Affect & Feeling (Upd: Apr 29, ’22)
“Movement and feeling are inseparable.” – Sondra Fraleigh7
In order to use our body as an instrument for life resonance and endlessly shifting qualias, we need to be able to feel in the first place. We must get very familiar with sensing the body, becoming the sense-ei, our own personal master teacher of feeling. To prepare the body for feeling, it helps to already have entered into a state of nurture and empty body.
Beautifully written, Susanna Åkerlund talks of the importance of sensing/listening in butoh training:
To train butoh is to train one’s abilities to intensify sensory experiences. It is a violent strive to come closer, closer to the environment, all objects, bodies, by taking them into your mouth, really taste the leaves, the rocks, the dirt, the water, feel the coldness of the wind, the hardness of the trees, the sliminess of the animals, to do it from the outside, with one’s real skin, and then take in these things inside oneself.12
Spinoza defines affect as “affections of the body by which the body’s power of acting is increased or diminished, aided or restrained, and at the same time, the ideas of these affections.”8 In Beth Lord’s words, “Affects are the feelings and desires that arise in us as a result of our encounters and experiences: affects push and pull us in different directions, determining our actions and behavior, sometimes overwhelming us.”10
When there is affect, both body and mind react together. Both emotion and sensation are affects grounded in a mind-body whole.
According to Spinoza, no matter what, we will always be in a state of varying affects, which will either remain in place or interchange with another affect.9 The same is the case for qualias, which are the something to be affected.
Affect also does not form a dichotomy with movement but another whole (affect-movement) just as the mind-body is a whole. To separate movement from the body would be to take away the body. As Eva Perez de Vega notes, “Movement has a physical component and a mental/emotional counterpart, both linked by the concept of affect.”11
Spinoza breaks down affect into two types: passive and active movements/affects. To him the passive affects (or passions) involve being acted upon by external things whereby we are either partially the cause or not the cause at all. Whereas active movement/affects derive from our nature alone (nothing external).8
Felt Sense
Body Channel
Pressure – even, uneven, supportive, crushing, cutting off circulation
Air current – gentle, cool, warm, from right, from left, stimulating, overstimulating, misty
Tension – solid, dense, warm, cold, inflamed, protective, constricting, angry, sad
Pain – ache, sharp, twinge, slight, stabbing
Itch – mild itch, irritating itch, moving itch, subtle itch, large area itch
Temperature – warm, hot, burning, cool, cold, clammy, chills, frozen, both hot and cold
Weight – light, heavy, both light and heavy
Texture – rough, smooth
Element – fire, air, earth, water, wood, metal
Qualia (shadowbody addition) – various/non-dual/Center of 8 Channel Model
Movement Channel
Motion – circular, erratic, straight line
Speed – fast, slow, still
Tingle – pricks, vibration, tickling, numb
Visual Channel
Size – small, large, medium, both large and small
Shape – flat, circular, triangular, irregular
Color – various
Emotion Channel
Mood – rainy, cloudy, sunny, stormy, violent (e.g. earthquake, tsunami)
Audio Channel
Sound – buzzing, harmonious, noisy
World = Self
Presence – empty, here, distracted
Human Relationship
Co-body (shadowbody addition) – sensation of another person in the room
Miscellaneous/Outside of 8 Channel
Taste – sour, bitter, sweet, astringent, salty, oily, pungent
Smell – pungent, sweet, like rain, like trees
Exercise 1: Body Scan Roll Down
While on your back or standing up, slowly roll your spine up then back down (or vise versa) vertebra by vertebra. Scan slices of your body (like the axial slices of a hospital cat scan machine) and be aware of any sensations. You can also refer to the roll down in the spine section.
Exercise 2: Hand Body Scan
Hover your hands around every surface of your body. Imagine your hands have extra senses to feel wherever it hovers, whether many eyes, ears, nose, or even tongue.
Exercise 3: Part Shift
First have the participant locate a particular feeling in the body and to express the feeling with movement. Then signal the participant to relocate the exact movement expression but to various body parts in varying subtleties.
Exercise 4: Taste Improvisation
Have the participants close their eyes and put some form of treat or fruit in their mouth. Have them dance the taste.
Feeling Weight
Feeling the weight in the body is an important part of Noguchi Taiso. Once the body is relaxed, attention can be focused on our body weight itself. Can help to feel the body as a water bag. We can feel the weight as we shift from different parts of the feet. We can also feel the weight on all parts of our body.
Exercise: Prosthetic Body
Through imagery, this is one way to feel the weight of parts of our body (especially the lower extremities).
- Prosthetize the feet then feel your ankle stumps walking as if you were a stilt walker.
- Prosthetize the lower legs so that your knee stumps feel like your new feet/stilt ends.
- Prosthetize the legs so that the hips feel like stump attachments to leg prosthetics.
Synaesthesia
“There is a kind of synaesthesia which seems to play out in the language of Butoh, whereby the dancer can mix up the senses… to send the normal sensory functions into disarray, allowing the ears to feel, or the eyes to smell…An arm might explore all the crevices and contours of its own skin with all the objective distance of a gloved and estranged limb.” – Rachel Sweeney²
Herbert Blau, a theoretician of performance, mentions theater group KRAKEN’s synaesthesia exercises he calls ghosting and/or burrowing. Blau states, “We were susceptible to, even impassioned by, a synaesthesia of organs and body parts, like listening with a kneecap, humming with a thumb, the eyelids avid as taste buds, images there in your gut.”5
Tatsumi Hijikata’s butoh-fu The Blind Girl contains the synesthetic line: “The fourth blind girl is listening to sounds / using her forehead, her ears, her skin, / and all the nerves in her body.”13
Deleuze and Guattari encouraged this sort of experiment. They add, “Is it really so sad and dangerous to be fed up with seeing with your eyes, breathing with your lungs, swallowing with your mouth, talking with your tongue, thinking with your brain, having an anus and larynx, head and legs? Why not walk on your head, sing with your sinuses, see through your skin, breathe with your belly[?]”6 When this happens, one has engaged in deterritorialization and defamiliarization of a body part (e.g. lungs) and the body part gets reterritorialized somewhere else (e.g. belly).
Emotion
“If you place the beauty of … [the] flower and the emotions which are evoked by it into your dead body, then the flower you create will be true and unique and the audience will be moved.” – Kazuo Ohno³
It is recommended to identify emotions past the basic happy, sad, and angry. There are many more:
Affection, anger, angst, anguish, annoyance, anticipation, anxiety, apathy, arousal, awe, boredom, confidence, contempt, contentment, courage, curiosity, depression, desire, despair, disappointment, disgust, distrust, ecstasy, embarrassment, empathy, envy, euphoria, fear, frustration, gratitude, grief, guilt, happiness, hatred, hope, horror, hostility, humiliation, interest, jealousy, joy, loneliness, love, lust, outrage, panic, passion, pity, pleasure, pride, rage, regret, remorse, resentment, sadness, saudade, schadenfreude, self-confidence, shame, shock, shyness, sorrow, suffering, surprise, trust, wonder, worry.
Important: To not get lost in the outer form (especially facial expressions), once a particular feeling is recognized, swallow the emotion and then resonate with how the body reacts while also being mindful of typical gestures associated with the feeling. This is not repression of emotion, but the opposite. If after this, the facial expression or gesture still comes, resonate with that too. (See Emotion Fermentation & Distillation further in page for more on this idea.)
An extreme re/deterritorializion/reduction of human expression of emotion would be to place the face right on the ground literally or as if it were the case. This is Tatsumi Hijikata’s floor face from his butoh score (butoh-fu) Quiet House.4
Exercise 1: Emotional Jumping Wild (Throwing Emotional Qualias)
This is a jumping wild exercise where somebody calls out one emotion after another and the participant is to shift through them. First, the emotions can be acted out in the face, but and then they can be acted out without the facial expressions or gestures associated with them. After one gets used to shifting, we take the training wheels off by shifting through them ourselves.
Exercise 2: Emotional Metamorphosis
This exercise involves entering very fully into one emotion. Afterword, somebody calls out various qualias (at first we can do more familiar qualias, such animals, then we can experiment with other qualias beyond animals). We keep the same emotion but we shift through various qualias. We express the emotion to the maximim to the best ability and limitation of the qualia. For instance, in Kafka’s Metamorphosis, when the main character turned into a bug, he remembered the human feelings and emotions, but now with a bug body, he could not react as a human. He had to attempt to express these things as a bug, which was not necessarily coming across to the humans in his world.
Exercise 3: Deconstructing Emotional Response
Because there are certain physical associations, gestures, or facial expressions related to a feeling, we want to train ourselves to go beyond this. The physicality of an emotion may seem universal, but there can still be a cultural influence. For instance, if one were to give a teeth-displaying smile to a monkey, this could be taken as a sign of aggression because to them teeth means being ready to bite, hence an act of aggression. We can thus shift the physical response to any emotion. If for instance, we go into the qualia of horror, we can utilize a gesture, physical association, or facial expression not associated with the qualia of horror.
Exercise 4: Emotional Face Chimera
This is a chimera exercise where one part of the face gives one emotion and another part another. For instance, the mouth can exhibit deep disappointment and the eyes, euphoria.
Exercise 5: Emotional Body Parts
This is a chimera exercise. Pick two or more body parts and associate them with different emotions.
Contemporary Metaphor Theory
Drawing upon the inspiring work of George Lakoff and his list of conceptual metaphors, we have examples of conceptual metaphors connected to emotions. To Lakoff, metaphors are more than just figures of speech, but modes of thought. Lakoff posits that principles of abstract reasoning may have evolved from visual thinking and mechanisms for representing spatial relations that are present in lower animals.21
Below, the source domain is where we get the metaphorical expression and the target domain is what we are trying to understand.
From the following conceptual metaphors, the body can be made to dance emotions in the space by transforming into heat or fire, becoming a lunatic, a brittle object, or someone who is blinded. Yet, by moving in and of itself, this can already display emotion as shown by the first conceptual metaphor on the list.
Emotions Are Physical Forces18
The conceptual metaphor EMOTIONS ARE PHYSICAL FORCES has the following examples: (1) I was moved by the poem; (2) She was carried away by the song; (3) He was struck by anger.
If one is moved (see strings) by an emotion internally be it negatively or positively, one might as well extend more into the body through movement and space. Drawing from the examples above, how does the song carry one in the space? How is anger striking the body in the space?
Strong Emotions Are Madness14
The conceptual metaphor STRONG EMOTIONS ARE MADNESS has the source domain: insanity; target domain: strong emotions. Examples: (1) The excitement is driving me over the edge; (2) She’s foaming with rage; (3) I’m mad with jealousy.
A sub-category is LOVE IS MADNESS with some examples: (1) I’m crazy about him; (2) She’s madly in love.
A way in which we can use this for our dance is to connect any exaggeration/fermentation/explosion or consciously out of control emotional state to that of also insanity.
Intense Emotions are Heat15
The conceptual metaphor INTENSE EMOTIONS ARE HEAT has the following examples: (1) The crowd was all fired up; (2) He had a burning emotion.
Sub-categories include ANGER IS HEAT, LUST IS HEAT & AFFECTION IS WARMTH.
The body can resonate with the qualities of heat whenever these emotions come to surface.
Emotional Self is a Brittle Object16
The conceptual metaphor EMOTIONAL SELF IS A BRITTLE OBJECT has the following examples: (1) She was shattered by his death; (2) She was crushed by what he said; (3) He broke down in tears.
When dealing with emotions of grief or other hard emotions, the body can enter into object resonance where the object is weak and/or breaks. We can ponder back on Tatsumi Hijikata’s object body: “To consider your limbs and parts of your body as separate objects and tools, and in reverse to love objects as if they were your own body; here lies the great secret of the origin of Butoh.”20
Strong Emotion is Blinding17
The conceptual metaphor STRONG EMOTION IS BLINDING has the following examples: (1) He was blinded by love; (2) She was so angry she couldn’t see straight; (3) They were dazzled with excitement.
One here can enter into eye/vision resonance whenever one has a strong emotion. The eyes are literally affected. If one feels too much love, then they cannot physically see or one gets so angry that one attracts movements that will see and feel vertigo.
Emotions Are Liquids Within a Person19
The conceptual metaphor EMOTIONS ARE LIQUIDS WITHIN A PERSON has the following examples: (1) I’m drowning in sorrow; (2) He’s stirred up; (3) She’s bubbling with excitement.
The metaphor calls upon the water qualia. To use the examples from above, one can enter into a state of drowning when in the world of sorrow. When one is angry, one can be a tornado in the space. If one is excited, active bubbles inside the body are moving you.
Emotion Fermentation & Distillation
What is in an emotional expression? The typical facial expression or movement gesture can be seen in everyday life or in movies. Mainstream actors know these gestures and facial expressions. In butoh, however, we may not be too interested in the surface meaning of things or general associations. This is why I like to use the analogy of: (1) Juice; (2) Wine; (3) Brandy.
Let juice be the ordinary emotion expression, e.g. fear. We then take this emotional expression and swallow it so that it can ferment. The question is, what will turn this juice expression to a wine expression? Is there something even more that can show us fear without the literal facial expression? Perhaps this is your secret. Is it new wine or aged wine? Can we take the process further into distillation? Can we make brandy? If so, will the brandy be a new brandy or an aged brandy? Perhaps the aged wine and aged brandy will take years of letting the expression sit. This is your process.
¹ Levine, Peter A. Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma : the Innate Capacity to Transform Overwhelming Experiences. Berkeley, Calif: North Atlantic Books, 1997. Print.
² Barbe, Frances. The Way of Butoh and Contemporary Choreography: Reflective. Writing on Choreographic Research. n.d. Web. 20 April 2010.
³ Ohno, K. (1988), “Notes by Kazuo Ohno”, in Viala, J. and Masson-Sekine, N. (ed. ), Butoh-Shades
of Darkness, Tokyo: Sbufunotomo Co., Ltd. pp. 176-183.
4 Lee, Rhizome, Behind the Mirror: Butoh Manual For Students.
5 Blau, Herbert. “Performing in the Chaosmos” Farts, Follicles, Mathematics, and Delirium in Deleuze. Deleuze and Performance. Edited by Laura Cull. Edinburgh, England. 2009. Page 31.
6 Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. London: Continuum, 2004. Print. Page 150, 151.
7 Fraleigh, Sondra. Somatics as Philosophy: From Spinoza to Damasio. http://www.eastwestsomatics.com/downloads/SomaticsAsPhilosophy.pdf. Page 7.
8 Benedict de Spinoza. The Ethics. III. D3.
9 Ibid. II. P13 Cor.
10 Lord, Beth. Spinoza’s Ethics. Edingburgh Philosphical Guides. Edingburgh, Great Britain. 2010. Page 83-84.
11 Perez de Vega, Eva. Affect and The Moving Body. Page 10.
12 Bergmark, Johannes. Butoh -Revolt of the Flesh in Japan and a Surrealist Way to Move. Stockholm. 1991. http://www.surrealistgruppen.org/bergmark/butoh.html
13 Waguri, Yukio, Butoh-Fu CD-Rom. 2006.
14 Lakoff, George. Master Metaphor List. Page 146.
15 Ibid. Page 143.
16 Ibid. Page 144.
17 Ibid. Page 147.
18 Ibid. Page 141.
19 Ibid. Page 140.
20 Haerdter, Michael, and Sumie Kawai. Butoh. Berlin: Alexander Verlag. Lecture from first Butoh Festival of Japan. 1986.
21 Lakoff, George (1990). “Invariance hypothesis: is abstract reasoning based on image-schemas?”. Cognitive Linguistics. 1 (1): 39–74.
