Subjectivity

I’m trying to catch up to my reading- my latest book to share is “Philosophical Essays on Dance” presented during a week in 1979’s American Dance Festival (which I hope to go to eventually!)

The first essay in this resource brings up concerns about subjectivity in dance, partly because of its temporal nature. Essentially from the outset, everything we see is from the past due to the time required for light travel (Bertrand Russell). On top of that, to remove us even further from the art we observe, one dance critic (Croce) described how we remember dance as “afterimages” which were debated for their validity as a basis of evaluation: if we describe movements based on our mental images, are we actually describing the qualities of the movements themselves, or our memories?

Besides that philosophical back-and-forth- which was simmered down to accept that we can indeed discuss dance itself as an objectively existent object of our attention- there is then the consideration of the subjective way in which we receive dance. Viewers of dance do not receive the art form directly as-is, but through a lens of context. The Gestalt mantra that “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts” reminds us that we can’t take dance movements individually, or even the dance itself as the sole source of the message we ultimately percieve; the context of the time period, culture, dance history, audience experience, and many other factors complicate what a dance expresses, amplifying the subjectivity of the experience of viewing a dance. “Each belohder must experience his/her own act of perception” in order for the viewing to become an experience of art. In order for the basic understanding of the untrained audience to become deeper and more meaningful, they must be allowed to process the work over time and through their own frames, which essentially subjectifies the objective object of dance.

Audiences may hesitate to allow thought to invade their experience of dance, but some thoughtfulness in the reception of art can allow more depth of understanding and enhance the experience. Yet with dance, art’s definitive bridging of the inner and outer arenas of man’s life is achieved within our actual mode of experiencing life: through the body itself, as the dancer becomes the work of art, so dance has an advantage of being able to be received at a basic kinaesthetic level regardless of the training of the audience. In this then there is no need to ask the meanings of individual movements and it is not absolutely necessary for the uneducated audience to cognitively investigate their response (though there is only more to discover with this!) Different theories such as Jungian ideas of archetypes, physiognomy, and embodied consciousness highlight what we have in common that allows universality in spite of the array of individuals who see a dance. We have associations for our emotions from life experience, including physical sensations and mental patterns which may be shared across people. As a choreographer, I will be able to choose qualities for my dance that will remind the audience metaphorically of the contexts for the emotions that I will want to induce.

~

In designing my project, this all brings up a few points. I will be presenting my works in progress to dancers and trained eyes who are practiced in verbalizing the visceral, but ultimately, it is my goal to have these studies performed for general audiences to hopefully have the fullest emotional effect possible (and hopefully have that effect communicated back to me by them). I have to think about how I might practically take data from the general audience (it’s easy enough to get feedback from the dancers if I give them the survey I’ll create) but in a theater setting, people may be put off by questions following the work. It will also be interesting to see the different verbalized responses I could get from dancers versus non-dancers in the free-response parts of the survey. I’ll also have to consider when I’ll ask the audience to fill out my questionnaire- if it’s during the dance, or after, which could get different effects. I might also want to do a pre-test to look at initial conditions… I feel like it would be a poor research technique not to do that. Of course at the same time, this is a dance project, in spite of my inspiration from and training in psych, so I should only expect research conscientiousness to go so far.

As far as subjectivity, I intend to handle that by using averages of sorts. While art has value in its combination of universality and uniqueness, my studies won’t necessarily seek to stand out as unique, but will seek to appeal as powerfully as possible to as broad a spectrum of people as possible. Sacrificing broadness of effect for powerful influence on a few individuals is not the goal in this case. The stimuli which I will be basing my dances off of will have been chosen for their average effects for a huge population of psychologically “normal” people. For my smaller dance-model, the choreography will rely on a less statistically powerful “average” that will combine the perspectives and input of my small group of dancers to recreate the effects of the initial stimuli.


There’s so much more to write about, even just for this one book. And so many more things to read- I haven’t even shown you what the IAPS, IADS, and ANEW are, which will be my original stimuli! I’ll be delving into those studies soon- I’ve started reading up on emotions and have found some good things there to tell about later.

Resource:
Fancher, 1981.