Joint Action and Joint Attention
The first re-enactment entails rough-and-tumble play (R &T play), also referred to as fight play, as the central starting point. R &T play refers to ‘vigorous behaviours, such as wrestling, grappling, kicking, and tumbling, that appear to be aggressive except for the playful context’ (Pellegrini & Smith, 2005, p.79), and that are almost always performed without hurting each other (DiPietro 1981). In the first phase material was collected from different events (‘mattress’, ‘rope’, a short film and a working session at the Conservatory of Amsterdam). A selected set of imagery was then handed over to first year students of the Modern Dance Theatre department at the Amsterdam University of the Arts. The following themes emerge from this working process:a sense of being alive, serious attention to having fun, energy level, joint attention,and the importance of both imagination and touch in this type of play.In this project also archive material is included that resonates with the theme of fight play.
Rough and Tumble Play: Teun van der Grinten, Michel van de Linden, Luuk Scheers and Maas Theuwkens, 17th of December 2017, Conservatory of Amsterdam
Re-Enactment: Björn Bakker, Alberto Quirico, Lian Frank, Simon Lelièvre, Fons Dhossche, Laura Costa, Catarina Paiva, Lucie Rutten, Oriane Gidron, Jente Witvrouwen, Oscar Valenza, first-year students Modern Theater Dance, Amsterdam University of the Arts, 15th of March 2018
Published in:Hermans, C. (2018). Joint action and joint attention: dance improvisation and children’s physical play as participatory sense- making activities. Choreographic Practices, 9(2), 311-332. DOI: 10.1386/chor.9.2.187_2.
December 2017, second session March 2018, Amsterdam University of the Arts
In December 2017 I invite four boys of 13 years old for a physical play session. The session takes play in the big theatre studio, in the basement of the Conservatory of Amsterdam. I am interested in their spontaneous physical play activities. There are as much as sixteen different play types (Hughes 2002) that include role play, object play, fantasy play, symbolic play, socio-dramatic play etcetera. In this research study I focus on one specific play type, namely Rough-and-Tumble play (R&T play). R&T play refers to ‘vigorous behaviours, such as wrestling, grappling, kicking, and tumbling, that appear to be aggressive except for the playful context’ (Pellegrini and Smith 2005: 79), and that are almost always performed without hurting each other (Pietro 1981).
In March 2018 I am invited at the University of the Arts, Modern Theatre Dance department to give a dance improvisation workshop to eleven first-year dance students (six male students and five female students). In this phase of my artistic research I am handing over the photo material and video footage collected in December 2017 when I observed the play activities of the four boys. The aim of the dance workshop is to revisit and relive the play event of the four boys by moving through the selected imagery, picking up traces of energy, intentions and foremost affects.
After a short introduction, the students divide themselves into groups of three and four. The groups look at the photographs, pick the ones out that hold their attention and move unto the dance floor. First, they are slightly hesitative, but gradually the dance students tune into the imagery and recollect traces of energy, intentions and affects.
In the analysis of the two events (physical play and dance improvisation) the following elements of participatory sense-making can be distinguished:
- Imagery is used in order to tap into reservoirs of meaning making that transform reality.
- Intentions are dynamic and floating, always in a process of becoming.
- A common intentionality emerges through the embodied engagement in the interaction.
- The participants synchronize movements in terms of rhythm, timing, phrasing but also in terms of force, direction and intensity (in short, the qualitative movement dynamics).
- Joint attention enables the participants to co-create intentions together.
- The participants are autonomous agents that bring themselves to the play or dance improvisation event.
- At the same time, the participants have a willingness to shape and let themselves be shaped by the others and the environment.
- Both play and dance improvisation are self-structuring processes: some rules vanish while others emerge.
In both physical play as well as dance improvisation the moving point of contact plays a crucial role in the sense-making process. This is also referred to as the third entity, the in-between space between two or more bodies that are in touch but move independently. The participants mould and sculpt their bodies through and around this rolling point of contact. Co-agency emerges around this third entity.
Finally, physical play and dance improvisation can take on many forms, but the heart of physical play and dance improvisation is pleasure. The latter should not be underestimated. It is through fun that we are able to creatively explore the limits and the rules of the social interaction. Fun can be seen as an affective state that reopens the playful process through the ‘creation of new meaningful constraints’ (Paolo et al. 2010: 78). We engage in this fun part by seriously attending to the play and dance improvisation event. A serious attitude to fun is required otherwise fun becomes just a fugitive force that only superficially touches upon the sense-making process. To be self-sustaining the participants need to invest in the fun part – and they can only do that by seriously attending to it. The intensity of the investment thus shapes and modulates the experience. Playing the game requires an embodied willingness to shape and to let oneself be shaped by the other participants and the environment – in such a way that both movement and the meaning of the movement transcends the individual. Being prepared to seriously engage in the fun-part can thus be seen as a necessary requirement for the co-modulation and co-construction of meaning.