E2M – Embodied Emotion in Motion: Developing Dancers’ Tools to Explore Sensorimotor Patterns for Emotion and Peak Performance

Abstract

This article discusses the results of a practice-as-research intensive project carried out in August 2019, which in turn applies the doctoral research of scholar-practitioners Jorge Crecis and Lucía Piquero. The project delved into ideas about embodied cognition to support a practice-led theoretical understanding of the experience of emotional import and peak performative states in theatre dance performances. A series of creative sessions were recorded and analyzed, and then presented to an audience at the end of each day. The experience of the audience is also collected through questionnaires and open discussion, to develop a multi-perspectival understanding of the experience of emotion in performance. The main pursuit of the project was to understand and develop tools in relation to the dancers’ awareness of their own sensorimotor patterns, in relation to peak performance and understandings of emotion in performance. The article develops a conceptual framework through the theoretical notions of embodied cognition, enactive perception, and sensorimotor patterns. This allows for analysis based on the experiences of the participants, and for an integration of views which then develops into a discussion of the dancers’ awareness of their sensorimotor patterns.