Understanding "Dance Understanding"

relations of space and time, of space and proportion, as well as concrete awareness of the movement phrases and body shapes and their connections in the overall performance. Heightened awareness of relationships between the various parts of the moving body, as well as among the dancers working together in a performance, results in a state of "thinking in movement". Following Merleau Ponty, and Maxine Sheets-Johnstone, the movement becomes the presence of thoughtP From this brief overview, it is apparent that dance performance represents an enormously complex set of cognitive operations requiring attention to several different domains. Erlebnis requires thatwe consider kinesthetic processes, feelings, and ideas, all in relation to movement. While Erlebnis appears to be the primary feature of knowledge considered from the point of view of the performer, a performance can also function as symbol for communicating ideas and feelings. Hence, through movement, a performance may present knowledge about something other than itself, as when the movement tells an edifying story or imitates the movements of the planets. In such instances, the performance approaches Erkenntnis, but this does not seem to be its primary function. Because the producer is also the receiver of the knowledge given in the performance, the dancer is in a unique position with respect to knowledge. As the producer, the dancer is in a position to share in the discoveries that unfold during the creative process; as the receiver, he/ she also aware of the outcome that is shared with audiences, critics, and theorists. While a dancer's knowledge may include what has been discovered during the creative process, there are apparent differences between the knowledge experienced directly by the producer and knowledge as it appears to the audience, and in criticism and aesthetic theory. The audience does not undergo the internal feedback of the performer and typically is not on the same level with respect to knowledge of the choreography and training. Rather the audience's knowledge, though firsthand experience, depends on seeing and other sensory and conceptual modes of information, including the kinesthetics, being transmitted and processed by the mind-body systems. The audience's knowledge, as well as that of critics and theorists, predominantly, but in varying degrees, are forms of Erkenntnis or knowledge about the 26 Ann Marie De Angelo, principal dancer, Jeffrey Ballet, Interview, New York, November, 1980. 27 Maxine Sheets-Johnstone, "Thinking in Movement," Journal of Aesthetics andArt Critidsm, 39:4 (1981), 398-407.