Reflection - Layer One

Reflections and further thinking after Choreolab 2010 at Jacob’s Pillow

In honor of Michael I am setting my timer for 42 minutes:

I am left with the realization that many people, including and, possibly especially, dancers, cannot finish the sentence “Because I dance I know...”  In the contingent that can muster an answer or two, few of those then transcend into language and expression that can be understood as as acutuality by people outside of the dnace realm.  This, it seems, is a problem.

From this realization, I begin to ask some questions of myself -

What is embodied learning, really?

Is it merely a hands on practice of investigation used in classrooms?  If it is more than that, and I believe that is most definitely is, then how so?  

Is it enough to say that because I am in motion I am learning?  What is the practice that allows me to know that I know?  That allows an onlooker to also know?

What is meant by learning through dance?  

What is meant by danced learning?

Are these questions asking different things, and if so, what?  Do their evi/dances manifest in different ways and if so what are the identifiers?

Difficulties come when the artist educators themselves have not made decisions about the distinctions and/or have not yet found the bridges and the deep water diving suits required to push us past the sentimental and stereotypical statements surrounding I just feel it in my body ( my gut, my heart...could THIS be some actual physiological response to information?  recognition stimulating the neurons to fire more rapidly - pupils dilating, heart rate increasing to keep up with the increased need of blood and oxygen to the brain???)

I know that we did investigate some of this but I also feel that in speaking with our audience there was a definite lack of common language that assists the identifying therefore, once again, relegating danced knowledge to that ephemeral temoprally sensitive place that allows us to shrug and say - “well, I could just feel it, you know?...”

So - WHAT IS IT? And what do we KNOW because of it?

I am thinking a lot about the process of how we record information.  Although we feel duty bound to name the many learning styles and modalities, to say that I am ( or you are) a kinesthetic learner however, feels at this point like a cop out.  Is there anyone you have ever met who did not have an increased sense of understanding or knowing after having an embodied experience of some kind in their explorations?  Maria brought up the new research on motor neurons and I think that there is some very important information there - it goes well with the somatic investigations of kinsethesia - the idea being that once you have had an experience in your body then when you see something similar happening there in an automatic sympathetic motor response in your body as you watch it occuring on someone else.  This idea added to the notion that there are mirror neurons, acutal neuronal structures that recognize and remember the information gathered through motoric investigations gives us some real information.  As we investigate the neuro-motor pathways are open and evaluating every moment.  WE analyze the data as it comes in and we adjust our responses accordingly - in better informed trials or in highly skilled and decisive actions.  There mirror neurons are seperate from the original neuro-motor pathways - and yet they are stimulated by initiating a memory process surrounding the action in question - they help us know what we know and why - they help us layer and cross modalities so that we connect our verbal knowledge into our motor knowledge, our motor into verbal, our written to motor to verbal , our sight to written to motor to verbal - you get the idea - 

but is the actual physical structure in our nervous system getting stimulated by TO CONNECT differing types of information that allow us to integrate our knowledge in a deeper way.

SO - when I suggest that by spending time in motor investigation in order to know - suggesting too that because I dance I gain knowledge that I would not have gained otherwise - could this be part of the why and the how and the multi layered proof needed?  

BEyond the question of emdodied learning - is the further question of what is embodied research?

What is research?  We hold a question or a hypothesis outside of our selves based on formerly gathered information that holds together as agreed upon truth - or knowledge.  AS I hold it away from me in the form of a question or hypothesis what takes place?  I ask a series of questions of the question as object - how to investigate it through movement to find out something I didn’t know before?  If I know a., b. and c., what if I alter how I see or use a.?  Will the overall relationships still hold?  As silly as it may sound what does it mean if I investigate the rhythmic or inflective potential of the word research itself?  ( RHy......tttttthhhhhh/MIC or rhhhhyyyytththththththmimimi c c c c or R H Y THHHHHHHHHHH/      mic) Isn’t this analogous to documenting the changes in gestation periods of frog eggs as we consider the patterns of warming climate in the northeast?  

Is not the process of working on idea in space and time, similar to going to a library and looking something up?  

Here’s a question - How do we look things up on and in the body?  

What is it when we observe others in movement investigations and what do we see?  

How do we know we are seeing it?  

What allows us to recognize or identify information?

I am determined to continue to push this investigation -

Descartes already used the I think therefore I am simplicity thing - to say I dance therefore I know is not enough.

There are levels and layers - 

Dance to investigate specific curricular problems

Dance to investigate intuitive honing

Dance to interpret learning expressively

Dance to know one’s self

Dance to know one’s self in relationship to....( fill in the blank)

Dance to re/search what one knows and how many ways one came to know it

Dance as a partner or peer in the normal research arsenal of books, internet, media, reading, writing and talking - to add to the depth of ways we investigate and know.

ok, I htink that’s it for the moment 

to post or not to post, THAT is the question.