smyth, mary

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Kinesthetic Communication in DanceAuthor(s): Mary M. Smyth

Source:Dance Research Journal,

Vol. 16, No. 2 (Autumn, 1984), pp. 19-22Published by: University of Illinois Press on behalf of Congress on Research in DanceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1478718 .

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Kinesthetic Communicationn D a n c eMaryM. Smyth

"Dance is movement that has been organizedso that it isrewarding to behold," writes Anderson(1974, p. 9), andmanyof those who talkor write about dance have attemptedto explainthe way in which dance rewardsthe beholderbyconsidering the processes by which dance communicates.Andersongoeson to say: "... dancecommunicatesbecause itpromptsresponseswithin us. Dance is not simplya visualart,it is kinestheticas well; it appeals to our inherent sense ofmotion"(p. 9). This distinctionbetween visual and kines-theticcommunicationsonewhich manydancers indappeal-ing. The kinestheticcommunication s not analyzedfurther,butrather,it becomesaneasyway of statingthe specialstatusof dance as an art form. That is, there is a special sense forwhich only dance can provideaestheticsatisfaction.This paper draws on a number of areasdealing with thestudyof perceptionand communicationwithin psychology norder to examinethe ways in which we can gain informationabout the movementsof other people and to consider howsuchinformationcould give rise to kinestheticexperience.Itdeals first with the use of the term "kinesthesis"within thestudyof sensationandperception, arguing hat in thiscontextkinesthesisrelatesto movementof one'sown body while themovement of another'sbody must be perceived via one ormoreof the five exteroceptive ystems.Kinesthesis an not bea channel for input in the way vision is because kinesthesisrefers o the nature of communication,not to the perceptualsystemby which it is pickedup. The next sectionpresents heargumentthat we do not always have direct knowledge ofwhere our sensationscome from so we may mis-attributethem to "subliminal" nput or even to perceptual systemswhich arenot in fact involved.If we believe that a communi-cationiskinesthetic, his neednot mean that there is a specialinput system,but rather,that somethinghappensas normalperceptual nformationcomes n which relates t to the move-mentsystemof the observer.The final sectionconsidershowwatchingsomeonedance could link to the movementsystemof the observer.One suggestionis that the perceptual inputlinks to the motor commandsystem, which becomes activeand somehowgivesrise to sensationswhich actuallyare fromthe observer'sbody, and another is that the input links tostoredmemoryrepresentationsof what movementsfeel likewithout involving the motor commands. Both suggestionshaveproblemsaccounting or observerswho cannot makethemovements hey watch, although t ispossible hat kinestheticimagery s flexibleenoughto makethisonly a minorobjectionto the secondaccount. The aim of the paper is to clarifythe

issues involved in kinestheticcommunicationand to suggestdirectionsn which we mightlook in order o understandhowdance communicates.The word "kinesthesis"was coined to refer to the sense ofmovement(kinein= to move, aesthesis= perception)of one'sown body,which isderived frommovement informationpro-videdby receptorsn joints,muscles, endonsand skin. In thiscontext it means "senseof one's own movement," and thereceptorswhich provide the informationcan be indicated.Theorthodox ivesense of seeing,hearing, touching, smellingand tasting also relate to particularkinds of receptors. Theygive us information about objectsand events in the world,and for this reasonSherrington(1906) called them "extero-ceptors"to indicate that they were the source of externalinformation. Sherringtonused "interoceptors" o refer toreceptorswhich were solelyconcernedwith the internalstateof the organism,such as pain and pressurereceptors n theviscera, and he added a third class of receptors,"proprio-ceptors" proprius:own) to referto the receptors n the joints,musclesand tendons. So, if we follow Sherringtonwe canrefer to particular receptorsand the informationthey pro-vide, and we can also speak of the sense which they serve(rodsandconesarereceptors n the retinawhich servevision,Golgi tendon organsservekinesthesis).More recently, this classification,which is based on thepositionandnature of receptors,has beenchallengedby thosewho are concernedwith the function of a perceptualsystemrather than its location. Gibson(1966) and Lee (1977) bothargue that if any perceptual system provides informationaboutthe positionand movement of the body then it is func-tioning proprioceptively,but they too are dealing with theperception of one's own body. In this account vision canprovide such information and therefore it is possible to speakof "visual kinesthesis" which is the sense of movement of one'sown body when movement is seen. However, even if weloosen kinesthesis from its traditional ties to receptors in jointsand muscle, we are still referring to sensing the movement ofone's own body and not as yet to sensations which arise fromwatching the movements of another.Information which we pick up from the environment mustcome in via our ears, eyes, nose, taste buds or skin. If dancecommunicates to us it must do so through these modalities. Ifthere is kinesthetic communication such that we experience asense of movement when we do not move, then this must bemediated via the other senses and we need to ask how this canbe done. It is not always clear from the words of dancers and

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writerson dance that they accept that kinestheticcommuni-cation must be mediated via the "external"senses. Royce(1977) writes of channels of communicationsof which thekinesthetic hannelisprimary.The otherchannels areseeing,hearing, touching and smelling, all of which contributeorcan contribute o the experienceof dance. Roycesumsup thecommunicationschannelsby saying: "It is clear that danceutilizes a numberof channels,thekinesthetic,whichis crucialto it alone of all the arts, and the visual, aural, tactile andolfactory." p. 200). It appears romthis that Royceconsiderskinesthetic ommunication o be a directcommunication,buthow is it conveyed?If kinestheticinformation(informationgiving rise to a sense of movement) is not visual, auditory,tactileorolfactory,what is it?If it isconveyedby one or all ofthese sense modalities but then requirestranslationinto asenseof movementof the observer's wn body, then it is not a"channel"n the way the exteroceptivemodalitiesare. It maybe a channel in a different way, but the use of the word"channel" bscuresandmystifies he processesof communica-tion rather than clarifiesthem.Dance is often comparedto language, sometimes becauserelationsbetweenstructureand meaningcan be comparedtosyntax and semantics.However, if we think of language asverbalcommunication,then we can alsocompare t to kines-theticcommunicationand investigatethe word "channel" nthiscontext.In orderto convey meaning,words mustbe seen,heard or touched. People with normal vision and hearingexperiencewrittenand spokenwords, and the same meaningmay be conveyedby a patternof soundwaves and a patternof markson a page. If auditionand vision are channelsthenthe messages carried by the channels are quite differentbecausethe physicalnature of the stimuli is different. Theblind and deaf can perceive words by touch, the deaf byseeing lip movementsor manual signs. All of these differentphysical stimuli can produce the same understanding, themeaningof a word. If, on the otherhand, we referto a verbalchannel of communication hen we mean that understandingis conveyed via words, whatever the nature of the physicalstimulusor the sensemodalitywhich receivedit. In this casewe can become interestedin how differentkinds of sensoryinput relate to an abstract representationof meaning. Itwould not make sense to refer to the verbal, visual andauditorychannelsof communicationbecause we would bemixingdifferentusesof the word"channel,"andthis sexactlywhat happens if we referto kinesthetic,visual and auditorychannelsof communication.Dance, likemanyartforms,doesnot communicate deasorfeelingswhich are easily verbalizable,althoughin some cul-turesstylizedpatternsof dance have agreedmeaningswhichmay be verbalizable.In her treatmentof meaning in danceRoyce refersto Waterman's 1962) distinctionbetween pat-ternsin dance which have such a denotative meaning and"empathic ubliminalcommunication"Royce1977, p. 195).Whileshe does not find this divisionadequate, Royce retainsthe idea that dance can communicatesubliminallyand shelaterstatesthat"youmaybe presentedvisuallywith one mes-sage while you are hearing or subliminally experiencingyetanother"p. 200). Thismay imply that subliminalexperienceis not mediatedvia visionor hearing, or it may simply meanthat dancecan convey severalmeaningssimultaneously,andthat we don'tknow how this happens. The use of "sublimi-nal"doesnot addto the explanationof how dancecommuni-cates because it is not defined, and the question simply movesfrom "How does dance communicate?" to "How does dancecommunicate subliminally?"A subliminal stimulus for perception is one which is below

the thresholdfor detection (limen= threshold). If a persontriesto detectthe presenceof a verydimlight and is unable todo so, then the light is of subliminal intensity. Subliminalperceptionoccurswhen a stimuluswhich cannot be detectedaffects the further behavior of the person who has beenunable to detect it. Such perceptionis often confusedwithperceptionwithout awarenessand if we find that we haverespondedto perceptualcues without being aware of doingso, we saythatwe pickedup the cuessubliminally.However,in many casesif we are told what the appropriatecues are,we are perfectlyable to detect them, that is, they are notsubliminal at all. Picking up an "impression"n ways whichcannot be specifieddoes not mean that the pick-up processdealtwith subliminalperceptualcues.If I speakto a groupofpeopleand they all makenormalsocial conversationand sayquite friendlythingsyet I feel that they are hostileto me, itwould probably be incorrectto conclude that the hostilitywascommunicated ubliminally,but the processesby which Ibecome awareof the hostilitymay not themselvesbe availa-ble to awareness.Non-verbal ommunicationhas been studiedfor a considerableperiod (Argyle, 1975) and we now knowthat attitude and emotion can be conveyed by "body lan-guage,"eye contact, distancingand so on. If a personwhosenseshostility is directed to the aspectsof the behavior ofotherswhich betrayedthis hostility those aspectswould bedetectable becausethey are above the thresholdfor percep-tion and not subliminal. The communicationis subtle andseems mysteriousbut it is effected via the ordinary senseorgansoperatingon a supra-liminal nput, and the mysterylies in how we use and understandsigns which we do notknow that we produceor receive.We tend to assume hat we know whethera piece of infor-mationreachedus via particularreceptors uchas our ears oreyes, but this is not always the case. Very few people knowthat they are able to maintain their balance thanks to areceptorsystemin the vestibule of the inner ear, so they arenotable to attributesensationsof tilt andsway to the activityof thatsystem the pit of the stomachmaybewhere we exper-iencethesensationbutthat is not the site of a balanceorgan).It is also possibleto misattribute he originof sensationsandperceptionswhen the existence of the relevant perceptualsystemis known. The ability of some blind people to detectand avoid obstaclesand barrierswithout any tactile contactwas not easily assigned o one particularsense.Many people,includingthe blind themselves,believed that avoidancewaspossibleon the basis of "facialvision."It felt as if the skin ofthe blind person's ace pickedup some informationfrom theenvironment,possibly air movement. However, a series ofexperimentsin which blind people were asked to detectobstacleswith a cloth over theirfaces, or while they wore earplugs, showed that it was not the skin of the face whichpicked up the information,but the ears.Theblindwere usingechoes producedwhen the sound of their own movementswas reflectedback to them, and could in fact use this todistinguishquitesubtledifferencesbetweensurfaces Kellogg,1962). Until there was evidence that "facialvision"was notoccurring,it is unlikelythat the experienceof blind peoplewould have been questioned. How could a sighted persondenytheexperiencewhich sheor he was unableto share?Thediscovery hat auditorycueswere the importantonesdoes notmean that the experienceof the blind people was incorrect,any more than it is incorrect o experiencea pitch or sway inthe pit of one'sstomach. To understandhow informationistransferredt is necessaryto considermore than the experi-enceof the receiver.Thisexperience s partof what it is to beexplained,not the explanation tself.

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To understand how dance communicateswe have to gobeyondthe experiencewhich leadsus to use wordslike "sub-liminal." We alsoneed to understandhow, if at all, the senseof movementof one'sown body can be stimulatedby hearingand seeing other people dance. The fact that many dancersand writerson dancebelievethat kinestheticcommunicationoccursdoesnot explainsuchcommunication,and may be nomore accurate hanthebelief in facialvisionwas. Dancers dobelieve that direct communicationof movement experienceoccurs,and one, MurrayLouis, has suggestedhow it mightoperate. In writing about the creative world of Alwin Niko-lais, Louis(1980)states: "Oneexperienceshis world abstract-ly, through the senses: optic, aural and kinetic" (p. 143).Again a movement(kinetic)sense is posited as if it were asense like vision and hearing which picked up particularphysicalstimuliby meansof specialized receptors.However,it later becomes less clear that Louis intends the "kinetic"senseto be independentof vision andhearingwhen he defineskineticsas "the excitement which sends motional sensationdirectlyinto the viewer's neuro-muscular ystem" (p. 162).The directnessof the communicationmay be via vision, butthe suggestionis that the sight and possibly the sound ofothersdancingis able to createactivityin the neuro-muscularsystem, that is, in the central nervous system and in themusclesof the body. Royce'saccount of kinestheticcommuni-cationmay implysomethingof the sameprocessbut it is con-fused by examplessuch as toe tapping and the inductionoftrancein spectatorsof trancedancing.Toe tapping occursinresponse to rhythmic stimulation, most commonly music,ratherthan dance, and trance can be induced by watchingrhythmicmovementsof manykinds, not only dance, so theseexamplescannot be used to suggest that dance, and dancealone, affects the neuro-muscular ystemin this way.If we accept that kinesthetic or kinetic communicationisnotdirect but is mediatedvia one or moreof the exteroceptorsand arguethat it involvesactivityin the motorsystemof thespectator, then for this activity to be "neuro-muscular,"motor commands must be sent from the brain to muscle.Presumably he resultsof this activation are then perceiveddirectlyas proprioceptive eedbackfrom the spectator'sownbody. As most people watching a dance concert in Westerncountrieswill be seated, the induced neuro-muscular ctivitycannotbe very great. The muscleactivityis unlikelyto resultin changesin the lengthof muscles n the limbsas this wouldimply limb movement, although muscle tension may alterwithout changesin length occurring (isometriccontraction).Theperceptionof changein the spectator'sbodywhich wouldaccompany,or result rom,suchactivitywouldbe veryunlikethat which accompaniesmovement.If kinetic or kinestheticcommunication esults romactivityin the spectator's keletalmusculature,it will be much less than descriptionsof itsuggest.The idea that we can perceivethe consequencesof rudi-mentarymovementsas if they were actual movementshassomesimilarities o the now discreditedbehavioristview thatthought is sub-vocal speech and involves small unperceivedmovementsof the vocal tract. Thought processes,even verbalones,can occurwithout any activityin the vocal tract, and itis no longer necessary o avoid mentalistaccounts of under-standingandreasoning.Thesuggestion hatthe perceptionofanother'smovementinvolvesthe productionof movementinone'sownbody,evenin a rudimentaryway, seems nadequateas an explanationof kinetic communication, and may alsoreflecta lack of understandingof the kindsof mental repre-sentationwhichcouldbe involvedin both the perceptionandproductionof movement.The memorycode for a movement

is not just a set of instructions to muscle, but an abstractspatio-temporal pattern used to generate such instructions. Ifwe could show that such an abstract representation is alsoinvolved in the perception and recognition of movement,then we would be suggesting that perception and productioninvolve some of the same processes and that perception ofhuman movement is different from the perception of non-human movement because we can produce movement as wellas watch it.A theory of this type has been put forward for the percep-tion and production of speech. The noises we hear when otherpeople speak (the acoustic input), do not have a direct one-to-one relationship to the speech segments (phonemes) which goto make up the words we hear. The same acoustic event canbe perceived as different phonemes, depending on the contextin which it occurs, and different acoustic events can be per-ceived as the same phonemes. The motor theory of speechperception (Liberman et al. 1967) suggests that we use ourknowledge of how we articulate to help us decide whichphonemes we are hearing. In some languages, Japanese forexample, the distinction which English speakers make be-tween the phonemes /r/ and /1/ is not made. Native Japanesespeakers cannot produce different sounds for /r/ and /1/ andare also unable to discriminate between these sounds whenothers make them (Miyawaki et al. 1975). The motor theoryuses such evidence to support the view that the ability toperceive depends on the ability to articulate. The theory is notaccepted by all of those who study speech but it is one of thefew theories in which motor and perceptual processes havebeen linked, and therefore it merits some consideration here.Close consideration however, tends to make this accountinappropriate for understanding dance communication. Theimportant part of the message in dance is not "what was thatmovement?"; and for the spectator who is not a dancer, beingable to discriminate one movement from another is not theproblem. We are concerned with how we perceive meaningin the movement, with semantics rather than with phonemes.Those watching dance may be totally incapable of performingthe movements they perceive, so their knowledge of move-ment production is only a weak approximation to the move-ments they see and hear. The most difficult problem of all forsuch an account of kinesthetic communication is that thecommunication which resulted from observers using theirknowledge of production to help them perceive would not bekinesthetic at all. Motor knowledge might be involved inclassification of movement, or knowing how to make a move-ment could be an important part of remembering it afterseeing someone else perform, but such motor knowledge neednot be kinesthetic. It could involve only the rules for the con-trol of movement, not the perception of how such movementswould feel. As kinesthesis is the sense of movement, commun-ication has to access the stored representations of what move-ments feel like, not how they are made.Visual and other exteroceptive input might lead to a kin-esthetic experience if movement memory included not onlymotor plans but also memories of how the movements felt,that is, of the feedback from joints, muscles, skin and othersources of movement perception, as the movements wereactually executed. There are movement learning theorieswhich suggest that this may be the case (Schmidt 1975). Sokinesthetic experience of someone else's movement could ariseif the sight of the movement triggered memories of what it feltlike to perform that movement, or movements of that type.Again, such a process would not explain how someone whowas not a dancer or who had no experience of the movementswould be able to receive a kinetic or kinesthetic communica-

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tion. A weak version of the hypothesis could be put forwardin which the sight of another's movements stimulate kines-thetic experience by analogy with movements which theviewer has made in the past. If it still seems implausible thateveryday activities of leaping or turning around are sufficientto provide kinesthetic experience of jetes or pirouettes, thenwe may have to query the whole concept of kinesthetic orkinetic communication.The kinesthetic memory account, with its weaknesses, doesnot claim that the neuro-muscular system is accessed or thatmovements are stimulated in the observer's body, but ratherthan kinesthetic imagery is involved. Mental imagery is prob-ably most often thought to be visual, although it can beauditory too. We can use imagery to answer the question"How many windows are there in your house?" (visual) or tohelp us decide which letter follows "t" in the alphabet (au-ditory). We can also use imagery to answer the question "Doyou lift the pen from the paper when you write the letter'M'?", and in this case the imagery relates to movement andincludes sensations of movement or kinesthetic imagery. Ihave asked people to imagine themselves performing takswhich they could do, such as opening a bottle of wine, andtasks which they could not do, such as climbing up a rope. Inboth cases visual and auditory imagery was reported butkinesthetic imagery was also present. This was true even forpeople who were completely unable to climb a rope, andcould not remember ever having done so. They reported feel-ing strain on their arms and activity in the legs as theyimagined the activity. So, it is possible that kinesthetic image-ry can be part of thinking about a series of movements whichone cannot perform.Would this be a sufficient account of the mechanism bywhich one can sense the movement in the body of anotherperson? Visual and auditory input lead to a sense of move-ment because they somehow allow us to use stored knowledgeof the proprioceptive consequences of our own movements to

create kinesthetic imagery. "Somehow" remains as a gap inthe process. Even if dancers were happy that such a processcould in any way relate to the experiences which they called"kinesthetic communication," we still do now know how it iseffected. It is not enough to suggest that kinesthetic commun-ication must exist because people have experienced it. As withfacial vision, the experience of receiving the information fromthe environment cannot be questioned, but the attribution ofthat experience to a particular mechanism can be. The argu-ments presented above suggest that the experience known askinesthetic communication must be mediated by exterocep-tive systems like vision, but that it may be possible to useinformation provided by the exteroceptors to produce a sensa-tion of movement by accessing the stored knowledge of whatmovements feel like. We do not yet know how seen movementcan do this, but the question of how this occurs is an interest-ing one for all of those interested in the representation ofmovement, not only for dancers. Experimental studies of howwe perceive and remember movement need to be widened toinclude work on how we perceive and remember the seenmovement of others. This would enrich our understanding ofmovement processes in general as well as providing a basis forunderstanding communication in dance.Dance can have extremely powerful effects on those whowatch it. Before we attribute these effects to a mysteriousperceptual process we need to consider the other systemswhich might be involved, and we have to have some idea ofhow any suggested mechanism for communication producesthe effects. It is possible that the sense of movement whicharises from watching dance is purely visual, but is misinter-preted, and it is also possible that the visual input can give riseto kinesthetic imagery although we do not know how thisoccurs. Investigation of the processes involved in perceptiondoes not take the magic from the experience itself, but themagic should always be part of the experience, not part of theexplanation.

REFERENCES CITED

Anderson, J. Dance. New York: Newsweek Books, 1974.Argyle, M. Bodily Communication. London: Methuen, 1975.Gibson,J. J. The Senses Consideredas Perceptual Systems.Boston:Houghton Mifflin, 1966.Kellogg, W. N. Sonar system of the blind. Science 1962, 137, 399-404.Lee, D. N. The functions of vision. In: Pick, H. L., and Saltzman, E.,(eds.)Modesof Perceivingand Processing nformation.Hillsdale:Erlbaum, 1978.Liberman, A. M., Cooper, F. S., Shankweiler, D. P. and Studdert-

Kennedy, M. Perception of the speech code. Psychological Review,1967,74,431-461.

Louis, M. Inside Dance. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1980.Miyawaki, K., Strange, W., Verbrugge, R., Liberman, A. M., Jen-kins, J. J. and Fujimura, O. An effect of linguistic experience: Thediscrimination of /r/ and /1/ by native speakers of Japanese and

English. Perception and Psychophysics, 1975, 18, 331-340.Royce, A. P. The Anthropology of Dance. Bloomington: Indiana

University Press, 1977.Schmidt, R. A. A schema theory of discrete motor skill learning.

Psychological Review, 1975, 82, 225-260.Sherrington,C. S. The IntegrativeAction of the NervousSystem.

New Haven: Yale University Press, 1906.

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