Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dk4vv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-05T11:28:12.480Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Improvisational Artistry in Live Dance Performance as Embodied and Extended Agency

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 June 2014

Aili Bresnahan
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article provides an account of improvisational artistry in live dance performance that construes the contribution of the dance performer as a kind of agency. Andy Clark's theory of the embodied and extended mind is used in order to consider how this account is supported by research on how a thinking-while-doing person navigates the world. I claim here that while a dance performer's improvisational artistry does include embodied and extended features that occur outside of the brain and nervous system, that this can be construed as “agency” rather than “thought.” Further I claim that trained and individual style accounts for how this agency acquires its artistic nature. This account thus contributes to the philosophy of improvisation in dance performance in a way that includes motor as well as cognized intentions.

Keywords

Agencyartistryembodied mindextended mindimprovisationstyleperformance
Type
Articles
Information
Dance Research Journal , Volume 46 , Issue 1 , April 2014 , pp. 85 - 94
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

Adams, Fred, and Aizawa, Ken. 2001. “The Bounds of Cognition.” Philosophical Psychology 14(1): 43–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Adams, Fred, and Aizawa, Ken. 2010. “Defending the Bounds of Cognition.” In The Extended Mind, edited by Menary, Richard, 67–80. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Armelagos, Adina, and Sirridge, Mary. 1978. “The Identity Crisis in Dance.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 37(2): 129–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carter, Curtis L. 2000. “Improvisation in Dance.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 58(2): 181–90.Google Scholar
Churchland, Patricia S. 2002. Brainwise: Studies in Neurophilosophy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Clark, Andy. 2011. Supersizing the Mind: Embodiment, Action, and Cognitive Extension. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Dennett, Daniel. 1981. Brainstorms: Philosophical Essays on Mind and Psychology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
De Spain, Kent. 2003. “Reports from the Inside of Improvisation.” In Taken by Surprise: A Dance Improvisation Reader, 27–38. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.Google Scholar
Di Francesco, Michele. 2010. “Extended Cognition and the Unity of Mind: Why We Are Not ‘Spread into the World.’” In Cartographies of the Mind: Philosophy and Psychology in Intersection, edited by Marraffa, Massimo,De Caro, Maria, and Ferretti, Francesco, 211–28. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer, 2010.Google Scholar
Fodor, Jerry. 1975. Language of Thought. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, Inc. for Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Fodor, Jerry. 2009. “‘Where is my mind?’ : Review of Supersizing the Mind: Embodiment, Action and Cognitive Extension, by Andy Clark.” London Review of Books 31(3): 13–5. http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/no3/jerry-fodor/where-is-my-mind, accessed May 30, 2012.Google Scholar
Foster, Susan Leigh. 2003. “Taken by Surprise: Improvisation in Dance and Mind.” In Taken by Surprise: A Dance Improvisation Reader, 3–12. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.Google Scholar
Gallagher, Sean. 2005. How the Body Shapes the Mind. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Goldman, Danielle. 2010. I Want to Be Ready. Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Goodman, Nelson. 1976. Languages of Art: An Approach to a Theory of Symbols. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company Inc.Google Scholar
Haugeland, John. 1998. “Mind embodied and embedding.” In Having Thought: Essays in the metaphysics of mind, edited by Haugeland, John, 207–37. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Hill, Constance Valis. 2003. “Stepping, Stealing, Sharing, and Daring.” In Taken by Surprise: A Dance Improvisation Reader, edited by Albright, Ann Cooper and Gere, David, 89–102. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.Google Scholar
Lewis, George E., and Piekut, Benjamin, editors. Forthcoming. Oxford Handbook of Critical Improvisation Studies. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Margolis, Joseph. 1981. “The Autographic Nature of the Dance.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 39(4): 419–27.Google Scholar
Matheson, Katy. 1998. “Improvisation.” In International Encyclopedia of Dance: A Project of Dance Perspectives, edited by Cohen, Selma Jean and Dance Foundation, Inc. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Noë, Alva. 2009. Out of Our Heads. New York: Hill & Wang.Google Scholar
Rupert, Robert D. 2004. “Challenges to the Hypothesis of Extended Cognition.” The Journal of Philosophy 101(8): 389–428,Google Scholar
Searle, John. 1983. Intentionality: An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Shapiro, Lawrence. 2004. The Mind Incarnate. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Sirridge, Mary, and Armelagos, Adina. 1977. “The In's and Out's of Dance: Expression as an Aspect of Style.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 36(1): 15–24.Google Scholar
Sirridge, Mary, and Armelagos, Adina. 1983. “The Role of ‘Natural Expressiveness’ in Explaining Dance.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 41(3): 301–7.Google Scholar
Zaporah, Ruth. 2003. “A Body with a Mind of Its Own.” In Taken by Surprise: A Dance Improvisation Reader, 22–6. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.Google Scholar