How to look like a good dancer

To talk about dance thinking, you need to highlight it somehow. And then it turns out that there are many different ways of thinking about dance, it is multi-level and multi-disciplinary. And since thinking is closely connected with communication (including dance communication, for example, paired social dances), talking about dance thinking becomes no less difficult than talking about any other thinking. Even more complex: in systems thinking, of course, you can add a body (embodied intelligence), but in dance thinking you can’t do without a body, or even several bodies.

Moreover, dance thinking is hardly distinguishable from non-thinking practices-experiences that have no rationality, that "just are", that are simply patterned gestalts of states-positions of the mind and states-positions of the body. See, for example, the texts "my three months of kizomba" http://ailev.livejournal.com/1312598.html and "kizomba, exotelo and basic for dancing intelligence" http://ailev.livejournal.com/1315064.html

If, when discussing systems thinking, engineering thinking, one can somehow abstract from the "bearer of thinking" and discuss the ideal flow of thought and the content of this thought, then in dance thinking it is impossible to abstract from the carrier of thinking by principle. As Anton Klimat (this is his pseudonym, he is actually Anton Klimov, the head of the Breakwater studio, which prepares hip-hop champions - https://vk. com/klimat) said a few days ago at a training session, "the dancer needs to be especially honest [reflexive] - because if the artist immediately sees with his eye that he smeared in the wrong place, the musician immediately hears with his ear that he played something wrong, then the dancer is deprived of such an opportunity if he is in the course of the dance does not look in the mirror. At any moment, the dancer must understand what is happening with his body, be honest and truthful in his feelings - this dance is different from other arts. " The focus of dance thinking is the dancer himself and what is happening to him, the dance is inalienable from the dancer. As I already wrote about the dance - here the dancer is both the material of the target system, and the stakeholder, who has his own interests. And so it is necessary to discuss separately "thinking of the material" (psychopractices) and "thinking of the stakeholder" (mental patterns taken from culture).

"Thinking of the material", low-level perceptions and patterns of movement are connected with the body, they make it possible to realize the dancing idea of ​​the dancer-stakeholder - this is "thinking about movements", not even "thinking about dance". This is motor thinking, "about the body and its movements."

The difference between this motor/body and dance thinking is about the same as between rational thinking and its logical foundations (see, for example, http://ailev.livejournal.com/1311261.html) and systems thinking -- the second is not happens without the first, builds on it. An illogical thinker cannot be a systems thinker. Similarly, a poorly moving (or poorly imagining movement) person cannot be a dancer. But rational thinking together with logical thinking is incorporeal in this regard (although there are nuances about embodied intelligence), but voluntary motor thinking (and not already patterned by dance!) thinking is bodily. Well, it should also be noted that along the line of development of rational thinking, you can get a Nobel Prize, and along the line of development of motor thinking, you can only set a Guinness record (becoming a world champion in some kind of dance or martial arts is also about performing in the arena, see below). "psycho-practices of the animal nature", http://openmeta.livejournal.com/236318.html).

The problem is that a good dancer doesn't think about movement in an arbitrary way, but in a very specific way. And this thinking can also be taught, and taught explicitly. The difference in explicit (through intelligible explanations of the principles and then through specially selected exercises) and implicit ("on the best samples", according to the principle "do as I do", i.e. purely on mirror neurons, "like monkeys") learning is usually five once in time. If you don’t want to learn five times faster, then you don’t need to “learn through awareness”, and then you could not talk about this “thinking of the material”. From motor practices, I mentioned such a transition to intelligible learning, I know in taijiquan (section " learning taijiquan" at http://ailev.livejournal.com/1013825.html), piano (http://ailev.livejournal.com/944960.html), and from the ones I recently met - just Anton Klimat's movement training school.

Boris Mayer just told me that he discovered a "general motor processor" in a person, which is suitable for superimposing any movement patterns on him - even ballroom dancing, even any other dances, even taijiquan, even any other martial arts. But he is personally interested in taijiquan, and therefore he is not particularly involved in explicitly describing and highlighting the practices of teaching motor skills as such, the practices of thinking about your body as a moving body, the psychopractices of bodily movement as such, not yet patterned by kizomba, taijiquan or a waltz from sports dances . Anton Klimat is about the same about this level of motor skills, only in relation to hip-hop in general and wavering in particular: he clearly does not distinguish it, but understands its existence well. This gives both the acceleration of learning for their students five times compared to learning the movements immediately patterned by their movement styles - that is, the gain in speed is obtained by dividing the actual dance (taijiquan is exactly the same dance as any other in my imagination), those. culturally patterned movement and movement as such, not yet affected by patterning, but conscious and developed for the perception of this patterning - prepared for the rapid development of the actual dance (in a specific dance or sports style) movement.

The leading scheme for me in thinking about this bodily level, borderline between thinking and just psychopractices, is the scheme of the (cyber)psyche (see the report "psychic engineering" http://openmeta.livejournal.com/238030.html, slide 13 https://www.slideshare.net/ailev/ss-58654585), and taking into account the possibility of the emergence of cyber components, http://openmeta.livejournal.com/237056.html (I myself tried to understand how I move smoothly using the graph from the accelerometer in the phone.There are gadgets for athletes like "smart racket", there will certainly be gadgets for dancers).

A good dancer thus has different points of attention on the body and other ways of controlling the body, other possibilities -- and these possibilities come to the body "through the brain", there are no other ways! Say, where does the beauty of hand movements come from?

1. Some muscles stop interfering with other muscles (isolation as the ability to contract one muscle, not large groups of muscles, which immediately gives you completely different possible trajectories of movement, as well as plasticity - the ability of a muscle not only to contract, but also to stretch, which adds significantly to the range of possible trajectories). Anton Klimat offers here some special training based on three modes of muscle work: tension (pressure sensation), stretching (burning sensation), relaxation (limp sensation). And you need to train conscious control of all three states, and in times less than a second (dancing is fast! And if under tension this “less than a second” looks like a ridiculous requirement, then try to relax some tricky muscles that control the position of the pelvis in less than a second! relax any flexor, the extensor will not be able to fully work, and vice versa). Brain training here is simple, but it takes a significant amount of time: a) to “catch” the right muscle with its “clamp” with attention, and b) learn how to relax and strain it (and other muscles will stretch it, but only when it can be relaxed).

2. Control points are tied to bones and joints, and not to the usual ordinary coordinates. For example, you can lift and rotate the shoulder, or you can lift and rotate the scapula - of course, the movement of the scapula (i.e., the movement that is perceived in the mind as controlling the scapula, not the shoulder) leads to a rise and torsion of the shoulder. But the style will be significantly different: the movements of the scapula (well, or "from the scapula", as the dancers say) will be softer, smoother, and more varied. The problem here is that it is difficult to even imagine the movement of the scapula, it is difficult to control the different muscles that pull it up. But it is very easy to imagine and control the muscles when it comes to shoulder movement. This is the first task: to retrain the brain. Another example is the movements of the pelvis (try to twist it in different planes, this is a rude "plate" - and you need to be able to somehow turn it, quickly and accurately), movements of the spine in the region of the upper ribs (usually there is nothing at all moves unless you specifically design this place - but if you want to send a wave through the body, you will need this movement).

The passage "through awareness" in this training of "bodily thinking", thinking "dancer as material", this education of self-perception and self-control through a clear connection "brain-body" takes about five times less time than through unconscious repetitions of some movements. And the practices of this "bodily awareness" are approximately the same in all schools. So, “dance meditation”, work with the brain-without-the-body works well (well, or on micro-movements, when the muscles do not work at full strength, but only twitch a little, imperceptibly to the eye). The climate calls it break meditation, but it is also described for practicing piano playing, and it was also used by Mahmud Esenbaev for his training, and Cameron-Bostick likes to talk about it, who “does ballet” in the hospital. “Dancing inside the head” (or playing a musical instrument “inside the head”) and micromovements is already a common place, but this is a move towards awareness, towards psychopractice, although not yet towards some kind of civilized thinking. But when you "inside your head" pull not with your shoulder, but with a shoulder blade - at this moment culture works, the bodily thinking transferred to you works.

There are many ways to define/describe dance that are important for conscious thinking about dance. For example, all systems of external recording of movements will not be adequate as "notes" for a dancer - for a dancer moving "inside the head" with a spatula will have to somehow translate a description into another system of motor thinking, in which the movement of the shoulder, which is clearly visible from the outside, will most likely be recorded. ! Here's about these dance notations: http://ailev.livejournal.com/76767.html - there is an emphasis on performance, meaning "outside view". This is a notation for thinking about the dancer, not the movement thinking of the dancer himself. Although both can formally be attributed to dance thinking, but these are completely different manifestations of it! Moreover, this is a recording of "just movements", while the actual dance thinking works in a patterned way. In the same kizomba, all thinking revolves around exits to various sayids, and not around individual movements of the legs. Thus, you need to record patterns, not individual movements!

Here's another example of this "external", visual thinking about dance -- Optimal asymmetry and other motion parameters that characterize high-quality female dance, http://www.nature.com/articles/srep42435. The article draws a connection between the ability of women to make asymmetrical movements (which shows a high degree of development of the body and brain) and her "femininity", the perception of male as a potential partner and female as a potential competitor. Further, these results can be translated into an engineering plane: to teach dancing in such a way as to "make the right impression" (well, and generally discuss the requirements for dancing). Well, or declare the entire article nonsense: perception in dances depends more on culture, it is artificial, comes from thinking, and not from "instincts" - and if the study carried out in the article is repeated on people from the hinterland of Africa, in the US ballet school and the village urban type in the Far North of Russia, the results will be quite different.

In any case, from the level of the motor base, the "movement processor", the feeling of the body from the inside and the pattern of body movement from the outside (as well as the relationship between dance and music - working with rhythm at least, phrasing in music, weaving rhythm and form of dance movements into rhythm and form of parts of musical instruments in music - see the initial list of skills in "the most important skills of a dancer" http://ailev.livejournal.com/1324775.html) we can go to the next level of dance thinking - where there are no longer separate movements, and their pattern, i.e. dance. By and large, dance thinking will work with dance, while the body and its control will be considered developed.

There are also several different levels, since different people are concerned about different things, everyone has their own concerns (concerns):
-- within the given dance language (patterns of movements of some kind of dance). Thinking is dogma, the canon of some kind of dance or dance family. Here, too, you can set different perspectives, build different methods of description, build a canon in different ways. For example, postulating a dance as inseparable from its music, or deriving a canon from the performance of some particular dance school (and albeit a large one - say, city parties somewhere in Luanda) at some period of time (say, in 80- years of the last century), or deriving the canon from some historical considerations, or simply referring to authorities with their "sense of correctness", or making attempts to formalize some ideas and mercilessly cutting off everything that does not fit under it. For example, discussions of "true kizomba" from this series. But further within the framework of the canon, this thinking also exists, we can talk about the degree of its development, wealth or limitation, productivity or secondary.
- outside the given dance language, in other words - the development of dance, going beyond some canon.
-- beyond the boundaries of dance as such, access to broader cultural patterns (for example, along the line of hip-hop culture, where breakdance is only one of the components of a wider culture, and the canon is wider, as well as development is not only break dance).
-- beyond these broader patterns, out into patterned thinking as such.

And at each of these levels, one can talk about "perception from within as a dancer", "perception as a dance partner", "perception by observers/spectators/judges/friends" - and further attempts to satisfy the most diverse interests/concerns of all the most diverse interests , realizing that dance as a "successful system" is very difficult to make.

Here it should be noted separately that dances obviously do not belong to science, but to engineering - therefore, systems thinking is quite applicable to dances. In this regard, in dancing, the task is to create (realization, "bringing into reality") a successful dance (successful dance), which satisfies, if possible, all stakeholders - both the dancer himself from the inside, and his partner / partner (also from the inside, remember about the connection! ), and viewers, and parents, and many, many others. Remember that a successful system is included in the very first phrase of the systems engineering definition - it is a system that satisfies the expectations of the project stakeholders (see the very first phrase in the systems engineering definition: http://www. incose.org/AboutSE/WhatIsSE). Well, those familiar with systems engineering do not need to be told that the dance "here and now" is just a 4D individual (a kind of "worm in space-time"), we even especially analyze this example in the classes of systems thinking.

So I personally would finally become non-pop, non-humanitarian and non-poetic, and build further reasoning about dance thinking as about engineering thinking, and to the extent that dance implies collective forms of its existence, I would also add managerial thinking. Thus, I would talk about dance thinking and dance practices in much the same way as about the thinking and practices of programmers, or the thinking of machine learning system engineers - what is there with the requirements for the dance, what is there with the architecture, what are the modules in the dance and what components , and even what kind of placements there are in the dance. Everything is not so original, but such an approach certainly allows you to somehow take into account the plurality of stakeholders in the dance and the plurality of their interests. Including interests in poetry, pop, ease of perception, compliance with some cultural canons, etc. material", and as "stakeholders", so that the methods of traditional "iron" and software engineering are unsuitable for creating dances. However, these engineering methods are many and they work. They reduce complexity in dealing with different situations, they provide reproducible results, they enable teamwork. And they leave a huge scope for creativity, no one has yet canceled the work of the head for that same engineering thinking - it does not cancel the engineering approach to dance and the work of the head for the manifestation of creativity in dance thinking.

Thus, above "body thinking", "motor thinking" there appears a level of patterned dance thinking within the framework of some kind of dance tradition.

In a good way, I would need to develop this idea further and tell what are the modules of the dance, what are the interfaces, which concerns of which stakeholders are made out by which viewpoints - with examples, without "bird language", understandable to dancers and the general public . But I won't do it.

Instead, I note that there are recognized pioneers in engineering - they propose new architectures that respond to new architectural requirements. What was previously considered impossible by a variety of stakeholders is becoming possible with these pioneers. They push the boundaries of the possible, they create the new. The rest are second-moverers, third-moverers and other rearguards and gray masses. This argument about engineering fully applies to dancing.

The main innovation of this post is a suggestion to take from engineering the methods of dealing with complexity that allow you to create successful engineering systems and apply them to dance. This will allow mass and conscious creation of successful dances. Moreover, it will allow the development of dances, making them more complex and sophisticated, but without going beyond the limits of ordinary human capabilities.

You can get great pleasure dancing the same waltz in its dogmatic version from youth to old age. There are stakeholders who need exactly this, this is an ideal. All their thinking is slowly moving into the unconscious, leaving a pure and uncomplicated trance - either a change of partner or a change of music can bring variety. But I'm not one of those conservatives. Art, including in its social, rather than professional and performative forms, develops and grows with new languages, new styles, new thoughts, and not by carefully preserving and polishing the classics. This discussion about art fully applies to dances, exactly the same as about engineering, which is also valuable for the by no means careful preservation of some kind of bridge building as of the middle of the last century.

When it comes to dance thinking, development is important to me - creating new dances that will be successful for more and more dancers, spectators, judges, art historians, DJs, friends, families and other people affected by dance.

To do this, dancers must have their own R&D, engineering (and sometimes just scientific) research and development. There should be experiments that go beyond what is already known and tested. There must be passages into new dances, there must be finds of rich and expressive dance languages.

Six months ago I found the social dance "kizomba" and found that it is largely inexhaustible -- research and development, formulating new requirements and building new kizomba architectures. Or no longer kizomba? It does not matter what words to call and what classification will then be built post factum. But it is important where and how the dance is developing, how the "dance engineers" communicate, how the research is organized.

The dance industry is like the mass production of dance -- it happens at parties. Thousands and thousands of dances are produced there. Yes, sometimes something new is also produced there, a party at the same time and an "exhibition of the achievements of the dance economy." But more often than not, new things are produced purposefully in the course of research and development, and this happens mainly in dance schools. Of course, schools are different. Most dance schools are just educational institutions: their teachers take master classes in various other schools and then pass on knowledge to students, preserving the canon. But there are dance schools focused on research. An example of such a dance school in Moscow is AfroFusion (http://afrofusion.ru/). For example, here is one of their research products: Kizomba Fusion -- https://youtu.be/whNe6zgPrV0. This is not the only result of the research. AfroFusion teachers lead a community https://vk.com/kizombamoscow, where a lot of materials on Fusion Kizomba have been published over the past few months - and most often today this is the junction of kizomba and dubstep (I myself, by the way, noticed that the frontier of kizomba is creeping towards dubstep back in November -- http://ailev.livejournal.com/1310496.html, http://ailev.livejournal.com/1311543.html. But AfroFusion noticed this earlier - in addition to several kizomba programs (very different: traditional, classical, fusion, urban kiz, tarraxa and even tarrax'osteo) there is also a dubstep group led by the same Anton Klimat. And this group is attended not only by ordinary students like me, but also by teachers. Well, the dubstep itself in this group is tailored to the interests of kizomba, this is also part of the research - but Anton's research in terms of the development of hip-hop in its fusion with other dances, the development of dance thinking of illusory styles.

AfroFusion teachers also lead the Yu community, where they publish their "projects" on the study of dance novelties (for example, there was a series of publications on urban tarraxa), biographies of figures in the kizomba world and other things that cannot be called "research and development", but what demonstrates some level of reflexivity in work. The same can be said about Thierry Déa's studio in St. Petersburg, they put on a rebit there: https://vk.com/video175030_456239031 - although I wouldn't say that we are talking about some kind of "creating a new one", but it's a disaster Start. Experiments go with movements, with music, the results are laid out on video (here is Dnepropetrovsk - https://youtu. be/lpNcbuIZQ3g, here is Krasnodar - https://youtu.be/fcb0TXThmMU, here is Kaliningrad - https://www .youtube.com/channel/UCCP-WhRAISTmE6ZSsgmkFgw, and this is not the whole list). I would draw attention to the fact that this is not so much about "advertising videos" and demonstrations of various "shows" (which can be extremely negatively perceived by fans of social dances, there is an opinion that "teaching kizomba" and "shows" incompatible with kizomba itself!). I would pay attention to the fact that there is some kind of research activity, some kind of development, some kind of advancement of the boundaries of dance, attempts to take some step in the development of dance thinking.

GP Shchedrovitsky wrote a book "Pedagogy and Logic", where he clearly showed that if there is no combined research and educational activity, then education cannot be of high quality. This I mean that if we are talking about "research schools", then the education in them will be of high quality, there is a chance to teach dance thinking, to make this thinking conscious. And if it's "just a school" that takes dance thinking in its unreflected form and tries to transfer it unconsciously to its students - I'm sorry, but such a school will only release good dancers into life by chance.

There is also a real university science of dance, and there is a lot of it on the Internet in a variety of languages. There, higher dance education is close, and even academic degrees in dance and their study. But usually this is far from life, it is a "theory", not life. For life, some Portuguese professor (not a university professor, but just a "teacher"! This is not English, everyone confuses the translation here!) Like mestre Petchu (http://www.mestrepetchukilandu.com/biografia.html, here is an example of him work -- he explains the basic movements of tarraxinha -- https://youtu.be/aHbjn_JQLa0) is often more influential than a major university graduating dancers with a real high school diploma.

Well, you can’t say in a nutshell about dance thinking itself, volumes have already been written about it (as well as about systems thinking, computational thinking and any other thinking, as well as “just thinking”). But I will repeat the main idea of ​​this post: it is worthless to try to describe it, to develop it, if we are not talking about education. For I adhere to a constructivist interpretation: if you understand what the essence of dance thinking is, then be ready to demonstrate it in the educational process, i.e. take a student (and even yourself) and show how your version gives a successful dance with less effort, in less time than other methods. Well, or with a comparable time, it gives a more successful dance than the dances obtained by other variants of dance thinking, or even "beyond thinking". This applies to all thinking. If you figured out how to think well, then write a textbook and do exercises for it - create a training course for good thinking. Without this, any talk about thinking is meaningless.

This means that dance thinking can be found in the curricula of the best dance schools. And then you can try to overcome the complexity, relying on systemic and engineering thinking about dance.

UPDATE: Facebook discussion -- https://www.facebook.com/ailevenchuk/posts/10209485959599942
Track concern (wow!) with the text of the first few lines of the post from Valery Veryaskin (https://www.facebook.com /valery.veryaskin) -- https://www.dropbox.com/s/t3av2yybeezx3rj/concerns.mp3?dl=0
Anton Klimat's review -- https://vk.com/wall7236650_5234
Huge discussion of various dancers -- https://www.facebook.com/alexandra.vilvovskaya/posts/10154668226083705 (and many of my clarifying comments)
Discussion with emphasis on the "interpretation" of both dances and neural networks and a systematic approach: https://www.facebook.com/alexander.girshon/posts/1640359375980662
Discussion, including about "alchemy and chemistry" in dance, as well as the possibility of an engineering approach https://www.facebook.com/groups/fulldayideokinesis/permalink/1838725396157102/
Discussion in the KIZOMBA community (alas, only a small part of the post was published there - but the discussion about "muscle memory" and dancing did take place): https://vk.

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