Sensation
Erin Brannigan, Dance
In the case of dance, the object perceived, the creation presented, is the human body itself, a manifestation of sensation in the subject-object of the dancer. Sensations can achieve a directness in their form (or “deformation”) in the encounter between dancer and other in a unique way; the moving body can never be pure representation [figure] or pure abstraction. There is always direct recourse/resonance between the sensation we see in the body of the other, the unit of measure we use to perceive it, and the field of corporeal experience we bring to bear in the encounter. For this reason, dance could be considered the art of sensation, where the entire creative event - from practice to process, from production to reception - engages with corporeal sensation is all of its chaos and instability.
Mind-body work with corporeal sensations and intensities calls for a shift in the field of perception from being dominated by vision to becoming decentred, plurisensorial, responsive, mobile, and virtuosic. This model of perception is unchained from patterns of recognition and seeking the familiar, and is closer to attention as an open, dispersed, and non-assertive form of information-gathering mobilized by/mobilizing affect and sensation. Working in this way, the dancer can circumvent the dangers of speechlessness associated with affect and sensation by channelling incoming stimuli into a corporeal loop so that what is experienced through the body stays with corporeal modes of expression, movement, and exchange. What is it to stay in the zone of sensation, expanding and thickening the experiential field before recognition, using methods such as interruption, repetition, exhaustion, or constant variation? And how can we name this? Experiments with composition have allowed the art form to explore the sensations, intensities, and imagination of the mind-body as medium to produce choreographies that are self-reflexive, relational, expanded, and durational.