Instrumental gesture as choreographic practice:

Performative approaches to understanding corporeal

expressivity in music

Imogene Newland, Independent Researcher

Abstract

Existing qualitative approaches within the field of music

perception and embodied music cognition provide scientific

models for the evaluation of physical gestures and their

expressive impact in performance. This article examines the

ways in which qualitative research methodologies and

outcomes may be used as stimuli for new choreographic

research, drawing upon the original performance

‘Woman=Music=Desire’. Beginning with an illustrated account

of expressive features of piano performance by music

researchers such as François Delalande and Mark Thompson,

recent departures in choreographic and related artistic

practice that indicate a growing interest in the expressive

function of musical corporeity are discussed. Through

exploring such work, the intersubjective and kinesthetic

relationship occurring between musician and spectator is

explored via an examination of gestural empathy. Thus,

through re-appropriating instrumental gestures within

practice-led research that interrogates the close

relationship between corporeity and expressivity, the

musician’s body emerges as a dancing body with the creative

potential for a new and exciting departure in choreographic

practice. A trailer to the performance ‘Woman=Music=Desire’

may be found at

http://www.imogene-newland.co.uk/perf_women_md.php.

Keywords

instrumental gesture

musical body

kinesthetic empathy

corporeal expressivity

performativity

intersubjectivity

Introduction

As a pianist fascinated by the relationship between music

and the body, the choreographic potential of musicians’

body movements holds a refreshing opportunity to deepen

current understanding of the role of bodily expression in

performance. Examining the musical body through a

choreographic lens may lead to the development of new

compositional, improvisatory and pedagogical approaches

within the context of western art music and also to the

development of a new form of choreographic practice.

Informing potential future collaborative work between the

fields of music and dance, such research invites the

possibility for new modes of understanding the nature of

gestural expression and how this might impact on

performative approaches to the choreographic re-

appropriation of ‘every-day’ movement. This new modality of

interdisciplinary practice-led enquiry offers a new and

exciting departure for creative work within the recently

emerging field of ‘choreomusical’ research (Jordan 2011).

To date, choreomusical research has been used as a means

to forge new relations between music and dance from a

primarily choreographic perspective and has been used as an

analytical framework for examining the relations between

sound and movement in existing dance theatre works (Jordan

2011, 2012). The earliest use of the term can be ascribed

to the dance practitioner Eva Gholson in her book Image of the

Singing Air: Presence and Conscience in Dance and Music Collaboration

(2004). Through her practice-led work, Gholson asks: ‘What

areas of knowledge constitute a reciprocal exchange of

embodied ideas, feelings and sensations between music and

dance, or between sound and movement?’ (2004: 65). Such

approaches thus push towards challenging didacticism

between choreographic and musical material in performance,

leading towards new ways of thinking about the ‘mutual

permeability’ of the sonic and the kinesthetic (Gholson

2004: 65; Jordon 2011).

The following passage explores choreomusical research from

the point of view of generating choreography from the

observation of musicians’ physical gestures. An overview of

analytical approaches to understanding the expressive

features of instrumental gesture within western art music

performance (Delalande 1988, 1995; Davidson 1993, 1995,

2007; Clarke 2002, 2006; Thompson 2007) illustrates the

ways in which such data might be used as a point of

departure for new creative work, drawing upon the original,

choreographic performance ‘Woman=Music=Desire’ (Newland

2010). A concentration on how instrumental gesture shapes

the listener/spectator’s experience and influences the

perception of expressive features within a musical work

suggests that choreographic research may provide an

alternative modality for comprehending the musical body

that embraces intersubjectivity. An overlap may thus be

identified between corporeal expressivity in music

performance, live art intersecting the body/instrument

relation and postmodern dance practices that use musical

corporeity as a starting point for choreographic research.

Musical bodies, instrumental gestures

The term ‘instrumental gesture’ refers to those

specifically corporeal features comprising musical

performance that arise as a consequence of physical

manipulation to an instrument. Claude Cadoz describes

instrumental gesture as a ‘communication modality’ that is

distinguished by ‘physical interaction with an object’, the

form of which is controlled by the player. These gestures

are believed to carry additional communicative

'information’, which acts as a supplement to sonic ideas

implicit within the music itself (Cadoz 1994). Instrumental

gestures include movements that are made both as an

immediate consequence of sound production and those

physical behaviours framing the act of performance, such as

bowing, which contribute towards the overall social

structure of musical events. Gestures made outside of the

immediate context of sound production are termed

‘ancillary’ or ‘non-obvious’ gestures by Marcelo Wanderley.

These gestures may be the result of technical difficulties

of the player, cultural or situational influences (the size

of room, for example), or because it is impossible to play

completely immobilized (Wanderley 1999: 7). In this way,

Peter Kivy suggests that we might understand instrumental

gesture as any ‘non-sonic aspect of music performance’

(1995).

Adopting an empirical approach to the classification of

musical expression, existing studies of instrumental

gesture within the fields of music perception and embodied

music cognition seek to qualify the emotional and

psychological impacts of gestural stimuli in communicating

sonic ideas. These studies have attempted to map the

physical movements of instrumental performers using

technology such as the point light detector system that are

then shown to participants who observe and assess

expressive qualities. Participants are asked to focus on

qualities such as the magnitude and intensity of gestures

in isolated body parts (for instance, in the hands, face or

arms) and how this might relate to elements such as the

velocity of touch. The qualities perceived are then

correlated with the intentions of the player, which in turn

may be taken to reflect expressive ideas inherent in the

music (Davidson 1993, 1995, 2007; Dahl and Friberg 2007;

Gurevich and Fyans 2011).

Similar approaches, such as those made by Patrick Juslin,

have monitored the player’s brain activity during

performance and how this contributes towards perceptual

experience. Based on his findings, Juslin constructed

computational models using algorithms to convert notation

patterns into patterns of expression (2003). Such

approaches seek to qualify expression objectively by

identifying generalized patterns of physical behaviour in

performing musicians and how such qualities correspond with

perceived underlying musical components. The question at

the heart of qualitative research is as follows: what is

musical expression and how might this expression be

measured?

Expression, in its widest sense, is not a term that can be

easily interpreted. The Oxford English Dictionary (2013) defines

it as the ability to ‘represent or make known in gestures,

conduct etc.; a facial aspect, showing of feeling in manner

or representation of feeling’ or, in the sense of ‘self-

expression’, ‘to say what one means or thinks’. In

choreographic practice, expression may therefore be taken

to mean a physical movement that conveys a specific feeling

to an audience that it is the intention of the performer to

communicate. The form of choreographic expression is often

conceived as gestural in the sense that movement may be

discussed in terms of distinct motifs that, when broken

down into their constitutive parts, may be known as a

‘gesture’. In music performance, expression may be

perceived as implicit within purely sonic elements, such as

dynamics, articulation, timbre, or within the harmonic

relationships and auditory progressiveness of a given work.

However, in the live performance setting it is also the

musician’s physical presence and facility to realize

musical features through a visible corporeal embodiment of

sonic qualities that may be understood as intrinsic to

musical expression. As Charles Rosen has discussed, while

many instrumental gestures are made as an immediate

consequence of sound production, such as to facilitate the

articulation of a sound, other gestures act more as a

visual supplement to musical ideas where they have no real

sonic impact (2002). These gestures are highly

individualized and may be seen as a kind of choreography

that becomes constitutive not only of the musical

intentions implicit within the work itself but also of the

expressive intentions of the player.

Juslin identifies that often, expression in music is

qualified in terms of an ‘intersubjective agreement’ based

on the relations found between the performer’s intention

and the listener’s receptivity (recognition) to this

intention. He emphasizes that expression has an emotional

bias that, when measured, presents many subjective

variables that must be accounted for, such as ‘the piece in

question, the instrument, the performer, the listener and

the performance context’ (Juslin 2003: 277). Indeed, as

Kivy suggests, emotions themselves are highly subjective

qualities, which, as discussed elsewhere, may only be truly

found to exist at an inauthentic level within the player

during performance (Kivy 1995; Newland 2013). The corporeal

acquisition necessary for the physical embodiment of

musical works, whereby rehearsal and subsequent

assimilation may lead to emotional detachment from the

material in question, might thus be considered as resulting

in a ‘quasi-mimetic’, ‘self-simulatory’ process (Newland

2012a).

Taking these factors into consideration, musical corporeity

may be understood as an attempt of the player to embody

expressive qualities that are then communicated to the

listener/observer visually through the deployment of

gestural motifs. Musicians’ physical movements are thus

crucially important to live musical performance because

they provoke a gestural ‘reciprocity of intention’ within

the body of the listener/spectator that results in a

kinesthetic identification with the player (Merleau-Ponty

1945: 215; Newland 2012b). This kinesthetic identification

‒ in which it has been suggested that mirror neurons

produce a sympathetic impulse in the body of the observer

as a result of gestural recognition ‒ takes on a crucially

empathetic character (Reynolds and Reason 2012). Understood

in expressive terms, if empathy is ‘a rapport where a

person identifies with or has understanding of another

person’s situation, feelings or motives’, then gestural

recognition and the resultant kinesthetic response in music

spectatorship serve to communicate expressive qualities

that are then evoked at the physical level in the

listener/observer's body (Fogtmann 2012: 305).

Maintaining a sense of kinesthetic identification and the

resultant empathetic response occurring between

listener/spectator and performer may be considered

explicative of how musical expression takes place at the

corporeal level within the live concert setting. By

removing the sonic impetus of instrumental gestures and

reframing them as a form of choreography acting as a

vehicle for musical expression, it thus becomes possible to

recognize listener/performer kinesthetic empathy as an

essential, precognitive process. At a time when emergent

genres such as the development of technological software

for new musical instruments and interfacing are

establishing an expanding collaborative field with dance

practitioners wishing to explore the gesturally expressive

relations between music and dance ‒ such as in

Palindrome’s work with Butch Rovan in ‘Seine Hohle Form’

(2002) ‒ it seems of vital importance that the kinesthetic

relation between instrumental gestures and the sympathetic

intentional reciprocity produced in the body of the

spectator is foregrounded. It is in this sense that we

might begin to understand in what form musical expression

arises through the player’s gestural embodiment of sonic

ideas and how this process of embodiment shapes the

intrinsically subjective perception of emotional qualities

within a given work. Indeed, as neuroscientist Antonio

Damasio asserts, our experience of emotional responsivity

is ‒ first and foremost ‒ absolutely biological (2000).

Instrumental gesture as choreographic practice

In the original performance ‘Woman=Music=Desire’ (2010)

instrumental gestures were adopted as a point of departure

for new creative research. This approach drew upon existing

models to comprehend the expressive role of instrumental

gestures within qualitative music research, which document

different movement features in relation to specific musical

motifs. Examples within such research, for example, the

work of François Delalande (1988) and Marc Thompson (2007),

analyse movement qualities inherent in performances by

Canadian pianist Glenn Gould. This kind of research

provides excellent starting points for the development of a

choreomusical framework for new performance.

Composed: Back is immobile and hunched over with chin

touching chest

Vibrant: The torso sways back and forth, pivoting on the

middle section of the back

Flowing: The entire back sways back and forth pivoting on

the lower back accompanied by eyebrow movement

Delicate: The head is sticking out on top of the keyboard,

stretching away from the shoulders

Vigorous: The entire torso is immobile with the head slightly

forward. Used during faster passages

While Gould’s playing style was highly physically

idiosyncratic, such an analytical approach to instrumental

gesture immediately presents lasting merit in terms of

denoting those specifically physical aspects of musical

expression. It goes without saying that physical playing

styles between one musician and the next will be highly

variable. On the one hand, the variability of physical

stylization makes it difficult to standardize a model for

corporeal expression from a purely scientific perspective,

yet, on the other, it offers an infinite collection of

possibilities for choreographic interpretation.

How might our perception and understanding of the

expressive role of instrumental gestures be reformulated

through choreographic interpretation and what might such a

reframing offer to deepen our comprehension of the musical

body? How does musical expression make itself visible

through corporeity and what might such a corporeity be

expressive of? How do the physical components of

instrumental performance contribute towards live musical

experience? In what ways do we learn about the expressive

function of movement and its ability to communicate the

performer’s intentions through witnessing physical gestures

devoid of their objective impetuses?

In ‘Woman=Music=Desire’, five dancers were invited to

observe piano playing, noting perceived expressive qualities

manifested through body movement. Observable features

included eye and eyebrow movement, facial expression, head,

arm, hand, foot and leg movements, and proximal movement

originating in the torso. The dancers were encouraged to

note down the rhythmic frameworks in which each of these

movement patterns occurred, information that then formed the

latter basis for choreographic sequencing. In addition, the

dancers were also asked to record incidental movements, and

vocalizations such as grunts and groans, which were then

used in the resultant choreography.

Following this observation process, individual sessions

with each dancer focused upon their findings to make

individualized choreographic sequences. This was a

particularly interesting process as, although almost

identical programmes had been played to each of the dancers

‒ indeed, even where dancers had clearly picked the same

gestural motif ‒ interpretation of the expressive quality

and perceived underlying intent of the gestural sequence

were markedly different. From this re-working of the

observed piano gestures material three further ‘tasks’ to

each dancer’s sequence were added. These tasks were then

interjected at the dancer’s discretion within the quasi-

aleatory framework of the opening scene of the performance.

For example, gestural sequences consisted of motifs such as:

beating the right heel on the floor while extending the

left leg and exhaling out the right corner of the

mouth, which is pulled down to the right side with the

lower lip protruding

opening the arms outwards, raising the sternum upwards

and widening the eyes while inhaling audibly

adjusting an invisible hair band, followed by slumping

the back and folding the palms of the hands over the

knees

circular torso movements increasing in size, leaning

further and further forward and coming to a halt

mouthing the word ‘sorry’ inaudibly

slowly rocking body weight from one hip to the other,

with a triplet hand-crossing gesture on each beat,

finishing with both hands in an accented downwards

gesture

a slow-motion withdrawal of hands upwards with mouth

and eyes widening open in horror

‘flowing’ wrist movements between alternating hands

leaning forward with hands on knees moving eyes upwards

and downwards sharply

nodding head in agreement, beginning small and

understated and gradually increasing in size and

intensity, sitting with the arms folded.

Three interjected tasks were:

standing up and slowly shuffling the feet forwards,

holding a static fifth position pas de bras, back

straightened and wiggling the fingers, accompanied by a

frowning expression with the head turned slightly to

the right as if listening to something far away

sitting on the ground facing away from the audience

with hands firmly clasped over the ears and moving the

head from side to side vigorously as if to drown out a

loud and unpleasant noise

lying face down on the ground with the arms and hands

held behind the back, bobbing the head up and down as

fast a possible.

The transitions between the piano gesture motifs and the

tasks were to be made as sharply and aggressively as

possible to emphasize the contrast between the different

kinds of movements. The gestures themselves could be

executed in any order, although dancers could choose to

stick to a specific running order whilst interjecting at

unspecified moments with the tasks as their impulse

dictated.

Figure 1: Sheena Kelly performs the opening piano gestures

sequence in ‘Woman=Music=Desire’ (2010), conceived and

directed by Imogene Newland. Performed at the ‘Sonorities

Festival of Contemporary Music’ in Belfast. Photography by

Chris Parker ©.

At this point I was then able to sit back and watch my own

movements and intentions embodied in the bodies of others.

Due to this process of detachment, my particular bodily

relationship between music making and expression became

acutely heightened. As a pianist I am aware of adopting a

particular corporeity as a way to support the appearance of

a polished and complete recital; were I to allow any

insecurity about my ability to execute specific technical ‒

and therefore physical ‒ aspects of the music, this would

manifest itself in my corporeity and have a negative effect

on the transmission of the work. In watching my body through

the body of others, I saw how this tremendous effort to

govern physical prowess and manage emotional instability

through a restrictive corporeity made itself apparent in the

way in which I played. I saw the bodies as constrained by a

desperate desire to inhabit a space of physical competence

as a means of survival within the context of performance

that directly went against the spontaneous realization of

expression that was my sole raison d’être for playing. I

realized that my desire for physical competence in reciting

pre-rehearsed material meant that what was communicated

through my body was not my intention at all ‒ but rather had

become imitative of what I felt was expected of myself, as a

player, within the environment of the concert hall.

Witnessing the interjected tasks was as if seeing glimpses

of my inner physical struggle to embody the physical

challenges of the musical material in order to make it

appear 'effortless' to the outside eye. My intention to

communicate specific expressive qualities that I felt to be

inherent in the music was therefore masked by my desire to

mould myself to a particular way of being that I felt

complicit with ‘expectation’. This occurred not as a by-

product of conscious volition to behave a certain way but,

rather, as a direct result of the physical process of

learning and embodying pre-rehearsed repertoire in which the

emotive content of the material had become disembodied in

order to facilitate adequate muscular playing conditions

(Newland 2013).

It was in the process of evaluating the choreographic

significance of my own instrumental gestures that I began to

question the specifically performative nature of movement in

music performance. Within this context, the term

‘performativity’ can be understood as a ‘transaction of

expression’ that prompts a specific kind of reflective

exchange between performer and spectator (Merriam-Webster

1993 in Preston-Dunlop and Sanchez-Colberg 2002: 1). This

mode of the performative can be differentiated from

‘performing’ in terms of the kind of exchange taking place ‒

performing serves to ‘implement, present and accomplish’,

while the performative invokes some form of active

participation in interpretation and reception (Preston-

Dunlop and Sanchez-Colberg 2002: 1).

In reflecting on the significance of my own instrumental

gestures, I entered into a kinesthetic dialogue with my own

performativity voiced through the bodies of others. This

doubling back of the performative onto the self began from

witnessing my own instrumental gestures embodied in other,

dancing bodies, only to be kinesically reintegrated and re-

embodied through visual/gestural recall onto my own,

originating, bodily schema. This separation and

reintegration forced me to experience my own otherness as an

objective concept, allowing me to assess my own corporeal

expressivity and what it might relay to the outside eye.

In considering the performative in relation to instrumental

gestures, a parallel may be identified with Judith Butler’s

writings on the performativity of gender in her seminal work

Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990). Butler

discusses gender performativity as constructed by the

individual through ‘reiterative’ and ‘constitutive’ acts

that seek to affirm their status as a gendered being. These

‘reiterative’ and ‘constitutive’ acts occur as a result of

how the individual conceives ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’ to

appear at the gestural level. These acts are defined,

through observation, as ‘constitutive’ of a particular

gender that then become ‘reiterated’ through rehearsed and

repeated behaviours that imitate and subsequently embody

specific assumed physical traits. The concept of Butler’s

‘reiterative’ and ‘constitutive’ acts may thus be considered

as correlative with the process of physical acquisition

necessary in learning an instrument and/or piece of music.

In this sense, gestural sequences assimilated by the player

may become ‘reiterated’ through a quasi-mimetic process that

are themselves ‘constitutive’ of the musician’s desire for

an appearance of physical competency and effortlessness.

In ‘Woman=Music=Desire’ this correlation was explored by

juxtaposing mimetic gestural elements from aspects of both

instrumental performance and that of the performed, female

body. This juxtaposition of performative modes arose from

the original premise of research in ‘Woman=Music=Desire’,

which was to explore the relations between music and the

feminine and how the two entities might be mutually

instructive in understanding notions of corporeal

expressivity. Initial interest in this area arose from

Richard Leppert’s writings on the historical relations

between the female body and music in which the synonymity

between woman, music and desire is foregrounded. This

proposition is supported by the idea that, since the

seventeenth century, music was considered as a feminine

entity due to its ability to invoke a desirous ‒ and thus

corporeally aroused ‒ response in the listener (Leppert

1993).

Following on from the notion of a potential correspondence

between the performativity of instrumental gestures and the

‘performance’ of femininity, the opening piano gestures

sequence of ‘Woman=Music=Desire’ is comparable with a latter

scene in which the dancers enact poses from fashion

magazines. During this scene, the dancers strut up and down

the stage within a ‘catwalk’- type scenario, repeating

overtly sexualized and ‘feminized’ postures. They perform

each action first to the audience and then, alternately, to

portrait photographs of themselves placed at the back of the

stage. The scene draws upon the same generative and

repetitive energy of the opening piano gestures sequence.

Using additive technique where new gestures are added onto

the end of the sequence with each new repetition, the

‘reiterative’ acts of gender performance are thus conceived

of both as self-originating and as self-perpetuating. In

this sense, the implicit quality of desirous intent to

inhabit a certain corporeal presentation becomes reminiscent

of the opening piano gestures sequence. As each extended

gestural reiteration nears completion, the dancers'

portraits, which serve as mirrors for enacting each pose in

order to monitor performative competence, now become the

loci of a transforming self-comprehension in which the

dancers begin to acknowledge their bodies with a newly

discovered sense of disgust.

In both the ‘catwalk’ and the opening piano gesture

sequences, gestural performativity is thus explored as the

desire of the subject to inhabit a certain corporeal

presentation. However, rather than becoming the full

embodiment and realization of the subject’s desire, these

corporeal presentations become the manifestation of an

inner, psychological conflict (Barthes 1980). The performer

reveals not the image that was intended, but rather:

‘certain anxieties and half-conscious desires manifest

themselves corporeally in a way which disrupts the intended

affect’ (Silverman 1996: 21213). Through enacting these

performative scenarios, audience identification with the

desiring process is encouraged through visual recognition

via a gestural ‘reciprocity of intention’ (Merleau-Ponty

1945: 215). Existing performative approaches to

understanding corporeal expressivity in music performance

may thus be illustrative in deepening comprehension of

instrumental gestures through an examination of kinesthetic

empathy (Reynolds and Reason 2012). Examining instrumental

gestures in this manner may assist in informing a

choreographic re-appropriation of musical corporeity.

Performative approaches to understanding musical corporeity

In the live setting, as Kivy contends, music-making is a

performing art, just as live art, in exploring the physical

limitations of the body ‒ and the articulation of space ‒

might be described as choreographic (1995). Indeed, it was

Judson Dance Theatre who first moved dance from the theatre

to the gallery space, intersecting a growing interest in

body-centred performance that helped to establish what was

to become the hallmark of live art. This ‘nurturing of the

relation between dance and live art’ opened up a new

modality for conceiving the choreographed, performed body in

which the sculptural and experiential potentialities of the

moving, living form were explored (Gray 2012: 211).

Subsequently, in the last ten years, a handful of artists

have become interested in using this framework as a modality

to explore the role of bodily expression in music

performance. Thus, through an interdisciplinary approach to

re-conceiving musical corporeity, a new kind of intersection

between live art, dance and music began to emerge in the

form of performance-based choreomusical research.

Having attended a workshop with Jonathan Burrows and Matteo

Fargion as part of the ‘3×3 Dance and Cross Arts

Collaboration Series’ at the Findhorn Foundation in 2009, I

became particularly interested in the transcription of

instrumental gestures into choreographic sequences. During

the workshop, participants were encouraged to develop three

musically unrelated sitting gestures onto a grid-like score

divided into seconds. Gestural material was thus inserted

into this grid-like score in an economical manner, inspired

by minimalist composer Kevin Volans’s statement on

predictability: ‘What is predictable must be both

predictable and unpredictable: and what is unpredictable,

must be both unpredictable and predictable’ (Volans cited in

Burrows 2010: 107).

Following this workshop I was keen to explore how this

framework might inspire choreography that was directly

derived from the observation of musicians’ body movements. I

thus began with the grid-like score as a framework for

working with the dancers. However, I laterally decided that

the strict rhythm that this score imposed was too rigid for

my intentions in exploring how different relations between

the gestural motifs of dancers might arise in a quasi-

aleatory manner. Whilst maintaining a ‘strict’ performance

style for the movements derived from pianistic gestures in

keeping with Burrows’s method, I used a looser structural

framework, thus allowing for a ‘freshness’ of the material

that I felt may otherwise potentially have been lost.

As an established choreographer/composer collaboration,

Burrows and Fargion have produced a number of performance

works that explore the overlap between musical and

choreographic methodologies. In its most explicit form, it

is musical structure in Burrows’s and Fargion’s work that is

often taken up as a framework on which textual and

choreographic forms unfold. For example, in ‘Both Sitting

Duet’ (2002), Fargion’s body, a musically trained body,

becomes a dancing body, while Burrows’s classically trained

dancing body, through the specifically complex rhythmical

manner of gestural execution, becomes a musical body. It is

through this cross-fertilization of music and dance

methodologies that new modalities for choreographic practice

are emerging in the form of choreomusical research. Such an

approach may not only inform new ways of viewing the

interrelatedness of sound and movement, but may also help to

inspire new compositional forms in both disciplines.

The potential signification of musical gestures has been

another area of concern in my own work when considering

notions of bodily expression in relation to performer

intention. Signification, as I was to discover, is as much

about how musical corporeity is received and interpreted by

the spectator through visual information as it is how the

musician goes about accomplishing particular physically

expressive ideas in line with the musical motifs that they

wish to communicate. Both of these areas, it seems, act on

bodies at an unconscious level. Through making this

connection, I became particularly interested in

demonstrating how instrumental gestures may be revealed as

‘self-simulatory’ through a choreographic re-appropriation

of musicians’ body movements. This realization informed my

understanding of the relations between instrumental gestures

and that of gender performativity and how they might be

connected through an examination of self-mimesis. In doing

so, I have been able to expand my comprehension of

musicians' expressive body movements in relation to existing

conceptions surrounding the performance of gender and the

desiring subject.

This new modality for interdisciplinary enquiry marks an

intersection in choreomusical interest that is also found in

the work of choreographer Xavier le Roy. Le Roy’s

‘Mouvements für Lachenmann’ (Cvejic et al. 2005) drew on

compositional works by composer Helmut Lachenmann and

exploited the already existing theatrical elements in his

work into an evening of choreography. Le Roy used sound-

producing movement as a starting point for the development

of the work in which the relationship between physical

gesture and sonic material was a stimulus. Le Roy states:

All possible forms of dissociation between

what can be seen, heard, or silenced, unfold

in a line of flight from a regular concert!

The potentialities to listen, not-listen,

hear, not-hear, see, not-see, in all

combinations, empower one’s senses with a

passion: the radical experience of

possibility which is a capacity of both

presence and withdrawal. (Cvejic et al.

2005)

Commenting on the piece, Lachenmann stated that he felt

that above all the work reflected our ‘perception practice

in ourselves’ (Cvejic et al. 2005). Thus, his choreographic

analysis of musical performance takes place not only in

relation to the examination of sound but also in relation to

all elements of instrumental experience, including the

experience of individual bodies. Le Roy achieves this by

isolating gestures that draw attention to their importance

in the communication of sonic ideas, and how such a

framework might comment upon the sociological function of

musicians’ bodily movements.

Since instrumental gesture often anticipates the playing of

a note, the observers’ expectation is that sound will follow

physical action. Le Roy successively plays with the notion

of expectation by presenting instrumental gestures separate

from their context of sound generation. By ‘dissolving the

mimetic relationship between note, action and sound into

movement’ le Roy succeeds in revealing the refractory nature

of sonic and physical gestures (Cvejic et al. 2005). In

kinesthetic terms, we are thus invited to recognize how

musical corporeity is reflective of sonic content and vice

versa, the two aspects becoming one intermingled and

inseparable facet of musical expression. It is in

highlighting this mutually dependent scenario of the sonic

and the physical that marks the territory of the musician's

body as a site and vehicle through which signification is

totalized.

An experimental approach in ‘Woman=Music=Desire’ led to

reflections upon how gestural information within the context

of music performance might be perceived by non-

instrumentalists. Rather than employing musicians to execute

their own material, an interest arose in exploring how

gestural information is communicated to an untrained,

outside eye. Indeed, it was the way in which instrumental

gestures might be viewed as choreographic in their own right

that the decision to employ dancers was made. This

particular interpretative framework for instrumental

gestures subsequently inspired an exploration of how body

posture and movement might be used to affect sound

production in the live art installation ‘Blood Piano’

(2011). Such an approach may inform a new, bodily approach

to music pedagogy, where one-to-one tuition on instruments

such as the piano might be supported by the student’s

assimilation of particular body movements. Such movements

may assist in the development of different sound qualities,

such as in the areas of timbre, dynamics and articulation.

Recently, a number of visual artists have produced work

that explicitly addresses the role of musical expressivity

in instrumental gesture. For example, Uriel Orlow’s

performance ‘In Concert’ (2005) conveyed a pianist and a

cellist reciting the first movement of Shostakovich’s

‘Cello concerto no.1 op.107’ in the absence of both score

and instruments. Using two musicians from the Royal Academy

of Music, London, Orlow produced the work as a study of

musical memory, providing the musicians with an audio

recording of themselves playing the piece that they could

follow during the performance. In a review of the

performance Ian Hunt comments:

Absorbed by the performance, we become

almost unaware that no instruments are

present. And then there is an unforgettable

pause when the cellist rests both hands on

her knees and the invisible cello, made so

present by her gestures, disappears. (Hunt

2006)

Hunt goes on to suggest that while Orlow’s ‘In Concert’

should not be read as a study of cognition, it does allow

for an understanding of instrumental performance as a

process of mimesis. Quoting Maurice Halbwachs, Hunt affirms

that the gestures and thoughts of the (orchestral) musician

come together to form ‘copies of the same model’ that can

be recalled in the absence of the score. In this way Orlow

exploits the physical embodiment of instrumental gestures

by re-framing the corporeal aspects of playing an

instrument within a gallery context. By re-setting movement

material in this way, the cellist’s movements become a

dance in which the gestures are revealed as pre-planned,

rehearsed and embodied. The physical acquisition of these

gestures is thus executed in a quasi-simulatory mode

(Newland 2012a), much in the way we might consider a

technique du corps to become acquired onto the body schema

(Mauss 1934).

Adopting a similar approach, Sam Taylor-Wood filmed a

cellist playing a Bach prelude and then digitally removed

the cello from the image in her video installation ‘Prelude

in Air’ (2005). By removing the object to which physical

manipulation is being made, Taylor-Wood invites the

spectator to reassess the expressive function of

instrumental gestures. The visual spectacle of cello-play

becomes audible to the spectator through movement alone, the

body providing confirmation of the rhythmic, dynamic and

above all, expressive qualities of the music now absent. The

body of the cellist enters into a dance with the empty space

before him, creating movements through silence that enable

the spectator to ‘hear’ the music purely through visual,

bodily recognition.

This dance of instrumental gestures frames the physical

qualities of performance as an intrinsic aspect of

comprehending musical expression in which the body of the

spectator is awakened to the role of kinesthetic response

when watching more traditional forms of music making. In

this sense the spectator internally performs what is

witnessed at the gestural level through embodied recognition

and experiences the subsequent sensorimotor impulse as

distinct from movement sensations ordinarily aroused by

listening to the music itself: changes in pitch, timbre and

dynamics, which have the ability to specify movement ‒

thereby evoking a sensation of motion such as can be found

in rhythmic indications (andante, ‘walking’ or corrente,

‘running’) ‒ are now absent, leaving only the musical body

as explanation for induced corporeal responsivity (Dahl and

Friberg 2007: 3). A practice-led approach to understanding

kinesthetic identification based on spectatorial experience

may thus be illustrative of the ways in which

performer/audience gestural reciprocity occurs.

Kinesthetic empathy as gestural reciprocity in

spectator/performer identification

In ‘Woman=Music=Desire’, two contrasting modalities of

expression were explored in the hope of deepening

understandings of the kinesthetic and empathetic

identification between performer and audience. These two

contrasting modalities may be considered opposite ends of

the expressive spectrum: on the one hand, a ‘dead-pan’,

pedestrian style delivery, such as can be found in the work

of Yvonne Rainer, and on the other, an 'expressionist'

approach, such as that found in the work of Pina Bausch or

Butoh. For example, in the piano gestures sequence, tasks

were executed with an ‘expressionist’ approach, with

movements fully invested with dynamic effort and emotional

intent made visible, while movements directly derived from

piano play were delivered dead-pan, in a quotidian, task-

like manner, without visible effort and with a sense of

emotional detachment.

Thus, throughout the performance, a trajectory of

humanization takes place: the dancers begin with their

bodies painted white and constrained by instrument parts,

matched by a general trend of decreased expression (dead-

pan), a state that gradually unfolds and is overcome by an

increasingly ‘expressive’ delivery as the dancers shed

costume parts and wash the white paint from their bodies,

finally appearing in jeans and t-shirt, hair loose and

without make-up. Exploring the intersection and overlap

between these two contrasting modes of expressive delivery

offered a new way of viewing the different kinesthetic

effects of performance delivery on the body of the

spectator. In watching scenes where the dancers performed in

the dead-pan state, feelings of effort and control as a

reflection of desire to inhabit a certain corporeal presence

may be identified, while the 'expressive' mode may resonate

with parts of the self less willingly acknowledged: the

ugly, uncontrolled and agonized. It was therefore in part a

cathartic process to relive this trajectory of ‘becoming’

through an acknowledgement and transformation as a spectator

witnessing my own embodied history.

In watching music and dance performance, spectators may

experience acute kinesthetic frustration; the movements

witnessed may be sensed as one’s own, and yet, as a

spectator, we are obliged to remain in our chair at all

costs. Rising up and giving in to the kinesthetic urge would

break the taboo of movement so intrinsically denied by the

physically static parameters of traditional audience

reception. Yet, as we watch, we may become aware of those

almost imperceptible gestures around us, executed by fellow

audience members, which serve as a small relinquishing to

desired kinesis. As Richard Leppert describes:

it is an etiquette that turns music from an

inherently participatory activity into a

passive one in which the listener maintains

physical stasis by exerting the cultural

force of will against the body's desires.

The auditor may move toes in time to the

beat but not hum, stomp feet, sway the torso

or bob the head: bodily reaction to music in

the concert hall must be neither audible nor

visible. To give oneself over to any of

these reactions invites rebuke. (1993: 25)

In ‘Woman=Music=Desire’, it was in recognition of this

shared kinesthetic response in watching music and dance

performance that inspired the second scene. Following on

from the opening piano gestures sequence, the dancers were

invited to explore the idea of kinesthetic empathy in

watching music performance through framing a listening

scenario in which they posed as audience members before an

invisible and inaudible orchestral performance. The dancers

enacted minimal gestures occurring in music spectatorship,

such as those described above, which arise as a sense of

felt gestural reciprocity between performing and listening

bodies. As the scene unfolds, one dancer gradually

transgresses the normative physical boundaries of static

audience reception by allowing herself to be 'overcome' by

the kinesthetic urge by extending her physical gestures into

an increasingly uncontrollable conducting sequence. Upon

completion, this act is the source of visible consternation

from the other 'audience' members and of clear public

embarrassment for the transgressor.

The absence of audible music in this scene establishes the

kinesthetic as centralized within music spectatorship

whereby sensorimotor and embodied responses are as much

dependent on the reception of sonic material as they are on

the visual impact of musical corporeity itself. The scene

frames the sociocultural act of listening as physically

'enacted', neurally sensed and empathetically mediated

(Varela et al. 1991). An emotional 'affective' response is

thus the result of kinesthetic identification whereby bodily

knowledge provides a physical stimulatory effect (Reynolds

and Reason 2012). This physical simulation serves to produce

the shared, intersubjective relationship between musician

and spectator in which the expressive becomes correlative

with empathetic understanding (Schutz 1951; Ness 1992;

Rabinowitch et al. 2012).

Figure 2: Sarmen Almond in ‘Woman=Music=Desire’ (2010),

conceived and directed by Imogene Newland. Performed at the

‘Sonorities Festival of Contemporary Music’ in Belfast.

Photography by Chris Parker ©.

Through exploring the kinesthetic urge in music

spectatorship, we might thus come to a deeper understanding

of musical corporeity and the impact of expressive bodily

movements. However, as has been revealed through

performative reflections on pianistic gesture in

‘Woman=Music=Desire’, what is intended by the performer in

terms of an expressive affect and what is actually perceived

by audience members may vary considerably. For this reason,

beyond a very individualized study and psychological

reflection upon performer motivation and perceived

expressive variables, it is hard to conclude with any fixed

remark on musical corporeity. What is apparent is the need

to acknowledge the specifically choreographic nature of

instrumental gestures, which may be usefully employed not

only as an alternative pedagogical approach in one-to-one

instrumental tuition but may also be developed into new,

compositional and improvisatory approaches to musical

performance. Through relocating instrumental gesture as a

performative process via a comparison with gestural

expression within gendered corporeity, overlooked

territories of kinesthetic ontology may also be deciphered.

A cross-fertilization of approaches to understanding bodily

expression in music and dance performance ‒ especially with

reference to the performative, gendered body ‒ may thus lead

to a new and exciting departure in choreographic practice.

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Contributor details

Imogene Newland is a researcher/practitioner whose work

intersects gesture-based study within the fields of music

performance and choreography. Originally trained as a

pianist specializing in contemporary repertoire, Imogene

became interested in the overlap between choreographic

practices and gestural analysis in music performance in

2003. She has subsequently formed a series of practice-led

works that address the intimate and intensely physical

relation between music and the body. She completed her

practice-led Ph.D. at the Sonic Arts Research Centre,

Queen’s University Belfast, in 2011. Imogene is currently

sub-editor for the journal Body, Space and Technology and

Associate Editor of Performing Arts for HARTS & Minds.

E-mail: imogene.newland@yahoo.com