Bodies in Couples

Gediminas Karoblis
February 2019, Oulu
 Gods fear a
dancing couple!
Couple Dancing in Sync:
Four-legged Animal
Bodies in Couples:
in Space (part one)

Gediminas Karoblis
February 2019, Oulu
 The multiple Bodies (4E)
• Material body (Aussenkörper)
– Biomechanics, biochemistry, brain…
– Physical features
• Perceiving body (Leib)
– Interoception/exteroception/proprioception
– Oculomotorics (eye tracking, pupillometry)
– Acoustic soundscape; the other behind; distance
– How depth is perceived in vision? Eyes crossing. Perspective...
– Tactile perception: Seeing/touching profiles (sides)
• Voluntary body (Körperleib or Leibkörper – „I can“ schalten und walten)
– not just kinesthesis (sense of ownership of the body), but also enaction
(sense of agency)
• Intersubjective Body
– my body as the Other for myself (there is no solo dance)
– my body for others and other bodies for me (emphatic bodies)
– the surrounding world shared by embedded bodies/persons
– the world of culture – extended bodies/persons
 Husserlian phenomenology of
empathy, body and space
The foundation for a resolution of the
problem of empathy lies in
clarification of the phenomenon of
corporeal Pairing [Paarung]
(Husserliana 15: 252).
 Husserlian phenomenology of
empathy, body and space
„when I see another travelling and
moving body, in general and well-
practiced way, I put myself into the
place [of it], and in agreement with
the body there (in congruence) make
the movement as if it were my bodily
movement… (Husserliana 14: 544)
 Space structures: forms of congruence
• Transposition In geometry, two figures or objects
are congruent if they have the
• Rotation same shape and size, or if one has
the same shape and size as the
• Reflection mirror image of the other.
• Complementarity

More formally, two sets of points are

called congruent if, and only if, one can
be transformed into the other by an
isometry, i.e., a combination of
transpositions, rotations and
reflections.
John Playford (1623–1686/7)
Kellom Tomlinson (ca 1690-1753)
Thomas Wilson (1790—1849)
Folk dance - Oravais menuett Pellinge,
Borgå, Finland 2007 (Youtube)
Systema cruzada in Argentine tango
by Raul Bravo
Kierkegaard: Johannes the Seducer as
an invisible dance partner
• The movements require another. She bows to
him; she stretches out her hand to him. She
recedes; she approaches again. I take her
hand; I complete her thought, which
nevertheless is completed within itself. She
moves to the melody in her own soul; I am
merely the occasion for her moving. I am not
erotic; that would only arouse her; I am
flexible, supple, impersonal, almost like a
mood.
Diachronic vs. synchronic pairing

Harmonia Praestabilita
Couple Dancing in Sync:
Four-legged Animal
 Gods fear a
dancing couple!
Bodies in Couples:
in Time (part two)

Gediminas Karoblis
February 2019, Oulu
Tracing European ballroom dance tradition

Early ballroom dance

Classic Ballroom dance
In late middle ages
(from ca. 1000): Modern ballroom dance
Renaissance:
- the concept of dance
- dancing moves from Early 20th century:
(Tanz) is applied only for
streets/squares to
couple dances - Transatlantic dances
ballrooms
- Boston (skating dance)
- new paradigm:
fashionable round - Contra Body
dancing (19th century) Movement
Phenomenological approach
Explicitation
interview Context

Theoretical Lived Motives

Knowledge
Action

Beliefs
 Interview with Jūratė and Česlovas Norvaiša
Starting of the elicitation-inspired interview in March 18, 2014

– Context-Narrative
• British-Soviet exchange in 1968
– General knowledge
• So you don’t want to know more about Alex Moore
– Motives
• The responsible person from the Soviet ministry of culture was from aristocratic
family; therefore she sympatised with our style
– Beliefs
• Modern Ballroom dancing technique is based on natural movement
– Process-action in dance class
• Teaching foxtrot; body in motion and the feather step (lrt.lt)
 Josephine Bradley
CON-TEMPORANEITY Moore’s past t-3
Moore’s then t-2
Allzeitlichkeit
Norvaiša past t-2
Norvaiša then t-1

Beholder‘s (My) past t-1

Beholder‘s (My – Our) now t0

 Analysis of the practical example

• Alex Moore’s Zeeta studio (YouTube)

• Foxtrot classes with Alex Moore
• The feather step
 “Theology” of Ballroom dance
• Tradition and/or Scriptures
– The Founding Councils (P. J. S. Richardson)
– Alex Moore “The Ballroom Technique”
• Worldwide schism: WDC and WDSF
• Initiation and pastoral care (ISTD exams)
– A family dance master
• Preaching techniques
– natural movement (founding “fathers”)
– mental training (Team Amsterdam)
• Vita activa (secular) and Vita eminentia (devoted)
• Cheirotonia (“hands on” transmission)
– Imitation
– Correction
– Complementation
• Sanctorum communio – the presence of ancestors
Husserl: immanent time + intersubjectivity

“Just as my living (urphenomenal) presence

carries within itself my past, it always shows
in the present form, and as it is constituted
through my immanent time, my primordial
space-time presence carries my primordial
past and future, and primordial nature is
constituted as a fulfilled universal
spatiotemporality.
Likewise: my primordiality bears within itself
Another, her/his primordiality, and this again,
etc. It constitutes itself for me, and constitutes
for me every existing Another, the primordial-
compresence, -consuccession, - the
transcendental contemporality; thereby a
transcendentally grounded objective nature,
objective world.
The coexistence of the transcendental
subjects, the coexistence of their immanent
temporalities, the coexistence of their
primordialities, is not an empty (precisely
unthinkable) togetherness, but a being-one-
for-another, and this implies a being
accessible to one another and thus inwardly,
intelligibly, self-evidently unified, connected
with one another.” (Husserl 1973: 191).
Bodies in Couples

Gediminas Karoblis
February 2019, Oulu