As French physicist Blaise Pascal wrote: "Our nature consists in motion; complete rest is death" (quoted in G. Beattie, Visible Thought. London, Routledge, 2004). This article is the first of two that explore some of the philosophical connections between movement, in particular dance and life.
In their book Movement, Awareness and Creativity (London: Souvenir Press, 1975) Bartal and Ne'eman observe that "any person engaged in daily activities--if he is using his potential fully--may become a highly sensitive instrument, performing physical tasks, expressing feelings and reacting to outside stimulus." As teachers of dance, they employ principles from the martial art tai chi, as well as techniques drawn from the Feldenkrais method and Alexander technique to put students in touch with their physical selves.
Citing Moshe Feldenkrais, the teachers emphasize the need to find something that has been lost, "to reduce the restrictive inhibitive controls from the forebrain, so that the reflex actions of the 'old' brain can organise the body on a level far deeper than can be achieved intellectually".
Intelligence in the Body
The notion of "intentionality" in the body, that it can learn and remember, is today fundamental to sports psychology, as well as instruction in music and dance. The idea of being in the "zone" when, for example, shooting baskets stems from this concept. In his massive novel Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace provides a satirical treatment of faith in body-learning in tennis: "Son, you're a body, son....[t]hose thoughts in your mind are just the sound of your head revving..."
The concept of a somehow intelligent or conscious body is linked with the philosophical movement of phenomenology. Dermot Moran (Introduction to Phenomenology. London: Routledge, 2000) describes phenomenology as "the attempt to get to the truth of matters, to describe phenomena...as it manifests itself". One of the best-known French phenomenologists was Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961), described by Moran as a pioneer in the study of consciousness and development. Merleau-Ponty believed that "there is a basic form of intentionality already present in the body, which cannot be explained in merely mechanistic terms."
The body-as-life explanation could help to explain the explosive popularity of physical art forms such as capoeira. According to Gerard Taylor (Capoeira. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 2005), this unique style of movement emerged in Brazil as "a fighting art based on central African martial art traditions," a way to develop physical and mental fitness for the oppressed workers in mines, plantations and on docks. Now it has a world-wide following. Taylor describes capoeira is "a living, breathing activity that is played in the present time and maintained only by people who do it in any given generation". This present-moment focus, the living aspect of capoeira, helps make it "deeply attractive...to the human body and psyche".
A linked article on Suite 101, The Body in the World, focuses on how the living body communicates through creative activity such as dance, and how the world reciprocates.
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