Kinaesthesia and Visual Self-Reflection in Contemporary Dance

Kinaesthesia and Visual Self-reflection in Contemporary Dance features interviews with UK-based professional-level contemporary, ballet, hip hop, and breaking dancers and cross-disciplinary explication of kinaesthesia and visual self-reflection discourses. Expanding on the concept of a ’kinaesthetic mode of attention’ leads to discussion of some of the key values and practices which nurture and develop this mode in contemporary dance. Zooming in on entanglements with video self-images in dance practice provides further insights regarding kinaesthesia’s historicised polarisation with the visual. It thus provides opportunities to dwell on and reconsider reflections, opening up to a set of playful yet disruptive diffractions inherent in the process of becoming a contemporary dancer, particularly amongst an increasingly complex landscape of visual and theoretical technologies.

Shantel Ehrenberg is a practitioner/researcher/academic. Her research and practice focus on the complexity of the corporeal. She is Lecturer in Dance & Theatre at the University of Surrey, UK. Her research is also found in publications such as Choreographic Practices, Dance Research Journal, and Research in Dance Education.