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A Glance Upon Material for the Spine, by Steve Paxton

Abstract:

The present research highlights some key points from Material for the Spine, by Steve Paxton, to establish links between Paxton’s work and positions on phenomena of sensation and perception in the context of contemporary performance. It also analyzes the relationship between internal body sensation and the design of the moving body, which Paxton defines as form. From these concepts, the present paper discusses the artistic power of this approach, based on a scenic practice which aim is to create dance.

Keywords:
Body Awareness; Scenic performativity; Iterativity

Resumo:

A pesquisa detalha alguns pontos fundamentais de Material for the spine, de Steve Paxton, para estabelecer relações entre o mesmo e posições acerca dos fenômenos sensação e percepção no contexto da performatividade na cena contemporânea. Analisa, ainda, a relação entre sensação interna do corpo e o desenho do corpo em movimento, que Paxton define como forma. A partir desses conceitos, discute a potência artística nessa abordagem, pautada numa prática cênica cujo objetivo está em criar dança.

Palavras-chave:
Consciência do Corpo; Performatividade Cênica; Iteratividade

Résumé:

Cette recherche porte sur quelques points fundament aux de Material for the Spine, de Steve Paxton, dans le but d´établir des rapports entre ce document et les positions concernant les phénomènes de la sensation et de la perception, dans le contexte de la performativité de la scène contemporaine. Le texte analyse également le lien existant entre la sensation interne du corps et le dessin de ce corps en mouvement, lequel Paxton définit comme étant de la forme. A partir de ces concepts, le travail étudie la puissance artistique de cette approche centrée sur une pratique de la scène dont l’objectif est celui de créer de la danse.

Mots-clés:
Conscience Corporelle; Performativité Scénique; Itérativité

Introduction

Dancer, choreographer, teacher, and movement thinker Steve Paxton (1939, USA), creator of the Contact Improvisation (CI) dance, is known in Brazil due to his visits to the country in the 1980s, while on an exchange program with the artist Tica Lemos, director of Estudio Nova Dança in Sao Paulo. Tica Lemos brought important names of Contact Improvisation dance to Brazil, such as Nancy Stark Smith, Daniel Lepkoff, and Lisa Nelson, as well as Steve Paxton. The technique became widespread throughout the country by artists, teachers, and choreographers who dedicate themselves to studying and teaching Contact Improvisation and ensuing materials, such as Nancy Stark Smith’s Underscore11 1 Developed by Nancy Stark Smith, Underscore is a structure that organizes a contact improvisation and enables people to work together in an improvisation session. , Lisa Nelson’s Tuning Scores12 2 Developed by Lisa Nelson, Tuning Scores is a study that questions what we see when we watch dance. Her creating spontaneous compositions in dance focused on sight, touch, and hearing brought to body and environment like musical scores. , and Material for the Spine, by Paxton himself. Even before the release of the DVD Material for the Spine (MFS), Paxton was in Brazil teaching an MFS (Material for the Spine) course in January 2006 at Estudio Nova Dança13 3 Fernando Neder conducted the interview during the course Material for the Spine, taught by Paxton in 2006 at Estúdio Nova Dança in São Paulo. It is available in three parts in this link: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gE-MSZMsWw>. There is also a transcript of the interview in Revista Percevejo (2010), available at: <http://www.seer.unirio.br/index.php/opercevejoonline/ article/view/1443/1247>. .

Material for the Spine (MFS) is translated literally into Brazilian Portuguese as Material para a Coluna, and consists of an observation system for the principles of Contact Improvisation. Paxton explains that he began his research in 1986 and compiled the information in a DVD with the same name in 200814 4 Steve Paxton. Material for the Spine. Contredanse, Brussels, 2008. . What makes this material interesting for theoretical reflection is that it discusses the interaction between movement, body consciousness, and artistic potential.

In the introductory part of the DVD, Paxton (2008PAXTON, Steve. Material for the Spine: um estudo do movimento. Bruxelas: Contredanse, 2008. DVD.) explains that MFS is a system developed to explore the internal and external muscles of the back, with the objective of raising awareness of parts we usually do not perceive. As described by Paxton, it studies movement while proposing practical exercises that reveal what is demanded from bodily senses when dancing becomes a process that explores the physical potential. He assumes that “[...] the dancer’s palette exists in the body, in the form of sensations” (Paxton, 2008). Hence the awareness of the muscles, the pelvis, and the bones as well as of internal sensations with which a movement is registered.

The DVD15 5 For better visualization of the topics described, it is suggested that the reader watchs the DVD in its entirety. consists of two parts: Sensation and Senses and Forms. In Sensation and Senses, Paxton groups the following principles: Weight of sensation, Gravity, Basics, Pointings, Pelvis, Walk, the Back, Space, and MFS as a base for improvisation. In Forms, the following specific and distinct movements are explored in investigating the sensations of the moving body: crescent roll, helix roll, puzzles, undulation, and Aikido roll. It also presents the following themes: looking at the forms, warm-ups, and cultivating (everyday movements).

The most relevant aspects of Steve Paxton’s research to this study are the three-dimensional consciousness of the spine and its spiral relation to the body; the increasing mobility of the spine and its connections with related (large and small) muscle groups; and, finally, strengthening the spine by studying Aikido rolls. Paxton argues that such issues are learning and incorporation processes that are an integral part of dancing that are not separated from it.

Sensation, Perception, and Proprioception

Paxton sees proprioception as the sensibility of muscles and other body parts, directing the gaze to the inside body (not with one’s sight, but rather with internal observation resources such as awareness). In MFS, Paxton reaches such conclusions from working with small dance within Basics and Sensation and Senses, as well as in basic forms such as crescent roll, helix roll, Aikido roll, and puzzles, within Forms.

This last point is particularly interesting as it constitutes a paradox in a certain way since the word form suggests an external perception of the body contours. For Paxton, the term external form (the body contours) is a result of practice and repetition for the development of internal awareness. Therefore, the process of capture and consciousness raising through movement is highlighted.

Movement shifts the body in its internal and external relations. Each movement integrates impressions and expressions at every moment. Each movement transforms our body image in a specific way. The movements we perform regarding feeling and form trace the path of such transformations, drawing new images of the world by renewing the body image that leads us to other movements, and so on.

But what do we do with all the movements generated by the kinesthetic, proprioceptive, and sensory system of the body scheme16 6 The body scheme is the representation of spatial relations between body parts perceived kinesthetically and proprioceptively, a neuromotor interaction that allows individuals to be aware of their bodies in space and time. It is a biologically-determined factor directly related to the neurological organization and the cortical homunculus (Freitas, 2004). Le Boulch (1984) classifies the body schema as the immediate recognition of our body due to the interrelationship of its parts, with the space and the objects that surround it, both in states of rest and movement. ? The movement is not led by a flat or fixed view, since the cortical reference is replaced by proprioceptive knowledge of the body; it is the precious moment when the body takes over (Forsythe, 1999FORSYTHE, William. Technologies of Improvisation: An Analytical Tool for the Dance of Eyes. Karlsruhe: ZKM - Institute for Visual Media, 1999.). Proprioception is the very sensitivity of muscles and ligaments, distinct from tactile sensitivity (exteroceptive) or visceral sensitivity (interoceptive). Philosopher Brian Massumi discusses this issue in his book Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation (2002):

The muscles and ligaments register as conditions of movement what the skin internalizes as qualities: the hardness of the floor under the foot as one looks into a mirror becomes a resistance enabling station and movement; the softness of a cat’s fur becomes a lubricant for the motion of the hand. Proprioception translates the exertions and ease of the body’s encounters with objects into a muscular memory of relationality. This is the cumulative memory of skill, habit, posture. Proprioception effects a double translation of subject and object into the body, at a medium depth where the body is only a body, having nothing of the putative profundity of the self nor of the superficiality of external encounter (Massumi, 2002MASSUMI, Brian. Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation. London: Duke University Press, 2002., p. 59).

Subtly, and at every exercise or practice, the record we have is connected to the action or movement, broadening our perception of it, consciously.

Paxton’s small dance appeared in the performance Magnesium (1972), in which dancers collided, threw themselves at and by each other for 10 minutes, and then remained standing for a few minutes. This act of standing became one of the basic premises of exploring the principles of communication first evident in Magnesium, and then in the research and technique, that today is known as Contact Improvisation.

Philosopher José Gil (2004GIL, José. Movimento Total: o corpo e a dança. São Paulo: Iluminuras, 2004.) reflects extensively on the relation between body and dance proposed by Steve Paxton in his book on movement, named Movimento Total: o Corpo e a dança. Gil describes small dance as follows: “small dance is the movement performed in the very act of standing: it is not a consciously directed movement, but it can be consciously observed” (Paxton qt. in Gil, 2004, p. 109). He also points out that to develop or expand “[...] the body’s inner consciousness, we begin by the ‘observation’ of small dance in ourselves” (Paxton apud Gil, 2004, p. 109).

Gil (2004GIL, José. Movimento Total: o corpo e a dança. São Paulo: Iluminuras, 2004.) concludes that expanding the inner consciousness can produce two effects on the movement. The first effect concerns the awareness of the possibility of expanding the scale of movements. The second effect consists in realizing that consciousness itself changes, no longer remaining in the exterior, as an object, but rather impregnating itself, thus, awareness becomes body consciousness.

In the topics Weights of Sensation, Gravity, Pointing, Pelvis, and especially in Basics, as listed in SFM (in the Sensation and Senses section), Paxton directs his gaze and feeling to the body’s inner consciousness which makes the dancer aware of the various systems that constitute itself not seen by the eyes, but accessed by sensation.

For Henri Bergson (1999BERGSON, Henri. Matéria e Memória: ensaio sobre a relação do corpo com o espírito. São Paulo: Martins Fontes, 1999.), in Matter and Memory: an essay on the relation of body and spirit, the sensation is the protagonist of memory and the body that triggers itself, that acts.

The immediate past as something perceived is a sensation since every sensation translates a long succession of elementary stimuli, and the immediate future as it determines itself is action or movement. Therefore, my present is simultaneously sensation and movement; and, since my present forms an undivided whole, such movement must be connected to this sensation, it should prolong it in action. Therefore, I conclude that my present consists of a combined system of sensations and movements. My present is, in essence, sensorimotor (Bergson, 1999BERGSON, Henri. Matéria e Memória: ensaio sobre a relação do corpo com o espírito. São Paulo: Martins Fontes, 1999., p. 160).

The body is the center of the action. The body of the memory is a sensorimotor system organized by patterns and habits called procedural memory. It is an almost instantaneous memory, which relates mainly to the embodied movement. Procedural memory also contains the potential for action, the possibility of actions that have not yet been committed.

In this sense, memory is related to the sensorimotor experience. A trace of memory is materialized and realized in the body, creating bodily sensations or, as defined by Paxton (2008PAXTON, Steve. Material for the Spine: um estudo do movimento. Bruxelas: Contredanse, 2008. DVD.), “a palette of sensations.” The memory of sensation is sensation itself in its state of becoming when the progression of memory materializes itself. A trace of memory that becomes real is a natural process since memory-image is already partly sensation.

Some practices access precisely this awareness. For example, standing up with the eyes closed, breathing deeply, opening up the spaces in the lungs, and directing attention to the spine and lungs. Breathing in and slowly out are essential guidelines in the work of Material for the Spine which aims at expanding inner consciousness and impregnating it with specificities of bodily sensations.

Gil (2004GIL, José. Movimento Total: o corpo e a dança. São Paulo: Iluminuras, 2004., p. 133), for instance, points out that “[...] seeing from the interior is, above all, designing a whole feeling of the body within space, in the interior space: it means opening such space according to the forces and affections that convey movement”. Therefore, our perception of a moment or an event is constituted through bodily images that relate to and are modified in our bodies. For Bergson (1999BERGSON, Henri. Matéria e Memória: ensaio sobre a relação do corpo com o espírito. São Paulo: Martins Fontes, 1999.), our perception of a whole does not correspond to the materiality of that event; however, the perception that we have about the same event is infinitely variable.

A system of images called ‘one’s perception of the universe’ and confuses itself at all levels by variations of a certain privileged image of one’s body. This image occupies the center; all other images are regulated around it; each of its movements changes everything as if spinning in a kaleidoscope. On the other hand, the same images (each related to itself) influence the others in a way in which the effect always remains proportional to the cause: what is called ‘universe’. How to explain that these two systems co-exist and that the same images are relatively invariable in the universe but infinitely variable in perception? (Bergson, 1999BERGSON, Henri. Matéria e Memória: ensaio sobre a relação do corpo com o espírito. São Paulo: Martins Fontes, 1999., p. 20).

Perception is never granted as finished, just as our perspectives lead us to explain and think of the world which encompasses and surpasses them, announcing itself through sensible forms as dazzling as a word, an arabesque, a fold, a movement. In this sense, it is necessary that our world of expression becomes sensation, that is, to awaken and reinvoke in its entirety the pure power to express, beyond the things already seen.

Perception, therefore, is a process of becoming aware of something, of knowing. It refers to the ability to differentiate information found in the world. This process of understanding the information found in the world is mediated by experience, which requires the use of the senses. For instance: for a sensation to be perceived, it passes into the body through one or more sensory organs. Interpreting a sensation is what we know as perception, but not in a chronological sense; rather, as a tangle without beginning or end.

Thomas Reid, author of Essays on Intellectual Powers of Man in Perception (2004REID, Thomas. Essays on the Powers of Man. In: SCHWARTZ, Robert (Ed.). Perception. Malden: Blackwell, 2004.), explores the theories of immediacy and their relation to perception. For Reid (2004), three stages occur during the perception of a phenomenon: firstly, a notion or an idea of what is being perceived comes to mind; secondly, a strong and irresistible conviction of the current existence of what is perceived; lastly, such conviction is immediate, and not a result of a rational activity. The immediate relates to an a priori notion which is given.

For John Dewey (2010DEWEY, John. Arte como Experiência. São Paulo: Martins Fontes , 2010.), perception is not only what we see nor what we understand of what we see, but rather a balance between what we see and what we understand, simultaneously. Perception is not something fixed or constant, but it has fixed elements in a system of constant change. There is an immediacy in what we perceive, but what we perceive is rarely unmediated.

Massumi (2002MASSUMI, Brian. Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation. London: Duke University Press, 2002., p. 90) believes that perception is related to the action on what is perceived. The properties of the thing perceived are also properties of the action, more than the thing itself. This does not mean that properties are subjective for the one who perceives; on the contrary, they are signs that the one who perceives and who is perceived is included in each person’s world. Perception is located between the one who perceives and what is perceived.

Thus, such in-betweenness that is this perception process adjusts itself in the subitem Dance and Culture, part of the section Cultivating, in which Steve Paxton discusses the role of dancing and dancers today by questioning the ambition that separates them from a sensitivity and physicality that would take place in a more natural environment. Such arrangement stiffens bodies and transforms them into uncreative tools since the city and urban civilization are devices that discipline and control bodies.

Paxton pays attention to the necessity of returning to a knowledge of nature in which dancing focuses our perception onto rather basic aspects of perceiving time, space, and gravity that comprise our creativity. In this sense, dancing is a wake-up call to work on a tamed body, since it will remind it of its own feet, vertebrae, and reach. Whether in Contact Improvisation, in the guidelines of MFS, or in other forms of dance, there is a knowledge produced in the body from the investigation of such relations of physical forces, in which the body consciously organizes and acquires abilities to dance and create or collaborate in creation.

Such abilities are intrinsically related to bodily sensation, to the acquisition of a palette of internal sensations that sustains the movements of the body and gives them formal precision. Thus, scenic performativity can captivate the spectators’ gaze before any cultural meaning arises to a particular movement.

Perception and Performativity in the Contemporary Scene

In the context of live arts, an emphasis on perception has been traditionally conceived as an external and hermeneutical look: exterior, like ballet in front of a mirror, and hermeneutical in conceiving the body and above all, as a means of expressing a meaning to be interpreted. From a practical standpoint, this hermeneutical emphasis is articulated by focusing on a representational work (in which the movement exists to represent an emotion, for example) and in which the bodywork of the dancer is subject to this goal.

However, the last three or four decades consolidated the idea that aesthetic perception cannot be reduced to an interpretive and rational perception of the artistic phenomenon. On the contrary, for certain theorists17 7 Especially Fischer-Lichte (2011). , it is exactly the lack of comprehension scripted in the artistic phenomenon that makes it an aesthetic reception experience, accessing sensory perceptions and sensations.

This idea is motivated by an unfolding in the Arts that privileges the exposition of its materiality, of the processes and procedures of its construction. That is, the exposition of performativity that is based, enabled, and constructed upon18 8 Fischer-Lichte (2011), for example, sees performative aesthetics as overcoming the hermeneutics aesthetic, since they do not have the tools to engage properly with contemporary performances and performing stage productions. .

What matters in the context of this paper is to recognize that in the performative art the sensory dimension of a phenomenon in its specific materiality, temporality, and spatiality in the moment of its performance constitutes itself as a basis for making art. At the reception pole, it frees spectators from the immediate task of seeking meanings, allowing them to apprehend the diverse sensory and affective intensities that the work causes in their construction of meaning.

Josette Féral (2009FÉRAL, Josette. Performance e performatividade: O que são os estudos performáticos? In: MOSTAÇO, Edélcio et al. Sobre Performatividade. Florianópolis: Letras Contemporâneas, 2009. P. 49-86.) points out the principles of iteration, citation, and ambiguity as basic principles of scenic performativity, beyond the principle of repetition (Féral, 2009). It is interesting to note the element that differentiates the performative work from a predominantly representational work is the performer’s subjectivity, which lies mainly in the presence of a body. Thinking about subjectivity and perceiving its role about the performed material is a crucial factor in performativity in contemporary stages, and the artistic goal is not to perfectly express a pre-existing ideal. There is room to an artistically account for the variations or gaps that necessarily arise from action as an expression of an idea and action as the unique expression of a moment when a performer, movement, and spectator meet.

In words that evoke Paxton’s reflection on the relationship between dancer and environment, Féral (2009FÉRAL, Josette. Performance e performatividade: O que são os estudos performáticos? In: MOSTAÇO, Edélcio et al. Sobre Performatividade. Florianópolis: Letras Contemporâneas, 2009. P. 49-86.) highlights the structural variation principle as an intrinsic element of the body which is sensitive to the specific context of its execution. Féral writes (2009, p. 76-77):

On the one hand, the incorporated activity or the performed reality cannot be in each of its resurgences an identical replica of what preceded it; on the other hand, even if repeated, an action necessarily inserts itself in the socio-historical contexts of different productions (performance reception, nuances in the performer’s psychological or physical state, etc.). This makes repetition or citation, at the same time, copy and original (simulation) to the context from which they emerge: always different contexts, never saturated, so that meaning is never unique, but rather variable and plural. All these variations ensure that each performance is always unique.

If we consider that traditional technical work was developed to eliminate as much disturbance of variation as possible, we are now before a phenomenon that precisely investigates the artistic potential of such disturbance. We find an opening in the principles of a much-needed appropriation of the subject and the exposition of such appropriation in the self-reflexivity of performance, which, according to Féral (2009FÉRAL, Josette. Performance e performatividade: O que são os estudos performáticos? In: MOSTAÇO, Edélcio et al. Sobre Performatividade. Florianópolis: Letras Contemporâneas, 2009. P. 49-86., p. 78-79),

Unfolds and appropriates itself, apprehending and transforming codes, playing with repetitions and with the enlargement of senses, both against and with them. There is, certainly, a margin, a hiatus - a gap as said elsewhere - between the ‘I’ and the code, an individual zone to be explored (each at their leisure). The ‘I’ reproduces the code, but maintaining its originality (nature) that highlights this ‘differance’ discussed by Derrida. As Marvin Carlson writes, performance is always ‘framed in self-reflexivity mode’.

That is, the dimension of displaying problematizes its relation to (artistic) doing and (empirical) being, so that this performative display in contemporaneity is conducted in a way that the construction of meanings is not universal. The construction of meaning takes place at a provisional, temporal, specific space in the performing bodies.

The performative mode (as an iterative and variational practice) self-reflexively exposes the subjectivity of performers about the perceptual material, establishing some contact points with the principles of training and creation developed in Material for the Spine. In the following section, a few parallels and reflections on differences between Paxton’s exercises and the functions of sensation and proprioception in the iterativity of artistic action are pointed out.

Material for the Spine as an Investigation of Artistic Potential

In addition to the previously mentioned exercises, MFS presents Paxton’s reflections on the relations between fluid corporeality and artistic creativity. Paxton claims that practicing exercises, such as rolls and puzzles even with repetition and precise execution leads dancers to a precise response and an expanded physical and perceptual flexibility. Furthermore, practice develops a body available to interact relatively freely with environmental stimuli. How can repetition-based physical training lead not only to better control of the contours of a moving body but also to more freedom in the possible uses of such movement? How can such training, in establishing parallels with performance principles, enhance artistic potential?

Firstly, training aims to connect dancers’ perception to a specific energetic internal bodily force: the Eastern principle of Chi (China) or Ki (Japan), meaning vital energy. The concept of Ki19 9 For more details see the available address: <http://www.energyarts.com/what-is-chi>. Accessed: 30 March 2016. encompasses a wide range of energies that permeate the universe: Ki is within us and also around us. According to the Eastern culture, it is this Ki that keeps us alive. Ki is the primordial energy of the universe; it is not only in the human body, in animals, or in plants; it is also in rocks, cars, or planes: everything that exists has Ki energy. Ki is the essence of acupuncture, as well as other forms of therapy, martial arts, and traditional arts in China and Japan. The Western correspondent of Ki is the spirit.

Paxton operates from the Ki principle and affirms that:

By means of exercises, ideokinetic imaginary, and specific examples, I wanted to raise awareness of internal sensations; the moments in which the use reveals operations in the bones, muscle connections between pelvis and fingertips, and the subtle energetic leverage that I understand to be the Eastern concept of chi or ki (Paxton, 2008PAXTON, Steve. Material for the Spine: um estudo do movimento. Bruxelas: Contredanse, 2008. DVD., 0:30-0:54).

The presence of ki is perceived internally20 10 “The sensation of ki [...] can be felt and applied to the contour inside the exercises” (Paxton, 2008 2:50-2:55). , impregnating the movement with such liveliness as if it were unique, being performed for the first time. Moreover, it generates a fluidity and diversity in the movements by amplifying creative possibilities in dancing, since the “dancer’s palette exists as internal sensations on the body” (Paxton, 2008PAXTON, Steve. Material for the Spine: um estudo do movimento. Bruxelas: Contredanse, 2008. DVD., 1: 18-1: 22).

To develop this ability, Paxton references small daily events that serve as a model for understanding the physical event. The execution and constant exercise of the principles are understood as part of an artistic event, as Paxton describes:

[...] Events such as pointing the ischium to the support of a chair when we are sitting and to the feet when we are walking. Or, during a handshake, in which there is - before shaking - a moment when it is possible to see an outward projection of the hand on standby in the lower forearm and the last two fingers. When gripping, the last two fingers roll around the palm bones near the last two fingers of the hand being held. This banal event contains Ki projection elements found in aikido, in which the arm and the hand are gently extended and supported, ready to give and receive at the same time (Paxton, 2008PAXTON, Steve. Material for the Spine: um estudo do movimento. Bruxelas: Contredanse, 2008. DVD., 1:35-2:41).

Thus, the ability to project the Ki, to work with such energy pulses in their openings to the environment at the moment of execution, is at the core not only of MFS exercises but also of the artistic work present in Contact Improvisation. Curiously, it is a reduction of movement complexity, consequently concentrating on a simple form to be maintained and repeated. This allows us to understand how such projection works in an environment that offers varied stimuli in dialogue with the unfolding of movement. For Paxton, the key is in the relationship between practicing the perception of a specific quality of bodily sensations and acquiring an artistic ability or potential:

Rolls in forms instigate and give focus to repetition: it deals with the challenge of maintaining form while executing the rolls, with the objective to improve form and contours. The key to this information is to experience forms. The body contours have to be formed from the inside. The better they are formed, the more fluid and continuous the roll is. While the contour rolls, all sensory and ground-support relationships change constantly. It is a challenge for the dancer to maintain the original configuration of form sensations within the complex and ever-changing support structure. The student must start with a sensory focus, and maintain it. It is an example of thinking with the senses and movement sensations. As long as the form rolls on the ground, losing form contour is normal. Therefore, MFS seeks feelings/sensations to create a path from normal to formal (Paxton, 2008PAXTON, Steve. Material for the Spine: um estudo do movimento. Bruxelas: Contredanse, 2008. DVD., 3:40-5:08).

“From normal to formal” can be understood as an impulse to go from matrix-less varying movement to a singular matrix-evidencing movement. Such highlight is more fluid since the body is capable of using the energetic leverage impulse that Paxton identifies as ki. What must be maintained is this specific sensory focus, so that the form is not lost and remains in dialogue with an ever-changing context. The movement does not degenerate into an empty form, into the habitual movement of a disciplined body, as it accomplishes itself in every movement as something lived in the present moment.

“From normal to formal” is also a proposal to establish the form of the moving body in a non-ordinary state, a state in which the presence of the dancers and their attention are open to the environment without losing sensory focus on the body itself, in its energetic state and its specific energy projections. Learning to think with the sensations of moment implies, certainly, an amplification of the artistic potential of a moving body. Thus, it establishes attention onto movement possibilities, seeking to maintain a specific quality on sensory focus which we identify as the sensation of the ki, the projection of such energy through the body itself.

It is important to note that the moving body in this paper meets all the characteristics attributed by Féral to performance and the performing body in the context of the performing arts. The principles of repetition and variation, of singularity without originality, thus, imply that no sequence of rolls is equal to another and no sequence can serve as an original for others to copy. However, focus on form establishes a restored behavior, focus on doing, and to some extent on displaying practice, as well as the self-reflexive presence of the dancer/performer, with a constant focus on proprioception.

However, this does not mean that MFS (and perhaps also Contact Improvisation) expose in the subjective appropriation of certain principles of movement, a problematization of such subjectivity, which is at the heart of the gap that Féral points as constitutive in contemporary performance.

Paxton builds a vector from normal to formal, perhaps for training purposes. For Féral, there is also the possibility of “normal against formal” or “from formal to normal and back”, when the researcher discusses possible conflicts between form and its subjective appropriation. Implicitly, on the movement from formal to normal, it is possible to consider crucial that dancers learn the difference between both states.

What allows us to differentiate between these states is a bodily sensation, a muscle state configured using conscious attention and practice. A muscle state that is defined at the moment the body enters a state of attention and consciously accesses, internally, a palette of sensations collected throughout one’s practical trajectory.

Its scenic potential arises from this sensation, its differentiated perception, and consequently its ability to be modulated by the dancer, and not from a possible volitional energy or an emotional intensity seen as authentic. For the muscle state, the question of authentic or pretended, real or false, is irrelevant as the body enters a scenic state of the event. What would once again be an indication that, at the basis of performative presence lies a sensory focus, an ability to create a muscular and bone status which MFS seeks to cause and refine, constituting itself as one more alternative to contemporary training.

Referências

  • BERGSON, Henri. Matéria e Memória: ensaio sobre a relação do corpo com o espírito. São Paulo: Martins Fontes, 1999.
  • DEWEY, John. Arte como Experiência. São Paulo: Martins Fontes , 2010.
  • FÉRAL, Josette. Performance e performatividade: O que são os estudos performáticos? In: MOSTAÇO, Edélcio et al. Sobre Performatividade. Florianópolis: Letras Contemporâneas, 2009. P. 49-86.
  • FISCHER-LICHTE, Erika. La Estética de lo Performativo. Madrid: Abada Editores, 2011.
  • FORSYTHE, William. Technologies of Improvisation: An Analytical Tool for the Dance of Eyes. Karlsruhe: ZKM - Institute for Visual Media, 1999.
  • FREITAS, Giovanina Gomes. O Esquema Corporal, A Imagem Corporal, A Consciência Corporal e A Corporeidade. Ijuí: Unijuí, 2004.
  • GIL, José. Movimento Total: o corpo e a dança. São Paulo: Iluminuras, 2004.
  • LE BOULCH, Jean. Educação Psicomotora: a psicocinética na idade escolar. Porto Alegre: Artes Médicas, 1984.
  • MASSUMI, Brian. Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation. London: Duke University Press, 2002.
  • NEDER, Fernando. Entrevista com Steve Paxton. O Percevejo, Rio de Janeiro, n. 2, v. 2, p. 1-9, 2010. Disponível em: <Disponível em: http://www.seer.unirio.br/index.php/ opercevejoonline/article/view/1443/1247 >. Acesso em: 30 mar. 2016.
    » http://www.seer.unirio.br/index.php/ opercevejoonline/article/view/1443/1247
  • PAXTON, Steve. Material for the Spine: um estudo do movimento. Bruxelas: Contredanse, 2008. DVD.
  • REID, Thomas. Essays on the Powers of Man. In: SCHWARTZ, Robert (Ed.). Perception. Malden: Blackwell, 2004.
  • 26
    This unpublished text, translated by Meggie Rosar Fornazari and proofread by Ananyr Porto Fajardo, is also published in Portuguese in this issue.
  • 1
    Developed by Nancy Stark Smith, Underscore is a structure that organizes a contact improvisation and enables people to work together in an improvisation session.
  • 2
    Developed by Lisa Nelson, Tuning Scores is a study that questions what we see when we watch dance. Her creating spontaneous compositions in dance focused on sight, touch, and hearing brought to body and environment like musical scores.
  • 3
    Fernando Neder conducted the interview during the course Material for the Spine, taught by Paxton in 2006 at Estúdio Nova Dança in São Paulo. It is available in three parts in this link: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gE-MSZMsWw>. There is also a transcript of the interview in Revista Percevejo (2010), available at: <http://www.seer.unirio.br/index.php/opercevejoonline/ article/view/1443/1247>.
  • 4
    Steve Paxton. Material for the Spine. Contredanse, Brussels, 2008.
  • 5
    For better visualization of the topics described, it is suggested that the reader watchs the DVD in its entirety.
  • 6
    The body scheme is the representation of spatial relations between body parts perceived kinesthetically and proprioceptively, a neuromotor interaction that allows individuals to be aware of their bodies in space and time. It is a biologically-determined factor directly related to the neurological organization and the cortical homunculus (Freitas, 2004). Le Boulch (1984) classifies the body schema as the immediate recognition of our body due to the interrelationship of its parts, with the space and the objects that surround it, both in states of rest and movement.
  • 7
    Especially Fischer-Lichte (2011FISCHER-LICHTE, Erika. La Estética de lo Performativo. Madrid: Abada Editores, 2011.).
  • 8
    Fischer-Lichte (2011FISCHER-LICHTE, Erika. La Estética de lo Performativo. Madrid: Abada Editores, 2011.), for example, sees performative aesthetics as overcoming the hermeneutics aesthetic, since they do not have the tools to engage properly with contemporary performances and performing stage productions.
  • 9
    For more details see the available address: <http://www.energyarts.com/what-is-chi>. Accessed: 30 March 2016.
  • 10
    “The sensation of ki [...] can be felt and applied to the contour inside the exercises” (Paxton, 2008 2:50-2:55).

Publication Dates

  • Publication in this collection
    23 Oct 2017
  • Date of issue
    Jan-Mar 2018

History

  • Received
    31 Mar 2016
  • Accepted
    17 Jan 2017
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