Södertörn university | Institute for Culture and Learning D-thesis 15 hp | Philosophy | 2013 E=(motion)2 Between Movement & Dance, 15 hp Author: David Pilbäck Supervisor: Marcia Sá Cavalcante Schuback Translation: Emmy Östlund and Lucy Kelley-Patterson Abstract Mainstream contemporary phenomenology understands the phenomenology of movement and dance through “the lived body” of Merleau-Ponty. This paper instead suggests a phenomenology of movement and dance based on an understanding of “the danced body” with capability for meta-feeling. It is argued here that we need to utilise the phenomenology of dance in order to understand the phenomenon of movement at all. Three dimensions of our bodily dance experience are described: “the body’s centre”, “the danced body” and “the room of the dancer”. A discriminating distinction between eight types of movement experience is proposed. Keywords: Dance, movement, energy, phenomenology, Body without organs, Deleuze, Gil, Merleau-Ponty. O body swayed to music, O brightening glance How can we know the dancer from the dance? Richard Yates Life is the dancer, you are the dance. Eckhart Tolle 2 Table of Contents The Lived Body’s Phenomenology of Movement…………………………………………………………………………..…4 Conceptual Limitations of “The Lived Body”…………………………………………………………………………………5 The Need for an Understanding Through a Different Body: A New Concept…………………………………………………6 The Unfree Movement: To move................................................................................................................................................7 The Danced Body: The Receiving Body with Capability for Meta-Feeling………..………………………….………………9 The Phenomenology of Co-Feeling: To be felt by someone…………………………………………………….………………9 The Phenomenology of Co-Movement: To be moved by someone…………………………………………….…..…………10 The Three Forms of Movement…………………………………………………………………………….............................11 Merleau-Ponty’s Understanding of Dance Through Movement………………………………………………...……………13 Degré Zéro: Where the Lived Body’s Movement Transforms into the Lived Body’s Dance Movements……….…………..14 Repetition………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………15 Movement and Dance Based on Repetition……………………………………………………………………………………16 Rhythm…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………17 Dance, Movement and Degré Zéro based on Rhythm…………………………………………………...……………………..19 The Phenomenology of Dance as the Lived Body’s Dance Movement: To move to something……………………………….20 The Three Dimensions of the Dancing Body……………………………………………………………………..……………20 Movement and Language: The Language of Movement…………………………………………………….…………………21 The Poetic Body: The Truth of Dance………………………………………………………………………………………….23 Centring…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………24 The Space at the Middle of the Body………………………………………………………………………….………………..25 The Language of Movement and the Gap in the Dance…………………………………………………...……………………27 The Dance Phenomenology of the Paradoxical Body: The space of the body………………………….………………………29 Depth……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………33 Energy: Etymology and Concept………………………………………………………………….……………………………33 The Dance-Movement-Energy of the Paradoxical Body……………………………………….………………………………34 E=(Motion)² ………………………………………………………………………………….…………………………………35 Energy as both Field and Body……………………………………………………………….…………………………………37 The Flow of Dance: An Introduction to a Social Phenomenology of Dance-Movement-Energy………………………………38 The Free Dance Movement: To be danced………………………………………………………………………...……………39 Arche Movements: To be danced as practice……………………………………………………………………………...……40 The Free Dance Movement and Repetition……………………………………………………………………………………..43 The Phenomenology of Co-Dance: To be danced by someone…………………………………………………………………44 Dance Ecstasy: To be opened up through dance………………………………………………………………………………..47 The Body Without Organs………………………………………………………………………………………………………49 The Technologising Body Without Organs of Contemporary Choreographed Dance…………………………………….……50 The Body Without Organs Through Dance Ecstasy…………………………………………………………………………….51 The Dancer Without Depth: Danseuse Acrobate…………………………………………………………………………..……53 The Open Body: The Mobile Immobile…………………………………………………………………………………………54 Authenticity…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...…54 Conclusion: The Courage to Not Know………………………………………………………………………………………....55 Summary…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………56 Summary of the Investigation’s Bodies and Nuances of Movement…………………………………………….………………58 The Three Dimensions of the Danced Body………………………………………………………………………………..……59 The Three Forms of Movement……………………………………………………………………………………………….…59 The Nuances of Movement………………………………………………………………………………………………………60 References………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..61 3 Introduction How is it possible to develop a theoretical axiom of the movement of dance that does not transform the dance’s movement into a physical object, a subjective feeling or any arbitrary movement? Within contemporary philosophy it is perhaps phenomenology that has asked this question as phenomenology aims to describe experience based from within experience itself. Of the phenomenologists, it was Merleau-Ponty who developed a phenomenology of movement and wished to expand it to additionally include a phenomenology of dance. In this dissertation I will start from the perspective of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of movement and will question the depth of the understanding of movement offered to us through “the lived body”. Instead, I propose a complementary understanding based on the “body of the dance” with capability for meta-feeling. This complementary theory is manifested in the description of how we have access to “the other” and the other’s experiences through our body and our movement. I thus present the thesis that we need to develop a phenomenology of dance and utilise it in order to understand the phenomenon of movement. This paper will first present a brief summary of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of movement from Phenomenology of Perception (1945), as well as launching an inquiry into an alternative understanding of our body in movement through the “body of the dance”. In order to propose a few directions for the phenomenology of dance, we will discuss the moment in which movements transform into dance – “degré zéro”, explained in A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia by Gilles Deleuze and Feliz Guattari (1987). The moment “degré zéro” can be understood through the way in which Giorgio Agamben views the artwork’s original structure as the rhythm of being in The Original Structure of the Work of Art (1999). Next we will investigate “the lived body” in dance aided by Sondra Horton Fraleigh’s Dance and The Lived Body: A Descriptive Aesthetics (1987) and “the paradoxical body” in José Gil’s The Paradoxical Body (2006). Furthermore, we will listen to testimonies of the body in movement from the experienced dancers William Forsythe and Ervi Sirén. The Lived Body’s Phenomenology of Movement Merleau-Ponty reveals that we always “intention” something prior to the conscious act of thinking; when we raise our arm to reach for something the hand is pointed towards it – not 4 as something imagined or thought, but rather as a specific object which we handle (MerleauPonty, 2004: 159). It is thus based on the finding of this intentionality, which can be seen as more foundational, and which exists prior to, or is played out outside of the consciousness that Merleau-Ponty develops his philosophy as a phenomenological description of perception through the body and also, partially, through the movement. Maurice Merleau-Ponty is the philosopher who has, primarily, been occupied with studying the body and its conditions. In his philosophy, he focuses mainly on a living body; a corps proper, which could be translated to “one’s own body” (Merleau-Ponty, 2002: 13). The “lived body” is an individual’s own and particularly characteristic body (Merleau-Ponty, 2002: 13). When our body is in motion, it is the phenomenological body that we move, not the objective body, because it is the body as a potentiality that is directed towards objects in order to perceive or seize them (Merleau-Ponty, 2004: 121). The lived body is the internally experienced own body that we have immediate access to in relation to our mobility project. Merleau-Ponty argues that we perceive our body through something which he calls “body schema”, which is, in part, a compendium of my bodily experience and a continuous translation of the moment’s kinetic and articulated perceptions into visual language. Another central concept in Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of movement is the concept “motor intentionality”, which is a non-cognitive bodily intentionality that is made possible by the “body schema”. The motor intentionality can be defined as the common unity and integration of our bodily movements and our intuitive consciousness of a given, stable environment (Carman, 2008: 117). Merleau-Ponty develops two further definitions; “abstract movements” and “concrete movements”. He defines movements which lack relevance to any actual concrete situations as “abstract movements”, which exist in opposition to “concrete movements”, which reasonably have relevance for an actual concrete situation (MerleauPonty, 2002: 118). Conceptual Limitations of “The Lived Body” Our criticism against Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of movement is that it traps us in a subjective perspective; “the lived body” is, for Merleau-Ponty, the subject. Through the limitations of this “lived body”, he does not adequately succeed in providing a description of 5 how we have access to the perspective of “the other” through the body – Merleau-Ponty simply shows that we have it. Merleau-Ponty frequently return to the paradox of the body’s double citizenship; that the body belongs to both the “objects” and the “subjects”. He mentions the example of when our hands grab each other. In those situations, we can, at will, inverse the positions of our hands as feeling and felt; “we are touched” when we “touch”. Thus, we discover both the body’s and the perception’s double citizenship; they are both subject and object. This is a central insight for our further investigation. What Merleau-Ponty has not done, and which we aim to do next, is to expand on the body’s capability for “meta-feeling” to include the perception of, and in relation to, “the other”. The Need for an Understanding Through a Different Body: A New Concept The traditional separation between the mechanical and the living is based on the premise that the mechanical needs an outer force in order to be set in motion, whilst the living is set in motion out of its own force; the living has a capacity for “self-movement” – “auto-kinesis” – which is also the first necessary condition for “the lived body’s movement” – To move towards something. We would like to complement this by the fact that we, as humans, have the capability to be set in motion by each other. When we learn about the movement through the phenomenology of dance, we find experiences of movement as “to be moved” – by “the other”, by the senses, by the feeling, by the energy or by the unconscious. We query whether our immediate access to, the access for and our being in tune with “the other’s” body is just as characteristic for our “existence” as our immediate access to our own “lived body” and its “auto-kinesis”? We assert that this is the case, and Merleau-Ponty himself is barely brushing the surface of this question in saying: ‘we are in the world with each other; not next to each other’. For Merleau-Ponty, the living body is moved just because it is moving. We can see that the body also moves because it is moved. Our contribution is a phenomenology of movement with a possible answer as to how we are in the world with each other. This phenomenology of movement is based on our bodily access for, and access to, and commonality with “the other” rather than in our own separate “lived body”. We realise a need to develop a new concept for our bodily experience which 6 captures these further levels of movement. The situation this concept should clarify is: a) There is a dualism in the movement; the movement is paradoxically both the perception’s subject and object. b) There is a duality in the body; it can feel itself, such as when the right hand feels the left hand and vice versa. In this way, the body is paradoxically both the subject and the object. c) The body also has a capability for “meta-feeling”; the body feels its feelings, just as it also feels its feelability and, thus, is feeling and felt (by me). d) The body is both feeling and felt (by “the other”). I feel “the other” as myself and I feel “the other” feel me as themselves. e) The body’s capability “to be moved” is just as foundational as its ability for “self-movement”. These conditions epitomise a new framework; a new concept. The basis of this new concept can be found though our unfree movements. We are indeed not, at every occasion, fully aware of our own movements or our movements’ intentions and purposes. Neither are we always aware of their emotional origin and charge. We call these unconscious movements “the unfree movement” – To be moved and refer to bodily movements which emerge without self-movement, but instead as a result of unconscious movement programs. The Unfree Movement: To move Our understanding of the movement has its origin in dance, and our path to understanding is going through what we call unfree movements – which are the form of movements which I am not fully conscious of being the source of. In which way is the unfree movement an entrance to dance? The answer is that movement and dance can be understood both as an active passivity in the way Merleau-Ponty understands movement, but also as a passive activity. What do we mean with a passive activity? What is referred to in the concept “passive activity” is that my “unfree movement” is performed when I am unaware of doing so, and I am, therefore, somewhat of a passive agent, as the body can move just because it is moved. The active aspect is thus that I, on one level, am the actor of my work; it is “my lived body” that performs an unconscious movement. Paradoxically, I move myself and am moved simultaneously. The passive aspect is thus that when I carry out an “unfree movement”, I move in a somnambulistic fashion, “under influence”; in some way separate from a full consciousness of my movements when I passively “perform” my pre-programmed movement programs. In order to exemplify how these pre-programmed movement programs can be connected, we will present four types of meta-knowing: 1) What I know that I know. 2) What 7 I know that I do not know. 3) What I do not know that I know. 4) What I do not know that I do not know. As Merleau-Ponty bases the understanding of “the lived body’s movement” on perception, his concept can only encompass levels 1 and 3. But the phenomenon “to be moved” is intimately linked to the 4th category, and from this the connection to the 2nd category will follow. We will find the phenomenon “to be moved” in many different contexts; one example is repetitive movement habits. These emerge if we, at any point in time, avoid feeling a certain feeling, and a fixation in our body is created as a result of this alongside a selfsustaining unconscious movement habit and, in those situations, this habit chooses us, over and over again, day after day. We meet our personal (movement) limitations when we investigate our own body’s possibilities for movement aided by dance. One of the foundational ideas of body psychotherapy and primal therapy is that uninhibited feelings are expressed with loud breathing, sounds and bodily movements. If in our early lives we keep our emotional expressions to ourselves, this non-expressed feeling will set as a fixation in the body. In order to dissolve this fixation we need to locate its origin and act out this feeling with the help of breathing, sound and movement, and will thereby find healing and the freedom to express what we feel in the present. Similar thoughts also exist in terms of the movements around free breathing and dance and movement therapy. The creative process is described by the French artist Marcel Duchamp as a relation between the non-expressed but intended, and the non-intended but expressed. When we explore our own body’s possibilities for movement in dance, the meeting with our nonintended but expressed movements gives us an opportunity to remember what our nondeliberate movements express. We are amazed by the discovery: to dance is to remember. Dance is always occurring in the present and dance is the dimension which gives us an immediate access to our unconscious without having to walk the long detour via language. To dance is to remember means that I, in the present, though dance, can claim and reclaim parts of myself which I, for a longer or shorter time, have hidden away, like my authenticity and my uniqueness. Dance awakes us to a deeper and brighter consciousness. With the help of dance, we can climb in our diagram from not knowing that we do not know (4) to knowing that we know (1). We thus find a movement from bodily awareness  movement awareness 8  self-awareness. We awake, in dance, what we once hide away and the “body of the dance” is now a receiver of memories. The Danced Body: The Receiving Body with Capability for Meta-Feeling Let us concentrate on a certain aspect of the phenomenology of movement: “To be felt”. What does it mean “to be felt”? “To be felt” is when we are felt by “the other” as “the other” feels him/herself. Merleau-Ponty seeks a phenomenological description of the experience of art, and rejects the explanation associated with aesthetics – that our access to art experiences would be a form of knowledge. Instead, Merleau-Ponty moves towards the experience itself, through returning to the Greek word aesthesis, meaning “to feel”. He takes into account the “existence”, “the lived body” and the unity of body and mind. He develops an argument about the “esthesiological body” in an attempt to describe the experience of art. If “the lived body” is the actor of my actions, then the “esthesiological body” is the receiving body which is flooded with experiences; experiences of art and other experiences such as feelings, wills and intentions. The “esthesiological body” is a listening body which devours the world’s rapid speed whilst “the lived body” is the body which carries out “self-movement”. The “esthesiological body” is, of course, “the danced body”. If the philosophy of Descartes touches on a thinking about thinking, then Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy touches on a feeling about feeling. In Descartes’ motto: ‘I think, therefore I am’ we can see metacognition. In a similar way, it is possible to perceive the body’s capability for meta-feeling in the expression: “I feel my feeling”, and this meta-feeling is characteristic for “the danced body”. When the left and the right hands touch each other, there is a reversibility of the positions “feeling” and “felt”, as we can, through an act of will, control which hand “feels” and which hand is being “felt”. When we move beyond this basic level of feeling, we discover meta-feeling. One example of this is when we feel the right hand’s feeling of the left hand; the body “is moved when it moves something”. Accordingly the body feels the left hand’s “feelability”; the body “is touched when it touches something”. The Phenomenology of Co-Feeling: To be felt by someone “The danced body” thus feels itself as an Other who is not an Other and it also has a peculiar capacity to feel the other as itself. This results in my ability “be felt” or be “co-felt” by “the 9 other” and that I can, additionally, “co-feel” “the other”. “Felt” in this context refers to being not only perceptually felt (in terms of pressure, movement or heat), nor as operating solely within the emotional register (such as grief or elation); it instead means that we simultaneously obtain access to all dimensions of the experience of “the other”. Therefore we will now introduce two definitions: a) “Co-feeling” – To feel someone is the danced body’s capability to, in the intuitive imminence of the present, share the complete experience of “the other”. b) “Co-felt” – To be felt by someone is my experience of “the other” co-feeling me. The French poet Paul Valéry talks about the secret blackness of milk; something which the artist can acquire through the magic of the esthesiological body – the artist experiences the deepest layers of life which are darkly hidden for most people. The capability for involvement in “the other’s” whole experiences is also one of the artist’s primary motives, points of departure and inspirations. It is the “dance-body” of the muse who feels the artist feel her and vice versa. Our new-found understanding of “the danced body” and our phenomenological description of how we “co-feel” “the other” allows us the opportunity to answer the question about which type of connection exists between feeling someone and movement. The question is: what type of effect does this “co-felt” material have on me? To which movement does the material in my lived body turn into? The answer is something that we call “co-movement” – To be moved by someone, which we will turn to next. The Phenomenology of Co-Movement: To be moved by someone The development of a phenomenology of co-movement is motivated by the lack of phenomenological descriptions of the movement’s social and collective aspects. One of the most prominent characteristics in all our movements is their common ground in collectivity. In our everyday life, we more often move with others than in self-movement, and therefore, we need to reflect this nuance of movement. What do we mean by the concept “comovement”? We mean the type of movement that the co-felt material results in. The two positions of “co-movement” are thus defined as: a) Co-moving – To move someone occurs when my experienced “material” is “co-felt” by “the other” to then transform into the other’s “co-movement”. b) Co-moved – To be moved by someone occurs when the co-felt “material” from “the other” transforms into movement through my “danced body”. I feel the other as myself, and this feeling with the other results in a moving with the other. My co-feeling has transformed into a “co-movement”. Without an understanding of “co-movement”, we cannot 10 describe how the “experienced material” that is co-felt by “the other’s” “danced body” can transform into movements. An example of co-movement is when my son has a tummy ache and gets angry and frustrated. I “co-feel” his anger and frustration and I stick out my bottom lip in sympathy with him = the lip movement is thus what we mean by the term “comovement”. We have thus far identified the following nuances of movement/essences of movement: a) The lived body’s movement – To move towards something. When we move through our everyday consciousness. b) The unfree movement – To be moved. Everyday movement governed by material in the unconscious. Due to this nuance of movement, we can draw a distinction between the movements I master and the movements that master me. c) Co-feeling – To feel someone is, strictly, no movement in physical space. When the dance-body “cofeels” someone, it feels “the other” as itself. Through nuancing this movement into existence, we gain a description that we can use to expose co-movement. We also obtain a clear phenomenological description of the foundation of empathy, the experience of art and (as we shall see) the bodily foundation of the dance. d) Co-movement – To be moved by someone. “Co-movement” is our movement-related account of the material which our dance-body has received from “the other” through our “co-feeling”. In the concept “co-movement”, we can identify the foundations for movement synchronicity. We thus know that (c) co-feeling is one of the premises for (d) co-movement. Co-movement is also a premise for movement synchronicity and we assume that this skill is a prerequisite for dance. In order to further describe the possibilities of the movement we, on top of these different types of movement, must also discuss the three forms of movement. The Three Forms of Movement The traditional understanding of the organism is that it has the capacity for self-movement, which separates the organism from the thing. We can be “moved to movement” in a mechanical fashion in the same way as a rock is set in motion by being kicked. However, the organism’s movement is more complicated than that; the existence can be “moved to movement” in more interpersonal ways. Movement is closely connected to touch and feeling in a way that makes it impossible to separate the two. We are in movement (translocation) in and through our movement (feeling). Much like water can manifest itself as ice, water and steam, movement can manifest itself as touch, feeling and translocation – usually in this 11 order. We can see the six possible paths for our movement-intentional transformations in the diagram below: a) We can be moved emotionally by someone (feeling) to move towards something/someone (translocation). b) We can be moved emotionally by someone (feeling) to move someone (touch). c) We can be moved positionally by someone (translocation) to move someone (touch). d) We can be moved positionally by someone (translocation) to an emotional movement (feeling). e) We can be moved by someone (touch) to an emotional movement (feeling). f) We can be moved by someone (touch) to move towards something (translocation). We need to understand the experiences of touch (tactile form), feeling (emotional form) and translocation (positional form) as different forms of the same underlying phenomenon: movement. When we understand all these phenomenon as forms of movement, we can approach an understanding of how movement is transformed from one form to the other. We thus rediscover the three meanings (tactile, emotional and translocation) of the word movement both in the Swedish and English language [moved, movement]. When we discuss authenticity, we refer to the moment in which movement, in all three of its forms, coincide; when the expression for movement as feeling, touch and bodily movement is the same. Before moving on to the phenomenology of dance, it is time to discuss Merleau-Ponty’s understanding of dance from the perspective of movement in order to later explain the different ways in which we imagine dance. 12 Merleau-Ponty’s Understanding of Dance Through Movement For example, is it not the case that forming the habit of dancing is discovering, by analysis, the formula of the movement in question, and then reconstructing it on the basis of the ideal outline by use of previously acquired movements, those of walking and running? But before the formula of the new dance can incorporate certain elements of general motility, it must first have had, as it were, the stamp of movement set upon it. As has often been said, it is the body which ‘catches’ (kapiert) and ‘comprehends’ movement. The acquisition of a habit is indeed the grasping of a significance, but it is a motor grasping of a motor significance (MerleauPonty, [1945, 1961,] 2002: 165). Merleau-Ponty’s contribution to the phenomenology of movement lies in his making visible movement’s unconsidered preconditions for science. He shows that when we engage with science about the body, we cannot ignore our own body as a basis for this science. To narrow our criticism of Merleau-Ponty, we are left with two counter-arguments: Merleau-Ponty understands dance from the perspective of his own phenomenology of movement. MerleauPonty understands dance as a technology whose recipe our “lived body” must understand. We want to emphasise that dance is a capability we are born with – an emotionally expressed child will spontaneously dance to music which speaks to him. There is nothing to memorise but there is everything to express. Merleau-Ponty understands dance from an external perspective – outside of the dance. Merleau-Ponty understands movement from an external perspective – through the perception of an observer. We understand movement from the internal perspective – the dancer’s experience of dance. Through this practice, MerleauPonty’s phenomenology of movement fails to include the body’s capability for co-movement and so we can identify unanswered questions: How can the dancer’s experience of the dance situation be described as phenomenological? Does the dance have its own phenomenology separate from the phenomenology of the movement? We would argue in the favour of this – that we need to understand dance from the perspective of the dance’s own phenomenology and, furthermore, we need the dance in order to understand movement. The experience of dance offers us levels of bodily awareness, movement awareness and self-awareness we can obtain in few other contexts. We will now explore movement aided by the phenomenology of dance and will start by exploring the moment when movement transforms into dance; the moment Gilles Deleuze calls the “degré zéro” of the dance. We will argue that one can move in a dancing way with a movement that is not yet dance and, simultaneously, with a movement that is no longer simply a movement. 13 Degré Zéro: Where the Lived Body’s Movement Transforms into the Lived Body’s Dance Movements In order to concretely clarify the moment in which “the lived body’s movements” transform into “the lived body’s dance movements”, we will follow Gilles Deleuze (1989) through a scene in the film The Band Wagon (1953) which he uses as an example in his investigation of dance. Through this we can obtain a visual and kinetic background and understanding of the following line of argument. Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse walk leisurely and nonchalantly through a park, before spontaneously bursting into dance in a similar fashion to when musical theatre artists suddenly burst into song. Charisse and Astaire’s preceding walk exemplifies one of our distinctions: “the lived body’s movement” – To move towards something; when our bodily movements have a concrete goal and aim. Hereby, we introduce a further definition in this paper: “the lived body’s dance movement” – To move to something is manifested as the dancer moves themselves to something; sounds, tones, paces or rhythms. Deleuze understands the moment in which “the lived body’s movement” transforms into “the lived body’s dance movement” as the following: This is the moment of truth where the dancer is still going, but already a sleepwalker, who will be taken over by the movement which seems to summon him: this can be seen with Fred Astaire in the walk which imperceptibly becomes dance (Minnelli’s Band Wagon)… Between the motor step and the dance step there is sometimes what Alain Masson calls a ’degree zero’ like a hesitation, a discrepancy, a making late, a series of preparatory blunders…(Deleuze, 1989: 61). Between Fred Astair’s “motoric steps” and his “dance steps” Deleuze identifies a hesitation – a delay – and Deleuze calls this moment the “degré zéro”1 of the dance. Gilles Deleuze took the term “degré zéro” from Alain Masson’s book Comédie Musicale (1981) where the concept is used in order to describe the moment of song just before the song has begun to be sung. How can we understand the “degré zéro” of the dance? What is separating one modus of movement from another? We can identify the difference between a static and a dynamic repetition. In Astaire’s preceding walk, he steps in a recurring static repetitive fashion at an even pace, whereas after “degré zéro”, he moves with a dynamic repetition in which he steps 1 The concept “Degré zéro” was coined by the French philosopher and semiologist Roland Barthes in his book Writing Degree Zero [1953]. 14 in an irregularly rhythmic pattern. Deleuze has developed a distinction between a static and a dynamic repetition, and we can use this in order to clarify the transition between movement and dance. Repetition If repetition exists, it expresses at once a singularity opposed to the general, a universality opposed to the particular, a distinctive opposed to the ordinary, an instantaneity opposed to variation and an eternity opposed to permanence. In every aspect, repetition is a transgression. It puts law into question, it denounces its nominal or general character in favour of a more profound and artistic reality (Deleuze, 1994:2-3). The repetition of the work of art is like a singularity without concept, and it is not by chance that a poem must be learned by heart. The head is the organ of exchange, but the heart is the amorous organ of repetition. (It is true that repetition also concerns the head, but precisely because it is its terror or paradox.) (Deleuze, 1994:1-2). It is of great importance that we deconstruct the concept of causality in order to distinguish between the two types of repetition: firstly, there is the form of repetition referring to the overall abstract effect, and then there is the form of repetition which refers to the acting cause (Deleuze, 2004: 22-3). One is a static repetition, the other is a dynamic repetition; one is the result of work, whilst the other is more of the bodily movement’s “evolution” (Deleuze, 2004: 22-3). This is a central observation of Deleuze’s as the dance movement’s dynamic repetitions can be rediscovered in a few of the human body’s most developed movements. Our everyday stroll takes us from A to B in a static repetition, whilst the dynamic repetition of the dance entails the possibility to create meaning and express what there is. The study of rhythm confirms this duality, as a distinction can be drawn between an arithmetic symmetry – which can be traced back to a scale of fractional coefficients; and a geometrical symmetry – which is based on proportions and several irrational ratios, which is an example of static and a dynamic symmetry (Deleuze, 2004: 23). The study of rhythm simultaneously allows us to distinguish between two different types of repetition as the first type, “cadence-repetition”, is an ordinary division of time; an isochronic recurrence of identical elements (Deleuze, 2004: 22-3). On the other hand, a period only exists through 15 being determined through a tonic accent which is, in turn, determined by intensities (Deleuze, 2004: 23). However, we would be mistaken if we saw the accents’ function as a creating of equal intervals (Deleuze, 2004: 23). The case is, in fact, the opposite: the tonic and intensityrelated values are working through creating inequalities or non-comparabilities between metrically equivalent periods or spaces (Deleuze, 2004: 23). These accents create distinct points – privileged moments – which always indicates a “poly-rhythm” and in which the unequal part is the most positive element (Deleuze, 2004: 23). The cadence, on its part, embraces the rhythm but also the relations between several rhythms (Deleuze, 2004: 23-4). The reiteration of the unequal points or the rhythmic event’s differences is, in other words, more foundational than the reproduction of ordinary homogenous elements (Deleuze, 2004: 24). As a result of this, we can differ between “cadence-rhythm” and “rhythm-repetition” as the former is solely the exterior revelation, or the abstract effect, of the latter (Deleuze, 2004: 24). Movement and Dance Based on Repetition Here, we can refer to Deleuze’s method of understanding this transition through describing how these diverse types of repetition differ from each other. In the transition from movement to dance – “degré zéro” – we can identify continuity and discontinuity; repetition and rhythm. The different repetitions found in walk and dance differ fundamentally from each other. The walk is an ongoing recurrence of the same; in “the lived body’s movement” we can find a concrete movement quality. After the transition into dance, however, the dance steps are creating an artistic pattern through dynamic “rhythm-repetitions”. Dance steps are the recurrence of the unequal. We could say that these patterns are a recurring discontinuity. How can we understand what a recurring discontinuity is, and why it is more foundational than the static, obvious rhythm? One way to explain that the recurring discontinuity is more foundational than the recurring continuity is through saying that: When we dance to a piece of music, the central element is not that we move in pace with the music, according to an even meter (1, 2, 3, 4) or [ta-ta-ta-ta]. The experience of dancing in music comes from another type of synchrony. Our movements can rather, in dance, be attuned to the music’s unequal rhythm or to the music’s or the singer’s phrases. Talented dancers rarely move according to the straight meter of a music piece, but rather, they mark out the rhythm [ta-ta-taaaaa-ta-ta-taaaa-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta] etc. In their expression, they can jump between (1) the even 16 meter of the music, (2) the recurring unequal rhythm of the music, and (3) the music’s or the singer’s different phrases. Both singer and dancer stand in a more obvious relation with the rhythm of the piece rather than the straight meter of the piece, which supports Deleuze’s discovery. Next in our investigation, we will ask if the phenomenon of rhythm can deepen our understanding of the difference between movement and dance. Giorgio Agamben has, in his investigation, realised that the phenomenon “rhythm” is the original structure of art, and he perceives rhythm in a slightly different way to Deleuze. According to Agamben, the concept has three meanings which are possible to recognise as foundational for artistic activity, artistic expression and artistic experience. Rhythm In order to understand how rhythm emphasises the differences between “the lived body’s movement” and “the lived body’s dance”, we will allow Giorgio Agamben2 to mediate Hölderlin’s message: “Rhythm is the original structure of art”. Everything is rhythm, the entire destiny of man is one heavenly rhythm, just as every work of art is one rhythm, and everything swings from the poetizing lips of the god (Hölderlin, in von Armin, 1914:331). But, we ask ourselves, what is the essence of this rhythm? But what then, is the essence of rhythm? What is the power that grants the work of art its original space? The word “rhythm” comes from the Greek rev, to flow, as in the case of water. That which flows does so in a temporal dimension: it flows in time (Agamben, 1999:99). Rhythm introduces stops and pauses in the eternal flow of time, and even if a musical piece exists, somehow, in time, we notice rhythm as something which escapes the eternal flow of movements, and almost appears like the presence of an atemporal dimension in time 2 Giorgio Agamben, b. 1942, is Professor in Aesthetics at the University of Verona. 17 (Agamben, 1999: 99). In the same way, we perceive a halt in time when we stand in front of an artwork or a landscape bathing in the light of its own presence, and we are thus locked into this presence, which is an absence, an ex-static state in a more foundational dimension (Agamben, 1999: 99). This preservation, which at the same time gives away, and hides away, its gift, is called, in Greek, “epokhé”. The verb “epékho”, which the word stems from, has a double meaning: it means, partially, to hold back, to suspend, and partially, to hand over, to offer (Agamben, 1999: 99-100). If we take into consideration what we have thus far stated about rhythm, which reveals a more foundational dimension of time, and at the same time hides it in a one-dimensional flow of moments, perhaps we can, without too much violence, translate epokhé to rhythm, in order to claim that rhythm is epoch, gift and reticence (Agamben, 1999: 100). The verb “epékho” has a third meaning in the Greek language; a meaning which combines the two other meanings in itself: “to be”, in the context of “to be present, to be there, to dominate, to hold” (Agamben, 1999: 100). Rhythm offers people both the possibility to dwell ecstatically in a more original dimension and, moreover, rhythm allows them to fall into an inescapable and unmeasurable time (Agamben, 1999: 100). Rhythm holds, in the epokhé, the essence of humans; in other words, offers them both the gift of being and nothingness through the impulse in the open space of the artwork, and, furthermore, through an impulse against shadow and ruin (Agamben, 1999: 100). It is the original ecstasy which, for humans, opens up the space of their world – and it is only through proceeding from this space that they can, simultaneously, experience freedom and alienation, and at the same time lose themselves in history and experience historical awareness and simultaneously in truth and mistake (Agamben, 1999: 100). To look at a work of art, therefore, means to be hurled out into a more original time: it means ecstasy in the epochal opening of rhythm, which gives and holds back. Only by starting from this situation of man’s relationship with the work of art is it possible to comprehend how this relationship - if it is authentic – is also for man the highest engagement, that is, the engagement that keeps him in the truth and grants to his dwelling on earth its original status. In the experience of the work of art, man stands in the truth, that is, in the origin that has revealed itself to him in the poietic act. In this engagement, in this being-hurled-out into the epoch of rhythm, artists and spectators recover their essential solidarity and their common ground (Agamben, 1999:102). 18 What does Agamben think when he articulates the idea that the artist and the observer “through this engagement, in this being-hurled-out into the epoch of rhythm recover their essential solidarity and their common ground”? We interpret this as the epochal rhythm of the artwork making it possible for the artist and the observer to experience their common human grounds of solidary – the universality which Simone de Beauvoir mentions is of integral importance for us to fulfil. Rhythm is thus one of the most necessary parts for this type of artistic recognition. Dance, Movement and Degré Zéro based on Rhythm Agamben identifies three aspects of the concept of rhythm: (1) presence, (2) pause, and (3) transmission. When we look for these three aspects in Astaire’s dance movement, we can identify only two of them: (1) presence, and (2) pause. We can observe how Astaire’s gaze vanishes at the beginning of the dance, and that he is thus in an artistic dimension of existence. The artist disrealises the reality in order to be able to create. His or her everyday perception is partially stretched or expanded in order for the artistic capacity of action to be actualised. Thus, the artist needs to divorce from, emancipate him/herself from his or her everyday perception. When we dance, we cannot be present in an everyday way, but neither can we be completely absent. The dancer is, as an artist, paradoxically, present in his or her absence. This is about an expansion as opposed to a complete disassociation from reality as artistic creation is impossible without frameworks. We thus discover artistic creation is just as impossible in complete neurosis as in complete psychosis. When we will later discuss danceecstasy, we will realise that the latter is a truth with modification. The moment “degré zéro” will lead, as we know by now, to “the lived body’s dance movement” – To move to something; self-movement as an art form to tones, sounds, music or rhythm. A book has been written with this particular approach – which is why we will utilise this book in our exploration of “the lived body’s” dance phenomenology. 19 The Phenomenology of Dance as the Lived Body’s Dance Movement: To move to something We believe that dance is intimately connected to music, even if many contemporary choreographers and dancers experiment by moving to clicking sounds from “clickers” or other metrical sound structures that are not obviously musical in their construction. Our definition of “the lived body’s dance movement” – To move to something – is: self-movement as an art form to tones, sound, music and rhythm. In the overview of our phenomenology of dance, we introduce, for clarity’s sake, the dancing body’s three dimensions for the reader as an orientation in the field of the phenomenology of dance. The Three Dimensions of the Dancing Body In our investigation, aided by the method of Descriptive Phenomenology, we can identify the three dimensions of the dancing body: a) “The space at the middle of the body” is the body’s energy centre, and is usually located approximately two centimetres below the navel and a few centimetres into the body. We need to consciously establish a relation to, as well as activate, this middle-space in order to be able to move with energy efficiency. b) “The lived body” is my own characteristic and distinctive body, which I have direct access to in relation to my movement-related projects. c) “The space of the body” is the sphere which Rudolf Laban perceived in the form of an icosahedron; a polyhedron whose sides are constituted by 20 equal triangles. This sphere is beaming out from, and simultaneously embracing, the individual dancer’s body and underpins the dancer’s movement. “The space of the body” is what we call the body’s electromagnetic field, or the aura. How can we understand “the lived body’s dance movement? Our point of departure in this inquiry will be regarding Sondra Horton Fraleigh3, who in the book Dance and the Lived Body – A Descriptive Aesthetics (1987) develops a descriptive aesthetics based on MerleauPonty’s concept “the lived body”. Our understanding is that her perspective is primarily based on modern stage dance, which explains her emphasis on aestheticism and expression. She claims that what characterises “the lived body’s dance movement” is that it primarily has an aesthetic purpose; this movement is disconnected from its instrumental utility and now has a concrete purpose (Fraleigh, 1987: 27-8). During this dance movement, my attention must be 3 Sondra Horton Fraleigh previously worked at the Department of Dance, SUNY, Bockport. 20 lifted from my everyday “task-body” – my “body-from-habitual-movement”, and as a result of this, my bodily awareness changes; my awareness about myself (and my body as myself). The dancer or couple retain an individuality as creative source of movement. But what counts is the way in which the dancer’s individual genius, his subjectivity, moves from a personal motivity to a supra-personal element, to a movement of world that the dance will outline (Deleuze, 1989: 61). A characteristic aspect of “the lived body’s dance movement” is the subjective thematisation it has given rise to within the art of dance. “The lived body’s dance movement” is the dancer’s own self-movement which also establishes a framework for what is possible to express with this movement. We rightly speak of the art of Balanchine, Astaire, or Isadora. But it is not a strictly personal identity that we attach. It is an aesthetic or a stylistic identity. We identify Balanchine´s work as abstract, Astaire´s as charming, and Isadora´s as free. (Fraleigh, 1987:33). The dancer is both universal (in the same way as dancers in all cultures and in all times) and personified (as I am my own non-repeatable body; I am my own dance) (Fraleigh 1987: 29). In dance, we transgress our own personal self in order to actualise a universal self. We can here identify another paradox inherent to dance. It is me who dances, but it is not me who dances. Movement and Language: The Language of Movement If anything, language is post-kinetic (Sheets-Johnstone, 1999:506). In this quote, Sheets-Johnstone indicates that she sees the capability for thinking in movement as something that precedes our verbal language development. In our culture based on written language, we have a tendency to think away our original kinetic foundation. 21 Sheets-Johnstone’s concept “post-kinetic” emphasises the relation between movement language and verbal language. This relation is revised through the concept “pre-linguistic” which is based on verbal language and even sees verbal language as the only language. Dance brings us to the bodily lived source of language; to the primordial expression which plays in-between the words in spoken language and, at the same time, is moving beyond them (Fraleigh, 1987: 71). My body reacts differently to the words warm and cold in the same way it reacts to warm or cold qualities in another person (Fraleigh, 1987: 72). Broadly speaking, dance is metaphorical in the sense that metaphors comprehend us in a transmitted usage of expressions (Fraleigh, 1987: 171). A metaphor is strictly operating though words which are composed into a coherent form (a phrase or an image), which for the observer becomes something beyond words (Fraleigh, 1987: 171). Dancing movements function, metaphorically and poetically, in dance, in a similar fashion to how the word functions in poetry – in the sense that the metaphor is open for interpretation, and also in how the metaphor ties us to our world through an open, metaphysical jump from the word to our world (Fraleigh, 1987: 171). If what Fraleigh claims is true; that dance relates to the body’s movements just as poetry relates to verbal language, and that dance uses bodily movement in the same metaphorising way as the poetry uses the word, is it then not possible to see bodily movement as a language – a “language of movement” – in a more concrete way than Fraleigh indicates? We now introduce the definition “movement-language”. “Movement-language” refers to the type of language, the total amount of possible human movements, in which the individual person has access to their own “movement-repository” and expresses themselves according to their own movement-related “dialects” and “sociolects” and with their own intensity-related “prosody”. As a possible critique of the term movement -language, we will listen to what Daly writes about the term “body language”: even if the idea about a “body language” is successful in popular media, it is an imprecise reduction (Daly, 1988. 44). According to Daly, the movement is a hub for intersecting elements and systems – semantic, syntactic, formal and contextual – which are linked in perpetually complex and varied ways; for example, a smile does not have a set meaning (Daly, 1988: 44). 22 The Poetic Body: The Truth of Dance As impetus toward speech proper, dance founds meaning; thus it is closer to the immediacy, rhythm, and origination of poetry than to linear language. Dance is structured as a poetry of movement, not as a language of movement, although dance differs from poetry because it speaks through movement images instead of words (Fraleigh, 1987:73). According to Fraleigh, dance produces its own meaning, and it does not have any counterparts in term of words because dance is of a different order to words and finds its expression through the poetry of the body and the patterns of qualitatively lived movements. According to her, the observer is pulled into dance by her own body’s poetic capability (Fraleigh, 1987: 74). In the same way, we are pulled into other people’s experiences through our body’s capability for fantasy, empathy and experience. Here, Fraleigh touches upon the phenomena “co-feeling” and “co-movement”, but does not develop how these would be possible. Fraleigh argues that dance becomes meaningful when the movement is true to its aesthetic purpose; a purpose which is only expressed when it is embodied in movement – in the moments when movement and purpose are inseparable (Fraleigh, 1987: 87). The limitation of Fraleigh’s understanding of movement based on this image is that is does not capture the experience. Aestheticism does not capture art. Aestheticism is thinking the science of art and, with aestheticism as the point of departure, we cannot capture the phenomenon dance-movement. Merleau-Ponty developed “the lived body” as a model for the description of the art experience as a response to the view that the art experience would be a form of knowledge. It is interesting that Fraleigh practices “the lived body” in a way that Merleau-Ponty deliberately avoided. A further limitation is that Fraleigh understands the meaning of dance as untranslatable. Is it reasonable to claim an interpretative prerogative for the meaning of movements linked to the aesthetic purpose and, at the same time, claim that the meaningfulness of dance movements is untranslatable? How can something that cannot be translated be meaningful? Meaningful for whom? For the dancer? For the choreographer? For the audience? William Forsythe has, in an interview, expressed that dancers are at the bottom of the cultural hierarchy. According to him, one of the primary reasons behind this is that dance has been incapable of explaining itself. How can a dance stage criticise viewers because they do not understand the dance if the viewers do not get the dance explained to 23 them? We are hereby reminded that the meaningfulness of “the other’s” movements is critical in order for “co-movement” to appear. Our counterarguments against the lived body’s phenomenology of dance is thus similar to those we have previously directed towards the lived body’s phenomenology of movement. A description of our bodily movement from the point of view of “the lived body” tends to shut us inside the subject “the lived body”. Instead, we develop a meta-feeling, co-moving and co-dancing “danced body” in order to capture the phenomenology of dance. In order to make this possible, we first need to understand how these dance movements are possible to carry out. Is there a particular professional secret in the form of practical knowledge that is shared amongst dancers? We will thus learn about a phenomenon which we call “the centring of the dancer” as a possible answer. Centring The dancer seeks to become one with her acts, which are none other than her own… She wants to be completely present to the dancing, spontaneously centered in it – not behind or ahead of it…Her concentration becomes the process of its own erasure, allowing her the possibility of becoming perfectly centered in her dance, or of being unified in a vibrant presentness (Fraleigh, 1987:41-2). Here, Fraleigh gives a description of centring in dance. The dancer Elizabeth Streb expresses that she strives after achieving a clean focus, free from everything else than this particular movement, this action. Furthermore, Streb also captures the concept “centring”. Dancers usually testifies about an experience of “centring”, which is created in, and through, the dance activity. This is something expressed as a created focus, which Streb does in the above statement, or as something created by the movement itself, as expressed by José Gil4 and Gilles Deleuze below: This is what makes dance fascinating: as the dancer experiences his whole body being transported to the periphery thanks to centrifugal movement, he feels increasingly more “centered” and reunited with himself (Gil, 2006:34). 4 José Gil, b. 1939 in Mozambique, was up until 2009 Professor in Philosophy at Universidade Nova de Lisboa. 24 This is the moment of truth where the dancer is still going, but already a sleepwalker, who will be taken over by the movement which seems to summon him: this can be seen with Fred Astaire in the walk which imperceptibly becomes dance (Deleuze, 1989:61). What the philosophers José Gil and Deleuze, the dancer Elizabeth Streb and also the researcher of dance April Nunes refer to in the following paragraph is the phenomenon “centring”. As dance is a practical activity, where one person needs to be in the “doing of”, the “happening of” or the “being of” the dance movement, we can identify the need for a practical method through which the dancer can centre himself or herself. We need an understanding of this phenomenon in order to be able to describe the experience of a more complicated state within the phenomenology of dance. “Centring” occurs as the dancer finds and activates “the space at the middle of the body”, and this is a bodily activity difficult to define, which requires at least one intuitive sensibility and is one of the professional secrets which professional dancers hold – a silent and practical knowledge we will now learn about. The Space at the Middle of the Body Dancers need to find and activate “the space at the middle of the body”, in order, in an ergonomically correct way, be able to perform demanding dance movements without harming their bodies. April Nunes5 describes, in the article ‘The Search for Centre’ (2007), how we can find and engage our body’s energy centre, which is located close to the gravity centre of the body, which we usually find two centimetres below the navel and a bit inwards the body, depending on the constitution of the body. Nunes’ article about dancers’ practical knowledge have been voted as best article in a competition in the research paper Research in Dance Education. Nunes exemplifies this inner bodily activity through two “body locks”, techniques taken from yoga (Nunes, 2007: 72). The performing of one of these locks, Mula Bandha, is described as ‘a gentle contraction of the pelvic diaphragm and the muscles of the urogenital triangle’ (Coulter, 2001: 184). A simple way of finding the involved muscles in order to activate this lock is to exercise to, in a way that is as most energy efficient as possible, cut the 5 April Nunes is a choreographer, dancer and lecturer, and teaches at Roechampton University and at LABAN in London 25 stream as we urinate. The second “lock” is Uddiyana Bandha, which we can find through moving the navel towards the spine, approximately two centimetres (Nunes, 2007: 72). If both bandhas are activated simultaneously (i.e. the navel is pulled gently back towards the spine and the perineum is subtly lifted) then the pelvis falls into correct alignment in relationship to the ribcage, the lumbar region of the spine is supported by the muscular engagement through the front of the body and the centre is not only activated but also strengthened (Nunes, 2007:72). Talented dancers hold the practical knowledge around how they can perform dance movements which are close to what is physically impossible without harming their bodies. A fundamental precondition for this is the ability to activate “the space at the middle of the body” to optimise the relationship between the pelvis and the thorax and so that the lower spine is protected, at the same time, through an activation of the surrounding muscles. The purpose of this is to obtain access to the full movement-potential of the body. We can link this discovery within research about dance education to a philosophical investigation of “The Space at the Middle off the Body” by Gilles Deleuze. Deleuze clarifies the differences in grace and consciousness through dance as he contrasts Fred Astaire’s and Gene Kelly’s relationships to their “space at the middle of the bodies”. We discover that: Astaire’s style has often been contrasted with Kelly’s. And it is true that, in the former, the centre of gravity passes outside his slight body, floats beyond him, and defies verticality, rolls crosswise, and follows a line which is now only that of a silhouette, his shadow or his shadows, to the extent that in it is his shadows which dance with him (Steven’s Swingtime). Whilst, in the latter, the centre of gravity grounds itself vertically in a compact body, to free and raise up from the inside the mannequin who is the dancer. ´Powerful acrobat’s movements often augment the enthusiasm and force of Kelly, the way that he gives himself some spring with a jump is sometimes easy to see. Astaire’s gestures, in contrast, link up through a clear will of the intellect, without ever surrendering movement to the body´, and define ´successive and perfect shadows’. It is like the two extremes of grace as defined by Kleist, ’in a body of a man entirely deprived of consciousness and of a man who possesses an infinite consciousness’, Kelly and Astaire (Deleuze, 1989:61). 26 It is very remarkable that Deleuze notice how “the space at the middle of the body”, in Astaire’s case, is moving outside of the body. Here, we can identify a comparison6 between a dancer who is absent and one who is so present that he is absent in his presence. In Kelly’s case, “the space at the middle of the body” is for him located in the middle of a concrete, compact and physical body – as in the acrobat’s balance/ed/(ing) body – whilst Astaire’s “space at the middle of the body” is located at the side of the support polygon’s vertical line, a bit outside of the body. This is also the case when it comes to modern dancers and the Argentinian tango dancer with the characteristic forward-leaning posture, where the “space at the middle of the body” is located a bit in front of the tango dancer. The Language of Movement and the Gap in the Dance Without claiming to give a comprehensive summary of Kelly’s and Astaire’s different careers and styles, we can trace clearly discernible features in their different expressions. Kelly wanted, with his life’s work within dance, change the view of male dancers and he chose to stage “the common man”, for example the carpenter and the sailor in order to justify the dancing man. We can here find a straight-upside-down-ness in the correct performance of Kelly’s movements. This state is clarified by Kelly himself in a film about dance where he hits a pitch in baseball and describes that movement as dance: “everything is dance”. Kelly thus equates movement and dance. Furthermore, if “everything is dance”, if all movement is dance, we have to, necessarily, equate “concrete” (baseball) and “abstract movement” (i.e. metaphorising dance), which leads to the conclusion that Kelly’s dance movement is movement without poetry – dance movement as non-metaphorical. In comparison, we find, in the performance of Astaire’s movements, an unsteadiness, a sliding, a delay, not only when entering “the lived body’s dance movement” at “degré zéro, but also in the introduction and in the completion of each dance movement and each dance movement sequence. We find, in Astaire’s dance movements, an infinite number of gaps, between choreographic dance movement acts, between dance movement sequences, between dance movements and between dance movement particles. 6 In his approach to rhythm, Gilles Deleuze distinguishes between an arithmetic symmetry, which can be traced back to a scale of fractional coefficients, and a geometric symmetry, which is based on proportions and several irrational ratios, an example of a static and a dynamic symmetry (Deleuze, 2004: 23). One way to describe the differences between Astaire’s and Kelly’s movements is that we rediscover a “dynamic symmetry” in Astaire’s movements and a “static symmetry” in Kelly’s movements. 27 We know that Nijinsky over-articulated movements, thus de-multiplying distances by means of microscopic decompositions of movement. He thereby dilated the space of the body: he gave the impression of having all the time in the world, dislocating in space with the superb ease of someone creating (unfolding) space as he moved. The same happens with any great dancer, regardless of technique (Gil, 2006: 27). The phenomenon which José Gil finds in the dancer Nijinsky – when microscopic separations between Nijinsky’s movements create a gap in the movement, which gives the viewer the impression that the dance movement involve a sense of airiness and a tremendous lightness. We can also find this phenomenon in Fred Astaire. We find that, apart from centring, lightness and gaps, also a non-separation in “the lived body’s dance movement” – To move to something. In certain cases of improvised dance, there is a “non-separation” between impression and movement (Sheets-Johnstone, 1999: 516). Gilbert Ryle describes the dancer as: “He learns how to do things thinking what he is doing” (Ryle, 1963: 43). Marcia Sá Cavalcante Schuback described, at the university seminar “The Hermeneutics of Dance” (2010) at The University of Dance and Circus in Stockholm, that “we can almost reach non-movement in movement, one is so completely movement that one does not move. Here, we can compare this to the poet or other artists who are in the existential dimension where thinking and feeling is the same thing.” Fraleigh record another example of “non-separation” in dance: “In dance, I must become one with the intentions of my actions” (Fraleigh, 1987: 41). She develops the symbol “the open space in the middle” as the point in time and in the physical life when the visible form and the inner truth is perfectly integrated in the right action (Fraleigh, 1987: 239). Right action in dance is centred, which means that it moves from a still and calm centre-point, open and responsive, with grace in the total presence as the movement moves in pace with the intention (Fraleigh, 1987: 239). Then, there is no separation between the self and the body, no separation between action and intention and Fraleigh refers to this moment as “grace” and “to become dance” (Fraleigh, 1987: 239). As we have observed this integrated dancer, many questions emerge: Is it possible to, in dance, transgress this centred “non-separate” dancer? Here, we consider the possibility to a phenomenology of dance beyond self-movement, but in order for us to understand such a phenomenology of dance, we need to understand how it is possible. The philosopher José Gil has explored the phenomenology of dance movement and noticed that the dancer’s body can 28 be described as a “paradoxical body” which exists in a, just as, paradoxical space, a “space of the body”. This “space of the body” embraces the dancer and underpins her movement. The phenomenon Gil refers to as “the space of the body” is one of the keys to an understanding of the phenomenology of dance beyond self-movement and co-movement. The Dance Phenomenology of the Paradoxical Body: The space of the body Gil describes a “paradoxical body” beyond Merleau-Ponty’s “lived body” and beyond the rhythm of dance. The phenomenology’s merit lies in the fact that it clarifies “the body in the world” through studying “the lived body’s role” in the constitution of meaning (Gil, 2006: 28). The concept “the lived body” comprehends, for Gil, the perceived body, and the lived body for Husserl, Merleau-Ponty and Erwin Strauss7 (Gil, 2006: 28). This image of the body has been important for choreographers and for dance theory in the works of authors such as Susanne Langer8 (Gil, 2006: 28). However, the “phenomenological body” (particularly as represented by Husserl, not so much by Susanne Langer) did not succeed to capture two essential elements of the living, particularly in dancers: what they call the “energy” of the body and the “space-time” of the body (Gil, 2006: 28). In Andreas Vesalius’ book De Humani Corporis Fabrica (1543), we can find illustrations of fantasy-inspiring “living” skeletons who perform human, and for skeletons impossible, activities, and these pictures indicates medical education’s early and fundamental mistake, at the time when medical education investigated dead bodies in a search for understanding of the life force. 7 Erwin Strauss (1891‐1975), phenomenologist and neurologist who developed anthropologic medicine and psychiatry. 8 Susanne Langer (1895‐1985) was an American philosopher who contributed to the field of Aestheticism. She was one of the earliest women who pursued an academic career. 29 Fig. 1. A scientifically posing skeleton (Vesalius, Andreas, 1543: 164) However, José Gil expands phenomenology’s understanding of this subject and we listen to what he has to say: Here, we would like to consider the body no longer as a “phenomenon,” no longer as a visible and concrete perception moving in the objective Cartesian space, but rather, we would like to consider the body as a meta-phenomenon, simultaneously visible and virtual, a cluster of forces, a transformer of space and time, both emitter of signs and trans-semiotic, endowed by an organic interior ready to be dissolved as soon as it reaches the surface. A body inhabited by - and inhabiting - other bodies and their minds, a body existing at the same time at the opening toward the world provided by language and sensorial contact, and in the seclusion of its singularity through silence and non-inscription. A body that opens and shuts, that endlessly connects with other bodies and elements, a body that can be deserted, emptied, stolen from its soul, as well as traversed by the most exuberant fluxes of life. A human body because it can become animal, become mineral, plant, become atmosphere, hole, ocean, become pure movement. That is: a paradoxical body. (Gil, 2006:28). “The paradoxical body” is put together by a certain form of material, which gives it the characteristic of being in the room and at the same time the ability to become the room (Gil, 2006: 28). This means that this body has the quality of being able to be combined as intimately with the external room that it pulls a plurality of textures from this external room to itself (Gil, 2006: 28). This body can also become an interior-exterior room which produces 30 a plurality of spatial forms: a porous, smooth or transversally striated space (Gil, 2006. 28). “The paradoxical body” opens and closes itself against the room, and it is doing this, to a greater extent, aided by the full surface of the body (Gil, 2006. 28). This opening of the body is not a metonymy or metaphor, but rather the interior room which exposes itself when it returns to the external and transforms the latter to a “space of the body” (Gil, 2006: 28). The dancer’s “paradoxical body” emerges and exists in a likewise paradoxical room. We know that the dancer develops in a certain room which is different from the objective room (Gil, 2006: 21). The dancer does not move in the room; the dancer rather exudes or creates the room with her movements (Gil, 2006: 21). The relationship between the dancer and the room can be compared to the Japanese archery, kyudo, where the bowman and his or her goal is one – and wherein these two, a new room emerges which we call “the space of the body” (Gil, 2006: 21). It is a paradoxical room on many levels, because even as it differs from the objective room, it is not separate from it (Gil, 2006: 22). It is an arena invested in affects and forces. “The space of the body” is the skin which expands in space – where skin turn into space, the extreme closeness between the things and the body (Gil, 2006: 22). In order to better be able to comprehend a new understanding of sensitivity in the dancer’s perception and spatial estimation through “the space of the body”, we can look to the following image: We can perform the following experiment: let’s immerse ourselves completely naked in a deep bathtub, leaving only our heads sticking out of the water; let’s drop onto the surface of the water, near our submerged feet, a spider. We will feel the animal’s contact on the entirety of our skin. What happened? The water created a space of the body defined by the skinmembrane of the bathtub’s water. From this example we can extract two consequences pertaining to the properties of the space of the body: it prolongs the body’s limits beyond its visible contours; it is an intensified space, when compared with the habitual tactility of the skin (Gil, 2006:22). This image clarifies the dancer’s excavated sensitivity through “the space of the body”, how the feeling in the dancer’s skin is expanded to also include the space around the dancer. “The space of the body” is born in the same moment as an affective investment by the body occurs (Gil, 2006: 22). The movements sprung from “the space of the body” do not stay at the actual border of the body, but they rather implicates the body in its wholeness – if “the space of the body” expands, this expansion also influences the body and its interior (Gil, 2006: 26). Here, we can imagine that Gil transgresses Merleau-Ponty’s proposition: that the body is not, solely, in the room but is also of the room (Merleau-Ponty, 2004: 171). With Gil’s 31 terminology it can be imagines that both “the body” and “the room” are of “the space of the body” (Gil, 2006: 26). All dancers, choreographers and thinkers who have mentioned “the space of the body” have described it as emitting from a singular body which is embraced but, at the same time, made independent through this “space of the body” (Gil, 2006: 22). Dance produces this “space of the body” which assumes forces, and moreover, is birthing itself through various tensions (Gil, 2006: 23). Laban’s icosahedrons surround the dancer in a form which the dancer carries with him as he moves from one point to another, simultaneously as the movement erupts into this icosahedron which changes it and preserves it through mutations (Gil, 2006: 23). All thinkers who have mentioned “the space of the body” have described it as the lived experience of the dancer, who feels himself or herself in movement within a form of vessel which supports the movement (Gil, 2006: 23). We can trace at least two functions to the space of the body: (a) it strengthens the flow of the movements through creating an appropriate environment with the lowest possible level of friction, and: (b) it makes possible the positioning of virtual bodies, which we have previously read about, which multiplies the dancer’s point of outlook (Gil, 2006: 23). “the space of the body” is the result of an emittance, or a returnability of the inner room in the body in relation to the outer (Gil, 2006: 23). This capability for returnability transforms the objective room and gives it a texture close to the texture of the inner room (Gil, 2006: 23). With the aid of this function, the dancer does no longer need to move as an object in an outer room – but rather, the dancer’s body can, from now on, spread movements as if those were, unrestrictedly, traversing the body; this body which is the movement’s natural environment (Gil, 2006: 23). José Gil offers a possible alternative to Merleau-Ponty’s “body schema” as a phenomenological explanation model of our experience of our own body during dance. We learn that it is true that I “see” my dancing, but it is also true that I “listen”, and even more deeply: I “feel” my dancing. We “touch” or “experience” the movement with the whole body, as the body’s reflexivity is total (Gil, 2006: 24). Here, Gil also emphasise that the feeling “danced body” is a prerequisite for dance. Movement feels. “There is no single visual or kinaesthetic image of the dancing body, but a multiplicity of virtual images produced by movement that mark so many points of contemplation from which the body perceives itself” (Gil, 2006: 24). Here, Gil’s description of perception is, on the one hand, possible to interpret as transgressing Merleau-Ponty’s definition of the “body schema”. On the other hand, it is possible to interpret Gil as deconstructing Merleau-Ponty, as the “body schema”, for Merleau-Ponty, is a coherent “continuous translation of the body’s positioning into visual 32 language”, whilst the body, for Gil, perceives itself from many different points. What these two thinkers have in common, is the approach that the term “body image” does not capture our perception of the own body. Depth One dimension which radically differ “the space of the body” from the objective room is “depth”, as it is, here, not about a measurable depth (Gil, 2006: 26). This “depth” is what Gilles Deleuze calls, in his book Différence et Répétition (1968), “spatium” in order to separate his perception of spatiality from Merleau-Ponty’s perception, which Deleuze believed originates from the Cartesian view of the room as extension (Gil, 2006: 26). What characterises the depth which belongs to “the space of the body” is its capacity to attach itself to a place which results in that we can define it as “topological”, that there is a certain link between the body and the place which cuts out its own depth from the room (Gil, 2006: 26). “Depth” is a primordial dimension of the dancer’s room which gives the dancer an opportunity to reshape the room, to extend and limit the room, and let the room acquire the most paradoxical forms (Gil, 2006: 26). The dancer does not move in common space, his time transforms the objective time of clocks (Gil, 2006:27). When the dancer’s movements create a “space of the body” which is characterised by “depth”, its influences the dancer not to move in the measurable room; the temporality of the dancer restructures the clock-related time, and thus new paradoxical unities of room-time are related. Here, we may remember Agamben’s appropriate words about how the ecstatic epokhé of the art work, keeps us in a stop in time, and tie this to the “depth” of the dancer’s room. It is possible to understand the opening of “the room of the dancer” as an epokhé of dance; the space of the body is thus what is creating this gap in time where the dancer is kept in his or her absent presence. Before we turn to discuss how Gil understands the link between energy flow and movement, and to this “depth” in the space of the body, we will first investigate different meanings of the word “Energy”. Energy: Etymology and Concept We find that the root words to the word “energy” is the Greek words “en” and “ergon” which means “in” and “the work”. “Energy” is, thus, what is “in work”, energy is what is 33 performing work. We can compare this original meaning of the concept “energy” to the definition in modern physics. According to physics, there are many types of energy: heat, sound, energy of position and energy of movement to mention a few. The law of physics related to energy conversion teaches us that energy can never be destroyed, only be converted to one form to another. Ek ½ * mv² Ek = Kinetic energy, m = mass, v = speed Above is the physical form for kinetic energy (energy of movement) which originally was developed by Gottfried Leibniz and Johann Bernoulli. It is remarkable that these people understood kinetic energy as vitality. The Dance-Movement-Energy of the Paradoxical Body In dance, the events refer to changes in the order of the energy flow (Gil, 2006: 27). Dance is composed by a succession of micro events; the specific micro events we rediscovered in Astaire’s and Nijinsky’s movements, which seamlessly transform the meanings of movements (Gil, 2006: 27). To each transformation of the energy-related order belongs a corresponding modification of the space of the body (Gil, 2006: 27). These modifications always consist of specific contractions or shortenings, and of certain expansions and stretchings (Gil, 2006: 27). One could say that there is expansions and contractions occurring in the same place, and not in the objective stretching (Gil, 2006: 27). For instance, it is only the depth’s opening of “the space of the body” which allows the dancer to acquire an “everlasting slowness” as he performs movements: if a distance has become too vast, the dancer does not need to cover it in a hurry under the pressure from an external force (Gil, 2006: 27). There is no autonomous or fixated “space of the body”, but rather, it varies based on the direction and speed of the opening, as it depends on the time it takes for the movement to open “the space of the body” (Gil, 2006: 27). In the same way, time in the dance situation is dependent on the structure of “the space of the body”, and this structure is created through the involved energy (Gil, 2006: 27). Energy creates space-time unities. The dancer does not traverse the space of the body as he would traverse an objective distance in a given chronological time. While dancing, the dancer produces singular and indissoluble space-time unities that confer a force of truth to metaphors 34 such as “a dilated slowness,” or “a sudden enlargement of space,” used to describe the dancer’s gestures (Gil, 2006: 27). In the same way, the dancer creates their own temporality and spatiality – “room-time” – though their movements. It is easy to connect this paradoxical “room-time” in “the space of the body” to Agamben’s description of how we, when we stand in front of an at work, perceive a stop in time, bathing in the light of our own presence, and how we then are locked to this presence, which is an absence, an ex-stacy in a more original dimension. If the compare Agamben’s perspective of art and Gil’s perspective of the paradoxical temporality and spatiality of dance, in art experiences in the still art forms, Gil talks about a temporality and spatiality which is produced through the “paradoxical body’s” dance movements and which are specific for the experience of dance. E=(Motion)² After having seen how Gil see the relationship between energy, “room-time” and movement, we can compare these relationships to incidents we have found earlier in our investigation relating “energy”, “movement”, “the space at the middle of the body”, and “the space of the body”. These incidents are here compiled through the equation E=(Motion)². Let us, together, see what this equation means and how we worked it out. The formulae E=(Motion)² expresses what Gil refers to in his statement that “the most abstract and subtle change of energy is enough to actualise the most concrete bodily movement” (Gil, 2006: 30). Here, “E” stands for energy and “motion” stands for body movement. We thus mean that it is not movement which influences and changes energy, but energy which influences and changes movement. Let us dwell deeper into this issue – Gil brings up, in the introduction to the article Paradoxical Body, “the energy-medical body” which maps the energy distribution and the energy flow in “the lived body” which springs from “the space at the middle of the body”. “The energy-medical body” describes how the body’s energy flow is associated to the body’s various inner organs. What has not been concluded in Gil is how an inner energy-medical mapping of energy can be merged with what we now know as “the space at the middle of the body” and “the space of the body”. April Nunes leaves out, just like Gilles Deleuze, the question of energy in her discussion about “the space at the middle of the body” and both of them chose to only mention it as “the gravity centre of the body” and not “the energy centre of the body”. However, the question 35 about dance phenomenology is, necessarily, a question about energy phenomenology, as Gil’s phenomenology shows us that dance movement is determined by an underlying energy. Thus, we can link Nunes’ and Gil’s descriptions of the internal as well as external manifestation of dance-movement-energy. We can do this through the following evidence related to “energy”, “movement”, “the space at the middle of the body” and “the space of the body”. 1. April Nunes argues that our localising of “the space at the middle of the body” is vital in order to achieve “quality of movement” (Nunes, 2007: 69). 2. José Gil states that the events in dance refer to changes in the energy flow’s order (Gil, 2006: 27). 3. “The most abstract and subtle change of energy is enough to actualise the most concrete bodily movement” (Gil, 2006: 30). 4. “The space of the body varies depending on the speed of the opening of “the space of the body”, in a way that makes it dependent of the time this opening of “the space of the body” takes. This time, in turn, depends on the texture of “the space of the body”, if “the space of the body” has a higher or lower density, or higher or lower viscosity, which is born from the involved energy” (Gil, 2006: 30). If (1) the quality of movement is determined by the dancer’s contact with “the space at the middle of the body” and if (2, 3) the quality of movement is determined by an underlying “energy”, it is reasonable to assume that this underlying “energy” springs from, and is determined by, “the space at the middle of the body”. When Gil mentions changes in the texture and density of “the space of the body” (4), it is possible to assume that he alludes to an energy-related “density”. This density materialises itself as thickness and airiness, but the underlying density is, essentially, energy-related. If energy in movement is determined by “the space at the middle of the body”, it means that it is rational that the “energy” from “the space at the middle of the body” also determines “the space of the body”, which embraces the 36 dancer’s “lived body” and underpins the dancer’s movements. This “space of the body” is what some people call the body’s aura and others call the heart’s electromagnetic field9. Energy as both Field and Body The dancer in movement can be perceived as both field (“the space of the body”) and body (“the danced body”) in a way that resembles of how light can be perceived as both wave and particle. This field’s internal, subtle and central manifestation is “the space at the middle of the body” – the energy-related inner field which usually10 is located close to the body’s weight-related balancing fulcrum, a point we, in most cases, can find a bit below the navel and a few centimetres inwards the body. This field’s external, subtle manifestation is “the space of the body” – the electromagnetic field which surrounds the body. Quantum mechanics teaches us that light (energy) needs to be understood both as wave (field) and particle (body) at the same time. In a similar way, this investigation understands energy in movement as both field and body. Energy in movement is not located both in field and body. Energy in movement is both field and body. If quantum mechanics is a theory about the physics of particle’s movement, our theory is a theory about the physics of human bodies’ movements. Our theory can thus be said to be an employment of quantum mechanics at a macro level. Our model with the fields “the space at the middle of the body”, “the lived body” and “the space of the body” is showing the synthesis of body and field which transforms energy from one form to another. “The space at the middle of the body”, “the danced body” and “the space of the body” can thus be seen as different spheres in the same energy-related system which underpins movement. It is completely natural that the concept of energy is given a practical usage within dance, as we have now seen how dance is intimately connected to, and prerequisite an understanding of, energy. In order to be able to perform according to best capabilities in dance, in order to create a great art of movement, it requires an intuitive contact with the whole range of human layers, not least with the deepest and the most subtle. The other systems of existence, for 9 Heartmath have in their research on the heart shown its electromagnetic field which surrounds the body. Deleuze’s exceptional attentiveness showed us that the middle‐space in Astaire can be found at the side of the dancer, in the same way as in Nijinsky, in the contemporary dancer and in the Argentinian tango dancer in a close embrace. 10 37 example the cognitive, is in dance often inadequate as they are too slow or too blunt in order to be useful in dance, which requires an intuitive immediacy in the present. The Flow of Dance: An Introduction to a Social Phenomenology of DanceMovement-Energy The extensions or shortenings Gil mentions, which occur in the same place in the room, can more accurately be described as a change in the energy-related density in “the space at the middle of the body”, in “the danced body” and in “the space of the body”. Here, we can compare the energy-related rhythm of dance to the rhythm in the in-and-out breathing, or to the heart beats, which does not have a stop-status. When I stand and charge during my preparations prior to a dance movement, I build of an energy-related charge in “the space of the body” and this “energy” carries my body and my dance movement through that I, as the lead, give this energy a direction and as this energy dances away I also dance away simultaneously. Another example is when I, as the follow, listen and feel the direction in my lead’s “energy” and intentions. We can, in a similar way, perceive energy-related waves accompany the wind as a powerful dancer dances past us. Or how we, as we dance after a powerful lead’s dance movements, on a social dancefloor, can get into an energy-related “whirlpool” which resembles the trace or undertow, in the question of air resistance, which supports the following crane during movement as the leading crane performs the heavies work in the flying formation as this leading, during the flight, breaks the air resistance for the whole group. Some followers know, on social dancefloors, to take support by other powerful leads, whilst foolish leads see other powerful leads as rivals. A further example of energyrelated whirlpools outside of dance is the runner in the lead who drags the whole group forward. When I, as follower in couple dancing, listens after my lead’s intention, I might, by mistake, notice and respond to another more powerful lead’s intentions which was meant for that lead’s follower. There are many other situations in movement and dance where energy is expressed through “the space at the middle of the body”, “the lived body” and “the space of the body”. We look forward to see, thrillingly, which additional implementations of the energy concept we will learn about, in the near future, through investigations of energy in dance movement performed with the method of descriptive phenomenology. What have we won through this description of the dancer’s experience of “the space of the body”? 38 The understanding of the space of the body is a necessary precondition in order to understand the transition as the dancer goes from “dance as self-movement” to “being touched by the movement”. What we know is that the energy houses in “the space at the middle of the body”, is distributed through “the space of the body” and underpins “the danced body” in movement. We also know that the dance’s relationship to, and dialogue with, “the space of the body” change the physical room. In order to approach the state of “being touched by the movement”, we must necessarily surrender ourselves to be treated by this cluster of forces which constitute “the space of the body”. We highlight that this surrender has more to do with awareness, determination, perseverance and courage than about cognitive knowledge. We are, after this, prepared to approach the next level in our phenomenology of dance: the phenomenon “the free dance” – To be danced. The Free Dance Movement: To be danced Through our understanding of “the space of the body” in which the dancer moves, it is now possible to clarify phenomenology of dance beyond self-movement: “the free dance movement” – To be danced. A possible definition of this is: “The free dance movement” – To be danced is when “I am touched by energy which is distributed in and through the space of the body”. Here, we do not perform movement; we receive movement. We do not remember; we receive memories. We remember Merleau-Ponty’s words: “if I wanted to render precisely the perceptual experience, I ought to say that one perceives in me, and not that I perceive” (Merleau-Ponty, 2002: 250). Merleau-Ponty’s position related to perceiving would, if this was translated to relate to “the free dance movement” – To be danced imply that one moves in me. We can here identify at least five possible answers to the question about “the free dance movement”: (1) that one dances in me, (2) that I am danced by the body, (3) that I am danced by the movement, (4) that I am danced by the space of the body, or (5) that I am danced by energy. This investigation still contains the question about how I am danced open. The phenomenon “the free dance movement” can be described as an active passivity. Rudolf Laban argues that when we realise that relaxation can be active and consist of movements, it also becomes obvious that these also involve a certain effort, and here we can find a paradoxical antithesis between activity and rest which has lost its meaning (Laban, 1988: 54). The activity means to actively and consciously chose to let go of my expectations about how I “should” or “must” move in order to live up to others’ expectations or in order to 39 be liked, accepted or loved. This is expressed in the introducing saying of this paper: dance like nobody’s watching. The activity consists of consciously giving up my self-centred and egoistical will. The passivity, which then can claim a place where this personal will would be, consists of letting the body and the movement move me beyond my body and my movement, outside my body and my movement. How can we access an understanding of this transition? Academic philosophers and phenomenologists lack an answer to this question as they lack the necessary bodily (paradoxical) experience. We thus notice that the experience of being danced in dancers with a long-reaching practice. Each and one of them, Forsythe11 and Ervi Sirén12 have sought a transgression of “the lived body’s dance”. Instead of talking about “the lived body”, we can, for these, talk about a body that lives us – instead of a body in selfmovement, a body that moves us. I think the biggest difficulty in the kind of improvisation we practice is not consciously shaping your body, is actually letting your body fold and to develop a more reactive and a many timed body as opposed to a shaped body… I see that as an idealised form of dancing: just not knowing and letting the body dance you around (Caprioli, 2008: 205-6) When Forsythe talks about dance, he gives us the advice to, in dance improvisation, go beyond the point where we no longer have any movement-related ideas and let the body dance us. Arche Movement: To be danced as practice Jaana Parviainen13 illuminates Ervi Sirén’s pedagogic method in the text ‘Dance techne: kinetic bodily logos and thinking in movement’ (2007). Here, Parviainen promotes the view that when we use dance technique as a rational discipline worked out in order to secure the mastering of our bodies, we miss the understanding that the origin of movements springs from human capabilities and needs (Parviainen, 2007). The only way to obtain access to original movement is through letting movements be, and allowing them to treat us, and challenge us (Parviainen, 2007). 11 William Forsythe is a dancer, choreographer and pioneer through his development of the modern dance. Ervi Sirén was active as Professor of Dance at the Theatre Academy in Helsinki from 1998‐2007. 13 Jaana Parviainen is active at the University of Tampere where she has a PhD in philosophy with her doctoral thesis focusing on the phenomenology of dance entitled ‘Bodies Moving and Moved’ (1998). 12 40 Movement is not in our control, rather it befalls us, strikes us, comes over us, overwhelms us, transforms us. The task of movement is not an “object” of calculative thought. It is not we who play with movement; movement starts to plays with us (Parviainen, 2007). Ervi Sirén searched for a movement state through unlearning the externally forced forming of the body (Parviainen, 2007). For her, the modern dance education wherein technique is used as a weapon, is obstructing the inherent aspects of dance as a creative state between being awake and being asleep (Parviainen, 2007). Sirén emphasises the importance of knowing one’s own body typography, as well as the significance of bodily awareness which involves a mapping of one’s own possibilities of movement (Parviainen, 2007). This coincides with Forsythe’s position. Forsythe and Sirén’s positions related to body, dance and movement overlap each other and we will later describe this overlapping in greater detail. Sirén has developed movements which Parviainen calls “arche movements”. Parviainen uses the word “arkhe” in the same sense as in archetype or architecture – as in the first thing from which something is or becomes (Parviainen, 2007). “Arche movements” are simple, usually circular, spiralling movements (Parviainen, 2007). When Parviainen uses the term “arche movements”, she wishes to emphasise their characteristic as an entryway to or starting position for a world of movements without limits (Parviainen, 2007). She says about one of the arche movements called the “cat movement”: ‘anybody can do the cat movement. But who is prepared for an inner journey? That is what makes it a totally different thing’ (Parviainen, 2007). These “arche movements” are interwoven with “breathing tones”, which Sirén has named after different animals and natural phenomena, such as “snake-breathing” and “windbreathing” (Parviainen, 2007). The person in movement combines these “breathing tones” with “arche movements” (Parviainen, 2007). Sirén maintains that there are usually blockages in different parts of the dancer’s body and that “breathing tones” together with “arche movements” evoke and dissolve these blockages (Parviainen, 2007). Through mindfulness, conscious breathing and arche movements, Sirén’s dance students start to abandon their bodily breathing and active control over their own visual expression, and, instead, they learn to move through unlearning the externally forced forming of the body (Parviainen, 2007). This responds to the founding thought of the Alexander technique – a body-aware technique where motion training is, primarily, about unlearning faulty movement habits, rather than learning “new” techniques. 41 Without trying to be “creative”, they begin to vary the arche movement, still keeping contact with the original and very simple idea of movement. In a way, arche movement remains transcendent to the dancer, despite its simplicity. This is improvisation within strict limits. By repeating arche movement dancers often find a condition where they are no longer actively executing the movement, but are moved by the movement, ending up in complex sequences and virtuosity… The challenge is to let go or put away the self, our habitual, learned movements, rhythms and styles, and then allow something new emerge out of the creative flux (Parviainen, 2007). Sirén bases the essence of the movement on spiral-like movements or the movement of the Medusa, where movements have neither a beginning nor an end (Parviainen, 2007). This movement has, in the same way as the movement of the human heart, no snap point, no specific direction, but its own movement echoes and vibrates in itself (Parviainen, 2007). In Sirén’s classes the aim is to return to bodily thinking, a bodily logos, leaving aside personal effort, to produce or invent new striking movements. She says: ‘You cultivate your personality, going deeper and deeper within, finding a kind of notion of the amoeba, a kind of undulating movement of the cell. It is inside all of us…and then we end up with the question, what is my own movement? And who am I? Does it exist at all? When you have found yourself, what is it then? Or is it something that constantly changes?’ (Parviainen, 2007) For Sirén, movement is a special topic; a spatial element in which we are located (Parviainen, 2007). We can compare Sirén’s dance practice to certain meditation states, or states in which we reach a certain level of concentration and where no effort is needed to do what we are concentrating on doing, as our whole system flows in that direction (Parviainen, 2007). Her relation to movement is not a “making be”, but a “letting be” attitude. This means neither passivity nor domination. For each mover, access to this presence is gained not by any human accomplishment, but by “letting” something be accomplished in the mover (Parviainen, 2007). This poetic description of “letting” movement happen, to “wait for” dance, captures something essential. To “let” something happen is not passivity, weakness or submission, but rather, an expression of patience. A patience that, according to Sirén, is necessary for the dance which dances us to occur. We can observe how Forsythe and Sirén’s positions have many similarities; both emphasise letting act-intentionality rest and not consciously forming either movement or body. We can see that: a) Forsythe articulates improvisation as “being set 42 in motion by the body”, b) Sirén’s arche movements can be articulated as “being set in motion by the movement”. What does “being set in motion by the body” or “being set in motion by the movement” consist of? We know that, through practice, it is possible to follow a dancer’s practices and, through her or him, learn how we, possibly, at one time in a distant future can “be moved by…”, but it does not provide us with an answer as to what To be danced is. I know that it is required of me to allow my ideas and my judgment to rest and to instead surrender myself to movement and dance. The question that emerges is if we, in “the free dance movement”, are touched by the movement, by the body, by both, or by something which underlies both of them? Gil teaches us that a dance movement is determined by an underlying energy. Can Forsythe’s concept “being danced by the body” and Sirén’s concept “being danced by the movement” be rewritten to “being danced by energy”, “being danced by the life force”, or “being danced by life”? We argue that this is the case. Our definition of the free dance movement is thus: The free dance movement – To be danced – as we are being danced by energy which is distributed in and through “the room of the body”. The Free Dance Movement and Repetition Earlier, we demonstrated a relationship between repetition and “the unfree movement” – To be moved, which we now know that we are deemed to repeat until we remember again – it comes out of our unconscious and compulsory, repetitive movement programs. We can identify a relationship between “the unfree movement” and “the free dance movement”, as we now know that “the free dance movement” has the possibility to free us from “the unfree movement”, from our habits, from what we have learnt externally and our forced movement patterns. It is possible that the concept of repetition can bring us a more profound clarity in this matter. Deleuze’s definition of “rhythm-repetition” is when the “intensity-related values work through creating inequality or incomparability between metric equivalent periods”. From this, it is possible to conclude that “rhythm-repetition” also is the type of rhythm which is foundational for “the free dance movement” – To be danced. How can we know this? We can see there are inequalities and an incomparability which characterises “the free dance movement’s” repetition, because when we dance, we repeat that which is dissimilar. Dance movements are, paradoxically, in “the free dance movement”, both strange and familiar; these movements are, on the one hand, repetitive, organised and comparable movements to 43 each other, and, on the other hand, non-repetitive, unorganised and incomparable movements to each other. “The free dance movement” is the first repetition Gilles Deleuze talks about. We can, once again, identify a paradox. We have never danced this dance; we have always danced this dance. The Phenomenology of Co-Dance: To be danced by someone To dance with someone is essentially different from dancing next to someone. What does this with consist of…? Our phenomenology of movement earlier showed that “co-feeling” is when I feel the other as myself; I feel the other’s experience with intuitive immediacy in my own body. We also discussed “co-movement” which is when the co-felt material transitions into bodily movement – both mine and the “other’s”. The capability for co-feeling and comovement is vital for “co-dance”. As “co-feeling” and “co-movement” occur in dance, the phenomenon we call “co-dance” occurs as well, and its two positions can be defined as: a) Co-dance – To dance someone is when the material I have “co-felt” is retuned to “the other’s” “dance body” through our mutual dance movement as an art form, to tones, sounds, music or rhythm. b) Co-danced – To be danced by someone is when my “material” is co-felt by “the other” and then transitions into dance movement though my “dance body”. Co-dance can partly occur when several dancers, in, for example, contemporary dance, dance in a series, or when the Argentinian tango dancers dance in a pair with each other. Below we will learn about Gil’s description of two or several contemporary dancers in a series. When we dance, we produce dancing doubles, which explains existence of the commonly occurring series of dancers who perform identical or complementary movements (Gil, 2006: 25). The actual dancer realises the virtual double of the dancer and it is, in essence, quite natural that the virtual partner occupies such a place: the dancer sees himself in the other, he adjusts. gestures and rhythms according to the virtual other, augmenting an identical impulse and complementing himself from the place of the other (Gil, 2006: 25) Vital for an understanding of the dancer’s production of doubles is that it is not about imitating or copying, but rather, the dancers enter a joint rhythm at the same time as they mark out their own differences within this rhythm (Gil, 2006: 25). This rhythm surpasses both partners as the difference perceived in one of the partners bounces back and resonates on the movements of other partner reciprocally (Gil, 2006: 25). We can clearly see the link to Deleuze concept “rhythm-repetition” – it is this form of repetition which characterises “co- 44 movement”. It is the “rhythm-repetition’s” dynamic and asymmetric symmetry which binds the dancers together in this commonality. Dancers in a series will enter the same rhythm and will move in asynchronic synchrony, in dynamic symmetry; they will move together but will not perform the same dance movement, but rather, the dance movement occurs within the same rhythm, with the natural variations resulting from the dancers’ different situations, constitutions and temperaments. Through this, a “plane of movement” is created, which overflows from each and every one of the dancers’ dance movements and works as a stimulating middle-space for both of them (Gil, 2006: 25). Gil takes the term “plane” from Deleuze and Guattari’s book A Thousand Plateaus (1980), wherein they explore the semantic ambiguity in meaning of the French word “plan” and expose its different meanings; partly a “geometrical figure”, partly a “map”, and partly to “make up a plan” (Deleuze and Guattari, [1980], 1987: 265). Two partners in a duo will, through this “plane of movement”, actualise other virtual bodies and so on and so on “Narcissus is a crowd” (Gil, 2006: 25). Even if Gil shows that the dancer, in what we call co-dance, enters the same rhythm, he does not show how this is possible. Only through my “dance body’s” capability for “cofeeling” and “co-movement” can I experience “co-dance”. “The other” and I need to share experience in order to be able to share rhythm; this phenomenon does not occur by coincidence. How can we share rhythm with “the other”?14 How can I perceive the other’s experience of movement and acting out of rhythm? Only through learning about “the other’s” experience can I enter “the other’s” rhythm and only then can I dance with “the other”. It is my “dance body” that “co-feels” the other dancer; the “co-felt” experience aspects transform into my “co-movement”; a co-movement which is performed to tones – co-dance. We repeat Gil’s very picturesque description of “the dance body’s” “co-feeling” and “comovement”. This rhythm surpasses both partners as the perceived difference in one of the partners bounces back and reciprocally resonates in the movement of the other. In dance, the movements of one partner try to enter the rhythm or form of the other’s energy; one partner becomes the other, becomes the energy in the other partner’s dancing (Gil, 2006: 25). The dancer enters the form of the other’s energy through a contact between “the space at the middle of the body” in both dancers. We can see that rhythm is a characteristic in energy: 14 This question motivates a phenomenology of movement from the perspective of the danced body. 45 energy has one or several rhythms, frequencies15. Here again we focus our attention on the fact that it is rhythm that binds the dancers in a mutual and atemporal flow in time, in a way which is similar to how artwork mesmerises the observer. In the close embrace in Argentinian tango, “the space at the middle of the body” is located in both dancers in the pair, with a mutual axis of balance in the same place – the middle of the embrace in the gap between the dancers – which makes it possible for the intimacy of the movement’s dialogue to be intensified to a maximum. It is not strange that dancers in partner dance who share “the space at the middle of the body” also share experience in an extremely intimate way. The experience of, in dance, becoming “the other”, is tellingly captured by Sally Potter in the song “I am You” from the film Tango Lesson. The exchange of information and intention between the lead and the follow’s bodies in the close embrace is primarily mediated through the dancers’ diaphragms, which results in “the other’s” “lived body” being accessible to me; the lead’s intentions can be followed in an extremely sublime way. We can compare the extroverted outward energy of salsa, where the dancers direct their gazes and their energy outwards, to the introverted energy of Argentinian tango, where the dancers forget about the world outside. It is possible to experience how tango dancers, during intense communication, dance in a bubble which embraces the pair; this is “the space of the body” of the dancers who seemingly coincide and this becomes more apparent than the individual dancer’s independent “space of the body”. This opportunity for co-dance is what attracts many people to the intimacy of partner dancing; the experience of co-feeling “the other’s” experiences, which can be expressed through dance. It is like we borrow each other’s bodies; we dance in each other’s shoes. The music and dance wake up; we feel, we attune and we dance out, over and over again, similar to the calm recurrence of breathing. This recurring catharsis, obviously, in part, requires a certain maturity and, in part, a certain repertoire of tools in the performer, which is why we share different surfaces from our palette of experiences with different co-dancers. An interesting and appropriate remark is the one made by the psychoanalyst Daniel Stern in a discussion with Steve Paxton (the founder of contact improvisation) about dance and intonation. Stern exposes a phenomenon which is at risk of occurring between dancers who, after having danced for a long time, have become habituated to each other’s subtle signals. Their disinterest for each other can result in that they stop listening to, and intoning to, each 15 In lead partner dance, the expression “send energy” is commonly used to describe how the lead communicates a proposed moving direction to the follower. 46 other’s vitality affects16; they lose their emphatic receptiveness, they lose the receptiveness to each other’s inner world. Through losing the capability for the dance body’s “co-feeling”, they thus also lose the capabilities for “co-movement”, “co-dance”, and as a further result, the “joint dance’s” asynchronic synchrony – its dynamic asymmetric symmetry. This movementrelated emotional shortage gives the dancers’ non-mutual movements a jerky, unfelt and disloyal character. Dancers can, in worst case scenario, dance as total strangers to each other; they do not know each other anymore. After this unfelt dance, we will turn to its diametrical opposite. When Dana Frigoli is being danced by Pablo Villarraza on the DVD Tangocamp: International Argentine Tango Festivals 2009 (2009), we will use their dance to show all the meanings of Agamben’s conception of “rhythm”. We can identify, in Villarraza (1) a most tangible presence in the situation through his body, which makes it possible for him to sincerely listen to, feel and meet Frigoli. We find in Villarraza a formidable example of an immediate, intuitive listening, in the present, to Frigoli, and to her feelings, moods and wills which gives inspiration to the joint dancers’ improvisation. We can see (2) the hiatus, the suspense, the artistic extension of the dancers’ perception which makes possible the artistic creation. We see how Dana Frigoli completely (3) surrenders herself to be danced by Pablo Villarraza, and we see how both dancers make themselves accessible for the music, for the dance and for each other. We find another movement, from co-feeling  co-movement  co-dance  joint dance. “Joint dance” occurs when we dance and are danced by the other, and, in the best of dances, we not only share a mutual dance movement, but we also share the mutual rhythm of our energies, we share a mutual “space at the middle of the body” and we also share a mutual “room of the body”. We hear the same music and we also know, now, that we feel the same feeling. The experience of “joint dance” is something many dancers strive for and yearn to get back after “the frenzy of dance halls”. “Joint dance” can lead to ecstasy but is not the only way to ecstasy. Neither is ecstasy the sole and final aim of dance. We do not believe in dogmas; we believe in muses. Dance Ecstasy: To be opened up through dance Now, it is finally time for the “dance ecstasy” to be opened up through dance. “Dance ecstasy” is chaotic – it can be unrestrainedly enjoyable and at the same time painful. It is the 16 The concept of “vitality affects” comes from the psychoanalyst Stern and refers to elements in our behaviour which are not affects such as feelings. For example, mothers tune in to aspects of an infant’s behaviour in order to show that they are emotionally intoned with the child. 47 dancer’s complete surrender to allowing oneself to be opened up – to become an open body. It is these fixations and affects that the body carries in its organs, which determine whether the experience of ecstasy will be enjoyable or painful, since physics teaches us, through the law of energy conversion, that energy can never be destroyed, only converted. This means that when the energy that was invested in our organs is released through ecstasy, the fixations in which the energy was locked into are released as well, and at the same time, the affects which were locked in by the fixations are released. In order to be able to better approach a deeper understanding of this, we will listen to how Marcia Sá Cavalcante Schuback describes the ecstatic dance: Dance can induce an intoxication, an ecstasy, the dance is ecstatic. This ecstasy is very interesting and the person who has experienced this dance ecstasy can describe it, no matter if it was a professional dancer or someone who just walked by came in and was infected. This particular ecstatic dimension is one in which the person appears by being completely drowned in presence, by the body, by the surrounding and by everything around. In Portuguese, we call this “corpo aberto” or “open body”, and it is through being totally locked into this “open body”, to speak paradoxically, that one is beyond oneself (Marcia Sá Cavalcante Schuback at a seminar at the School of Dance and Circus, 2010.01.28). Fraleigh develops the symbol “the open space at the middle” to refer to when the dancer’s visible form and his inner truth are perfectly integrated in the accurate action (Fraleigh, 1987: 239). We can identify a clear link between Fraleigh’s concept “the open space at the middle” and “the open body” [corpo aberto] Marcia Sá Cavalcante Schuback speaks about. Through Fraleigh and Cavalcante’s articulations, we can make a further connection between “the space at the middle of the body”, “the lived body” and “the space of the body”. In trance dances, for example the Tarantella, it is the body itself that becomes the scene or the space for the dance, as if someone – another body – danced within the possessed subject (Gil, 2006: 23). We can link this thought about the dance’s possession to Merleau-Ponty’s words: “if I wanted to render precisely the perceptual experience, I ought to say that one perceives in me, and not that I perceive” (Merleau-Ponty, 2002: 250). The dancer’s body unfolds in the dancing body-agent and in the body-space in which the dance is dancing, or rather, the body-space which the movement traverses and occupies (Gil, 2006: 23). Because dance – and no longer possession – can be started it is necessary that there is no longer any interior space available for the movement (Gil, 2006: 23). It is necessary that the interior space participates as intimately as the exterior space so that movement from the outside 48 coincides with movement lived or seen from the inside, which is the case in danced trance, as no space is left freely outside of the body’s consciousness (Gil, 2006: 23). This is, in part, possible to contrast to the (traditional) division of responsibility in stage dance art (which, in many ways, has changed and dissolved), whereby the choreographer is responsible for the movement’s visual expression, whilst the dancer is responsible for the movement’s inner experience. In the film Dances of Ecstasy, Michelle Mahrer (2003) shows a Nigerian priestess, who, through dance, enters a trance. We know that dance is a particularly efficient way to enter trance, as dance simultaneously initiates all the forces that Ethnopsychoanalysis speaks about (a loss of sense of direction through a confusion of the balance mechanism, disorientation and difficulties in perceiving time and space) (Gil, 1998: 167). Dance strips “the space of the body” itself; it dissolves the body in the physical space it occupies and prepares the body for the metamorphosis to become-other – which is the trance (Gil, 1998: 167). Through creating a body-room detached from real time, dance creates an “intemporality”: all dance is divine through being intemporal, evolving in the space without inertia or hindrance (Gil, 1998: 167). Here, we re-remember the epokhé of the artwork Agamben speaks about. The Body Without Organs When you will have made him a body without organs, then you will have delivered him from all his automatic reactions and restored him to his true freedom. Then you will teach him again to dance wrong side out as in the frenzy of dance halls and this wrong side out will be his real place (Artaud, 1947). Gilles Deleuze found the words to his concept “body without organs”, in the end of Antonin Artaud’s17 poem above: To be done with the judgment of God18”. The concept is, already in its original context, obviously tied to the ecstatic dance, to “the frenzy of dance halls”. We also find, in Artaud’s poem, the possibility for emancipation from automatic reactions. In the book A Thousand Plateaus (1980), by Deleuze and Félix Guattari, we find a chapter with the title ‘How to make yourself a BwO’. After reading Deleuze and Guattari’s ambiguous and 17 18 French poet. The poem is considerably longer, here only the last lines are presented. 49 difficult chapter, it is not clear what we should do in order to create a “room without organs” for ourselves, so Gil wants to show that the dancer completes this task, the transformation of the body, and creates a “body without organs”, a “plane of immanence” (Gil, 2006: 31). Gil believes that we need to answer the question as to why the expression “body without organs” is used and why this body constitutes a “plane of immanence” (Gil, 2006: 31). The habitual body (the body-organism) is formed by organs which inhibit the free circulation of energy (Gil, 2006: 31). In this habitual body, energy is impregnated and fixated in the organ system of the organism and it is in this way we build the “interiorized sensorimotor systems” Merce Cunningham mentioned, which, for him, represents an obstacle for innovation (Gil, 2006: 31). We need to release ourselves from these inhibiting systems in order to constitute another body in which intensities can be taken to their highest levels, as in the case with artists and, most importantly amongst them, the dancer (Gil, 2006: 31). The Technologizsing Body Without Organs of Contemporary Choreographed Dance The concept “body without organs” has held great significance in art more broadly, but in particular when it comes to contemporary dance. Contemporary modern dance has now launched an investigation into a technologising body without organs, as, in many ways, the modern dancer is no longer taught to perform movements according to Cunningham, Wigman, Laban or some other system of movement. The dancer strives to free him/herself from all of the body’s socialised and socio-cultural habits and patterns of movement; from conventions regarding which movements are deemed appropriate to perform. The position actualises that all of us have socio-cultural, movement-related breaks which we perceive others’ movement though. What is being strived for is thus the “body without organs” mentioned by Deleuze; a body without inhibiting structures and strata which provides the possibility for a starting point for choreography. This lack of socio-cultural movement-related conventions and habits in the body makes possible a starting point for free creation through choreography. Our modest query regards whether choreography, in its missions, organises the body according to precise structures and strata, and thus also risks forcing new fixations upon the dancer’s inner organs? 50 The Body Without Organs Through Dance Ecstasy Gil poses the question as to how we create this “body without organs”, this “plane of immanence” mentioned by Deleuze. In order to answer the question, Gil allows us to follow the ethnologist András Zempléni in his field work related to the Wolof people in Senegal to clarify the possibility of whether, though possession, we can transgress sociocultural strata which limit our body’s possibilities for movement (Zempléni, 1984: 325-52). In many cultures, therapeutic dances are aimed at healing through trance, and for the Wolof people, the trance occurs through dancing and the dancer enters a trance through a deconstruction of the “body-organism” (Gil, 2006: 31). One of the Wolof people’s rituals is performed though removing the innards of a sacrificed animal and covering the body of a female patient with the guts (Gil, 2006:31). After having bathed the patient with the blood from the sacrificed animal, the animal’s innards are emptied to later be: cut, and after that tied, bit by bit, to the body of the patient: to her left wrist and to her right ankle (or vice-versa), to her waist, like a belt; to her chest and back, as if it was crossed brassiere tied under her breasts. Finally, a part of the animal’s stomach, emptied out and turned inside out, is attached to the patient’s hair like a small coif. Under a blanket of coagulated blood, the patient will wear these visceral adornments and this coif made out of stomach until the ritual bath she will take the next day in the lustrous waters of her new altars (Zempléni, 1984:332; italics in original). It should here be emphasised that as this process occurs the patient in trance goes through incredibly powerful intensities which result in her fainting repeatedly (Gil, 2006: 32). The ritual operation consists of, in part, the extraction of the organism’s organ, and partly, of the emptying of the inner space. Through removing the organs and then spreading them out, the organism’s organisation is destroyed, and in this way, the affects which have been fixated in the organs are released – affects which had been organised according to precise structures and strata (Gil, 2006: 32). The body’s enemy is not the organs in themselves but the organisation of the organs forced upon them by socio-theological forces (Gil, 2006: 32). The body is not at all the body, the BwO; rather, it is a stratum on the BwO, in other words, a phenomenon of accumulation, coagulation, and sedimentation that, in order to extract useful labor from the BwO, imposes upon it forms, functions, bonds, dominant and hierarchized organizations, organized transcendences (Deleuze och Guattari, [1980] 1987:159). 51 These actions assume an identification with the animal, or more precisely: a “becominganimal”, and through this, an interior “paradoxical space” is created, which both is, and is not, space (Gil, 2006: 32). As this internal space is empty, and at the same time corporeal and incorporeal, this paradoxical “interior space” consists of “interstitial matter” which is potential matter, a matter which has the possibility to become anything – a becoming matter (Gil, 2006: 32). Gil does not see the interstitial nature of this interior “paradoxical space” as an aspect of the “lived body”. The interstitial is empty, void, a floating body, but with the power to attract all forms of material and transform them into specific intensities (Gil, 2006: 32). Why is this body subjected to these – towards the outside – operations of reversal though which this body is turned inside out like a glove (Gil, 2006: 32)? To obtain the opportunity to become a “body of thought”, a “body without organs of sensations”, or a “plane of immanence” (Gil, 2006: 32). Through the fact that the internal room creates an interface with the skin, this room allows the released affects to move freely in the same way as all other material it will attract; thought, emotion, wood, mineral, supernatural beings, ancestors; all tend to flow through “the room of the body” in the same way as energy flows through the dancer’s body (Gil, 2006: 33). We can here talk about a body of emotions or a body of intensities (Gil, 2006: 33). Two conditions are required in order to create a body where intensities flow: (a) an interior, emptied space which coincides with the skin and thereby constitutes a “body without organs”; (b) the skin impregnated with the interior space must become the body-matter of the full body, which includes “the space of the body” (Gil, 2006: 33). We can add that these two conditions themselves require immanence, they require that there no longer is a separation between body/mind or between mind/matter; here, no transcendence will disrupt the movements of intensities (Gil, 2006: 33). The skin no longer limits “the own body”, but rather, this body extends beyond the skin outwards to the external room, and this transforming environment is primarily affective, traversed by chaotic dynamics without anchorage (Gil, 2006: 33). How can we understand Gil’s position on the paradoxical body’s experience of dance? In order to give a concrete picture of this paradoxical body’s environment and its preconditions, Gil uses a series of images by Matisse: Danseuse Acrobate. 52 The Dancer Without Depth: Danseuse Acrobate Fig. 4. Gil observes, in Matisse´s drawings, the dancer’s body as a continuous moving line of paradoxical reversibility. Henri Matisse. Danseuse Acrobate (Female Acrobat Dancer), lithograph series, 1931-32 (© 2006 Succession H. Matisse, Paris/Artists Rights Society [ARS], New York) In short, the BwO is constructed by danced movement because this movement: (1) empties the body of its organs, de-structuring the organism, liberating the affects, and directing movement toward the periphery of the body, toward the skin; (2) creates a continuous space-skin surface, one that prevents orifices from inducing movements toward the interior of the body. Quite on the contrary, breathing becomes almost dermic, sounds make the skin vibrate, vision happens totally on the surface.... (3) builds, thanks to movement, a Möbius strip-like body: pure depthless surface, without thickness, without obverse, body-without-organs freeing the strongest kinesthetic intensities (Gil, 2006:33). The symbol for Gil’s “paradoxical body”, a “body without organs”, is the series Danseuse Acrobate by Matisse. In these images, Gil associates female ballet dancers with erased genitals and nudity in contemporary dance which also, in a paradoxical way, according to Gil, emphasises the unified surface of the skin. We can here find two further extremes: firstly, the modern dancer with a totally unified surface, and secondly, dancers within urban tribes, wherein it is the clan who feel the need to harmonise themselves through singing, dance and trance (Dances of Ecstasy, 2003). The singing, the rhythm and the dance are, originally, a way to achieve healing through an opening. The dancer obtains freedom through an “open middle space” and an “open body”. 53 The Open Body: The Mobile Immobile Together with Gil, we emphasise the subversive possibility of dance; the possibility for us to be shaken up by dance, the possibility to be deconstructed and thereby release affects, intensities and energies. We remember David Stránský, whose dance is an intimate intertwining of the powerful and the sensitive in a man who, in the realm of dance, is obviously in touch with the depth of his own strengths and weaknesses – truths and mistakes [Agamben]. We return to the film “Dances of Ecstasy” (2003) and to the priestess who, with the help of the drums, the singing and the rhythm during her dance, enters trance and faints. She is carried to a resting room for the possessed and rests there in complete harmony. This is to come out from the movement in the movement. She is our example of “the open body” – the body that has access to all of its possibilities of movement. These extremes of rest and activity in two moments without a gap are as close to the dance we can come, in words. And afterwards… When one wakes up, it’s difficult to express, it’s like the normal body was trying to come in and the spirit of Orisha is still there. The body is still disorganized and it takes time for the person to come back to normal self (Dances of Ecstasy, 2003). It is, in no way, a necessity to move to the extremes of dance in order to taste the subversive capability of dance. One evening or night’s devoted dancing on the floor is enough to experience the opening of the body, to experience the intoxication dance brings, to experience the awakening afterwards and how sluggish returning to our everyday experiences seems. Those of us who have been danced can testify about the time it takes to return to our normal existence again. Now, we ask ourselves what the subversive capability of dance can result in. Authenticity Agamben describes how we, in front of an artwork, perceive a pause in time; how we are then locked in to an ex-stasis in a more foundational dimension. Our discovery: to dance is to remember links this epokhé to memory – through dancing, I remember who I am. What we mean by ecstasy addresses the congruence between the three forms of movement in the dancer: movement as touch, feeling and translocation. A dance movement would then be authentic when the expression of touch, feeling and bodily movement coincides. 54 Conclusion: The Courage to Not Know Aesthetics is unable to think of art according to its proper stature, and so long as man is prisoner of an aesthetic perspective, the essence of art remains closed to him (Agamben, 1999: 102) Dance is, like philosophy: not a method but an activity. Dance is, in the same way as philosophy, not a way to obtain answers but a way to raise questions. Over and over again the activities demand of the performer the courage to not know. What is dance? What is to be danced? We found several possible answers to that question: a) Inspired by Merleau-Ponty’s words: “if I wanted to render precisely the perceptual experience, I ought to say that one perceives in me, and not that I perceive” (Merleau-Ponty, 2002: 250), the phenomenological description of the experience of being danced can be written as not that I dance but that one dances in me. b) An answer based on William Forsythe was to let the body take over and dance us. c) An answer based on Ervi Sirén was to let movement handle us. d) To be danced means, for us, to be danced by “the space of the body”. To be danced then means that I completely surrender myself to being treated by the rhythm of the energy which underpins movement. The whole thing is perhaps only a question of semantics. Which of the lines you, as a reader, choose, or if you find a way of your own, if you find your own words to describe your experience of dance, we wish you good luck with your dance. It is thus clear to us that dance requires the courage to not know, to not intervene. It is also clear that dance requires that we keep ourselves open and receiving. That we wait for it; dance requires that we let it occur and let it express itself. Dance requires that we let it inhabit our being, our spirit. Dance for us is not only an awareness of movement, an art form, a meditation or a prayer; it is all of this and more than our small, blunt words can capture. Or expressed in better terms: Feelings are nothing, nor are ideas, everything lies in motility from which, like the rest, humanity has taken nothing but a ghost. Antonin Artaud 55 Summary Merleau-Ponty’s concept of “the lived body” has, throughout the years, come to act as a model for how we understand the phenomenology of movement and dance. This paper has questioned the depth of this understanding and we thus suggest a complementary understanding of the phenomenology of movement and dance based on a receiving “danced body” with capability for meta-feeling. Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception leads him to a phenomenology of movement which, in turn, is applied to a phenomenology of dance. We thus reverse this relation and propose our thesis: We need to understand and develop a phenomenology of dance, and use this approach to understand and describe movement through the phenomenology of dance. We thus notice that the movement can be a paradoxical, passive activity. The entrance to the receiving “danced body” is through the phenomenon “unfree movement” – when we are moved by unconscious movement programmes. Through the discovery of these unfree movements, we obtain access to a spectrum of movement experiences: We move. We are moved. We are moved when we move. We move when we are moved. We touch when we are touched. We are touched when we touch. We move with the other. We are moved by the other. We are touched with the other. We touch the other. We are touched by, and move with the other. We are moved by the movement. These are but a few of our numerous possibilities for movement. We thus find, through the phenomenology of dance, movement-related awakenings from the unconscious. We discover that to dance is to remember. We collide with our personal (movement) limitations when we explore our own body’s possibilities for movement in dance. Our movement-awareness increases and dance now becomes a way to regain and become aware of our uniqueness and authenticity. When we hold our hands together, we identify a capability for meta-feeling; we feel our feeling, just as we feel our feelability. The meta-feeling in “the danced body” makes it feel “the other” as itself, which we call “co-feeling”. When we perceive “the other’s” emotional expressions, we have, through this body, the capability to borrow the other’s whole experience. “Felt” here refers to that we, at the same time, obtain access to all dimensions of “the other’s” experience, both with a perceptual, affective and emotional meaning. This “cofeeling” gives us access to “co-movement”; “co-movement”, in turn, gives us access to “codance”. We must be able to feel with someone in order to be able to move with someone; we must be able to move with someone in order to be able to dance with someone. 56 The phenomenon of movement needs to be understood through three forms: (a) a tactile form: touch, (b) an emotional form: feeling, and (c) a physical form: translocation. Touch, feeling and translocation are thus different forms of the same phenomenon in the same way as ice, water and steam are three forms of water, which means that we can move to movement in six different directions. Touch  feeling. Touch  translocation. Translocation  feeling. Translocation  touch. Feeling  translocation. Feeling  touch. We identify, in the transition between “the lived body’s movement” and “the lived body’s dance”, a hesitation in the dancer’s movement, and this phenomenon has been called the “degré zéro” of dance. Here, there is a movement which is not only a movement, but which is not yet dance. When we explore this phenomenon, aided by the way in which Deleuze understands repetition, we see that everyday movement is linked to “cadence-repetition”, while dance movement is linked to “rhythm-repetition”. Dance steps are the return of the unequal. With the help of Agamben’s understanding of the original structure of art, as a “rhythm” of being, we can see three aspects of the phenomenon: (1) presence, (2) pause and (3) transmission. We can identify the presence of all three of these aspects within dance movement. In dance, we experience a pause in time, bathing in the light of our own presence, and we, in that time, are locked in to this presence, which is an absence, an ex-stasis of a more foundational dimension. Through the phenomenology of dance, we can identify even more nuances of movement: we dance, we are co-danced, we are danced by someone, we are moved by the movement and we are moved by energy. Here, the body’s three dimensions become visible: “the space at the middle of the body” located two centimetres below the navel, “the dance body” and the paradoxical “space of the body”. I, as a dancer, need to establish a relationship to my body’s “space at the middle” in order to be able to move in an energy efficient and ergonomically correct way. José Gil’s description of the dancer’s “paradoxical room” shows that it is composed of a special form of material, which gives it the quality of simultaneously being in the room and becoming the room. The dancer herself transforms the room she moves within to the paradoxical “space of the body” which surrounds the dancer’s body, which coincides with the electromagnetic field Laban perceived and built his doctrine of movement on. Dance movement is determined by an underlying energy. We realise that the root words to the word “energy” are the Greek words “en” and “ergon” which mean “in” and “work”. “Energy” is thus what is “in work”, energy is thus what performs work; what makes us move. Gottfried Leibniz understood kinetic energy as vitality. Energy housed in “the space at the 57 middle of the body” is distributed through “the space of the body” and underpins “the lived body” in movement. Co-movement is, as we have seen, a necessary precondition for co-dance. Co-dance – To dance with someone is when the material we have “co-felt” is returned to “the other’s” “dance body” through our mutual dance movement, as an art form to tones, sound, music or rhythm. We understand co-dance through the way in which Gil understands rhythm: “This rhythm surpasses both partners given that the difference perceived in one partner bounces back and resonates on the movement of the other reciprocally (Gil, 2006: 25). In dance, the movements of one partner tries to enter the rhythm or form of the other’s energy, as a matter of fact, one partner becomes the other, becomes the other’s dancing energy (Gil, 2006: 25). In order to be moved by the movement, we must stop using dance technique as a rational discipline in order to master our bodies and instead let the movements be and let them handle us, challenge us. We cannot find the essence of movement until we have stopped to consciously form the body. The phenomenon “the free dance movement” – To be danced occurs as we surrender to being handled by the rhythm of the energy which is distributed in and through “the space of the body”. Finally, in this exposé of movement and dance we come to the dance ecstasy – To be opened up through dance. In Portuguese, the ecstatic dancer’s body is called the “open body” [corpo aberto]. Trance dances disorganise the dancer’ body and energies which have been fixated are released, and, eventually, the dancer’s body is open. Dance has the possibility of giving us this open body as a gift if we are willing to surrender ourselves to follow the flow. Summary of the Investigation’s Bodies and Nuances of Movement (1) “The physical body”; the body explored by physics. The body explored by the objective instruments of physics and which is impacted on by physical laws, for example, gravity. It is described as mass and density. (2) “The physiological body” which is explored by the instruments of physiotherapy. It is described with words such as joint angle and muscle tonus. (3) “The objective body” is the body as it is seen by an “objective” observer, say, how the body is seen by a camera or by the flying eye of science. (4) “The lived body” is my own characteristic and distinctive body which I have immediate access to. 58 (5) “The danced body” is the feeling body with capability for meta-feeling. My dance body can feel me as someone else. I discover this when I let my right hand hold my left hand and notice that their positions as feeling and felt inhabit a reversibility. Additionally, “the danced body” has the capability to feel “the other” as itself which gives us the capability for “co-movement”. (6) “The paradoxical body” is the dancer’s paradoxical body, a cluster of forces which have the possibility to, through metamorphosis, become-another, become material, stone, wood, emotion, ancestors. (7) “Body without organs” is the dancer’s disoriented body during “dance ecstasy”. It is a body whose inner organs, through inner disorientation, are released from the sociocultural forces which organise these organs following rigid and inhibiting structures and strata. (8) “The open body” is the body which dance ecstasy leaves behind. This body has immediate access to all of its possibilities of movement. The Three Dimensions of the Danced Body (1) “The space at the middle of the body” is the body’s gravity centre which houses the body’s energy. We can find “the space at the middle of the body” approximately two centimetres below the navel and a bit into the body. The dancer needs to activate “the space at the middle of the body” in order to perform his or her movements. (2) “The body of dance” is the receiving body with capability for meta-feeling. (3) “The space of the body” is the field which distributes energy during dance and this space surrounds the dancer and underpins his or her movements. “The space of the body” is what makes it possible for the dancer to “be danced” by energy. The Three Forms of Movement In the same way as water can act as ice, water and steam, movement can act as touch, feeling and translocation – although rarely in that specific order. We can thus identify six possible paths for the transformations related to our movements’ intentions: (1) We can be moved emotionally by someone (feeling) to move towards something/someone (translocation). (2) We can be moved emotionally by someone (feeling) to move someone (touch). (3) We can be moved positionally by someone (translocation) to move someone (touch). 59 (4) We can be moved positionally by someone (translocation) to an emotional movement (feeling). (5) We can be moved by someone (touch) to an emotional movement (feeling). (6) We can be moved by someone (touch) to move towards something (translocation). The Nuances of Movement (1) “The unfree movement” – To be moved occurs when I am governed by unconscious movement programmes, and these programmes are repeated until I go through an awakening to consciousness. (2) “The lived body’s movement” – To move towards something is when I, in my everyday life, move towards the concrete things. (3) “Co-movement” – To be moved by someone is what “the danced body” makes possible. “Co-movement” is when I feel the other as myself; I feel the other’s experiences with an intuitive immediacy through my own “dance body”. “Comovement” is key to understanding how we can move from movement to dance, from movement to art, from expression to impression and from impression to expression. “Co-movement” is, partly, the capability for meta-feeling, and, partly, the “togethermovement” with others which meta-feeling opens up a possibility for. (4) “The lived body’s dance movement” – To move to something is self-movement as an art form to tones, music or rhythm. (5) “Co-dance” – To dance with someone is made possible through “the danced body”. “Co-dance” is “together-movement” as an art form to tones, sound, music or rhythm. Here, I move with one or several dancers through intuitive and reciprocal listening, and in conversation with, “the other’s” moods, feelings and intentions. (6) “The free dance movement” – To be danced is made possible through “the space of the body”. This occurs when I receive the dance; I let the dance handle me and I let the movement happen to me. It is “the space of the body” which distributes the underlying energy, which in “the free dance movement”, dances the dancer. (7) “Joint dance” – To be danced by someone is when my partner’s dance movements enter the rhythm of my energy which dances me. 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