Papers by Maxine Sheets-Johnstone
Frontiers in cognition, Jun 13, 2024
Can we again learn about ourselves and our surrounding world through dance as we age, thereby pro... more Can we again learn about ourselves and our surrounding world through dance as we age, thereby promoting our own health? This article documents facts of life showing that "older adults" do not have to learn to be cognitive of their movement, affective dispositions, or surrounding world; they have been experientially cognitive of all by way of tactility, kinesthesia, and affectivity from the beginning. Present-day cognitive neuroscience, concentrating and theorizing as it does on the brain's neuroplasticity, is however deficient in recognizing these experiential realities. Research studies on the brain and behavior, in contrast, demonstrate that coordination dynamics are the defining feature of both neurological and kinesthetic coordination dynamics. These dynamics are central to corporeal concepts, to the recognition of if-then relationships, and to thinking in movement. In effect, the brain is part of a wholebody nervous system. The study proceeds to show that the qualitative dynamics of movement that subtend coordination dynamics are basic to not only everyday movement but also to dancing-to experiencing movement kinesthetically and to being a mindful body. When Merce Cunningham writes that dance gives you that "single fleeting moment when you feel alive" and is not for "unsteady souls" and English writer D. H. Lawrence writes that "[w]e ought to dance with rapture that we are alive, and in the flesh, and part of the living incarnate cosmos," their words are incentives to those who are aging to awaken tactilely, kinesthetically, and affectively to the existential realities of dance.
Continental philosophy review, May 10, 2024
No abstract.
Routledge eBooks, Sep 7, 2023
The aesthetic unity of dancer and dance is a unique phenomenon in the art world. In exploring the... more The aesthetic unity of dancer and dance is a unique phenomenon in the art world. In exploring the nature and consequences of the aesthetic unity, this chapter first focuses on a dancer's and an audience's experience of dance, pointing out in the process an affective difference and a difference evident in an audience's recognition of technical virtuosity. The chapter then turns to writings of writer and filmmaker Susan Sontag and of eminent choreographer/dancer Merce Cunningham, and to those of Cunningham dancer Carolyn Brown and world-renown choreographer Pina Bausch, all of which describe in different ways the aesthetic unity of dancer and dance, ways that heighten understandings of dance, its uniqueness in the world of art, and its challenges. The well-known ending line from Yeats's poem "Among School Children"-"How can we know the dancer from the dance?"epitomizes just such a range of perspectives. The temporal awareness that runs like an undercurrent through the perspectives centers on the fleeting "nowness" of dance, its existential impermanence, hence the temporal unity of dancer and dance, and the temporality of movement itself, both of which are major factors in the challenge of preserving the art of dance. The chapter shows how this challenge may explain wayward phenomenological assessments and understandings of movement and of being a body, hence wayward phenomenological assessments and understandings of the aesthetic realities of dance and of dancing the dance, and more particularly the phenomenological neglect or faulty assessment and understanding of the sensory modality of kinesthesia. The writings of Merleau-Ponty and of Heidegger, and of various present-day phenomenologists such as Gallagher and Zahavi are of particular concern in this regard. Of contrasting concern are the highly informative and indeed edifying first-person experiential writings of notably famous choreographers/dancers Doris Humphrey and Merce Cunningham that highlight the centrality of kinesthesia to life as well as to dance, of notably famous theater directors Jacques Lecoq and Stanton Garner, and of music composer Roger Sessions, all three of whom write pointedly, experientially, and in thought-provoking ways of the centrality of movement to their art, in no way diminishing the uniqueness of the art of dance but both documenting and broadening the relevance of movement to aesthetic creativity.
Psychotherapy and Politics International, Dec 18, 2022
To say … that a man is made up of certain chemical elements is a satisfactory description only fo... more To say … that a man is made up of certain chemical elements is a satisfactory description only for those who intend to use him as a fertilizer. Herbert Muller (1943:107)
BRILL eBooks, Jun 2, 2023
BRILL eBooks, Jun 2, 2023
BRILL eBooks, Jun 2, 2023
BRILL eBooks, Jun 2, 2023
Theatre, Dance and Performance Training, Apr 3, 2022
DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals), Nov 1, 2016
Routledge eBooks, Apr 12, 2019
DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals), Dec 1, 2011
Phenomenology and The Cognitive Sciences, Dec 2, 2011
Frontiers in Cognition, 2024
Can we again learn about ourselves and our surrounding world through dance as we age, thereby pro... more Can we again learn about ourselves and our surrounding world through dance as we age, thereby promoting our own health? This article documents facts of life showing that "older adults" do not have to learn to be cognitive of their movement, affective dispositions, or surrounding world; they have been experientially cognitive of all by way of tactility, kinesthesia, and affectivity from the beginning. Present-day cognitive neuroscience, concentrating and theorizing as it does on the brain's neuroplasticity, is however deficient in recognizing these experiential realities. Research studies on the brain and behavior, in contrast, demonstrate that coordination dynamics are the defining feature of both neurological and kinesthetic coordination dynamics. These dynamics are central to corporeal concepts, to the recognition of if-then relationships, and to thinking in movement. In effect, the brain is part of a wholebody nervous system. The study proceeds to show that the qualitative dynamics of movement that subtend coordination dynamics are basic to not only everyday movement but also to dancing-to experiencing movement kinesthetically and to being a mindful body. When Merce Cunningham writes that dance gives you that "single fleeting moment when you feel alive" and is not for "unsteady souls" and English writer D. H. Lawrence writes that "[w]e ought to dance with rapture that we are alive, and in the flesh, and part of the living incarnate cosmos," their words are incentives to those who are aging to awaken tactilely, kinesthetically, and affectively to the existential realities of dance.
Continental Philosophy Review, 2024
Keywords:
Heidegger’s “bodily nature” · Merleau-Ponty’s “ambiguous body” ·
Husserl’s “animate or... more Keywords:
Heidegger’s “bodily nature” · Merleau-Ponty’s “ambiguous body” ·
Husserl’s “animate organism · Vision and kinesthesia · Aliveness, feelings, and“Being-toward-Death”
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Papers by Maxine Sheets-Johnstone
Heidegger’s “bodily nature” · Merleau-Ponty’s “ambiguous body” ·
Husserl’s “animate organism · Vision and kinesthesia · Aliveness, feelings, and“Being-toward-Death”
Heidegger’s “bodily nature” · Merleau-Ponty’s “ambiguous body” ·
Husserl’s “animate organism · Vision and kinesthesia · Aliveness, feelings, and“Being-toward-Death”