Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dlnhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T13:24:06.161Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Choreographing Empathy: Kinesthesia in Performance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 September 2014

Rachel Fensham
Rachel Fensham*
Affiliation:
University of Melbourne
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

On the cover of both of these two books are photographs of women in loose white pants—arms extended, wrists twisted, each wearing concentrated facial expressions; both seen from front and back as if doubling in a mirror. Perhaps suggested by the reaching gesture, the bodies seem to implore the viewer. It is as if movement is held out and yet in abeyance, incomplete within the image, thus awaiting further fulfillment and explanation. As with the images, both books grapple with the conundrum of how movement communicates to a viewer, and how feelings might be evoked, whether kinesthetically or choreographically. Similar but different—one more historical, the other more fragmented—they also address the timely question of empathy in creative practice.

Type
Review Essays
Information
Dance Research Journal , Volume 46 , Issue 2: Body Parts: Pelvis, Feet, Face, Hips, Legs, Toes, and Teeth , August 2014 , pp. 98 - 104
Copyright
Copyright © Congress on Research in Dance 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Brandstetter, Gabriele, Egert, Gerko, and Zubarik, Sabine, editors. Forthcoming. Touching and Being Touched: Kinesthesia and Empathy in Dance and Movement. Berlin: DeGruyter.Google Scholar
Callard, Felicity, and Papoulias, Constantina. 2010. “Affect and Embodiment.” In Memory: Histories, Theories, Debates, edited by Radstone, Susannah and Schwarz, Bill, 246–62. New York: Fordham University Press.Google Scholar
Fensham, Rachel. 2009. To Watch Theatre: Essays on Genre and Corporeality. Brussells: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Fer, Briony. 2004. The Infinite Line: Remaking Art after Modernism. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Foster, Susan Leigh. 1997. “Dancing Bodies.” In Meaning in Motion: New Cultural Studies of Dance, edited by Desmond, Jane, 235–58. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Leys, Ruth. 2011. “The Turn to Affect: A Critique.” Critical Inquiry 37(Spring): 434–72.Google Scholar
Massumi, Brian. 2002. Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation (Post-Contemporary Interventions). Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. 2003. Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar