Papers by Einav Katan-Schmid
The Routledge Companion to Performance Philosophy, 2020
Roger Federer is one of the most acclaimed athletes of our times. In line with iconic sportsperso... more Roger Federer is one of the most acclaimed athletes of our times. In line with iconic sportspersons like Nadia Comaneci and Mohammed Ali, his innovative performance advances the sport he plays, inspires many, and is lauded for both its kinaesthetic beauty and its excellence. David Foster Wallace famously compares Federer’s somatic grace to a ballet, analyses his intelligence as “both flesh and not”, and defines witnessing his playing as a “religious experience” (Wallace 2006). Christopher Jackson highlights the importance of Federer to the history of tennis, sport in general, and contemporary culture, by situating his beautiful appearance in the history of art and defining Federer himself as an artist (Jackson 2017). As a figure for performance philosophy, Roger Federer’s tennis embodies contemplative action and the symbiosis between thought and practice. Federer presents a vivid example through which to consider the relationship between artistry, contemplative knowing, physical wittiness, genuineness, and transformative creativity.
Radical Immersions: Navigating between virtual/physical environments and information bubbles - DRHA 2019 Conference Proceedings
From Immersion to Interference: Sites of Collaboration in 'Playing with Virtual Realities
Immersion has become both a powerful metaphor and a branding strategy for a wide range of contemp... more Immersion has become both a powerful metaphor and a branding strategy for a wide range of contemporary participatory performance practices. In its current usage, immersion is used in a variety of disciplinary contexts, ranging from musical performance to site-specific theatres and computer gaming. This interaction between performing arts and digital technology is also at the heart of our collaborative practice-based research project Playing with Virtual Realities (PwVR), an interdisciplinary exploration of immersion by computer scientists, designers, philosophers, choreographer, dancers, and dramaturgs in experimenting with cognition, embodiment, and VR-technology. In this article we re- stage our collaboration as a series of interventions and interferences into each other’s practices and knowledge bases.
Tanzpraxis in der Forschung - Tanz als Forschungspraxis, 2016
The tragedy of the first position 1 is a video that went viral and gained more than 6.5 million v... more The tragedy of the first position 1 is a video that went viral and gained more than 6.5 million views on youtube. This video demonstrates one of the common challenges in learning a technique. Acquiring new physical knowledge, which lies beyond one's existing patterns of movements, is not a self-evident task. In the video a little girl, approximately 4 years old, is confused by the request to perform a first position in a ballet class. First position seems to be a very basic task to perform for dancers. Thus, when dancers watch this video they know how to achieve what the girl in the video is trying to realize. Nevertheless, the video became viral among some professionals, not as a target for mocking the girl, but rather as a source for empathy. The movements the little girl performs demonstrate her determination in comprehending the request of the teacher. Alongside with her misunderstanding, the girl's movements express her natural intelligence, her cognitive effort, and her ambition. When she touches her legs and opens her wrists her cognitive effort becomes apparent. It is noticeable that she conceptually understands the requested task of the first position. However, she does not comprehend how to conduct her body accordingly. The girl changes her strategy, and as the teacher corrected her position beforehand by replacing her feet, she reaches her legs with her hands and tries to open them. Focusing on the position as a requested result, the girl relates to her feet as if they were an external object to her own consciousness and spirit. After the attempt to move the feet with her hands, the girl loses balance. Losing balance becomes a sudden moment of grace. It seems that her feeling of almost falling induces an inner recognition, which directs the immediate catch up that she, as a sovereign agent, 2 successfully originates. 1 | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdylQeg5B9I (last access: 14.06.2016). 2 | Aili Bresnahan defines agency as the control and intention of dance performers. The act of catching balance reviles that the girl is able to take hold on physical control. For that reason, it testifies her existing agency.
Body, Space & Technology, 2020
The Open Library of Humanities and all its journals are digitally preserved in the CLOCKSS schola... more The Open Library of Humanities and all its journals are digitally preserved in the CLOCKSS scholarly archive service.
Embodied Philosophy in Dance: Gaga and Ohad Naharin's Movement Research by Einav Katan. 2016. London: Palgrave MacMillan. 228 pp., 10 illustrations, works cited, index. $99.98 cloth. ISBN: 9781137601858
Dance Research Journal, 2017
Einav Katan’s Embodied Philosophy in Dance presents a phenomenological reading of Gaga, the movem... more Einav Katan’s Embodied Philosophy in Dance presents a phenomenological reading of Gaga, the movement practice elaborated by Batsheva Dance Company’s artistic director, Ohad Naharin, and employed as a daily training and research practice by Batsheva and many professional and amateur dancers around the world. Katan’s work is praiseworthy for its gesture of layering definitions of Gaga throughout the book. As the title informs, Gaga is first of all an instruction-based method that Naharin utilizes to explore and combine movement (he now defines it as a “toolbox”). Thus, it is a research practice that defines and distinguishes “tonalities of feelings” (50) that dancers experience as a creative “process of growth” (26). This book offers a journey through the somatic, emotional, and cognitive experience of Gaga, especially to those who are not familiar with the transformative and generative force of dance research practice. The first part of the book, “Embodied Philosophy in Dance: Introduction,” seeks to affirm the legitimacy of dance as knowledge and thinking, which is a fundamental assumption in dance scholarship. Addressing readers who are more familiar with the Western philosophical tradition of phenomenology and aesthetics than with dance studies literature, Katan sets the stage for a consideration of Gaga as a “body of ideas” that works as “an excellent point of access for reflecting on the cognitive aspects of dancing, and the interaction of body and mind” (18). Focusing on perception and its interaction with imagination as sources of cognition in dance practice, part 2, “The Sensual Emphasis of Gaga,” takes on an idea integral to Naharin’s research, namely, the discovery and transmission of the moving body’s sensuality. Here, Katan articulates the cognitive responses triggered by the vocabulary utilized by Gaga teachers. Katan explores how the notorious “instructive metaphor,” “Float!” (the title of chapter 5), enhances the dancer’s awareness of gravity and energy, generating imagery to which the dancer can refer in order to reactivate sensorial experience. Katan claims that in this process of physical actualization of a verbal metaphor, dancers affirm their individuality. This process, however, is debatable: during Gaga intensives, participants tend to move alike and (inadvertently or otherwise) try to mimic a certain Gaga or Batsheva style. Katan’s phenomenological/philosophical inquiry does not attend to this tendency, but rather to the ideational principles of Gaga. The final chapters of part 2 provide an entry point to Naharin’s creative process as a “perceptual work in which sensuality plays a constitutive part” (51). According to Katan, Gaga draws on sensation; thus, Naharin’s choreographies can be read as generators of sensation. However, it is difficult to ascertain the specificities of the “phenomenological method of Gaga” (the title of chapter 9) that distinguishes it from other somatic research practices that rely on the dancer’s combined sensorial awareness and intentionality. Part 3, “The Mental Emphasis of Gaga,” analyzes Gaga as a strategy to direct moods and addresses the relation between instructor and respondent. Framing her analysis around Heidegger’s concepts of Stimmung and Dasein, Katan explains that the Gaga teacher functions as a “mood instructor” (113). Stimulated by the verbal directions designed to trigger a joint body-mind response, the dancer develops a practice of “self-regulation” meant to enhance the fluidity of movement and energy (91). Katan goes on to elaborate a definition of Gaga as a creative and hermeneutical process for the development of a perceptual, mental, and physical “attunement” within a dancer’s control, combining Gadamer’s hermeneutical approach and Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception. This definition leads to an idea central to Katan’s conceptualization of Gaga and of Batsheva’s bodies. The stream of instructions requires the dancer to move in “. . . a state of attentiveness, mental as well as physical. In it, attention is directed to all possible aspects of sensing. The eyes are open and calm; there is no concrete focus of the gaze. However, although the gaze is calm, it is ready to direct its focus immediately following the signal” (124). Katan eventually argues that the Gaga
Dance as embodied ethics
In this chapter, we propose that one of the many possible ways that dance might embody philosophi... more In this chapter, we propose that one of the many possible ways that dance might embody philosophic thought and discourse is via embodying ethical practice. Each author contributes a different perspective on the relationship between dance and ethical activity. We invite the reader to go through this account in two ways: as separate ideas and as interrelated thoughts. Katan-Schmid views ‘dance’ as a metaphor for ‘embodied ethics’. She analyses dance as an embodied activity of decision-making which regulates the tension between coexisting physical dynamics. Following from the idea of ‘dancing’, she asks us to think of ‘embodied ethics’ in performative terms–as a contemplative activity. In her section, Bresnahan shows how dance practice provides examples of applied ethics within traditional Western philosophical categories of both virtue ethics and consequentialist ethics. Houston argues that dance can encompass an ethics of care. She demonstrates how dance with an ethic of care involves attentiveness, putting the person before the form, and for the dance artists to give up a degree of control and autonomy over the work made.
,שירת המדע, שנתון לספרות, אמנות ומדע, 2022
Global Performance Studies, 2021
Immersion has become both a powerful metaphor and a branding strategy for a wide range of contemp... more Immersion has become both a powerful metaphor and a branding strategy for a wide range of contemporary participatory performance practices. In its current usage, immersion is used in a variety of disciplinary contexts, ranging from musical performance to site-specific theatres and computer gaming. This interaction between performing arts and digital technology is also at the heart of our collaborative practice-based research project Playing with Virtual Realities (PwVR), an interdisciplinary exploration of immersion by computer scientists, designers, philosophers, choreographer, dancers, and dramaturgs in experimenting with cognition, embodiment, and VR-technology. In this article we re- stage our collaboration as a series of interventions and interferences into each other’s practices and knowledge bases.
Dance as Embodied Ethics
The Routledge Companion to Performance Philosophy, Laura Cull Ó Maoilearca, Alice Lagaay (eds.), 2020
In this chapter, we propose that one of the many possible ways that dance might embody philosophi... more In this chapter, we propose that one of the many possible ways that dance might embody philosophic thought and discourse is via embodying ethical practice. Each author contributes a different perspective on the relationship between dance and ethical activity. We invite the reader to go through this account in two ways: as separate ideas and as interrelated thoughts. Katan-Schmid views ‘dance’ as a metaphor for ‘embodied ethics’. She analyses dance as an embodied activity of decision-making which regulates the tension between coexisting physical dynamics. Following from the idea of ‘dancing’, she asks us to think of ‘embodied ethics’ in performative terms–as a contemplative activity. In her section, Bresnahan shows how dance practice provides examples of applied ethics within traditional Western philosophical categories of both virtue ethics and consequentialist ethics. Houston argues that dance can encompass an ethics of care. She demonstrates how dance with an ethic of care involve...
Improvisieren Playing with Virtual Realities. A Practicebased- Research Experiment in Dancing with Technology
Experimentieren, Dec 31, 2019
The Challenge of a Perceptual Gap between Body and Mind
Embodied Philosophy in Dance, 2016
The Dancing Body as a Means of Expression
Embodied Philosophy in Dance, 2016
Understanding Expressions
Embodied Philosophy in Dance, 2016
“Connect Effort into Pleasure!”
Embodied Philosophy in Dance, 2016
The Involvement of Psychology and Physicality
Embodied Philosophy in Dance, 2016
Comprehending Emotions and Directing a Mood
Embodied Philosophy in Dance, 2016
Extending Perception
Embodied Philosophy in Dance, 2016
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Papers by Einav Katan-Schmid