Investigating Dance Improvisation: From Spontaneity to Agency

Abstract

This article argues that the performance of a dance entails varying degrees of openness and spontaneity and that, on these terms, any dance can be considered improvised. The first part substantiates this claim, whereupon the second part deals with the contingent question as to how dancers then handle openness and spontaneity differently in improvisation practices. To answer this question, the article turns to enactive and phenomenological clarifications of agency—our capacity to perform acts—and by analyzing the improvisation of Danish performer Kitt Johnson, indicates how this clarification can help us understand the different ways agency is exercised when improvising.

AllPlay Dance: Two Pilot Dance Projects for Children With Disability, Developed and Assessed With a Dance Studies Approach

“…As suggested by dance scholar Susanne Ravn, it is the dance situation itself which determines how one can have agency. Ravn (2020 , p. 79) states that, “…agency is our capacity to engage in and form part of actions as these are aroused through the way we form part of situations”. In the AllPlay Dance projects, that meant that the participants were able to make their own dance movements, or versions of those movements, asserting their agency, because they were in a situation which foregrounded creative individual input to collaborative dance making.…”

“…In the AllPlay Dance projects, that meant that the participants were able to make their own dance movements, or versions of those movements, asserting their agency, because they were in a situation which foregrounded creative individual input to collaborative dance making. In this way, according to Ravn (2020 , p. 79), situations such as the AllPlay Dance projects could be thought of as a “… kind of agentive training” in which participants are not only offered the opportunity to have agency but also practicing doing so.…”

Performing Illness: A Dialogue About an Invisibly Disabled Dancing Body

“…We focus on Pini's re-enactment of illness through her video dance performances, to emphasise how performative practises can offer original perspectives that contribute to questioning and reframing established notions of subjectivity and different forms of agency. By relating to current notions of agency in psychology and philosophy (Balconi, 2010;Gallagher, 2013;Bresnahan, 2014;Ataria, 2015Ataria, , 2018Deans et al, 2015;Moore, 2016;Martens, 2018;Ravn, 2020;Pini and Deans, in press), we stressed the capacity of dance to enable the reacquisition of an agentic perspective. Addressing Pini's case of acquired impairment and hidden disability, we highlighted how agency in dance encompasses cognitive and performative dimensions, providing an example of how a dancing body can reframe notions of disability considering its intersubjective and ecological aspects.…”

“…By focusing on Pini's case, we address the embodied nature of pain and illness, emphasising the role of the body as vehicle of sense making, and how the construction and embodiment of a meaningful self-narrative can help shape one's identity. We relate to notions of agency in psychology and philosophy (Balconi, 2010;Gallagher, 2013;Bresnahan, 2014;Ataria, 2015Ataria, , 2018Deans et al, 2015;Moore, 2016;Martens, 2018;Ravn, 2020;Pini and Deans, in press) to elucidate the capacity that dance and creative performance practises exert in enabling the reacquisition of an agentic perspective. Addressing a case of acquired impairment and hidden disability, we explore disability as an intersubjective ecological phenomenon in which the dancing body plays a transformative role.…”

Improvisation and thinking in movement: an enactivist analysis of agency in artistic practices

“…As current philosophical and practice-informed discussions of the nature of improvisation indicate, the idea that improvisation is based on spontaneous and more or less autonomous acts does not do justice to the actual practices and expertise of professional improvisers (Bailey, 1993, pp. xii, 109-111;Lewis, 1996, p. 109;Peters, 2016, Ravn et al, 2021 or to the widely varying cultural practices of improvisation around the world (Midgelow, 2019;Ravn 2020).…”