Dance Composition: The Jessy Experience: Dance and the Lived Body Related to My World

I’ve never been fond of philosophical readings only because it becomes so time consuming. I can’t just skim through and somewhat grasp what the reading is about; rather I have to truly understand one sentence before moving to the next. The idea of dualism as straying away from the Cartesian thought from a soul and mind separation to “recognizing a dialectical and lived dualism” was difficult for me to grasp at first (Fraleigh 4). Every time I read or hear the word dualism I automatically go to the Cartesian dualism idea, so trying to give this word a new meaning was highly frustrating. This explanation of how phenomenological existentialism is different from the old way of thinking helped me to put these two terms into understanding. It makes sense to me if I think about how one’s environment and past experiences can structure the way in which new happenings are experienced within the lived body. A very elementary way of connecting this within my life was thinking about how I had always been taught that making mistakes and taking risks in class were unacceptable as a young person, coming into college my lived body took a long time to adapt within the idea that these aspects of dancing are good for me.

The idea of phenomenological reduction helped me in developing a first draft to my choreography. ‘This involves “a narrowing of attention to what is essential in the problem while disregarding or ignoring superfluous and accidental”’ (Fraleigh 6). Instead of allowing myself to be distracted by ideas or movement not related to my intention within the piece, I focused on only the idea being portrayed in the here and now. Cool tricks and how to clean the piece were not on the forefront of my intentional consciousness. Cleaning is for later, and cool tricks aren’t relevant to a piece of art pertaining to movement.

Through taking classes such as Somatics and Improvisation, I can remember being told to let the body take over for the mind. The idea of separation between the mind and body as Cartesian developed dualism. “As the existential phenomenologists emphatically reject traditional dualism, they reject instrumental definitions of the body” (Fraleigh 8). I have always had trouble with grasping the concept of allowing my mind to go into a sedated state while my body works in its place, moving how it wants to move and not how my mind wants it to move. There have been times when I felt this sensation, but I’m now wondering if you can every really separate the two, mind and body. The idea of “the whole person as a minded body, not a mind in command of something separable, called body” makes so much more sense when thinking about dance (Fraleigh 9). I can still see how the body could be thought of as an instrument for the dancing artist, but instead of the mind playing the instrument the mind and body work as one. Even though the mind and body can play against each other at times, Merleau-Ponty’s statement that these two entities ‘“can never be distinguished absolutely without ceasing to be”’ (Fraleigh 12). The mind needs the body as the body needs the mind; each one giving the other purpose.

Freedom within this body having to do with phenomenological existentialism also gave me another idea when forming movement for my piece. Even though I still have a lot of work do with my piece, I already have lots of movement to work with and edit. Instead of being “limited by being this particular body, which is mine and mine along” I am able to create movement and intent for others to communicate for me (Fraleigh 16). I now have other dancers to utilize in doing movement that I create but may not necessarily be able to portray as well as these bodies I have been given to work with. “Embodiment is thus the ground for all experienced values, for both intimacy and alienation, freedom and limitation” (Fraleigh 17). The intimacy and alienation from my body-mind unit is being used in the process of creating while I have more freedom and less limitation in one sense. This is the sense of capabilities within my dancers that are not found within my body, yet I have to work on communicating the movement that is intimate because of my individual alienation. I do not worry, however, that my creations will not come across as unique and true to my choreographic style because “all works of art bear the stamp of individual creation” (Fraleigh 22). Throughout working with others in this composition class, I notice that some choreographers create movement that is similar to others. Sometimes it’s a simple gesture that one takes from another or even an act of repeating a shape or skill, but I’ve noticed that this use of other’s movement or movement ideas is unintentional. I used to fear that I would find myself doing this at some point, but Fraleigh’s statement above reminded me that even if something is repeated by someone, the creation of the art is always going to be individualized by the specific choreographer to make it their own.

After assessing the material I had given all together since day one on Wednesday I realized that I did not have a lot of continual movement other than that of the solo performer. I hadn’t read the second chapter of this book yet, and now I want to try to embody the idea that “when I become my dance, it becomes consonant with my consciousness. The difference between the dance and myself disappears” (Fraleigh 40). I feel like I should try to embody my intent with movement rather than depending on costumes that I have in mind. Now I’m wondering whether or not to make my intent so obvious through the medium of costumes rather than my movement. I would rather the phenomenon of my dance be noted by its “discernible structures and qualitative characteristics” through the movement (Fraleigh 35).

I learned some valuable information from the first two chapters of Dance and the Lived Body that I didn’t connect with myself until reading it over for a second time. The philosophical nature of the intent was hard to decipher, but once understood it was easy to relate to the process of my choreography as well as performing.

Inspirational pictures to my piece:

Carnival Evening by Henri Rousseau