Visible thought : choreographic cognition in creating, performing, and watching contemporary dance

In the creation, performance and appreciation of contemporary dance we find a microcosm of cognition. Contemporary dance is at once nonverbal, communicative, and expressive; it is visual, spatial, temporal, kinaesthetic, affective, and dynamic. This chapter applies contemporary psychological theory to the complex processes that mediate creation, performance, and observation of contemporary dance. These perceptual, cognitive and emotional processes are termed collectively choreographic cognition. Psychological investigations have dealt with dance as discrete movements or steps, and questions of memory and imagery have been unnecessarily confined to codes that are verbal or visual. We propose there is much more. Movement through space is continuous, it flows; transitions are the conveyors of information and form. In an effort to capture the temporal and spatial characteristics, we outline a theoretical approach that conceptualizes choreographic cognition as an evolving dynamical system. We also pose research questions and suggest ways that these are beginning to be addressed. Contemporary dance is defined here as a work in which the major medium is movement, deliberately and systematically cultivated for its own sake, with the aim of achieving a work of art. It shares with other art forms the possibility of being viewed either as non-representational/non-symbolic (typically termed 'formalist' in aesthetic theory), or of being representational or symbolic in some sense. Regardless of the approach that is adopted, time, space and motion are the media for choreographic cognition.