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).