The “Body in Motion” as the Substance of Dance Improvisation? Based on Motifs from Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s \u3cem\u3ePhenomenology of Perception\u3c/em\u3e

In the beginning of my academic career, it was my personal experience of dance practice that provided a direct impulse for studying the phenomenon of dance as art from a philosophical perspective. It was that same experience that drew my attention to the concept of aesthetic engagement proposed by Arnold Berleant. His theory, in my view, captures the fundamental aspects of dance in a unique way.[1] That early study led me to develop and promote the aesthetics of sensitivity, which in turn created a basis for the appreciation of dance as a practice that is inseparable from life.[2] Many problems explored by Berleant – such as the inseparability of perception from action, appreciation of the living and sensing body, and understanding of the space as relational and dependent on the body’s motion – can also be found in the thought of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. His arguments, in my opinion, help explain factors in modern dance such as somatic engagement in the process of its perception or the performative character of an event that is inseparable from its broadly construed context or the environment in which it occurs. In the course of his academic career, Arnold Berleant has frequently referred to Merleau-Ponty’s thought and, inspired by the latter’s works, employed,, in his own reflection, notions such as those of chiasm, of the flesh of the world, or of the body as a field of forces – which he also used in reference to dance.[3] He has been most acutely sensitive, however, to the remnants of dualistic thinking present in terminology like that of “the interior” and “the exterior,” which he found even in Merleau-Ponty’s work.[4] This article is a proposal for one of many possible ways of re-interpreting Berleant’s concept of dance as a practice in which elements of an existential nature are tightly connected with aesthetic, cognitive, or environmental ones. In this text, space in dance is not construed as something external to the body but as something emanating from its movement, merging with broadly understood surroundings, and becoming an embodiment of our being in the world

Some remarks on conceptual dance from Richard Shusterman’s pragmatist perspective

The main aim of this presentation is to consider how performances that are called conceptual dance can be included in Richard Shusterman’s pragmatist aesthetics. The shows of artists such as Xavier Le Roy, Jan Ritsema and Jonathan Burrows cannot be classified as art in the traditional sense, but neither can they be labeled as everyday life or as theory - because they are situated on the borderline of these fields. In fact, their aim is to dismantle the determinants of dance as art, to critique accepted conventions, including those based on the division between the audience and the stage, and between the roles of the spectator and the artist. Thus, in order to consider such performances, the adoption of a transdisciplinary approach is necessary. The presentation will include performances by Le Roy Unititled, and by Ritsema and Burrows Weak Dance Strong Questions. Particular attention will be paid to the issue of bodily interaction, based on dismantling the hidden perceptual habits of the spectator in the public space of the theater. Consideration will also be given to the performative agency of artists’ bodies that critically questions the internalized conventions of the art world. Attempts to destabilize the perception process and shake off habits and expectations are treated as aesthetically and cognitively important components of experience

Photo-performance: A study of the performativity of butoh dance photography

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.This thesis analyses the detailed performativity and the intuitive act of photographing the Japanese dance form Butoh. It argues that the photographer’s embodied experience constitutes an ‘inner’ performance and introduces new terms: the photo-performance and the photo-actor. The author argues that the photo-performance, similarly to Butoh dance, manifests itself not only in physically apparent (visually perceived) movements but also within the multi-modal pre-reflective consciousness of the reciprocal interaction between the photo-actor and a Butoh dancer.Butoh has been widely photographed since it began in 1959 in Japan. However studies formalising the relationship between dancers and photographers have been largely absent in academic research so far. Butoh photographers such as Nourit Masson-Sekine (1988, 2006, 2008) or Maja Sandberg (2003) suggest that their photographic act places them closer to the performers than the rest of the audience and, as a result, they become part of the dance itself. However, Butoh dancers including Yoshito Ohno (1938 - ) and Tatsumi Hijikata (1928 – 1986) amongst others, express their concerns as to whether photographs can capture the essence of their art. This thesis confronts the tensions between the fields of dance and photography by elucidating the performative dimension of dance photography.This thesis brings the qualities of the Butoh photographer’s performative act to the forefront by using interdisciplinary methods to attain an intersubjective knowledge of the nature of the photographer’s experience. The methods include: a practical research presented in a form of case studies of the photographic projects carried out by the author in London with various Butoh dancers; an analysis of the structure of the photographer’s subjective experience through the use of first-person methodologies (an explicitation interview); an analysis of theories of theatre represented by Tadeusz Kantor (1915 – 199) and Jerzy Grotowski (1933 – 1999) whose work helps to develop the notion of a performative body; and a description of the photo-performance aesthetic and the performative potential of photographic documents informed by cognitive phenomenology. This thesis argues that drawing attention to the performativity of Butoh photography would contribute greatly to the pedagogical aspects of photography and performing arts

Usefulness of the historical approach to research on Polish private competition law

Tematem artykułu jest analiza przydatności podejścia historycznego do badania prywatnego prawa konkurencji. Początkowo analizie poddano kwestie terminologiczne. Kolejno sformułowano argumenty uzasadniające korzystanie z tego podejścia w badaniach nad prawem prywatnym. Dalej przedstawiono genezę prawa konkurencji w Polsce i sformułowano argumenty dotyczące przydatności podejścia historycznego dla badania polskiego prawa konkurencji. W rezultacie potwierdzono hipotezę wskazującą na przydatność podejścia historycznego do badania polskiego prywatnego prawa konkurencji.The subject of the article is an analysis of usefulness of historical approach to the study of private competition law. Initially, terminological issues were analyzed. Arguments justifying the use of this approach in private law research were subsequently formulated. The genesis of competition law in Poland is presented below and arguments regarding usefulness of historical approach to the study of Polish competition law are formulated. As a result, hypothesis indicating usefulness of historical approach to the study of Polish private competition law was confirmed

New humanities and the language of contemporary educational studies : interdisciplinary messages

Th e article is an attempt to synthetic introduction to issues concerning language of contemporary Polish educational studies in the interdisciplinary perspective and with the use of categories of the New Humanities. For many years language has been perceived as a tool of description of reality according to rules provided by Lvov-Warsaw School (mainly the rule of precision and unambiguity). Linguistic turn changed this point of view and set the language as a scientifi c issue in many specifi c disciplines including educational studies. Multiparadigmatic and humanistic as well dimension of knowledge of education indicates the necessity of analysis of contemporary educational studies’ language in the perspective of the newest trends including the New Humanities. Its transdisciplinary character and new orientations situated on the frontier of the traditional scientifi c disciplines point out to the need to investigate the new language of educational studies, allowing, in addition to the traditional principles of clarity, precision and exactness also for the categories of fi gurativeness and metaphoricalness situated in the perspectives of streams of non-dualistic and anti-essentialistic philosophy. Such language corresponds to the basic attributes of the New Humanities, determined by the categories of innovativeness and social usefulness. Departing from the neo-positivist rules of language evaluation also favors the adverse phenomena of emergence of pseudo- and paralanguages in educational science, apparently only setting issues in the domain of research on education