Haptic and deep sensing in ballet class

Abstract

ABSTRACT Different cultural traditions about the sensory domain of tactility can lead groups of people to categorize the senses differently. This research explores how professional dancers in their social relations learn sensorially through touch at three London institutions and offers new perspectives on how touch compose part of the dancers’ shifting sensoria and the epistemology of the culture of their ballet class. Drawing on de Sousa Santos (2018) development of the concept of corazonar and Borda’s (2015, 10) notion of “sentipensar” (feeling-thinking) I discuss how dancers feel touch, how other sensorial modalities intersect with touch and how the variants of touch/being touched influence learning. In my study the dancer’s ways of knowing are inscribed in social relations by combining the feeling/thinking, reason, and love in emotions/affects indicating a deeper understanding of the confluence of various senses. The methodology involved four years of ethnographic observations, my active participation in professional ballet classes and interviews with dancers.