures I make when actively, or intuitively, or subconsciously engaging with a specific topic and
expanding on these gestures and playing with them. Gesture takes space and time. Gesture expands
and grows, extends its physiology and its meanings.
DE-CATEGORIZING and RE-ASPECTING

I think there is the tendency in popular culture to assign gestures to the body and speech to
cognition. It seems that this categorization is reflected in academic circles, as practice research is still
not fully acknowledged as a form of research or academic inquiry. Beattie34 writes: “The traditional
view is that nonverbal communication is primarily concerned with the communication of emotions
and interpersonal relations. This (Beattie's) new theory will propose that some nonverbal
communication does reveal emotional state/interpersonal relations but some (particularly hand
movements) reveal unconscious aspects of thinking.” Goal35 of this dissertation is to significantly
blur the boundaries between thinking and emotions/affect, between thinking and doing. I argue
that both are part of one another and both are aspects of bodily function. I am arguing that all
actions and phenomena that we can experience are in fact matters of the body. Body-mind
duality does not exist in my theory. Thinking is a bodily action and movement and thinking
belong together. It is hard to do one without the other, although both can require substantial
amounts of focus and reduce the other. The question then arises: what is “thinking”? I wish to
redefine this term to include a) the body thinks b) moving is thinking c) thinking is moving I am
also seeking to decolonize the body and thinking, doing away with hierarchical categories that
imbue thinking and cognition with a higher value than for example sports or dancing. I think
these ways of thinking are deeply flawed, over-simplified, and unfounded. They are based on a
categorical way of thinking that dissects and cuts apart what it seeks to understand, rather than
coming from a whole-istic starting point, that premises cooperation and response-ability among
34 Beattie, Geoffrey “How Spontaneous Gestures relate to thinking”, official transcript from talk at Gresham College,
2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nyxuiua-JM&t=1782s
35 Goal and thesis statement: refine this, calrify, be critical, be controversial
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all parts of the body, without dominance of one part over the others for disproportionate
amounts of time. Thinking while writing a text does not exclude the other functions, such as
movement and feeling emotions. Studies show the correlations between emotion and reason.
Without emotion there can be no reason, no impulse, no drive, no motivation for reason 36.
I am attemting to de-categorize and to instead aspectize actions: we can be aware of certain aspects,
but prevalence of one aspect does not call for a re-categorization. Highlighting aspects merely helps
describe what it is we are experiencing. The body will need to shift attention to certain parts for
certain activities, but shifting focus does not mean shifting activity levels necessarily. The different
actions influence one another, but they do not turn each other off.
SUBTEXTING in CHOREOGRAPHIC PRACTICE

I turn all gesturing into a Paralinguistic subtext37 for the dancer, or to be more precise:
paraexperiential gesture (gesture that is evoke by experience, emotion, feeling, thought, reflex,
situation, context, conversation, exchange, living, etc, in my opinion, is the foundation for dance.
Gesture isn't the only foundation for dance, but I would like to discuss how gesture plays a role in my
choreographic process and what this could translate to in regards to academic contexts and other
areas of life, such as education, therapy, research, politics, etc..
“I'm not so interested in how they move as in what moves them.”

Pina Bausch38
36 Find research to back this up.

37 Goals and thesis/hypothesis, put into abstract/summary/introduction, back up with argumentation, back up with
research/philosophy
38 Pina Bausch
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4 65
WHAT IS A GESTURE?:
PHENOMENOLOGICAL POV:
Mearleau-Ponty and others
SUMMARY OF TOPICS BY PARAGRAPH
66
“TRACING GESTURE: REVISITING MEANING AND REDEFINING IT'S PLACE IN
CHOREOGRAPHIC PRACTICE AND ACADEMIC CONTEXTS”
Merleau-Ponty: Phenomenology, The body is a historical idea (need to emphasize the living body,
ground philosophy in our lived experience, philosophy are 'pseudo-problems', we are disconnected,
everything rests on the background of perception, intellectualism removes us from the world,
empiricism: reducing what exists to what we can directly perceive, in order to describe 'essences' we
have to do the phenomenological reduction (see the world as it is, but stepping back to watch it
without withdrawing from it, relative detachment, unites extreme subjectivism with extreme
objectivism, emphasizes the living body, Husserl (body as third person “Koerper”, body as living first
person “Leib”, against mind-body dualism, not a dualistic philosophy, in-between, there is not inner
self, we know ourselves only in and through the world, historical nature of the person/body, constant
state of becoming, no fixed essence, process through personal and collective history, not a thing but
an orientation towards space, there is no space without the body, can';t apply abstract categories on
living bodies: you have to go the other way, enactivist view of consciousness, motility is the spatiality
of the body brought about in action, consciousness takes place in motility, I can: my body is an I can,
tacit knowledge of the body in space, directed towards possibilities, objective space (allo-centric
space) and oriented space (bodily space, motility/motricity, first person, ego-centric space), objective
space is fundamental and objective space is he derivative: not the other way around as we have it
traditionally in western philosophy, our active engagement with the world around us, our
consciousness is embodied. Phenomenology is concerned with descriptions. Phenomenological
approach to analysis. There is no 'inner self' for Merleau-Ponty, but there are layered dimensions of
our experiential existence. Our constant state of becoming in the here and now. Body schema: I can.
Gestalt: the whole, the sensible realm already comes to us with this spontaenous structuration, that
does not require cognition/intellectual understanding. Form is embedded into matter, one figure
stands out of the background and asserts itself without the background disappearing. Every
perceptual field has this dynamic of figure and background. We perceive depth, which is a feature of
the organization of elements in the area. Left and right and up and down are already organized into
the field of perception. he resists the notion of mere sensory interpretation of the environment.
Perception of our own bodies: when I experience and perceive my own body it's impossible for me to
know where matter and form go one way or another. It's not an intellectual activity, but in our own
embodiment that we see the limits of critical philosophy. Phantom limbs.
DISSERTATION 2024 * Performance Studies * PAR * University of California at Davis * Karola Luttringhaus
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5
68
WHAT IS A GESTURE?: GESTURE

RESEARCH POV: GEOFFREY
BEATTIE, SUSAN GOLDYN-
MEADOWS, BOGDANKA PAVELIN
LESIC , and others
SUMMARY OF TOPICS BY PARAGRAPH

 STOP!: introducing some of my goal: introduction/overview into research in gestures studies.
Sign, signifier, emblem gestures (translatable to consistent, clear meaning), peace sign, easy
recognize, emblems jump out into conscious awareness, gesticulation, obvious, culturally
agreed upon, some universality
 HOW AND WHY: awareness of constant/frequent gesturing, sub-consciously created,
relationships between gesture and movement, idiosyncratic, types of gestures, some reasons
for gesturing, scale of gesturing paralleled with scale of volume, explore what gesture
research has studied and concluded about why and how we gesture. how and why do they
make sense, matter, and relate to dance and other areas of life; body expresses and
communicates (through body-part unique ways of knowing and expressing) gestures are sub-
consciously created, conscious bodily participation, gesture, vocalization and language are on
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equal par. cognition is more complex, takes place in more areas of the body than one.Dance is
an amplification of expression. Gesture/thinking as reflex. Reflex as intelligence. Lexical
ambiguity. McNeill's “growth-point” theory: conflict creates gesture to provide greater clarity.
Problems with growth-point theory: insufficiency around conversational and social context.
 EXAMPLES: head scratching when wondering about something. connections between
thought and movement. dance is a form of shouting, expressing more clearly, amplification.
studies only scratch the surface, list of moments/situations when people gesture, examples of
gestures I notice in myself often with short guesses as to why I do them, Meditations:
associations on my gestures while writing.
 KINESICS: gesture study terminology, subset of Communication Studies, kinesics, oculesics,
introducing the need for individuation for gestural choreography (to be picked up and
elaborated on again later)
 WHO GESTURES?: hominidae, cats, dogs, birds, etc... investigating how dane and gesture are
related, and how far the definitions of gesture can be expanded.
STOP!
In this chapter I wish to explore and outline what gesture research has studied and concluded about
why, when, and how we39 gesture. Geoffrey Beattie and Judith Holler40 write: “McNeill (1985,
1992, 2000) suggests that gesture and speech are two different dimensions of thinking, with
gestures often representing information that is not represented in speech so that, jointly, they
provide a fuller insight into a speaker’s thoughts.”41 Beattie and others42 refer to gesture and
39
I am referring here to western euro-usa culture.
40 Judith Holler and Goeffrey Beattie, "Pragmatic aspects of representational gestures: Do speakers use them to clarify
verbal ambiguity for the listener?”, 2003, University of Manchester
41 One of my key arguments: important quote, add to list of theories and arguments, to abstract, conclusion
42 These people have referred to gesture and speech as separate “communicational channels”:(add sources/references)
Holler & Beattie (page 1/127, as mentioned in footnote Nr 40 above), Goldyn-Meadow (p.......), add others as they come
up
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speech as two independent but cooperative “communicational channels”. Holler and Beattie further
add: “He (McNeill) also claims that the gesture here ‘is necessarily regarded as a symbol on an equal
footing with the sentence’ (ibid.; emphasis added). This view of gesture-speech interaction seems
implicitly to suggest that gesture and speech are involved in the communication of meaning in a
similar way in that they both contribute to the communication process by each representing certain
aspects of a mental image.”(p.2/128)
'Stop!'. A gesture can be a sign, a signifier, a codified, culturally agreed upon, movement and symbol,
that stands on its own in the transmission of information. Similar to a word or sentence, it can
convey clear information without needing any other context. That kind of gesture, like for example
the peace sign, or the stop! Gesture are called emblem gestures. They are sometimes universal, or
transferable from culture to culture. There are other types of gestures that are universal, that I will
discuss a bit later on.
In comparison to gesturing, gesticulating is thought of as very broad and overly dramatic movements
to illustrate specific things in speech or performance, or to draw attention to the speaker. Both
Emblems, such as the peace sign, and gesticulations are very obvious movements. We recognize
emblems easily. I think of it as recognizing a few words we know in a foreign language. They stand
out and jump out into our attention rather easily.
It will become important to consider how to delineate one gesture from another. Mc Neill (1992)
defines “A gesture unit ... as “the period of time between successive rests of the limbs (McNeill,
1992).” (from p.5 Kang and Tversky) I will revisit this definition within the context of movement
analyses later on.43
HOW AND WHY
43 To do: revisit gesture definitions from McNeill and others in the context of choreography, movement analysis
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I gesture all the time. Sometimes I am aware of it especially since I write about and work with
gesture. But still, often, or mostly, I am not aware of what gestures I make. I do not plan them or try
to manipulate them in any way. I become aware of them in mid action and sometimes I surprise
myself with them. They seem to be parts of my speaking and thinking processes. They just happen.
They make sense to me, and it is one of my main goals44 here to describe how and why these
gestures “make sense”. And how and why they show up in my choreographic work with such
importance and prevalence. All types of gestures make their way into my choreography, emblems
or learned vocabulary of movement are certainly some of them, but what fascinates me are the
creatively, emergent, morphing, adaptive, and spontaneous gestures that make up the majority of
intuitive processes of gesturing. I am mostly working with the types of gestures that Geoffrey
Beattie45 refers to as “unconsciously generated gestures”. I suppose even an emblem can be
produced uncosciously, it just happens to show up as part of speech. But first, I need to clarify that I
prefer the term “subconscious” because the term “un-conscious” to me indicates that there is no
awareness at all, and that a person is in a state of mind that is equivalent to being under anesthesia,
passed out, physiologically not-conscious. “Sub conscious” is a term that helps me preserve that
body's conscious participation via non-verbal communication, via the various body-part's specific
ways of knowing and expressing, i.e. movement, posture, gestures, eye movements, focus, etc. I
don't think that gestures are unconsciously created, but rather they are created subconsciously46,
because in a state of un-consciousness, not much can happen at all besides essential life preserving
functions. Communication is not taking place during states of unconsciousness. Not everything we
think about and experience and wish to communicate makes it or even can make it into language and
words, for various reasons (time, efficiency, language not having the proper expressions, etc). There
is too much going on at the same time for language to capture it all, or enough to convey proper
situational information, within a reasonable time frame for communication to take place and be
engaging. Hence, gesturing, emoting, and vocalizing is part of communication, on equal par with
44 Make sure to address this goal and deliver an explanation, a theory and a defense, add to abstract, introduction and
conclusion.
45 Geoffrey Beattie, “How spontaneous gestures connect to thinking”, p.4, p.6, p.7
46 Theory, add to abstract, goals, conclusion
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words. Not everything is controlled by our cognitive processes. And not all cognitive processes are
possible to detect and be aware of all the time. So consciousness is present, but the parts of our
consciousness that are aware of an control thinking and speaking are not able to access this
information fully. Thinking and cognition takes place in more places than the brain, or specific brain
regions47. Multiple regions are involved and multiple other structures and systems and agents are at
work. I will speculate on and research ideas and philosophies around ways of thinking that
involve agents, or processes that reach, beyond the personal body (indigenous thought, spiritual
thought, artists claiming that something speaks through them, etc)
Holler and Beattie write: “According to McNeill, ‘a gesture will occur only if one’s current thought
contrasts with the background discourse’ (McNeill, 1992, p. 2), or, in other words, gestures occur with
those aspects of thought that stand out against the immediate context of speaking. This type of
argument is central to McNeill’s growth point theory (1992, 2000), with which he attempts to explain
the occurrence and form of gestures. With this theory, McNeill attempts to explain in great detail
how and why gesture originates from thought, using illustrative examples.” (p.2/128) My
interpretation of this is that either speech, vocalization, or gesture is chosen to communicate.
Another of these channels is added as necessary in order to be more specific. This happens extremely
fast and is not a conscious choice per se; conscious as in the body-mind does choose to do this, but it
is decided upon so quickly and based on mechanisms primarily outside of our conscious control, that
they are perhaps more like reflexes. Is the need to express oneself truthfully a reflex? Or some other
category of action that falls between a reflex and a conscious cognitive choice. The term 'reflex'
carries with it connotations of a lack of intelligence. I beg to question the definition of intelligence:
perhaps we could see the existence of reflexes as signs of intelligence. Reflexes afford greater
reaction speed and are often protective mechanisms/ action chains. Holler and Beattie write about
McNeill's explanation for the emergence of gestures; they say that “Growth points emerge from such
‘fields of oppositions’, as McNeill calls them, and trigger gestures.”(p.2/128) A conflict or a potential
confusion, a lexical ambiguity, must exist for a gesture to arise. Holler and beattie criticize McNeill's
47 Find research on decisionmaking or thinking and where it is taking place. Add quotes here.
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theory in part because “McNeill does not provide any example of how exactly the social context has
an influence on the emergence of growth points.”(p3/129). McNeill uses artificial situations and does
not look at spontaneous conversation. “This context shapes the content of thought and in particular
the speaker’s intentions, because the communicational context creates a variety of communicational
demands, which the speaker responds to. Therefore, it is important to take the social context into
account in a more detailed and specified manner when talking about the communicational role of
gestures.”(p3/129) Holler and Beattie conclude “...we want to suggest that gestures assist speech and
facilitate the communication process by responding to immediate communicational demands that a
situation poses, and for which the speaker considers the verbal channel as not sufficient.” (p.4/130)
Furthermore they say that “...gesture might be used as a resource to fulfill different kinds of
communicational functions and that one such function might be the disambiguation of speech,...”
(p4/130). They conclude “In short, the theoretical position we are arguing for suggests that gestures
have a range of pragmatic uses, which is an aspect of functioning that McNeill’s theory somewhat
neglects. This is not because findings such as the present ones are not fundamentally compatible
with his theory, but rather because McNeill seems to largely ignore the influence of the social context
and focuses on the interface of language, gesture and thought instead. Of course, this focus is
indispensable if we are to build a general theory of gesture. However, at the same time, it is
necessary to expand his theory by attempting to understand what aspects of ‘the context’ in which
communication takes place may encourage the use of gestures and influence their form, as well as
the interaction of gesture and speech. Only then will we be able to further our understanding of the
communicational role that these ubiquitous hand gestures play in everyday talk. The present
analyses represent one small step in this direction.”(p.26/152) Holler and Beattie here mainly describe
that the speaker anticipates the interlocutor's understanding and potential problems in regards to
lexical ambiguities and employs gesture in pragmatic ways to enhance comprehension. They write:
“Ambiguity is a fundamental characteristic of spoken language (see, for example, Kendon, 2000), and
attributable to the fact that we use a finite number of words in order to talk about an infinite number
of things in the world. However, verbal ambiguity can pose a communication problem for the listener,
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and it would therefore be interesting to see whether speakers do indeed employ gesture in cases of
ambiguity in order to get the message across.”(p.4/130) The finding of this study is: yes, they do.
EXAMPLES: MEDITATIONS ON GESTURING48

Gesturing is much more complex than any study could demonstrate. Studies help us get a taste of
what all might be going on. But it would be too easy to land on one explanation. I don;t think it's like
that. There is gesturing that blind people do, that people do in phone conversations, that people do
when talking to themselves, when thinking, writing, reading. Even in sleep sometimes movements
are created. Is there any gesturing outside of conversation?49 Some gestures that I do often and
become aware of are for example: My fingers scratch my head when I don't know an answer50 or
something is puzzling. There are many idiosyncratic and often repetitive smaller movements that
my body does when I am trying to remember a specific word for example. These seem to bridge
moments of suspense, pauses, breathholds,....they happen automatically. When the action of
writing is stopped because I am thinking about where to lead my argumentation next, or how to
express something, I gesture, I shift my focus from thinking and writing to breathing or holding
breath and moving somehow, but these movements are often small, and focus on the fingertips,
face, head, etc... thoughts and pauses in thought lead me to gesture, to change my posture and
focus: I touch my face and slide my fingers slowly across the opposite half of my jaw or suddenly (I am
thinking “Hm, is that true? Is that a good way of saying it, am I expressing myself clearly?” I suppose
this supports Holler and Beattie's theory around lexical ambiguity. I gesture when I am trying to make
something very clear. At other times I am becoming aware of the sensation of my fingertips of my
48 To do: videotape myself when writing and analyse all my gestures.

49 To do: Research into gestures that are not communicating with another, support thinking, for example. Add this research
here.
50 note to self: is there a correlation between gestures and types of actions, thoughts, regions of
brain activity? I don't know if anyone has done this researc: Check on research into brain regions in relation
to where people touch their heads when they gesture, think and try to find an answer). A German saying is “Leichte
Schlaege auf den hinterkopf erhoehen das Denkvermoegen” “Slight slapping onto the back of the head enhances the
capacity for thinking”, it's something I grew up with. I don't know where this comes from.
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left hand sliding against one another in circular motions, bringing my attention to a very small area. I
am trying to be specific. Sometimes these gestures are really strange: I touched my nose and pulled
up my upper lip, almost like an angry dog... I had never noticed that gesture before. It happened just
now, writing these last sentences. It was almost as if I am trying to smell my path through these
words. Playing with my upper lip is another gesture. Sometimes the sensation of the touch distracts
me from writing. I am trying to observe my thoughts. Pulling on my lip: pulling words out of my
mouth?, biting my upper lip: practicing verbalization?, ...writing and the thinking that is associated
with it draws my attention very much to the front of my face and the fingertips. Snakelike
undulations with my spine in between sentences bring energy into my arms while loosening my back
muscles a bit. When I stop typing, the fingers continue moving in the air, or rubbing against each
other, keeping the flow going.
Or, I sit back against my chair to loosen some 'stuck' muscles, or I slump over when I am tired. I have
even fallen to the ground when I felt utterly defeated, helpless, and panicked about another person
whose situation I felt responsible for. A dramatic gesture at a dramatic moment. The more stressed I
am or the more emotional the experience is perceived, the more my body feels threatened: the more
grand a gesture I produce. When we raise our voice, we are more likely to gesture bigger as well,
increasing the 'volume' on both vocal and visual signals. Bigger gestures are easier to see. Louder
voices are easier to hear. Dancing is an amplification, sometimes like shouting: speaking up, louder,
expressing enunciating more clearly, it is the act of expressing something in a way that wants to be
seen and even felt kinaesthetically, communally.
KINESICS
As a subset of Communication Studies: Kinesics explores how bodily movements and facial
expressions relate to, produce, or support meaning and communication non-verbally. A further
subset of kinesics is oculesics, the study of eye movements, gaze, and other eye related events in
communication, and psychology in general. The eyes are an important aspect in choreography both
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in how eye movements affect the dancer as well as how they communicate meaning51 to the viewer. I
will include posture and how it has settled into the body over time and manifested itself more
permanently, changing how the 'same' movement is inevitably executed uniquely by individual
dancers, because of individual physiology and structural changes over time, which prompts
choreographic consideration around individuation. I will speak to this important component in my
work at a later point in this chapter52.
WHO GESTURES?
Although I am only writing about gesture in humans I find it interesting to know that all hominidae
use gesture. This includes, for example, gorillas, bonobos, chimpanzees, and Urang Utans. Cats,
dogs, birds, and many others gesture as well, using their heads and eyes and posture more than their
hands and arms, but birds will use dance and even create sculptures and design and set stages for
formal performances. Some theories around the origins of language hence argue that gesture
preceded the development of spoken and written language. Although that theory seems to make
sense generally speaking, I will not be concerned with investigating this claim. I am more interested
in how gesture and dance are related and how far our definitions of gesturing can be expanded. I am
curious to see how far my research into gesture will lead me; do mountains gesture?
DETOUR
As everything in this world, and beyond, lives in exchange with one another, there is communication
among those individual agents: water forming oceans, rivers, rain, clouds, wind, mountains, grasses,
deer, etc...There is some form of gesturing happening, just perhaps not in the way we think of it. It is
a very dislikable quality of western people to deny anything and anyone but humans the ability to
think, act, communicate, feel, express, etc. Since our language does not allow for agency and
personhood in 'others' and even makes a strong attempt at 'othering' every'thing' I will have to
51 Meaning: I am using the word 'meaning' here until I find that the term needs to be replaced by another. I am providing
a definition of the word in chapter one on page (tbd)
52 See Chapter 2, section (tbd) “Individuation and adaptation of movement execution based on individual experience
and embodiment and expression” stuff about expressing the meaning not copying movements.
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borrow some of the language from indigenous ways of thinking. I hope that this will not be perceived
as cultural appropriation. Our definitions are very strictly limited and so we have many blindspots to
the gestures of all of our beyond-human relations. We do not know how to listen to our beyond-
human relations, to rock, water, grass, dogs, etc. I don't know how to write about animals without
calling them animals. They are people. They gesture. All of them. I will refer to them as beyond-
human people. It is a question of learning to communicate that is the issue. We do not communicate
with them enough. We do not listen to them enough. Listening lies at the heart of communication.
GESTURE RESEARCH
In the field of Gesture Studies, gestures are defined as movements of the arms, hands, face, eyes,
and the rest of the body that accompany speech or stand on their own for the purpose of
communication. Gestures that emerge as we speak fall under the category of co-speech gestures.
Susan Goldyn-Meadows53 points out that even people who are blind from birth will gesture, never
having seen anyone do so. We will also gesture when we are speaking to someone on the phone
that can not see us, so gesturing appears to reach beyond visual communication into our own
processes of thought and expression. Seokmin Kang and Barbara Tversky54 write: “Gestures serve
many roles in communication, learning and understanding both for those who view them and those
who create them. Gestures are especially effective when they bear resemblance to the thought they
represent, an advantage they have over words.....Gestures can map many meanings more directly
than language, representing many concepts congruently. Designing and using gestures congruent
with meaning can augment comprehension and learning.” (p.1 abstract, Seokmin Kang and Barbara
Tversky) They add: “Gestures are especially effective because they can both resemble and represent
and also embody action.” (p.1, Seokmin Kang and Barbara Tversky) “Dynamic systems ordinarily
have one or more structural layers and one or more layers of action. Structural layers consist of a set
of parts, typically with specific associated properties, and their interrelations. Layers of action,
behavior, process or causality consist of sequences of kinds of actions and their consequences. The
53 Susan Goldyn-Meadows (page...?)
54 Seokmin Kang and barbara Tversky, “From Hands to Minds: Gestures promote understanding”, Cognitive Research:
Kang and Tversky Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications (2016)
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structural layer is static, and if only for that reason, is easier to understand. The action layer is
dynamic; it consists of changes in time, specifically, a sequence of varying actions and outcomes that
are the consequences of the actions, often accompanied by causal reasons. Smart undergraduates
who happen to score below the median in a test of mechanical ability—that is half the
undergraduates—have difficulties understanding the behavior of dynamic systems, even relatively
simple ones like the workings of a car brake or bicycle pump or pulley system, though they readily
grasp the structure of the system parts (e.g., Hmelo-Silver & Pfeffer, 2004; Tversky, Heiser, &
Morrison, 2013).” (p.1, Seokmin Kang and Barbara Tversky) Theatre performance is such a complex
system. Starting with the spatial arrangement and organization of people to come together, to
viewing something conceptual, while translating how the seen relates to other people or one's own
life, etc. Each performance is comprised of multiple layers and each audience member has unique
ways of processing the experience. Kang and Tversky continue: “Putting concepts into the world in
the form of sketches, models, diagrams, artifacts and the like is well-known to promote memory,
thinking and learning (e.g., Card, Mackinlay & Shneiderman, 1999; Hegarty, 2011; Larkin & Simon,
1987; Mayer, 2005; Schon, 1983; Tufte, 1983; Tversky, 2001, 2011).....Importantly, the ways that
elements are shown and spatially arranged can abstract and structure thought more directly and
congruently than language (p.2).....Several solutions have been devised to convey dynamic
information in graphics, including arrows, successive still diagrams and animated diagrams; none
have proved to be universally satisfactory. As noted, a common and often successful solution is to use
arrows. People readily produce and interpret arrows as temporal and/or causal relations (e.g., Heiser
& Tversky, 2006). However, arrows can be ambiguous because they have a multitude of uses in
diagrams. They can be used to label, to indicate temporal sequence, to indicate movement, to
indicate causal connection, to show invisible forces, and more (e.g., Tversky, 2011) (p.2) … Animations
are especially compelling because they are conceptually congruent with what they convey: they use
change in time to convey change in time (Tversky, Morrison, & Betrancourt, 2002). However, a broad
survey comparing animated and still graphics relaying the same information and designed to educate
viewers about complex processes that occur over time showed no benefits from animated graphics
(Tversky et al., 2002)....In fact, animations accompanied by explanations can improve understanding
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when compared with animations without explanations (e.g., Mayer, 2005). (p.2) …..An underused
and understudied possibility for effectively explaining dynamic systems is to use
gestures....Numerous studies have shown that people spontaneously gesture when explaining to
themselves or to others (e.g., Alibali, Bassok, Solomon, Syc, & Goldin-Meadow, 1999; Alibali,
Spencer, Knox, & Kita, 2011; Atit, Gagnier, & Shipley, 2014; Cartmill et al., 2012; Chu & Kita, 2011;
Emmorey, Tversky, & Taylor, 2000;(p.2) …..Ehrlich, Levine, & Goldin-Meadow, 2006; Engle, 1998;
Goldin-Meadow & Beilock, 2010; Goldin-Meadow & Alibali, 1999; Goldin-Meadow, Kim, & Singer,
1999; Goldin-Meadow, Nusbaum, Kelly, & Wagner, 2001; Gukson, Goldin-Meadow, Newcombe, &
Shipley, 2013; Hostetter & Alibali, 2008; Kang, Tversky, & Black, 2014; Schwartz & Black, 1996). In
many cases, gestures carry information that is not carried in speech. Considerable research has
shown that information carried solely by gesture can facilitate learning, thinking and understanding
in both children and adults in a broad range of tasks including conservation (e.g., Church,
AymanNolley, & Mahootian, 2004; Ping & Goldin-Meadow, 2008), word learning (McGregor,
Rohlfing, Bean, & Marschner, 2009), problem solving (Beilock & GoldinMeadow, 2010; Singer &
Goldin-Meadow, 2005; Tversky & Kessell, 2014), sentence memory (Thompson, Driscoll, & Markson,
1998), asymmetry (Valenzeno, Alibali, & Klatzky, 2003), math (e.g., Alibali & DiRusso, 1999; Cook,
Duffy, & Fenn, 2013; Cook & Goldin-Meadow, 2006; Goldin-Meadow et al., 1999; Segal, Tversky, &
Black, 2014), math analogies (Richland & McDonough, 2010), cyclical and simultaneous time
(Jamalian & Tversky, 2012), story understanding (Beattie & Shovelton, 1999), and more.
(p.3)...Gestures are frequently produced spontaneously to express both structure and action (e.g.,
Atit et al., 2014; Cartmill et al., 2012; Chu & Kita, 2011; Emmorey et al., 2000; Enfield, 2003; Engle,
1998; Goldin-Meadow & Beilock, 2010; Gukson et al., 2013; Kang et al., 2014).(p.3)......A sequence of
pointing gestures in gesture space can map the relative spatial locations of landmarks in an
environment, much like a schematic map (Emmorey et al., 2000). A circling gesture is a more direct
and congruent representation of circling motion than the word “circling.” Gestures are themselves
actions and can be three-dimensional so can represent complex manners of action more directly
certainly than words and in many cases also more directly than flat diagrams or animations. Note
that in these congruent mappings of meaning, the gestures both represent the concept to be
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conveyed and resemble the concept to be conveyed. Both the word “circling” and a circular motion of
the finger represent circling motion but only the circular motion resembles circling. A circling gesture
can be more readily apprehended than a word, which is an arbitrary mapping of meaning to sound
requiring knowledge of the language.(p.3) …..Gestures are spontaneously used to convey action and
gestures can both represent and resemble actions. Neuroscience research also shows connections
between thought, action and gesture. Watching actions performed by others, especially well-known
actions, has been shown to activate regions of the brain involved in planning or making actions, a
phenomenon known as motor resonance (e.g., Decety et al., 1997; Iacoboni, Rizzolatti & Craighero,
2004; Iacoboni et al., 1999; Molenberghs, Cunnington, & Mattingly, 2012; Rizzolatti & Craighero,
2004; Rizzolatti, Fogasse, & Gallese, 2001; Utihol, van Rooij, Bekkering, & Haselager, 2011). The
general view is that this kind of motor mirroring serves action understanding. Seeing action gestures,
then, should induce motor resonance, adding a layer of meaning and understanding of action.(p.3) ”
Gestures are divided into several overarching categories. I will offer an introductory glimpse into
gesture research here insofar as it remains relevant to my hypotheses around the various ways in
which gesture and dance are intertwined. Geoffrey Beattie writes: “... iconic and metaphoric
gestures have no standards of form. In other words, we spontaneously and unconsciously create
meaning in gesture.” (p.6, Beattie, How Spontaneous gestures connect to Thinking) This fluidity and
creativity of gesturing is important as it serves as an easy way into understanding and re-tracing
dance as full-body gesture.
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Beattie55 writes: “David McNeill (1992) in his book ‘Hand and Mind’ had argued that ‘Gestures exhibit
images that cannot always be expressed in speech, as well as images the speaker thinks are
concealed...People unwittingly display their inner thoughts and ways of understanding events of the
world.’ We may edit our speech but not our unconsciously generated gestures. Thus, we may find
cases where our gestures and speech do not match, and when we do these gestures will tend to be a
more accurate indicator of underlying thoughts.” (from Beattie ‘Rethinking Body Language’,
Routledge, 2016). For me this strengthens the idea that intuition, improvisation, spontaneity, and
allowing movement to happen are all valid and 'natural' processes of expression. Beattie writes: “the
connection between nonverbal communication and speech. The traditional assumption in both the
academic and the popular literature is that they're separate systems of communication. But when
you study people closely, you can see immediately that the two systems are very closely
connected,”(Beattie, p.2, How spontaneous gestures connect to thinking). If I have the urge to
dance, move with gestural expression, then this is expressing something. My movements are in a
way 'always expressing something'. I am not able to control my movements and decouple them from
my thinking consistently (I suppose that good liars are better at it than bad liars).
If I meditate on a topic, meaning I enter a specific focused mindset and allow my mind to enter a
state of “talking about” something, and I begin move without planning any movements (this may
take some time, and it could be easy or difficult to enter this state and find that connection, and it
may be shallow or deep more like a trance state), my movements will relate to that which I am
thinking about and can be traced back to the topic, and can be potentially understood by other
people, in the same way that they pick up on co-speech gestures. People can misunderstand anyone
no matter how clear, or associate very different things with certain words, movements expressions
etc, so let me postpone addressing these factors, the other side of the communication, and focus on
the dancer/communicator/speaker. I will look at the reader/audience listener at a later point in time.
But, Beattie's research on what people are able to pick up on is also strengthening my ideas around
55 p. 6 in “How Spontaenous Gestures Connect to our Thinking”, (from Beattie ‘Rethinking Body Language’,
Routledge, 2016).
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the potential specificity of dance movement in regards to portraying specific things, ideas, concepts,
etc through dance movement. Being able to “read” a dancer's movements depends to some degree
on the audience's ability to empathize with the movements, how they feel when they are being
executed, how easy or difficult they are to produce, etc. It depends on their ability to describe what
they see. Beattie gives a bullet-point list of things that the listener will pick up on in non-verbal
signals relating: “Size  Relative position  Direction  Movement  Identity  Description of action,
speed (and) shape.”(Beattie, p.6 HSGCTT) This is a very broad list and outlines very rough groupings.
Gestures will describe and provide information on spatial arrangement (both actual and metaphorical
space), texture, emotional attitude, relationships, belonging, degree of involvement/investment
(how much passion does the speaker have for what they are talking about), and by combining
gestures and contextual elements (space, lighting, relationship to audience, etc) we can change
meanings and create greater specificity and express concepts that are perhaps easier explained in
words than in gesture alone. This then becomes tremendously complex and includes social, political
and psychological or spiritual ideas and concepts. On page 7 he writes something very important:
“So gestures do convey significant information. But how important is this information? We scored all
of the different bits of ‘size’ information in a number of stories and found (somewhat counter-
intuitively) that ‘high importance’ size information was more likely to be encoded in gesture only
rather than in speech or in speech and gesture.” (Beattie, HSGCTT, p.7) He refers here to someone
talking about having been hit by a huge bicycle. The size indicator word “huge” was predominately
expressed in gestural form rather than verbal form. Important information is entrusted to gesture!
Automatically and unconsciously.
READING HIDDEN THOUGHTS

Beattie writes: “I want to suggest that there are a number of important applications of the work
including: i. Reading hidden thoughts. ii. Detecting deception: forensic implications. iii. Identifying
‘dissociation’ in attitudes. iv. Advertising.” (Beattie, HSGCTT), p.7). For example, we can tell if our
friend isn't really excited to do something although he says he is. What is it about his expression,
gesture, facial expression, or posture that makes us question his words? People will try to suppress
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emotions and thoughts all the time. Often successfully. But we can become more perceptive by
studying gesture. Similar to the gait cycle we can study gesture more precisely by dividing the
gesture into specific phases. Beattie explains the following observable categories: preparation, pre-
stroke hold, stroke, post-stroke hold, and retraction. Comparing people speaking the truth and
people lying, particularly the stroke and post-stroke holds were significantly shorter during lying.
Some degree of control is possible but it is difficult to perfect and control every moment of gesturing.
Gesturing is often stopped during a lie. These moments could be split-seconds only. But not only
lying can alter gesturing or kick in these attempts to control. Uncertainty about what is being said,
bad memories that connect to a thing that is being said, or a number of other conflicting thoughts or
emotions might be the reason. This discussion around lying or controlling or attempting to act as if
one is telling the truth directly translates to theatre and dance, of course. After all, the actor/dancer is
performing something that has been rehearsed and is no longer spontaneous, or that they can not
relate to at all. In a sense they are lying. Now,.... I think that a “good” dancer is not lying, or lying
really well and a so called “bad” dancer is one that is not able to focus on the narrative and emotional
state that produces the coherent body language that the piece requires. “Bad” dancers seem to be
lying, doing something they are not aware of, or do not believe in. Their movements look disjointed
from their minds. They are over-acting, or acting something else entirely. I can read dancers'
thoughts. I can see if they believe their movements, their stories, if they have a story, if they are clear
on why and what they are doing. I don't have to understand the narrative or subtext, but I can
understand continuity, focus, attention, logic, follow through, and development. If it looks truly
meaningful to them, then I can be interested by what they are doing. But if they are not “in love” with
what they are doing, I can not stand to watch it. This is where honesty is a term that comes up for me
in rehearsals. I can tell if something is made out of a desire to please, entertain, get applause,
adoration, or if the dancers are falling back on reproducing steps rather than bringing those steps out
through their very unique embodied visceral experiences. In my work, I need dancers to have a
subtext. Or I need them to instinctively understand the movements and they don't need a subtext.
However, if they are not doing the movements the way I am hoping for, then I assist with subtext and
usually that is successful. Every dancer is different. I have worked with people that needed to have
84
the opportunity to improvise around a topic/situation, specific idea of a scene instead of being given
my movements. They couldn't dance my movements and express what I was expressing with them.
They needed to find their own movements to express what I was after. Usually there is some amount
of individuation because each dancer is a unique person that experiences and expresses a specific
feeling, situation or concept differently. So our rehearsals do not only consist of learning movement,
but of discussion. I need my dancers to go into a performance thinking about the topic not thinking
about the counts and the steps. Counting is “illegal” in my work; it kills your ability to feel and
express.
VARIABLES
Grammatical structures of different languages are reflected in how people gesture. This would lead to
conclusions about cultural and language related gestural and expressive differences in dance as well. I
will be addressing how several kinds of contexts56 change and contribute to meaning-making in
dance expression. Among those elements are for example the performance space design, lighting,
costuming, audience seating, audience proximity and interactivity, culture, political and sociological
environmental factors, age, and others.
CONNECTIONS
Susan Goldyn-Meadows (p.?57) points out that gestures are paralinguistic and intrinsic to language
and part of communication. Gestures and language are companions. Gestures apparently “align” (p.?
@ in talk) in some ways with the grammatical structure of the language and as one acquires a new
language one also acquires part of the gestures. According to Goldyn-Meadow58, more research into
this connection between learning a second language and gesture acquisition is pending. We can
modify our gestures to be helpful with communication or also confuse communication intentionally.
What researchers call “cooperative” gesturing stands against “competitive” gesturing: gestures
become more clear in encounters of cooperation and less clear in competitive situations or in
56 Context. See Chapter 1: Context... (tbd)
57 Connections between languages and gesturing, tbd talk on youtube, maybe there is a paper that accompanies this talk
58 Find place in talk where she says that this reasearch is still outstanding. Check if more studies have come out since.
85
deception. We tend to gesture more in a face-to-face situation, because we know that the gestures
can help with communication, but we still gesture, when our interlocutor can not see us. Gesture
evidently helps with thinking (word finding,flow, etc) and I am drawing conclusions from this
statement onto the act of dancing (as in authentic movement, where the dance is about oneself and
not about learning steps or dancing to counts and beats) similarly affecting and stimulating our
cognitive and speech processes and capacities. There is a number of research out there that points to
the connections between movement/physical activity and brain development, mathematical thinking
and learning59. Furthermore I will be talking about psychological well-being and it's connections to
creative dance in the section on Authentic Movement60.
SIGN LANGUAGES
Sometimes gesture replaces speaking altogether. This could be for individual words and concepts or
the entire language. Some languages use gestures instead of words for certain things, like directional
information, or even entire parts of sentences. Diego Campos61 told me about the gesture common in
Mexico that consists of all fingertips of one hand tightly pushing towards a common center , which
replaces the words “that was really tight”. One would speak “That was ….” and then gesture that
particular gesture to express the entire message. I will look briefly into sign languages (American Sign
language and Native American sign languages62). There are variations on a theme, as well as distinct
cultural differences in meaning where the same gesture will mean something entirely different.
Susan Goldin-Meadow63 writes: “When called upon to carry the full burden of communication,
gesture assumes a language-like form, with structure at word and sentence levels. However, when
produced along with speech, gesture assumes a different form – it becomes imagistic and analog.
Despite its form, the gesture that accompanies speech also communicates.” She continues: “Despite
59 Find quotes for this connection between math and physical activity/building of muscle
60 Chapter ?: Authentic Movement
61 Diego Campos, PhD student at UC Davis, artist, website link, etc...
62 Add info about ASL and native american sign languages, super brief excursion into this
63 SusanGoldin-Meadow The role of gesture in communication and thinking
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364661399013972 1364-6613/99/$ – see front matter ©

1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S1364-6613(99)01397-2
TrendsinCognitiveSciences–Vol.3,No.11,November1999
86
its form, the gesture that accompanies speech also communicates. Trained coders can glean
substantive information from gesture – information that is not always identical to that gleaned
from speech. Gesture can thus serve as a research tool, shedding light on speakers’ unspoken
thoughts. The controversial question is whether gesture conveys information to listeners not
trained to read them. Do spontaneous gestures communicate to ordinary listeners? Or might
they be produced only for speakers themselves? I suggest these are not mutually exclusive
functions – gesture serves as both a tool for communication for listeners, and a tool for thinking
for speakers.” (p419)
About deaf children of speaking parents she notes that these children will come up with their own
sign language. “The striking aspect of these gesture systems is that they are invented by deaf
children who have access, not to conventional sign languages such as ASL, but only to the
spontaneous gestures that their hearing parents use as they talk.
While the deaf children’s gesture systems have language-like structure, the hearing parents’ gestures
– like the gestures of all hearing speakers21 – do not22. “ (P420) . Depending on their application,
gestures take over, become more dominant, take different kinds of structures. In dance there might
yet be another additional manifestation that gestures accomplish. “When the manual modality is
used in conjunction with speech and does not carry the full burden of communication, it does not
assume language-like form – that is, it does not convey meaning by rule-governed combinations of
discrete units. Rather, these gestures convey meaning mimetically and idiosyncratically through
continuously varying forms21. The question is whether the gestures that accompany speech play a
role in communication despite the fact that they are not language-like in form.” (p.420)
Goldin-Meadows asks whether gesture can be interpreted reliably and consistently. It indeed
appears that there is substantial congruency/continuity/reliability. She states:...” gestures are not
random movements but rather reveal substantive beliefs about the task at hand.” p.422
CONTRIBUTING INFORMATION
87
Each time we gesture we are bringing additional information into the discourse. Even if the gesture
is what I call “illustrative”, meaning it mimics or reinforces what's being said, the gesture still gives
additional info about the nature of that which is talked about or how the speaker feels about it. Let's
say someone motions to “let's move the chairs over there!” they might be choosing a number of ways
to motion that action and location: a straight line movement and a pointing at a particular location,
or swervy gestural pathway and a up and over motion to the location, or a clearly indicated are where
the chairs need to go or a general area. The options are endless. However, in gesture studies, these
gestures are considered “illustrators” and I use the term “Illustrative/illustration” slightly differently,
indicating a kind of redundancy, or that they stand in for words. In that sense, ASL is illustrative 64.
'illustrative” to me means that something is said in words and in gesture and it does not add any new
information. There are some cross-cultural gestures, some that are shared by (almost?) all cultures.
For example raising the shoulders or bringing the palms up when expressing “I don't know” is fairly
universal.
It begs to question why there are similarities across cultures and it leads to concluding that perhaps
gesturing has something to do with how humans think, how they are human.
GESTURE TYPES
When talking about gesture and meaning, it is helpful to know what categories of gestures have been
established so far.
EMBLEM can be translated into a precise verbal message V for Victory,
easily repeated; 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,
ILLUSTRATORS used to depict the words being said, “Let's move the chairs over here”,
enhances what I am saying. Used to make a point, might not mean anything in
[particular (this is where I disagree, they mean specific things,or illustrate
64 Be clear here on my and their definition of “illustrative, decide if this distinction is clear and even useful.
88
specific things)
Iconic/metaphoric complex gestures that map out images, no standard form and no
lexicon, spontaneous, unconsciously produced, closely integrated with
speech, slightly precedes speech, phases;: preparation, pre-stroke hold,
stops, gesture happens, post stroke hold, retraction. 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.
Metaphoric gestures: are not necessarily grounded in the physical world
Batonic movements stress-timed movements, rhythmical emphasizers,
Deictics pointing, pragmatic: offering the floor to someone, or motioning "don't
bother me right now"
(SELF) ADAPTORS to release or display bodily tension, rubbing my face, rubbing hands,
REGULATORS gestures used to coordinate the flow of communication, eye contact to

invite someone into a conversation, signal, inviting people into
conversations
AFFECT DISPLAYS displays of emotions, facial expressions, gestures alongside facial

expressions, hands up and looking surprised, showing emotion,
frustration, happiness, shock, etc
89
DE-CATEGORIZING and RE-ASPECTING

I think there is the tendency in popular culture to assign gestures to the body and speech to
cognition. It seems that this categorization is reflected in academic circles, as practice research is still
not fully acknowledged as a form of research or academic inquiry. Beattie65 writes: “The traditional
view is that nonverbal communication is primarily concerned with the communication of emotions
and interpersonal relations. This (Beattie's) new theory will propose that some nonverbal
communication does reveal emotional state/interpersonal relations but some (particularly hand
movements) reveal unconscious aspects of thinking.” Goal66 of this dissertation is to significantly
blur the boundaries between thinking and emotions/affect, between thinking and doing. I argue
that both are part of one another and both are aspects of bodily function. I am arguing that all
actions and phenomena that we can experience are in fact matters of the body. Body-mind
duality does not exist in my theory. Thinking is a bodily action and movement and thinking
belong together. It is hard to do one without the other, although both can require substantial
amounts of focus and reduce the other. The question then arises: what is “thinking”? I wish to
redefine this term to include a) the body thinks b) moving is thinking c) thinking is moving I am
also seeking to decolonize the body and thinking, doing away with hierarchical categories that
imbue thinking and cognition with a higher value than for example sports or dancing. I think
these ways of thinking are deeply flawed, over-simplified, and unfounded. They are based on a
categorical way of thinking that dissects and cuts apart what it seeks to understand, rather than
coming from a whole-istic starting point, that premises cooperation and response-ability among
all parts of the body, without dominance of one part over the others for disproportionate
amounts of time. Thinking while writing a text does not exclude the other functions, such as
movement and feeling emotions. Studies show the correlations between emotion and reason.
65 Beattie, Geoffrey “How Spontaneous Gestures relate to thinking”, official transcript from talk at Gresham College,
2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nyxuiua-JM&t=1782s
66 Goal and thesis statement: refine this, calrify, be critical, be controversial
90
Without emotion there can be no reason, no impulse, no drive, no motivation for reason 67.
DANCE AS FULL BODY GESTURE: GESTURE IS THE FOUNDATION FOR DANCE

“Since the advent of printing the word has become the principal bridge joining human beings to one
another. The soul has migrated into the word and become crystallized there. The body, however, has
been stripped of soul and emptied. The expressive surface of our bodies has been reduced to just our
face. This is not simply because we cover the other parts of our bodies with clothes. Our face has now
come to resemble a clumsy little semaphore of the soul, sticking up in the air and signalling as best it
may. Sometimes, our hands help out a little, evoking the melancholy of mutilated limbs.”
Bela Balasz, “Visible Man”, p. 1
This quote is amazing. Very poetic and bitter. So dramatic. But I do agree with him in many ways.
·engage with how gesture relates to expression through embodied action
If our hands help us think, then our entire bodies do too.

“Complex ideas can be conveyed in gesture” (Susan Goldin-Meadow) @2:00
67 Find research to back this up.
91
Blind people gesture even though never having seen anyone gesture.
“Gesture is a window onto our thoughts” (Susan Goldin-Meadow) @3:00
“Gesture can reflect what we know. It can be a useful tool for parents, clinicians, ...for anyone who is
watching gesture....Gesture has the potential to do much more.... It can change what we know. It can
change our minds in two different ways: The gestures we see others do, and the ones we do ourselves
can change our mind.”(paraphrased a bit)
gesture-speech match: speech and gestures align.
Gesture-speech mismatch: different information in speech and gesture.
What do mismatchers know more or differently about the info than the matchers?
“We are mismatchers when we are on the cusp of elarning something.”(Susan Goldin-meadow)
@11:35
“Gesture is powerful as a learning device.” @18:00
“they extract meaning from the movement and come up with strategies (paraphrasing)” at 26:00
gesturing helped kids develop strategies.
“Just do anything” is my motto for starting a piece, if I don't already have a vision of what it should
look like etc. Just moving, full-body-gesturing, helps me find the topic, the structure, and the topic,
and the meaning.
Am I readying myself to learn by engaging physically and improvising around a topic? Improvising
could include mismatching because I don't have words yet for what I do.
How does gesture change what we know? @33:00

gesturing: motorsystem is engaged. The observer's motorsystem is also engaged.
Hand movements interfere, leg movements do not interfere @36:30
speech and gesture are two dofferent modalities... (note: is that so?) They offer two different
representational formats.
Speech, versus analog hands, pictorial information.
92
Note: I think gestures represent how people feel about things.

“if you produce a lot of mismatches before instruction, then you are ready to learn, and likely to
learn.” @43:00
gestures are not just movements, they convey information, we understand them all the time. They
way I move my hands it can influence how I think about a problem.
Co-speech gesture.
Sometimes it's just gesture. No speech.
Gestures for thinking.
Gestures for speaking.
Gesturing is related to acquiring new ideas.
Just moving may also be part of it.
Thinking with Bogdanka Pavelin Lesic's

“Speech Gestures and the Pragmatic
Economy of Oral Expression” p.tbd
Quotes to engage with:
93
6
LYNETTE HUNTER – CRITIQUES OF KNOWING &
POLITICS OF PRACTICE
text coming, in progress
p.24: “Smith. In 1973, Pateman’s profoundly influential critique of the liberal democratic social contract that
underwrites many of the representative democracies in the Euro-American west, illuminated the work of many other
political thinkers by defining the basis for the liberal social contract as the isolated autonomous individual (also
known as universal man), the notion of objective knowledge, and the idea of neutral and therefore unquestionable
truth. In many
Hunter, Lynette. Critiques of Knowing : Situated Textualities in Science, Computing and the Arts, Taylor & Francis
94
Group, 1999. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucdavis/detail.action?docID=169694.

Created from ucdavis on 2023-10-16 18:27:43. “
7
DO YOU SEE WHAT I MEAN? - Thinking with BRENDA FARNELL
indigenous sign language and non-verbal communication
coming soon.... under construction
95
8
ROGUE TEXT THAT IS NOT HET ASSIGNED TO A
CHAPTER:
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."
96
My dancing traces gesture. By dancing, I express, finding the traces of gestures that accompany
meaning and communication, and they become highlighted, enlarged, amplified, focused,
specialized, more clear, or used in specific ways to express something.
HAND GESTURES WHILE DANCING: RETRACING EXPERIENCES

When I dance, improvise, I often find myself making a lot of elaborate movements with ym hands
and fingers. These gestures are sometimes very specific and repetitive, I feel the need to express
them for a long time until my body no longer craves the sensation. These movements expand on the
usual every-day hand movements and can be tenticular like an Octopus walking across the ocean
floor and reaching for shells, feathered like a bird in flight, negotiating landing and wind-currents,
spidery supporting my weight on my fingertips, or supporting my weight with the normally non-
supporting surfaces like the backs of my hands or the thenar or hypothenar eminences, or knuckles.
Movements in improvisational contexts that are not geared towards choreographing, but merely for
dancing wildly to release energy and “just” move for the “sake of moving” (to be active and do
something healthy for my body), I think can be divided into these different categories:
1) feeling, perception, sensation: these movements satisfy my need for complexity and
completeness of sensations. This is very tactile. I search for perceptions and touch especially on the
outsides of my body that do not usually interact with the world through touch. It feels like
reassurance of presence, and it is a massage.
2) expressing the body, feeling the body's capabilities, full stretches, twists, etc, perception: I notice
quite a bit of jearning toward moving in complex, full-bodied, tiny, large, movements. Sort of the
entire breadth of experience.
3) expression of meaning, searching for gestures of meaning, being surprised by their meaning
sometimes, the dead snake, for example. Movements emerge that are tied to and evoke meaning
and associations.
4) communication of meaning to others.
97
As I dance my hand gestures, Iisten to myself, my thoughts, my emotions, my bodily experiences,

and sometimes I come to a conclusion about the gesture and sometimes I don't.
5) the need for intimacy, touch, caresses, being held, connecting to the world, it's humans and its
others.
6) to move with others in call and response or in mimicry/mirroring. This is a strong urge to connect
to others through movement conversation.
7) Allowing emotional, psychological, thought and embodied expression to find unity/congruence,
agreement, expression. Allowing to bring various “frequencies” into cooperative frequencies,
lessening the occurrence of “interference patterns”.
8) Retracing experiences to process them. Like dreaming, I believe, dancing, and moving creatively
expressively in general serves as a function to process experiences. I believe that these must be
cognitive, bodily functions to establish some sort of organization, congruency, equilibrium, or
communicability, openness, receptivity, responsibility, etc. To keep the organism healthy and
functioning, thriving.
All of these layers exist simultaneously.
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.
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I propose to regard dance (68) as 'full-bodied' gesture. Dance plays with the timing and amplitude of
these gestural expressions. Dance allows for a more complete embodied gesturing, in fact, dance is
the platform for unhindered full-bodied gesturing.
Gesture is a participant in the game of communication. When a person is gesturing while they are
speaking, we don't usually feel that these gestural movements are out of place; we accept them as
part and parcel of what is being communicated. Gesticulation emerges spontaneously and in parallel
with what the speaker is expressing. Movement of the appendages is under normal conditions
inseparable from speaking. Because of the physiological makeup of the body, gesture takes place in
the entire body. If I lift my arm the entire body is participating in this action and kinetic chains of
activity can be followed throughout the body in regards to shifts of weight, compensatory
movements, postural adjustments, and level changes. There are books about what gestures will
produce specific responses in interlocutors or audiences, but I find them artificial and annoying. To
plan one's gestures is contrived and is easily picked out as manipulative. Gesturing is spontaneous. It
is essential for holding meaning.
Dance, I am attemtping not to overgeneralize dance, for me, is an amplifier of gesture. When we
gesture with our hands, inevitably, our necks, torsos, legs and feet move as well. At the anatomical
and dance research level, any movement is a full-body action. In order to lift the arm, the body has to
shift away from that arm to compensate for the shift in weight and to prevent falling over. Whether
we are aware of it or not, each action contains within it a counteraction, each movement forward
68
dance: There are many forms of dance and many reasons and methodologies for dancing and creating dances. The
dance I speak of here refers to my own process of choreographing and more generally to the kind of dance that is the
focal point of German Dance Theatre and related modern dance practices. I am thereby opening the possibilities for
dance to be what I describe if not fundamentally by nature of expression.
99
consists of multiple efforts of moving or shifting back. movement is not as linear as we allow
ourselves to perceive. Upon closer scrutiny, all movement is multi-directional, undulatory, and
helical/spiraling.
Back to gesturing in particular: According to Geoffrey Beattie (6) researchers have distinguished
different categories of gestures. The qualities of the movements are indicative and directly
proportional to the quality of the desired response movement.
The gestures I am referring to, and am comparing dance to, are the gesticulations that our body
makes without asking for permission or without questioning what we are doing while we are talking,
or when reacting to something. This happens almost constantly in a fascinating immediacy. In
authentic Movement, this might be part of the so-called authenticity AM practitioners strive to tap
into. We are doing those movements to express ourselves, and to communicate all that which we
want to communicate and all of who we are at that moment. Much of the message exists only in the
gesture. Movements of lightness are intrinsically linked to feeling light, to seeing something light.
Heaviness is immediately understood when gestured. Within the contexts used they become tools
for expression of very specific, nuanced, states of experience and qualities. There is always a direct
connection. The two are deeply linked. By this we can access meaning through movement. As an
improvising choreographer, in the studio, with my colleague Lena, I am trying to open the channels
and allow for the flow and the connections to happen. I am trying to channel thought, situation and
emotion into movements. These are amplified, or, if the body is able and willing to move more fully,
as dancers are training to do, the movement can grow naturally. Like a poet or a writer, gaining
eloquence of expression, new, additional, different states of being and emotion can emerge, through
the dancer's ability to allow the emotion to travel further into the body, to dance inside the body and
play with the body.
To remain within a movement language such as Ballet or Graham Technique is a tremendous

reduction in expressive potential. For Martha Graham, these movements were what came from her
body/mind. They were hers, they were HER, and she began to structure and categorize them to make
100
a warm-up and training technique to help her dancers express what she wanted to express in her
pieces in her specific way. She developed a method for changing bodies to resemble hers. Ballet
trains people to resemble the typical ballet body. Graham needed her dancers to move in very
specific ways to 'move-speak' of the things she wanted to express. But one language doesn't transfer
to everything and everyone. The completeness of expression can suffer when sticking to a set of
signs. To some extent I think of the ballet language as an emblematic language that can be jotted
down in a 'connect the dots' sort of fashion. The expression of emotion and narrative is told through
everything else that goes on in the bodies of the ballet dancers while going from dot to dot, from
passé to arabesque to fouetté and so on. Like people gesturing while speaking, like gesturing while
communicating via ASL. The gestures are added to the dance language. Like the child first using
isolated words, then adding connectors and descriptors, then metaphors, etc. What tells the story is
the ability of the dancer to channel the energies of emotion into the body through facial and full
bodied gestures that gently augment the dance, through texture, timing, delay, direction and
positioning in space in order to make the message come to life. Most of the movements are rigid
forms through which the dancers move and perform in ways that carry the meaning as much as
possible. The “good” ballet dancer has to feel and emerge the ballet movements as if they are their
own. Ballet is a highly stylized and abstracted, encoded, way of moving. Also, this code contains rules
about who dances ballet, for whom, why, and where. Every language exists in a context and as a
language with a long lineage, it is a tradition that is practiced, in part, to keep certain ways and rules
alive. Of course, as any language, Ballet has changed an adapted to contemporary ways of being,
thinking and moving, but it is much more a traditional, historical project than for example
contemporary or post modern movement approaches. Everything will fall into historicity eventually.
The Axis Syllabus in this case is different.it is a listof principles that affect mvoement and it looks at
the individual reality of each mover: joint range of motion, anatomy and biomechanics are one way
of appraoching a way of moving that is unique to each individual and always changes and adapts to
new circulstances. In that sense the Axis Syllabus is not a style or a technique. It is a way of thinking
about movement and it can be applied to many different ways of moving and to other forms of
101
expression. I much prefer the Axis Syllabus69 to other ways of moving, because I am only concerned
with what I can do and what works for me. I am not trying to change my body to look like or move
like another. It is a way to find yourself, to find acceptance and freedom within your own range.
Studying Ballet is always a struggle and an attack onto my very self. Ballet reshapes the body against
physiological reality. It is the ultimate mind-over-matter movement approach as it continues to
disarticulate joint integrity, overstretches fascial and ligamentous connections, and celebrates the
female body that becomes undone. Any aspects deemed as female: fat on thighs, wide hips, big
butts, and big breasts are unfavorable charactersistics in ballet dancers.
TRACING GESTURE: 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.
69 Axis syllabus, founder Frey Faust, international research community, https://www.axissyllabusforum.org/ Axis syllabus
allows what is, whereas Cunningham, graham, ballet and other techniques hypothesize concepts and overlay these ways
of moving onto all other bodies. I find this oppressive. In that sense the AS is a political movement of anarchy against
oppression, hierarchy, and centralized power. Check this description with Frey
102
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.
A gesture encodes a multitude of meaning within a short hand signal, a bodily movement, a partial
sound, an automatic response, a first impression.
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8
TRACING GESTURE: READING JUDITH BUTLER'S “When Gesture
Becomes Event”
https://youtu.be/iuAMRxSH--s
Butler examines how Benjamin and Brecht use gesture as a critical practice.
Butler argues that the gesture becomes the event, unlike what Benjamin argued, that the
gesture “... is, a truncated form of action that has lost the context of it's established intelligibility.
Kafka's incomplete gestures... That gesture was understood as a kind of stalled action, one that could
not quite become action, that was something less than a fully formed act. Benjamin writes:"Kafka's
literary work divests the human gesture of it's traditional supports and then has a subject for
reflection without end." (p.182, performance reader)
On page 190 Butler writes: “The gesture, then, functions as the partial decomposition of the
performative that arrests action before it proves lethal.” I think I am arguing with Butler here that
gesture is not decompositional but emergent, bringing something about rather than being the
remnants of something once intelligible.
The gesture that Butler discusses is a split second moment where a mother has taken a bust (torso
and head statue) to throw it at her daughter, with the husband and father just entering the room
upon this scene that is frozen in time without any further explanation. We could look at this scene as
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taken out of context, or we could investigate it for it's potential and current meanings. Butler does
this in detail and concludes that the gesture itself, of threatening to kill a daughter with a head, is
laden with meaning.
Theatre itself is a gesture. A gesture towards real life. But theatre is in itself also itself, it is REAL,
because it does not need to stand in for anything else. As mucha s the gesture in itself is full of
meaning, theatre in itself is full of meaning. The act of theatre is real. Theatre is real. It is not only a
symbol for or towards something else, and this is what I think Berthold Brecht was after with the
Verfremdungseffekt. To remind the audience that we are not replaying reality or getting lost in an
imaginary, magical, reality, but that we are indeed coming together to engage in theatre. There is a
fundamental difference that is not that easy to explain70. I would say that this lies at the heart of some
of the struggles that I occasionally encountered in presenting dance-theatre to audiences. I believe
that some audiences expected to be transported into another reality, while others were interested in
staying present in the reality of the theatre encounter. I do not make entertainment. I create
philosophical theses in the shape of interdisciplinary dance performances and films. My
performances are gestures within a larger conversation.
Butler writes: “Usually, in Kafka, the coordination of bodily parts fails: body parts lose their functions,
or speech and action are working in opposing ways so that a facial expression has nothing to do with
what is said, something that happens all the time in The Trial and elsewhere.”(p.183, When gesture
becomes event, performance reader). I think that this fracturing is only confusing if you believe that
gestures should match what is being said. The disjointing of gesture and action is a deliberate
maneuver to illustrate the psychological and societal ruptures that he perceived and wanted to bring
into the fore to discuss publicly. The fragmentation and defamiliarization become the fertile ground
for new meaning, and for discussing the loss of meaning, as it is perceived within society often,
especially at times of war. Decoupling, fragmenting, and juxtaposing elements of a narrative is
disorienting, which reflects on the effects of societal loss of control, increased alienation from
70 Insert this explanation: theatre is real, Verfremdungseffekt, etc.
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structures of power and growing industrialisation and capitlist structures are expressed in this way of
chopping up the familiar and comprehensible. Changes at those times were happening rapidly and
society morphed, went to war, advanced, and regressed rapidly in humanitarian areas, and World
war II still to come and on the horizon in many ways. Kafka's literary tools reflect on the fears and
worries of his generation. Gestures express what IS (and what is in the speaker's body-mind). They do
not merely illustrate and reflect on what is being said. Gestures represent, as much as they are
fragments or little glimpses of their own perfect completeness, something of their own that
contributes to the narrative/message/meaning. Butler writes: “In The Castle (by Kafka), there is a
scene between Frieda and the surveyor, where all the affect seems out of joint. As she explains that
she is the mistress of a certain Klamm, Frieda “involuntarily straightened up a little, and her
triumphant glance…had no connection whatever with what she was saying.” (p.183) It might not
have had anything to do with what she was saying, but all to do with how she, or the author, was
feeling. The rift between what we feel and how we act is fundamental to European repressionist
embodiment, our relationship to bodies, what is good, what is bad, and what to show or hide for fear
of social stigmatization or rejection) and social customs is paramount. Censorship and control are key
elements. Kafka, as a social critical writer, would certainly highlight the embodied struggles of his
time, translating them into conflicted and disjointed characters, because society enforced this
conflicted dismemberment and bodies suffered from it greatly (this is reflected in gender norms and
gender performativity, ableism, racism, and other more subtle rules for interpersonal, hierarchical,
and familial relationships, etc.
Butler continues: “Adorno, responding to Benjamin, suggests that gesture crystallizes the
disjunction between what the body does and what it says.” (p.184) I couldn't disagree more. Yes the
gesture does crystallize something, but it doesn't manifest a disjunction. Gesture is what the body
does. Gesture can not be disjointed from body. Literary gestures, of course are a different matter.
Gesture is what offers the missing links, what provides some meaning or a path to it.
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Susan Goldyn-Meadows71 writes: “Because gesture rests on different representational devices from
speech, and is not dictated by standards of form as is speech, it has the potential to offer a different
view into the mind of the speaker.”(p.422) Communication is both verbal and visual, even tactile; it
utilizes all of the senses whenever possible. Which means also, that verbalization, movement and
putting out scents etc is communicative, or at least has the potential to communicate, and often is so
inevitably, without the intent of the “speaker”. We are usually interpreted by others in some way,
whether we seek this out or not.
Gesture and verbalization often go together. By that we are telling a story through the merging of
the various sensory tracks of communication. Looking at gesture alone now, to Benjamin, renders
the gesture as Butler analyzes: “an interdicted action, a truncated narrative, drawing on theatrical, literary, and
cinematic traditions, so precisely not an act in any usual sense, but a gesture, the gesture as a citation of an action that
becomes its own event.”(p.189, reader) Truncating the communication to only one part of its
components, in this case gesture, Butler argues is a critical act, as it evokes the viewer to
begin to think about what is not there. She writes: “The decomposition of the speech act into gesture is not
only the sign of critical capacity, but also of grief for what decomposes as we compose, for what is no longer possible, and
for the loss of those traditional supports—and tradition itself—that cannot be restored.” (p.191) I believe that
communication does not happen in the illustration of facts but in the creative assemblage, the
improvisational practices or play, between interlocutors of various kinds. Theatre utilizes
composition and decomposition to create congruency and disonance, all within the context of
the greater socio-political and spatial paradigms we live in, to incite critical engagement with
content of various kind. Dance theatre is a socio-critical practice and incites socio-critical
reorganization in everyone who participates.
Brecht sought to foreground the act of going to the theatre as the event. We gather to
witness, contemplate and experience theatre, not as a distraction from everyday life, but as
an act of reimagining everyday life, and as a ritual practice of collective action as humans, as
citizens, as a collective, a tribe, a family, as individuals.
71 Susan Goldyn-Meadows, the role of gesture in communication, article, p.422
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Judith Butler72: “I hope to consider the role of gesture as it crosses between language and performance,
focusing on Walter Benjamin's discussion of epic theatre in Brecht, which brings language and
performance together in some unexpected ways, and where I will suggest the citational account of the
speech act has consequences for how we think about forms of action that become suddenly shorn of
context. The egsture, I will suggest, is an ethically consequential decomposition of the speech act
characteristic of epic theatre that shares certain features with the performativity of gender.”@3:00
“Butler “What acts on speech when speech acts?” @15:00
Judith Butler @22:55 “I want to suggest that both gesture and the citational act traverse the domain of
language and eprformance and that this dual sense of the performantive is not only important for
understanding the dynamic of gender perforativitity but for understanding how gesture conceived as
both citation and event might be understood as a critical practice.”
Judith Butler “Gesture as unsupported action” @25:15
My thoughts on gesture:
TRACING GESTURE: PHENOMENOLOGY OF GESTURE

Part of embodied gesture is about feeling, how certain movements feel within the body, which
could be highly affected by injuries, posture, muscle shortenings, etc. What makes a person
feel the full length, the full breadth, fill collection through the body and what does that mean
for them?
72
TPP2014: Judith Butler, When gesture becomes event on youtube
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The other part is what certain movements evolve in terms of emotion and psychology. That
two are obviously connected. It seems to me that an important part of gesturing is expressing
and sensing certain feelings, sensation. Each gesture feels differently. By retracing someone
else'sgestures, I believe that we can gain someinsight about what making these gestures might
feel like to the original 'speaker'. I believe it also important to point out that by searching for the
correct feeling, one can find the appropriate gesture. This is what Pina bausch describes when
she was trying to find the movements in her role in Cafe Mueller. She was not searching to copy
movements from a video of a past performance, but she was introspectviely searching for the
feeling she remembered being specifically tied to this movement and discovered it by changing
merely the direction of her gaze behind closed eyes.
Judith Butler73 reminds quotes from Shannon Jackson’s book “Social Works: Performing Art,
Supporting Publics”: “For Jackson, performance
is invariably social and infrastructural. Even the monologue requires a platform and a structured
space that some group of people have found, built, and arranged; moreover, there is no performance
without the broader coordination of the event, which means that when one person acts, many
people are acting. For Jackson, performance emerges from shared social worlds, so no matter how
individual and fleeting any given performance might be, it relies upon, and reproduces, an enduring
(or durational) set of social relations, community practices, infrastructures, labor, and institutions, all
of which turn out to be part of the performance itself. In a way, “social work”—the title of her book—
names, as well, at least two dimensions of performance. There is a working together that constitutes
the social condition and the stuff of performance itself, and there is a chance to recreate community
73 The reader, Judith Butler from the reader PART III of her essay “When Gesture Becomes Event”
entitled “GESTURE AS UNSUPPORTED ACTION”
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through the kinds of performance undertaken. (Butler p.179 of the reader)

To me, this reality carries over into the gestural and linguistic realms of verbal and non-verbal
communication. No one single person, although individual and unique in many ways, is generating
gestures that seem completely out of context, as they are shaped and recreated through communal
use and socialization. This allows for a certain familiarity with even the most unique types of
gestures.
Butler74 further writes: “Both performance and disability studies have confirmed the crucial insight
that all action requires support, and that even the most punctual and seemingly spontaneous act
implicitly depends upon an infrastructural condition that quite literally supports the acting body....In
the same way that Austin illuminated how the speech act depends upon its social conditions and
conventions, we can also claim that performance more generally depends upon its infrastructural and
social conditions of support. This bears implications for a general account of embodied and social
action.” (@28:24, Butler in Performance Reader p.180).
TRACING GESTURE
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
74 Judith Butler, When gesture becomes event talk @ 28:24 in book on page 180
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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 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 detours, 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 -
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.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOUwPr1fd0Y Derrida, Differance, Trace and Supplementarity,
Diane Davis. Page 9: at bottom of top paragraph “I would like to demonstrate that the...are
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generalizable. They are valid not only for all orders of signs...experience. Even the experience of
being, the above mentioned 'presence'.”
metaphysics of presence would locate experience prior to the sign. You experience reality, then
language comes in when that presence withdraws., talk about things that are not currently present. I
have the experience and thanks to language I can now tell you about it. Derrida says first comes the
sign and then comes the experience. Language is your first colonizer and your first liberator...
experience is not something you can actually articulate. Once you do you have domesticated it,
assimilated and made sense of it. Levinas quote: :”the great experiences of out life have properly
speaking never been lived.” the kind of experience that gives you to be. Something that affects you in
a way that can never quite cognitively get a handle on, nonetheless it affects you. Has an impact.
(refer to Derrida's books on Levinas). If you really could accommodate all the ways in which we are
being affected we would be going crazy. Cognitively they don't register. We are having encounters
constantly by the fact that structurally we are exposed. The line between emotion and affect: you are
affected constantly, but emotions are those feelings that have gone through the language machine.
It can be mapped. Once you can say it you are ina different realm. Affect will always preceed and
exceed the emotional. Making it knowable. Turning it into something we can understand. Derrida is
responding to the performative event. Derrida grapples and argues with, and insistance that Austin
makes in the book about parasitical language, (according to Austin, speech act theory is serious
business, a speech act is not successful unless it is serious,no joking, no actor on a stage, those are
parasitical acts on normal speech, they are citations of the speech act. Austin excludes those from his
study. Derrida: looks at whatever is crammed over the margin, takes that into the center.
Demonstrates that you can't do that, exclude things. Locautionary, perlocutionary (what we bring
about or achieve by saying something, surprising, misleading, effects of illocutionary acts),
illocutionary acts (informing, warning, promising, undertaking, conventional forces, they perform
something by saying). p.14 in “Signature, event, context” Derrida writes: “Austin has not
taken...determination. Already entails...graphomatic... “ p.16: Austin: “as utterances also heir to
certain kind of... we are deliberately excluding these:....parasitic (non-serious language) upon normal
use...all of this we are excluding from consideration” Derrida attacks this: each time it is dependant
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on its repetition. The only way a speech act can work is through its repetition, by re-uttering. You cant
exclude anything. Anacemia (goes against the normatice yields of reason, it goes against the grain,
focuses on marginalia, reading for what someone else leaves out) Polycemia. Dissemination. Those
three concepts are used in a group.
Differance: pushing to the limit saussures notion of language as a system of differences. Speech as to
take the written signifier as its point. You have to say “difference with an a”. the difference between
signifiers disappears from saussures definition of the sign, Derrida brings it back and callsit
difference, the differantiality of the force of difference, the sign has to come first and last, difference
indicates the delay or belatedness that language entails: meaning is not instantly present.
***
SPEECH ACT THEORY
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illocutionary: relating to or being the communicative effect (such as commanding or requesting) of

an utterance.
Perlocutionary: : of or relating to an act (as of persuading, frightening, or annoying) performed by a

speaker upon a listener by means of an utterance compare illocutionary, locutionary.
locutionary: of or relating to the physical act of saying something considered apart from the
statement's effect or intention
Hegel, de Beauvoir: being is becoming

Merleau-Ponty: Phenomenology, The body is a historical idea (need to emphasize the living body,
ground philosophy in our lived experience, philosophy are 'pseudo-problems', we are disconnected,
everything rests on the background of perception, intellectualism removes us from the world,
empiricism: reducing what exists to what we can directly perceive, in order to describe 'essences' we
have to do the phenomenological reduction (see the world as it is, but stepping back to watch it
without withdrawing from it, relative detachment, unites extreme subjectivism with extreme
objectivism, emphasizes the living body, Husserl (body as third person “Koerper”, body as living first
person “Leib”, against mind-body dualism, not a dualistic philosophy, in-between, there is not inner
self, we know ourselves only in and through the world, historical nature of the person/body, constant
state of becoming, no fixed essence, process through personal and collective history, not a thing but
an orientation towards space, there is no space without the body, can';t apply abstract categories on
living bodies: you have to go the other way, enactivist view of consciousness, motility is the spatiality
of the body brought about in action, consciousness takes place in motility, I can: my body is an I can,
tacit knowledge of the body in space, directed towards possibilities, objective space (allo-centric
space) and oriented space (bodily space, motility/motricity, first person, ego-centric space), objective
space is fundamental and objective space is he derivative: not the other way around as we have it
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traditionally in western philosophy, our active engagement with the world around us, our
consciousness is embodied.
speech act theory: origins of the concept of performativity, apply speech act theory to gender, from
philosophy of language, J.L. Austin: constatives (declarations, statements of fact, “it's raining”, echo
existing states of afffairs), performatives (rare, bring about new states of affairs through their
utterance, marriage pronunciation, signatures, the right conditions have to be in place, requires a
certain authority, gender is performative, through our expression of it we make it come about,
gender is a performative, uttering is not just speaking: it's embodiment, expression of my physical
gestures, way of dressing/speaking/moving, not just a conscious theatrical performance: a self that
adapts a role, happens within a broader social context, easy to misunderstand Butler: “gender is a
performance: NO, gender is a performative)
Derrida: difference,binaries are hierarchical, like writing two terms of the opposition are so
disctinctly intertwined that it no longer makes any sense to think of them as oppositional at all,
Derrida shows the proliferating field of differences, differences that are traces of other differences,
opposition and difference are not singular, speech requires a sense of punctuation, imagining the
space and periods between sentences, tried to undermine logocentrism: speech/word privileging the
phoneme over the grapheme, privilege of consciousness over unconscious/not known, present over
absent, neologism of 'difference' only different in writing: shows that writing has a leg up on speech,
difference is neither a concept nor a word, heuristics (mental shortcuts for solving problems in a quick
way that delivers a result that is sufficient enough to be useful given time constraints ),
dconstruction, authprity of consciousness, reason, language is suspicious to him, p454,
UPCOMING EVENTS REGARDING THE TRACING GESTURE SUMMER FELLOWSHIP

CAM event on September 9th, 2023: explorations into embodied conversational aesthetics - the choreographic practice"
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TRACING GESTURE
Dance as WAYFINDER: Pina Bausch75 quoted a young Roma girl for having said to her
“Dance, dance... otherwise we are lost!” and this quote stuck with
me. Dance as therapy, dance as connection, dance as wayfinding.
Dancing, in it's many manifestations, attunes us to the inherently corporeal, embodied reality
we live in and allows us to communicate through this embodiment in a multitude of ways. If
we do not revisit dancing throughout our life, I believe we can get lost in the logocentrism and
other disjointed belief systems or religions that promise a disembodied life in one way or
another. Dance can help us remain rooted and attuned.
75
Pina bausch, quotes young Roma girl @ in the video taped interview link:
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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. 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 predictability - as you change you become - slithering from one to the
next - igniting - responsive right away - everyone - 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 -
WHAT IS A GESTURE?: DANCING IS GESTURING
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Dancing is gesturing. We dance with our faces, our eyes, bodies, and postures. We dance in very
unique identifiable ways, even if all effort is made to make dancers look alike and have them move in
identical ways we can identify individuals immediately. I think that, on a more philosophical level, we
could look at the silhouette, the entirety of the person, as a gesture in itself. Even from far away can
we detect gestural behavior and intent of action. Be it as simple as someone running versus someone
crawling or searching something. This perhaps evokes ideas from merleau-Ponty around the
immediacy of recognition, the Gestalt. That certain forms stand out agaisnt the background without
our cognition having to analyze the field at all. Matter organizes into entities, and each human body
is such an entity. I think that what we can deduct from observation of a person from afar is more
precisely called to be 'different' as opposed to merely less 'clear' or less 'detailed'. Our relationship to
that person changes by distance and so does out communication shift from interlocutor to observer
or even voyeur.
When choreographing, I make the choice to position the dancer at a specific distance from the
audience as to transmit specific messages. Not only do I change the distance between them but I
actually change the meaning of the scene for the audience. Arguably, the meaning of the movement
might not change for the dancer, but the experience changes when the audience is very closeup,
which in effect changes the meaning again, because the absence or presence of a viewer changes the
meaning of the movement because it changes the relationship between the dancer and the viewer.
Extreme proximity could be perceived as supportive or as threat, as vulnerability. Often we have the
safety of the 4th wall, the distance between the stage and the house. In my piece 'adam-mah' I
brought the audience very, very close.
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Performances like adam-mah challenge audiences to consider their actions. This was my itention for
the piece: point out that it matters where we step. Even if we do not understand what we are
stepping on, or why there is this special floor and soil that we are stepping on, perhaps we can be
mindful and think before acting or just ignoring it alltogether. It also incites people to look at how
each other are reacting to the space. The entire piece of 'adam-mah' is full of gestures, metaphors,
allegories and symbolism. The challenge is for people to become aware of their own significance in
the creation of the experience for everyone, including the dancers. Art teaches critical thinking.
Nothing is meaningless. Everything has at least one meaning, but usually several, even countless,
meanings. It is my intention to open the space towards awareness and listening to one another. I
invite people to analyze what I am offering them in the form of a dance performance.
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Walter Benjamin writes about Kafka's literary gestures. And Judith butler points out how in Kafka, the
disjointed gesture, the gesture that has lost it's meaning becomes an event in itself, a political act, a
project of critique. I will comment on this more later on.
A gesture encodes a multitude of meaning within a short hand signal, a bodily movement, a partial
sound, an automatic response, a first impression.
What's in a name?
The title of a piece is a gesture towards its meaning. Meaning is not absolute. I contribute meaning
with my gestures. Audiences contribute meaning. Dancers do. The space does. The time of day does.
The society within which the performance takes place does, etc. I give a piece a title because I am
pulling specific things into the foreground, for audiences to know before the performance. Like
Merleau-Ponty's form, the title meets the eye and conveys a first impression.
Everything is a gesture.
Philosophically speaking, everything is a gesture. I come to this conclusion when thinking with
Jacques Derrida's ideas around the impossibility of clarity. All action and thought are based on
incomplete information. We never fully grasp a thing or a situation. Guessing is part of the game. Not
even I, making my own piece, can ever fully reach “the right” interpretation of it. I believe that the
interpretations of others add to the incompleteness, making it a bit more complete. I am pulling it
from intuition, which sees form in an act of immediacy, without words, through a process we call
improvisation out of another realms that I would refer to as “the unknown” or “the subconscious” and
then present it to dancers and audiences to have my own incomplete understanding or things be
enriched by their intuition and analysis and their ability to verbalize and gesture toward greater
understanding and greater clarity. Yes, I do crave clarity. I think that's ok, as long as I am not
delusional about the possibility of gaining complete clarity or needing it for my life to be fulfilled.
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A basket is a gesture towards what it mean to be a container. A lamp is a gesture towards what it
means to be light. A sentence is a gesture towards some meaning. An image of anything that I see if a
gesture towards what is actually there.
The title 'adam-mah'

The title 'adam-mah' is a gesture towards adam from the bible, some origin, mah towards mother
and earth in hebrew, as well as blood and soil/earth.the multiplicity of potential meanings within the
title hints at the multiplicity of life's realities, and the many layers of the performance. All my pieces
are created as layerings. Like an onion one can peel it, layer after layer comes off and reveals more
and more intricate lineages of comprehension, narratives, connections, realities. But I am not talking
of a linearity of revelation, these multiple layers of interpretation, of manifestation, co-exist
simultaenously and they intermingle, criss crossing and sharing fibers. Adam-mah has a superficial
layer: the first layer that meets the eye: an abstracted space, a modern scene with lightbulbs,
painters cardboard, and soil. The audience is invited to stand (or sit) around the edge of the paper.
Describe adam-mah in more detail the several layers:
personal:
interpersonal:
evolutionary movement: embryo, spirals, birth, to death
lab scenario/science:
symbolic:
musical:
rhythmical:
interactive: observing to interacting to dominating
engagement: gentle to complicit
environmental: heating up of space, light bulbs lowering closer to the soil, drying it out
psychological:
political:
socio-critical:
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structure: realism, Verfremdungseffekt, theatre is real
Audience member coming close to Bonnie, daring to observe and break that barrier of personal
space. Photo by Deborah Tripplett.
At times the audiences touch the dancers, stand should to shoulder or face one another. But the
entire time they form a human fence around the performance space and the dancers are at all times
surrounded by the gaze and the physical bodies of the audience, who is curious, friendly, bored,
hostile, puzzled, engaged, or confused, etc. All these emotions reflect back onto the dancers even
more if the viewers are closer. The communication happens on a very intimate level that is only
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achieved by physical proximity. Every gesture, every facial expression, breath sounds, the sliding of
the body-parts on the ground, are seen. The performance becomes more personal.
WHAT IS A GESTURE?: Symbolism in Art
ALBRECHT DUERER'S Kabbalistic gesture of the heart with Zhenya Gershman

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dS6fHbA78qs
secret handgestures that merge kabbalah and christianity, spreading the message that you don't
need to go to church, that you don't need a bible, but that god is within you, in your heart. The Shin
gesture from the hebrew alphabet.
"TRACING GESTURE" is the practice component of my dissertation research and a chapter

within the Dissertation.
1) Concept development with Lena Rose Magee, followed by a work-in-progress presentation
– gesture experiments @ the PFS Symposium April 23rd, 2022, UC Davis
2)2) making of several films 2022-2023
3)3) Performance of “The River Home” with Slow Ear Ensemble @ Cameron Art Museum,
Earthday, April 22nd, 2023, interactive live performance for a general public
4)4) Tracing Gesture project, choreography of new performance piece/alongside writing
Dissertation Chapter
5)5) Live Performance and presentation of Dissertation Research to general audience at
Cameron Atr Museum, September 9th, 2023
6)6) Open Community workshop “Gestures of Love” at Cameron Art Museum, September 9 th,
2023
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"TRACING GESTURE" is a complex project motivated by the desire to verbalize various steps
of the processes of meaning making in creative movement.
The project consists of the practice of translating movement to meaning and vice versa.
AUDIENCE FEEDBACK
The practice of discussion is intrinsic/foundational to the process of choreographing, and
exchanges with audiences are sought out frequently.
Please attend the events, watch the dance films, and give feedback on these short videos
here: https://www.karolaluettringhaus.com/tracing-gesture.html
GESTURE & FULL-BODY GESTURING: EMBODIED KNOWING
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ABOUT “TRACING”
Tracing a gesture, a thought through the body as a practice of sensing the common effort of all body
elements to produce the gesture. What does it mean that a hand gesture begins in the rest of the
body as a multitude of actions that allow for compensations and expressions of vectors, directions,
shapes, shapings, changes and movement? How does the back shape the gesture of the hand. What
does the back do when the hand moves? How does that movement that the back makes
communicate? What does it say?
ETYMOLOGY OF THE WORD TRACE/TRACING

Text …
I feel that gesture is not something that we will understand by dissecting the movement flow and
categorizing and archiving etc all that takes place.
I feel that rather we can understand gesture through doing, and through looking at the connection
pathways and the qualities of execution.
I feel that gesture speaks with us, to us, through us, and for us.
It might be helpful to reminisce and remain with a gestural moment, repeat it, think about it, like
stopping at a word of a sentence to analyze what it means, but all in all, the meaning seems to be
hidden in the orchestration and the emergence that all gestures, sound and dynamics, etc create.
It helps to look at certain body parts to understand their anatomy and how they contribute to the overall
wholistic expression, but the magic lies in the togetherness, in the fluidity, the flowing, the changing.
I feel that by listening to all the academic dissection of gesture, I am losing the main point, the main
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experience of life. It wants to be lived, not found out about, and taken apart. We have cooperating,
interconnected parts that form a whole. It is this wholeness we should be feeling.
I feel that perhaps through the work of Bergson on intuition we come closer to what I am talking about
in the experience of gesture.
Alan Cienki (*1) speaks of gesture as an act of metaphore. He refers to a definition of metaphor by
Lakoff and Johnson (1980 5): "The essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing on kind of
thing in terms of another."
Dance to me is an extension of smaller gesture. Dance allows for the gesture to be experienced more
thoroughly, more extremely, to fully embody, to fully take over the body to experience it. Dancing then
could be thought of as a kind of dwelling, or ruminating, or deeper thought about a thing, or events,
concept, etc.
Dancing is the full bodied experience of a gesture.
CONTEXT
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MACRO - the whole
MACRO - the whole
I am looking at the bigger picture: what are all the elements that create the narrative of
"vita5"? The dancers' actions take place against the backdrop of, and in conversation with, a
number of other players: the theatre space, the building, the audience, a technological set-
up, a projection and the shadow of the dancer, and an animation that is projected into the
space and combines with the captured and projected image of the dancer as a projected film
on the page.
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I could not have made this piece to be shown as a film, because there are important
elements of the message of the piece inside the co-existence and interactions between the
dancer, the space, the stage, the audience, the animations and projected images and the
page. Only in its complexity is the story told in full. ?
?From the beginning of vita, this has always been a live performance, the story of a human
meeting the digital.
?If I had had the opportunity, I would have kept the live musician as well. It was due to
logistical reasons that the music had to be recorded.
Below is a scene by scene analysis of what the piece in (its entirety) seeks to communicate,
in my mind. Each player (including so-called "objects", time, or space) is alive and contributes
to the story.
Everything takes place in a context that is shaped by and also shapes the existence, the
narrative, and the personalities of the story. I am interested in discovering the connections,
the interrelations of these players and i am hoping that this will be what the audience will
become aware of as well. I think that this is similar to Brecht's Verfremdungseffekt.
?The audience member is supposed to become aware of the multiplicity of existence, reality,
virtuality and ultimately of our presence in the theatre and the mutually agreed upon ritual
we engage in: the performance and the creation of a world and a story, or multiple such
stories.
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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
As an experiment, and as part of the process for writing this essay, Lena and I picked out videos of
people talking about something. Anything. We picked videos that lent themselves to learning the
gestures, and body position; meaning: people had to be gesturing enough to be easily copied and we
needed to be able to see at least their heads and arms. Lena would start. She would play the chosen
video on her screen, which i couldn't see. I could only see Lena. She would copy the gestures and
facial expressions as good as she could, simultaneously with the video subject, staying close to timing
and positioning of body parts. We each performed the gestures to one another in this manner (via
zoom).
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The 'spoken'
The task for the other person was to try to guess what kinds of content was connected to the
gestures, and what kind of person the speaker was. Maybe even who they were. We could fairly
accurately guess what the talks were about, and what kinds of people the speakers were. Of course
we knew each other fairly well and we were, inevitably, also guessing what sort of person we would
pick for this experiment. So we had that advantage. I picked my video person based on their
elaborate and vivid gesticulating, Donna Haraway talking about the "humanimal". Her gestures are a
dance, truly! her hands are extremely expressive and very 'loud'.
The 'speaker'
When I learn someone's gestures, when i move with them as they talk, copy their gestures, I can
embody who and how they are at that moment and how they are relating to what they are saying.
Movement is instantaneous. Speaking comes about slower. In an instant I have a gesture to express
my feeling, my thought, my opinion. My body has already responded, my language and my cognitive
realization of this response are a bit slower.
In our experiment, I picked out Donna Haraway (6a) in an interview on the 'humanimal'. I picked her
because she is an extremely vivid gesturer. Her gestures are beautiful and bold, wild, all over the
place, intriguing to watch. There is an intensity in her gesturing that comes through in this interview.
She talks about the merging of words and species but her hands are clashing, literally. I think that it is
difficult for her to fully believe herself that we are one, that the humanimal is possible the way her
intellectual mind wishes it could be, and arguably needs to be. Or perhaps she illustrates how difficult
it is for humans to want to merge with the animal. Her forceful moving is perhaps also reflecting on
the force she uses to make the merging happen. She thinks that they have to come together, but
really, they almost repel one another. The merging she gestures is not a gentle meeting, it is almost a
war, almost an artificially provoked genetic experiment. When she talks about the humanimal as 'a
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hybrid word' she turns her fists outward, smashing the medial sides of the fists together, like
slamming your fist on a table, but edge of hand to edge of hand. Two fists gesture two hard, enclosed
entities and she makes them meet end to end. Her thumbs are facing outward, away from one
another. No facing one another, no gentle melting and shaking hands. She doesn't attempt much of a
physical connection to the interviewer. She remains in her world although responding and talking.
Her whole body tenses up when the species finally merge, the backs of the hands are smashed
together, fingers facing her, all in the same direction; They are stuck to one another and look rather
awkward in this new togetherness. When she speaks of linguistics she softens a bit and her fingers
are allowed to flow with the directionality of her breath towards the interviewer, which, to me, feels
like she can assist the difficulty of the merging by writing and speaking of these topics. Much of her
gestures, including those where she talks about history and the making of history, are gestures of
holding, and supporting. But her hands also, whatever they would hold, could only hold for a short
while as the contents would run through her opened fingers. She gestures about sensitivity,
fingertips touching, hands missing one another. She also enforces her gestures, raising her
ideas/gestures and voice as a wall between her and the interviewer, in a moment where she wishes
not to be interrupted in her thought. I feel that she intensely identifies with her work with her
theories. I could write about her movements in this 2 minute long interview for a long time. And
these gestures could serve as inspiration for a dance to embody the emotions and thoughts that
evoked them in her.
The process of sensing meaning is a process of observing, registering, and describing. The actual
doing of the movements provides depth of information, as we can experience what the movements
feel like.
beginning notes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwdqB5FXenc
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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.
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
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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.
traces and the trace
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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.
pull out landmarks. trace the trace.
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end of notes
***
notes from Leiden University , no-one ever gets to clarity: 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
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does not 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 Noe76 made about that art and philosophy being "re-organizational practices"
76
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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 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
(**&&^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
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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 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
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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."
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
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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 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?
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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 through intuition than through language is indescribable. it is a sense all unto
its own. (note: quote authors Lois Ellfeldt and Eleanor Metheney77 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) "
77 Lois Ellfeldt and Eleanor Metheney "Movement and meaning: Development of a General
Theory" p.267
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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.
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143
4
THINKING WITH
AGAMBEN'S “Notes on
Gesture”
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https://townereastbourne.org.uk/learn/read/staging-gestures#:~:text=%E2%80%9CThe%20gesture%20is%20the
%20exhibition,%E2%80%9D%20(Agamben%202000%2C%2058)
“…The gesture is essentially always a gesture of not being able to figure something out in
language; it is always a gag in the proper meaning of the term...” (Agamben, 59,“ Notes on
Gesture” (2000) the theorist Giorgio Agamben )
Similar to Balsz, Agamben78 remarks that society, has “lost its gestures” (Agamben, p.211). Agamben
narrows his observation onto western Bourgeoisie and he demarcates it on a timeline as having
completed this loss by the end of the 19th century. Agamben writes: “In the cinema, a society that has lost
its gestures tries at once to reclaim what it has lost and to record its loss........ For human beings who have lost
every sense of naturalness, each single gesture becomes a
destiny. And the more gestures lose their ease under the action of invisible powers,
the more life becomes indecipherable. In this phase, the bourgeoisie,
which just a few decades earlier was still firmly in possession of its symbols,
succumbs to interiority and gives itself up to psychology.” (p.211)
These statements are so vague in my opinion. It is ahrd to follow their logic when he begins his
argument on human beings who have lost their naturalness he moves to say that each gesture
becomes a destiny. How does he define destiny? How does destiny relate to naturalness? Does he
mean that the modern western human will latch onto the new enacted gestures and celebrate them
as their new identity? Do we latch onto these, from what I understand empty, gestures and enact
them with ferver? What are these invisible powers he speaks of? And is he saying that because we
invent new meaning, which is dis-articulated from actual life and naturalness, meaning for gestures is
superimposed, assigned, artificially assigned by means of reason and logic, misleads us further and
further into losing ourselves? Do we lose the knowledge of who we are? Of how we are? Balasz is
certainly saying this. Do we lose our intuition? And our ways of being intiutive?
Since we are now so confused and see ourselves as separate from nature, out of touch with
ourselves, we now need psychotherapists that explain to us what our own gestures mean. Only that
78 Georgio Agamben, “On Gesture”,
145
they do not know either and investigate these interpretations around notions of research and
scientific observation.
Agamben says that Jung is closer to de Jorio (Andrea De Jorio (1769–1851) was an
Italian antiquarian who is remembered today among ethnographers as the first ethnographer of body language,
[1] in his work La mimica degli antichi investigata nel gestire napoletano, 1832 ("The mime of the Ancients
investigated through Neapolitan gesture"). The work has been mined, refined and criticized. [2]
Born on the island of Procida in the Gulf of Naples, De Jorio became a Canon at the Cathedral of Naples, a
respected archaeologist under the pre-modern conditions of his times, and a curator at the predecessor to
the Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples.
He wrote extensively about the then-recent excavations of classical antiquity near Naples, such
as Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Cumae.
His recognition in the frescos of Pompeii and Herculaneum provided him with his insight, that the gestures
depicted were familiar to him in the streets of modern Naples. The book stressed the continuity from
Classical times to the present by showing the similarity between hand gestures depicted on ancient Greek
vases found near Naples and the gestures of modern Neapolitans. "Its doubtful premise of a time-honored
continuity"[3] in culture has retreated to the confines of sentimental writings on Neapolitan cuisine, but De
Jorio was among the first ethnographers to venture into the field, producing the first scholarly investigation
of Neapolitan hand gestures; it remains the source literature for more recent treatments of the topic, both
scholarly and popular.
The volume has been reprinted three times photostatically in Italian in recent years—1964, 1979, and 2002
—and recently (2000) in a scholarly and annotated English translation by Adam Kendon as Andrea de
Jorio: Gesture in Naples and Gesture in Classical Antiquity (Indiana University Press, 2000).[4])
than to Erwin Panofsky
(Erwin Panofsky (March 30, 1892 in Hannover – March 14, 1968 in Princeton, New Jersey)[1] was a German-
Jewish art historian, whose academic career was pursued mostly in the U.S. after the rise of the Nazi regime.
Panofsky's work represents a high point in the modern academic study of iconography, which he used in
hugely influential[2] works like his "little book" Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art and his
masterpiece,[2] Early Netherlandish Painting.
Many of his works are still in print, including Studies in Iconology: Humanist Themes in the Art of the
Renaissance (1939), Meaning in the Visual Arts (1955), and his 1943 study The Life and Art of Albrecht
Dürer. Panofsky's ideas were also highly influential in intellectual history in general, [3] particularly in his use
of historical ideas to interpret artworks and vice versa.)
Whatexactly does Agamben say is slipping through humanity's fingers to be lost forever? Our
connection with the immediacy or embodied life? Intuition? Expression? Honesty? Originality?
146
Janet harbord writes about Agamben's essay: “Yet in presenting gesture rather than the image as
cinema’s ‘element’ Agamben orients the political stakes in a particular way, where cinema is a force-
field through which oppositional currents pass. Within this force-field the opposition between gesture
and the image opens onto a far more fundamental tension in which a common language of the
(gestural) body is set against its biopolitical capture. “ This sounds to me like the effort is made to trace
and capture the magnitude of power and the influence that gesture has onto our socio-political lives.
Agamben p.215: “What characterizes gesture is that in it nothing is being produced or acted,
but rather something is being endured and supported.”
147
148
BIBLIOGRAPHY
& SOURCES
149
article about Agamben, Deleuze, gesture, film, movement, trace:

https://townereastbourne.org.uk/learn/read/staging-gestures#:~:text=%E2%80%9CThe%20gesture
%20is%20the%20exhibition,%E2%80%9D%20(Agamben%202000%2C%2058)
Agamben, Georgio: “Notes on Gesture” (2000)
about Agamben's “Notes on gesture”

Harbord, Janet: “Agamben’s cinema: Psychology versus an ethical form of life” published in European Media
Journal
https://mediarep.org/bitstream/handle/doc/3378/NECSUS_4_2_2015_13-
30_Harbord_Agambens_cinema.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
DETAILS ABOUT TRACING GESTURE PROJECT PROCESS:

videos of people talking about Love:
https://www.google.com/search?
q=anishnaabe+word+for+love&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS722US722&oq=anishnaabe+word+for+love&aqs=
chrome..69i57j0i13i19i512l9.4857j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-
8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:b514dadf,vid:TlGBG6h0Dvw,st:50
Ojibwe: love, bless, pity. Empathize with someone. I feel you. Feel me, hear my prayer.
“Posessive” love. You are mine.
Love unconditionally. Compassion for my relative. To bless someone.
Ojibwe sexy phrases

https://www.google.com/search?
rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS722US722&sxsrf=AB5stBiEjyX5AklkZwMDJnDKizYfKTwPsQ:1689618446186&q=
150
anishinaabe+word+for+love&tbm=vid&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiZt6mar5aAAxXYEVkFHSZ9CkwQ0pQJ
egQIDBAB&biw=1600&bih=732&dpr=1#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:2b9e0a28,vid:K0Iwxdg68lQ
***
NOTES ON
Hidden Metaphors in Gesture, Sign, and Spoken Language: Haun Saussy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3pFfcBSxhE
Aristotle gave us the term metaphore
how do we know that something is a metaphore
NOTES ON AMGAMBEN ON GESTURE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4bKAEz3TF0&t=920s
Giorgio Agamben. Gesture, or the Structure of

Art. 2011
***
NOTES ON
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EGxoAIQ0mM&t=2994s
151
Viewpoint and Perspective in Language and

Gesture
***
NOTES ON
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPrV-eqEWaM
Center for Gesture, Sign, and Language
***
NOTES ON
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRuI89DnBys&t=224s
The Resilience of Language and Gesture, Susan

Goldin-Meadow: The 2017 Ryerson Lecture
***
152
NOTES ON
AMGAMBENS NOTES ON GESTURE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAesOjEKm9M&t=17s
***
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
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXaQAtGybFc
youtube talk, university of chicago
How our hands help us think.
NOTES ON GEOFFREY BEATTIE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nyxuiua-JM&t=1782s
Bogdanka PAVELIN LESIC, “Speech Gestures and the Pragmatic Economy of Oral Expression in
Face-to-Face Interaction”
153
article in zotero: “From hands to minds: Gestures promote understanding” Seokmin Kang1* and
Barbara Tversky2,
article in zotero: “Introduction to Gesture in Language” From the book Gesture in

Language By Aliyah Morgenstern and Susan Goldin-Meadow
book in zotero: “Gesture in Language - Development Across the Lifespan”

Edited by: Aliyah Morgenstern and Susan Goldin-Meadow
END
154

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DISSERTATION TRACING GESTURE: Revisiting Meaning & Redefining its Place in Choreographic Practice and Academic Contexts

Chapter 2: TRACING GESTURE Karola Lüttringhaus 2023

Last updated: 10/17/2023

CHAPTER 2: TRACING GESTURE

INTRODUCTION SUMMARY: TOPICS BY

* Balasz has a theory on gesture

>>> End of headlines/paragraph summaries <<<

2 Bela Balazs, Visible man, from the introduction

Photo by Bryan Snipes “Carrotopia” a silent movie performance3.

11 “The Passion of Joan of Arc” 1928, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Passion_of_Joan_of_Arc

>>> End of Thinking With Balasz <<<

 Etymology : Latin, medieval Latin, french, German

 BACK TO ETYMOLOGY: relationship to movement

 GESTURES OF LOVE SUMMARY (under construction): incomplete section: conclusions will be

MOVEMENTS vs GESTURES: A gesture is a movement with meaning. When describing a movement

GESTURES OF LOVE SUMMARY (under construction)

Audience survey: What is a gesture.

A GESTURE: ALWAYS INCOMPLETE?

22 “I thikn, therefore I am” quote from Descartes, yes????

GESTURE AND WORD

24 Bela balasz, from “Visible Man”, opening sentence and p.1

26 Bessel van der Kolk, “The Body Keeps the Score”

in the making of “Gestures of Love” I made the following observations:

 Did my gestures reveal something to me? What?

COMPLETE/INCOMPLETE: arteries of perception

 adam-mah: lack of water, plastic waterbottles, drying and heating of environment,

FULL BODY APPROACH

A GESTURE: ALWAYS WHOLE? - the lives of gestures

CREATIVITY AS SPIRITUAL PATH

EXPERIMENTS: GESTURE AS AGENT, GESTURE AS PERSON, GESTURE AS WHOLE – THE LIFE OF A

GESTURE AS BODY PARTS HAVING A CONVERSATION WIHT ONE ANOTHER:

IN DANCE: GESTURES TAKING SPACE

DE-CATEGORIZING and RE-ASPECTING

SUBTEXTING in CHOREOGRAPHIC PRACTICE

“I'm not so interested in how they move as in what moves them.”

36 Find research to back this up.

SUMMARY OF TOPICS BY PARAGRAPH

WHAT IS A GESTURE?: GESTURE

SUMMARY OF TOPICS BY PARAGRAPH

HOW AND WHY

EXAMPLES: MEDITATIONS ON GESTURING48

48 To do: videotape myself when writing and analyse all my gestures.

READING HIDDEN THOUGHTS

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364661399013972 1364-6613/99/$ – see front matter ©

REGULATORS gestures used to coordinate the flow of communication, eye contact to

AFFECT DISPLAYS displays of emotions, facial expressions, gestures alongside facial

DE-CATEGORIZING and RE-ASPECTING

DANCE AS FULL BODY GESTURE: GESTURE IS THE FOUNDATION FOR DANCE

·engage with how gesture relates to expression through embodied action

If our hands help us think, then our entire bodies do too.

67 Find research to back this up.

How does gesture change what we know? @33:00

Hand movements interfere, leg movements do not interfere @36:30

Note: I think gestures represent how people feel about things.

Thinking with Bogdanka Pavelin Lesic's

Quotes to engage with:

text coming, in progress

Group, 1999. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucdavis/detail.action?docID=169694.

HAND GESTURES WHILE DANCING: RETRACING EXPERIENCES

As I dance my hand gestures, Iisten to myself, my thoughts, my emotions, my bodily experiences,

Gesture is a participant in the game of communication.

To remain within a movement language such as Ballet or Graham Technique is a tremendous

TRACING GESTURE: MATCHING