Audiences’ Experience of Proximity and Co-Presence in live Dance Performance Jola, C.1 & Reason, M. 2 (equal contribution) _______________________________________________ 1 Division of Psychology, School of Health and Social Sciences, Abertay University, Dundee 2 Faculty of Arts, York St John University Introduction Spectators’ experiences of watching dance have recently gained much attention in scientific research. The cognitive neurosciences, a field that generally studies the neuronal processes linked with sensory stimulation, action execution, memory, language, attention, emotion and consciousness, had over the last ten years sought to better understand how the human brain responds to watching dance movement. For example, neuroscientific publications have dealt with expert or novice spectators’ neuronal responses to watching dance (see Bläsing et al., 2012; Sevdalis & Keller, 2011). The majority of these studies are based on the theory of the mirror neurons; a culmination of brain cells often described the mirror neuron network. The brain areas containing these cells showed functional relevance for action execution, such as dancing, but also for passive observation (for an overview of the brain areas found to be relevant in passive dance observation, see Christensen & Calvo-Merino, 2013). This overlap of brain activity during passive action observation and action execution has been explained through a mechanism; an internal sub-threshold neuronal resonance of the movements “mirroring” seen, as if the spectator was moving him- or herself. To some extent, the findings from this research capture the neural basis of the ephemeral experience of watching dance. However there are limitations to such studies, including most relevant to this paper– the –and technological challenges accompanying research on audience responses to live performance. Due to the constraints of brain imaging technologies, and the requirement to fulfil scientific principles of reliability and reproducibility, scientists generally employ digital displays (e.g., images, video recordings) for all types of experiments that require visual perception. While this approach has enhanced our understanding of the complex neuronal processes of perception and cognition, as a research approach into spectators’ responses to dance, it neglects numerous possible experiential differences between watching dance in
Audiences’ Experience of Proximity and Co-Presence in live Dance Performance Jola, C.1 & Reason, M. 2 (equal contribution) _______________________________________________ 1 Division of Psychology, School of Health and Social Sciences, Abertay University, Dundee 2 Faculty of Arts, York St John University Introduction Spectators’ experiences of watching dance have recently gained much attention in scientific research. The cognitive neurosciences, a field that generally studies the neuronal processes linked with sensory stimulation, action execution, memory, language, attention, emotion and consciousness, had over the last ten years sought to better understand how the human brain responds to watching dance movement. For example, neuroscientific publications have dealt with expert or novice spectators’ neuronal responses to watching dance (see Bläsing et al., 2012; Sevdalis & Keller, 2011). The majority of these studies are based on the theory of the mirror neurons; a culmination of brain cells often described the mirror neuron network. The brain areas containing these cells showed functional relevance for action execution, such as dancing, but also for passive observation (for an overview of the brain areas found to be relevant in passive dance observation, see Christensen & Calvo-Merino, 2013). This overlap of brain activity during passive action observation and action execution has been explained through a “mirroring” mechanism; an internal sub-threshold neuronal resonance of the movements seen, as if the spectator was moving him- or herself. To some extent, the findings from this research capture the neural basis of the ephemeral experience of watching dance. However there are limitations to such studies, including –and most relevant to this paper– the technological challenges accompanying research on audience responses to live performance. Due to the constraints of brain imaging technologies, and the requirement to fulfil scientific principles of reliability and reproducibility, scientists generally employ digital displays (e.g., images, video recordings) for all types of experiments that require visual perception. While this approach has enhanced our understanding of the complex neuronal processes of perception and cognition, as a research approach into spectators’ responses to dance, it neglects numerous possible experiential differences between watching dance in