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To cite this document:

SOUZA, Giordani Gorki Queiróz de; RIBEIRO, Natalia Pinto da Rocha. improvising
a body: attention and first-person methodologies in dance. . In:
NATIONAL MEETING OF DANCE RESEARCHERS, 7, 2022, edition
virtual. Electronic annals [...]. Salvador: National Association of Researchers in
Dance – Editora ANDA, 2022. p. 2534-2549.

www.portalanda.org.br

2533
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Improvising a body: attention and first-person methodologies in

dance

Giordani Gorki Queiróz de Sousa (UFBA)

Natalia Pinto da Rocha Ribeiro (UFBA)

Thematic Committee Somatics and Practice as Research in Dance

Abstract: This article aims to present some clues about the importance of attention in
dance learning processes, specifically in improvisational practices. The text arises from
the convergence of some themes addressed in the authors' doctoral research in the
Graduate Program in Dance at the Federal University of Bahia (PPGDança/UFBA).
Having as a theoretical support for our reflections the enactive approach of corporeal
cognition (VARELA, THOMPSON & ROSCH, 1991), we articulate studies of attention
(KASTRUP, 1999, 2004; VASCONCELOS, 2009; SADE & KASTRUP, 2011; ROMERO,
2018; WU , 2014; GANERI, 2017; WATZL, 2017), first-person methodologies
(SCHIPHORST, 2009; VARELA, THOMPSON, VERMERSCH, 2003,2206), somatic
practices and their possible contributions to artistic and pedagogical processes that have
improvisational practices as a focus.

Keywords: IMPROVISATION IN DANCE. DANCE AND LEARNING.

ENACTIVE APPROACH TO COGNITION. ATTENTION STUDIES.
FIRST PERSON METHODOLOGIES.

Abstract: This article aims to present some clues about the importance of attention in
dance learning processes, specifically in improvisational practices. It the text arises from
the convergence of some themes addressed in the doctoral research of the authors in the
Postgraduate Program in Dance at the Federal University of Bahia (PPGDança/UFBA).
Having as a theoretical contribution to our reflections the enactive approach of embodied
cognition (VARELA, THOMPSON & ROSCH, 1991), we articulate the studies of attention
(KASTRUP, 1999, 2004; VASCONCELOS, 2009; SADE & KASTRUP, 2011; ROMERO,
2018 ; WU , 2014; GANERI, 2017; WATZL, 2017), first-person practices (SCHIPHORST,
2009; VARELA, THOMPSON, VERMERSCH, 2003, 2206), somatic practices and their
possible contributions to the artistic and pedagogical processes that have the
improvisational practices as a focus.

Key words: IMPROVISATION IN DANCE. DANCE AND LEARNING. ENACTIVE

APPROACH TO COGNITION. ATTENTION STUDIES. FIRST PERSON METHODOLOGIES.

1. Introductory body

In this article, we want to share some points of convergence between 2534

our research and reflections developed in the doctorate in dance, by the

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Graduate Program in Dance (PPGDANCA/UFBA), and in our practices

professionals as artists and researchers. Such intersections are
from common interests about improvisation practices in dance, the
attention studies and first-person methodologies. to articulate this
proposal, we will follow some clues, having as a theoretical contribution the approach
embodied cognition ( VARELA; THOMPSON; ROSCH, 1991) and understanding cognition
as invention (KASTRUP, 1999).
In this way, we approach first-person methodologies, focusing on
in personal experiences of the moving body, as a possibility to expand the
our understanding of the production of knowledge that takes place in/with the body.
We intend, based on the clues presented here, to reflect on the extent to which the
attention can potentiate learning processes in dance, within the
improvisational practices. Our initial articulation is that somatic practices
(SCHIPHORST, 2009) can be approached as first-class methodologies
person, “due to the closeness in their experiential goals and their
methodological procedures” (SOUZA, 2017, p. 16). About these methodologies, Vasconcelos
(2009)1 in his doctoral thesis in psychology, points us to a
important clue on how to understand and articulate them with somatic practices. O
author tells us that

The first-person methodology is the one in which the data is phenomenological,

in the sense of what appears to the subject, as experience, based on the
attention that the subject has on himself, on what he can access from his
experience or a posteriori (retrospectively). It presupposes the subject's
relationship with himself as a function of attention to himself (VASCONCELOS,
2009, p. 12).

From this understanding presented by the author, we can infer that

this proximity is due to the fact that both somatic practices and methodologies of
first person, aim at a regular, organized and systematic investigation of the
experience, through the articulation of subjective data, not separated from the relationship
between body and environment. Some examples of first-person methodologies are:
phenomenological reduction, Buddhist meditation, mindfulness, and the interview of
explicitation (guided introspection). By articulating somatic practices with
first-person methodologies, we realized that this dialogue can contribute with
2535
1
Some texts by Christian Sade Vasconcelos are found as Sade (2011), or Vasconcelos
(2009).
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the learning processes in dance by approaching the body as a process

of circularity between action and perception that potentiate the production of
knowledge of yourself and the world.

According to Varela (1989) the movement of the body is conditioned by

its sensory aspects and, in turn, the disturbances that happen to the body
are triggered by your movement, this creates an infinite circularity, a
circular causality, producing a dialectic between body and world. When
we improvise with dance we can pay attention to this circularity and the movement
he modifies himself and his world by the very act of moving. For example, if in a
improvisation, we see a body or object in our proximity, we will make a
choice of action and this can lead to a situation not yet lived or not
expected by us improvising dancers. This circularity between perception and
action enables the elaboration of aesthetic choices that can produce new ways of
moving, as well as differentiated compositions and with this body2
knowledge not yet instantiated. As the object of improvisation is dance and
own body, the knowing subject is produced in knowing oneself by moving.
Vasconcelos (2009) bases his articulations from the approach
enactive form of cognition and presents us with attention to oneself as a way of
self-production. This understanding is for us an important clue about the role of
attention in the learning processes of improvisation and in the very act of
improvised composition. The author brings us that the "enactive approach to cognition
directly depends on the exploitation of the experience, because this is at the base
of the genesis of cognitive activity" (VASCONCELOS, 2009, p. 30).
improvisation in dance has as its founding principle the exploration of experience
body of the mover, which brings our understanding of how the body
knows by improvising with this approach to embodied cognition.
The cognitive sciences, which traditionally configure their research to
from third-person experimental methodologies, come in the almost 50 years,
since the launch of the book by Varela, Thompson and Rosch, The Embodied Mind:
Cognitive Sciences and Human Experience (1991), searching through the
First-person methodologies research the relationship between cognition and experience.

two 2536
KATZ, Helena. body. because body is also verb. In: BASTOS, Helena. (org.) Living things.
Flows that inform. [electronic resource] São Paulo: ECA-USP, 2021. 225 p. ISBN 978-65-88640-54-
8, DOI 10.11606/9786588640548
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In this regard, Vasconcelos (2009, p. 4) tells us that "the growing use of

first-person methodologies have posed the problem of how to trigger and
mobilize attention to oneself, accessing what is presented as experience."
Next, we will present the discussion on the mobilization of attention to the self.
and how the attentional gesture depends on how it is embodied in a
concrete context and situation. We want to be in tune with what Vasconcelos (2009)
presents us, focus on the understanding that "attention to oneself is not limited to a
process of self-observation, but it may constitute a process of self-production".
(VASCONCELOS, 2009, p. 4). This is for us an important clue about the role
of attention in improvisational practices, both in their pedagogical aspects
how artistic. For this, we will dialogue with the studies of attention in articulation
with first-person methodologies.

2. Body-attentive

Attention studies have aroused more and more interest in

part of the cognitive sciences and philosophy, an interest that was fostered by
recognition that it is closely linked to consciousness, perception, action,
thinking, justification, memory, empathy and introspection. (WU, 2014; GANERI,
2017; WATZL, 2017) However, mainly in research carried out in the field of
cognitive psychology, the prevailing approach to attention is still part of
understanding of cognition as a problem-solving process, and attention
in this process receives emphasis on its role in the control of behavior and in the
carrying out tasks.
In our research, we approach attention from an enactive perspective, that is, to
For us, self-care is always linked to a context and a history of
couplings between body and world (SADE; KASTRUP, 2011). Like this
Vasconcelos (2009, p. 96) we “pose the question of thinking about the process
attentional as also being characterized by a mode of embodiment. A
From this understanding, another clue emerges, that cognition, as well as
the body is always situated in a concrete situation, that is, there is a dialogue
intrinsic relationship between the living body and the lived body, between the biological body and the

social and cultural. In this sense, Vasconcelos (2009) referencing Varela,

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Thompson and Rosch (1992) tells us that
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“Knowledge depends on being in a world inseparable from our body, our

language and our social history, in short, from our incorporation” (VARELA;
THOMPSON; ROSCH, 1992, p. 176). Embodiment in the enactive approach is
not limited to the biological nor is it caused by the social. Our shared biological
and cultural world should not be seen as a pre-defined, representational
foundation. They are also enacted through a history of incorporations
(VASCONCELOS, 2009, p. 35).

The attentional processes and gestures evoked in somatic practices and

in improvisational practices demand a quality different from that which
we are used to using in everyday tasks. In these, attention has a
instrumental function, usually aimed at carrying out tasks and solving problems
problems. So that the body can produce knowledge of itself with and from the
your own move and develop a personal repertoire of sensory skills
motor skills that can subsidize their improvisational practices, it is necessary to
another kind of attention. The improviser needs to be able to "perceive the variations
quality of attention he directs to his body, thus influencing
their experience" (ROMERO, 2018, p. 202). As for this specific type of care
focused on the production of knowledge from pre-reflected aspects of the
movement, Sade and Kastrup (2011) point out that

This attention is marked by an openness, which is important considering that

the contact with this very fine and dynamic dimension of the pre-reflected
experience, marked by subtle discontinuities, requires a diffuse, panoramic,
peripheral or fluctuating modality of attention (Petitmengin , 2006a; 2007). This
panoramic attention is different from focused attention, which is concentrated
on a particular content. The non-focusing gives this attention an opening that
allows it to get in touch with undefined elements and aspects of our experience
(SADE;
KASTRUP, 2011, p. 143).

We believe that this is exactly the attention requested both in the

somatic practices and improvisational practices in dance. In turn, in
intersection between somatics and dance, we have witnessed the development of
practices that create an interface that aims to “enable attention and consciousness to
being fully present in the experience” (KASTRUP, 2004, p. 9). articulating
this understanding with the concept of becoming-conscious, Depraz, Varela and Vermersch
(2003) present us with an interface for attention studies. The authors us
invite you to investigate, through a first-person methodology, the
human experience at the time of its happening and not just its 2538
contents. From the proposal of a phenomenological pragmatics presented in
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form of a renewed description of the épochè3 the authors claim that

[...] the phenomenology claimed here is characterized by its concrete

functioning, its operative, procedural or performative dimension, therefore, its
praxis, much more than by its internal theoretical systematics, its aim of
knowledge and a priori and apodictic justification knowledge (DEPRAZ;
VARELA; VERMERSCH, 2006, p. 77).

In this regard, Kastrup (2004, p. 10) citing Depraz, Varela and Vermersch
(2003) brings us that "becoming-conscious is the act of making explicit, clear and intuitive
something that inhabited us in a pre-reflexive4 , opaque and affective way.” About this the author
comments that “it is about knowing the human experience in its character of
activity, of practice, emphasizing its changeable and fluid character” (KASTRUP, 2004, p.
10).
From this understanding, presented by the author, we recognize a
of the principles found in somatic practices: that of approaching the attentional gesture
as an act of encounter, in which these affective and pre-existing elements are welcomed.
reflective of bodily experience. Somatic practices, as methodologies
first-person, offer us a way to experience the body through
procedures that make it possible to incorporate technical and reflective knowledge from the
movement. The act of paying attention here presents itself as a modulator and configurator
of experience, and this is due to the fact that attention has no content
itself, such as perception and memory, “the objects of attention would be the
cognitive processes that it invests, modulates and regulates functioning” (SADE;

3
Part of the basic cycle of phenomenological reduction to épochè is a procedure “which aims to resume
the different stages of the process by which something of myself comes to my clear consciousness that
inhabited me in a confused and opaque way, affective, immanent, therefore, pre- reflected.” (DEPRAZ;
VARELA; VERMERSCH, 2006, p. 77) It unfolds in three main phases: A0. A phase of prejudgmental
suspension, which is the very possibility of any change in the type of attention that the subject pays to his
own experience, and which represents a rupture with the natural attitude. TO 1. A phase of conversion of
attention from the “outside” to the “inside”. A2. A phase of letting go, or accepting the experience.
(DEPRAZ; VARELA; VERMERSCH, 2006, p. 78).
4
The pre-reflected or ontological experience refers to processuality, to the plane of co-emergence, a
common plane, collective of forces, from which all representational contents come. (TEDESCO; SADE;
CALIMAN, 2013, p. 302) The conjunction between reports of kinesthetic perception and self-awareness
refers to discussions about intentionality in the works of phenomenologists Edmund Husserl and Maurice
Merleau-Ponty. Both argued in favor of the pre-reflexive dimension present in the movements of action
and perception of a subject in the world (Husserl, 1907/1997; MerleauPonty, 1945/1999). Pre-reflected
self-awareness is pre-reflective in the sense that (1) it is an awareness we have prior to making any
reflection about our experience; (2) it is an implicit and first-order consciousness rather than an explicit or
higher-order form of self-awareness. In fact, an explicit reflective self-awareness is only possible because
there is a pre-reflective self-awareness that is an ongoing and more primary type of self-awareness. The
2539
notion of pre-reflective self-awareness is related to the idea that experiences have a subjective 'feel', a
certain (phenomenal) quality of 'how it is' or how it 'feels' to have them (GALLAGHER; ZAHAVI, 2021, S/
N, our translation).
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KASTRUP, 2011, p. 139).

So that the body can learn from its own experience during
improvisational practices it would then be necessary to cultivate and develop this type of
attention to which pre-reflexive aspects of movement can be brought to
awareness and investigated. From this investigation of movement, through the
move, the body becomes capable of developing a set of sensory skills
motor-affective that enable the mover to configure their own research methodologies. It
would be like mapping5 one's own experiences in order to
learn to learn. The process here would be characterized by learning
inventive, that is, it “includes the experience of problematization” (KASTRUP, 2004, p.
8). The author points to the understanding that “the problem of attention that is
required for a learning process to take place is replaced by the
problem of learning attention itself” (KASTRUP, 2004, p. 9). That's why,
then we will present more clues about learning processes and their
relationship with attention.

3. Learning body

With regard to learning processes, Kastrup (2004, p. 14)

brings us that “the circular mechanism of learning points out that attention is, at the same time,
at the same time, condition and effect of a learning process”, and this
understanding is for us a clue of the importance that should be given to attention and
its cultivation in dance learning processes. That is to say, it is as much
invest in attentional learning in its most diverse regimes, how much
awaken interest in the practices of attentional gestures. in many practices
pedagogical aspects in dance, attention is turned outwards, to a third-person,
be it the mirror, the teacher or the video, and learning happens by imitation
form, external to the body itself.
The proposal that somatic practices brought to dance was to
enable the body to learn about itself and its movement through its own

5
Mapping here is understood as accompanying processes, or even inhabiting an existential territory.
(PASSOS; KASTRUP; ESCÓSSIA, 2009) The main objective of cartography is to research experience,
understood as the plane in which the processes to be investigated effectively take place. The reality to be
2540
investigated is composed of processes and not only of objects (things and states of affairs) delimited by
precise and timeless contours. (TEDESCO; SADE; CALIMAN, 2013, p. 300).
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experience. Unlike our everyday way of being attentive to ourselves and the
world, which basically we are focused on solving tasks and
external information, in these practices the attentional gestures are turned to the
lived in the first-person. In this way, the mover directs attention to itself,
perceiving how your body updates its couplings with the environment, its
compositional strategies and their production of meaning. The body-I is for itself the greatest
creation reference. This attentional gesture enables learning to be
redirected from the 'what' to the 'how' of the movement, through an attention
engaged, panoramic and open to the sensory-motor-affective aspects of the body,
still undefined from our experience.
When we articulate studies of attention and somatic practices,
as first-person methodologies, with learning processes in
dance, here more specifically with improvisational practices, we understand the
importance of embodied attentional gestures in building skills
necessary for the moving body to develop a personal technique. Like this,
we are referring to a concrete situation, a body, situated in a context,
drawing attention to their own experience, in order to develop and cultivate a
specific skill, that of composing by improvising. As Kastrup (2004, p. 13-14)
reminds us, “these concrete learnings that can be very diverse”
would consist of concrete updates of learning itself.
Paraphrasing the author, we can think that the ability to improvise
with dance is not merely technical, nor does it aim at merely muscular training
and mechanic. Involved in this process is a learning of sensitivity, the
which means learning a special attention that finds dance,
letting oneself be affected by it and accepting its effects on oneself (KASTRUP, 2004, p.
12). It would be learning by cultivation, through repeated practice of certain
attentional gestures and disciplined practices that empower and enable the body
moving to develop movement dynamics that existed as virtuality. "O
Cultivation learning is a process of actualizing a virtuality,
gaining a sense of differentiation. It's about activating gestures, increasing your
strength through exercise and training” (KASTRUP, 2004, p. 13).

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4. Improvised-body

In improvisational practices, whether pedagogical or artistic,

there is a pre-defined content or form, and, from this fact, the question arises: what if
learn to improvise in dance, or even, how to learn to dance from
improvisational practices? This question brings us back to the issue of
attention. Without pre-defined forms, from which references the body is capable of
develop a personal technique that enables you to dance and improvise?
For us, it is necessary to develop, through the regular practice of a
first-person methodology, in cultivating and learning attention to oneself, to
possibility of moving from at least three attentional gestures: attention to
somatic aspects of movement, attention to the body/environment relationship and attention to
act of composing. Such gestures can be understood as a network in which
there are several connections and developments with other gestures in a structure
circular as in the phenomenological reduction. Furthermore, all these gestures are
also or should be interconnected with the gesture of attention to oneself. O
fluid and open entanglement of these gestures among themselves and all the others
transient or “fixed” constituents of the territories of that dance, engender a
attentional ecosystem. Thus, we propose that from these three gestures
attention we managed to arrive at an ecological process of joint attention
(CITON, 2016), in which the creative and pedagogical process of improvisation in dance
can be configured as an act of co-creation and conscious becoming. This
would enable the moving body to build its own repertoire
sensory-motor-affective and configure, based on your own experience, a body
improviser.
These three attentional gestures can be understood as principles
guides for the invention of procedures and improvisational practices. The shapes
how they would combine with each other will be configured based on the needs of
each body or group of improvisers and the objectives of each practice or process
creative. They can be distributed in a single session or distributed throughout the
time with different emphases. Referring to the three gestures of the épochè, suspension,
reversal and letting go, gestures that are quite present in several somatic practices,
Kastrup (2004) brings us the idea of circularity, which is how we approach the three 2542

gestures of our proposal.

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Each session, like all learning, takes the form of a circle. The three gestures
constitute a cycle where the movement is to repeat, return, renew, reinvent,
reiterate, start over. Ultimately, the circular logic of learning points to the
incompleteness of the process, as there is no definitive solution to the problem
of attention. Learning is never finished and each session opens up to new
learning. It is continuous and permanent, not closing in on a solution and not
totaling itself in its actualization, therefore always needing to be reactivated
(KASTRUP, 2004, p.
13).

As for the three attentional gestures that we propose in this article and in
our practices: attention to the somatic aspects of the movement, attention to the relationship
body/environment and attention to the act of composing, we would like to talk a little
about how they would occur in the concrete situations of improvisational practices. A
division into three gestures is purely didactic and aims to articulate the
principles that constitute them. In fact, they are not separated at the time of
improvisation, mainly in practices of improvised composition, that is,
scenic improvisation.
The first gesture, attention to the somatic aspects of the movement, has
with the aim of enabling the moving body to investigate and explore the
movements that arise when paying attention to aspects of the living and lived body, that is,
structure and subjectivity, such as: breathing, physical sensations, relationship with
gravity, interoception, proprioception, kinesthesia, kinetics, affects, images,
qualities of movement, temporality, aesthetics and intentionality. when attending
these aspects of corporeal existence with the intention of producing movements
enables the body to come into contact with a more internalized dimension of
himself and access what is already present in his virtuality and update them in the
concreteness of the movement.

The second attentional gesture, attention to the body/ environment relationship,

refers to other concepts such as spatiality (of the body, of the environment, of others
bodies and objects), three-dimensionality (horizontality, verticality, volume and
depth), environmental characteristics (light, temperature, sound, speeches, affections
etc.), otherness (other bodies, objects) and invites the exploration of movement to
from these relationships. For the improviser, paying attention to these aspects of
experience complicates the possibilities of exploration of movement, since
that other aspects of corporeity can be investigated in addition to the
own physical sensations. The environment, in general, is always changing. 2543

transforming and the body, when it moves in relation to it, has to

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reorganize from these changes. Possible contingencies in this relationship

serve as both enablers and constrainers of improvised movement.
The enactive approach brings us the concept of “breakdown” .
rupture), an important aspect in the production of knowledge that takes place in the body.
Learning, which is understood here as inventive, is based on the
capacity of the body to produce differences and knowledge from them. O
breakdown would then be, for the enactive approach to cognition, the source of its
autonomous and creative aspect. Regarding this Vasconcelos (2009) points out that

The breakdown is a moment in which the concrete is updated, from a break, a

rupture of symmetry in cognitive activity. [...] The breakdown is a crisis (break),
but it also gives rise to experience (VASCONCELOS, 2009, p. 36).

In improvisational practices, breakdowns happen so much

natural, as when the body is in a situation where habits
sensorimotor systems need to be reconfigured, both in the form of procedures
that propose specific restrictions. This can happen in the form of rules,
games or scores that demand from the body different ways of dealing with these
cognitive habits. In our improvisational practices we usually use the
concept of brackdown as a learning device. We realize that your
use, together with other resources allow us to improvise from the
surprises, in order to enhance our creation, as well as to refine our sense of
aesthetic and dramaturgical. But, above all, it enables us to learn and
cultivation of a fluid and open attention, which is willing to welcome intercurrences,
basis of improvisational territories.
These restrictions can break standards and thereby create
bifurcations, that is, they place the body in a state of having to produce differences to
from what is already known. This is a clue to the inventiveness of cognition, which
does not invent from nothing, but from its own history of couplings
with the world. About this Kastrup (2004) brings us that

[...] when we talk about invention we resort to its Latin etymology –

inventire – which means to compose with archaeological remains. Inventing is
digging for what was hidden, hidden, but which, when the historical layers that
covered it are removed, reveals itself as already there.
(KASTRUP, 2004, p. 13).
2544
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This invention does not happen by itself, it involves continuous training and
disciplined, through practices that place the body in a state of becoming
conscious. For this reason, we believe in the importance of first-class methodologies
person as a facilitator for this inventive state of the body, in which invention
of problems (bifurcations) enables the creation of differences that enrich the
improvisational skills and cognition itself.
The third attentional gesture would perhaps be the most important of the three and
would in a way always be present in the other two, attention to the act of
to compose. When we think of improvised composition, that is, improvisation
as a scenic language, we are thinking about dramaturgy, production of
shared meaning, collective creation, joint attention, ecology of attention and
creation of attentional ecosystems. Each of these concepts would require a single article
for you, which is beyond the scope of this. So let's introduce them in general.
trying to live up to the complexity they evoke.
Scenic improvisation has become increasingly present in the scene
contemporary dance, with that, more dance artists are also coming to
calling improvisers. Specific methodologies have been developed by
dance artists internationally, some examples are: Composition in Time
Real by João Fiadeira (Portugal)6 , the AND Operative Mode (MO AND) by Fernanda
Eugénio (Brazil/Portugal)7 , Instant Composition by Julyen Hamilton (United Kingdom
Kingdom)8 , between others.

Let's return to our central theme, attention. Within the enactive approach
of cognition some philosophers of mind like Hanne De Jaegher & Ezequiel Di Paolo
(2007) have been developing a research project within the field of cognition
from the concept of Participatory Sense Production (Participatory Sense
Making). These authors argue that interaction processes can happen autonomously and that
the production of meaning is generated and transformed
in the articulation between the development of the interaction process and the individuals
engaged in it. In collective creation processes, all agents involved
produce meaning about themselves and the environment through their own actions
modulated by events in the environment, thus, the collective produces meaning in a way

6 2545
Available at: https://joaofiadeiro.pt/
7
Available at: https://www.and-lab.org/
8
Available at: https://www.julyenhamilton.com/
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shared.
Following the understanding presented by the authors above and starting from the
assumption that collective improvisation in dance is a social event,
we think it possible that this type of practice produces interpersonal transformations
and produce meaning in a shared way. Since meaning-making is a
corporeal process of active regulation of the coupling between agent and world, the
social interaction, through patterns of body coordination, opens the possibility
of this process to be shared among the interactors. This sharing creates a
attentional ecosystem. Regarding this, Romero (2018) in his article “About
joint attention and affective harmony in Contact Improvisation dance” brings us that

[...] the notion of attentional ecosystem comes from the proposal of an “ecology
of attention” elaborated by Yves Citton (2014) as an alternative to the currently
dominant approach of the “economy of attention”. On such
proposal, based on readings by Gilbert Simondon (1989), Félix Guattari (1989)
and Arne Naes (1989), Citton (2014) introduces the aesthetic dimension in
current research on attention and proposes an inversion in the traditional way
of conceiving it . Instead of conceiving attention as being a capacity of the
subject (the reader, the spectator) in front of an object (a book, a film, a dance),
it is necessary to apprehend it in terms of the ecosystem in which we bathe
before identifying this or that object. The author proposes that, from an
individualistic approach to attention, we begin to apprehend it as an essentially
collective phenomenon.
Thus, beyond the relations of a “subject” with the “objects” of attention, he
points to the importance of “identifying the collective attentional regimes
through which we are led to perceive the world” (ROMERO, 2018, p. 197 ).

Given the above, we can think of improvisational practices

as practices of attention, shared production of meaning and creation
of attentional ecosystems. During an improvised composition performance
movers need to be aware of what happens in their bodies, in their
relationship with the environment and the context and territory that are inserted and produce
meaning (dramaturgy) in a collective and shared way. For Citton (2014, p. 127) the
joint attention is an aspect of the attentional dynamics that occur in situations
in which “people, aware of the presence of others, interact in real time
according to what they perceive in relation to the attention of others”. Concerning
joint attention Romero (2018), citing Citton (2014) brings us that

In addition to the aspect of co-presence, he develops three others, also

characteristic of situations of joint attention: the principle of reciprocity, the
effort of affective harmony and the artistic practices of improvisation. The 2546
principle of reciprocity concerns the need for attention to “circulate
bidirectionally” (p. 128) between the
Machine Translated by Google

interacting people. This is fundamental for the affective attunement effort to

take place. This, in turn, concerns the “incessant work of reciprocal
adjustment” (p. 129), the “micro-gestures” necessary for people in interaction
to maintain a “good affective resonance” (p.
130). It has a necessarily improvised character, as attunement between two
or more people is not something that can be prepared in advance.

The above contributes to our understanding that during the

process of making the body available for improvisation, learning and
cultivation of these attentional gestures can contribute to the development of
skills needed by the improvising body. Practice co-presence,
reciprocity, affective harmony and improvisation practices in processes of
collective creation enactively develop the body's ability to produce
shared meaning.

5. Body-inconclusive

Here we try to present in a very synthetic way some points of

convergence between our doctoral researches. We know they are themes
complex and demand more depth in their articulation, but we hope that
the reader can, through the clues that we present, understand the importance of the
studies of attention, first-person methodologies and approaches
corporeal aspects of cognition for learning processes in dance, in particular
of improvisational practices. The cultivation of attention to oneself in articulation with the three
presented gestures have the potential to develop in the moving body the ability
to learn with the movement itself and thereby develop your personal repertoire of
sensory-motor-affective skills and make the body available for the act of
dance improvisation. In our perception, the production of knowledge that
gives to the body through improvised movement is a theme that can inaugurate in the
field of dance new understandings about our pedagogical practices and
artistic.

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Giordani Gorki Queiroz de Souza (UFBA)

E-mail: giorrdani.gorki@ufba.br
Dance and performance artist, PhD student and Master in Dance at
PPGDança/UFBA (CAPES scholarship holder), physiotherapist, dance therapist, member
of Grupo X de Improvisation em Dança, E AÍ? Artistic Collective, from the Ágora
Research Group: ways of being in dance (UFBA/CNPq) and from the CORPOLUMEN
Research Group: Body, image and creation study networks in Dance (UFBA).

Natalia Pinto da Rocha Ribeiro (Person with visual impairment) (UFBA)

E-mail: nattyribeiro@yahoo.com.br
Dance and performance artist, accessibility consultant, actress and educator.
PhD student in Dance and Master in Dance (PGDANCA/UFBA). Member of the Dance 2549
Improvisation Group X and the PROCEDA Research Group (UFBA/CNPq), and Coordinator
of the GDEF – Disability Studies Group.

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