Improvisational Dance as Enactive Cognition: What Do Novice Dancers Teach Us about Embodied Cognition in Dance?

ABSTRACT

We demonstrate the ways an improvisational dance workshop provided the opportunity for university students to be autonomous actors and engage in embodied sense-making through dance—two key parts of the conceptualization of enactive cognition. As part of a Design-Based Research project, we use Interaction Analysis to present examples of using autonomy in dance learning in a public art museum. We describe the interactions of one pair of novice dancers engaging in two designed dance activities, and how their improvisational dancing highlights the ways in which dance is a tool for sense-making. This research explores dance as both the content and context for learning, deepening the conceptualization of 4E cognition in dance education.

KEYWORDS:

• 4E cognition
• enactivism
• dance education
• improvisation
• autonomy
• sense-making

Acknowledgments

This research would not have been possible without the support of the UCLA Graduate Summer Research Mentorship Program, the Museum staff and students, and the participants who trusted us to dance in a public space.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Graduate Student Research Mentorship Grant, UCLA.