Sharing the Dance. Contact Improvisation and American Culture, by Cynthia J. Novack. New Directions in Anthropological Writing. Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990. xvii + 258 pp., photographs, references, index. $14.95 paperbound.

In search of our highest capacities, cognitive scientists aim to explain things like mathematics, language, and planning (and while explaining them, they often imagine computers at work). But are these really our most sophisticated forms of knowing? In this paper, I point to a different pinnacle of cognition. Our most sophisticated human knowing, I think, lies in how we engage with each other, in our relating. Cognitive science and philosophy of mind have largely ignored the ways of knowing at play here. At the same time, the emphasis on discrete, rational knowing to the detriment of engaged, human knowing pervades societal practices and institutions, often with harmful effects on people and their relations. There are many reasons why we need a new, engaged—or even engaging—epistemology of human knowing. The enactive theory of participatory sense-making takes steps towards this, but it needs deepening. Kym Maclaren’s (2002) idea of letting be invites such a deepening. Characterizing knowing as a relationship of letting be provides a nuanced way to deal with the tensions between the knower’s being and the being of the known, as they meet in the process of knowing-and-being-known. This meeting of knower and known is not easy to understand. However, there is a mode of relating in which we know it well, and that is: in loving relationships. I propose to look at human knowing through the lens of loving. We then see that both knowing and loving are existential, dialectic ways in which concrete and particular beings engage with each other.

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Loving and knowing: reflections for an engaged epistemology

The Mirror Game (MG) is a common exercise in dance/movement therapy and drama therapy. It is used to promote participants' ability to enter and remain in a state of togetherness. In spite of the wide use of the MG by practitioners, it is only recently that scientists begun to use the MG in research, examining its correlates, validity, and reliability. This study joins this effort by reporting on the identification of scale items to describe the non-verbal behavior expressed during the MG and its correlation to measures of attachment. Thus, we explored the application of the MG as a tool for assessing the embodiment of attachment in adulthood. Forty-eight participants (22 females, mean age = 33.2) played the MG with the same gender-matched expert players. All MG were videotaped. In addition, participants were evaluated on two central measurements of attachment in adulthood: The Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) and the Experience in Close Relationship questionnaire (ECR). To analyze the data, we developed the "MG scale" that coded the non-verbal behavior during the movement interaction, using 19 parameters. The sub-scales were reduced using factor analysis into two dimensions referred to as "together" and "free." The free factor was significantly correlated to both measurements of attachment: Participants classified as having secure attachment on the AAI, received higher scores on the MG free factor than participants classified as insecure [t(46) = 7.858, p = 0.000]. Participants, who were high on the avoidance dimension on the ECR, were low on the MG free factor [r(48) = -0.285, p = 0.007]. This is the first study to examine the MG as it is used by practitioners and its correlation to highly standardized measures. This exploratory study may be considered as part of the first steps of exploring the MG as a standardized assessment tool. The advantages of the MG as a simple, non-verbal movement interaction demonstrate some of the strengths of dance/movement and drama therapy practice.

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The Body Speaks: Using the Mirror Game to Link Attachment and Non-verbal Behavior.

The fields of music, health, and technology have seen significant interactions in recent years in developing music technology for health care and well-being. In an effort to strengthen the collabor...

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2059204321997709

Music, Computing, and Health: A Roadmap for the Current and Future Roles of Music Technology for Health Care and Well-Being:

This article makes a case for connecting knowledge of the sense(s) of self-movement with understanding psychology’s subject matter in terms of relations It first outlines the history of the sense 

Kinaesthesia and a Feeling for Relations

Collective dance improvisation (e.g., traditional and social dancing, contact improvisation) is a participatory, relational and embodied art form which eschews standard concepts in aesthetics. We present our ongoing research into the mechanisms underlying the lived experience of "togetherness" associated with such practices. Togetherness in collective dance improvisation is kinaesthetic (based on movement and its perception), and so can be simultaneously addressed from the perspective of the performers and the spectators, and be measured. We utilise these multiple levels of description: the first-person, phenomenological level of personal experiences, the third-person description of brain and body activity, and the level of interpersonal dynamics. Here, we describe two of our protocols: a four-person mirror game and a 'rhythm battle' dance improvisation score. Using an interpersonal closeness measure after the practice, we correlate subjective sense of individual/group connectedness and observed levels of in-group temporal synchronization. We propose that kinaesthetic togetherness, or interpersonal resonance, is integral to the aesthetic pleasure of the participants and spectators, and that embodied feeling of togetherness might play a role more generally in aesthetic experience in the performing arts.

https://www.mdpi.com/2076-328X/8/2/23/pdf

Coordinated Interpersonal Behaviour in Collective Dance Improvisation: The Aesthetics of Kinaesthetic Togetherness

Dans cette etude de cas multiples, nous avons utilise la danse pour entrainer la synchronisation sensori-motrice (SMS), les fonctions motrices et cognitives chez des enfants atteints d'anomalies developpementales du cervelet (ADC). Les ADC sont de rares dysfonctionnements du cervelet qui affectent les capacites motrices et cognitives. Le cervelet joue un role important dans la cognition temporelle, y compris la SMS, qui est essentielle au developpement moteur et cognitif. La danse fait intervenir le circuit neuronal de la SMS, compose du cervelet, des ganglions de la base et du cortex moteur. Ainsi, nous avons emis l'hypothese selon laquelle la danse aurait un effet benefique sur les competences de SMS et les fonctions motrices et cognitives associees chez les enfants atteints d'ADC. Sept enfants (âges de 7 a 11 ans) atteints d'ADC ont participe a un protocole d'entrainement a la danse de 2 mois (3h/semaine). Un protocole test-retest a ligne de bases multiples a ete utilise pour evaluer les competences des enfants en matiere de SMS ainsi que leurs capacites motrices, cognitives et sociales. Les capacites de SMS etaient tres faibles chez les patients avec ADC avant l'entrainement. L'entrainement a permis d'ameliorer la SMS (reduction de la variabilite du rythme du taping), l'equilibre et le fonctionnement executif (flexibilite cognitive), ainsi que les aptitudes sociales (cognition sociale). Les effets benefiques de l'entrainement de danse ont ete visibles chez tous les participants. Notamment, les benefices ont ete maintenus deux mois apres l'intervention. Ces effets sont susceptibles d'etre maintenus grâce a l'activite accrue des reseaux cerebraux de la SMS due au protocole d'entrainement de danse.

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Julien Laroche

Papers

Coordinated Interpersonal Behaviour in Collective Dance Improvisation: The Aesthetics of Kinaesthetic Togetherness

Dance Improves Motor, Cognitive, and Social Skills in Children With Developmental Cerebellar Anomalies.