Metodo

International Studies in Phenomenology and Philosophy

Book | Chapter

178427

Foregrounding the imagination

re-reflecting on dancers' engagement with video self-recordings

Shantel Ehrenberg

pp. 133-163

Abstract

This chapter negotiates interpretations of dancers' descriptions of dancing using a phenomenological approach with arguments about the power of the visual. It explicitly advocates for the possibility to conceive of visual self-reflection, related to certain contexts, as productive for dancers. More specifically, to support two key points: (1) the ways that a group of dancers engage with video self-recordings in ways that are productive, primarily because of the context they are viewing the videos and their project as dancers and (2) that dancers' lived experience and processes of becoming dancers nurture them to pay attention to kinaesthetic skill or give power to the kinaesthetic, which can undermine the power of the visual. The latter is to acknowledge the power and agency of dance knowledge and intelligence—an intelligence that can only be understood by investigating dancers' lived experiences in the practice. It is also to foreground the imagination in the dancers' viewings of video self-recordings in the practice and the way they work as professional dancers to express an imagined creative form by and through their dancing.

Publication details

Published in:

Grant Stuart, McNeilly-Renaudie Jodie, Wagner Matthew (2019) Performance phenomenology: to the thing itself. Dordrecht, Springer.

Pages: 133-163

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-98059-1_7

Full citation:

Ehrenberg Shantel (2019) „Foregrounding the imagination: re-reflecting on dancers' engagement with video self-recordings“, In: S. Grant, J. Mcneilly-Renaudie & M. Wagner (eds.), Performance phenomenology, Dordrecht, Springer, 133–163.