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Embodied Philosophy in Dance: Gaga and Ohad Naharin's Movement Research by Einav Katan (review)

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