Some fleshy thinking: improvisation, experience, perception

This essay reveals the tacit ways of knowing inherent in somatically based dance improvisation practices and considers how such embodied experience might become present, become recognized and understood, by both dancer and viewer. Written as a playful dialogue between ‘Dancer’ and her ‘Practice’, concepts drawn from phenomenology are elaborated to reveal the ways that deeply internalised experiential movement practices may enter and expand perceptual fields. This is approached in two interconnected stages as I ask:
Firstly: How, as an improviser, is it possible to know ‘something’ of the dancing body whilst ‘in-action’?
Secondly: How is improvisation, as a mode of embodied research and knowing, developed with, and made ‘sense’ of, by an audience?
This entails a consideration of the relationships between body, experience, perception and knowledge.

This is a draft of a chapter accepted for publication by Oxford University Press in the book The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Theater edited by Nadine George-Graves. Published in final form as:
Midgelow, Vida L. (2015) Some fleshy thinking: improvisation, experience, perception. In: The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Theater. George-Graves, Nadine, ed. Oxford Handbooks . Oxford University Press, New York, pp. 109-122. ISBN 9780199917495, reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780199917495.do