Rhythm: Synchronization of Body and Mind

Abstract

Dancers constantly interpret physical dynamics. They lead their move-ment, while being responsive to continuous stimulation. For that pur-pose, the intentionality of movement and its actual existence have to be synchronized. When an attunement between direction and sensory stimuli exists, dancers start to gain freedom of movement, without letting go of the precision of their intentionality. Accordingly, dancing is a rhyth-mic procedure. Additionally, within somatic attentiveness, the rhythm of movement becomes unconditional. Thus, it can be developed with many variations. Rhythm is not merely a procedural repetition since new actual variations infl uence further happenings. The dancers' attunement of intentions within bodily sense evokes an inner feeling of how a movement is and can be organized. Therefore, intentional forms can nonetheless be fulfi lled. Equally, within attunement, the current physical dynamics open up further mental representations: the dancer is induced to imagine and understand how movement and physical energies can be further directed without unwillingly breaking the fl ow of energy. Feeling the formatting process of movement is being one with the rhythm of organized dynamics in their processing procedure. As a result, the performance gains a quality of freedom, smoothness, and ease. When dancers perform fast, small movements within their body, the fl esh enters into a local rhythm. The movement is guided in different directions when within each muscle there is a fast reaction of contraction Rhythm: Synchronization of Body and Mind and release. The dancer might begin by contracting the stomach muscles and then releasing them and letting the dynamics of this play proceed to neighboring muscle fi bers. The fl ow can be divided into smaller parts like the neural, connective tissue and cellular adaptations, and within them change its momentum. The dancers, of course, do not have to be conceptually familiar with the mechanism and the anatomical division of the body; they control it by attentiveness and feeling the possibilities of movements to fl ow, to be divided, and to be constantly reorganized.