Pragmatic and Critical Somaesthetics

I’m considering joining a CI group of dancers at a dance department in of one of the local universities. The problem is that their interest is primarily in performance whereas my interest is primarily in developing a personal dance practice. It is natural that for them dancing is a profession and is mainly about producing dance performances. I have a day job. This problem of CI as a medium of artistic production verus CI as a somatic (or somaesthetic) practice comes up regularly.

In preparing for this I did some research and came across an interesting article came up by Kristian Larsen “Improvisation as a Value Shift in Contemporary Dance (Conjecture 5.0)” in Proximity (a CI magazine). He shifted over from choreographing contemporary dance to “the practice of performance improvisation”. One of the major points that he makes in the article is that even when choreographers use improvisation, that still retains the standard status distinctions between the dancer and the choreographer. He says that while using improvisation at least moves away from the idea of the dancer as merely replicating the choreography and creates a sense of dialogue between dancer and choreographer, the old status distinctions are retained. He writes:

The most problematic question I see with this process is “who takes credit?” It is usually the choreographer who assumes total rights and responsibility for the choreography even when dancers have constructed entire sections of an evening length work. In that instance isn’t the role of ‘choreographer‘ more accurately described as ‘director’? At best the dancers are given some vague mention of thanks in the programme for their ‘input’ or ‘contribution’. The lack of generosity is appalling. Only once have I ever heard of the dancers being publicly & explicitly credited for their actual role in the creation of a work ie: as choreographers.

The physical, emotional, and intellectual energy that goes into the construction of a set choreography is only one half of the actual process. The other half happens onstage. Performance is more than just a ‘live’ aspect of a dance piece. It’s a major reason why a piece gets made in the first place. Once onstage it’s out of the choreographers hands & belongs entirely to the dancer. The work evolves because the dancer transforms. The dancer transforms because their performance now has context, meaning & relationship. This is what the audience brings to the equation.

Just as Grotowski elevates the actor over the text, Larsen wants to reinstate the primacy of the dancer over the choreography. He posits that “There is no such thing as dance. There is only the dancer”. He wants to extrapolate the implications of this. He thinks that improvisation is not an alternative to choreography, but is continuous with it. The primary difference is that the role of the choreographer becomes ‘distributed’:

One of the key differences I perceive is that the value system is rearranged. For example the role of choreographer no longer rests on an individual (in an ensemble situation) but rather is extrapolated out to that of a shared responsibility. Typical dance hierarchy with its implications of status has to be relinquished in order for a group to improvise. The value of ‘acceptance’ has to be actively used in performance because so many events are out of the individual’s hands. The lack of control in the way that control is used in constructing set works is one of the most rewarding and terrifying aspects of improvisation. Predetermined responses almost always fail in this realm so a more real kind of communication has to occur. And by ‘real’ I mean dynamic in the sense that language, context and meaning change in relationship to each other.

Larsen emphasises the collaborative nature of the process, the immediacy of the situation in improvised performance and the idea that the dancer must make instant choices in response to that situation that includes the other dancers, between dancers and musicians, etc. Where in choreographed performance collaboration is an option, improvised performance is intrinsically and essentially collaborative. It brings out the social function of performance. Where in choreography coincidence detracts from the performance, in improvisation it becomes a stimulus for discovery and creativity.

In improvisation we are looking to set up conditions where coincidence can occur. This is where real discovery and response to those discoveries can occur. Chance and coincidence can transform the banal and abstract into a meaningful and rewarding event to witness.

Larsen thinks that while contemporary dance technique is essential to dance improvisation, contemporary dance is excessively bound to the classical model of dance production, and attempts to ’spice it up’ and render it more modern do not undermine these fundamental structures which he sees as too limiting. Because underlying it all is the fundamental status relationships in the creative process. He says:

Contemporary dance is a fine art driven by deeply intellectual concerns. Currently it has its hands tied; it is bound to its own classicism. And no amount of multimedia, text, minimalism, somatic based movement, inclusion of cultural dances (e.g.: Pacific island or Hip Hop etc), dramaturgy, innovative set design, or technology is going but give us anything else but ‘more and better of the same’. I believe performance improvisation to be an opportunity, a forum for dialogue and relationship with vast potential to transform the underlying paradigms of thought that propel contemporary dance. It is not a question of form. It is a question of values and of relationship. And most probably it is a question of relinquishing current understanding of status & control within the art.

In other words, Larsen thinks that improvisation undermines “the underlying paradigms of thought”, not “form” but “status and control within the art”. I basically agree that this is fundamental, that the implications of improvisation are profoundly misunderstood and that the classical model essentially hinders practice and the extrapolation of the full implications of improvisational performance practice.

The classical model is essentially ‘representational’. Here we need to distinguish between two ways of conceiving choreography, and we might draw on the analogy with improvisation in jazz. A choreography can be viewed either as a way of formalising a technique, or it can be viewed as an actual performance piece, a work of art. While initially a set of movements might be performed, when they become formalised they might represent either a way of initiating into a technical practice. But as performance it becomes merely a calcified copy of the original.

In tango there are certain set patterns that one uses to teach the dance. But one is not supposed to be dancing patterns. What then are the patterns for? Well, they are for teaching the technique. One does not learn tango merely by learning the patterns. Rather, the patterns are a way into the dance which involves learning to respond to the immediate situation in teh course of repeated exposure to a wide variety of problem situations that one learns, more or less successfully, to respond to.

Here we may point to a phenomenology of learning developed by the philosopher Hubert Dreyfus. Dreyfus argues that someone learning a skill like playing chess or driving a car initially needs certain rules for action to respond to a given situation, e.g., which pieces to move or when to shift gears. They need to identify a situation and then they need to make a choice of an action in response to the situation. But an expert does not follow rules in that way. An expert takes in the whole unique situation and is able to choose among many different possibilities in an instant. Having expert knowledge means knowing how to respond within that unique situation, and no two situations are alike. Dreyfus argues that the expert has an intuitive understanding of the unique situation that is embodied rather than cognitive, and that he acquires this by being exposed to multible situations in which he responds under pressure. Someone who continues to consult rules past the initial stages never acquires true expertise but remains at the stage of competence or proficiency. To become an expert one must cease to consult rules and respond to the situation as it is, even though no two situations are exactly alike.

I think that this supports the improvisational approach in dance. A dancer is asked to repeat a choreography in a rule-governed sort of a way, and is asked to ignore the unique features of the situation. In improvisation the immediate situation is of primary importance, and expertise is not replication of pre-defined actions but rather the ability to respond to the peculiarities of the situation. One learns this not by replicating a set of action rules but rather by repeatedly coping with problem situations and gradually ceasing to consult rules, that is, to become immersed in the situation and to make instantaneous decisions.

In that sense choreography is fundamentally representational. Instead of being a means of entering into a technique, as an initial crutch to be ultimately dispensed with for the immediacy of the performance, it becomes a form detached from the immediacy and the peculiarities of the particular situation. As Larsen insists, it is not the form that is the issue, but rather the structures and relationships that are inherent in the choreographic process, relations that I would say are representational, and that preclude the necessary response to the immediate situation that is constitutive of a certain kind of expertise, namely, an expertise that renders dance a form of communication, or as another philosopher, Jurgen Habermas, would put it, communicative action.

Finally, it might be said that representation goes together with status. In other words, wherever a representational form emerges, this is inherently connected with status, and conversely, it might be said that improvisation is inherently connected to collaboration, that it necessitates and demands collaboration. I basically agree with Larsen that it is not a matter of dispensing with form, but rather whether the form is a point of entry into a collaborative improvised practice or whether it remains a pre-fabricated text as an art object distinct from the dancer him or herself. I would agree with Larsen that “There is no such thing as a dance. There is only the dancer”.*

* At this junction we may recall Herbert Marcuse’s distinction between two forms of the reification of the body: that which is mediated within the production process, and that which provides for the immediacy of the reified body.