Contemporary Dance Choreography and Spectatorship: Embodied Emotion

✍ Scribed by Lucía Piquero Álvarez

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2023
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 253
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This book offers an approach which unites choreographic and spectatorial perspectives, and argues for dance itself—its materials, its structures—as a medium of emotional communication. Contemporary dance often seems to contend with issues of understanding, regularly being “read” in “languages” which alienate it. Even if emotion seems a significant part of people’s engagement with dance, its workings are often surrounded by an air of mysticism. Engaging with these issues, this study investigates the experience of emotion in Euro-American contemporary dance theatre. It questions its dependence on the artist’s personal emotions, and the assumption that it is mediated by representational meaning. Instead, this book proposes that the emotional import of dance emerges from an interplay between perceptual properties and symbolic elements in an embodied affective cognitive experience. This experience includes the background of the spectator as well as the context of work, choreographer, performer(s) and other creative agents.

✦ Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Contents
About the Author
List of Figures
List of Tables
1 Introduction
The Experience of Emotional Import as Complex, Bodily, and Thoughtful
Understanding Emotion
The Affective Realm and Spectatorship
Understandings of Emotion in Dance
The ‘Widely Popular Doctrine’
Raw Emotion and Ineffability
Emotion in Euro-American Contemporary Theatre Dance
4E Cognition
Experience of Dance
Spectator’s Experience of Art
Aesthetic Experience and Disinterest
Kinesthetic Empathy
Establishing the Research Process
Case Studies
Content Organisation
How to Use the Book and Web Resource
Notes
Works Cited
2 The Analysis Model
The Method of Analysis
Movement Qualities
Factors for Analysis
Observing Movement Qualities/Efforts in the Case Studies
Spatial-Rhythm
Spatial Forms in the Analysis of Choreography
Virtuality, Emergence, and Perceptual Properties
The Focal Point
Analysis of Video Based on Spatial-Rhythm Method
Sound-Movement Relationships
Structural Relationships Between Sound and Movement
Forms of Analysis
Reviews and My Experience
Video and Still Frame Analysis
Information from the Creative Processes
Selection of Examples for Discussion
Notes
Works Cited
3 Case Study 1: Melancholy Spirals in Russell Maliphant’s Afterlight (Part One) (2009): Emergence, Expressiveness, and Emotional Import
Introduction to Afterlight (Part One)
Informed Audience Perspective
Perceptual Properties
Remarkable Features: Light
Notes on the Choreographic Process
Analysis of Properties and Interactions
Scene 1 | 02:10 | A Sense of Melancholy
Scene 2 | Beginning of Section 2 | A Gasp
Scene 3 | 07:56 to 07:58 | A Silent Cry of Surrender
Scene 4 | 08:50 | A Look of Longing
Scene 5 | 10:00 | A Feeling of Lightness
Scene 6 | Final Scene | An Impending Loss
Chapter Insights
Emergence
Expressiveness
Emotional Import
Note
Works Cited
4 Case Study 2: The Poignant Tensions of Crystal Pite’s Dark Matters (2009): Embodiment, Enaction, and Emotion
Introduction to the Work
Informed Audience Perspective
Perceptual Properties
Sound/Text
Light
Notes on the Choreographic Process
Analysis of Properties and Interactions
Scene 1 | 00:01 | The Solo’s Opening Scene
Scene 2 | 01:07 | Power
Scene 3 | 01:33 | Reaching to Infinity
Scene 4 | 01:41–01:54 | Control and Vulnerability
Scene 5 | 02:01–02:14 | Ripple Through the Body
Scene 6 | Words and Meaning
Scene 7 | Final Moments
Chapter Insights
Embodied Cognition
Enactive Perception
Social Construction of Perception; Theatre; and Visuality
Embodied Concepts
Embodiment, Enaction, and Emotion: A Summary
Notes
Works Cited
5 Case Study 3: The Despair of Petrichor (2016): Choreographer, Analyst, Audience, Dancer
Introduction to Petrichor
Informed Audience Perspective
Perceptual Properties
Remarkable Features: Music
Analysis of Properties and Interactions
Scene 1 | 00:24–00:44 | Struggle and Melancholy
Scene 2 | 00:44–0:55 | Floating, Voice, and Poignancy
Scene 3 | 01:04–01:10 | Reaching Towards the Light | Actively Taken By Energy
Scene 4 | 01:13–01:22 | Delicacy and Surrender, Ephemerality and Power
Scene 5 | 01:53 | Second Solo Repetition—Breaking Free
Scene 6 | 01:57 and 02:14 a Brief Elevation | Big Arch of the Back
Scene 7 | Final Moment
Chapter Insights
The Choreographer’s Experience
The Dancer’s Role
Notes
Works Cited
6 Conclusion
Poignancy as a Summarising Example
Main Points for Future Research
Dance Analysis
Other Directions of Research
Final Thoughts
Works Cited
Index