Between minds and bodies: Some insights about creativity from dance improvisation. Issue 3 (1st December 2015)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Łucznik, Klara
• Is Part Of: Technoetic arts. Volume 13:Issue 3(2015)
• Page Start: 301
• Page End: 308
• Publication Date: 2015-12-01
• Subjects: Interdisciplinary approach to knowledge -- Periodicals; Interdisciplinary research -- Periodicals; Consciousness -- Periodicals; High technology -- Social aspects -- Periodicals; 001
• DOI: 10.1386/tear.13.3.301_1
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1477-965X

Abstract

Observing dance improvisation provides a unique opportunity to understand how people collaborate together while creating. It is an opportunity to consider how new ideas appear, not simply from the internal processes of a single creator but rather from the interactions between the minds, bodies and the environment acting on and between a group of improvising dancers. Improvisational scores served in this study as a laboratory into group creativity. Using a video-stimulated recall method, which asks dancers to reflect upon their own processes just after completing the score, I explored the interdependency between meta-cognitive strategies such as imagery and sense awareness, group processes, the role of others in one's own creative processes, and interactions between bodies and with the environment. As a result I describe how dancers build together a common improvisational space, which allows them to co-create and share their ideas mostly in non-verbal, non-propositional ways. I discuss the co-agency of such a process, showing that intentionality is distributed between dancers at each moment of improvisation and that they are mainly focused on supporting the ideas of others. I also discuss the medium of the body and the embodied response as central to dance improvisation practice.