Browsing by Subject "dance"

This thesis focuses on the understandings of the body among contemporary dancers in the western post-modern scene. In doing so, it aims to describe the ways contemporary dancers experience thinking, mind language and agency in their bodies. Further, the aim of this thesis is to understand how this affects experiences of self and being. Examining ethnographical examples and the discussions on the body-mind relations, this thesis endeavours to further the understanding of experienced relationships between body, mind and thinking in the West. Additionally it looks at the ways through which embodied knowledge is produced, shared, and evaluated among contemporary dancers. As such, it takes a critical stance towards dualistic notions of mind and body; rational and sensed; culture and nature. In this thesis, contemporary dancers are approached as a professional category. The ethnographic data was gathered during a two and a half month fieldwork period in Berlin in the summer 2021. The fieldwork comprised of participant observation in rehearsals, festivals, workshops and weekly professional dance classes, supplemented by seven semi-structured interviews with contemporary dance artists. The field notes and interviews were accompanied by auto-ethnographic description. Further, importance for the authotrs own bodily experience and understanding was granted in building analytical understanding The theoretical framework of this thesis draws from phenomenology, discussions of body and mind, and theories of personhood. Phenomenological discussions and theories of bodily practice and sensorial anthropology are used to examine how information is embodied in dance practices, and how the idea of embodied knowledge is constructed and shared. The ethnographical evidence suggests that contemporary dancers use strategies of embodiment to articulate, transmit, and integrate meaning and language. In the second part of the analysis, the focus lies on the experiences and conceptualizations of body, mind, thinking and their relations. The experiential concept of “observing while doing” is described and discussed. Finally, this thesis considers what kinds of notions of self, personhood and agency are attained in the experience of dancing. Here, theories on dividual subjects are used to examine ethnographical findings. The analysis and ethnographical evidence in this thesis suggest that the experience of a dancing body is multiple and can be altered using strategies of embodiment. The multiplicity of the body, as well as the multiplicities of thinking and mind, are sensed through somatic modes of attention. Further, the expansion of experiential understandings of the body has led to conceptual multiplicity of the body and mind. Finally, this thesis argues that the dancing subjects are dividual in the way that their experiences and expressions are constituted by distinct embodied knowledges from their training, education, dance work, and other environments. The findings of this thesis call for reflection of the body-mind relation and notions of thinking in the West, utilizing knowledge produced by contemporary dancers attending specific perceptual awareness and notions of bodily knowledge and thinking in their work.

Objective: Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a major public health issue leading to long-term cognitive, emotional, and physical impairments. New, effective, multimodal and multidisciplinary rehabilitation practices are needed. Dance is a multimodal activity that engages several brain regions simultaneously and, therefore, might be ideal for enhancing complex functions. Dance also combines physical exercise and the use of music, both of which positively affect healthy and neuropathological populations. The aim of the research project was to develop a multidisciplinary dance rehabilitation method and to evaluate its feasibility and effectiveness in chronic severe TBI. The current study investigates the intervention’s effects on cognition, depressive mood, and health-related quality of life. The feasibility of the intervention is also discussed. Methods: The current study had 11 participants with severe TBI; four women and seven men, 19 – 45 years old, with an average time of 7.6 years from the acquisition of the injury. A two-group crossover design with random allocation was used. The intervention (three months, two weekly sessions) was carried out together by a dance instructor and a physiotherapist. Neuropsychological assessments were conducted at the beginning of the study (t0), and twice after that every three months (t3 and t6). Performance before and after the intervention in general cognition, frontal lobe functions, abstract reasoning, visuo-spatial reasoning, working memory, mood, health-related quality of life, and executive functions were compared with paired sample t-tests. Time and group interactions were studied by repeated measures analyses of variance. Results: Abstract reasoning, health-related quality of life, and most saliently, mood improved significantly during the intervention. Qualitative findings also indicated enhanced mood. One of the participants described being reconnected to emotions for the first time a after the acquisition of the TBI and several other participants expressed positive feelings and experiences during the intervention. Conclusions: The current study suggests that dance rehabilitation may improve mood, abstract reasoning, and quality of life in the chronic state of severe TBI. These results are tentative and more research with larger samples is needed to verify the findings.

Body consciousness research is a multidisciplinary field including various conceptualizations of its subject. Usually research frames are based on comparisons between bodily experts, such as dancers, or psychiatric groups with bodily aberrations (e.g. eating disorders) and control participants. Methods of body consciousness research include behavioural and self-report measures as well as brain imaging. Some methods have been used to study bodily experts, but not psychiatric groups, and vice versa. In this study, dancers, amateur and professional athletes, and control participants were studied using four behavioural methods (aperture task, endpoint matching, rubber hand illusion, posture copying) and two self-report measures PBCS (Private Body Consciousness Scale of the Body Consciousness Questionnaire) and BAQ (Body Awareness Questionnaire). Because many methods of studying body consciousness focus on the use of hands, a new method called posture copying, involving the whole body, was developed in this study. Dancers succeeded better than controls in the aperture task, and better than athletes and controls in the posture copying task. In the posture copying task, group differences were present in copying all other body parts but hands. Both dancers and athletes scored higher in the BAQ than controls. There was an almost significant difference between athletes and controls in the endpoint matching task. No group differences were found in the rubber hand illusion or PBCS. The results were considered as proof that dancing has a special connection with body consciousness, but that some aspects of body consciousness are similar in dancers and athletes. Methods measuring the same quality of body consciousness produced contradictory evidence, which questions their validity. This study offers useful knowledge for the future of body consciousness research, with regards to choice of participants, methodology, and study design, as well as treatment plans of clinical groups with disorders in their body consciousness (e.g. eating disorders).