embodied meaning - BODY LANGUAGE

‘BODY LANGUAGE’ ANALYSIS
- devised from my teaching experiences

breaks down into 4 categories
- space
- levels
- angles
- open/close


SPACE refers to the distance between people – this indicates degrees of familiarity – also increases and decreases availability – degrees of intimacy & availability

LEVELS refers to status & power interactions – high equating with the lifting of status, and low with the reverse – sameness & difference – power-play & same-&-difference regulator – people dress similar to be on the same level, but the police wear uniforms to impose a barrier of authoritative difference

ANGLES refers to the front of the body, the head, and the eyes – this indicates degrees of interest – also see David Morris’s reference to the concept of “a grammar of facing bodies” (154)

OPEN/CLOSE refers to the crossing & uncrossing of limbs – indicates warm & cold zones, inclusion & exclusion, and comfort & discomfort


these categories are analytically applied to behavioural characteristics between people, or between people and objects, as well as between people and aspects of the environment (they can also be applied to animals)
they seem to reveal bio-physical laws that social and cultural factors modify, where differences become variations on more deeply placed understandings of movement and space
in everyday use, broader gestural and postural states are richly populated by a teeming world of micro-shifts, reactions, and physical adjustments that create a shifting, flickering panorama of rich multifaceted semi-automatic communicative activity – all of which can be easily examined using the above analytical categories

FOR MY RESEARCH PROJECT, THIS ACTIVITY WILL BE OBSERVED AND ANALYSED

- in interactional situations between people in social or any other type of setting

- in the interactions between people and their immediate physical environment

- in relationships between performers and viewers in performance situations

CV

PROFESSIONAL PERFORMER/CHOREOGRAPHER

1977 - 1980
Founder-Artistic Director, Limbs Dance Company (New Zealand)
Created over 20 short works and performed nationally and internationally in theatres ~ festivals ~ campuses ~ TV & film ~ also taught regular dance classes and workshops to the general public in the company’s studio

1982 - 1997
Founder-Artistic Director, Darc Swan (Australia)
Created 15 public performance works and 8 dance-in-education programmes ~ this was primarily a dance-in-education company that toured nationally to an annual audience of approximately 100,000 young people ~ also taught regular public dance classes and workshops

1976 - 2006 (New Zealand & Australia)
performer
Movement Theatre (dance-in-education) ~ Korobushka (folk dance) ~ Auckland Ballet & Opera Workshop ~ Auckland Symphony Orchestra ~ Sideshow Burlesque Co ~ Australian Opera Co ~ various documentaries, telethons, & Australian and NZ light entertainment & children’s TV programmes

choreographer
Royal New Zealand Ballet (2 works) ~ Footnote Dance Co, New Zealand (2 works) ~ Aboriginal/Islander Dance School, Australia (created numerous small works & directed 2 end-of-year productions) ~ Australian Dance Theatre (1 work) ~ Toe Truck Theatre Company, Australia (1 production) ~ Marionette Theatre of Australia (1 production) ~ Australian Contemporary Dance Company (2 works) ~ John Gordon Productions, Australian contemporary opera (choreographed and performed in 1 production) ~ Touch Compass, NZ mixed ability dance company (1 work) ~ Auckland Dance Festival, choreographic showcase (1 work) ~ plus various music videos

director
Sydney Puppet Theatre (1 production) ~ Sydney Children’s Choir (3 productions) ~ The Song Company, Australia (1 production) ~ Nightsong Productions, NZ experimental theatre (3 productions)

TEACHING

1998-2007
Head of Dance, Unitec School Of Performing And Screen Arts (New Zealand)
Ran a practice-based tertiary dance course, along with academic leadership and industry liaison, duties included: teaching choreography, performance, research, funding, production, touring, professional practice, videodance, interdisciplinary collaboration ~ choreographing for student performances & national tours (8 works) ~ supervising and mounting student works and productions

1976 - 2007
Guest tutor and choreographer for various teaching organisations including: University of Western Sydney (Dance Dept) ~ Centre for Performing Arts (Adelaide) ~ South Australian College of Advanced Education (Adelaide) ~ NSW, Queensland, and Victorian Regional & Metropolitan Education Depts (primary & secondary schools, in-services, dance camps) ~ Pan Pacific Dance Camps ~ University of Newcastle (P.E. Dept) ~ South Brisbane Music Camps ~ University of New South Wales (Dance Dept) ~ Auckland Dance Educators Network

CONFERENCE PAPERS/PUBLICATIONS

2001
Performing Immortality, Danz Research Forum, University of Waikato, New Zealand – conference paper

2005
Scoping High-End Dance: What Makes A Great Performer? Dance Canopy conference, Unitec, New Zealand – conference paper

2006
Mentoring Dance, Danz Tamaki (the Auckland branch of DANZ) – seminar presentation

Dance and Body Language, Auckland University, Dance Research Seminar Series – seminar presentation

A Precarious Boom, DANZ Quarterly – an article

OTHER

2005 - 2006

Artistic consultant/mentor for emerging New Zealand contemporary dance choreographers under the auspices of DANZ

research PROPOSAL

This project creates a dialogue between artistic form and everyday function by examining stylised dance through the lens of the behavioural patterns of daily life. Kinetic ‘snapshots’[1] will be taken of everyday settings and dance contexts, and investigated for comparisons between stylised dance and everyday movement. Written and choreographic work will produce practice-based responses to complexities underlying concepts of ‘embodied’ meaning.

With the advent of post-modern dance, site-specific work, and dance/physical theatre in the 1960s and 1970s, pedestrian movement, and explorations between movement and space are now more commonplace in dance (Banes, 1987). Building on these practices, this research will interrogate synergies between everyday movement and stylised dance by making new choreographic work that foregrounds sociokinetic frameworks. By creating and analysing ‘kinetic snapshots’ of movement in everyday/vernacular settings, this project will examine, through choreographic workshops with dancers, the interplay between kinetic and spatial factors in socialised human movement.

The overarching research question, drawn from Lakoff and Johnson’s (1999) proposal that abstract thought derives from bodily experience, and is linked via the mechanism of metaphor, is: If abstract thinking is reducible to bodily experience, then are there metaphoric links also between stylised/abstract dance and everyday movement?

My interest in everyday movement stems from teaching ‘body language’ and non-verbal communication to actors and dancers. Illustrating how everyday gestures, postures, and spatial configurations can reveal the interplay between text and sub-text, has implications for literal and non-literal figurations within dance with respect to embodied meanings.

Embodied meanings consist of non-verbal layers of intelligence in movement and the body (Olson, 2002). Various disciplines have focussed on these layers providing important tools for use in this choreographic investigation. Godard’s (in Dobbels, D. & Rabant, C., 2004) and Olson’s (2002) somatic approach to anatomy and physiology will contribute holistic, dance-based methods of enquiry into embodied meaning for use in choreographic workshops with dancers. Architectural theory (Hillier, 2001) and ecological psychology (Gibson, 1986) will guide practical and theoretical analysis of the interactions between environments and movement, and the role spatiality plays in socialising human behaviour. Methods for notating and mapping kinetic activity will be informed by Preston-Dunlop’s (2002) Laban-based work. Phenomenological perspectives on the connectedness of lived space and animate form will provide a philosophical base, and contribute to critical discussions and rationalisations of embodied meaning. (Merleau-Ponty 1962, Sheets-Johnstone, 1999).

This investigation will also use a combination of phenomenological and Action Research methods to produce interactive dialogues between:

- human activity in everyday life

- studio practice with dancers

- theories of embodied meaning and sociokinesics

Phenomenological investigative techniques, with their ‘bracketing’ of phenomena and inclusion of the researcher’s position in the field of study (Groenewald, 2004), will dominate the observation and gathering of everyday movement data. Action Research, with its ‘symbiotic relationship between theory and practice’ involving heuristic feedback loops (Rubidge, 2000), will guide the choreographic workshops.

In spite of the availability of various systems for deconstructing movement (e.g. Laban, 1971; Preston-Dunlop; 2002), contemporary analysts often privilege socio-political, art historical, ethnographic and philosophical frames of reference to investigate dance (Fraleigh, 1987). By re-examining the interface between spatiality and movement, and adopting movement-based research methods, this project will reintroduce the importance of movement analysis for a study of embodied meaning. The resulting choreographic and written work will evaluate the impact of sociokinesis on current dance practices examining its implications for new compositional outcomes.

SCHEDULE

Year 1 – (primarily practice-based)

- preliminary experimentation into practical concepts (e.g. everyday movement, stylisation, space/environment, sociokinetic meanings of movement)
- trialling the making of ‘kinetic snapshots’ and testing them with dancers
- review of relevant literature and of the work and practices of other artists

Year 2 – (primarily practice-based)
- in-depth studio-based practice to analyse kinetic snapshots taken from movement behaviour in a) everyday settings and b) dance settings, with the goal of
- producing a preliminary performance piece using sociokinetic principles in a choreographic context
- close analysis of theoretical ideas relevant to the emerging practice in order to deepen the practice and illuminate research issues

Year 3 – (practical and theoretical)
- focused reflection on practical research followed by
- the production of a final choreographic work based on refined sociokinetic dance-making principles and techniques
- completion of written thesis

OUTCOMES
A body of documented practice in the form of choreographic work and a 30,000-40,000 word thesis elucidating the interconnections between sociokinesis and choreography will result. The completed research should increase practical and theoretical understandings of movement, dance, and space from the perspective of sociokinetic meaning.

[1] ‘Kinetic snapshots’ will be scores that map movement and space using video footage, diagrams, and written description for the purposes of choreographic analysis with dancers.

REFERENCED TEXTS

Adams, Constance, M. (2002). Sociokinetic Analysis as a Tool for Optimization of Environmental Design. Retrieved 19 July 2007 from

http://www.lsda.jsc.nasa.gov/books/ground/3.7Sociokinesis.pdf

Banes, Sally. (1987). Terpsichore in sneakers: post-modern dance. Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press.

Dobbels, D. & Rabant, C. (2004). The missing gesture: an interview with Hubert Godard. Writings on Dance 5. April edition.

Fraleigh, Sondra. (1987). Dance and the lived body: a descriptive aesthetic. Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press.

Gibson, James J. (1986). The ecological approach to visual perception. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

Groenewald, T. (2004). A phenomenological research design illustrated. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 3(1). Article 4. Retrieved 20 July 2007 from

http://www.ualberta.ca/~iiqm/backissues/3_1/pdf/groenewald.pdf

Hillier, Bill. (2001). A theory of the city as object: or, how spatial laws mediate the social construction of urban space. Proceedings, 3rd International Space Syntax Symposium Atlanta.
Laban, Rudolf (1971). The mastery of movement. London: MacDonald & Evans.

Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M. (1999). Philosophy in the flesh: the embodied mind and its challenge to Western thought. New York: Basic Books.

Merleau-Ponty, M. (1962). The phenomenology of perception. London: Routledge.

Olson, Andrea. (2002). Body and Earth: an experiential guide. Middlebury: Middlebury College Press.

Preston-Dunlop, Valerie, & Sanchez-Colberg, Ana (eds.). (2002). Dance and the performative: a choreological perspective: Laban and beyond. London: Verve.

Rubidge, Sarah. (2000). Identity in flux: a theoretical and choreographic enquiry into the identity of open dance work. Thesis. London: Laban Centre and City University.

Sheets-Johnstone, Maxine. (1999). The primacy of movement. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Co.