Resonance in dance: The art of blending bodies
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.36025/arj.v3i2.10755Keywords:
Dance, Cognition, Self-other matching, Conceptual blendingAbstract
In dance, “resonance” describes a shared sense of energy, rhythm, flow, and coherence. Choreographers and dancers seek resonance for the purposes of creating and performing dance. I theorize that resonance is a kind of human social cognition in the context of self-other matching, which is defined as any phenomenon in which the observation of another’s behavior or state causes the observer’s behavior or state to become congruent with it. I review findings from cognitive and neuroscience to show that “resonance in dance” is a blend of feeling and knowing arising from somatomotor “reflexive” systems that prime more reflective processes like learning by imitation, perspective-taking, and empathy. I introduce the “embodied conceptual blending” hypothesis as a mechanism for dance resonating. I explore questions that arise about the role and function of resonance in dance and speculate on gender differences. Implications are discussed.
Downloads
References
BLAIR, Rhonda. Cognitive neuroscience and acting: Imagination, conceptual blending, and empathy. TDR/The Drama Review vol. 53, no. 4, p. 93-13, 2009.
BLÄSING, Bettina, PUTTKE, Martin, and SCHACK, Thomas (Eds.). The Neurocognition of Dance: Mind, movement and motor skills. New York: Psychology Press, 2010.
BONINI, Luca, ROZZI, Stefano, SERVENTI, Francesca U., SIMONE, Luciano, FERRARI, Pier F., and FOGASSI, Leonardo. Ventral premotor and inferior parietal cortices make distinct contribution to action organization and intention understanding. Cerebral Cortex v. 20, p. 1372-1385, 2009.
BROWN, Steven, MARTINEZ, Michael J., and PARSONS, Lawrence M. The neural basis of human dance. Cerebral Cortex vol. 16, no. 8, p. 1157-1167, 2006.
BUTLER, Judith. Performative acts and gender constitution: An essay in phenomenology and feminist theory. Theatre Journal v. 40, n. 4, p. 519-531, 1988.
CHAFFIN, Roger, LOGAN, Topher R., and BEGOSH, Kristen T. Performing from memory. In HALLAM, Susan, CROSS, Ian, and THAUT, Michael (Eds.). Oxford Handbook of Music Psychology. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2008, p. 352-363.
CHARTRAND, Tanya L., and BARGH, John A. The chameleon effect: The perception–behavior link and social interaction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology vol. 76, no. 6, p. 893-910, 1999.
CSIKSZENTMIHALY, Mihaly. Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.
DAMASIO, Antonio, R. The Feeling of What Happens: Body and emotion in the making of consciousness. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1999.
DeWAAL, Frans B., and FERRARI, Pier F. Towards a bottom-up perspective on animal and human cognition. Trends in Cognitive Science v. 14, n. 5, p. 201–207, 2010.
EISENBERG, Nancy, and STRAYER, Jane (Eds.). Empathy and Its Development. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
EMERY, Nathan. J., LORINCZ, Erica N., PERRETT, David I., ORAM, Michael W., and BAKER, Christopher I. Gaze following and joint attention in rhesus monkeys. Journal of Comparative Psychology v. 111, n. 3, p. 286–293, 1997.
EVANS, Jonathan S. Dual-processing accounts of reasoning, judgment, and social cognition. Annual Review of Psychology v. 59, p. 255–278, 2008.
FACCHINETTI, Lívia D., IMBIRIBA, Luis A., AZEVEDO, Tatiana M., VARGAS, Claudia D., and VOLCHAN, Eliane. Postural modulation induced by pictures depicting prosocial or dangerous contexts. Neuroscience Letters v. 410, no. 1, p. 52-56, 2006.
FAUCONNIER, Gilles, and TURNER, Mark. The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities. New York: Perseus Books Group, 2002.
FAUCONNIER, Gilles. Compression and emergent structure. Language and Linguistics v. 6, no. 4, p. 523-38, 2005.
GALLESE, Vittorio, and LAKOFF, George. The Brain's Concepts: The Role of the Sensory-Motor System in Conceptual Knowledge. Cognitive Neuropsychology vol. 22, no. 3-4, p. 455-479, 2005.
GENANGU, Elena, BENGA, Oana, STAHL, Daniel, and STRIANO, Tricia. Contagious crying beyond the first days of life. Infant Behavior and Development vol. 33, no. 3, p. 279-288, 2010.
GOODALL, Jane. The Chimpanzees of Gombe: Patterns of behavior. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986.
HARRISON, Neil A., WILSON, C. Ellie, and CRITCHLEY, Hugo D. Processing of observed pupil size modulates perception of sadness and predicts empathy. Emotion vol. 7, no. 4, p. 724-729, 2007.
HOGAN, Robert. Development of an empathy scale. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology vol. 33, no. 3, p. 307-316, 1967.
HOLLIN, Clive. Forensic (criminological) psychology. In COLMAN, Andrew (Ed.). Companion Encyclopedia of Psychology. London: Routledge, 1994, p. 1231-1253
JEANNEROD, Marc, and FRAK, Victor. Mental imaging of motor activity in humans. Current Opinion in Neurobiology vol. 9, no. 6, p. 735–739, 1999.
KAUFMAN, James C., and STERNBERG, Robert J. (Eds.). The Cambridge Handbook of Creativity. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
KIRSH, David. Thinking with the body. In OHLSSON, Stellan, and CATRAMBONE, Richard (Eds.). Proceedings of the 32nd Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society, p. 2864-2869, 2010.
McNEILL, William H. Keeping Together in Time: Dance and drill in human history. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997.
MELTZOFF, Andrew N., and MOORE, M. Keith. Imitation of facial and manual gestures by human neonates. Science vol. 198, no. 4312, p. 75–78, 1977.
NEAL, David T., and CHARTRAND, Tanya L. Embodied emotion perception amplifying and dampening facial feedback modulates emotion perception accuracy. Social Psychological and Personality Science vol. 2, no. 6, p. 673-678, 2011.
PLUTCHIK, Robert. Evolutionary bases of empathy. In EISENBERG, Nancy, and STRAYER, Jane (Eds.). Empathy and Its Development. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1987, p. 38-46.
PREMACK, David, and WOODRUFF, Guy. Does the chimpanzee have a theory of mind? Behavioral and Brain Sciences vol. 1, no. 4, p. 515-526, 1978.
PRESTON, Stephanie D., and DeWAAL, Frans B. Empathy: Its ultimate and proximate bases. Behavioral and Brain Sciences vol. 25, no. 1, p. 1-20, 2002.
RIBEIRO, Mônica M., LIMA, Isabela, MALLOY-DINIZ, Leandro, LAGE, Guilherme, PIMENTEL, Lucia G., and TEIXEIRA, Antônio L. Corporal Artistic Training Influences Attention: A Pilot Study. Perceptual and Motor Skills vol. 118, no. 3, p. 818-832, 2014.
SHEETS-JOHNSTONE, Maxine. The Corporeal Turn: An interdisciplinary reader. Exeter, UK: Imprint Academic, 2009.
STEVENS, Catherine, and McKECHNIE, Shirley. Thinking in action: thought made visible in contemporary dance. Cognitive Processing vol. 6, no. 4, p. 243-252, 2005.
VARELA, Francisco J., THOMPSON, Evan, and ROSCH, Eleanor. The Embodied Mind: Cognitive science and human experience. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1991.
WARBURTON, Edward C. Of meanings and movements: Re-languaging embodiment in dance phenomenology and cognition. Dance Research Journal vol. 43, no. 2, p. 65-84, 2011.
WARBURTON, Edward C., WILSON, Margaret, LYNCH, Molly, and CUYKENDALL, Shannon. The cognitive benefits of movement reduction: Evidence from dance marking. Psychological Science vol. 24, no. 9, p. 1732-1739, 2013.
WHITEN, Andrew, MCGUIGAN, Nicola, MARSHALL-PESCINI, Sarah, and HOPPER, Lydia M. Emulation, imitation, over-imitation and the scope of culture for child and chimpanzee. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences vol. 364, no. 1528, p. 2417-2428, 2009.
ZENTALL,Thomas R. Imitation: definitions, evidence, and mechanisms. Animal cognition vol. 9, no. 4, p. 335-353, 2006.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2016 Edward C. Warburton
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
This work is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) License.
Authors retain copyright, while licensing their work under a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) License.
English
Português (Brasil)
