“Human Perception” (LizB)

Being a teaching assistant in Andrea’s beginning dance class has been particularly valuable to me because it has forced me to return to sensation, the fundamental basis of movement and dance. For this reason I was interested in Moore’s use of the concept “tune out” to describe how we ignore repetitive stimuli. Of course this “tuning out” of certain sensations can be useful at times, but it can also distort our body image and prevent us from becoming fully aware of how we perceive the world around us. Our awareness is selective and a deeper understanding of how the body perceives the world allows greater freedom of choice in where we choose to direct our attention. One of the challenges I am currently facing in rehearsals is how to instill an awareness of sensation in my dancers. This is particularly difficult given that many of the states I am asking them to embody are purposefully unfamiliar and uncomfortable. Personally, I often avoid vulnerable or uncomfortable states by defaulting to highly physical, muscular movement. Thus, I have been forced to heighten my own awareness of my habits in order to bring out the qualities I am seeking in their bodies. In our last rehearsal we did vocal exercises and this seemed to deepen our awareness as we explored how sounds fill and vibrate different parts of the body.

I was also interested by Moore’s discussion of how individual perception is informed by one’s cultural context, as each culture demarcates its own range regarding what falls within the categories of real and illusory (Moore 36). Which leads me to question: to exactly what extent can we trust our perceptions? A significant part of my choreographic project is to explore multiple ways of perceiving an event and what happens when the event is decontextualized and deconstructed. “While creativity rests on the ability of the individual to see things differently, civilization itself rests on social agreements as to what is real and what is illusory” (Moore 37). I believe that the dancing, performing body has the potential to place the neat divisions drawn between reality and illusion in jeopardy.