P.
My work in dance-improvisation and composition is born from the practice of exercises I design and propose to trained dancers. These exercises are based on complex combinations of thought-based and body-based tasks, which are aimed at taking the dancer out of their comfort zone while attempting to master more than one thing at the time. The tasks I propose to the dancers ground themselves in the idea of DOUBT, applied to both intellectual and physical realms. What attracts me to doubt are the possibilities it faces me with. I am particularly interested in the application of doubt to a physical practice, the embodiment of this emotion and whether an integration of body and mind in this context leads to vulnerability and intimacy with an audience.
My work in dance-improvisation and composition is born from the practice of exercises I design and propose to trained dancers. These exercises are based on complex combinations of thought-based and body-based tasks, which are aimed at taking the dancer out of their comfort zone while attempting to master more than one thing at the time. The tasks I propose to the dancers ground themselves in the idea of DOUBT, applied to both intellectual and physical realms. What attracts me to doubt are the possibilities it faces me with. I am particularly interested in the application of doubt to a physical practice, the embodiment of this emotion and whether an integration of body and mind in this context leads to vulnerability and intimacy with an audience.
C.
Doubt is commonly associated with uncertainty in front of more than one course of action to choose from (Delft Institute of Positive Design, 2020). There is not one sole definition of this notion. In philosophy doubt has been associated with skepticism. René Descartes addresses doubt in his Meditations on First Philosophy, in particular in Meditation One, where he states that knowledge about the external world is impossible, making an example through the figure of a Meditator who, finding it impossible to keep opinions and assumptions out of his head, pretends that these opinions are imaginary to counter-balance his habitual way of thinking (Descartes, R., 1993, p. 13). This approach generates a methodology called Cartesian Doubt, to assess truth as a basis for the sciences. In this context I am not searching for definitive answers but for openings. On a different end of the spectrum, farther from the sciences and closer to spirituality, doubt has been given attention by Zen Buddhism in a different light: by doubting the necessity to doubt itself, Zen Buddhism claims that the sophistication of thought leading men to doubt exposes an artificial construct of the mind, which in turn collapses as there is always an unknown (Leach, N., 2019). In Zen practice, the essential point is to arouse doubt to the point of realising that it cannot be mastered. This breakthrough, also called Doubt Block, or Great Doubt is what in Zen claims to keep men curious and to challenge them to cultivate trust and find focus and openness in life (Batchelor, M. 2001, p.29).
Applying a blend of strategies deriving from both Cartesian Doubt -through which a dancer can inject imaginary options into a dance improvisation to challenge their habitual thinking- and Zen Buddhism -to open up to possibilities and augment their curiosity-, doubt becomes in itself a conversation in constant evolution. The indecision motivates an urge for movement (of thought and of body) to change a static into a dynamic situation. It is this act of negotiation, materialising a dialogue in search of a resolution, that can results in the experience of a state of uncertainty and vulnerability.
Doubt is commonly associated with uncertainty in front of more than one course of action to choose from (Delft Institute of Positive Design, 2020). There is not one sole definition of this notion. In philosophy doubt has been associated with skepticism. René Descartes addresses doubt in his Meditations on First Philosophy, in particular in Meditation One, where he states that knowledge about the external world is impossible, making an example through the figure of a Meditator who, finding it impossible to keep opinions and assumptions out of his head, pretends that these opinions are imaginary to counter-balance his habitual way of thinking (Descartes, R., 1993, p. 13). This approach generates a methodology called Cartesian Doubt, to assess truth as a basis for the sciences. In this context I am not searching for definitive answers but for openings. On a different end of the spectrum, farther from the sciences and closer to spirituality, doubt has been given attention by Zen Buddhism in a different light: by doubting the necessity to doubt itself, Zen Buddhism claims that the sophistication of thought leading men to doubt exposes an artificial construct of the mind, which in turn collapses as there is always an unknown (Leach, N., 2019). In Zen practice, the essential point is to arouse doubt to the point of realising that it cannot be mastered. This breakthrough, also called Doubt Block, or Great Doubt is what in Zen claims to keep men curious and to challenge them to cultivate trust and find focus and openness in life (Batchelor, M. 2001, p.29).
Applying a blend of strategies deriving from both Cartesian Doubt -through which a dancer can inject imaginary options into a dance improvisation to challenge their habitual thinking- and Zen Buddhism -to open up to possibilities and augment their curiosity-, doubt becomes in itself a conversation in constant evolution. The indecision motivates an urge for movement (of thought and of body) to change a static into a dynamic situation. It is this act of negotiation, materialising a dialogue in search of a resolution, that can results in the experience of a state of uncertainty and vulnerability.
2.
P.
The necessity to consider doubt's relevance in the practice of dance, which faces me with the potential to see multiple options and to take decisions accordingly, sprouts from the feeling of pressure coming from norms and constructs in the field of contemporary dance. Dance (as other fields reflecting of social conditions), is infected by an expectation of what it should look like, how it needs to entertain publics, where it may or not be performed and whether the messages it conveys are fitting a given context. This is dictated by social and economical factors which influence the production of dance from top down, persuading it to adhere to formalities and inhibiting it from finding alternative ways to manifest. I address doubt as a strategic resistance to attitudes, beliefs, and behaviours adherent to a group norm, and as a potential key to emancipation from mass ideologies -even in as small a bubble as the dance industry-. Reflecting upon this with a solution-oriented attitude, I come to conceive the term CÓNTFORMAL, for a dance that is contrarian to form, where the first part 'cónt' stands as an abbreviation of contrary.
One of my movement tasks: "as soon as I feel I know what I am doing (ie: I am able to define it, predict where it is going or have a sense of control over my actions), I change it" takes me into a conversation between metamorphing forms, where each time a movement or a thought is about to be completed, it is deliberately interrupted, constantly morphing into the next beginning, escaping shape like soap in a bathtub. Even a natural organisation of the organs inside the body is challenged, purposefully un-forming or deforming the body within its container. By doing so I ask myself how I can loosen up the conception of the body as I know it.
The necessity to consider doubt's relevance in the practice of dance, which faces me with the potential to see multiple options and to take decisions accordingly, sprouts from the feeling of pressure coming from norms and constructs in the field of contemporary dance. Dance (as other fields reflecting of social conditions), is infected by an expectation of what it should look like, how it needs to entertain publics, where it may or not be performed and whether the messages it conveys are fitting a given context. This is dictated by social and economical factors which influence the production of dance from top down, persuading it to adhere to formalities and inhibiting it from finding alternative ways to manifest. I address doubt as a strategic resistance to attitudes, beliefs, and behaviours adherent to a group norm, and as a potential key to emancipation from mass ideologies -even in as small a bubble as the dance industry-. Reflecting upon this with a solution-oriented attitude, I come to conceive the term CÓNTFORMAL, for a dance that is contrarian to form, where the first part 'cónt' stands as an abbreviation of contrary.
One of my movement tasks: "as soon as I feel I know what I am doing (ie: I am able to define it, predict where it is going or have a sense of control over my actions), I change it" takes me into a conversation between metamorphing forms, where each time a movement or a thought is about to be completed, it is deliberately interrupted, constantly morphing into the next beginning, escaping shape like soap in a bathtub. Even a natural organisation of the organs inside the body is challenged, purposefully un-forming or deforming the body within its container. By doing so I ask myself how I can loosen up the conception of the body as I know it.
C.
Within the arts, form is conceived as the three-dimensional aspect of shape, whether material or as an illusion (a drawing). In 1914 the critic Clive Bell coined the term significant-form to describe form that could be expressive even when divorced from appearances (Bell, C. 1914, p.50). Georges Bataille conceived the term informe—that admits of no definition, defies definitions as such, even denies essentially that things have “definition” (Theophanidis, P. 2014), and uses the notion in a philosophical sense, detaching it from the relation of form to finite matter. In the course of the twentieth century the notion of form has become suspect, from Dada to Surrealist movements investigating to find a form for formlessness, to show the form that has no form (ie: the works of the painter Francis Bacon). If the above examples challenge art to fulfil its purpose without form rather than with-form, they also challenge art from a perpetuation of an existing and established normativity. An attitude of contrariety to form could imply its destruction, vandalisation, neglecting. The idea of cóntformal I want to introduce is not an act of against-ness. What it enables is an active escape from fixity and formality, touching it but slipping off of it. In psychology Postformal Thought is the step beyond formal thought, considered to be a sophistication of thinking. According to it one is able to "relate contradictory systems of formal operations to permit practical choice among those systems" (Sinnott J.D. 1998, p.22). Thinking operations, which can be thought of as relations in constant adaptation or dialogue with each other, constitute ever-morphing networks of thought, reordering in a system that never comes to a single conclusion (p.24).
In this light, cóntformal is not as an attribute of one movement or one thought, but of a dialogue of both questioning one another. The result is a complex and ever changing combination of shape-shifting entities, questioning a hierarchical organisation of the systems of the body and allowing to imagine alternative ways to relate them with one another.
Within the arts, form is conceived as the three-dimensional aspect of shape, whether material or as an illusion (a drawing). In 1914 the critic Clive Bell coined the term significant-form to describe form that could be expressive even when divorced from appearances (Bell, C. 1914, p.50). Georges Bataille conceived the term informe—that admits of no definition, defies definitions as such, even denies essentially that things have “definition” (Theophanidis, P. 2014), and uses the notion in a philosophical sense, detaching it from the relation of form to finite matter. In the course of the twentieth century the notion of form has become suspect, from Dada to Surrealist movements investigating to find a form for formlessness, to show the form that has no form (ie: the works of the painter Francis Bacon). If the above examples challenge art to fulfil its purpose without form rather than with-form, they also challenge art from a perpetuation of an existing and established normativity. An attitude of contrariety to form could imply its destruction, vandalisation, neglecting. The idea of cóntformal I want to introduce is not an act of against-ness. What it enables is an active escape from fixity and formality, touching it but slipping off of it. In psychology Postformal Thought is the step beyond formal thought, considered to be a sophistication of thinking. According to it one is able to "relate contradictory systems of formal operations to permit practical choice among those systems" (Sinnott J.D. 1998, p.22). Thinking operations, which can be thought of as relations in constant adaptation or dialogue with each other, constitute ever-morphing networks of thought, reordering in a system that never comes to a single conclusion (p.24).
In this light, cóntformal is not as an attribute of one movement or one thought, but of a dialogue of both questioning one another. The result is a complex and ever changing combination of shape-shifting entities, questioning a hierarchical organisation of the systems of the body and allowing to imagine alternative ways to relate them with one another.
3.
P.
What motivates me to challenge the fixity of forms and to take into account a multiplicity of options to choose from, lies in my perpetual search for volition in the moment of performance. The term volition implies a power of choice (conscious or automatised) I am able to engage with. Engaging with volition in the act of moving and thinking in performance is for me a way to assess my position against given circumstances and to find a relative sense of freedom within a specific situation. This does not come independent of responsibilities. In fact what distinguishes volition from free will or unbounded freedom, is that volition is a power of choice within a given situation. It asks to act accordingly to what the circumstance allows. To talk with specificity about how I apply choice within my practice, I will acquaint the reader with the notion of OPTION-VOLITION, where option is used as an auxiliary word to help narrow down the meaning of volition in relation to my particular approach to dance. It may sound counter intuitive or even contradictory to the framework of this lexicon to try and narrow down, but a degree of clarity at times allows me to consider the available options. In this case to practice option-volition in order to escape definition. This condition of desire to escape and to evaluate possibilities, leads the body to being torn between a kick and a cuddle.
What motivates me to challenge the fixity of forms and to take into account a multiplicity of options to choose from, lies in my perpetual search for volition in the moment of performance. The term volition implies a power of choice (conscious or automatised) I am able to engage with. Engaging with volition in the act of moving and thinking in performance is for me a way to assess my position against given circumstances and to find a relative sense of freedom within a specific situation. This does not come independent of responsibilities. In fact what distinguishes volition from free will or unbounded freedom, is that volition is a power of choice within a given situation. It asks to act accordingly to what the circumstance allows. To talk with specificity about how I apply choice within my practice, I will acquaint the reader with the notion of OPTION-VOLITION, where option is used as an auxiliary word to help narrow down the meaning of volition in relation to my particular approach to dance. It may sound counter intuitive or even contradictory to the framework of this lexicon to try and narrow down, but a degree of clarity at times allows me to consider the available options. In this case to practice option-volition in order to escape definition. This condition of desire to escape and to evaluate possibilities, leads the body to being torn between a kick and a cuddle.
C.
It is a combination of option and volition that shifts a situation onwards from a standpoint to another, generating movement in between. To have options is to have the freedom or right to choose something, to make a decision based on available alternatives. In order to make a decision, a certain amount of involvement of one's own will is necessary. Determinists deny the reality of choice, because of an apparent connection of motive and volition with physical, psychological, social, and unconscious factors. Indeterminists instead think that human beings with limited choices are still free to choose among alternatives (Rummel, R.J. 2020). For Hannah Arendt, will is the faculty by which free action is possible (Jacobitti, S. 1988, p.53). In her last work The life of the mind, coming from Martin Heidegger's phenomenological approach to will as something men cannot own -which is later diverted towards an understanding of it as an act of "bringing oneself to one's self"- Arendt talks about will through the self, which has itself a desire to encounter its authenticity (Arendt, H. p. 176). This leans towards the idea of volition conceived as the "absolute commitment to achieving something" (Ghoshal, S., Bruch, H., 2003)—perhaps its authenticity. Option-volition in this context is dependent and responsive to external factors, and independent of the strength of motivation that drives it. It exists in the encounter of cognitive and non-cognitive influences impacting the body-mind in its performing of the self.
The conversations occurring between physical and psychological desire, and social and individual responsibility constitute the dialogue intrinsic to the concept of option-volition. The body-mind lives and performs through the tension these generate.
It is a combination of option and volition that shifts a situation onwards from a standpoint to another, generating movement in between. To have options is to have the freedom or right to choose something, to make a decision based on available alternatives. In order to make a decision, a certain amount of involvement of one's own will is necessary. Determinists deny the reality of choice, because of an apparent connection of motive and volition with physical, psychological, social, and unconscious factors. Indeterminists instead think that human beings with limited choices are still free to choose among alternatives (Rummel, R.J. 2020). For Hannah Arendt, will is the faculty by which free action is possible (Jacobitti, S. 1988, p.53). In her last work The life of the mind, coming from Martin Heidegger's phenomenological approach to will as something men cannot own -which is later diverted towards an understanding of it as an act of "bringing oneself to one's self"- Arendt talks about will through the self, which has itself a desire to encounter its authenticity (Arendt, H. p. 176). This leans towards the idea of volition conceived as the "absolute commitment to achieving something" (Ghoshal, S., Bruch, H., 2003)—perhaps its authenticity. Option-volition in this context is dependent and responsive to external factors, and independent of the strength of motivation that drives it. It exists in the encounter of cognitive and non-cognitive influences impacting the body-mind in its performing of the self.
The conversations occurring between physical and psychological desire, and social and individual responsibility constitute the dialogue intrinsic to the concept of option-volition. The body-mind lives and performs through the tension these generate.
4.
P.
I search for movement that is cóntformal, engaging with doubt and applying option-volition to find an urge for change to occur. If option-volition is the freedom and power to act responsively to given circumstances, I need a motivation to manifest movement, and through it my individuality -not as separate from everything that constitutes and surrounds me, but as the result of my integration in an ecology of provocation and response-. The dance I want to be talking about emerges from frictions generating sparks of a fire. I feel the necessity to put heat into the dialogue, moving away from rationality or interest-driven action, and towards viscerality. Adding the term FRICTION to this nor-lexicon enables me to talk about a heat born from attrition between contradictions, a resistance generating a force that rebels to external or artificial conditions I have earlier mentioned as being pressuring. A tension between rough surfaces that seeks release through the courage to take decisions, as uncomfortable or unsatisfying as they may be.
Friction gives life to a visceral body, mediating risky conversations between co-existing desires: that to be seen and simultaneously that to disappear. What makes friction crucial to my practice is the phenomenology it entails: the experience of it as a catalyst of change. The body-mind is set into motion, and cannot be questioned. It is the question itself, (r)evolving.
I search for movement that is cóntformal, engaging with doubt and applying option-volition to find an urge for change to occur. If option-volition is the freedom and power to act responsively to given circumstances, I need a motivation to manifest movement, and through it my individuality -not as separate from everything that constitutes and surrounds me, but as the result of my integration in an ecology of provocation and response-. The dance I want to be talking about emerges from frictions generating sparks of a fire. I feel the necessity to put heat into the dialogue, moving away from rationality or interest-driven action, and towards viscerality. Adding the term FRICTION to this nor-lexicon enables me to talk about a heat born from attrition between contradictions, a resistance generating a force that rebels to external or artificial conditions I have earlier mentioned as being pressuring. A tension between rough surfaces that seeks release through the courage to take decisions, as uncomfortable or unsatisfying as they may be.
Friction gives life to a visceral body, mediating risky conversations between co-existing desires: that to be seen and simultaneously that to disappear. What makes friction crucial to my practice is the phenomenology it entails: the experience of it as a catalyst of change. The body-mind is set into motion, and cannot be questioned. It is the question itself, (r)evolving.
C.
Epistemologically, friction and freedom are both central to knowledge, and are not mutually exclusive. Norms, for example, are products of freedom but instruments of friction (Sher, G. 2016 p.8). According to Gila Sher, so much as norms, knowledge requires friction or constraints. This is where the practice of doubt and option-volition reveals itself as a strategy striving for discovery: friction becomes a catalyst for new knowledge, but not only. It is also a means to embodied criticality: generated by a state of questioning, or of doubt, it manifests as an experience of effort, where by rubbing up agains difference one realises their position. It cannot be talked about friction or heat without mentioning physics. If in art, form inhabits three dimensions, in physics a fourth dimension appears: that of time. The Third Law of Motion demonstrates that without friction one would not be able to maintain stability nor to walk (NASA, n.d.). To come back to Descartes, in his Theory of Motion, he denies that bodies possess any inertia or sluggishness in their nature, making of a state of ease and convenience one of stall (Kochiras, H., cited in Nolan, L. 2016, p. 405-407). Later in the 19th century, French engineer Sadi Carnot, with his Second Law of Thermodynamics proposes that heat can be generated by mechanical energy through friction (Srinivasan, J. 2001, p.46). With an analogy between physical and phenomenological properties of friction applied to my practice of dance -therefore to the dimensions of space and time- it can be said that an internal friction generates heat and momentum, while simultaneously allowing to maintain stability over time. From a place of doubt, torn between contradictory tasks, in the moment of slipping through resistances as the body-mind works out its ways, micro-changes occur where I may think or experience something in a new or different way from just before.
Epistemologically, friction and freedom are both central to knowledge, and are not mutually exclusive. Norms, for example, are products of freedom but instruments of friction (Sher, G. 2016 p.8). According to Gila Sher, so much as norms, knowledge requires friction or constraints. This is where the practice of doubt and option-volition reveals itself as a strategy striving for discovery: friction becomes a catalyst for new knowledge, but not only. It is also a means to embodied criticality: generated by a state of questioning, or of doubt, it manifests as an experience of effort, where by rubbing up agains difference one realises their position. It cannot be talked about friction or heat without mentioning physics. If in art, form inhabits three dimensions, in physics a fourth dimension appears: that of time. The Third Law of Motion demonstrates that without friction one would not be able to maintain stability nor to walk (NASA, n.d.). To come back to Descartes, in his Theory of Motion, he denies that bodies possess any inertia or sluggishness in their nature, making of a state of ease and convenience one of stall (Kochiras, H., cited in Nolan, L. 2016, p. 405-407). Later in the 19th century, French engineer Sadi Carnot, with his Second Law of Thermodynamics proposes that heat can be generated by mechanical energy through friction (Srinivasan, J. 2001, p.46). With an analogy between physical and phenomenological properties of friction applied to my practice of dance -therefore to the dimensions of space and time- it can be said that an internal friction generates heat and momentum, while simultaneously allowing to maintain stability over time. From a place of doubt, torn between contradictory tasks, in the moment of slipping through resistances as the body-mind works out its ways, micro-changes occur where I may think or experience something in a new or different way from just before.