TABLE OF CONTENTS Keynotes 1 Eeva Anttila: On Be(com)ing and Connecting: Participatory Approaches to Dance Research and Pedagogy 2 Efva Lilja: Why Claim to be Dancing? Presentations 1 Eeva Anttila, Hanna Järvinen and Leena Rouhiainen: Artistic Research in Dance from a Finnish Perspective 2 Birutė Banevičiūtė: Dance Didactics in Lithuania: Context and Content of Paradigm Change 3 Ingibjörg Björnsdóttir: A Dance Festival Comes of Age 4 Camille Buttingsrud: A Phenomenological Appreciation of Dancers’ Embodied Self- Consciousness 5 Corinne Lyche Campos and Anette Sture Iversen: So Many Considerations to be Made … – Methodological challenges within dan- ce in primary education 6 Céline Gladpootjes: Unpacking Dance Didactics – Social-constructivism in Dance Technique Class 7 Lena Hammergren: Practicing ”Theory” in the Dance Studio: On Language and the Use of Metaphors 8 Joa Hug: How Does Artistic Research Change Dance Training Practice? 9 Hanna Järvinen: Experience and Affect as Epistemological Concerns for Dance History Pedagogy 10 Paula Kramer and Alys Longley: Moving, Writing, Living – Experimental Documentary Practices in Site-Specific Dance Research 11 Lise Lavelle: An Approach to an Improvised, Practice-Based Healing Performance as a ’Rite de Passage.’ 12 Michael Netschajeff: 20 Years with Dance in the Upper Secondary School in Denmark 13 Lauren O’Neal: I Am Interested in Dragging: Fatigue Aesthetics & Counter- Choreography 14 Aray Rakhimzhanova: Qara Jorğa danced by the King of Art or How I discovered the “authentic” Qara Jorğa 15 Cecilia Roos: Dancer as Agent 16 Irene Velten Rothmund: Dance Technique – Meanings and Applications Viewed through Students Experiencing Contemporary Dance 17 Turid Nøkleberg Schjønsby: Gesture as Tool in Dance Studies 18 Bryan Levina-Viray: The Motif that was Lost: Locating Choreographic Practice in Staging a Philippine Ritual 19 Liesbeth Wildschut: Watching Dance. The Experience of Beauty and Kinesthetic Empathy 20 Tone Pernille Østern: Embodied Teacher-Thinking Investigated through Choreography as Artistic Research KEYNOTE I On Be(com)ing and Connecting: Participatory Approaches to Dance Research and Pedagogy Eeva Anttila Introduction connectedness, combined with an attempt to predict and control research processes and outcomes has set the agenda for onto-epis- My presentation focused on the interconnectedness of art and temological discussion for many centuries, an agenda that many re- pedagogy, as well as on evolving approaches to dance research searchers are trying to overcome. The following citation highlights that stem from post-qualitative and performative paradigms. The the pressure that many (post)qualitative researchers face even to- key question that I wanted to address was how to facilitate social day: change and transformation through dance, and also, how to respect the processual nature of these phenomena when researching them. The rigor of research and the methods of research are often During the talk I referred to various theoretical and philosophical understood as following methodological recipes, (pre)dictated frameworks, including non-representational and sociomaterial paths, which take you to the findings and the conclusions. So theories. These theories may open exciting possibilities for inves- often we researchers are asked for some results/findings/out- tigating dance practices. For me, they elucidate especially how hu- comes, some new, evidence-and-systematicity-based knowl- man meaning-making is always connected to the physical, material edge on something. But knowledge is on the move, it escapes conditions of life, and how meaning arises through manifold ac- the knower, and when captured and frozen it ceases to reflect tions and interactions rather than in discourse or symbolic order; the complexities of life. (Guttorm, Löytönen, Anttila and Val- in other words, how thought is placed in action and how action keemäki 2015) is placed in the world. This may refer to the vague sensations and intuitive knowledge many dance practitioners somehow “know in Disconnection from the senses, the world and others has influ- their bones” but often find difficult to explain. This shift towards enced also our classrooms, our pedagogies. In many classrooms pu- understanding human meaning-making as connected with materi- pils study mostly alone, sitting, indoors, often disengaged. They are ality resonates strongly with my embodied experiences. evaluated individually, the information that is presented to them is The theoretical and philosophical discussion was accompanied most often in symbolic form (letters, numbers, graphs, etc.), comes with examples from practical work, especially some projects with from outside their lifeworld, prescribed in curricula, in books, the my students within The Theatre Academy, master programmes in content often chosen by the teacher and the institution. In dance dance and theatre pedagogy. In these projects the aim has been to pedagogy, disconnectedness has taken different forms. The notion merge pedagogy and performance. The notion of an artistic-peda- of dance as a predominantly wordless practice, ontologically dif- gogical event as a possible way to foster connectedness and partic- ferent and separate from cognition and conceptual thought, has ipation is central in this discussion. Public events that are based on generated “practices of silence” where reflection, interaction, col- collective, participatory approaches may also be one possible way laboration, sharing meanings and experiences in dance classes have to understand the evolving and emerging nature of artistic-peda- been undervalued. Disconnectedness, thus, is not only a matter of gogical processes and to see performances as on-going events. In physical constellation of classrooms, or a matter, or lack, of inter- such events the interest is in creating situations rather than objects, action. It also influences our beliefs and conceptions on learning, to foster action and interaction, participation and affect. In the end, thinking and creating. I returned to the notion of social change and turning focus towards There are many well-known examples of scientific practices a better future, and addressed the issue of fostering change in a where connection with the physical, material world has been cru- conscious way while acknowledging that human and non-human cial for creativity and great discoveries. A quote by Albert Einstein forces interact in complex ways. from 1916 highlights this nonverbal and sensorial nature of sci- entific discovery eloquently: “I very rarely think in words at all. A thought comes, and I may try to express in words afterwards” (see Dis/connectedness in research and pedagogy Galison, Holton and Schweber 2008: 34). This quote seems, to me, closely related to a more recent quote by the French philosopher According to common, albeit often inaccurate, interpretations, the Gilles Deleuze. He elaborates how, French philosopher René Descartes (1596-1650) suggested that the mind and the body are ontologically different: the mind is nonma- Something in the world forces us to think. This something is terial, and thus, not subject to laws of nature, whereas the body, an object not of recognition but of a fundamental encounter through its materiality, functions in a mechanistic, determined … It may be grasped in a range of affective tones: wonder, love, manner. These interpretations have generated dualist conceptions hatred, suffering. In whichever tone, its primary characteristic of the human being, where the mind is seen as separate from the is that it can only be sensed. (Deleuze 1968/1994: 139) body (see, e.g., Rauhala 2005; Thompson 2007; Sheets-Johnstone 2009). Such dualist conceptions have influenced research meth- And, an even more recent articulation omes from scholars who odologies and pedagogies greatly ever since Descartes’ times. Dis- are working on increasingly pervasive affect theories: KEYNOTE I and that the material world is embedded in immaterial energies. (Fenwick, Edwards Sawchuk 2011) These theories focus on for- mations and stabilization of elements within systems, and trace Page 2 interactions among human and nonhuman parts of the system. Affect arises in the in-between-ness: in the capacities to act and They understand human knowledge and learning to be embedded to be acted upon… affect … is the name we give to those forc- in material action and inter-action, or intra-action, and trace how es – visceral forces beneath, alongside, or generally other than knowledge, knowers, and known emerge together with/in activity. consicious knowing, vital forces insisting beyond emotion. A key theme is emergence: learning and knowledge emerge within (Seigworth and Gregg 2010: 1) dynamic structures where events and actors are mutually depend- ent, mutually constitutive. Human beings are fully nested within This lineage of accounts along about a hundred years of diverse and interconnected with the elements of the systems in which they scholarly work points out, for me at least, the intangible yet rela- are part of. Humans, thus, are not autonomous, sovereign agents tional and material nature of thinking and scientific work. There are, of their learning and knowledge construction. Knowledge, learn- of course, countless writers who have emphasized these themes of ing and action are understood as continuous invention and explo- relationality, connectedness, body-mind unity, and embodiment, ration, knowledge performs itself into existence, and learning is over the years. 20th