Moving in Medias Res : Towards a Phenomenological Hermeneutics of Dance Improvisation
- Submitting institution
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The University of Lancaster
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 261421993
- Type
- C - Chapter in book
- DOI
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10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199396986.013.45
- Book title
- The Oxford Handbook of Improvisation in Dance
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press
- ISBN
- 9780199396986
- Open access status
- -
- Month of publication
- March
- Year of publication
- 2019
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This chapter tackles for the first time an exploration of the relationship between dance improvisation and phenomenological hermeneutics in particular, rather than just phenomenology in general. The exploration advances philosophical understandings of different approaches to improvisation in dance and stems from the author's field research with some of the practitioners who are discussed, as well as the close examination of the practices of others. The essay considers how dance improvisation involves processes of interpretation that are fundamental to the human experience. To do this, the author evolves an understanding of psychosomatic performance through the phenomenological hermeneutics of Paul Ricoeur and, to a lesser extent, Hans Georg Gadamer. Through the exploration of Ricoeur’s concepts such as distanciation, appropriation, conversation, and occasion, the author argues that improvised dance in general, and the ‘butoh’ of Marie-Gabrielle Rotie and the site-specific environmental dance of Jennifer Monson in particular, offer an alternative approach to psychosomatic performance that exemplifies Ricoeur’s phenomenological hermeneutics. By such means, the author argues that dance improvisation is a practice in which the moving body unfolds the world – particularly the natural world – of which it is already a part by relating to it through a subtext that it interprets kinaesthetically.
This essay is published as a chapter in The Oxford Handbook of Improvisation in Dance. At 848 pages, a key feature of the Handbook is its unusual scope and breadth. It is one of the first publications to combine and juxtapose philosophical, socio-cultural and therapeutic approaches to the theorisation of dance improvisation. An early version of the essay was presented as a paper at ‘Fathoming Dance’, a panel at Theatre & Stratification, International Federation of Theatre Research World Congress, Coventry: University of Warwick, 2014.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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