Situating Sensations as a Means to Develop Knowledge€¦ · Situating Sensations as a Means to...

Ashley Thorndike, CORD working paper, 9/10/2010

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Situating Sensations as a Means to Develop Knowledge

It is with all of one’s senses that one gradually converts to the world of prizefighting andits stakes. To give this proposition its full force, one would need to be able to capture andconvey at once the odors (the heady smell of liniment sniffed full force, the sweat hanging in theair, the stink of the situp table, the leathery scent of the gloves); the cadenced “thump” ofpunches against the bags and the clanking of the chains they hang from, each bag having its ownsound, each drill its tonality, each boxer his own manner of accenting the machine gun-likerattle of the speed bag; the light ‘tap-tap’ or frantic galloping of feet on the wooden floor whileskipping rope, or the muffled squeak they let out as they move gingerly on the canvas of the ring;the rhythmic puffing, hissing, sniffing, blowing, and groaning characteristic of each athlete; andespecially the collective layout and synchronization of the bodies in the space of the gym, whosemere sight suffices to wield lasting pedagogical effects; not to forget the temperature, whosevariation and intensity are not the least relevant properties of the room. The combination of allthese elements produces a sort of sensuous intoxication that is key to the education of theapprentice boxer.1

In the above passage, sociologist Loic Wacquant introduces the concept of corporeal

knowledge as developed in a South Side Chicago boxing gym. By describing the “sensuous

intoxication” of the ring, he suggests how the sensate elements of a space and community create

a visceral context for learning. For the dancer, the studio environment is equally sticky—and

equally alluring. In this essay, I argue that the learning that takes place in the dance studio

occurs when the dancers prioritize sensation. Sensation, then, becomes the foundation for

danced knowledge.

The essay describes a rehearsal that occurred during a yearlong ethnography of knowledge

practices in the college dance studio.2 This rehearsal serves as an exemplar of a context wherein

learning arises through sensations that develop through a process of repetition and refinement.

The rehearsal demonstrates the elements of fatigue and fun and the practices of layering

complexity. Furthermore, it serves as an instance wherein the body is both a means of learning 1 Wacquant, L. (2004). Body and Soul. Oxford University Press. p. 70-71.2 Thorndike, A. (2010). Articulating Dance Improvisation: Knowledge Practices in the College Dance Studio. PhDDissertation. Ohio State University.


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and the substance of learning as the students cultivate a sense of knowledge as, at once, known

and unknown.

Rehearsal Practices Generate a Sensate Knowledge Base

On a Monday night, walking from the graduate student office to rehearsal, I pass by the

largest of the Ohio State University dance studios. There, an advanced non-major jazz class

dances to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” a standard of late October elective classes. I continue on

to Annie Kloppenberg’s rehearsal for her MFA thesis concert. Studio Two, long, rectangular,

and windowless, has a yellowish cast, which might be from the lighting or the aging paint.

Tonight, I am here to observe, and I have arrived about five minutes late. Annie usually begins

her rehearsals with a choreographed warm-up sequence that takes about 20 minutes. Expecting

to arrive a few minutes into that, I am surprised to see that they have jumped right into learning

material (Figures 2.1, 2.2). Undergraduate dancers Margaret, Anabel, and Carrie3 lean on the

piano over by the wall-mounted television, learning material from the video of an improvisation

in a prior rehearsal.

All three dancers wear black cotton jersey pants and washed-out pastel tops. Each also

wears another layer, which will soon be adapted to cover her waist and hips: a high school

sweatshirt, a long floral shirt, and a long-sleeved shirt. Trying to figure out a series of low

partnering lifts from the video footage, the three look quizzically at the television, watching

moments of assisted airtime that they once did and now must remake. They learn these moments

from prior improvisations that Annie has spliced together on DVD, a choreographic method she

frequently uses. As they awkwardly mark through the series of lifts, two say simultaneously: 3 Pseudonyms are used for the research participants; by choice, artists Annie Kloppenberg and Kathryn Enright arereferred to by name.


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Images of an Indelible Marks rehearsal

Figure 2.1 The dancers circle around the television to watch clips from a previous rehearsal.Photo courtesy of Kathryn Enright

Figure 2.2 Annie watches the dancers initiate a lift. Photo courtesy of Kathryn Enright


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Figure 2.3 Carrie launches herself upwards on a diagonal to initiate a large weight shift. Photocourtesy of Kathryn Enright

Figure 2.4 Carrie sends her weight to the right as she curves to the left. Photo courtesy ofKathryn Enright


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Figure 2.5 Anabel falls backward. Photo courtesy of Kathryn Enright

Figure 2.6 Margaret slices her arm across her body. Photo courtesy of Kathryn Enright


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Figure 2.7 The three dancers weave through one another by reaching for and pulling oneselfthrough the other two. Photo courtesy of Kathryn Enright

Figure 2.8 Annie tries out the task she has given the dancers by inserting herself in the processand describing what she feels. Photo courtesy of Kathryn Enright


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Figure 2.9 The dancers take a break and catch their breath. Photo courtesy of KathrynEnright


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“No, that’s not going to work. It’s too much force.”

“Can we change this?”

Annie asks, “Do you hate it or just not remember it?”

All three respond teasingly, “We hate it.”

They start laughing and joking about what each had done on the tape and resume work on

specific lifts. Groaning at oneself on video is a common practice—“Oh good one!” “I look like

that?” “Isn’t it awful to watch yourself!” (fieldnotes, 10/2008). These quips bring a lightness to

the process. While humorous, they also reference the constant practice of evaluating oneself and

the frustration that can breed and demonstrate the presence of emotionality and felt sensations in

the studio process. The dancers soon stop talking about the video and begin seriously re-

discovering and re-making the material by emulating their movements trying iteratively to build

a sequence of lifts that reflects the moments on video. The repetition the dancers engage in is

different from memorization, but is instead a process of embodying and integrating the

movements until they shift slightly, becoming anew. At one moment, Anabel seems to

remember a sensation from the sequence and swings herself onto and around Carrie, hooking her

armpit onto Carrie’s shoulder. Though startled, Carrie lifts and spins her, gently setting her

down to finish. Finding this exact point of connection seems to allow them to recreate and

complete the lift. Annie asks to see the lifts and interactions that they know, and they show her

the series of supported movements.

Renegotiating Movements from a Piecemeal Series to a Fluid Whole

Next, each dancer crafts a sequence of traveling movements and Annie sets up a pathway

by pulling out two chairs and describing how the dancers should weave through and around


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them. As the dancers repeat their phrases of movement, they become fluid, with more swiping,

falling, and gliding through space. They develop and repeat the sequence by moving along a

figure-eight shaped track demarcated by two folding chairs in the middle of the room. They then

try executing the path in reverse.

Carrie’s phrase starts with her elbows bent near her ribs as she twists back and forth like a

boxer, while in contrast her legs take wide, deep steps. She charges through space. As seen in

Figure 2.3, she is frequently off-center, launching herself up and outwards or, as in Figure 2.4,

arcing over by curving laterally against the direction of movement. As such, her path involves

negotiating movement in the frontal/door and sagittal/wheel planes with low shifts of direction,

giving her movement the charging sensibility. Anabel’s phrase reaches then drops through wide

low second-positions of the legs, but she also negotiates a sense of falling backwards, which

builds momentum for it requires quicker recovery (Figure 2.5). Margaret’s phrase is more

horizontal, her weight moving in the transverse/table plane (Figure 2.6). While mechanically

different, the phrases all become full-bodied and athletic with the repetition and the infusion of

running and the group begins to call the result “the marathon of the loop-de-loop phrase.”

“Modulate your energy,” Annie directs, “dropping in and out of it and see if you can still

be really specific.” The three begin playing with focus, looking up and out while emphasizing

different actions. From my vantage point, they do not seem to be modulating their energy in

terms of drawing back, but instead they seem to use the fatigue they feel to find more momentum

in the phrasing.


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Repetition Enables Further Risk Taking and Layers of Complexity

Repeating these full-bodied, traveling phrases breeds exhaustion, which in turn makes for

more efficient movement as the dancers physically negotiate when to exert energy and when to

give in to gravity. Fatigue aids in the learning process, for it becomes easier to mobilize one’s

weight to find a phrase’s internal structure. Unfortunately, it also constitutes a range of work

wherein injuries are most possible.

While repetition drives the process, repeating the movements alone would be unsustainable

and inefficient, and attention to details through individual work or discussion is present in this, as

in most, rehearsal processes. The dancers pause to work things out either with Annie, or on their

own. When Annie modifies one interaction between Carrie and Margaret, Anabel repeats a

movement of which she apparently feels unsure. Moving out of the way of the others, and closer

to the mirror, she sweeps her arm up then drops into a deep plié over and over again while

watching herself in the mirror and trying different methods of sending her arm up and over. As

she repeats the movement it becomes faster and more cascading, like a ball that has been tossed

rather than spiked.

To my relief, Anabel asks Annie to put on different music. We have been listening to the

DVD menu music—a country song about Jesus and bartenders—on repeat for the last half-hour.

With Anabel’s iPod playing Andrew Bird, the three move faster, moving more frequently into

high space, and with more accents. Rather than being evenly spaced apart on the track-like path,

their cycles compress and they run closer together (Figure 2.7). Next, they do their phrases near

one another, still moving along the same pathway. It seems riskier overall, yet they seem to have

much more control than they did an hour earlier.


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Annie remarks, “I like that part; I don’t know if it works though.”

“It was fun,” the dancers agree, non-committal.

They stand and talk for about ten minutes; the dancers explain their sensations to Annie

and ask her questions. After a quick break for water and the bathroom, they resume the building

process. This time they stay extremely close as they travel. I am unsure of the task until Annie

says, “See if you can make it more like a braid—so you are always crossing in between,” and I

realize they are trying to pass one another while weaving in and out.

The Choreographer Relates and Evaluates

They stop, and Annie steps in to show them how to dive through the other two as they pass

(Figure 2.8). She describes her own sensation to give them an intention: “I feel like I’m always

reaching for you.” They incorporate this directive, literally reaching for the torsos of those in

front and trying to pull through, without pushing the others back. In addition to an inter-personal

relationship, the connection between choreographer and dancer is physical, with Annie’s body

moving in and out of the process. While this could be read as what dance theorist Foster (1997)

calls the “demonstrative body” (p. 237), which she describes in terms of a teacher’s body that the

student understands as a mediator between her or his “perceived” and “ideal” body, instead,

Annie’s physicality is less a vehicle to show a movement ideal, but instead a means of

developing and articulating a movement quality.4 In other words, Annie demonstrates not to

show, but to discover the details of the movement quality through her attuned body then to

communicate those in various ways to the dancers.

4 Foster, S. L. (1997). Dancing bodies. In J.C. Desmond (Ed.), Meaning in motion: New cultural studies of dance(pp. 253-258). Durham, NC: Duke University Press.


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Annie looks at each of them and I can tell that she is scanning their body postures, looking

for signs of fatigue and injury potential. She asks, “Do you want to do it again?”

“Yeah!” They respond with enthusiasm. The three talk among themselves and Anabel

seems to be suggesting an idea. Annie walks across the studio to stand by Kathryn Enright, who

is photographing. She physically distances herself from the material, which gives her more of an

audience perspective but also shifts the responsibility for approaching the final run to the

dancers. After a moment, the dancers charge forward in the last repetition of the evening. This

time, the section has a cycling, flying sense—not just as a whole but also in the individual

movements. It is like a steeplechase, a race filled with obstacles.

They end, breathing heavily. Annie asks,“ How tired are you?” And Margaret exclaims,

“Really tired!”

“Good,” Annie concludes, with a sly smile.

This section of movement in fact fatigues the dancers to a point where they are gasping for

breath (Figure 2.9). At one point in a later rehearsal, one dancer finished the section so out-of-

breath that I snap, “Quit smoking!” in a moment of motherly concern. While contemporary

dance requires a great deal of athleticism, it less often demands sustained aerobic endurance.

This section, in its early stages, required cardiovascular exertion comparable to sprinting coupled

with large, exertion-filled weight shifts and direction changes. Only an abbreviated section

makes it into the final work, but this so-named “marathon” version demonstrates the physical

rigor and learning required of the dancers.


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Bodies as Means and Substance of Learning

In this specific rehearsal, the dancers’ bodies are both the means for learning and the

substance of the learning. In this instance, the dancers are not learning about external content.

The drive of this rehearsal is not to express an idea or emotion; instead, the content is the

physical dimensions of dancing, in this case the mobilization of weight while negotiating other

bodies. The dancers repeat and refine their material with the choreographer articulating her ideas

as they emerge, empathizing and giving feedback through her body, while also gauging the

physical capacities of the dancers. The learning procedure is repetition, but in each iteration, the

dancers explore different choices and approaches to the movement. The objective is curiosity,

with the dancers metaphorically asking: “What is this? How can I discover something here?

What are the possibilities?” through physical repetition and problem solving.

As the dancers fatigue, they start to use their energy in a more nuanced way, riding

through the momentum at times, as if coasting down a hill for a brief moment, then drawing up

more energy to approach difficult parts with abandon. They begin to launch their weight rather

than laboriously lift, and drop into gravity rather than resisting it.

This rehearsal illuminates the physical training of dancers—discoveries made through

repetition, sensing of weight, and the allure of the sweaty, tired, and always potentially injured

dancing body. Like Wacquant’s boxers, these dancers immerse themselves in a learning

environment wherein the sensorial dimensions—of the space and between the people—create a

contrasting context of stability and mobility. It is a bounded but open studio; the dancers touch,

push, and pull against each other’s bodies. Everyone in the studio participates in a system of

knowing that relies on exploring and questioning a state of the unknown: dancers Carrie, Anabel,


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Margaret, choreographer Annie, who moves in and out from observer to actor; Kathryn who

photographs the rehearsal, moving along the sidelines, framing the action, and I, as I sit in the

corner, writing and watching.

Learning over Time

The learning here is through sensation and repetition but the context is the students’

belief that the work of dance is a matter of engaging in the practices of dancing over time to

uncover the opportunities to refine. They understand knowledge as a process. As another

research participant Mary says,

I’m trying to situate myself in relation to what I’ve learned more than letting it wash overme. I’m trying to constantly reassess [whenever] something happens. After Annie’s piece,I’m just trying to look at myself in a bigger picture than I ever was. I think about thefunction of things.5

The idea that one must keep doing (or in some instances, undoing by letting go of patterns of

tension or movement habits) situates danced knowledge as a practice or an action, rather than a

commodity. While the greater argument that resulted from my ethnography is that danced

knowledge arises from sensation, is crafted through dialogue, is mediated by pain, and is enabled

by connection—the everyday work of dancing, as exemplified in this rehearsal, requires an

interest in and commitment to the movement that exists in the moment. Sensation and action are

primary. The momentary sensations and realizations are about both discovery and instability as

the students work to integrate those experiences into their senses of selves as artists, learners, and

individuals.

5 Mary, May interview


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Repeating and Refining in Technique Class

In the dance studio, breadth precedes depth. At a physical level, large muscle groups must

be warmed-up before firing the specific small muscles that produce the level of detail evident in

refined dancing. In ballet, grande plié, a deep knee bend, comes before petit battement serré, a

fluttering of the ankle. Likewise, the effort to find specificity in dancing is often preceded by

learning in broad, exploratory strokes. In the rehearsal example, the dancers go from roughly

emulating video footage and organizing sequences and spatial patterns, to discovering the weight

and directionality of the material and tasks that complicate the performance of it, for instance, in

the sequence when they begin weaving the material together and pulling themselves through one

another.

The Conflict of Thinking versus Sensing

A phenomenon noted by many dance students, is that something becomes “organic” as the

“thinking” lessens. While the term organic is problematic, for several of the dancers in this study,

the process of delving into physical sensations involves following one’s weight, getting into a

“zone” and analytically reflecting on it later. Indeed, the tension of pulling away from weight,

whether due to a wandering mind or a mind overly analytic of the task, can inhibit weight-based

movement.

Like the boxers Wacquant describes, dancers often talk about getting “out of my head” or

“into my body” as requisite for optimal performance. “Thinking too much” is blamed for poor

performance, and dancers talk about knowing material so well that “you don’t even have to think

about it,” then moments later, suggesting that “you have to be thinking all the time.”6 This

6 Dissertation data set.


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conflict seems to have to do with turning off something akin to Freud’s “superego,” the little

voice telling you that your knee isn’t bent enough, or your weight isn’t dropped, or that you are

behind the music. This sort of commentary on dancing often impedes dancing. Yet dancing

requires a high degree of concentration: visualizing the skeleton, processing the music, seeing

the room, reminding yourself of technical details or thematic ideas—a different experience of

thought, what Wacquant calls corporeal capital. Dancing requires an awareness of self and

others, and the physical prowess to bend at the knee, drop one’s weight, and use one’s arms

efficiently.

The dancers in this study understand danced knowledge both through an understanding of a

trajectory as a dancer and through moments of realization, where everything “clicks.” Moment

of realization can involve the demonstrative body of the teacher who functions both as an

exemplar and mediator of movement in that moment, and serves as a model of a careered dance

artist—as when Annie stepped into the trio to demonstrate both the movement and the process of

discovering experience—or they can involve moments, as Anabel found, where repetition and

fatigue allow newly constructed movements to emerge. The experience of knowing in dancing, it

seems, is better read as the process of knowing. For the dancers in this study, it is about how they

learn how to engage with dancing, rather than the acquisition of specific skills, and this develops

through sweaty, sticky, and tactile sensations.

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