Points de vue - Summit | SFU's Institutional...
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Points de vue
by
Yves Candau
M.Sc., Université Pierre et Marie Curie, 1995
B.Sc. and M.Sc., Ecole Centrale Paris, 1994
Project Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree of
Master of Fine Arts
in the
School for the Contemporary Arts
Faculty of Communication, Art and Technology
Yves Candau 2015
SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY
Fall 2015
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Approval
Name: Yves Candau
Degree: Master of Fine Arts
Title: Points de vue
Examining Committee: Chair: Judy Radul Professor
Arne Eigenfeldt Senior Supervisor Professor
Martin Gotfrit Supervisor Professor
Henry Daniel Supervisor Professor
Rob Kitsos Supervisor Associate Professor
Rebecca Todd External Examiner Assistant Professor, Psychology University of British Columbia
Date Defended/Approved: December 4, 2015
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Abstract
Points de vue is an interdisciplinary performance integrating solo dance improvisation with
contextual and processual information about the activity which is unfolding. The center of
this research-creation project is a question: What happens when I improvise? Investigating
the question reveals a deep synergy between multiple and complementary modes of
inquiry: theoretical reflections, stimulating the development of methodologies, enacted
through practices over extended periods of time. These are co-dependent processes,
mutually enriching each other through recursive and iterative cycles of inquiry.
Improvisation is contextualized through phenomenological accounts, contemporary ideas
from the embodied cognition paradigm, and an examination of somatic techniques. The
practice is then articulated in the performance through a multiplicity of appearances:
experienced through sight, sound, kinaesthetic empathy, words and concepts. Far from
contradictory, these multiple points of view contribute to a kind of experiential synesthesia,
leading to a richer appreciation of the phenomenon as a whole.
Keywords: postmodern dance; improvisation; somatic techniques; embodied cognition; research-creation
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Acknowledgements
The past two years and four months in the MFA program have been a rich and intense
time to learn, practice and create, made possible with generous support from SFU’s
School for the Contemporary Arts, its faculty, staff and students. I was also fortunate to
receive a SSHRC scholarship and an SFU graduate fellowship to fund my research.
I would like to thank Arne Eigenfeldt, my senior supervisor, for his openness, insights and
advice. His sharp mind, eyes and ears have encouraged me to delve deeper into my ideas
and practices. I am also grateful to my supervisors and external examiner: Henry Daniel
for many thought-provoking discussions; Martin Gotfrit whose passion for sound revealed
a world which I was eager to explore; Rob Kitsos for inspiring me as a movement artist
and sharing his practice in the studio; and Rebecca Todd, whose breadth of experiences
as an artist and cognitive scientist demonstrates an edifying interdisciplinarity.
My graduating project owes much to the talented and nuanced contributions from my
collaborators: Barbara Adler, Kyla Gardiner, Nur Intan Murtadza, Ben Rogalsky and
Matthew Horrigan. A number of other artists and teachers are inspirations for the work. I
thank them for pointing out new possibilities, in particular Elaine Kopman, Lisa Nelson,
Steve Paxton, Barry Truax and Hildegard Westerkamp.
Many more have kindly supported me throughout the program, and as I worked towards
my graduating project in the past months, especially Lara Abadir, Valérie Candau, Milton
Lim, Cheryl Prophet, Zoe Quinn, Gabriel Rahminos, Corbin Saleken, Stefan Smulovitz,
Albert St. Albert Smith and Wilson Terng.
Last but not least, I thank my wife Nur Intan Murtadza for her love, patience and ongoing
support.
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Table of contents
Approval .......................................................................................................................... ii Abstract .......................................................................................................................... iii Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................ iv Table of contents ............................................................................................................. v List of figures ................................................................................................................. vii Introductory image ........................................................................................................ viii
Points de vue – Defence statement ............................................................................. 1 1. The project ............................................................................................................. 1 2. Background ............................................................................................................ 2 3. Interdisciplinary MFA .............................................................................................. 3 4. Movement influences and somatic practices ........................................................... 3 5. Methodologies ........................................................................................................ 4 6. Sound ..................................................................................................................... 6 7. Narratives ............................................................................................................... 7 8. Composition ........................................................................................................... 7 9. Embodied knowledge ............................................................................................. 8 10. To be continued ...................................................................................................... 8 11. Bibliography ............................................................................................................ 9
Points de vue – Project documentation ..................................................................... 11 1. Photos .................................................................................................................. 11 2. Script .................................................................................................................... 16
Yves – Walking ..................................................................................................... 16 Barbara – Research center for moving trees ........................................................ 16 Yves – Working with the structure ........................................................................ 17 Barbara – Dark pond ............................................................................................ 17 Yves – Secondary helixes .................................................................................... 17 Barbara – Silent canyon ....................................................................................... 18 Yves – Spinal helix ............................................................................................... 19 Barbara – The falling hiker .................................................................................... 19 Yves – Small dance and John Cage’s chamber of secrets ................................... 19 Barbara – Research center for moving trees – Reprise ........................................ 20
3. Program notes and credits .................................................................................... 21
Appendix A. What happens when I improvise? ....................................................... 22 1. Introduction ........................................................................................................... 22 2. The project ........................................................................................................... 23 3. Parenthesis – Moving in words ............................................................................. 23 4. Complexity ............................................................................................................ 24 5. The Moravec paradox ........................................................................................... 25 6. Transparency and opacity .................................................................................... 26 7. Sensorimotor cognition at the micro scale of postural reflexes .............................. 28
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8. Simplexity ............................................................................................................. 29 9. Integration and differentiation ............................................................................... 30 10. Working with mindfulness – Somatic strategies .................................................... 32 11. The Alexander technique ...................................................................................... 33 12. Material for the Spine............................................................................................ 34 13. Somatic techniques as hermeneutic and heuretic ................................................. 34 14. Last words – Not an end, a beginning… ............................................................... 35 15. Bibliography .......................................................................................................... 36
Appendix B. Video documentation ........................................................................... 39
Appendix C. Audio documentation – Eight channel composition .......................... 40
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List of figures
Figure 1. Postcard image. ..................................................................................... viii
Figure 2. Live lighting: Kyla Gardiner – Multiple points of view .............................. 11
Figure 3. Live text: Barbara Adler .......................................................................... 12
Figure 4. Live sound: Nur Intan Murtadza ............................................................. 12
Figure 5. Found instrument: Physalis alkekengi (Chinese lantern) ........................ 13
Figure 6. Found sound: Bird song ......................................................................... 13
Figure 7. Found movement: Pronation and supination .......................................... 14
Figure 8. Transformed movement: Walking horizontally ........................................ 14
Figure 9. Transformed movement: Helix roll .......................................................... 15
Figure 10. Moving through reaching ........................................................................ 15
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Introductory image
Figure 1. Postcard image.
Design: Valérie Candau Photo: Sap on wet bark, Lynn Headwaters, Yves Candau
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Points de vue Defence statement
1. The project
Points de vue is an interdisciplinary performance integrating solo dance
improvisation with contextual and processual information about the activity that is
unfolding.
Following the parable of the elephant and the blind men or women, it aims to
articulate a practice through a multiplicity of appearances: as experienced through sight,
sound, kinaesthetic empathy, words and concepts. Far from contradictory, these multiple
points of view can contribute to a kind of experiential synesthesia, leading to a richer
appreciation of the phenomenon as a whole.
I find a deep synergy in leveraging multiple and complementary modes of inquiry:
an interest in principles, stimulating the development of methodologies, enacted through
practices over extended periods of time. The linear order of the enunciation does not imply
a privileged progression. These are co-dependent processes, and they mutually enrich
each other through recursive and iterative cycles of inquiry.
The performance is the culmination of this meta-process of research-creation, its
organizing center a question: an effort to understand, demonstrate and disclose the ways
by which I do what I do in my artistic practice. I could ask: How do I improvise? It seems
fitting at first, but upon careful consideration places too much emphasis on an “I” as the
sole locus of improvisational processes. So I am widening my frame and asking instead:
What happens when I improvise?
2
Investigating this deceptively simple question leads to a surprisingly rich and
multifaceted journey, including phenomenological accounts, contemporary ideas from the
embodied cognition paradigm, and an examination of somatic practices. The journey is
generative in a twofold sense: at the larger timescale of creative processes it informs and
deepens my practice, potentially revealing new possibilities with which to engage; at the
shorter timescale of the performance it becomes conceptual source material with which to
compose – a warp to weave the weft of my dance through, their combination creating a
more intricate performative fabric.
Further multiplying the points of view, the piece also includes text written and
performed by Barbara Adler, dramaturgy and a lighting design by Kyla Gardiner, live music
by Nur Intan Murtadza (found objects and Javanese Gender, pélog nem tuning), and an
eight channel sound composition by myself.
2. Background
Working through different modes of inquiry permeates my background. It includes
practices and disciplines intersecting a variety of approaches: artistic, scientific and
embodied. I studied science in university, completing graduate degrees in mathematics
and cognitive science. Following a surprise encounter with dance, I then branched into a
path of first-person inquiry, with an embodied and experiential practice at its core.
I was soon drawn to postmodern dance approaches: using improvisation as a full-
fledged performance form; incorporating somatic techniques as generative and creative
tools; and exploring open movement systems sourced in pedestrian and functional
patterns. I was eager for the physicality of moving, but I also included an ongoing interest
in deriving principles from my practice, and letting the principles then influence my practice
in return.
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3. Interdisciplinary MFA
Over the past seven semesters in SFU’s interdisciplinary MFA, I have worked
towards articulating and integrating the different facets of my background and interests.
One goal was to organize and systematize a number of recurring ideas, accumulated from
17 years of experiential practices: training, rehearsing, performing, teaching; and a
number of fortunate encounters, particularly with the Alexander Technique and Steve
Paxton’s Material for the Spine.
The MFA program was first an opportunity to read, write, and think. I am particularly
interested in the growing literature on embodied cognition (Wilson, 2002) and situated
cognition (Hutchins, 1995), research-creation (Borgdorff, 2006), and a variety of hybrid
research bridging science, philosophy, and movement studies (Berthoz & Petit, 2008;
Clark, 2013; Hagendoorn, 2003). Going back and forth between my movement practice
and these ideas helped clarify and structure my own reflections, in turn changing how I
practiced, and leading to three presentations in various conference settings.
With such an integrated approach underlying more and more how I dance and
improvise, I became interested in integrating the approach itself as an explicit layer of a
performance. I started experimenting with dancing, the embodied manifestation of my
research, while also disclosing the means whereby my dancing comes together: the
principles, methodologies, and practices.
4. Movement influences and somatic practices
Like many contemporary dancers, I trained through a variety of techniques,
including a background in martial arts. Two practices stand out both for the lasting and
ongoing influence they have on my work, and because most of the ideas presented in
Points de vue can be traced back to them.
The Alexander Technique was created by F. Matthias Alexander at the turn of the
20th century, initially to overcome a recurrent problem of voice loss which conventional
medicine failed to alleviate. From this practical investigation, Alexander developed a
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mindfulness based system to overcome harmful habits of use (Alexander, 2001). It
presents fascinating parallels with Eastern meditational practices, yet to my knowledge
the ideas were evolved independently.
I will present one here. The Zen-like concept of non-doing (as I interpret it) makes
a crucial distinction between sending an intention of movement as a voluntary decision;
and letting involuntary sensorimotor processes then enact that movement, taking care of
the fine coordination necessary for it. The Alexander Technique is thus a methodology to
investigate the interface between conscious thinking and sensorimotor cognition.
Material for the Spine is a movement technique created by Steve Paxton to “bring
consciousness to the dark side of the body” (Paxton, 2008). This dark side comprises the
more opaque elements of our embodiment, such as the deepest layer of spinal
musculature – hundreds of small and delicate muscles connecting pairs of adjacent
vertebrae in various parallel or diagonal directions (Dimon, 2008).
Material for the Spine combines open movement explorations with a set of rigorous
exercises. These are practice forms which include fundamental patterns, such as the
helixes and undulations which are a recurrent theme in Points de vue. They are important
for physical training, but even more so to train the mind. The learning process does not
aim to define a fixed taxonomy of movements, but rather through repetition and inquiry to
sensitize the mind to the patterns. Just like frets on the neck of a guitar, references are
created so that the mind can orientate itself with ease and efficiency within a continuum
of kinaesthetic possibilities.
5. Methodologies
To illustrate the circularity between principles, methodologies, and practices, we
can follow some of these mutual influences through examples. Here are a few of the ideas
presented in Points de vue. Many have been introduced in the previous section on
movement influences and somatic practices:
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Embodied structures are complex but organized in simplex 1 patterns;
They also exhibit varying degrees of transparency 2 and opacity
3;
Movement involves an interfacing of voluntary and involuntary processes;
The body is highly integrated as well as finely differentiated.
The last principle hints at one possible methodology. Considering the hands, for
instance: they are amongst the least opaque structures we can move or observe in
ourselves. Any such movement in turn affects the whole structure as it reorganizes itself
to support it. Hubert Godard describes how when we reach forward with the hand, the first
muscles to engage are actually the postural muscles of the calf: a transient and involuntary
pattern of organization which anticipates our intention (Godard, 1995).
Putting these ideas to work, we can use less opaque features as access points
and foci to engage our whole structure. The possibilities are endless and leverage
powerful sensorimotor processes, such as the mammalian head stabilization reflex.
Reaching with our eyes for instance, the eyes connect to the head, the head engages the
spine, the spine mobilizes the pelvis, and as the pelvis moves our weight distribution
through the feet shifts. By refining these connections through practice, we can then use
them to modulate and transform our movements.
Margaret Wilson’s concept of “re-tooling the mind” (Wilson, 2010) provides a useful
concluding point. Culture affects the content of our cognition, of course, but the very
processes of cognition are themselves plastic and transformable. Wilson investigates a
variety of cognitive tools, a term understood in a broad sense, including material artefacts
and behaviours. When adopted and incorporated in lived experience, these invented and
culturally transmitted technologies re-tool the mind. The somatic methodologies
developed in postmodern dance can be similarly understood as cognitive tools of
transformation.
1 From Alain Berthoz’s concept of simplexity: an ubiquitous principle at work in natural systems, as they evolve simplifying solutions to deal with the complexity of their environment and themselves (Berthoz, 2012).
2 Transparency in the sense that we mostly do not see how we do what we do.
3 Opacity in the sense that even when we voluntarily try to see, the deep structures are difficult to access.
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6. Sound
Points de vue includes an eight channel electroacoustic composition, created as I
pursued another major focus of my MFA – developing a sound art practice. It is influenced
by the rich tradition of soundscape composition developed at SFU (Truax, 2002). I used
outdoor field recordings, mainly from the Vancouver area, and one recording from Alsace,
France.
Embracing my role in these soundscape recordings as both witness and
participant, I combined environmental sounds with vocal and physical sounds of embodied
presence. These were then processed through convolution, granular synthesis and modal
synthesis, using software I programmed. The place which emerges from this combination
is chimeric, a layering of experience, memory and imagination.
Examining the strategies developed in postmodern dance and soundscape
composition reveals interesting connections. There is first an emphasis on mindfulness as
the foundation of a practice (Westerkamp, 2015). Soundscape compositions also
incorporate open repertoires of materials, highlighting the timbral complexity of aural
textures and structures already present in the environment. Like the pedestrian patterns
of locomotion used in postmodern dance, these source materials are found rather than
designed or codified. In both cases, however, the artistic practice is more than just
transposing or re-enacting. The activity of listening is a sensitized state, from which the
artist then continues through cycles of transformation and composition.
There is some irony in using a fixed composition as the final piece of music for a
performance on improvisation. But actually the two practices are highly complementary.
In both cases I am experimenting with composition: the choices made either once in real
time, or repeatedly through iterative adjustments. Because my movement practice has
been mainly improvisational, the contrast of working with a fixed medium is particularly
fruitful. It enriches my reflections on composition, through multiple opportunities to
examine and alter my choices.
The fixed sound composition is preceded by live music. Nur Intan Murtadza plays
mainly found objects, gradually introducing subtly variated textures, reminiscent of
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environmental soundscapes. She supports and contrasts the narrative imagery and the
movements, with the interactive quality of a live and partly improvised performance –
mutual listening unfolding here in real time.
7. Narratives
I asked Barbara Adler to write and perform text for Points de vue, with the intention
of adding yet another layer. This was new creative territory in my work, as I have always
avoided the use of narratives until now.
In our initial meetings, I shared some of the thoughts underlying the materials for
my own text. The resulting transformation which then unfolded was fascinating. Barbara
took my ideas, worked with them, and came back with narrative threads where I could still
distinguish the original thoughts, but transformed in surprising and evocative ways.
I appreciate the imagery she developed, sometimes influenced by digressions on
my part that did not make it into my own text, but are wonderful in these more allusive
forms. Her narratives create a more situated context, preserving just enough ambiguity to
avoid being too literal. They contrast the more internal or theoretical ideas I present, and
foreshadow the shift into the aural environment of the final sound composition.
8. Composition
Before joining the MFA I was experimenting with minimalist performance formats
(no lights, music or costume) to see what might remain with just myself improvising and
dancing on a stage. These short and open forms could sustain themselves for about 10
to 15 minutes, and were mainly reflecting the movement ideas I was working on at each
point.
Points de vue follows these explorations with a similar focus on specific movement
materials. The longer form however requires more structure to trace the connections
between multiple ideas, and create an overarching sense of progression.
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As described in previous sections, the performance incorporates a variety of layers
to create a multi-faceted experience. These elements also provide compositional tools to
support my improvisational practice. Barbara Adler’s narrative threads for instance are
used as points of references and stable landmarks, around which to structure my more
fluctuating materials.
I also sought new compositional systems to organize my dancing. For instance,
William Forsythe’s improvisation technologies (2012) bring attention to an external
geometry of the body unfolding through space, an interesting counterpoint to the more
internal geometry of curves, helixes and undulations emphasized in somatic techniques.
9. Embodied knowledge
In Embodied knowing through art, Mark Johnson reflects on the relationship
between art, research and cognition (2011). He discusses the nature of embodied
knowledge, and cautions against our temptation to seek the fixed and immutable.
Embodied knowledge cannot be reduced to static collection of facts, but needs to be
sourced in dynamic processes of inquiry.
Applying these ideas to improvisation, I see that as I train and rehearse to create
Points de vue, I compose myself – a process of neuro-plastic transformation through
practice. Extending this process across the timescale of a lifetime can then become a form
of research where the contributions are not causal, correlative or descriptive. Rather, the
artist manifests possibilities.
10. To be continued
I want to keep developing the various things I worked on during the MFA program.
The format of the performance has potential, staging the circularity between principles,
methodologies, and practices, which I find so useful for myself. Disclosing how I work also
makes the work more accessible for the audience.
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More generally, a performance such as Point de vue is most meaningful to me as
a lens to stimulate and bring together my interests: one iteration in the longer arc of my
creative process which coalesces the current states of my practices. I use the plural form
“practices” mainly to reflect the new possibility of working with sound, a practice with which
I was so eager to engage.
Questions are still the generative centers connecting my various interests. As I am
about to start a PhD at SFU’s School of Interactive Arts and Technology, which I intend
as a continuation of the research-creation initiated in the MFA, I find myself reflecting
mainly on issues of composition.
11. Bibliography
Alexander, F. M. (2001). The use of the self. London: Orion Publishing.
Berthoz, A. (2012). Simplexity: Simplifying principles for a complex world. New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press.
Berthoz, A., & Petit, J.-L. (2008). The physiology and phenomenology of action. New
York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Borgdorff, H. (2006). The debate on research in the arts. Bergen: Bergen Academy of
Art and Design.
Clark, J. O. (2013). The intrinsic significance of dance: A phenomenological approach. In
J. Bunker, A. Pakes, & B. Rowell (Eds.), Thinking through dance: The philosophy
of dance performance and practices (pp. 202–221). Alton: Dance Books.
Dimon, T. (2008). Anatomy of the moving body: A basic course in bones, muscles, and
joints. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books.
Forsythe, W. (2012). Improvisation technologies: A tool for the analytical dance eye.
Berlin: Hatje Cantz Publishers.
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Godard, H. (1995). Le geste et sa perception. In M. Michel & I. Ginot (Eds.), La danse au
XXème siècle (pp. 224–229). Paris: Bordas.
Hagendoorn, I. (2003). Cognitive dance improvisation: How study of the motor system
can inspire dance (and vice versa). Leonardo, 36(3), 221–227.
Hutchins, E. (1995). Cognition in the wild. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Johnson, M. (2011). Embodied knowing through art. In M. Biggs & H. Karlsson (Eds.),
The routledge companion to research in the arts (pp. 141–151). New York, NY:
Routledge.
Paxton, S. (2008). Material for the spine: A movement study. Brussels: Contredanse.
Truax, B. (2002). Genres and techniques of soundscape composition as developed at
Simon Fraser University. Organised Sound, 7(01), 5–14.
http://doi.org/10.1017/S1355771802001024
Westerkamp, H. (2015). The disruptive nature of listening. Keynote Address. Presented
at the International Symposium on Electronic Art, Vancouver, BC.
Wilson, M. (2002). Six views of embodied cognition. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review,
9(4), 625–636.
Wilson, M. (2010). The re-tooled mind: How culture re-engineers cognition. Social
Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 5(2-3), 180–187.
http://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsp054
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Points de vue Project documentation
1. Photos
Figure 2. Live lighting: Kyla Gardiner – Multiple points of view
The upstage right corner of the performance space, with mirrors left uncovered to create a mise en abyme. Dancer: Yves Candau
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Figure 5. Found instrument: Physalis alkekengi (Chinese lantern)
A found instrument played by Nur Intan Murtadza, creating dry crackling sounds.
Figure 6. Found sound: Bird song
Spectrogram from the bird song used at the end of the eight channel composition. Source: Grouse Mountain field recording.
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Figure 7. Found movement: Pronation and supination
Demonstrating and explaining the rotation of the forearm around a diagonal axis. Dancer: Yves Candau
Figure 8. Transformed movement: Walking horizontally
Walking pattern transposed to the horizontal plane. Dancer: Yves Candau
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Figure 9. Transformed movement: Helix roll
Transposing the winding and unwinding of the spine to the floor. Dancer: Yves Candau
Figure 10. Moving through reaching
Dancer: Yves Candau
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2. Script
Yves – Walking
I am walking, just walking for now, and standing. I am using this simple activity as
an opportunity to witness my structure in movement. I find much to observe already, or a
variety of places from which to observe, many questions I could ask.
How is my head balancing on top of my spine? Where are my eyes looking as I
am standing, or walking? More unusual, what is the back of my head doing as I move.
Back of the skull, always behind me, while my attention is mostly ahead me.
I am cheating a bit. Letting the questions influence my activity. Playing with them.
At the other end, my feet, the soles compressed as my weight comes down through
my structure, through the soles, to the ground. Moving slowly, the sense of my weight
pouring from one support to another, and back. A shift, small in space, but large in my
experience. It changes everything. One foot now free of weight, and in that empty touch
the freedom to move.
All of this, and a lot more, in a walk. It happens almost in spite of myself. I intend,
and my intention becomes fleshed out, by something that I mostly don’t see. It happens
transparently.
Finding out more takes strategies.
Barbara – Research center for moving trees
There is an experimental forest attached to a research center, where the
researchers have found a way to invert our perception of trees. Normally, when you walk
to a tree, you arrive, steps swinging, heart beating, to a column of vertical stillness. You
become conscious of your breath, amplified by the forest, feel the blood rush to your
cheeks and realize the tips of your ears are cold.
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In this normal instance, the tree becomes the fixed point against which you
measure the thousand cases of your own mobility: the walk to arrive, the breath, the blood,
the way your legs ask for readjustment.
Yves – Working with the structure
I am still walking, slowly. As the walking pattern stretches through time, it changes.
I am seeing new things while losing others. My sit bones are more present, but the counter
swing in the arms is gone. I could bring it back, but now it is definitely something that I
make happen.
I am working with the structure, with what is already there: this rich complex
system. I am interrogating the patterns, and playing with them. Looking for the new in the
old. By the measure of my lifespan, the patterns are ancient: my heritage as a human
biped.
Barbara – Dark pond
When you put your hand into the water of a murky pond, you first feel the soft silt
bottom and then the tangle of weeds exploring your wrists, checking for a pulse. If you
hold still long enough for the plant to take your vital signs, you will feel the light tapping of
small bodies, knocking against your knuckles, asking to be let in. Stay still for even longer,
and they will bite your fingertips. This is the slowest way to catch a fish: to let the fish think
it is catching you.
Yves – Secondary helixes
Another piece of the puzzle. I am playing with the helixes of my limbs – pronation
and supination. If I was to summarize the skeletal structure of the arm I would say one
bone, two bones, many bones. It is a branching structure. There are some interesting
details which make this rotation possible, a range of motion we do not have in the legs.
So the forearm has two bones, in this position more or less parallel. On the side of
the small finger, the ulna, which connects to the upper arm through the elbow joint. On the
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side of the thumb, the radius. Now at one end, close to the elbow, you find a pivot joint,
centered along the radius. At the other end, another pivot joint, but centered along the
other bone. Combining the two pivot joints, what you get is this.
A first pivot, on one end and one side. Then on the other end, other side, a second
pivot. And together this rotation around a diagonal axis. So this axis, which is really the
heart of the movement, does not follow either of the two bones, but crosses them
diagonally.
To inform my movement, to move from the right place, the axis is what matters to
me. It comes out of the underlying anatomy, but it is already an abstraction. So I work from
the structure, this rich complex structure. But I am also abstracting it into a simpler and
more integrated geometry of centers, axes, curves, planes: drafting maps to help me
navigate movement in real time.
Barbara – Silent canyon
There comes a point when you realize that you’ve been walking along the lip of a
silent canyon. Though you rarely see your feet, you can feel yourself walking. You walk,
and feel the point of your ankle bone grazing a vast envelope of space. Above your foot,
the fingertips, elbow, and shoulder of one arm skim the edges of this rift, which seems to
fall away for miles. One ear, one cheek brushing against miles of long, still silence.
The other side of your body always faces toward the noise. The noise tangles you,
grabbing your heel and nipping your waist. You walk alongside cars and their motors; a
stoplight’s exclamation; the hum of electricity malfunctioning in a hundred small ways;
sound, tangled in every part of itself, like the confusion of a springtime forest: the
aggressive punctuation of air brakes; the neighbour’s Sunday morning vacuum; the
kitchen pipes suddenly afflicted with bronchitis; murmurs; alarms; babies; cross-
conversations; things cracking open, other things ground down.
On one side, noise. On the other side, a canyon. On the one side brambles, on the
other side, silence. There’s another way to say it. On one side of the canyon is where
you’ve always walked. On the other side of the canyon there is another path. On one side
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of this second path is the emptiness of the canyon. You don’t know what is on the other
side of the path. When you shout across to it, your own voice comes bouncing back.
Yves – Spinal helix
I am working with helix rolls. The patterns are coming together, as the helixes of
my arms connect with the main helix of the spine. I am moving through reaching, a useful
way to organize my movements.
This is still walking. The pattern is transposed from vertical to horizontal, and keeps
turning around itself. But it relies on the same twisting and untwisting of the spine as its
motor. I am engaging a long curve, a long helix, to integrate all of myself: from the fingers,
through the arm, crossing diagonally through the back, all the way to the small toe on the
other side.
Barbara – The falling hiker
When you’re lost, the classic instruction to a hiker is: stay where you are. Stop
moving. Your body will fall and catch itself a hundred times a minute as you wonder if
anyone is walking through the dark to meet you. But whether you are discovered by
someone else, or whether you discover where you are simply by waiting long enough for
the stars to speak to you through the tree-tops, you will get the furthest by waiting.
Yves – Small dance and John Cage’s chamber of secrets
This is Steve Paxton’s small dance. I am standing and observing the stand. Sit-
bones pointing down. Crown of the head pointing up. In between, the whole length of my
spine.
I am standing, and the stillness reveals a stream of minute falls and recoveries,
my verticality constantly lost and found, stillness always swaying. These are postural
reflexes which happen whether we pay attention to them or not. As I witness them, I can
also move from them, adding a gentle touch of intention to ride this involuntary activity.
20
It reminds me of John Cage’s experience in Harvard’s anechoic chamber. In that
expected place of silence he found two sounds: a low one from his blood flow, a high one
from his nervous system. They were always there, but it took silence to disclose them.
Finding trust in this embodied aural texture which precedes consciousness and
never recedes, he said “One need not fear about the future of music”.
Barbara – Research center for moving trees – Reprise
There is an experimental forest attached to a research center, where the
researchers have found a way to invert our perception of trees. Normally, when you walk
to a tree, you arrive, steps swinging, heart beating, to a column of vertical stillness.
In this normal instance, the tree becomes the fixed point against which you
measure the thousand cases of your own mobility. But the researchers have found a way
to invert this usual temporal relationship. Suddenly to the tree it is you that seems fixed in
time, fixed in shape.
And suddenly to you, the tree is not just flittering in the wind – trembling yet mostly
unchanged. Instead of isolated snapshots of its being, you begin to see its continuous
growth and adaptation. Layers upon layers of fresh sapwood, differentiating themselves
from a thin sheathing of cambium. The older sapwood gradually drying into heartwood.
You see the tree reacting and changing in response to its environment, just as we
do. In its physical form, much more plastic actually. A new opening in the canopy, and it
grows new branches reaching for the light. A much looser shape score to improvise from.
Another tree, quite exposed, shudders and loses its radial symmetry, buckling into
a more stable helix. Where stressed, it grows stronger and thicker, building up reaction
wood, like the muscles and bones of a dancer.
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3. Program notes and credits
Points de vue is an interdisciplinary performance stimulated by my desire to
investigate, discuss, and share this thing that I do when I move and improvise.
As I ride the evolved and cultured structures that I embody, it is me dancing. But I
am also working through systems that go much beyond me: systems that we share, as
humans, and to some extent even share with others, across time and species.
As in the parable of the elephant and the blind men or women, the performance is
an opportunity to articulate my practice through a multiplicity of appearances: as
experienced through sight, sound, kinaesthetic empathy, words and concepts.
Points de vue also includes an eight channel electroacoustic composition. I worked
from outdoor field recordings, which were then processed through convolution, granular
synthesis and modal synthesis, using software I programmed. The place which emerges
from this combination is chimeric, a layering of experience, memory and imagination.
Yves Candau Movement, text, sound (eight channel composition)
Barbara Adler Text
Kyla Gardiner Dramaturgy, lighting
Nur Intan Murtadza Live sound
Ben Rogalsky Technical direction
Matthew Horrigan Mixing board
Lara Abadir Documentation
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Appendix A. What happens when I improvise?
1. Introduction
I am a dancer and an improviser, mostly drawn to solo forms. The thrill of moving
was certainly instrumental in luring me to such an embodied pursuit: moving, with
disorienting speed or suspended slowness, and attending to the experience of it. Coming
from a background in mathematics and cognitive science, I brought into my practice an
attitude of questioning. I am curious of course, but more than that I find a deep synergy
between complementary modes of inquiry: theoretical reflections, stimulating the
development of methodologies, enacted through practice over extended periods of time.
The linear order of this enunciation does not imply a privileged progression. These broad
types of processes are co-dependent and mutually stimulate each other through recursive
and iterative cycles of inquiry.
My research then is the whole that is greater than the sum of these parts, its
organizing center a question: an effort to understand, describe and discuss the processes
by which I do what I do in my artistic practice. I could ask: How do I improvise? It seems
fitting at first, but upon careful consideration places to much emphasis on an “I” as the
sole locus of improvisational processes. So I am widening my frame and asking instead:
What happens when I improvise?
Unpacking this deceptively simple question leads to a surprisingly rich and
multifaceted journey, including: phenomenological accounts, contemporary ideas from the
embodied cognition paradigm, and an examination of somatic practices such as the
Alexander Technique and Steve Paxton’s Material for the Spine. Threaded through all
these considerations, two ideas keep reappearing: the importance of contextualizing
phenomena in terms of the scales at which they occur; and the need to articulate possible
dynamics between involuntary or unconscious processes, and higher level voluntary forms
of cognition.
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2. The project
I propose to create a hybrid performance event that will integrate solo dance
improvisation with contextual and processual information about the activity that is
unfolding. Following the idea of a lecture demonstration, my goal is to leverage a
multimodal approach to open up and unpack the phenomenon for myself and for the
audience.
To use the parable of the elephant and the blind men or women, I want to embrace
my practice in the full multiplicity of its appearances: as experienced through sight, sound,
kinaesthetic empathy, words and concepts. Far from contradictory, these multiple points
of view should contribute to a kind of experiential synesthesia, and lead to a richer
appreciation of the event as a whole.
The process of understanding and articulating what it is that I do when I improvise,
and how it dynamically unfolds, will thus be generative in a twofold sense. At the larger
timescale of creative and rehearsal cycles it will inform and deepen my practice, potentially
revealing new possibilities to engage with. At the shorter timescale of the performance it
will become conceptual source material to compose with: a warp to weave the weft of my
dance through, their combination contributing to a more intricate performative fabric.
3. Parenthesis – Moving in words
As my center of gravity shifts horizontally, the weight pouring through my left leg is
gradually diverted to its twin right brother. The pressure through the sole of my left foot
lessens and lightens. Eventually its touch on the wooden floor is empty of all weight, and
the foot is free to move. I reach upward with my left knee, its circular rise taking the foot
with it up in the air and away from the ground. At the same time I point my right sit bone
downward and towards my right heel, tracing a vertical line that anchors my now single
support. Also at the same time, my skull pivots, front of the head turning left while the back
of the head turns right. Thus it is with rotating circles, for each part moving in a given
direction, another is moving in opposition – an elementary geometrical property that still
holds true in this complex structure that I embody.
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So many words to describe just a few seconds of movement at a rather slow pace.
And so many ways to track this short slice of experience as it unfolds, any point or place
in the moving whole a possible focus to rest my attention on. I could also describe how
the left ear is reaching back as if in response to a sound coming from behind; or the
sensation, as the head turns, of tissue stretching in a helix around the bones of the cervical
spine; or how this twisting easily propagates further down into the spine, engaging more
and more of it. And I have said nothing yet of the eyes, arms and hands…
Language is not well suited to represent movement information. One could easily
fill an entire page attempting to transcribe a single static kinaesthetic percept into words.
The longer we observe the more we notice. The description it seems can always be
enriched, its grain further and further refined. Once we start moving, the flow of information
accumulates even more.
4. Complexity
Attempting to capture all of it in words is obviously doomed to fail, there is just too
much happening. Limiting our scope to just the back and the muscular system for instance,
we find no less than five layers of musculature (Dimon, 2008, p. 104). We are familiar with
the large muscles of the most superficial layer: the trapezius and the latissimus dorsi.
These we can easily see rippling close under the skin on somebody else, or feel their tone
engage in ourselves. They are powerful and in a kinaesthetic sense sort of loud, thus
easily accessible to conscious experience. Going deeper the musculature becomes
smaller and more numerous. The most internal layer, closest to the spine, contains a
multitude of small and delicate muscles. They mainly connect pairs of adjacent vertebrae
in various parallel or diagonal directions, or vertebrae to neighboring ribs. I won’t name
them all. Fifteen different types can be distinguished, many of them multiplied along the
successive segments of the spine. I stopped counting after reaching over a hundred.
All of these muscles have to be coordinated to work in synergy as we sit, stand,
walk or run – a staggering complexity. As he studied locomotion in the 1960s, the Russian
neurophysiologist Nikolai Bernstein defined what he calls the degrees of freedom problem.
When dealing with the moving body we are faced with a system that has high
25
dimensionality and a high level of redundancy, in every aspect: anatomy, kinematics, and
neurophysiology. So there are multiple muscles that act on the same joints, multiple
possibilities of movements to accomplish the same goals, and multiple neural connections
that can activate the same muscles (Bernstein, 1967).
The corresponding information is quantitative in nature: angles, forces, velocity
and acceleration vectors; all elements of an embodied geometry embedded in a
Newtonian world of gravity. A tension between qualitative and quantitative modes of
inquiry permeates the literature on research in the arts, as in a number of chapters in the
Handbook of the Arts in Qualitative Research (Knowles & Cole, 2008). It echoes
considerations of legitimacy similar to those debated earlier in social sciences (Borgdorff,
2006, p. 20). One recurring narrative is that the artist has a privileged access to qualitative
and subjective forms of knowledge.
As a dancer I am tempted to provocatively upend this opposition: quantitative
information is at the heart of my practice. There would be no dancing without it. The fine
modulations of muscular tone; pressure gradually increasing in the sole of my foot as I
shift my weight; shaping and bending an internal curve from center to fingers; tracing an
intricate trajectory to navigate a chaotic space of moving bodies: these tasks all rely on
continuous and multi-dimensional data. Sensorimotor processes are constantly
anticipating, measuring and correcting; all the while keeping tracking of a high bandwidth
flow of information.
5. The Moravec paradox
By contrast, conscious thinking exhibits certain limitations. Most crucially for a
dancer, the corresponding processes are relatively slow. The threshold for discriminating
between two successive stimuli is in the 100 milliseconds range (Varela, 1999, p. 273).
This might seem short, but as any sports photographer knows, for high velocity
movements a tenth of a second is a rather long time. Also our attention can only track a
few different focuses at a time, and is limited in terms of available cognitive load.
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We face a conundrum, at least conceptually. How do we reconcile the complexity
of sensorimotor processes with the limited and relatively slow nature of conscious
thinking? As an improviser who aims to make voluntary movement choices in real time
this is particularly problematic. In practice we seem to do rather well, manifesting an
amazing capacity for adaptation: from powerful throws to fine hand eye coordination; and
activities that range from explosive bursts of tone to the 320 kilometers long races of the
Tarahumara people (McDougall, 2009).
We make the difficult look easy, and we are far from unique in that way. In the
1980s a group of roboticists and cognitive scientists initiated a paradigm shift in artificial
intelligence, now called nouvelle AI. Earlier research focused predominantly on
propositional systems modelling high level functions, such as rule based expert systems.
Rodney Brooks, Marvin Minsky and Hans Moravec emphasized instead the importance of
sensorimotor coupling to build cognition from the ground up. Their efforts to replicate in
robots abilities found throughout the animal kingdom have highlighted the marvels of
design evolved in natural systems. The simple sensorimotor skills we take for granted are
not so simple after all. They are computationally intensive and pose difficult engineering
problems. This realization is called the Moravec paradox (1988, p. 15).
The question remains: How do we move? And as corollaries: How do we dance?
How do I improvise? The key point is that most often we move and do not think much
about it. As mentioned in the introduction this seemingly natural line of inquiry needs to be
critically examined. The “I” can improvise, in the sense that there is playing with intention
and action. But the processes by which the improvisation is enacted are not limited to
volitional levels of cognition. Conscious thinking is just not suited to the massive
processing which is necessary to coordinate hundreds of muscles. Trying to micromanage
such complexity is doomed to failure. A better question – the title of this essay – is: What
happens when I improvise?
6. Transparency and opacity
At the small scale of micro movements, such as in Steve Paxton’s small dance,
even the simple activity of standing in stillness reveals a stream of minute falls and
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recoveries (1997a, p. 23, 1997b, p. 108) – verticality constantly lost and found, stillness
always swaying. These are postural reflexes that happen whether we pay attention to
them or not. A slight bending of the knee for instance triggers a stretch reflex, which in
turn brings the knee back and closer to vertical alignment (Woodhull, 1997, p. 25). This
corrective feedback loop takes place wholly at the spinal level, and is thus unconscious.
With quiet attention however, some of the resulting movements can be observed and
experienced, through other neural pathways that don’t end at the spinal cord and reach
into the cortex.
Generalizing this clear example we find again a distinction between involuntary
reflexes that happen at high speed, and conscious processes that flow at slower
timescales. While any such binary categorization is a simplification, and the mind much
more modular and differentiated, the contrast is still worth considering. Sensorimotor
information is also challenging to access consciously, a fact that Moravec links to the the
long evolutionary timescales over which these abilities have evolved and been perfected.
Abstract thinking on the other hand is a comparatively recent development, and “the
thinnest veneer of human thought” (Moravec, 1988, p. 15).
This challenge has actually a dual nature, which characterizes sensorimotor
processes as opaque as well as transparent. The apparent contradiction is resolved when
considering that in both cases there is an issue of not seeing: opacity prevents us from
seeing what we try to see; transparency is not seeing that through which we see.
The latter is a reference to Heidegger’s distinction between the ready-at-hand
(zuhanden) and the present-to-hand (vorhanden). His analysis comes out of considering
how we relate to tools, the usual story being that of a hammer. We tend not to examine
what we use, and even less so what we are used to use. It is then ready-to-hand, in the
sense that our focus is on the use of the object rather than on the object itself. Francisco
Varela describes this habitual flow as “transparency as disposition for action” (1999,
p. 298). Only when the tool breaks down does our attitude towards it shift to one of inquiry.
The broken hammer is now present-to-hand as we ponder its sorry state. The distinction
is fruitfully transposed to sensorimotor processes, showing that somatic techniques are
strategies to shift our relation to embodiment from ready-at-hand to present-to-hand.
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As we turn our attention inward however, sensorimotor processes often resist our
attempts to lift them to consciousness. We encounter here the second issue of opacity.
Reminding ourselves of the five layers of musculature in the back, we find that while the
larger superficial muscles are easily felt or seen, the delicate deep musculature is almost
impossible to sense. It is a kinaesthetic terra incognita, which takes great effort to
approach. In the Alexander Technique for instance, a lot of attention is given to the sub-
occipital muscles. There are six of them and they regulate the fine balance of the skull
poised at the top of the spine (Dimon, 2008, p. 92). Only through extended practice can
we begin to interface our conscious thinking with these deep autonomic systems.
7. Sensorimotor cognition at the micro scale of postural reflexes
In the case of the small dance it takes a deep physical quieting and careful tuning
of the mind, to reveal the minute reflexive movements that continuously recover our
verticality. They are easily masked by higher levels of activity, stronger sensations or
overriding intentions. This is actually a close sensorimotor analogue to John Cage’s
experience in Harvard’s anechoic chamber. In that expected place of silence he found two
sounds: a low one from his blood flow, a high one from his nervous system. They were
always there but it took silence to disclose them. Finding trust in this embodied aural
texture that precedes the awakening of our consciousness and never recedes, he
concludes that “one need not fear about the future of music” (Cage, 1961, p. 8).
The French dancer and scholar Hubert Godard similarly defines pré-mouvement
as our unconscious relation to weight and gravity, which exists before we even start
moving. It is involuntary but conditions and colors all of our gestural expressivity. Godard
emphasizes the initiations and attacks of movements: transient patterns of organization
that anticipate our intentions. If we reach forward with the hand for instance, the first
muscles to engage are actually the postural muscles of the calf. This involuntary
preparation is necessary to counter the weight transfer that is about to happen as the arm
shifts forward (Godard, 1995, p. 225).
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Both Paxton and Godard highlight the importance of involuntary postural reflexes,
as they organize and coordinate our relations to gravity, ground and space. These
processes escape intention but are necessary conditions to its enactment. Godard uses
the concept of pré-mouvement as an analytical tool to observe the fine textures that imbue
our larger scale movements with a “postural musicality” (1995, p. 224). And Paxton
initiates a practice that discloses this world of micro movements to consciousness. The
potential to leverage such experience into dancing is exciting. Echoing Cage I find that
one need not fear about the future of dance.
8. Simplexity
The French neurophysiologist Alain Berthoz describes simplexity as a ubiquitous
principle at work in natural systems. They evolve simplifying solutions to deal with the
complexity of their environment and themselves:
These solutions make it possible to process complex situations very rapidly, elegantly, and efficiently, taking past experiences into account and anticipating the future. ... They may involve detours, an apparent complexity, by presenting problems in a novel way, changing reference frames, points of view, and so forth. Contrary to what we might think, simplifying is not simple. (Berthoz, 2012, pp. 3–4)
I have shown in my presentation a short video documenting cheetahs running,
using extreme slow motion and a high speed camera filming at 1200 frames per second
(G. Wilson, 2012). It highlights a number of important points with utmost clarity. The
cheetah is the fastest land animal, and demonstrates powerful and intense physicality as
it runs. With every second it goes through an average of 16 steps and 16 corresponding
spikes of muscular tone. Thinking of all the moving parts that are dynamically coordinated
to make this activity possible is staggering. And yet simple holistic patterns emerge out of
this complexity unfolding at high speed. The spine goes through an undulation in the
sagittal plane, reminiscent but functionally very different from the sideways undulations of
fishes and amphibians. The head is stabilized and floats in an almost perfect line, in spite
of, or rather thanks to all the activity happening between it and the ground.
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Both patterns are characteristic of mammal quadrupeds. They demonstrate
simplex properties that act as organizing principles to coordinate the complexity of
sensorimotor processes. Stabilizing the head facilitates the work of perception at the
expense of increased motor coordination. In the words of Berthoz it is “a veritable ‘inertial
guidance system’”. Organizing the whole body from this floating point of reference
resolves some of the redundancies discussed earlier in Bernstein’s degrees of freedom
problem (Berthoz, 2012, p. 130).
The sagittal undulation is a similar organizing principle which leverages the
segmented structure of the spine into a powerful whole bodied form. We might think of
running as an activity of the limbs, but its prime impetus is driven by the spine. This holds
true for ourselves as much as the Cheetah, but the patterns are different. Tracing a brief
evolutionary history of locomotion we find lateral undulations in fishes and amphibians,
followed by sagittal undulations as land animals adapted to gravity. We can still access
and cultivate these patterns through practice, as Susan Harper brilliantly demonstrates in
a short video on the Continuum technique (Harper, 2011). The foundation of our own
locomotion though is a unique oscillatory form based on winding and unwinding helixes.
It is determined by our transition from quadrupeds to bipeds, and the shift from a bridge
like spine to our present vertebral column. The layered musculature of the back which
used to support a horizontal arch is now transposed vertically – evolution adapting old
systems to new configurations (Dimon, 2011, pp. 87–98).
9. Integration and differentiation
As a specific action reverberates throughout the embodied structure, it is enacted
both as a whole and through a multiplicity of differentiated articulations. The parts are
coordinated, moving with one another. Just as in an orchestra there is a co-dependent
tuning that facilitates this synergy. The reaching eyes, the turning head and the feet
receiving and yielding weight are dynamically adjusting to each other and everything else.
This coming together however is manifested through every part’s individual quality and
function. Extending the metaphor of the orchestra, each is like an instrument contributing
its own specific timbre and color to the ensemble. As a dancer I am interested in cultivating
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both the connectedness of the system and its highly differentiated structure: tuning but not
blending, quite the opposite actually.
Interestingly, this echoes ideas developed by the biologist Gerald Edelman and
the neuroscientist Giulio Tononi. They were studying neuroscientific conditions of
consciousness and proposed that “both diversity and reentry are necessary to account for
the fundamental properties of conscious experience” (Edelman, 2003, p. 5521). Reentry
here refers to feedback loops, mediated by the thalamocortical system, that integrate
highly differentiated neural clusters into transient but unified states.
The interplay between integration and differentiation is just as relevant for
anatomical systems. Thomas Myers’ Anatomy Trains for instance shifts the usual attention
given to the skeletal and muscular systems to emphasize instead the role of connective
tissue for movement. The fasciae in particular are presented as an organizing and guiding
structure, a web that holds all the parts together. Challenging the conventional notion of
the single muscle as an anatomical unit, Tom Myers questions whether we have 600
muscles or rather one muscle in 600 fascial pockets (Myers, 2014). This might be
overstating the argument, but certainly his focus on long chains of muscles makes a lot of
sense for a dancer. It clarifies that raw anatomic information needs to be condensed and
organized to be useful – integration and simplexity. This is not just an epistemological
need to make information palatable and digestible to our limited human consciousness.
Rather, the structure is embodied and already there.
If we shift our attention to investigate the opposite yet concurrent trend –
differentiation – the structure becomes almost fractal. As mentioned, the longer we
observe the more we notice. In that sense it is a multi-scale system. We can think of the
foot as a foot, and leverage our ability for integration to hold that in our mind. Or we can
explore it like a landscape. The foot, even just “flat on the ground” as we would say in the
Alexander Technique, is full of contrast. The fleshy ball of the heel is nothing like the finely
articulated toes. Its arches rise up from the floor, a first hint of verticality. So even at rest,
there is ground under the foot but also air, the skin correspondingly callous or delicate.
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10. Working with mindfulness – Somatic strategies
The Alexander Technique and Steve Paxton’s Material for the Spine are the two
somatic techniques that have influenced my dance practice most. Before discussing these
in more details some distinctions are useful to make. I want to draw attention to alternative
ways in which somatic techniques structure their practices: in terms of the relation
between voluntary and involuntary processes; and how they use attention, intention,
sensation and action. Examining breathing meditations and techniques for instance
reveals a fairly important divide.
Breathing is an unusual physiological activity because it bridges the voluntary and
the involuntary. We keep breathing whether we are conscious or not, in wakefulness and
in sleep. It then operates as an involuntary process, like digestion or the beating of the
heart. But it is also a process easily open to voluntary control, a property used extensively
in eastern somatic and meditational techniques. By some accounts the different schools
of Yoga have developed as many as 50 different pranayama breathing techniques. My
goal here is not to describe and compare them, but rather to highlight their commonality.
They are all voluntary forms, imposing control on the process of breathing. For instance
Anuloma Pranayama, used in Hatha Yoga, is an exercise where air is inhaled through
both nostrils, and exhaled alternately through the right and left nostrils. Such forms are
often very specific, verging on the ritual.
The Vipassana School from the Theravada Buddhist tradition also uses breathing
as a focus, in Anapana meditation (Hart, 1987). The emphasis though is not on control
but mindfulness. As one sits down to meditate, it soon becomes obvious that observing
our breathing without affecting it is a challenge. The conscious mind is easily drawn to
doing, thus interfering with the involuntary process it is trying to witness. But the practice
is very much that, refining one’s ability to track fine kinaesthetic variations, and
disentangling sensing from doing.
So there is a distinction here between techniques that develop voluntary control of
physiological processes or movements into set forms; and techniques that aim for the
mindful observation of already unfolding processes. As a corollary, in the former case the
exercises are codified into potentially arbitrary patterns. Anuloma Pranayama thus
33
specifies that only the right hand should be used to alternately close each nostril during
exhalations: with the thumb for the right nostril, and the ring finger and small finger for the
left nostril. Essentially the practice aims to reproduce and integrate an externally imposed
form. In Anapana meditation by contrast, the practice is experiential and exploratory. As
patterns of breathing are not overridden but left to unfold, they reveal unconscious
reactions, like ripples on the surface of a dark pond left otherwise undisturbed. Subtle
kinaesthetic changes in the quality of the breath – depth, frequency, muscular tone – are
signs of underlying emotional changes that are hard to access directly and have not risen
yet into consciousness.
The same distinction is important to keep in mind when considering various
exercises in Western movement practices based on somatic techniques. The small dance
for instance is very much a mindfulness based exercise.
11. The Alexander technique
The Alexander Technique was created by F. Matthias Alexander at the turn of the
20th century, initially to overcome a recurrent problem of voice loss which conventional
medicine failed to alleviate. From this practical investigation, Alexander developed a
mindfulness based system to overcome harmful habits of use (Alexander, 2001, 2004). It
presents fascinating parallels with Eastern meditational practices, yet to my knowledge
the ideas were evolved independently.
I am interested here in two concepts developed by Alexander: directions and non-
doing. Directions are mental intentions that can be put in words, for instance “let the neck
be free”. While these voluntary thoughts are renewed, the student is guided to an actual
experience of a freer neck through the hands and touch of a teacher. Gradually, through
many repetitions, a connection is thus created between the intention of the free neck and
the embodied organization which makes it possible.
This two-step process is what is understood as non-doing. Cognitively it is a
detachment and letting go from doing things directly. A crucial distinction is made between
sending an intention of movement as a conscious decision; and letting sensorimotor
34
cognition then enact the movement, taking care of the fine coordination necessary for it.
The Alexander Technique is thus a methodology to investigate the interface between
conscious thinking and sensorimotor cognition, and a way to facilitate a gradual process
of transformation.
12. Material for the Spine
Material for the Spine is a movement technique created by Steve Paxton to “bring
consciousness to the dark side of the body” (Paxton, 2008). This dark side comprises the
more opaque elements of our embodiment, such as the deep layer of spinal musculature
discussed earlier. Like the Alexander Technique this is a practice that works at the
interface between conscious thinking and sensorimotor processes. In a pedagogical
context, Material for the Spine combines open movement explorations with a set of
rigorous exercises.
These are practice forms which include fundamental patterns such as the helixes
and undulations we described. They are important for physical training, but even more so
to train the mind. The learning process is not about building a fixed repertoire of
movements, but rather through repetition and inquiry to sensitize the mind to the patterns.
Just like frets on the neck of a guitar, references are created so that the mind can orientate
itself with ease and efficiency within a continuum of kinaesthetic possibilities. Interestingly
this work came out of Paxton’s feeling that while he could not teach improvisation, he
could instead formalize and teach such a movement system.
13. Somatic techniques as hermeneutic and heuretic
In Grammatology Gregory Ulmer revisits Derrida to investigate the gesture of
invention, and strategies to generate methodologies from theories (Ulmer, 1994). As is
obvious from his word plays and choices of examples, Ulmer’s ideas are sourced from
and operate within mostly linguistic domains. Transposed to movement practices, his
opposition between hermeneutic and heuretic processes yields interesting ideas. Somatic
work can be framed as a form of hermeneutic inquiry. It reveals the mind and body as
35
inscribed by influences across a wide range of timescales: the oldest ones evolutionary,
later ones cultural or individual.
A potential for invention though seems to emerge out of this hermeneutic
archeology of embodied forms. Paxton’s exploration of walking for instance is a deep self-
study of a pattern he embodies individually and shares intersubjectively as a vertically
organized biped. But in performance it is manifested through hacked and recombined
improvisations that are highly mutated versions of the original forms. The heuretic gesture
here is strong and impossible to articulate propositionally. As a process of transformation
it goes much further than Ulmer’s examples based on logical operations such as opposites
or converses.
14. Last words – Not an end, a beginning…
In Embodied knowing through art, the philosopher Mark Johnson combines his
foundational work in embodied cognition with reflections on the relationship between art
and research. Following earlier ideas from John Dewey, he discusses the nature of
embodied knowledge. He cautions against our temptation to seek the fixed and
immutable. Embodied knowledge cannot be reduced to static collection of facts, but needs
instead to be sourced in dynamic processes of inquiry (Johnson, 2011).
Transposing these ideas to the specific practice of improvisation, we see that as
he trains and works towards a performance, the improviser is not composing a score, he
is composing himself – a process of neuro-plastic transformation through practice.
Extending this process across even longer timescales then becomes a form of research
where the contributions are not causal, correlative or descriptive. Rather, the artist
manifests possibilities.
When I watch Steve Paxton dance, now well into his seventies, I see: what might
be, what might come to happen, when you devote a lifetime to a practice. There is no
certainty, every path is singular, yet can be shared. Myself, about a decade and a half into
my own journey of inquiry, I am just starting. But the journey always is exciting.
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15. Bibliography
Alexander, F. M. (2001). The use of the self. London: Orion Publishing.
Alexander, F. M. (2004). Constructive conscious control of the individual (3rd ed.).
London: Mouritz.
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Appendix B. Video documentation
Creator: Yves Candau
Description: A series of video excerpts from the performance of Points de vue, on
November 28th, at Hastings studio, School for the Contemporary Arts
at Goldcorp Center for the Arts.
Documentation: Lara Abadir
Video editing: Yves Candau
Codec: H.264
Video format: 1280 x 720, 29.97 fps, progressive
Audio format: AAC, 48 kHz, 320 kbps, stereo
Filename: Points_de_vue_Video_1.mp4
Duration: 5:35
Filename: Points_de_vue_Video_2.mp4
Duration: 9:55
Filename: Points_de_vue_Video_3.mp4
Duration: 10:23
40
Appendix C. Audio documentation – Eight channel composition
Creator: Yves Candau
Description: A stereo downmix of the electroacoustic composition used in Points de
vue. The piece was composed for and played through eight channels
in the performance.
Codec: MP3
Sample type: 48 kHz, 24 bits, stereo
Bitrate: 320 Kbps, constant
Filename: Points_de_vue_Audio_Composition.mp3
Duration: 11:12