Rebecca Weber

University of Auckland · Dance Studies Programme

This chapter examines a multimodal model of cognition, the Interacting Cognitive Subsystems (ICS) model (Barnard 1985), and proposes it as an anti-reductionist approach to creative cognition in dance. It presents an overview of theories of creativity from traditional cognitive science, and then introduces the more recent field of embodied cognition...

This anthology negotiates the influential, yet silent educational presence of spiritualities within the field of somatic movement dance education internationally. The expressive and integral nature of spiritual experience remains academically undefined and peripheral to our understanding of creative practice. Lack of theoretical rigor, as well as a...

Previous research has examined the effects of more structured somatic practices, sometimes referred to as codified or structural integrity techniques, on contemporary dance education, yet few researchers have addressed the effects of open- or semi-structured somatic frameworks. This article is presented in two parts: the first part examines previou...

This article examines the scholarly discourse on Anna Halprin’s rituals and Halprin’s own use of the word ‘ritual’ in historical archives to define what determines a work as ritual. The hallmarks of ritual in both discourses include efficacious intention, audience-as-witness, transformation of space, and performers’ investment of deeper meaning in...

We are currently experiencing unprecedented population aging worldwide, with people over 65 projected to outnumber youth for the first time in human history. As such, the need to support this demographic’s health and wellbeing has never been more acute. There is a growing recognition that engagement with dance and arts provides numerous benefits fo...

This article presents findings from first-person accounts of shifting choreographic practice into mixed-reality environments. Dancing in/Dancing with the Digital, a transdisciplinary practice-based project exploring embodiment and movement in XR. In the research and design phases of the project, all authors kept reflective practice journals, which...

This article presents a study on three somatic movement dance educators’ perspectives on developing creativity in dance students. A post-positivist, inductive qualitative study was undertaken to gather practitioners Katye Coe’s, Sara Reed’s, and Rebecca Weber’s phenomenological reflections on teaching somatically informed dance and how somatic prac...

In a longitudinal study, 240 undergraduate dance students were recruited to assess the effectiveness of a series of workshops designed to develop metacognitive skills in use of mental imagery to support choreographic creativity. The workshops were based upon a theoretical model of mental representations and cognition. The students also completed a...

Dance, as a practice of coupling the sensate moving being with the environmental context, is a form of embodied meaning-making. Somatics, the field of mind-body integration, offers pedagogical frameworks that can deepen the benefits of dance education in relation to bodily attention and perception, individual autonomy, and intersubjective mutuality...

Creativity is commonly recognized as a complex phenomenon; one which entails a range of debates around definition, process and product, domain specificity, cross-discipline generalisability, and appropriate testing measures. The psychology of creativity appears to find a fitting home in dance science, a field concerned with understanding and enhanc...

Project Trans(m)it is a collaborative research project among a cohort of intercontinental artists exploring dance creation via technological platforms. This paper seeks to disseminate our practice-led research findings on ‘best practices’ for transferring embodied information via technology, as well as posit how technology will shape and impact glo...

How do dance teachers think about developing creativity in their teaching choices? This paper will look at the choices that teachers make when preparing for the teaching of choreographic and improvisational sessions with their dance students, and connect them to existing research and theories of creativity from cognitive psychology. The presented i...

Dance, as a practice of coupling of the sensate moving body with its environmental context, is inherently a practice of embodied meaning-making. Somatics, the field of mind-body integration practices, offers pedagogical frameworks, grounded in philosophical systems, that further deepen benefits of dance education—particularly in developing embodime...

How do dance teachers think about the role of creativity development in their teaching choices, for example the choice of teaching materials and activities? This paper will look at the choices that teachers make when preparing for the teaching of choreographic and improvisational sessions with their dance students. The data used is based on the pe...

Explore how to avoid habitual responses to innovation and unlock creative potential The supposition that creativity involves the production of novelty is of particular importance in contemporary dance, a field invested in the re-invention of form, decolonization of the body, and formulation of novel movement sequences. It has been proposed that awa...

This presentation will introduce the group to my working thoughts on applying the Interactive Cognitive Subsystems (ICS) theory (Barnard 1985; Barnard and May 2004) from philosophical psychology to performing arts, in particularly dance, in order to make a case for movement and dance as a form of creative cognition. In this model, developed by Phil...

Though memory may be primarily thought of as cognitive action (Schöpflin 2001), recent studies (Fuchs 2012; Summa 2012; Sheets-Johnstone 2012; Hinson, Jameson & Whitney 2002) assert the importance of body memory. The phenomenology of implicit body memory influences our everyday existence; our somatic memory is enacted in our activities and informs...

Though memory may be primarily thought of as a cognitive action, recent studies assert the importance of body memory. The phenomenology of implicit body memory influences our everyday existence; our somatic memory is enacted in our activities and informs our experiences without our conscious awareness. Other research suggests that audiences are eng...

An experimental resetting of 'Corporecord', comissioned by the World Dance Alliance-Americas, on WDA-A conference attendees in a one-week choreolab and performance at Vancouver's Scotiabank centre.

In the 1960s, amidst the sexual revolution and radical artistic experimentation, Halprin’s dancers operated in a liminal space—transitioning from what was previously acceptable for performance to what would become acceptable for performance through an embodied performativity of the nude subject. As composer Morton Subotnick reflects, “I don’t know...

A layered embodied exploration for six dancers of the similarities between observation leading to changes as reflected in scientific studies from quantum physics and social psychology, as well as the divide in the performers’ own private and public personas. Interactions between dancers explore the rift between judgmental viewing and supportive wit...