ENQUIRY 3 | RELATIONALITY 

In enquiring about the relationality with Janette in the studio research, I excavated a theory of the interrelationship between performer and audience according to Zeami because Noh performance theory was developed in tandem with the concern of ‘how best to engage audiences’ (Quinn 2005: 202).

In Noh, there is a practice of observing oneself as if from a distance, or riken no ken 離見の見, literally translated as ‘the seeing of detached perception’ (Yusa 1987: 331). Riken no ken is underpinned by the notion of the performing body in Noh. Based on the framework of medieval Japanese Buddhist philosophy, mind and body are considered as transient but inextricable from each other (Amano 2011: 535). The awareness of the transient nature of all living things leads to the critical framework of the Noh performing body, understood as a ‘flexible processual site’ opening towards the surroundings and undergoing ‘constant transformation’ (2011: 530).

Riken no ken is a practice that aims to shift the performer’s perspective towards that of the audience (Yusa 1987: 334). For me, practising riken no ken is a form of a ‘somatic mode of attention’ — an attention to and with the performing body in the intersubjective milieu with the audience (Csordas 1993: 139).

Riken no ken

Riken no ken is a form of ‘double reference’ (Lepecki 2000: 354) of perception where one observes oneself perceiving, or ‘a perception in perception’ (Massumi 2011: 44). An example of practising riken no ken is in the video on the right.

In the video, the practice of riken no ken helped to expand my fields of attention to include Janette and my surroundings. At times, I felt a dispersed quality of my body — as if my dancing body became porous — and Janette’s gaze could penetrate through my body.

While the act of observing myself from a distance initially generated a dispersed quality of my body, my attention intensified as though my body became a thickness for Janette to perceive my embodied processes. Likewise, I also noticed her lingering attention as she watched me moving. This two-way reciprocity informed how my improvisational material was generated. In this way, we were co-contributors to the generative milieu of the improvisation through our relationality. Through practising riken no ken, my experience of each jo-ha-kyū passage and its construed ending was relational to what I felt Janette might experience.

Indeed, riken no ken offered not only relationality between Janette and me, but also an intersubjective relation. In this way, the process of attunement when practising riken no ken pertained to the active acquisition of intersubjective experience: I attuned to Janette and her attention informed my actions. As a way of organizing my improvising body, riken no ken is speculative in nature as I cannot ascertain what the viewer actually perceives.

For riken no ken, the process of detached perception can be employed only as what Philipa Rothfield calls ‘an asymptote’, or ‘a movement towards’ (Rothfield 2021: 182). That is, I shift my perspective towards the kinaesphere around me but I am not actually being outside myself.

Here are my reflections on practising riken no ken in my improvisation.

• First, the boundaries between Janette and me were clear, but they were permeable.
• Second, in the studio research when I practised jo-ha-kyū no ken, I shifted my perspective towards the point of view of Janette as if offering her what she might be able to see. But as soon as I felt that I took Janette’s perspective, it became mine and no longer hers. Nevertheless, the practice of riken no ken intensified my attention. I felt as though Janette’s gaze was drawn towards me and my embodied processes became accessible to her. This was not only during ma, but also as I was moving and generating arcs of jo-ha-kyū.

Riken no ken cannot be practised in a hurry. It takes a while for me to perceive myself as if from a distance. In turn, the practice gives me time to notice the back-formation of jo-ha-kyū.

What emerges from this enquiry is that when practising riken no ken, my improvising body was unable to settle into a state — it was at first dispersed then intensified to become a thickness. During the improvisation, the continual uncertainty of my improvising body became heightened, along with the initial vagueness of my perceptual experience and the sense of potentiality before each jo-ha-kyū grain emerged.

This led to Enquiry 4: the indeterminacy of embodying jo-ha-kyū and ma in my improvisation.

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