Abstract
The chapter deals with the hermeneutic act of understanding expressive gestures. Focusing on the case study of bodily movements that are performed in Bellus, Katan suggests that dance forms in dances of the Batsheva Dance Company invite the spectator to realize feelings and intentionality of dancers as meaningful forms of expression. The chapter deals with embodied dimensions of understanding, and offers a requested viewpoint on the relationship between culturally embedded meanings in bodily movements and the physical origins of comprehending them.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Since this part is focused on the expressive value of Gaga, the contribution of a choreographer and other creators of the dance forms are “left between brackets.” In order to comprehend dance forms further, there is a need for another reflection.
- 2.
See the theory of the picture act: Bredekamp (2010).
- 3.
Edmund Husserl, Empathy and the Constitution of the Other. In: Donn Welton (ed.) The Essential Husserl: Basic Writings in Transcendental Phenomenology. Bloomington Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1999, p. 147: “It is clear from the very beginning that only a similarity connecting, within my primordial sphere, that body over there with my body can serve as the motivational basis for the ‘analogizing’ apprehension of that body as another animate organism.”
- 4.
Edith Stein, On the Problem of Empathy. Waltraut Stein (trans.) In: The Collected Works of Edith Stein, Volume 3, Washington D.C.: ICS Publications, 1989, p. 6.
- 5.
Ibid, p. 19.
- 6.
Husserl, (1999).
- 7.
See: Gärdenfors (2006).
- 8.
See: Kant (1790; 2010), p. 120 (§17), and Gadamer (1975; 2004), p. 38.
- 9.
Schopenhauer argues that contemplation occurs easily with a will-less state of aesthetic. See: Schopenhauer (2008), Book 3.
- 10.
See: Gärdenfors (2006).
- 11.
Langer, (1967; 1970), p. 4.
- 12.
Aristotle, TS (1981), p. 97.
- 13.
Dewey (1934; 1980), p. 64.
- 14.
Jessie Prinz (2004).
- 15.
Langer (1953), p. 174.
- 16.
Ibid.
- 17.
Dewey (1934; 1980).
- 18.
Ibid.
- 19.
Langer (1953), p. 51, p. 203.
- 20.
Langer (1953), p. 174: “Gesture is created at the first touch—in this case, with the first motion, performed or even implied.”
- 21.
See: Gadamer (1975; 2004), Language and Hermeneutics. pp. 385–406. In this respect, “being in one rhythm” means that the dance is a medium of hermeneutical experience.
- 22.
Barbara Montero, Proprioception as an Aesthetic Sense. In: The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 64:2, Spring 2006, pp. 231–42.
- 23.
Gadamer (1975; 2004).
- 24.
Langer (1953), p. 178: “Dance gesture is not real gesture, but virtual. The bodily movement, of course, is real enough; but what makes it emotive gesture, i.e. its spontaneous origin in what Laban calls ‘feeling-thought-motion,’ is illusory, so the movement is ‘gesture’ only within the dance. It is an actual movement but virtual self-expression.”
- 25.
Dewey (1934; 1980), pp. 62–3.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2016 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Katan, E. (2016). Understanding Expressions. In: Embodied Philosophy in Dance. Performance Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-60186-5_22
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-60186-5_22
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-60185-8
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-60186-5
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)