Embodied knowledge and dancers’ dance-making: Solo dance improvisation and phenomenological perspectives

Abstract

This paper illuminates the existing lack of knowledge concerning how dancers work in creative processes in contemporary dance. The material was produced from a period of sharing and elaborating upon dance improvisation practices. Two improvisers used solo improvisation, one performing and one watching, and invited another researcher in when analysing the material. They identified the theme dialoguing with your material and two situations called returning home and the eye moment. Through conceptualising the not-yet conscious, the lived expressive body, the attentiveness and bodily intentionality, the material illuminates the practice as something that dancers could gain new perspectives on. Analysis reveals the knowledge dancers embody as both vague and clear, as well as expressed in the dance improvisations’ mutual sharing between the watching of the watcher and the dancing of the dancer. Bodily, social, and inter-affective relationships play out, and the dancer’s knowledge is visible in dwelling and expressiveness as a source for exploration of the dancer’s subjectivity, voices, and tradition. Phenomenological literature supports how language plays a part in dancers’ dance-making. This article exemplifies how creating material from improvisations contributes significantly because it is felt, known, bodily available, and should be pursued, not dismissed. Dance improvisation regarding dance-making needs to be further investigated, discovered, and articulated.