neurocognitive dance

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication DataA catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataThe neurocognition of dance : mind, movement and motor skills / editedby Bettina Bläsing, Martin Puttke and Thomas Schack.

p. cm.Includes bibliographical references and index.ISBN 978-1-84872-024-4 (hb)1. Dance. 2. Cognition. I. Bläsing, Bettina, 1970– II. Puttke-Voss,

Martin. III. Schack, Thomas, 1962–GV1588.N48 2010792.8—dc22 2009042154

ISBN: 978-1-84872-024-4 (hbk)

http://www.psypress.com/the-neurocognition-of-dance-9781848720244


Contents

Foreword viiAcknowledgements ix

Introduction: Towards a neurocognitive science ofdance – two worlds approaching or two approaches to thesame world of movement? 1BETTINA BLÄSING, MARTIN PUTTKE AND THOMAS SCHACK

PART I

The science perspective 9

1 Building blocks and architecture of dance 11THOMAS SCHACK

2 Shall we dance? Action researchers and dancerscan move together 41DAVID ROSENBAUM

3 Getting cognitive 53HOLK CRUSE AND MALTE SCHILLING

4 The dancer’s memory: Expertise and cognitivestructures in dance 75BETTINA BLÄSING

PART II

The dance perspective 99

5 “Learning to dance means learning to think!” 101MARTIN PUTTKE



6 Searching for that “other land of dance”: Thephases in developing a choreography 115GREGOR ZÖLLIG

7 Overcoming the dyslexia barrier: The role ofkinesthetic stimuli in the teaching of spelling 123GALEET BENZION

PART III

Neurocognitive studies of dance 151

8 Neural mechanisms for seeing dance 153BEATRIZ CALVO-MERINO

9 Building a dance in the human brain: Insights fromexpert and novice dancers 177EMILY S. CROSS

10 Research and choreography: Merging danceand cognitive neuroscience 203CORINNE JOLA

Author index 235Subject index 243

vi Contents



IntroductionTowards a neurocognitive science ofdance – two worlds approaching ortwo approaches to the same worldof movement?

Bettina BläsingNeurocognition and Action Research Group, Faculty of Psychology andSport Sciences & Center of Excellence Cognitive Interaction Technology(CITEC), University of Bielefeld, Bielefeld, Germany

Martin PuttkeBerlin, Germany

Thomas SchackNeurocognition and Action Research Group, Faculty of Psychology andSport Sciences & Center of Excellence Cognitive Interaction Technology(CITEC), University of Bielefeld, Bielefeld, Germany

What will happen when dancers, choreographers, cognitive and neuroscien-tists come together to talk about movement, the body and the brain in orderto understand the phenomenon of dance? We were intrigued by this questionwhen we organised the symposium that finally led to the production of thisbook. What we witnessed during these 3 days truly exceeded our expectations.We were impressed by the positive personal reactions by members of thescientific community, who, in several situations, were simply amazed andtouched by the mere beauty, precision and energy of movement of thedancers who improvised or demonstrated their movement sequences in thelecture hall. Dancers and dance teachers were equally as fascinated when theydiscovered that many of the theoretical ideas and results that were broughtforward in the talks also yielded beauty and precision, and often also prac-tical benefit for the dance community. The reactions on both sides expressedsilent respectful amazement, which may be the premise for a true gain ofknowledge, the origin of mutual understanding. It might have been this per-sonal experience of feeling deeply touched that keeps bringing the newlyestablished community of dancers and scientists together and that has givenrise to the idea of writing this book together.

One motivation for this project certainly is an emotional one, as the chap-ter titles chosen by some of the authors suggest. Another motivation lies in



the shared view that important insight into the nature of human movementand action has been gained over the last decade, and that this insight has tobe communicated and discussed beyond the borders of professional com-munities. Dance has always been an important aspect of human cultures, andbringing dance into the focus of the cognitive sciences will certainly broadenour understanding of the nature of human minds and brains.

Since the cognitive sciences have discovered the importance of embodi-ment, of the concept of minds being grounded in the physical environment inwhich they have evolved and with which they constantly interact (see Wilson,2002), movement of the human body has become a topic of increasing rele-vance. Questions of how human body movement is controlled and howspecial movements are learnt concern not only scientists interested inmuscle physiology and biomechanics, but also those trying to understandhow thinking, reasoning and learning are processed by the human brain.Experimental psychology has discovered a wide range of interrelations ofbody postures and body movements with perception, mental processing andaction planning (e.g., Hoffmann, Stoecker, & Kunde, 2004; Hommel,Müsseler, Aschersleben, & Prinz, 2001; Koch, Keller, & Prinz, 2004; for anoverview see Schack & Tenenbaum, 2004a, 2004b), for example in paradigmslike the Simon effect (Simon & Rudell, 1967) or mental rotation tasks(e.g., Shepard & Metzler, 1971; Parsons, 1987; Jola & Mast, 2005).

Only a little more than a decade ago, scientists in Parma, Italy, discoveredthe so-called mirror neurons in the monkey brain – neurons that fire duringperformance of a specific action as well as during observation of that sameaction performed by others (e.g., Gallese, Fadiga, Fogassi, & Rizzolatti, 1996;Rizzolatti, Fadiga, Gallese, & Fogassi, 1996). This discovery and the sub-sequently arising interest in the principles of a neurocognitive mirror systemin the human brain have initiated an extensive shift within the neurosciences,in a close cooperation with experimental psychology, towards researchrelated to the coupling of neural codes for action observation and actionexecution (e.g., Arbib, 2002; Iacoboni, 2008). This field of research investi-gates general principles of the interplay between perception, cognition andaction in humans (e.g., Schütz-Bosbach & Prinz, 2007). It offers a new under-standing of the cognitive basis of model learning (see Bandura, 1986), basedon a better description of the human action observation system (Cross,Hamilton, & Grafton, 2006).

What happens in our brain when we observe someone performing a simpletask, or a complex movement sequence? What does it mean to “understand”an action, or a movement, as such, and how does this relate to language? Whydo we have the ability to imitate the actions of others, and how does this helpus to learn? How do we understand what our interlocutor feels, or expresses,by watching his facial expression, gesture, movement quality, and body pos-ture? And how do we apply this mutual understanding in a social context inreal time to interact successfully with each other, to join into others’ actions,to compete or collaborate, and to communicate?

2 Bläsing, Puttke, Schack



When we think about learning and performing complex movements, prob-ably in interaction with others, sooner or later, dance comes to mind. Adancer’s skill includes not only expert physical abilities but also a wide rangeof cognitive skills – which again might reflect how closely related thesedomains are when it comes to human body movement. Dancers often have tolearn highly complex “designed” movement sequences combined in choreog-raphies that might last for hours. They have to be able to perform their partnot only perfectly, reproducing the movements without variation, but alsowith adequate expressive quality, no matter how nervous, tired or exhaustedthey are, seemingly independent of their own emotional state. While dancing,they constantly have to keep track of their surroundings, space and objects,partners and co-dancers, dynamical qualities of the music, and their audi-ence. While learning movement sequences during the training or duringrehearsals for choreographies, they have to be able to immediately transfersteps from one side of the body to the other side or from the forward to thebackward direction, as well as from one direction in space to another, withoutlosing orientation. Choreographers rely on these skills and apply them tocreate and develop the pictures and scenes they have in their mind, to conveythe stories they want to tell, to arouse the intended emotional reactions in theaudience. Many of the concepts and ideas that are now in the focus of cogni-tive research have implicitly been in the minds of dancers and choreographersfor a long time, yet without deeper scientific understanding of brain functionsor cognitive processing. The interest the dance world takes in the neuroscien-tific side of their art is equally as young as the interest cognitive and brainscientists take in embodiment, the situatedness of the human mind in thephysical world and related questions of human body movement. Yet, amutual fascination has grown during recent years (see, e.g., Stevens, 2005 foran interdisciplinary approach to choreographic cognition).

A few psychologists and neuroscientists have started to work with dancersto find out if and how their highly specialised expert training may haveenhanced or modified their cognitive abilities; how their brains integrate all thenecessary information while they perform highly sophisticated physical tasks,lined up in hour-long choreographies, that have to be flawlessly remembered,at the same time producing expressions of a deep emotional quality that havethe power to captivate the audience (e.g., Bläsing, Tenenbaum, & Schack,2009; Calvo-Merino, Glaser, Grèzes, Passingham, & Haggard, 2005; Calvo-Merino, Grèzes, Glaser, Passingham, & Haggard, 2006; Cross et al., 2006;Jola, Davies, & Haggard, 2009; Jola & Mast, 2005). Some of these scientistsalso have followed a career in dance or choreography themselves, whichmakes them even more qualified to explain and integrate the most relevant,most promising aspects of both worlds.

Questions and ideas that derive from the interconnection of complexmovements and related cognitive processing are not only of interest whenregarding high-level professional classical or modern dance and choreog-raphy. Pre-school and primary school teachers increasingly apply movement

Introduction 3



and movement learning as tools, as vehicles for learning in general, even ofabstract principles in maths or grammar. They come to the conclusion thatchildren who are allowed to run, jump and dance become more motivated,better learners, and that movement sometimes can teach children more aboutgeometry and dynamics than images and words can. Learning to move indifferent ways, with different pace and qualities, to express feelings with thebody, to interact with space, rhythm, sound and with each other allows chil-dren and adults to grow more self-confident and courageous. Learning todance on a professional level, and learning to teach others how to dance, canbe a great challenge and gratification for body and mind. A professionalcareer in dance, however, can also become a thorny path if the teachingmethods applied diverge too far from the basic physical, neural and cognitiveprinciples of human motor learning. Therefore, one of the aims of this bookis to offer new scientific perspectives on the neurocognition of dance, and togive the impetus to integrate scientific knowledge and principles into the wayof teaching dance.

When we started our cooperation between the Neurocognition and Action –Biomechanics research group of the Department of Psychology and SportScience at the University of Bielefeld and the aalto ballett theater Essen 2 yearsago, our common goal was to study mental representations underlyingmovements from classical dance and, based on these studies, to developimproved teaching methods. Within minutes of our first meeting, we alreadyfound ourselves discussing questions that went far beyond dance training andsport science, questions of the human mind and the many ways it relates todance. How are dance sequences created from moving images in the choreo-grapher’s mind? How are they processed and embodied by the dancer andcommunicated to the observer in the audience? What happens in the brain ofthat observer, and what role does his or her own dance experience play? Whatdoes that tell us about movement learning in general and especially aboutteaching dance? From this discussion, it was only a short step to the idea oforganising a brain pool meeting of professionals interested in the abovetopics.

In October 2007, we had the opportunity to arrange a meeting thatbrought together dancers, choreographers, dance teachers and leading scien-tists from the fields of neuroscience, psychology, cognitive and movementscience, providing a platform for mutual introductions into each others’ dis-ciplines and approaches to thinking, learning and movement. The Werkwoche[Workshop] “Intelligence and Action – Dance in the Focus of CognitiveScience” took place at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF) atBielefeld, Germany, and was hosted by Tanzplan Essen 2010 (Tanzplan Essen2010 is supported by Tanzplan Deutschland, an initiative of The FederalCultural Foundation, Kulturstiftung des Bundes, Germany). The Werkwochewas one of the most inspiring and broad minded conferences many of us hadever encountered, and it left us with the impression that the innovative com-bination of scientific talks, dance performance, choreographic workshop, lec-




ture demonstration and other topics we had immersed ourselves in duringthese 3 days had been like jigsaw pieces, diverse at first sight but fittingtogether beautifully at second, revealing promising parts of an impressivewhole picture.

With the publication of this book, we want to share our ideas and insightswith a broader audience, with professionals from the worlds of dance andscience, with teachers, trainers, therapists, and with everyone interested indance and cognition. We hope to initiate a process of mutual exchangeand stimulation between dancers and cognitive scientists, psychologists andchoreographers, ballet teachers and neurobiologists, and we hope that thisprocess might lead to a deeper understanding of dance as movement of thehuman body and mind.

This book is addressed to a diverse audience, to those readers who are usedto digging into scientific theory as well as to those whose work consists ofcreating, performing or teaching movement. We know that the aim to makethis book equally informative and enjoyable for all of them must be a chal-lenge. We have therefore structured the content of our book in such a waythat chapters written from similar perspectives are grouped together, in orderto provide our readers with a line of orientation. First, scientists introduceideas that offer different perspectives on human movement and therefore canbe applied to dance. Second, professionals from the world of dance have theirsay, reporting how their creative and pedagogical work relates to cognitionand learning. Finally, researchers with personal links to the dance worlddemonstrate how neurocognitive methods are applied to studying differentaspects related to dance.

In Part I of the book (The science perspective), we present basic approachesto movement control, providing different perspectives on the way movementsare initiated, adapted and stored in memory. The contents of these chaptersrange from theoretical foundations over experimental studies to computersimulation models. Thomas Schack (Building blocks and architecture of dance;Chapter 1) introduces his cognitive architecture model of dance that is basedon the idea of mental representation of movements in long-term memory.Schack illustrates how this model can be applied to the study of movementexpertise in sports and dance and raises implications for psychological train-ing methods. David Rosenbaum (Shall we dance? Action researchers anddancers can move together; Chapter 2) introduces the concept of goal posturesand explains their vital role in motor planning. Rosenbaum shows how con-tinuous movements, from everyday grasping actions to dance, are anticipatedand stored in memory by the mental representation of goal postures. HolkCruse and Malte Schilling (Getting cognitive; Chapter 3) demonstrate how abiomimetic computer simulation of walking behaviour can be augmented todevelop internal world models and, progressively, become “cognitive”. Cruseand Schilling take a computational approach based on artificial neuralnetworks to explain phenomena ranging from motor control to subjectiveexperience and even illusions. At the end of the first part, Bettina Bläsing

Introduction 5



(The dancer’s memory: Expertise and cognitive structures in dance; Chapter 4)shows how movement can be studied on different levels, including the cogni-tive one. Bläsing illustrates how information is stored in the dancer’s long-term memory and presents a study in which dancers of different expertiselevels were compared based on the quality of their mental representations ofclassical dance movements.

In Part II (The dance perspective), professionals from the dance worldreport on their practical work and share their experiences of how dancerelates to cognition in dance education, pedagogy and choreography. MartinPuttke (“Learning to dance means learning to think!”; Chapter 5), formerDirector of the State Ballet School Berlin and Director of the aalto balletttheater Essen, explains why cognitive skills make good dancers. By givingexamples from his rich experience of developing world-class dancers, Puttkeshows how ballet teachers can improve their dancers’ physical and artisticqualities by substantiating the training process with cognitive methods.Choreographer Gregor Zöllig (Searching for that “other land of dance”: Thephases in developing a choreography; Chapter 6) describes the process offinding novel movements while creating a choreography. Zöllig, who por-trays himself as a traveller in “that other land of dance”, prefers a workingstyle that integrates ideas and improvisations of his company into the cre-ative process. Galeet BenZion (Overcoming the dyslexia barrier: The role ofkinesthetic stimuli in the teaching of spelling; Chapter 7), dancer, choreog-rapher and primary school director, introduces her pedagogical conceptcalled the “kinematics teaching method”. BenZion has developed thismethod to help children with learning difficulties, especially related to dys-lexia, to acquire their own way of learning by creating meaningfulmovements.

In Part III (Neurocognitive studies of dance), scientists present recent stud-ies that bridge the gap between neurocognitive research and dance, showinghow dancers as experimental subjects can help to enlighten our understand-ing of the ways in which the human brains process different aspects ofmovement. Beatriz Calvo-Merino (Neural mechanisms for seeing dance;Chapter 8) demonstrates how the discovery of mirror neurons in the brainhas influenced the way cognitive neuroscientists think about movement, andpresents her studies on action observation and dance expertise. Subsequently,Calvo-Merino illustrates how the human brain might generate the aestheticevaluation of beauty we experience while watching dance. Emily S. Cross(Building a dance in the human brain: Insights from expert and novice dancers;Chapter 9) introduces the concept of an action observation network in thehuman brain and explains the role of this network in learning complexmovement sequences in dance. Cross and colleagues have investigated howactivity in the dancers’ brains changes over the course of learning a newmovement sequence or choreography, and how this differs in dance expertsand novices. Finally, Corinne Jola (Research and choreography: Mergingdance and cognitive neuroscience; Chapter 10) presents the idea of “experi-




mental choreography” and shows how this idea can be put into practice. Jolagives examples from her own works in science and choreography. She hasbeen investigating cognitive abilities of dancers to mentally rotate images ofhuman bodies and to “measure” their own body posture based only on pro-prioceptive information.

We would like to recommend this book to students and professionals fromthe fields of psychology, neuropsychology, cognitive psychology, cognitiverobotics sport psychology, sport science, movement science, motor control,motor development, kinesiology, dance, choreography, dance education,dance therapy; to teachers who use or want to use (dance) movement as ameans of teaching, or who want to teach dance to students of any age.Finally, we hope that our enthusiasm will be shared by many of our readers,and we are looking forward to learning about their ideas and projects in thisyoung field, the neurocognition of dance, in the near future.

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Introduction 7



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neurocognitive dance

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