Points de vue

by

Yves Candau

M.Sc., Université Pierre et Marie Curie, 1995

B.Sc. and M.Sc., Ecole Centrale Paris, 1994

Project Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the

Requirements for the Degree of

Master of Fine Arts

in the

School for the Contemporary Arts

Faculty of Communication, Art and Technology

Yves Candau 2015

SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY

Fall 2015

ii

Approval

Name: Yves Candau

Degree: Master of Fine Arts

Title: Points de vue

Examining Committee: Chair: Judy Radul Professor

Arne Eigenfeldt Senior Supervisor Professor

Martin Gotfrit Supervisor Professor

Henry Daniel Supervisor Professor

Rob Kitsos Supervisor Associate Professor

Rebecca Todd External Examiner Assistant Professor, Psychology University of British Columbia

Date Defended/Approved: December 4, 2015

iii

Abstract

Points de vue is an interdisciplinary performance integrating solo dance improvisation with

contextual and processual information about the activity which is unfolding. The center of

this research-creation project is a question: What happens when I improvise? Investigating

the question reveals a deep synergy between multiple and complementary modes of

inquiry: theoretical reflections, stimulating the development of methodologies, enacted

through practices over extended periods of time. These are co-dependent processes,

mutually enriching each other through recursive and iterative cycles of inquiry.

Improvisation is contextualized through phenomenological accounts, contemporary ideas

from the embodied cognition paradigm, and an examination of somatic techniques. The

practice is then articulated in the performance through a multiplicity of appearances:

experienced through sight, sound, kinaesthetic empathy, words and concepts. Far from

contradictory, these multiple points of view contribute to a kind of experiential synesthesia,

leading to a richer appreciation of the phenomenon as a whole.

Keywords: postmodern dance; improvisation; somatic techniques; embodied cognition; research-creation

iv

Acknowledgements

The past two years and four months in the MFA program have been a rich and intense

time to learn, practice and create, made possible with generous support from SFU’s

School for the Contemporary Arts, its faculty, staff and students. I was also fortunate to

receive a SSHRC scholarship and an SFU graduate fellowship to fund my research.

I would like to thank Arne Eigenfeldt, my senior supervisor, for his openness, insights and

advice. His sharp mind, eyes and ears have encouraged me to delve deeper into my ideas

and practices. I am also grateful to my supervisors and external examiner: Henry Daniel

for many thought-provoking discussions; Martin Gotfrit whose passion for sound revealed

a world which I was eager to explore; Rob Kitsos for inspiring me as a movement artist

and sharing his practice in the studio; and Rebecca Todd, whose breadth of experiences

as an artist and cognitive scientist demonstrates an edifying interdisciplinarity.

My graduating project owes much to the talented and nuanced contributions from my

collaborators: Barbara Adler, Kyla Gardiner, Nur Intan Murtadza, Ben Rogalsky and

Matthew Horrigan. A number of other artists and teachers are inspirations for the work. I

thank them for pointing out new possibilities, in particular Elaine Kopman, Lisa Nelson,

Steve Paxton, Barry Truax and Hildegard Westerkamp.

Many more have kindly supported me throughout the program, and as I worked towards

my graduating project in the past months, especially Lara Abadir, Valérie Candau, Milton

Lim, Cheryl Prophet, Zoe Quinn, Gabriel Rahminos, Corbin Saleken, Stefan Smulovitz,

Albert St. Albert Smith and Wilson Terng.

Last but not least, I thank my wife Nur Intan Murtadza for her love, patience and ongoing

support.

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Table of contents

Approval .......................................................................................................................... ii Abstract .......................................................................................................................... iii Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................ iv Table of contents ............................................................................................................. v List of figures ................................................................................................................. vii Introductory image ........................................................................................................ viii

Points de vue – Defence statement ............................................................................. 1 1. The project ............................................................................................................. 1 2. Background ............................................................................................................ 2 3. Interdisciplinary MFA .............................................................................................. 3 4. Movement influences and somatic practices ........................................................... 3 5. Methodologies ........................................................................................................ 4 6. Sound ..................................................................................................................... 6 7. Narratives ............................................................................................................... 7 8. Composition ........................................................................................................... 7 9. Embodied knowledge ............................................................................................. 8 10. To be continued ...................................................................................................... 8 11. Bibliography ............................................................................................................ 9

Points de vue – Project documentation ..................................................................... 11 1. Photos .................................................................................................................. 11 2. Script .................................................................................................................... 16

Yves – Walking ..................................................................................................... 16 Barbara – Research center for moving trees ........................................................ 16 Yves – Working with the structure ........................................................................ 17 Barbara – Dark pond ............................................................................................ 17 Yves – Secondary helixes .................................................................................... 17 Barbara – Silent canyon ....................................................................................... 18 Yves – Spinal helix ............................................................................................... 19 Barbara – The falling hiker .................................................................................... 19 Yves – Small dance and John Cage’s chamber of secrets ................................... 19 Barbara – Research center for moving trees – Reprise ........................................ 20

3. Program notes and credits .................................................................................... 21

Appendix A. What happens when I improvise? ....................................................... 22 1. Introduction ........................................................................................................... 22 2. The project ........................................................................................................... 23 3. Parenthesis – Moving in words ............................................................................. 23 4. Complexity ............................................................................................................ 24 5. The Moravec paradox ........................................................................................... 25 6. Transparency and opacity .................................................................................... 26 7. Sensorimotor cognition at the micro scale of postural reflexes .............................. 28

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8. Simplexity ............................................................................................................. 29 9. Integration and differentiation ............................................................................... 30 10. Working with mindfulness – Somatic strategies .................................................... 32 11. The Alexander technique ...................................................................................... 33 12. Material for the Spine............................................................................................ 34 13. Somatic techniques as hermeneutic and heuretic ................................................. 34 14. Last words – Not an end, a beginning… ............................................................... 35 15. Bibliography .......................................................................................................... 36

Appendix B. Video documentation ........................................................................... 39

Appendix C. Audio documentation – Eight channel composition .......................... 40

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List of figures

Figure 1. Postcard image. ..................................................................................... viii

Figure 2. Live lighting: Kyla Gardiner – Multiple points of view .............................. 11

Figure 3. Live text: Barbara Adler .......................................................................... 12

Figure 4. Live sound: Nur Intan Murtadza ............................................................. 12

Figure 5. Found instrument: Physalis alkekengi (Chinese lantern) ........................ 13

Figure 6. Found sound: Bird song ......................................................................... 13

Figure 7. Found movement: Pronation and supination .......................................... 14

Figure 8. Transformed movement: Walking horizontally ........................................ 14

Figure 9. Transformed movement: Helix roll .......................................................... 15

Figure 10. Moving through reaching ........................................................................ 15

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Introductory image

Figure 1. Postcard image.

Design: Valérie Candau Photo: Sap on wet bark, Lynn Headwaters, Yves Candau

1

Points de vue Defence statement

1. The project

Points de vue is an interdisciplinary performance integrating solo dance

improvisation with contextual and processual information about the activity that is

unfolding.

Following the parable of the elephant and the blind men or women, it aims to

articulate a practice through a multiplicity of appearances: as experienced through sight,

sound, kinaesthetic empathy, words and concepts. Far from contradictory, these multiple

points of view can contribute to a kind of experiential synesthesia, leading to a richer

appreciation of the phenomenon as a whole.

I find a deep synergy in leveraging multiple and complementary modes of inquiry:

an interest in principles, stimulating the development of methodologies, enacted through

practices over extended periods of time. The linear order of the enunciation does not imply

a privileged progression. These are co-dependent processes, and they mutually enrich

each other through recursive and iterative cycles of inquiry.

The performance is the culmination of this meta-process of research-creation, its

organizing center a question: an effort to understand, demonstrate and disclose the ways

by which I do what I do in my artistic practice. I could ask: How do I improvise? It seems

fitting at first, but upon careful consideration places too much emphasis on an “I” as the

sole locus of improvisational processes. So I am widening my frame and asking instead:

What happens when I improvise?

2

Investigating this deceptively simple question leads to a surprisingly rich and

multifaceted journey, including phenomenological accounts, contemporary ideas from the

embodied cognition paradigm, and an examination of somatic practices. The journey is

generative in a twofold sense: at the larger timescale of creative processes it informs and

deepens my practice, potentially revealing new possibilities with which to engage; at the

shorter timescale of the performance it becomes conceptual source material with which to

compose – a warp to weave the weft of my dance through, their combination creating a

more intricate performative fabric.

Further multiplying the points of view, the piece also includes text written and

performed by Barbara Adler, dramaturgy and a lighting design by Kyla Gardiner, live music

by Nur Intan Murtadza (found objects and Javanese Gender, pélog nem tuning), and an

eight channel sound composition by myself.

2. Background

Working through different modes of inquiry permeates my background. It includes

practices and disciplines intersecting a variety of approaches: artistic, scientific and

embodied. I studied science in university, completing graduate degrees in mathematics

and cognitive science. Following a surprise encounter with dance, I then branched into a

path of first-person inquiry, with an embodied and experiential practice at its core.

I was soon drawn to postmodern dance approaches: using improvisation as a full-

fledged performance form; incorporating somatic techniques as generative and creative

tools; and exploring open movement systems sourced in pedestrian and functional

patterns. I was eager for the physicality of moving, but I also included an ongoing interest

in deriving principles from my practice, and letting the principles then influence my practice

in return.

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3. Interdisciplinary MFA

Over the past seven semesters in SFU’s interdisciplinary MFA, I have worked

towards articulating and integrating the different facets of my background and interests.

One goal was to organize and systematize a number of recurring ideas, accumulated from

17 years of experiential practices: training, rehearsing, performing, teaching; and a

number of fortunate encounters, particularly with the Alexander Technique and Steve

Paxton’s Material for the Spine.

The MFA program was first an opportunity to read, write, and think. I am particularly

interested in the growing literature on embodied cognition (Wilson, 2002) and situated

cognition (Hutchins, 1995), research-creation (Borgdorff, 2006), and a variety of hybrid

research bridging science, philosophy, and movement studies (Berthoz & Petit, 2008;

Clark, 2013; Hagendoorn, 2003). Going back and forth between my movement practice

and these ideas helped clarify and structure my own reflections, in turn changing how I

practiced, and leading to three presentations in various conference settings.

With such an integrated approach underlying more and more how I dance and

improvise, I became interested in integrating the approach itself as an explicit layer of a

performance. I started experimenting with dancing, the embodied manifestation of my

research, while also disclosing the means whereby my dancing comes together: the

principles, methodologies, and practices.

4. Movement influences and somatic practices

Like many contemporary dancers, I trained through a variety of techniques,

including a background in martial arts. Two practices stand out both for the lasting and

ongoing influence they have on my work, and because most of the ideas presented in

Points de vue can be traced back to them.

The Alexander Technique was created by F. Matthias Alexander at the turn of the

20th century, initially to overcome a recurrent problem of voice loss which conventional

medicine failed to alleviate. From this practical investigation, Alexander developed a

4

mindfulness based system to overcome harmful habits of use (Alexander, 2001). It

presents fascinating parallels with Eastern meditational practices, yet to my knowledge

the ideas were evolved independently.

I will present one here. The Zen-like concept of non-doing (as I interpret it) makes

a crucial distinction between sending an intention of movement as a voluntary decision;

and letting involuntary sensorimotor processes then enact that movement, taking care of

the fine coordination necessary for it. The Alexander Technique is thus a methodology to

investigate the interface between conscious thinking and sensorimotor cognition.

Material for the Spine is a movement technique created by Steve Paxton to “bring

consciousness to the dark side of the body” (Paxton, 2008). This dark side comprises the

more opaque elements of our embodiment, such as the deepest layer of spinal

musculature – hundreds of small and delicate muscles connecting pairs of adjacent

vertebrae in various parallel or diagonal directions (Dimon, 2008).

Material for the Spine combines open movement explorations with a set of rigorous

exercises. These are practice forms which include fundamental patterns, such as the

helixes and undulations which are a recurrent theme in Points de vue. They are important

for physical training, but even more so to train the mind. The learning process does not

aim to define a fixed taxonomy of movements, but rather through repetition and inquiry to

sensitize the mind to the patterns. Just like frets on the neck of a guitar, references are

created so that the mind can orientate itself with ease and efficiency within a continuum

of kinaesthetic possibilities.

5. Methodologies

To illustrate the circularity between principles, methodologies, and practices, we

can follow some of these mutual influences through examples. Here are a few of the ideas

presented in Points de vue. Many have been introduced in the previous section on

movement influences and somatic practices:

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Embodied structures are complex but organized in simplex 1 patterns;

They also exhibit varying degrees of transparency 2 and opacity

3;

Movement involves an interfacing of voluntary and involuntary processes;

The body is highly integrated as well as finely differentiated.

The last principle hints at one possible methodology. Considering the hands, for

instance: they are amongst the least opaque structures we can move or observe in

ourselves. Any such movement in turn affects the whole structure as it reorganizes itself

to support it. Hubert Godard describes how when we reach forward with the hand, the first

muscles to engage are actually the postural muscles of the calf: a transient and involuntary

pattern of organization which anticipates our intention (Godard, 1995).

Putting these ideas to work, we can use less opaque features as access points

and foci to engage our whole structure. The possibilities are endless and leverage

powerful sensorimotor processes, such as the mammalian head stabilization reflex.

Reaching with our eyes for instance, the eyes connect to the head, the head engages the

spine, the spine mobilizes the pelvis, and as the pelvis moves our weight distribution

through the feet shifts. By refining these connections through practice, we can then use

them to modulate and transform our movements.

Margaret Wilson’s concept of “re-tooling the mind” (Wilson, 2010) provides a useful

concluding point. Culture affects the content of our cognition, of course, but the very

processes of cognition are themselves plastic and transformable. Wilson investigates a

variety of cognitive tools, a term understood in a broad sense, including material artefacts

and behaviours. When adopted and incorporated in lived experience, these invented and

culturally transmitted technologies re-tool the mind. The somatic methodologies

developed in postmodern dance can be similarly understood as cognitive tools of

transformation.

1 From Alain Berthoz’s concept of simplexity: an ubiquitous principle at work in natural systems, as they evolve simplifying solutions to deal with the complexity of their environment and themselves (Berthoz, 2012).

2 Transparency in the sense that we mostly do not see how we do what we do.

3 Opacity in the sense that even when we voluntarily try to see, the deep structures are difficult to access.

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6. Sound

Points de vue includes an eight channel electroacoustic composition, created as I

pursued another major focus of my MFA – developing a sound art practice. It is influenced

by the rich tradition of soundscape composition developed at SFU (Truax, 2002). I used

outdoor field recordings, mainly from the Vancouver area, and one recording from Alsace,

France.

Embracing my role in these soundscape recordings as both witness and

participant, I combined environmental sounds with vocal and physical sounds of embodied

presence. These were then processed through convolution, granular synthesis and modal

synthesis, using software I programmed. The place which emerges from this combination

is chimeric, a layering of experience, memory and imagination.

Examining the strategies developed in postmodern dance and soundscape

composition reveals interesting connections. There is first an emphasis on mindfulness as

the foundation of a practice (Westerkamp, 2015). Soundscape compositions also

incorporate open repertoires of materials, highlighting the timbral complexity of aural

textures and structures already present in the environment. Like the pedestrian patterns

of locomotion used in postmodern dance, these source materials are found rather than

designed or codified. In both cases, however, the artistic practice is more than just

transposing or re-enacting. The activity of listening is a sensitized state, from which the

artist then continues through cycles of transformation and composition.

There is some irony in using a fixed composition as the final piece of music for a

performance on improvisation. But actually the two practices are highly complementary.

In both cases I am experimenting with composition: the choices made either once in real

time, or repeatedly through iterative adjustments. Because my movement practice has

been mainly improvisational, the contrast of working with a fixed medium is particularly

fruitful. It enriches my reflections on composition, through multiple opportunities to

examine and alter my choices.

The fixed sound composition is preceded by live music. Nur Intan Murtadza plays

mainly found objects, gradually introducing subtly variated textures, reminiscent of

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environmental soundscapes. She supports and contrasts the narrative imagery and the

movements, with the interactive quality of a live and partly improvised performance –

mutual listening unfolding here in real time.

7. Narratives

I asked Barbara Adler to write and perform text for Points de vue, with the intention

of adding yet another layer. This was new creative territory in my work, as I have always

avoided the use of narratives until now.

In our initial meetings, I shared some of the thoughts underlying the materials for

my own text. The resulting transformation which then unfolded was fascinating. Barbara

took my ideas, worked with them, and came back with narrative threads where I could still

distinguish the original thoughts, but transformed in surprising and evocative ways.

I appreciate the imagery she developed, sometimes influenced by digressions on

my part that did not make it into my own text, but are wonderful in these more allusive

forms. Her narratives create a more situated context, preserving just enough ambiguity to

avoid being too literal. They contrast the more internal or theoretical ideas I present, and

foreshadow the shift into the aural environment of the final sound composition.

8. Composition

Before joining the MFA I was experimenting with minimalist performance formats

(no lights, music or costume) to see what might remain with just myself improvising and

dancing on a stage. These short and open forms could sustain themselves for about 10

to 15 minutes, and were mainly reflecting the movement ideas I was working on at each

point.

Points de vue follows these explorations with a similar focus on specific movement

materials. The longer form however requires more structure to trace the connections

between multiple ideas, and create an overarching sense of progression.

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As described in previous sections, the performance incorporates a variety of layers

to create a multi-faceted experience. These elements also provide compositional tools to

support my improvisational practice. Barbara Adler’s narrative threads for instance are

used as points of references and stable landmarks, around which to structure my more

fluctuating materials.

I also sought new compositional systems to organize my dancing. For instance,

William Forsythe’s improvisation technologies (2012) bring attention to an external

geometry of the body unfolding through space, an interesting counterpoint to the more

internal geometry of curves, helixes and undulations emphasized in somatic techniques.

9. Embodied knowledge

In Embodied knowing through art, Mark Johnson reflects on the relationship

between art, research and cognition (2011). He discusses the nature of embodied

knowledge, and cautions against our temptation to seek the fixed and immutable.

Embodied knowledge cannot be reduced to static collection of facts, but needs to be

sourced in dynamic processes of inquiry.

Applying these ideas to improvisation, I see that as I train and rehearse to create

Points de vue, I compose myself – a process of neuro-plastic transformation through

practice. Extending this process across the timescale of a lifetime can then become a form

of research where the contributions are not causal, correlative or descriptive. Rather, the

artist manifests possibilities.

10. To be continued

I want to keep developing the various things I worked on during the MFA program.

The format of the performance has potential, staging the circularity between principles,

methodologies, and practices, which I find so useful for myself. Disclosing how I work also

makes the work more accessible for the audience.

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More generally, a performance such as Point de vue is most meaningful to me as

a lens to stimulate and bring together my interests: one iteration in the longer arc of my

creative process which coalesces the current states of my practices. I use the plural form

“practices” mainly to reflect the new possibility of working with sound, a practice with which

I was so eager to engage.

Questions are still the generative centers connecting my various interests. As I am

about to start a PhD at SFU’s School of Interactive Arts and Technology, which I intend

as a continuation of the research-creation initiated in the MFA, I find myself reflecting

mainly on issues of composition.

11. Bibliography

Alexander, F. M. (2001). The use of the self. London: Orion Publishing.

Berthoz, A. (2012). Simplexity: Simplifying principles for a complex world. New Haven,

CT: Yale University Press.

Berthoz, A., & Petit, J.-L. (2008). The physiology and phenomenology of action. New

York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Borgdorff, H. (2006). The debate on research in the arts. Bergen: Bergen Academy of

Art and Design.

Clark, J. O. (2013). The intrinsic significance of dance: A phenomenological approach. In

J. Bunker, A. Pakes, & B. Rowell (Eds.), Thinking through dance: The philosophy

of dance performance and practices (pp. 202–221). Alton: Dance Books.

Dimon, T. (2008). Anatomy of the moving body: A basic course in bones, muscles, and

joints. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books.

Forsythe, W. (2012). Improvisation technologies: A tool for the analytical dance eye.

Berlin: Hatje Cantz Publishers.

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Godard, H. (1995). Le geste et sa perception. In M. Michel & I. Ginot (Eds.), La danse au

XXème siècle (pp. 224–229). Paris: Bordas.

Hagendoorn, I. (2003). Cognitive dance improvisation: How study of the motor system

can inspire dance (and vice versa). Leonardo, 36(3), 221–227.

Hutchins, E. (1995). Cognition in the wild. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Johnson, M. (2011). Embodied knowing through art. In M. Biggs & H. Karlsson (Eds.),

The routledge companion to research in the arts (pp. 141–151). New York, NY:

Routledge.

Paxton, S. (2008). Material for the spine: A movement study. Brussels: Contredanse.

Truax, B. (2002). Genres and techniques of soundscape composition as developed at

Simon Fraser University. Organised Sound, 7(01), 5–14.

http://doi.org/10.1017/S1355771802001024

Westerkamp, H. (2015). The disruptive nature of listening. Keynote Address. Presented

at the International Symposium on Electronic Art, Vancouver, BC.

Wilson, M. (2002). Six views of embodied cognition. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review,

9(4), 625–636.

Wilson, M. (2010). The re-tooled mind: How culture re-engineers cognition. Social

Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 5(2-3), 180–187.

http://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsp054

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Points de vue Project documentation

1. Photos

Figure 2. Live lighting: Kyla Gardiner – Multiple points of view

The upstage right corner of the performance space, with mirrors left uncovered to create a mise en abyme. Dancer: Yves Candau

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Figure 3. Live text: Barbara Adler

Figure 4. Live sound: Nur Intan Murtadza

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Figure 5. Found instrument: Physalis alkekengi (Chinese lantern)

A found instrument played by Nur Intan Murtadza, creating dry crackling sounds.

Figure 6. Found sound: Bird song

Spectrogram from the bird song used at the end of the eight channel composition. Source: Grouse Mountain field recording.

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Figure 7. Found movement: Pronation and supination

Demonstrating and explaining the rotation of the forearm around a diagonal axis. Dancer: Yves Candau

Figure 8. Transformed movement: Walking horizontally

Walking pattern transposed to the horizontal plane. Dancer: Yves Candau

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Figure 9. Transformed movement: Helix roll

Transposing the winding and unwinding of the spine to the floor. Dancer: Yves Candau

Figure 10. Moving through reaching

Dancer: Yves Candau

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2. Script

Yves – Walking

I am walking, just walking for now, and standing. I am using this simple activity as

an opportunity to witness my structure in movement. I find much to observe already, or a

variety of places from which to observe, many questions I could ask.

How is my head balancing on top of my spine? Where are my eyes looking as I

am standing, or walking? More unusual, what is the back of my head doing as I move.

Back of the skull, always behind me, while my attention is mostly ahead me.

I am cheating a bit. Letting the questions influence my activity. Playing with them.

At the other end, my feet, the soles compressed as my weight comes down through

my structure, through the soles, to the ground. Moving slowly, the sense of my weight

pouring from one support to another, and back. A shift, small in space, but large in my

experience. It changes everything. One foot now free of weight, and in that empty touch

the freedom to move.

All of this, and a lot more, in a walk. It happens almost in spite of myself. I intend,

and my intention becomes fleshed out, by something that I mostly don’t see. It happens

transparently.

Finding out more takes strategies.

Barbara – Research center for moving trees

There is an experimental forest attached to a research center, where the

researchers have found a way to invert our perception of trees. Normally, when you walk

to a tree, you arrive, steps swinging, heart beating, to a column of vertical stillness. You

become conscious of your breath, amplified by the forest, feel the blood rush to your

cheeks and realize the tips of your ears are cold.

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In this normal instance, the tree becomes the fixed point against which you

measure the thousand cases of your own mobility: the walk to arrive, the breath, the blood,

the way your legs ask for readjustment.

Yves – Working with the structure

I am still walking, slowly. As the walking pattern stretches through time, it changes.

I am seeing new things while losing others. My sit bones are more present, but the counter

swing in the arms is gone. I could bring it back, but now it is definitely something that I

make happen.

I am working with the structure, with what is already there: this rich complex

system. I am interrogating the patterns, and playing with them. Looking for the new in the

old. By the measure of my lifespan, the patterns are ancient: my heritage as a human

biped.

Barbara – Dark pond

When you put your hand into the water of a murky pond, you first feel the soft silt

bottom and then the tangle of weeds exploring your wrists, checking for a pulse. If you

hold still long enough for the plant to take your vital signs, you will feel the light tapping of

small bodies, knocking against your knuckles, asking to be let in. Stay still for even longer,

and they will bite your fingertips. This is the slowest way to catch a fish: to let the fish think

it is catching you.

Yves – Secondary helixes

Another piece of the puzzle. I am playing with the helixes of my limbs – pronation

and supination. If I was to summarize the skeletal structure of the arm I would say one

bone, two bones, many bones. It is a branching structure. There are some interesting

details which make this rotation possible, a range of motion we do not have in the legs.

So the forearm has two bones, in this position more or less parallel. On the side of

the small finger, the ulna, which connects to the upper arm through the elbow joint. On the

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side of the thumb, the radius. Now at one end, close to the elbow, you find a pivot joint,

centered along the radius. At the other end, another pivot joint, but centered along the

other bone. Combining the two pivot joints, what you get is this.

A first pivot, on one end and one side. Then on the other end, other side, a second

pivot. And together this rotation around a diagonal axis. So this axis, which is really the

heart of the movement, does not follow either of the two bones, but crosses them

diagonally.

To inform my movement, to move from the right place, the axis is what matters to

me. It comes out of the underlying anatomy, but it is already an abstraction. So I work from

the structure, this rich complex structure. But I am also abstracting it into a simpler and

more integrated geometry of centers, axes, curves, planes: drafting maps to help me

navigate movement in real time.

Barbara – Silent canyon

There comes a point when you realize that you’ve been walking along the lip of a

silent canyon. Though you rarely see your feet, you can feel yourself walking. You walk,

and feel the point of your ankle bone grazing a vast envelope of space. Above your foot,

the fingertips, elbow, and shoulder of one arm skim the edges of this rift, which seems to

fall away for miles. One ear, one cheek brushing against miles of long, still silence.

The other side of your body always faces toward the noise. The noise tangles you,

grabbing your heel and nipping your waist. You walk alongside cars and their motors; a

stoplight’s exclamation; the hum of electricity malfunctioning in a hundred small ways;

sound, tangled in every part of itself, like the confusion of a springtime forest: the

aggressive punctuation of air brakes; the neighbour’s Sunday morning vacuum; the

kitchen pipes suddenly afflicted with bronchitis; murmurs; alarms; babies; cross-

conversations; things cracking open, other things ground down.

On one side, noise. On the other side, a canyon. On the one side brambles, on the

other side, silence. There’s another way to say it. On one side of the canyon is where

you’ve always walked. On the other side of the canyon there is another path. On one side

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of this second path is the emptiness of the canyon. You don’t know what is on the other

side of the path. When you shout across to it, your own voice comes bouncing back.

Yves – Spinal helix

I am working with helix rolls. The patterns are coming together, as the helixes of

my arms connect with the main helix of the spine. I am moving through reaching, a useful

way to organize my movements.

This is still walking. The pattern is transposed from vertical to horizontal, and keeps

turning around itself. But it relies on the same twisting and untwisting of the spine as its

motor. I am engaging a long curve, a long helix, to integrate all of myself: from the fingers,

through the arm, crossing diagonally through the back, all the way to the small toe on the

other side.

Barbara – The falling hiker

When you’re lost, the classic instruction to a hiker is: stay where you are. Stop

moving. Your body will fall and catch itself a hundred times a minute as you wonder if

anyone is walking through the dark to meet you. But whether you are discovered by

someone else, or whether you discover where you are simply by waiting long enough for

the stars to speak to you through the tree-tops, you will get the furthest by waiting.

Yves – Small dance and John Cage’s chamber of secrets

This is Steve Paxton’s small dance. I am standing and observing the stand. Sit-

bones pointing down. Crown of the head pointing up. In between, the whole length of my

spine.

I am standing, and the stillness reveals a stream of minute falls and recoveries,

my verticality constantly lost and found, stillness always swaying. These are postural

reflexes which happen whether we pay attention to them or not. As I witness them, I can

also move from them, adding a gentle touch of intention to ride this involuntary activity.

20

It reminds me of John Cage’s experience in Harvard’s anechoic chamber. In that

expected place of silence he found two sounds: a low one from his blood flow, a high one

from his nervous system. They were always there, but it took silence to disclose them.

Finding trust in this embodied aural texture which precedes consciousness and

never recedes, he said “One need not fear about the future of music”.

Barbara – Research center for moving trees – Reprise

There is an experimental forest attached to a research center, where the

researchers have found a way to invert our perception of trees. Normally, when you walk

to a tree, you arrive, steps swinging, heart beating, to a column of vertical stillness.

In this normal instance, the tree becomes the fixed point against which you

measure the thousand cases of your own mobility. But the researchers have found a way

to invert this usual temporal relationship. Suddenly to the tree it is you that seems fixed in

time, fixed in shape.

And suddenly to you, the tree is not just flittering in the wind – trembling yet mostly

unchanged. Instead of isolated snapshots of its being, you begin to see its continuous

growth and adaptation. Layers upon layers of fresh sapwood, differentiating themselves

from a thin sheathing of cambium. The older sapwood gradually drying into heartwood.

You see the tree reacting and changing in response to its environment, just as we

do. In its physical form, much more plastic actually. A new opening in the canopy, and it

grows new branches reaching for the light. A much looser shape score to improvise from.

Another tree, quite exposed, shudders and loses its radial symmetry, buckling into

a more stable helix. Where stressed, it grows stronger and thicker, building up reaction

wood, like the muscles and bones of a dancer.

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3. Program notes and credits

Points de vue is an interdisciplinary performance stimulated by my desire to

investigate, discuss, and share this thing that I do when I move and improvise.

As I ride the evolved and cultured structures that I embody, it is me dancing. But I

am also working through systems that go much beyond me: systems that we share, as

humans, and to some extent even share with others, across time and species.

As in the parable of the elephant and the blind men or women, the performance is

an opportunity to articulate my practice through a multiplicity of appearances: as

experienced through sight, sound, kinaesthetic empathy, words and concepts.

Points de vue also includes an eight channel electroacoustic composition. I worked

from outdoor field recordings, which were then processed through convolution, granular

synthesis and modal synthesis, using software I programmed. The place which emerges

from this combination is chimeric, a layering of experience, memory and imagination.

Yves Candau Movement, text, sound (eight channel composition)

Barbara Adler Text

Kyla Gardiner Dramaturgy, lighting

Nur Intan Murtadza Live sound

Ben Rogalsky Technical direction

Matthew Horrigan Mixing board

Lara Abadir Documentation

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Appendix A. What happens when I improvise?

1. Introduction

I am a dancer and an improviser, mostly drawn to solo forms. The thrill of moving

was certainly instrumental in luring me to such an embodied pursuit: moving, with

disorienting speed or suspended slowness, and attending to the experience of it. Coming

from a background in mathematics and cognitive science, I brought into my practice an

attitude of questioning. I am curious of course, but more than that I find a deep synergy

between complementary modes of inquiry: theoretical reflections, stimulating the

development of methodologies, enacted through practice over extended periods of time.

The linear order of this enunciation does not imply a privileged progression. These broad

types of processes are co-dependent and mutually stimulate each other through recursive

and iterative cycles of inquiry.

My research then is the whole that is greater than the sum of these parts, its

organizing center a question: an effort to understand, describe and discuss the processes

by which I do what I do in my artistic practice. I could ask: How do I improvise? It seems

fitting at first, but upon careful consideration places to much emphasis on an “I” as the

sole locus of improvisational processes. So I am widening my frame and asking instead:

What happens when I improvise?

Unpacking this deceptively simple question leads to a surprisingly rich and

multifaceted journey, including: phenomenological accounts, contemporary ideas from the

embodied cognition paradigm, and an examination of somatic practices such as the

Alexander Technique and Steve Paxton’s Material for the Spine. Threaded through all

these considerations, two ideas keep reappearing: the importance of contextualizing

phenomena in terms of the scales at which they occur; and the need to articulate possible

dynamics between involuntary or unconscious processes, and higher level voluntary forms

of cognition.

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2. The project

I propose to create a hybrid performance event that will integrate solo dance

improvisation with contextual and processual information about the activity that is

unfolding. Following the idea of a lecture demonstration, my goal is to leverage a

multimodal approach to open up and unpack the phenomenon for myself and for the

audience.

To use the parable of the elephant and the blind men or women, I want to embrace

my practice in the full multiplicity of its appearances: as experienced through sight, sound,

kinaesthetic empathy, words and concepts. Far from contradictory, these multiple points

of view should contribute to a kind of experiential synesthesia, and lead to a richer

appreciation of the event as a whole.

The process of understanding and articulating what it is that I do when I improvise,

and how it dynamically unfolds, will thus be generative in a twofold sense. At the larger

timescale of creative and rehearsal cycles it will inform and deepen my practice, potentially

revealing new possibilities to engage with. At the shorter timescale of the performance it

will become conceptual source material to compose with: a warp to weave the weft of my

dance through, their combination contributing to a more intricate performative fabric.

3. Parenthesis – Moving in words

As my center of gravity shifts horizontally, the weight pouring through my left leg is

gradually diverted to its twin right brother. The pressure through the sole of my left foot

lessens and lightens. Eventually its touch on the wooden floor is empty of all weight, and

the foot is free to move. I reach upward with my left knee, its circular rise taking the foot

with it up in the air and away from the ground. At the same time I point my right sit bone

downward and towards my right heel, tracing a vertical line that anchors my now single

support. Also at the same time, my skull pivots, front of the head turning left while the back

of the head turns right. Thus it is with rotating circles, for each part moving in a given

direction, another is moving in opposition – an elementary geometrical property that still

holds true in this complex structure that I embody.

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So many words to describe just a few seconds of movement at a rather slow pace.

And so many ways to track this short slice of experience as it unfolds, any point or place

in the moving whole a possible focus to rest my attention on. I could also describe how

the left ear is reaching back as if in response to a sound coming from behind; or the

sensation, as the head turns, of tissue stretching in a helix around the bones of the cervical

spine; or how this twisting easily propagates further down into the spine, engaging more

and more of it. And I have said nothing yet of the eyes, arms and hands…

Language is not well suited to represent movement information. One could easily

fill an entire page attempting to transcribe a single static kinaesthetic percept into words.

The longer we observe the more we notice. The description it seems can always be

enriched, its grain further and further refined. Once we start moving, the flow of information

accumulates even more.

4. Complexity

Attempting to capture all of it in words is obviously doomed to fail, there is just too

much happening. Limiting our scope to just the back and the muscular system for instance,

we find no less than five layers of musculature (Dimon, 2008, p. 104). We are familiar with

the large muscles of the most superficial layer: the trapezius and the latissimus dorsi.

These we can easily see rippling close under the skin on somebody else, or feel their tone

engage in ourselves. They are powerful and in a kinaesthetic sense sort of loud, thus

easily accessible to conscious experience. Going deeper the musculature becomes

smaller and more numerous. The most internal layer, closest to the spine, contains a

multitude of small and delicate muscles. They mainly connect pairs of adjacent vertebrae

in various parallel or diagonal directions, or vertebrae to neighboring ribs. I won’t name

them all. Fifteen different types can be distinguished, many of them multiplied along the

successive segments of the spine. I stopped counting after reaching over a hundred.

All of these muscles have to be coordinated to work in synergy as we sit, stand,

walk or run – a staggering complexity. As he studied locomotion in the 1960s, the Russian

neurophysiologist Nikolai Bernstein defined what he calls the degrees of freedom problem.

When dealing with the moving body we are faced with a system that has high

25

dimensionality and a high level of redundancy, in every aspect: anatomy, kinematics, and

neurophysiology. So there are multiple muscles that act on the same joints, multiple

possibilities of movements to accomplish the same goals, and multiple neural connections

that can activate the same muscles (Bernstein, 1967).

The corresponding information is quantitative in nature: angles, forces, velocity

and acceleration vectors; all elements of an embodied geometry embedded in a

Newtonian world of gravity. A tension between qualitative and quantitative modes of

inquiry permeates the literature on research in the arts, as in a number of chapters in the

Handbook of the Arts in Qualitative Research (Knowles & Cole, 2008). It echoes

considerations of legitimacy similar to those debated earlier in social sciences (Borgdorff,

2006, p. 20). One recurring narrative is that the artist has a privileged access to qualitative

and subjective forms of knowledge.

As a dancer I am tempted to provocatively upend this opposition: quantitative

information is at the heart of my practice. There would be no dancing without it. The fine

modulations of muscular tone; pressure gradually increasing in the sole of my foot as I

shift my weight; shaping and bending an internal curve from center to fingers; tracing an

intricate trajectory to navigate a chaotic space of moving bodies: these tasks all rely on

continuous and multi-dimensional data. Sensorimotor processes are constantly

anticipating, measuring and correcting; all the while keeping tracking of a high bandwidth

flow of information.

5. The Moravec paradox

By contrast, conscious thinking exhibits certain limitations. Most crucially for a

dancer, the corresponding processes are relatively slow. The threshold for discriminating

between two successive stimuli is in the 100 milliseconds range (Varela, 1999, p. 273).

This might seem short, but as any sports photographer knows, for high velocity

movements a tenth of a second is a rather long time. Also our attention can only track a

few different focuses at a time, and is limited in terms of available cognitive load.

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We face a conundrum, at least conceptually. How do we reconcile the complexity

of sensorimotor processes with the limited and relatively slow nature of conscious

thinking? As an improviser who aims to make voluntary movement choices in real time

this is particularly problematic. In practice we seem to do rather well, manifesting an

amazing capacity for adaptation: from powerful throws to fine hand eye coordination; and

activities that range from explosive bursts of tone to the 320 kilometers long races of the

Tarahumara people (McDougall, 2009).

We make the difficult look easy, and we are far from unique in that way. In the

1980s a group of roboticists and cognitive scientists initiated a paradigm shift in artificial

intelligence, now called nouvelle AI. Earlier research focused predominantly on

propositional systems modelling high level functions, such as rule based expert systems.

Rodney Brooks, Marvin Minsky and Hans Moravec emphasized instead the importance of

sensorimotor coupling to build cognition from the ground up. Their efforts to replicate in

robots abilities found throughout the animal kingdom have highlighted the marvels of

design evolved in natural systems. The simple sensorimotor skills we take for granted are

not so simple after all. They are computationally intensive and pose difficult engineering

problems. This realization is called the Moravec paradox (1988, p. 15).

The question remains: How do we move? And as corollaries: How do we dance?

How do I improvise? The key point is that most often we move and do not think much

about it. As mentioned in the introduction this seemingly natural line of inquiry needs to be

critically examined. The “I” can improvise, in the sense that there is playing with intention

and action. But the processes by which the improvisation is enacted are not limited to

volitional levels of cognition. Conscious thinking is just not suited to the massive

processing which is necessary to coordinate hundreds of muscles. Trying to micromanage

such complexity is doomed to failure. A better question – the title of this essay – is: What

happens when I improvise?

6. Transparency and opacity

At the small scale of micro movements, such as in Steve Paxton’s small dance,

even the simple activity of standing in stillness reveals a stream of minute falls and

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recoveries (1997a, p. 23, 1997b, p. 108) – verticality constantly lost and found, stillness

always swaying. These are postural reflexes that happen whether we pay attention to

them or not. A slight bending of the knee for instance triggers a stretch reflex, which in

turn brings the knee back and closer to vertical alignment (Woodhull, 1997, p. 25). This

corrective feedback loop takes place wholly at the spinal level, and is thus unconscious.

With quiet attention however, some of the resulting movements can be observed and

experienced, through other neural pathways that don’t end at the spinal cord and reach

into the cortex.

Generalizing this clear example we find again a distinction between involuntary

reflexes that happen at high speed, and conscious processes that flow at slower

timescales. While any such binary categorization is a simplification, and the mind much

more modular and differentiated, the contrast is still worth considering. Sensorimotor

information is also challenging to access consciously, a fact that Moravec links to the the

long evolutionary timescales over which these abilities have evolved and been perfected.

Abstract thinking on the other hand is a comparatively recent development, and “the

thinnest veneer of human thought” (Moravec, 1988, p. 15).

This challenge has actually a dual nature, which characterizes sensorimotor

processes as opaque as well as transparent. The apparent contradiction is resolved when

considering that in both cases there is an issue of not seeing: opacity prevents us from

seeing what we try to see; transparency is not seeing that through which we see.

The latter is a reference to Heidegger’s distinction between the ready-at-hand

(zuhanden) and the present-to-hand (vorhanden). His analysis comes out of considering

how we relate to tools, the usual story being that of a hammer. We tend not to examine

what we use, and even less so what we are used to use. It is then ready-to-hand, in the

sense that our focus is on the use of the object rather than on the object itself. Francisco

Varela describes this habitual flow as “transparency as disposition for action” (1999,

p. 298). Only when the tool breaks down does our attitude towards it shift to one of inquiry.

The broken hammer is now present-to-hand as we ponder its sorry state. The distinction

is fruitfully transposed to sensorimotor processes, showing that somatic techniques are

strategies to shift our relation to embodiment from ready-at-hand to present-to-hand.

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As we turn our attention inward however, sensorimotor processes often resist our

attempts to lift them to consciousness. We encounter here the second issue of opacity.

Reminding ourselves of the five layers of musculature in the back, we find that while the

larger superficial muscles are easily felt or seen, the delicate deep musculature is almost

impossible to sense. It is a kinaesthetic terra incognita, which takes great effort to

approach. In the Alexander Technique for instance, a lot of attention is given to the sub-

occipital muscles. There are six of them and they regulate the fine balance of the skull

poised at the top of the spine (Dimon, 2008, p. 92). Only through extended practice can

we begin to interface our conscious thinking with these deep autonomic systems.

7. Sensorimotor cognition at the micro scale of postural reflexes

In the case of the small dance it takes a deep physical quieting and careful tuning

of the mind, to reveal the minute reflexive movements that continuously recover our

verticality. They are easily masked by higher levels of activity, stronger sensations or

overriding intentions. This is actually a close sensorimotor analogue to John Cage’s

experience in Harvard’s anechoic chamber. In that expected place of silence he found two

sounds: a low one from his blood flow, a high one from his nervous system. They were

always there but it took silence to disclose them. Finding trust in this embodied aural

texture that precedes the awakening of our consciousness and never recedes, he

concludes that “one need not fear about the future of music” (Cage, 1961, p. 8).

The French dancer and scholar Hubert Godard similarly defines pré-mouvement

as our unconscious relation to weight and gravity, which exists before we even start

moving. It is involuntary but conditions and colors all of our gestural expressivity. Godard

emphasizes the initiations and attacks of movements: transient patterns of organization

that anticipate our intentions. If we reach forward with the hand for instance, the first

muscles to engage are actually the postural muscles of the calf. This involuntary

preparation is necessary to counter the weight transfer that is about to happen as the arm

shifts forward (Godard, 1995, p. 225).

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Both Paxton and Godard highlight the importance of involuntary postural reflexes,

as they organize and coordinate our relations to gravity, ground and space. These

processes escape intention but are necessary conditions to its enactment. Godard uses

the concept of pré-mouvement as an analytical tool to observe the fine textures that imbue

our larger scale movements with a “postural musicality” (1995, p. 224). And Paxton

initiates a practice that discloses this world of micro movements to consciousness. The

potential to leverage such experience into dancing is exciting. Echoing Cage I find that

one need not fear about the future of dance.

8. Simplexity

The French neurophysiologist Alain Berthoz describes simplexity as a ubiquitous

principle at work in natural systems. They evolve simplifying solutions to deal with the

complexity of their environment and themselves:

These solutions make it possible to process complex situations very rapidly, elegantly, and efficiently, taking past experiences into account and anticipating the future. ... They may involve detours, an apparent complexity, by presenting problems in a novel way, changing reference frames, points of view, and so forth. Contrary to what we might think, simplifying is not simple. (Berthoz, 2012, pp. 3–4)

I have shown in my presentation a short video documenting cheetahs running,

using extreme slow motion and a high speed camera filming at 1200 frames per second

(G. Wilson, 2012). It highlights a number of important points with utmost clarity. The

cheetah is the fastest land animal, and demonstrates powerful and intense physicality as

it runs. With every second it goes through an average of 16 steps and 16 corresponding

spikes of muscular tone. Thinking of all the moving parts that are dynamically coordinated

to make this activity possible is staggering. And yet simple holistic patterns emerge out of

this complexity unfolding at high speed. The spine goes through an undulation in the

sagittal plane, reminiscent but functionally very different from the sideways undulations of

fishes and amphibians. The head is stabilized and floats in an almost perfect line, in spite

of, or rather thanks to all the activity happening between it and the ground.

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Both patterns are characteristic of mammal quadrupeds. They demonstrate

simplex properties that act as organizing principles to coordinate the complexity of

sensorimotor processes. Stabilizing the head facilitates the work of perception at the

expense of increased motor coordination. In the words of Berthoz it is “a veritable ‘inertial

guidance system’”. Organizing the whole body from this floating point of reference

resolves some of the redundancies discussed earlier in Bernstein’s degrees of freedom

problem (Berthoz, 2012, p. 130).

The sagittal undulation is a similar organizing principle which leverages the

segmented structure of the spine into a powerful whole bodied form. We might think of

running as an activity of the limbs, but its prime impetus is driven by the spine. This holds

true for ourselves as much as the Cheetah, but the patterns are different. Tracing a brief

evolutionary history of locomotion we find lateral undulations in fishes and amphibians,

followed by sagittal undulations as land animals adapted to gravity. We can still access

and cultivate these patterns through practice, as Susan Harper brilliantly demonstrates in

a short video on the Continuum technique (Harper, 2011). The foundation of our own

locomotion though is a unique oscillatory form based on winding and unwinding helixes.

It is determined by our transition from quadrupeds to bipeds, and the shift from a bridge

like spine to our present vertebral column. The layered musculature of the back which

used to support a horizontal arch is now transposed vertically – evolution adapting old

systems to new configurations (Dimon, 2011, pp. 87–98).

9. Integration and differentiation

As a specific action reverberates throughout the embodied structure, it is enacted

both as a whole and through a multiplicity of differentiated articulations. The parts are

coordinated, moving with one another. Just as in an orchestra there is a co-dependent

tuning that facilitates this synergy. The reaching eyes, the turning head and the feet

receiving and yielding weight are dynamically adjusting to each other and everything else.

This coming together however is manifested through every part’s individual quality and

function. Extending the metaphor of the orchestra, each is like an instrument contributing

its own specific timbre and color to the ensemble. As a dancer I am interested in cultivating

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both the connectedness of the system and its highly differentiated structure: tuning but not

blending, quite the opposite actually.

Interestingly, this echoes ideas developed by the biologist Gerald Edelman and

the neuroscientist Giulio Tononi. They were studying neuroscientific conditions of

consciousness and proposed that “both diversity and reentry are necessary to account for

the fundamental properties of conscious experience” (Edelman, 2003, p. 5521). Reentry

here refers to feedback loops, mediated by the thalamocortical system, that integrate

highly differentiated neural clusters into transient but unified states.

The interplay between integration and differentiation is just as relevant for

anatomical systems. Thomas Myers’ Anatomy Trains for instance shifts the usual attention

given to the skeletal and muscular systems to emphasize instead the role of connective

tissue for movement. The fasciae in particular are presented as an organizing and guiding

structure, a web that holds all the parts together. Challenging the conventional notion of

the single muscle as an anatomical unit, Tom Myers questions whether we have 600

muscles or rather one muscle in 600 fascial pockets (Myers, 2014). This might be

overstating the argument, but certainly his focus on long chains of muscles makes a lot of

sense for a dancer. It clarifies that raw anatomic information needs to be condensed and

organized to be useful – integration and simplexity. This is not just an epistemological

need to make information palatable and digestible to our limited human consciousness.

Rather, the structure is embodied and already there.

If we shift our attention to investigate the opposite yet concurrent trend –

differentiation – the structure becomes almost fractal. As mentioned, the longer we

observe the more we notice. In that sense it is a multi-scale system. We can think of the

foot as a foot, and leverage our ability for integration to hold that in our mind. Or we can

explore it like a landscape. The foot, even just “flat on the ground” as we would say in the

Alexander Technique, is full of contrast. The fleshy ball of the heel is nothing like the finely

articulated toes. Its arches rise up from the floor, a first hint of verticality. So even at rest,

there is ground under the foot but also air, the skin correspondingly callous or delicate.

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10. Working with mindfulness – Somatic strategies

The Alexander Technique and Steve Paxton’s Material for the Spine are the two

somatic techniques that have influenced my dance practice most. Before discussing these

in more details some distinctions are useful to make. I want to draw attention to alternative

ways in which somatic techniques structure their practices: in terms of the relation

between voluntary and involuntary processes; and how they use attention, intention,

sensation and action. Examining breathing meditations and techniques for instance

reveals a fairly important divide.

Breathing is an unusual physiological activity because it bridges the voluntary and

the involuntary. We keep breathing whether we are conscious or not, in wakefulness and

in sleep. It then operates as an involuntary process, like digestion or the beating of the

heart. But it is also a process easily open to voluntary control, a property used extensively

in eastern somatic and meditational techniques. By some accounts the different schools

of Yoga have developed as many as 50 different pranayama breathing techniques. My

goal here is not to describe and compare them, but rather to highlight their commonality.

They are all voluntary forms, imposing control on the process of breathing. For instance

Anuloma Pranayama, used in Hatha Yoga, is an exercise where air is inhaled through

both nostrils, and exhaled alternately through the right and left nostrils. Such forms are

often very specific, verging on the ritual.

The Vipassana School from the Theravada Buddhist tradition also uses breathing

as a focus, in Anapana meditation (Hart, 1987). The emphasis though is not on control

but mindfulness. As one sits down to meditate, it soon becomes obvious that observing

our breathing without affecting it is a challenge. The conscious mind is easily drawn to

doing, thus interfering with the involuntary process it is trying to witness. But the practice

is very much that, refining one’s ability to track fine kinaesthetic variations, and

disentangling sensing from doing.

So there is a distinction here between techniques that develop voluntary control of

physiological processes or movements into set forms; and techniques that aim for the

mindful observation of already unfolding processes. As a corollary, in the former case the

exercises are codified into potentially arbitrary patterns. Anuloma Pranayama thus

33

specifies that only the right hand should be used to alternately close each nostril during

exhalations: with the thumb for the right nostril, and the ring finger and small finger for the

left nostril. Essentially the practice aims to reproduce and integrate an externally imposed

form. In Anapana meditation by contrast, the practice is experiential and exploratory. As

patterns of breathing are not overridden but left to unfold, they reveal unconscious

reactions, like ripples on the surface of a dark pond left otherwise undisturbed. Subtle

kinaesthetic changes in the quality of the breath – depth, frequency, muscular tone – are

signs of underlying emotional changes that are hard to access directly and have not risen

yet into consciousness.

The same distinction is important to keep in mind when considering various

exercises in Western movement practices based on somatic techniques. The small dance

for instance is very much a mindfulness based exercise.

11. The Alexander technique

The Alexander Technique was created by F. Matthias Alexander at the turn of the

20th century, initially to overcome a recurrent problem of voice loss which conventional

medicine failed to alleviate. From this practical investigation, Alexander developed a

mindfulness based system to overcome harmful habits of use (Alexander, 2001, 2004). It

presents fascinating parallels with Eastern meditational practices, yet to my knowledge

the ideas were evolved independently.

I am interested here in two concepts developed by Alexander: directions and non-

doing. Directions are mental intentions that can be put in words, for instance “let the neck

be free”. While these voluntary thoughts are renewed, the student is guided to an actual

experience of a freer neck through the hands and touch of a teacher. Gradually, through

many repetitions, a connection is thus created between the intention of the free neck and

the embodied organization which makes it possible.

This two-step process is what is understood as non-doing. Cognitively it is a

detachment and letting go from doing things directly. A crucial distinction is made between

sending an intention of movement as a conscious decision; and letting sensorimotor

34

cognition then enact the movement, taking care of the fine coordination necessary for it.

The Alexander Technique is thus a methodology to investigate the interface between

conscious thinking and sensorimotor cognition, and a way to facilitate a gradual process

of transformation.

12. Material for the Spine

Material for the Spine is a movement technique created by Steve Paxton to “bring

consciousness to the dark side of the body” (Paxton, 2008). This dark side comprises the

more opaque elements of our embodiment, such as the deep layer of spinal musculature

discussed earlier. Like the Alexander Technique this is a practice that works at the

interface between conscious thinking and sensorimotor processes. In a pedagogical

context, Material for the Spine combines open movement explorations with a set of

rigorous exercises.

These are practice forms which include fundamental patterns such as the helixes

and undulations we described. They are important for physical training, but even more so

to train the mind. The learning process is not about building a fixed repertoire of

movements, but rather through repetition and inquiry to sensitize the mind to the patterns.

Just like frets on the neck of a guitar, references are created so that the mind can orientate

itself with ease and efficiency within a continuum of kinaesthetic possibilities. Interestingly

this work came out of Paxton’s feeling that while he could not teach improvisation, he

could instead formalize and teach such a movement system.

13. Somatic techniques as hermeneutic and heuretic

In Grammatology Gregory Ulmer revisits Derrida to investigate the gesture of

invention, and strategies to generate methodologies from theories (Ulmer, 1994). As is

obvious from his word plays and choices of examples, Ulmer’s ideas are sourced from

and operate within mostly linguistic domains. Transposed to movement practices, his

opposition between hermeneutic and heuretic processes yields interesting ideas. Somatic

work can be framed as a form of hermeneutic inquiry. It reveals the mind and body as

35

inscribed by influences across a wide range of timescales: the oldest ones evolutionary,

later ones cultural or individual.

A potential for invention though seems to emerge out of this hermeneutic

archeology of embodied forms. Paxton’s exploration of walking for instance is a deep self-

study of a pattern he embodies individually and shares intersubjectively as a vertically

organized biped. But in performance it is manifested through hacked and recombined

improvisations that are highly mutated versions of the original forms. The heuretic gesture

here is strong and impossible to articulate propositionally. As a process of transformation

it goes much further than Ulmer’s examples based on logical operations such as opposites

or converses.

14. Last words – Not an end, a beginning…

In Embodied knowing through art, the philosopher Mark Johnson combines his

foundational work in embodied cognition with reflections on the relationship between art

and research. Following earlier ideas from John Dewey, he discusses the nature of

embodied knowledge. He cautions against our temptation to seek the fixed and

immutable. Embodied knowledge cannot be reduced to static collection of facts, but needs

instead to be sourced in dynamic processes of inquiry (Johnson, 2011).

Transposing these ideas to the specific practice of improvisation, we see that as

he trains and works towards a performance, the improviser is not composing a score, he

is composing himself – a process of neuro-plastic transformation through practice.

Extending this process across even longer timescales then becomes a form of research

where the contributions are not causal, correlative or descriptive. Rather, the artist

manifests possibilities.

When I watch Steve Paxton dance, now well into his seventies, I see: what might

be, what might come to happen, when you devote a lifetime to a practice. There is no

certainty, every path is singular, yet can be shared. Myself, about a decade and a half into

my own journey of inquiry, I am just starting. But the journey always is exciting.

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15. Bibliography

Alexander, F. M. (2001). The use of the self. London: Orion Publishing.

Alexander, F. M. (2004). Constructive conscious control of the individual (3rd ed.).

London: Mouritz.

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Appendix B. Video documentation

Creator: Yves Candau

Description: A series of video excerpts from the performance of Points de vue, on

November 28th, at Hastings studio, School for the Contemporary Arts

at Goldcorp Center for the Arts.

Documentation: Lara Abadir

Video editing: Yves Candau

Codec: H.264

Video format: 1280 x 720, 29.97 fps, progressive

Audio format: AAC, 48 kHz, 320 kbps, stereo

Filename: Points_de_vue_Video_1.mp4

Duration: 5:35

Filename: Points_de_vue_Video_2.mp4

Duration: 9:55

Filename: Points_de_vue_Video_3.mp4

Duration: 10:23

40

Appendix C. Audio documentation – Eight channel composition

Creator: Yves Candau

Description: A stereo downmix of the electroacoustic composition used in Points de

vue. The piece was composed for and played through eight channels

in the performance.

Codec: MP3

Sample type: 48 kHz, 24 bits, stereo

Bitrate: 320 Kbps, constant

Filename: Points_de_vue_Audio_Composition.mp3

Duration: 11:12