Findings and concluding thoughts

From the beginning of the research project, jo-ha-kyū in my movement improvisation was a post-reflective process. Having looked more closely at Zeami’s writings, I embarked on an exploration of the embodiment of jo-ha-kyū as an emergent process and practised fulfilling each jo-ha-kyū modulation. In so doing, the wave-like flow of my habitual movement pattern was disrupted and replaced by the granularity of jo-ha-kyū arcs with small pauses of ma in between. Over the course of this research project, my embodiment of jo-ha-kyū as granular has allowed temporal space during ma to attune to the intersubjective milieu with Janette. Practising riken no ken (practising observing myself as if from the outside) to gauge the emergence and back-formation of jo-ha-kyū has rendered my improvising body as thickness yet porous, allowing the penetration of Janette’s gaze.

The process of activating jo-ha-kyū and ma while improvising in relation to Janette underscored the indeterminacy of my improvising body and my perceptual experience. To mediate this indeterminacy, I explored approximating superpositions of relational fields and nexūs, which allowed me to account for both potential (virtual) and actualized movement. As a result, I found the accumulation of virtual and actualized jo-ha-kyū, with speculative quality of ma, could enable sequencing — temporal composing in sequential form — in my improvisation. Sequencing through jo-ha-kyū generated ma while practising riken no ken allowed me to gauge the duration, speed, and temporal patterning of jo-ha-kyū modulations in any level of performance.

Findings | A new lexicon and languaging for dance improvisation

To bring the concepts from Noh performance theory to dance improvisation, this research employed the linguistic framework of Noh and physics to construct a new way of languaging, discussing, and analysing embodied temporality in improvisation. This new lexicon of improvisation includes ‘grains’, ‘fields’ and ‘fielding’, ‘superposition’, ‘nexus/nexūs’, and ‘nodes’. The new languaging is based on the understanding of embodied temporality in my Noh/improvisation practice and Rovelli’s idea of time as following:

• Time pertains to process and is understood as simultaneously ongoing and discrete (as grains/granular). Similarly, in improvisation, time is not an entity to be filled with improvisational material. Instead, time emerges rather than is, and embodied temporality emerges from embodied processes.
  
  
• The improviser’s perceptual experience is always relational across various milieux or fields — intersubjective, spatial, temporal, historical, cultural, etc.

Concluding thoughts | Expanding the idea of movement and embracing indeterminacy

The new linguistic framework in this research project provides a way in which indeterminacy can be taken into account and mediated as a resource for improvisational material. Through the activation of jo-ha-kyū from virtual into actual movement, this research project offers the following interrelated insights into movement improvisation:

First, an expansion of the scope of what can be considered ‘movement’. That is, movement should involve not only actualized motion but also mobilization of somatic–perceptual activities as the improvising body organizes perceptually and speculatively to attune to various relational milieux. For example, it is possible to have a movement of thought, a movement of attention and speculation.

Second, while being spontaneous ‘in the moment’ is widely practised in Western dance improvisation, overemphasizing spontaneity can risk improvisers striving for ‘temporal immediacy’ (Hassan 2009: 103). The state of temporal immediacy values the present above all else, which renders very little time for improvisers to pay deep attention. As I established in Enquiry 4 that improvised movement can be understood as events, it takes time to account for various relational milieux, organize from retained perceptual experience, and speculate potential movement. My research calls for allowing temporal interstices (ma) while improvising to attend to evolving performance milieux and retained felt perception to inform future actions.

Third, my research advocates the cultivation of somatic modes of attention that approaches the fields of indeterminacy. Rather than determining movement too soon, my research shows that taking time to access embodied processes and temporality, as well as schematizing potential jo-ha-kyū as a set of superpositions, can be generative for improvisation and invaluable for facilitating intersubjective experience with the audience. In addition, this research project demonstrated that unactualized potentials are the foundation of actualized movement. By approximating superpositions of potential fields, some of the potentials are not actualized. Unactualized (virtual) movement was retained in my body and informed further potential movement. Speculative qualities of unactualized speculations, such as those during ma, can ‘give off the fragrance’ of potentiality, which is perceivable by the audience as experiential fields of intensity.

The method of ‘improvising time’ is based on my own experience in improvisation, and I am mindful that every improviser has their own take on what embodied temporality may be. This study calls for future research on diversification as well as articulations of what may constitute ‘embodied processes’, which inevitably manifest in embodied temporality.

Finally, I hope that this research project offers a method where embodied processes can enrich movement in its actualization, and that dwelling in a sense of indeterminacy during improvisation engenders embodied temporality and can be invaluable for both improviser and watcher alike. I hope that future research will include an exploration of implementing the proposed perceptual tools from a pedagogical perspective, in particular for dancers who do not have an experience in Noh training and study.

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