How to explore dancers’ sense experiences? A study of how multi-sited fieldwork and phenomenology can be combined

Abstract

In this article, we deal with how sense experiences can be described and analysed in movement activities such as dance. We present a methodological framework of how multi-sited fieldwork and phenomenology can be combined to explore ongoing constitutive processes of subjects’ sense experiences. The challenge of how to employ phenomenology in relation to a fieldwork based on particular and subjective experiences is constructively related to phenomenological discussions of the content versus the structure of experience. Phenomenology as a philosophical enterprise is subsequently linked to concrete methodological challenges, by presenting and discussing how, in a specific study, we handle the ‘in practise’ sense experiences of different dancers. Being a dancer herself, the first author included her embodied competence when performing the fieldwork. The body thereby became both the researcher’s tool and the subject to be investigated. The comparative structure implicit to performing a multi-sited fieldwork was used to build a creative tension between the researcher’s and the dancers’ experiences. Two descriptions of dancers’ sense experiences are presented. They exemplify how the dancers turn to an overall sense of how the body feels in preference to working with specific modalities of sensing. Furthermore, the dancers’ sensing of the physicality of their moving bodies appears to be shaped by their unique intention is at the same time given form through their interactions with other dancers.

Keywords:

• philosophy
• qualitative methodologies
• participant observation
• subjectivity
• researcher positions

Acknowledgment

We thank Dorothée Legrand for her helpful comments on a previous version of this paper. We would also like to express our sincere gratitude to the anonymous reviewers for providing us with constructive and detailed suggestions. Ravn acknowledges the support from The Ministry of Culture Committee on Sports Research, Denmark.

Notes

1. We use here the notion ‘constituted’ in accordance to Moran and Zahavi’s presentation of Husserl’s writing on constitution as a threefold process. The process of constitution is about how objects come into being for the subject and is experienced in consciousness as other than consciousness (Moran 2000, pp. 165–166). Constitution unfolds itself in the structure of subjectivity and the world in a threefold process of subjectivity-intersubjectivity-world (Zahavi 2003, p. 74–76). The threefold process illuminates subject and world as fundamentally intertwined.

2. Ravn’s prior experiences include more than 10 years of competing in rhythmic sport gymnastics on an international level, followed by three years of training in classical ballet (classes 3–5 times a week) and ongoing training in various contemporary dance techniques (Ravn 2009, pp. 84–85).

3. Four solo dancers from the Royal Danish Ballet were also included in the study. Each dancer’s practices and descriptions from interviews were worked with as individual cases in the earlier part of the analysis (Ravn 2009, p. 141 ff.). As we have chosen ‘only’ to present and refer to the nine contemporary dances in the methodological discussions in this article, for the case of clarity we have chosen only to include those dancers in the presentation of the design.

4. The theories and methods of BMC rely on experimenting, experiencing and exploring anatomical and physiological mechanisms and principles. The training is also referred to as a re-education of the body and a journey through which ‘we are led to an understanding of how the mind is expressed through the body in movement’ (Cohen 2008, p. 1).

5. The sense of transformations of energy and presence combined with relatively ‘slow-moving’ choreographies are some of the most striking aspects of the expressiveness of Butoh dance forms (Ravn 2009, p. 108). Butoh technique can be described as striving towards a ‘hypersensitive’ awareness to make the dancer able to ‘tap into a universal consciousness, bridging a gap between “self” and “other”’ (Hassel 2005, p. 16).

6. The following themes were central to the questions asked: How the dancer thinks of the physical materiality in her/his technique?Based on the shared practices each dancer was asked to exemplify their initial descriptions further. How they are aware of their body when moving?Each dancer was asked about the focus of their sense awareness. The question was phrased in an open way. Subsequently, they were also asked to describe the sense experiences they recall from different situations of the shared practice – and to exemplify how they by purpose direct their sense awareness in these situations.When referring to the shared practices, Ravn used her own experiences (including both a first and second order perspective) to elicit further descriptions and examples by the dancer (Ravn 2009, pp. 137–138).