Audience as Community: Corporeal Knowledge and Empathetic Viewing

Abstract

This essay focuses on community in the form of audiences, and in particular, screendance audiences. A specific focus is given to a collection of screendance experiences from viewing a selection of contemporary dance films. The term screendance is used in this research as suggested by Douglas Rosenberg as "stories told by the body" and "not told by the body."1 What follows, for this essay, are theories borrowed from the discipline of audience and reception research detailing what we may perceive audiences to be and how the idea of 'audience' as a community may influence the way filmmakers approach the very audiences they hope to reach. Kinesthetic empathy will be used as a framework to understand the pleasures and displeasures that are experienced by the viewer from an embodied perspective. While considering kinesthetic empathy with audience and reception research, the main focus for this essay is nuancing the idea of audiences as a community that is enriched with corporeal knowledge. This knowledge reveals itself as empathetic and sympathetic viewing of the media.Kinesthetic empathy can be loosely defined as the sensation of moving while watching movement, where the viewer can sense, as Ivar Hagendoorn points out, the "speed, effort, and changing body configuration" of the dancer, as if performing the movement themselves. 2 The word 'kinesthesis' is derived from the Greek word kine-movementand aesthesis-sensation. Combining kinesthesis with 'empathy,' this concept emerges as an empathetic interaction between performer and viewer that embodies aspects of the performer's movement. This interaction is a sensory experience, perhaps facilitated by emotion, memory, and imagination.This investigation into kinesthetic empathy and screendance audiences, described below, shows that the knowledge that the viewers are part of a collective, or indeed in the case of the experimental dance film audiences, are part of an immediate small collective, is a key factor in engagement with the viewed media. In focus groups created for this research, dance film viewers revealed that they experience enhanced attention to technical details. Therefore, I assert that the selection of films, with their different characteristics, create empathetic viewing experiences. This type of reception research is qualitative and is used to examine individuals' interpretations of a particular phenomenon and, in this case, of particular media. According to John Creswell, qualitative research "begins with a worldview, the possible use of a theoretical lens," 5 and studies a phenomenon through a specific approach to inquiry, collecting data, and analyzing this inductively for emerging themes. 6Through analysis of audiences' experiences of viewing dance on screen, I will show how empathetic viewing is created from the artistic aesthetic of dance made for camera. Qualitative reception research methods, focus groups, and diary writing were used to gather material on viewers' experiences of watching selected contemporary dance films. 7The films selected for t...

Dance in Schools… What for?

“…Also according to the author, "[…] the concept arises as an empathic interaction between the performer and the spectator, who incorporates aspects of the performer's movement" (Wood, 2015, p. 29, our translation). Thus, Wood (2015) argues that the sensory experience may be facilitated by emotion, memory and imagination.…”