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).