What is it about?

I argue that all emotional feeling is e-motion, the movement of something somewhere in the body. Eventually, a pattern of tensions in the body's musculature becomes a familiar pattern which we recognize as felt emotion. Neuroscience reveals that we mimic muscles tensions observed int he movements we see others make. When we do this, our own muscles tense and stretch and form the patterns correlated with the emotions we feel when we observe dance. Similar mimicking goes on when we listen to music or view paintings and other forms of the visual arts.

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Why is it important?

This provides a non-metaphysical explanation of why all art works as it does.

Perspectives

Dance Research has often published work concerned with the expressivity of danced forms and so this article continues a long conversation.

susan pashman pashman

Read the Original

This page is a summary of: Feeling is Movement: Damasio's Neural Model of Dance Expression, Dance Research, November 2017, Edinburgh University Press,
DOI: 10.3366/drs.2017.0204.
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