Abstracting Dance: Detaching Ourselves from the Habitual Perception of the Moving Body

This work explores to what extent the notion of abstraction in dance is valid and what it entails. Unlike abstraction in the fine arts that aims for a certain independence from representation of the external world through the use of non-figurative elements, dance is realized by a highly familiar obj...

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Autor principal: Aviv, Vered
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5432560/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28559871
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00776
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author Aviv, Vered
author_facet Aviv, Vered
author_sort Aviv, Vered
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description This work explores to what extent the notion of abstraction in dance is valid and what it entails. Unlike abstraction in the fine arts that aims for a certain independence from representation of the external world through the use of non-figurative elements, dance is realized by a highly familiar object – the human body. In fact, we are all experts in recognizing the human body. For instance, we can mentally reconstruct its motion from minimal information (e.g., via a “dot display”), predict body trajectory during movement and identify emotional expressions of the body. Nonetheless, despite the presence of a human dancer on stage and our extreme familiarity with the human body, the process of abstraction is applicable also to dance. Abstract dance removes itself from familiar daily movements, violates the observer’s predictions about future movements and detaches itself from narratives. In so doing, abstract dance exposes the observer to perceptions of unfamiliar situations, thus paving the way to new interpretations of human motion and hence to perceiving ourselves differently in both the physical and emotional domains.
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spelling pubmed-54325602017-05-30 Abstracting Dance: Detaching Ourselves from the Habitual Perception of the Moving Body Aviv, Vered Front Psychol Psychology This work explores to what extent the notion of abstraction in dance is valid and what it entails. Unlike abstraction in the fine arts that aims for a certain independence from representation of the external world through the use of non-figurative elements, dance is realized by a highly familiar object – the human body. In fact, we are all experts in recognizing the human body. For instance, we can mentally reconstruct its motion from minimal information (e.g., via a “dot display”), predict body trajectory during movement and identify emotional expressions of the body. Nonetheless, despite the presence of a human dancer on stage and our extreme familiarity with the human body, the process of abstraction is applicable also to dance. Abstract dance removes itself from familiar daily movements, violates the observer’s predictions about future movements and detaches itself from narratives. In so doing, abstract dance exposes the observer to perceptions of unfamiliar situations, thus paving the way to new interpretations of human motion and hence to perceiving ourselves differently in both the physical and emotional domains. Frontiers Media S.A. 2017-05-16 /pmc/articles/PMC5432560/ /pubmed/28559871 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00776 Text en Copyright © 2017 Aviv. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Aviv, Vered
Abstracting Dance: Detaching Ourselves from the Habitual Perception of the Moving Body
title Abstracting Dance: Detaching Ourselves from the Habitual Perception of the Moving Body
title_full Abstracting Dance: Detaching Ourselves from the Habitual Perception of the Moving Body
title_fullStr Abstracting Dance: Detaching Ourselves from the Habitual Perception of the Moving Body
title_full_unstemmed Abstracting Dance: Detaching Ourselves from the Habitual Perception of the Moving Body
title_short Abstracting Dance: Detaching Ourselves from the Habitual Perception of the Moving Body
title_sort abstracting dance: detaching ourselves from the habitual perception of the moving body
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5432560/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28559871
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00776
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