Exposition

Improvising Time: An investigation into the link between time and intersubjectivity in the performance of solo dance improvisation (2025)

Nareeporn Vachananda

About this exposition

Improvising Time is a practice-led research project investigating embodied temporality in the performance of solo dance improvisation. It explores two temporal concepts in Japanese Noh theatre — the sequencing concept of jo-ha-kyū 序破急 and the notion of ma 間, defined as interval — investigating how jo-ha-kyū and ma can be embodied for the temporal organization of solo dance performance when improvised before an audience. Grounded in praxis where theory is imbricated in practice, Noh performance theory is brought into a dynamic interaction with the fundamental theory of time in physics and a phenomenological approach to intersubjectivity. Using a multi-voice dialogic approach as a key methodology, the studio research examines the experience of improvisation from both sides — as improviser and as watcher — in collaboration with solo dance practitioner Janette Hoe. The research shows how, in the act of improvising, an embodied temporality of the improviser is created not only by an awareness of embodied processes but also by the potentiality of unknown improvisational material. Culminating in a major project, Solo Dialogue (2021), the research proposes a new framework of embodied temporality offering an insight into how improvisation can be temporally shaped and organized by prioritizing attentiveness and attunement to diversify performance material and enhance the intersubjective experience between improviser and audience. Download Accessible PDF
typeresearch exposition
keywordssolo dance, Noh, jo-ha-kyū, ma, intersubjectivity, riken no ken, granularity, relationality, indeterminacy, improvisation, Performance making, temporality
date15/07/2025
published15/07/2025
last modified15/07/2025
statuspublished
share statusprivate
affiliationIndependent artist/researcher
copyrightNareeporn Vachananda
licenseCC BY-NC-ND
languageAustralian English
urlhttps://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/2262837/3678456
doihttps://doi.org/10.22501/jar.2262837
published inJournal for Artistic Research
portal issue35. 35
external linkwww.nareevachananda.net

References

  • Amano, Yuka, “‘Flower’ As Performing Body in Noh Theatre”, Asian Theatre Journal, Vol.28, Issue 2 (University of Hawaii Press, 2011), pp. 529-48 <https://doi.org/10.1353/atj.2011.0048>
  • Borgdorff, Hendrik Anne (Henk), “The Conflict of the Faculties : Perspectives on Artistic Research and Academia”, 2012 <http://hdl.handle.net/1887/18704>
  • Buonomano, Dean, Your Brain Is a Time Machine: The Neuroscience and Physics of Time (New York NY: W.W. Norton &amp; Company Inc, 2017)
  • Csordas, Thomas J, “Somatic Modes of Attention”, Cultural Anthropology, Vol.8, Issue 2 (Wiley on behalf of the American Anthropological Association, 1993), pp. 135-56
  • De Spain, Kent, Landscape of the Now: A Topography of Movement Improvisation (New York NY: Oxford University Press, 2014)
  • Hassan, Robert, Empires of Speed: Time and the Acceleration of Politics and Society (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2009)
  • Komparu, Kunio, The Noh Theatre: Principles and Perspectives (Tokyo: Weatherill/Tankosha, 1983)
  • Lepecki, André, “Still: On the Vibratile Microscopy of Dance”, in ReMembering the Body, ed. by Gabrielle Brandsetter and Hortensia Volckers (Vienna: Hatje Cantz Publishers, 2000), pp. 334-72
  • Lu, Youjia, “Indeterminate Self”, 2017 <http://hdl.handle.net/11343/294841>
  • Magee, Paul, “Introduction. Part 1: Beyond Accountability”, Text, 14: Special Issue: Beyond Practice-led Research (Society for Textual Scholarship, 2012)
  • Maier, Craig T, “Attentive Waiting in an Uprooted Age: Simone Weil’s Response in an Age of Precarity”, The Review of Communication, Vol.13, Issue 3 (Taylor &amp; Francis, 2013), pp. 225-42
  • Manning, Erin, Always More Than One: Individuation’s Dance (Durham NC: Duke University Press, 2013)
  • Manning, Erin, Relationscapes: Movement, Arts and Philosophy (Campbridge MA: The MIT Press, 2009)
  • Massumi, Brian, Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation (Durham NC: Duke University Press, 2002)
  • Massumi, Brian, Semblance and Event: Activist Philosophy and the Occurrent Arts (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2011)
  • Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, Phenomenology of Perception (London and New York: Routledge, 2012)
  • Morris, David, “Body”, in Merleau-Ponty: Key Concepts, ed. by Roslyn Diprose and Jack Reynolds (London: Taylor and Francis, 2014), pp. 111-20
  • Quinn, Shelley Fenno, Developing Zeami: The Noh Actor’s Attunement in Practice (Honolulu HI: University of Hawaii Press, 2005)
  • Ramirez-Christensen, Esperanza, Emptiness and Temporality: Buddhism and Medieval Japanese Poetics (Stanford CA: Stanford University Press, 2008)
  • Rothfield, Philipa, Dance and the Corporeal Uncanny: Philosophy in Motion (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2021)
  • Rovelli, Carlo, Helgoland (London: Penguin Books, 2021)
  • Rovelli, Carlo, The Order of Time (New York: Riverhead Books, 2018)
  • Sanders, Michael, “Intersubjectivity and Alterity”, in Merleau-Ponty: Key Concepts, ed. by Roslyn Diprose and Jack Reynolds (London: Taylor and Francis, 2014), pp. 142-51
  • Yusa, Michiko, “Riken No Ken. Zeami’s Theory of Acting and Theatrical Appreciation”, Monumenta Nipponica, Vol.42, Issue 3 (Sophia University, 1987), pp. 331-45
  • Zeami, Motokiyo, J Thomas Rimer, and Masakazu Yamazaki, On the Art of Nō Drama: The Major Treatises of Zeami (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984)

Copyrights


Comments are only available for registered users.
Download Accessible PDF" style="float:right">