Dancing bodies, shaped minds: An ecological approach to kinaesthetic intelligence

  • Sarah Pini (Speaker)

    Activity: Talk or presentationPresentation

    Description

    Speed paper presented at the Music Cognition and Action Symposium

    Abstract
    While phenomenological philosophy has stressed the relevance of the environment in the study of embodied cognition, the influence of the cultural context in which the movement technique is analysed is often neglected by more cognitive studies which have focused on expertise in dance. Embracing an interdisciplinary and a cross-cultural comparative approach to different dance forms in the study of embodied cognition and skilled movement, my research attempts to uncover how experts in Contact Improvisation and Body Weather articulate their sense of space and agency in relation to the experience of flow. It investigates how aesthetics embedded in dissimilar techniques shape the perception of world and self, among skilled performers. Aiming to contribute to the understanding of skilled body’s forms of intelligence by means of mixed-method approach including somatic attention, participant observation, phenomenological approach and ethnographic data gathering techniques, I will outline my project and seek feedback at this early stage.
    Period10 Mar 2014
    Held atThe MARCS Institute for Brain, Behaviour, and Development, Australia