An Enactivist Model of Improvisational Dance

Abstract

Despite its centrality in all human cultures and throughout human history, philosophy of mind and cognitive science have historically had very little to say about vernacular dance. Vernacular dances are cultural dances, the ones we do at parties, clubs, rituals, festivals, competitions, in the studio, and sometimes at home in the mirror. Vernacular dances are, as I argue, forms of life. Despite its importance, most of our current frameworks within the philosophy of mind and cognitive science still treat dance as an afterthought. This dissertation argues that representational and computational philosophy of mind and cognitive science cannot adequately account for vernacular improvisational dance. Instead, we need a dynamic systems based enactivist account of vernacular improvisational dance which emphasizes self-organization and affordances. I argue that in improvisational dance, the dichotomy between being in control and not in control of ones actions does not neatly map on to the phenomenon. Rather, vernacular improvisational dance is characterized by distributed control; the dancer, other agents, the environment, the music, culture, and other factors co-constitute the dance system. In other words, improvisational dance is an emergent product constituted by the totality of the dance context. Instead of reconstructing the world in an inner simulation, dancers are in direct commerce with the world, regulating the environment through affordances as the world regulates the dancer. In this model, skill is not just the ability to assert ones agency but also the ability to let oneself be regulated by the environment. When we aesthetically evaluate an improviser, we are (amongst other things) analyzing how well they can dynamically couple themselves with minute forces in the environment