solo, working title: Behind the Dream

This dance has been important in getting me out of the slump I experienced this past semester. I think I became so vulnerable in what I consider to be a sort of creative depression (inconveniently timed!) that I finally gave up covering up, and accessed it to make what I think is one of my most successful creations. It's still got potential to be developed further, and I'm excited to go there.





Today I realized how silly it was for me to not draw on the situation I was in these past few months. Rather than try to dance through it, I might have tried dancing about it, in it. Now experiencing the success at the end of that tunnel, I can look in and remember clearly. Both ends of that are potential I hope to work with over break in preparation for a fresh start next semester. I intend to access the vulnerability and open honesty that this solo helped me use so successfully to also pursue my original project. The change of blog colors signify the new attitude I'm going to take.

Still [still] processing

I've just gotten official access to the ANET, which are sentences and data on their related emotions. I can use these for exercises in re-beginning with a fresh resource...

As a personal rule, I don't like to totally reject anything I create, but I'm leaning towards really really setting aside what I did this semester, and getting out in a new path to finish this project out more effectively. I'll also have the guidance and structure of a final composition class to help me better use the resources of fellow dancers to form my mini-company for this coming semester.

My other ideas lately are to take dance-sketches from this semester's class and develop them into portraits of how I personally have experienced certain basic emotions. I've got leads for several of these, and need to stop waiting for the ideal studio time, and just work it out.

I was still processing, with too much emphasis on the stillness. The energy is building back up now, and I'm getting ready to move again.

My processes

Trying to get back on board here, I did a little brainstorm. After writing a paper for my composition class, I realized that what I love about dance and what I connect with is the processes within and between people. So I looked at my own processes and this is what I got.

What are the processes of an emotion? For me…

Anger- when I am angry, I clam up, get flustered, feel anxious inside and it comes out in a jumble, I try to turn to someone who will understand while avoiding the person or situation that I’m angry at, I want to change it, know I need to change myself too, but feel that there is some force blocking me and us from making the right things happen

Sadness- when I am sad, I feel down, useless, very very alone and unwanted, I hide myself and wallow while part of me tries to talk myself out of it, I wonder how it happened, when it will end, I regret, I crunch up and cry, I want to burrow and disappear and not burden anyone

Happiness- when I am happy, I feel expansive and joyful, ready to go out and take on the world and show them who I am and what I can do, I want everyone to feel alive with me, I want to move around in big ways and be everywhere at once, I feel like it will last forever but even if it won’t I feel great that it’s happening even for the moment, I see the good in everything even difficult things and I hope others can see the good too

Fearful- when I am afraid, I hide, I stay very still or sneak away very quickly and softly, or I may become extremely anxious and my thoughts become circular and I have to talk myself out of it and force myself to breathe and think clearly, I do useless things and feel ineffective at what needs to be done to help myself, I feel helpless and lost

Disgusted- when I am disgusted, I avoid confronting what it is, I try to say away from it and put space between it and me, I try not to let my reaction offend but I also try to protect my own needs and comfort

[Insert title here]

I was thinking about the course that laughter follows in trying to understand why and when things happen to whom in this piece to clarify that... Here's what I got:

1. social (antecedent)
2. next stage is a tie, between the mind and the body (depends on your theory of emotion)
3. social (communication, contagion)

...So here emotion begins and ends socially, bridging people on both ends. And in-between, it bridges the bio-psycho-social elements of the individual all at once. Emotion ties us together as an individual and with others in a natural, bidirectional process of experience and communication.

That's where my title idea of "Bridges" comes from. I was thinking, maybe "Affect: Bridge I" and "Affect: Bridge II" etc. to distinguish the sections. Or maybe something stemming from the idea of "contagion." Oh, this struggle with titles- it seems unimportant until I have paperwork and need to identify the work!

Thoughts since Unshowing #2

These days we're dancing to ragtime music (Bolling's Mississippi Rag), with movements inspired by little Scottish girls doing handclap games on Youtube, childhood toys like Hungry Hungry Hippos, a few remaining apple seeds, some residual funny faces, ANEW words made into a movement phrase, and the laughter of people we enjoy. We seem to have found the genuine humor in the piece, and now it may be time to select portions to keep and return to the original structure of the first unshowing (mask, blank-face, laughter).

Verbal feedback from the Unshowing yesterday follow:
-stirring (ANEW "snuggle") stood out to one person
-dancer about to pee pants with laughter
-clap movements stood out, visually and audibly rhythmic, depth and intricacy, connection between the dancers
-hungry hungry hippos at the end
-goofiness, fun and playful, entertaining, inspired real laughter in audience, interesting
-believable, virus (contagious)

on setting:
-sleepovers were referenced by many
-silent movie referenced by several because of the music
-many others asked about setting- and this I will work on.

on characters:
-female "Three Stooges"
-childhood, young/young at heart?
-they saw a reason for the laughter, laughing at/with each other/something else
-there were questions as to the relationships between the dancers that I need to continue to address: who's who? what's going on when one breaks away from the group? the clear dynamic gets muddled when not all moving together (as in, not all "laughing" or doing phrase at once)

on changes from first Unshowing (two weeks ago):
-missed mystery of first structure, it was engaging and odd to see laughter without sound (I need to consider clarity vs. engaged confusion)
-originally an organic sense in the laughter-only movements
-original structure gives deeper context than delving into only one on standing alone (I'm realizing that I don't want to wait to explore the other side of this or wait to present them together. I'd like to do a parallel process with another section, and begin juxtaposing them as I previously thought to do.)
-no moments remain when all are "laughing"
-vocal vs. not vocal (I still need to decide on this... I'm leaning towards muting it after we get a full understanding of complete embodiment with sound first.)
-problem, challenge of face/body separation (I want to take this one on to return to the original structure with the experience of what we've become genuine in now. no more mime comments!)

Working Title Idea

It's funny how you're not saying things out loud to me.

A little wordy, but just try it on for size... That phrase came along ot me in a bizzare way. Via my coat pocket specifically, on a long folded shred of paper towel and in my handwriting. But I had no memory of how it got there! It was the oddest feeling, before I recognized my handwriting, trying to figure out WHEN it was from, and WHO wrote that to me and why... or when I did recognize it, who I wrote it for, why it was in my pocket and not theirs, and again, WHY was it written? Then I decided I don't really want to know those answers! (Unfortunately, new clues have told me it came from a paper towel at home. I hope not to recall more than this.)

I immediately took the urge to take that little slip of paper seriously, maybe because of the mood I was in when I found it and the personal little crisis that I'm relating it to based on that... but I think it can be applied here. In this dance, we won't be explicit- I imagine we're going to work ourselves to communicating and sharing emotions in a roundabout and clearly nonverbal way. I didn't find amusement in the phrase "it's funny" the first time I read it, instead my stomach dropped as I pressed on to finish the first reading. As I looked at it more, it gathered more dimensions as I hope this dance will. I realized I may have actually been amused when writing it. But there's also a sense of exclusion that touches me. Like the first showing of this piece, there is some confusion as to what it all means, what the feelings behind this are, how it relates to us. Maybe it's silly to give it that kind of weight, but who's to deny something that seems to fit, when something that somehow fits is just what I could use. It feels relevant to my personal processes that relate to the subject of this dance on emotions.

I might decide against it later, but for now, I'm going to see how I like the fit.

IADS Wind Remix

I got a disk with the IAPS and IADS on them today, and I've been having fun beginning to play with editing the sounds! This is just the beginning. I can't quite get the file to post, so that's a technical difficulty I'll need to work out. This may serve as a soundtrack to the pieces, or it could just be inspiration.

Either way, it adds more layers. I'll do a separate post on our first open showing this past Monday and some of my thoughts on the feedback. But after seeing the beginning work performed and the strange power it had, I'm interested in bringing more layers into the piece. As Neta said, let's "see how we can mess it up more." I'd like to look into drawing on more areas of the brain and human experience to add depth to the piece. Rather than being a pared-down version of the stimuli (which everybody would quickly get bored with) let's see how many relevant elements can contribute to what I imagine can be an oddly touching emotional experience pushing itself on the viewers from as many angles as possible.

Communication as meaning-creating

"From a transactional perspective, human communicating is a process of meaning-creating rather than idea- or message-sending. When you're communicating, you're not transmitting your ideas to others but evoking their own ideas or meanings."
-John Stewart in "Listening"

I like this quote because it is as relevant to dance as it is to verbal communication. One of the premises of this dance project is that our dance communications call to the mind of the receiver associations to which they attach meaning, just as our verbal language does, and much like the CSEA stimulus collections do.

Other sources influencing me in this area lately include a New York Times article on the book "Through the Language Glass," this other Times article on how language affects our thinking, and studying for my Listening class (joy).

Rehearsal 4: laughing club and apple seeds

Today's rehearsal was a bit more selective in what we worked with as we focused on the first pleasant emotion we've worked with!

First, we watched videos of people laughing to introduce the idea of that contagion and the social nature of it. Then we did a little Laughter Yoga as a silly warm-up (this is a sample). With this we explored the boundaries of faked and real laughter and how the first can become the second when in a social situation and given the opportunity. We reconsidered the original phrase with the laughter playlist linked above as our soundtrack, and discovered how some of the moves can fit with some of the unusual laughs heard on it.

Moving from this, we worked with some improvisation around the original phrase, and gradually this turned into a game based off of one of the moves which I describe as "dropping apple seeds." Soon enough, the dancers were tossing seeds into each other's mouths, flinging them at each other, and some creative hiding places to avoid seed-theifs. All of this, combined with some of the laughter-movements from earlier became a free-for-all game. For the next rehearsal, I've asked the dancers to each create a bit of movement for a laugh with which they are familiar and we'll see what comes of it next week.


In the attempt to portray emotions and through all the insight from research, I've in some ways lost track of them. Today's rehearsal, particularly with its upbeat topic and somehow freeing degree of focus on making fun allows me to give myself permission to focus on only one emotion for now. The showcase is in October, and my project deadline is in the spring. To fully investigate the emotions to the degree I can imagine would be to make a career out of this project beyond that time frame- however, I hope to have grad school next year. To get ready for the informal showing on Monday evening, for that afternoon's rehearsal, I'd like to work on some sort of structure in which to present what we created today. And for the showcase, I'll plan to show only one, maybe two emotions. But we'll get to the second one when I'm satisfied with the first well enough, so there.


...Now, in the spirit of silliness, enjoy one more video and your weekend!

Rehearsal 3: exhale, jittery, un-focus(ed)

In this rehearsal we experimented with different elements placed on the same movement phrase we've been working with. I first recalled some experimentation I did on my own with the ideas of "give/get/remove/escape" where I found inhales and exhales had an interesting relationship to the associated gestures (mentioned in a previous post). At another point in rehearsal I also chose to look at words that the SAM assessment associates with the concept of "excited": stimulated, jittery, wide-awake, aroused. With these ideas of excited and exhaling as manipulations, we returned to our phrase.

Again, each dancer found her own way to interpret this as we manipulated breathing first, working with focus on the exhales. Differences in the origin of the breath (lungs or stomach) and changes like segmented breaths, pursed lips, or an open mouth were interesting variations. Then we also considered heart rate, so we ran a lap of the dance building and returned to work with the phrase some more. We found that our breathing changed significantly after running, so that deeper "HAA" exhales were easier. It was a challenge to make the movement work with the naturally segmented breath rather then the usual other way around. We also discovered an interesting shift in the sense of release when the dancers were still focused on catching their breath. It was as if they were more free because their bodies were worked up, or they were distracted by the breathing to be freer in the movement. When I introduced the SAM description of excitement, each dancer naturally tended towards a different point along the scale of valence, one positive, one neutral, and one negatively interpreting the idea of excitement. Continuing this part of rehearsal and going off of their natural valences, we also experimented with focus: the dancers described an internal focus as feeling naturally faster, and I need to look again at video in which the dancers tried to maintain a forward focus at the audience to see if any worthwhile effect is found.

You can see above the flighty paths I'm following in leading rehearsals, and I'm realizing with the difficulties of this that I'm resisting the fact that I simply don't have the time to explore in a worthwhile way even a small fraction of the possible "variables" I'd like to have the time to look at. It's just like any psychology experiment- a reasonable researcher would limit the variables and attempt to control for the rest. In this case, control is neither quite possible, nor frankly desirable. But I can still limit my manipulations to focus and have more clear understanding of what I will look at. As we go along, my dancers' patience and feedback helps me to learn ways to focus and better delve into material, and I'll keep at it until we get it right and enjoy doing it!

Rehearsal 2: grieving woman photo

In our second rehearsal, we completed our cast with a third dancer. I briefly introduced the SAM dimensional analysis idea and described how we will draw from both categorical and dimensional theories to inform our adjustments of our movement in the process of illustrating cues for the most basic emotions. I described it as "sliders" along different dimensions of movement quality, and my goal is to determine which dimensions used to what degrees and in what combinations produce the strongest effects. There are lots of possibilities...!

I also began to explain the problem of whether to try to induce what I'll call primary (or first-hand) emotions such as sadness for an unfortunate event in your life, or secondary (or empathetic) responses, such as how I may be saddened by your sadness. I have yet to determine whether it is more effective to, for example, seek to induce fear by actually intimidating the audience, or by demonstrating fear in the movements in hopes of audience identification with the dancers. I could also seek to have them identify with one dancer who is responding to the other two versus identifying with the entire cast at once.


While the IAPS and other databases are out of commission until October (very unfortunate given this semester's showcase timing, but we can work around this), I searched online for other images which fit the short descriptions of the IAPS photos. I considered some "mutilation" images but am not ready to process those in rehearsal yet (given that they're probably a strong part of the need for a release form to view the images, I hesitate to give them to my cast to soon, or at all) ... so today we worked with an image of a grieving woman which could easily have been in the collection.


Before beginning to move, I mentioned Humbert deSuperville's ideas about people's unconditioned reactions to shapes and colors as having emotional significance, so that the down-and-out slopes of this woman's face correlate aesthetically with the sadness that she is expressing. I also noted the tension which I observed and at one point asked that they consider that in their movement. We didn't write out our responses this time, but began moving right away, using the same phrase I taught in the last rehearsal. They quickly moved on to fresh improvisation which really highlighted each dancer's own take on grief, and with this, I realized the richness which each of the three dancers brings to this project. Their three different styles working alongside and with each other works well with my desire to approach this process as creating something that addresses a universal element with roots in individual input, much as averaged data comes out of thousands of single participants, and as an overall message in a dance still has a personal effect that varies between viewers.

Watching them move, I became very interested in their use of negative space, which I at one point prompted them to focus more on that led to some movements I'll hope to use later; to me, this calls to mind the absence of the grief object. Later, movements of grasping for something not present, tension surrounding and through the body, and fixation of one body part on a point stood out to me. Each of the dancers seemed to have one of these qualities that struck me most strongly, and I asked each dancer to focus on what I had noticed in them, which gave diverse and both individually and collectively stronger-feeling results. A sense of precariousness also came into play with all of them at some point, and that is something I think may relate well with grief- as if the emotion were at a tipping point to overwhelming expression at the slightest nudge. And at some points sudden shooting movements our of the tension show pangs of emotion.


At one point I also mentioned the paradox of movement and stillness in grief: that the individual fixates on the object of grief while the world keeps moving, and they also have externally-unseen but internally-overwhelming emotional movements. I found a great article on a series of photos which illustrate this and other elements of grief. The series is called "a dozen useless actions for grieving blondes" by Rosemary Laing, and partway through improvisation I showed the expressive images from the article to my dancers. (I still need to decide about use of facial expressions- that'll come later when we have some other movements set, to see what effects facial options have.) The photo links to the article which has a great analysis of the series. In watching videos of today's work, I think it would be an useful exercise to have one dancer fixed on the spot while others move around the space surrounding her, trying out different distances to see if this paradoxical feeling can be found.


At the close of today's rehearsal, I asked for feedback from the dancers, and I was given an important reminder of the need for humanity behind what has become objective and academic for me during the summer research phase of this project. According to a request from one dancer -whose pensive style was part of why I asked her to work with me- I will make upcoming stimuli available to them in order to allow the dancers time to process and personally relate to the material that I'm asking them to embody. While I have ideas of in some ways imitating the experience of being an IAPS study participant for the dance audience, that does not mean that the dancers need to have that limited brief exposure. (And with a maximum of 8 minutes to present a few basic emotions at the upcoming Fall BFA showcase, exposure time will be short enough. We'll see how condensed we can make this!) I want to respect and take advantage of each of these dancers' unique ways of processing the material and working in dance; I'll maintain the research end of things, but they are the ones who I am looking to to embody and expand my ideas which I'll pare down to our eventual final work, so I'll look forward to how this change in our process can enrich things.

Finally, in reviewing videos of our rehearsals so far, I'm hoping to start improving how I lead improvisation, to make my prompts less general and more helpful. That will also come as we work together more, I hope. We're looking to continue practicing an hour and a half twice a week, once we find regular studio space!

Rehearsal 1: snake and homeless images

We've had two rehearsals so far, and it's been an interesting experience for me. I appreciate the three dancers who've joined me, and while a good part of our time so far has been spent explaining the gist of the project and subject matter, and ennumerating the many choreographic choices I'll have to make, we spent some good time looking at a few emotional images, discussing, and improvising. These images so far have been presented during rehearsal, so the dancers had little time to process them, but I think that we've addressed certain elements for each that will contribute to my first goal of generating ideas from which we will select later to focus on. At the first rehearsal, there were two dancers.

First, we discussed the image below. Personally, I am struck by certain aesthetic aspects of the photograph (so my input is an interpretation of an interpretation- which will continue to happen through this kind of work). The body of the snake rises out of darkness, creating contrast; there is forward movement, aggression, a primacy of action over foresight (with the mouth larger than the eye); and a sense of falling in (the mouth) vs. striking out, and round/smoothness vs. sharpness (curved fangs). Discussion with another dancer also brought up how snakes are unpredictable (including when we can't remember the "rules" of them, such as which are poisonous), and they are deceptive (I think even their appearance deceives: they aren't slimy though they look so). He also felt that they are vindictive without reason, which reminds me how we give human characteristics out so easily (which may make for more emotional experiences in some cases), and reminded me of the relationship between anger and fear, which will be better explored later I think. My dancers' reponses included phrases like "danger, open, escape response" and "'ahhh!' fear, scary, big, killer, escape; from the snake's perspective: attack, anger." From these responses, I asked the two dancers to improvise with an original phrase I taught them and the ideas of being like the snake as structures (with Massive Attack's "Antistar" playing softly). As I lead more improvisation, I hope to improve at clarifying instructions at the start- but as we went along, I requested more aggression, and became interested in the contrast of pulsating waiting and sudden larger movements which as I watched I felt characterized a snake. I requested more aggression directed towards me, and I think a stronger sense of dominance might help to inspire a more fear-like reaction in the viewer. Finally for this image, a request for "suddenness" yielded some effective movements that I'll look at for later use.

The other image that we looked at in the first rehearsal was of a "hobo", according to the IAPS descriptions (the actual image is not shown here to avoid copyright problems, but here is a somewhat similar image). The man in the actual picture is seated in a dark place and has a dirty face in such a way that he looks almost skeletal, he is drinking from a yellow glass bottle, and within the dark image, next to him are highlighted a loaf of bread and two more bottles on a piece of cloth. The drink and food remind me of the idea of gluttony, which can be disgusting or repulsive. When I look at the image, textures are very evident to me, in the black grease on his face, the roughness of the wall and brick behind him, and the cloth and crumbs net to him. I related this noticeable variety of "dirty" textures to how people respond to disgust. In a course on social cognition, I learned that people de-humanize the homeless to the point that we tend to think of them as having less human characteristics than dogs (which I believe shows up in brain scans- I need to find the research to reference). We also learned that people relate moral/mental dirtiness to physical dirtiness, so that when people who are "disgusted" by an idea are allowed to literally wash their hands, they feel better afterwards (also will look up that article to reference). The dancers noticed the dark, gruesome colors of the IAPS image, and also wrote "thirst, dark, cold, age/hunger in the defined cheekbone, bright hand sticks out" and "dark, chill, hydrate, drunk, escape (through drunkenness), trapped on the streets, lost, going anywhere?" We wondered what happened to him- but aside from re-humanizing him (and losing the sense of being at least somewhat initially repulsed that I hoped to look into at the time), I wanted to maintain the jerk-reaction urge to distance ourselves from the stimulus. For improvisation on this image, I particularly asked to see the texture that struck me in the photo, and the sense of the thickness of space that they created felt satisfying to me. One dancer pulled her hood over her head and faced upstage, which was an interesting way to remove herself from seeming fully human. Writhing, rubbing, sliding, crouching, and self-manipulation (one limb moving another) all appeared during this section of the improvisation. Next, I asked for them to show me something "repulsive" so as to cause me to feel disgust. The movements in response to this included reference to sexual exploitation which was a unique take on the prompt that led to some interesting movements, and also low-to-the-ground crawling/writhing.

Movements of the Emotions, Charted

This book, De Rivera's "A Structural Theory of the Emotions," has been keeping me particularly excited about this project or the last few weeks (and is the reason for me playing blog catch-up today, now that I finished reading it). I meant to read only parts of it, but ended up reading the whole thing. The best parts of it are about the "movement of the emotions," as Chapter 2 is titled.

The basic movements explored correlate in my mind with Graham's contract and release: contraction and extension, which illustrates four basic movements depending on whether the palms are turned in or out. Imagine the arms in First Position, palms inward, and extend the arms- this action looks like "giving" and is interpreted by the author as a movement of love. Next, bringing the arms back in with palms still facing in, wanting or desire are illustrated. Then, return to First with the palms facing out and imagine the arms extending- it is the motion of a push, as in anger. And then contracting them again with palms facing out, is withdraw as in fear. So with these four simple motions, four basic emotions are shown in movement- perfect for this project? I think so!

I found it interesting that the orientation of the palms made the difference between the positive (palms in) and negative (palms out) emotions. Essentially, these emotions correlate with the four basic modes of object relations: giving, getting, removing, and escaping. The author further breaks these down into object vs. subject, which does the moving, positive vs. negative, fixed or fluid quality, and categories of belonging/recognizing/being which further distinguish categories and continually more complicated matrices of emotions. What we end up with is several pages of categories and sub-categories that qualitatively define different dimensions of many emotions.

As an example, to define anger with this method, it is a negative "away" movement with the person as the subject actively altering the position of the object. It is fluid, and applies to the "belonging" subject of emotionality. With these six "choices," I can already imagine certain elements that I would want to include in order to portray anger. Away-movement is important, as is consideration of who is causing the action to what or whom, and whether it is a lasting, fixed situation, or fluid as in this case. These are all things I can easily give to dancers bit by bit to see how they react and what material is generated or how it is altered according to an emotion's characterization according to this theory. The dimension of belonging/recognition/being is the most difficult to show, but that could be creatively addressed as well.

It is interesting that these dimensions seem to have metaphorically-corresponding directions attached to them. Belonging is considered horizontally (pushing/pulling others to/away), recognition is vertical (looking down on or up to someone), and being is an in/out choice (being open to or closed to others, allowing them to be part of oneself or not).

The charts in the book which lay out the structured theory look like a formula for emotions, but of course we know that lived emotions don't exist in such broken-down ways. A gestalt mindset takes these observations into account with a whole rolled-up experience. However, these ideas and "choices" give me opportunities for play with my dancers, and I'm sure I'll enjoy using them to get started with my own choreographic choices when the time comes. (Fall semester is coming soon, and so are auditions where I may get to choose my dancers! The really fun part of this project is on its way, and soon enough I may have videos to post!)

There are also social antecedents that correspond to each emotion that are discussed briefly in the text- other books I am reading will let me do a separate, more inclusive post on that topic.

Reference:
De Rivera (1977).

Defining Basic Emotions

Emotions, according to Johnson-Laird and Oatley (Stein and Oatley, 1992), are in response to fundamental life tasks, or "fundamental human predicaments." The emotions are distinguished by having distinctive universal signals, physiology, and antecedent events (and emotions are separate from other affective phenomena like moods or attitudes). The five "basic" or most fundamental emotions found by these researchers in 1989, based on analysis of emotion words, are: happiness, sadness, anger, fear, and disgust. These categories correlate with many of the categories mentioned in previous posts about categorical analysis of the IAPS, IADS, and ANEW stimuli.

The strongest universal signals distinguishing between emotions are in facial expressions (Johnson-Laird et al 1992). I can consider it a variable to have or not have facial expressions in my dance. I would like to see the differences between showing expressions related to particular basic emotions, other kinds of facial use, and no expression. Tomkins (1962) also sought unique vocals for each emotion, and I may be able to look into that for use of vocalization in my dance.

The physiology of specific emotions is interesting, in that we seem to have common action plans for the different emotions. Though our actual behavioral responses may vary, it is common for blood to go to the hands in anger (in order to attack), or in fear, for us to freeze for concealment and also have blood sent to the large skeletal muscles as we become ready to flee. These specific Autonomic Nervous System patterns distinghs anger, fear, disgust, and maybe sadness (Ekman, Levenson, and Friesen, 1983; Levenson, Ekman, and Friesen, 1990 and 1991). I can consider this flow of energy to different body parts when creating movement; I imagine if I wanted to illustrate anger using hand movements, and freezing of large whole-body flight to help illustrate this aspect of the experience of fear.

Universality of antecedent events is found on a more abstract level (for example, loss of a significant other can trigger sadness, but who is considered significant varies across cultures and people). I may look into Ekman and Frieen (1975) to find out more about their prototypic interpersonal events that supposedly can universally cue certain emotions. It should be noted that different emotions can come of the same antecedent event (Stein and Trabasso, 1992). I hope to demonstrate the social nature of the emotions by the relationships of multiple dancers within each piece, and this will tie in with antecedent events as well as other emotional components.


There is a problem of distinguishing positive emotions in defining basic emotions; in this study, happiness is the only category outside the negative realm, making it a very broad category. As I have regularly found in my sources, the positive emotions tend to have less distinction (which may tie in with the Alarm Hypothesis, by which it is only necessary to survival to have distinction among the negative emotions). There are no distinctive signals between emotions of enjoyment, but collectively they do all demonstrate the genuine "Duchenne" smile. It is possible that they differ in vocal signals.

Other possible basic emotions (having significant distinction from other emotions in the earlier-listed ways) include embarrassment, awe, and excitement- each featuring its own research difficulties.

Resource:
Stein and Oatley (1992).

Emotions and the Body

Emotions, according to Denzin (1984), include three fundamental components: specific neural basis, characteristic bodily expressions, and distinct subjective qualities. In this way, "emotionality radiates through the lived body of the person" (p. 3) including the brain, body, mind and heart of the person. Emotional effects on the mind and body offer much to be further explored. (Denzin distinguishes that this "emotionality," specifically, is the process of being emotional which places us within a social world, another topic to address separately because of all it has to offer. Discussion in this and other posts will include the essentially social nature of emotions, even private ones.)

James-Lange Theory's definition of emotion is primarily physiological and nonconscious: "an agitation of the passions or sensibilities, often involving physiological changes... and to excite, to move out, to stir up, to move." According to this theory, emotions are the results of bodily changes in response to a situation, which recalls the idea of the Cartesian Passions referred to in an early post. Even if James and Lange's early theory has the order of events incorrect (emotions following physical reactions to perceived events), the strong sense of the body-emotion link is still valuable.

Hochschild's definition of emotion supports this link, as emotion is defined as "bodily cooperation with an image, a thought, a memory- a cooperation of which the individual is aware." And Scheff corroborates, "emotions are specific patterns of bodily changes, whether or not there is conscious awareness." So while the order of events and role of conscious awareness are debatable at this point, the author further emphasizes the point that "emotions are embodied experiences. The place of the body as an instrument in the expression of the emotion cannot be denied." As I will be aiming to effect emotional responses in my audience, I will rely on this bodily cooperation, whether conscious awareness is part of the response or not.

Discussion in Denzin's text come to agree that in the process of awareness-recognition-interpretation, interpretation of emotions does not occur in the body; mental interpretation has value that may later be discussed in its value to individual emotional responses. I take this to mean that emotions in the rawest unthought-out form are those being experienced in the body, not having as much individualizing mental mess but being more universal. I will aim to apply myself towards the more universal emotions in this project, so this is a great coincidence in the essential role of the body in this kind of emotional experience.

Resources:
Denzin (1984).

Similar Realities: Emotion and Dance

"Emotion is a lived, believed-in, situated, temporally-embodied
experience that radiates through a person's stream of consciousness,
is felt and runs through his body and...
plunges the person... into a... transformed reality..."
Denzin, p. 66

The transformed reality mentioned in this quote is interesting because of how I view it in relation to my intended medium of dance. "When felt, emotion constitutes a reality, or a world, unique and solely contained within itself" (p. 66) which are not doubted; emotions are real, they crowd out disbelief (p. 93). Similarly, when viewing a dance, people may suspend their connections to the regular world to engage themselves more fully with the movement presented, allowing their reality to be transformed. Particularly with some imaginative dances (I am thinking of those of my project mentor, choreographer Neta Pulvermacher), the dance can be several steps removed from reality to really transform the space and subject for those involved. It will be a choice for me, then, to consider if/how I will "transform reality" through dance to bring in and mimic the transformations of the emotions.

Also, considering the similarities of emotion and dance, I have noticed that both build on themselves, relying on the past for future developments. Neta calls this the "archaeology of the dance;" it is the parts of the choreographic process that the final product doesn't overtly reveal, but which had an important impact on its conceptual and practical development. As an audience to the development of many senior projects in the department, I have seen how a piece can change seemingly drastically from week to week, yet it is still in the mind of the choreographer the same piece. They are processing what will eventually be buried within the meaning and movement of the final piece as its archaeology. Similarly, our emotions are based on the "archaeology of [one's] past" (p. 43) and this is important to the history of individual interpretations of events and emotions that make our moment-to-moment emotional experiences unique.

The symbolism of dance and emotions is another similarity I have noted. Indirect symbolism is derived through individual histories, as we unite our inner and outer worlds through lived emotions. Even the irrationality of emotions can be linked to dance, as "character assaults, disjointed speech, inappropriate dress, refusal to follow ceremonial rules of conduct, trancelike states, and hysteria" (p. 96) are all part of symbolically fulfilling our emotions in emotional life as well as performance contexts. To me, these events sound like potential elements of modern dance. "Magical structures replace deterministic activity when ordinary dealings with the world no longer work" (p. 97) and rather than always demonstrating pedestrian activity, dance often bursts into un-ordinary dealings and emotional displays.

In the world of emotions, as in the world of dance, "inner meanings and feelings are revealed" unlike in the taken-for-granted everyday world....

"This world of emotion and the reality it invites is always there,
waiting to be entered and embraced." (p. 277)

Resources:
Denzin (1984).

Common categories across studies

In the research I've been looking at in categorizing the IAPS, IADS, and ANEW stimuli, I've found certain amounts of consistency in categories.

Fear and Sadness are discussed for IAPS, IADS, and ANEW (Mikels, Fredrickson, Larkin, and Lindberg, 2005; Stevenson and James, 2008; Stevenson Mikels, and James, 2007). This makes it easy to create a collection of multimedia stimuli to explore with potential dances of these themes.
Disgust, Anger, and Happy are included for the IADS and ANEW only (Stevenson et al, 2008; Stevenson et al, 2007). I might want to look into a categorization of IAPS for these three important emotions.
Amusement and Contentment are only in Mikels' (2005) discussion of the IAPS. These show a division of the "Happy" category that other studies do not regularly distinguish, but might be helpful for orientation within the theme in choreographic exploration.

As stated, some problems arise- besides not having all categories available from research so far for each type of media, there is also the vagueness of some categories such as "Negative" (not included), and "Happy" which give large and diverse examples. I'll update as more of these studies are found, hopefully.

Resources:
Mikels, Fredrickson, Larkin, & Lindberg,(2005).
Stevenson & James, (2008).
Stevenson, Mikels, & James, (2007).

Categories and stimuli descriptions

The IADS (sounds) categories include happiness (n=29), fear (n=14), anger (n=1; apparently car horns are the only sound to trigger this...), disgust (n=6), and sadness (n=4; Stevenson and James, 2008).

Examples of categorized IADS sounds include...
-Happy: carousel, giggling, colonial music, etc.
-Sad: baby cry, (and with less distinction in the data:) puppy cry, funeral, and bagpipes
-Disgust: nose blow, toilet flush, belch, etc.
-Fear: female screams (1 and 2), prowler, howling rain, and many others with less distinction
-Anger: only car horns


The ANEW (English words) categories are anger (n=8), fear (n=5), sadness (n=7), disgust (n=14), and happiness (n=323; with so many of the words under this broad category, I'll want to make distinctions within later; Stevenson, Mikels, and James, 2007).

Examples for ANEW stimuli under categories...
-Happiness: abundance, bless, dazzle, food, improve, mail, pancakes, sky, wink, etc.
-Anger: disturb, mad, noisy, etc.
-Fear: afraid, fear, fearful, horror, terrified
-Sadness: burial, dreary, gloom, misery, etc.
-Disgust: filth, grime, maggot, mucus, rancid, etc.

(Those last few are pretty bad-- I'm not sure I can stomach a "disgust" dance!)
I also need to note that some of the words are redundant to the category. For example, under Anger, are the words "anger" and "angry;" above you can see this is a problem for Fear as well. That narrows down the number of useful words for those categories, so I may rely more on other kinds of stimuli for those categories. I wonder if it is in the nature of the medium to have more triggers for some emotions than others.


It's interesting to note that some stimuli which may have the same dimensions can actually trigger different kinds of brain activation; these happen to be in different categories. This supports the need to consider multiple ways of describing emotions, dimensionally, and categorically (Stevenson et al, 2008)- and soon, I'll be writing about a text that defines emotions with a structural model.

Resources:
Stevenson & James, (2008).
Stevenson, Mikels, & James, (2007).

IAPS Emotional Gategories

I found an article that has just what I need! Mikels, Fredrickson, Larkin, and Lindberg (2005) took the IAPS, a dimensional model of emotion, and put it into categories!

The category names were chosen based on a free-response pilot study, and two subsequent studies were run with guided responses, one for negative emotions, and one for positive ones. The results give me 8 examples which were categorized as fear, 12 for sadness, 12 for amusement, 15 for contentment, 20 for awe, and 10 for excitement (excluding mixed and undifferentiated images, and excluding those with gender differences).

Altogether, these emotions seem to correlate with lists I have seen throughout my sources that describe models and ideas of what the basic emotions are. These may be the terms that I end up using for my dances, and I'm sure I'll be drawing from these images for my "stimuli!" Once I get I get in touch with the right people to get the images (which are listed by number in the study's archives), I'll try to post some sample images.

I'm really hoping that I can find similar articles for categorizing the IADS and ANEW!

Resources:
Mikels, J. A., Fredrickson, B. L., Larkin, G. R., & Lindberg, C. M. (2005a).
Mikels, et al.(2005b).
Mikels, et al. (2005c).

Non-expression and expression

In post-modern dance, choreographers try to create movements that are not representational or expressive. This is opposed to the idea that the human body, and hence dance, is inherently expressive.
By considering works that intend to remove expressiveness from dance, I may learn about elements that could be useful for expressing emotions.

For example, Rainer's Trio A has no climax, no key images or poses that I could easily identify to you, no repetition of segments or variations on a motif, no clear floor plan, no tempo developments, just a moment-to-moment presence as a moving point in space, according to Carroll.



Even in such non-expressive dances, though, we might think of dance as being expressive by its discursive nature. In this case, because of contextual knowledge of the developments within dance history and Rainer's intent to create non-expressive dance, this dance still expresses something about a belief in non-expressive dance. (It's kind of like Duchamp's urinal "Fountain" having ironic status as art; the statement and meaning comes from context about it, not from the object itself.)

Dance communicates ideas as much as it does emotions; it can show us what the choreographer wants to show us of their view of the world more so than it gives us an expression of the dancer's own present emotions. For my project, my dances will show my understanding of invocation of emotions, what cues them, and somewhat how they feel to experience (thought that is more the audience's role). I can consider the many things that are absent from Trio A as tools for that expression, which Rainer was attempting to get away from.

Resource:
Carroll, N. (1981). Post-modern dance and expression. In G. Fancher & G. Myers (Eds.), Philosophical essays on dance (pp. 95-114). Brooklyn, N.Y.: Dance Horizons.

The problem of inducing negative emotions

My goal with this project will be to inspire feelings related to several contrasting emotions in separate pieces. This means that some of these studies will deliberately evoke emotions that will have negative valence and naturally will be unpleasant.

Considering this, though, I may want even the negative emotions to bring some sort of satisfaction, and not just be torturous to the audience. In spite of negatively-valenced intended responses, I know from seeing others' dances that this sort of art can lead to a kind of appreciation, respect, fulfillment - as if we are relieved to have such a deep buried feeling met onstage in another's body. In fact, personally, I feel that this relates most to dance for me, above the other arts. Like mirroring in therapy, seeing an emotion we recognize, maybe even particularly for negative ones, though immediately unpleasant, validates some part of our human emotional experience (probably some part that we would not normally allow to see the light of day, or even admit to ourselves). This video has a great introduction that illustrates this relief...




The catch to this whole string of thought is that this may not be the most honest reproduction of the experience of perceiving the original stimuli. Maybe I'll go to the source and ask the experimenters more about that though- it may not be a pure recreation if I make the relief described above my goal. Having sat through the IAPS myself as an undergrad participant, I know that some of the negative images truly are horrendous and sickening, with no sense of personal relief as if anything had been mirrored. In fact, they're such strong images (most likely from the extremes of the catalog) that it is unlikely that it could mirror anything an average person could relate to. I'm not sure yet how liberal I'm willing to be in re-interpreting the participant/audience experience regarding this and other factors. It'll definitely be a challenge if I choose to delve into the areas such as those referred to as "mutilation" images (with some of the strongest positive ones being fairly sexually explicit)... they'd certainly be a well-defined reaction, but I'll have to gear up to actually processing and re-presenting that with my dancers and audience.

The pleasanter dances may also prove difficult to portray meaningfully without looking silly or shallow... it will be the nuances and subtle colorings between the emotions and the blends of their effects on us that will enrich the dances to bring them beyond "well, clearly this dance is meant to be pleasant/beautiful" to "this dance makes me feel joy/love/anticipation..."

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.