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).