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Dancers’ Perceptual Skills: An ethnographic, cognitive and phenomenological study

The extensive use of devising techniques in contemporary choreography stimulates the interest of dance practitioners in the performer’s perceptual skills. They are considered crucial for developing new creative strategies. In the article, we analyse Fighting Monkey (FM) – a training method developed by Jozef Frucek and Linda Kapetanea – as technique that is explicitly focused on the development of perception through physical training. We developed the research from three parallel conceptual frameworks. In the first (auto)ethnographic perspective, researchers’ and participants’ practice, as well as written reports from FM workshops, worked as a tool for pointing out particular exercises and assessing their impact on the dancer’s performance. Conclusions derived were then used as primary premises for the analysis in the second, cognitive, perspective. Its use was justified by existing studies on the impact of motor training on cognitive functions and models of research-based practice (Hansen 2018). Based on both sources, a study of selected perceptual abilities was designed and conducted with the participation of dance students randomly assigned to two training groups: FM, and Contemporary Dance technique designed to resemble standard curriculum. After 20-hours of practice, participants showed persisting, improved results in cognitive tests. The FM group showed an increased correctness of the response in the first-person (egocentric) mental body rotation task, which may indicate a better kinesthetic representation of the body (Kaltner, Riecke, Jansen, 2014). A detailed discussion was then performed with the use of the third, phenomenological, perspective that allowed isolation of particular differences in training that were the reasons for differences between the groups. At the same time, phenomenology was utilized as a methodological medium between the third-person research and the first-person experience. As such, it was used to formulate research conclusions in the discussion, covering the relationship between the training techniques, improvement of perceptual functions and the understanding of creative competences of dancers and choreographers.