Not really relating to dance but I've come across the idea of figure and ground in music, where you can apply it to melody (figure) and harmony (ground) or even in EDM you could say that a lead sound is really a figure and a pad sound a ground, very much like foreground vs. background elements in painting. Anyways interesting read and always good to brush up on some phenomenology!
Thanks Henry :) The figure/ground concepts originated in early Gestalt psychology and then were taken up by phenomenologists to more philosophical ends. If you’re interested, you can find a phenomenological engagement with traditional music theory in the work of Roman Ingarden.
Wonderful as always. You are right that often when I dance with people I feel that I know no so much about them, so much so it is often disorienting to actually meet them later. Some people are so different to how they dance.
Really fascinating work, Vincent. Some of these ideas have come up in my own thinking though I lack your academic acumen in presenting such ideas. Here are a couple of thoughts all the same:
- Meditation, when taken beyond the cushion into mindfulness, can be a very useful means of engaging with experience. Sitting meditation is in part a practice in developing an awareness of the body but with particular emphasis on the mind's response to external stimuli. Buddhist concepts on the mind are very rigorously laid out in a number of ways, though these concepts can be somewhat murky in the overlay of a presentation that is likewise defined by its culture of origin. The bhavachakra, or Wheel of Life, is a good example of this: the outer rim, for example, is essentially describing the process by which the mind interacts with stimuli (perception, cognition, recognition, response, judgement, etc.). Meditation and mindfulness then are intended as a practice to deepen one's attention towards experience in part to have a better understanding of one's mind/body and our ways of relating to the world and others. Ideally, we can then have a greater ability to adapt and change in ways that are beneficial.
- I studied music in university and was fortunate to learn both African and Indian music; how these different styles of music affect the perception of time are distinct.
For example, the polyrythm of African music (specifically of the Ewe and the Akan, in my experience) can be analogized as being akin to a Necker cube; depending on which rhythm your mind fixed on, the overall rhythm may be perceived in a duple time (2 or 4, in most cases), but fix the mind on another pattern and you will hear it in a triple time. This speaks, I think, to the idea of figure and ground, though in this example, the change in perception takes place primarily in the ground. It may, however, alter perception of the figure.
In the Indian music I studied, specifically, carnatic music of South India, time is played with in a very different way: linearly. Indian music has a static rhythmic pulse called a tala underpinning it; the tala can be a simple 4-beat pattern, but I can also have more complex patterns in 7, 11 or 15. While the tala never changes, the rhythmic and melodic lines (performed homophonically, generally) played over it can vary greatly in terms their rhythmic structures. It becomes very hard to explain here in text suffice to say that patterns can be stretched, compressed or broken up in a variety of ways such as to affect, from my experience, one's perception of time. For example, a common structure such as a yeta (if I remember correctly) takes a pattern of, say, 5 quarter beats, 5 dotted-eighths, 5 eighths, and 5 sixteenths and repeats this pattern 3 times (possibly repeating the final 5 set of sixteenths, as well) which will end on the 1 of the next repetition of the tala. This creates a sense of being pulled forward in time towards the downbeat and, when it lands, it can create a very VERY satisfying sensation. (It is very similar in spirit to what you may hear in some EDM, though generally much more complex on the whole.)
Thanks for your work and introducing me to the work of Merleau-Ponty, Vincent! Phenomenology is a field of study well worth all of us knowing more about.
Just a quick correction (IF I am NOW remembering correctly), the rhythmic idea from India music I described above is not yeta but morah--a rhythmic pattern repeated three times before a new section begins. (George Harrison's "Within You Without You" has a very basic morah prior to the final verse of the song.)
Too bad the academic presses omitted his metaphysical meanders because that’s the pulse! I truly love your take on MP’s daily process- writing bookended by a.m. sobriety and musings tinted by the evening red wine (rinse n repeat). Beautiful, I bet true, and dang I wish I could have been there with him. Wouldn’t that be fun? 💫
You might check out Music Grooves, a book of essays and dialogues by ethnomusicologists Steven Feld and Charles Keil, especially Keil's theory of participatory discrepancies.
I really love this, thanks for introducing this aspect of Ponty. I only read so far the Eye and the Mind so for me he is a Painting - Philosopher, never bothered to check about any other art 😅
Not really relating to dance but I've come across the idea of figure and ground in music, where you can apply it to melody (figure) and harmony (ground) or even in EDM you could say that a lead sound is really a figure and a pad sound a ground, very much like foreground vs. background elements in painting. Anyways interesting read and always good to brush up on some phenomenology!
Thanks Henry :) The figure/ground concepts originated in early Gestalt psychology and then were taken up by phenomenologists to more philosophical ends. If you’re interested, you can find a phenomenological engagement with traditional music theory in the work of Roman Ingarden.
Wonderful as always. You are right that often when I dance with people I feel that I know no so much about them, so much so it is often disorienting to actually meet them later. Some people are so different to how they dance.
Really fascinating work, Vincent. Some of these ideas have come up in my own thinking though I lack your academic acumen in presenting such ideas. Here are a couple of thoughts all the same:
- Meditation, when taken beyond the cushion into mindfulness, can be a very useful means of engaging with experience. Sitting meditation is in part a practice in developing an awareness of the body but with particular emphasis on the mind's response to external stimuli. Buddhist concepts on the mind are very rigorously laid out in a number of ways, though these concepts can be somewhat murky in the overlay of a presentation that is likewise defined by its culture of origin. The bhavachakra, or Wheel of Life, is a good example of this: the outer rim, for example, is essentially describing the process by which the mind interacts with stimuli (perception, cognition, recognition, response, judgement, etc.). Meditation and mindfulness then are intended as a practice to deepen one's attention towards experience in part to have a better understanding of one's mind/body and our ways of relating to the world and others. Ideally, we can then have a greater ability to adapt and change in ways that are beneficial.
- I studied music in university and was fortunate to learn both African and Indian music; how these different styles of music affect the perception of time are distinct.
For example, the polyrythm of African music (specifically of the Ewe and the Akan, in my experience) can be analogized as being akin to a Necker cube; depending on which rhythm your mind fixed on, the overall rhythm may be perceived in a duple time (2 or 4, in most cases), but fix the mind on another pattern and you will hear it in a triple time. This speaks, I think, to the idea of figure and ground, though in this example, the change in perception takes place primarily in the ground. It may, however, alter perception of the figure.
In the Indian music I studied, specifically, carnatic music of South India, time is played with in a very different way: linearly. Indian music has a static rhythmic pulse called a tala underpinning it; the tala can be a simple 4-beat pattern, but I can also have more complex patterns in 7, 11 or 15. While the tala never changes, the rhythmic and melodic lines (performed homophonically, generally) played over it can vary greatly in terms their rhythmic structures. It becomes very hard to explain here in text suffice to say that patterns can be stretched, compressed or broken up in a variety of ways such as to affect, from my experience, one's perception of time. For example, a common structure such as a yeta (if I remember correctly) takes a pattern of, say, 5 quarter beats, 5 dotted-eighths, 5 eighths, and 5 sixteenths and repeats this pattern 3 times (possibly repeating the final 5 set of sixteenths, as well) which will end on the 1 of the next repetition of the tala. This creates a sense of being pulled forward in time towards the downbeat and, when it lands, it can create a very VERY satisfying sensation. (It is very similar in spirit to what you may hear in some EDM, though generally much more complex on the whole.)
Thanks for your work and introducing me to the work of Merleau-Ponty, Vincent! Phenomenology is a field of study well worth all of us knowing more about.
Just a quick correction (IF I am NOW remembering correctly), the rhythmic idea from India music I described above is not yeta but morah--a rhythmic pattern repeated three times before a new section begins. (George Harrison's "Within You Without You" has a very basic morah prior to the final verse of the song.)
Too bad the academic presses omitted his metaphysical meanders because that’s the pulse! I truly love your take on MP’s daily process- writing bookended by a.m. sobriety and musings tinted by the evening red wine (rinse n repeat). Beautiful, I bet true, and dang I wish I could have been there with him. Wouldn’t that be fun? 💫
I love how you described the body’s reaction to dance. Very apt. It’s like a movement meditation.
You might check out Music Grooves, a book of essays and dialogues by ethnomusicologists Steven Feld and Charles Keil, especially Keil's theory of participatory discrepancies.
Wonderful work ✨ as someone who finds philosophy somewhat intimidating, I really enjoyed this breakdown
Thank you! I’m always really trying to make it accessible in a non-academic way so I’m very happy to hear that!
I really love this, thanks for introducing this aspect of Ponty. I only read so far the Eye and the Mind so for me he is a Painting - Philosopher, never bothered to check about any other art 😅