Mind Joining in the Dance. Body Techniques and Choregraphy of Mental Concepts

From within the ethnomethodological perspective which focuses on the study of action and ordinary reasoning, and from within Wittgenstein's philosophy of psychological verbs, this article tries to capture the symbolic and projective uses of mental concepts in the field of dance. I propose to examine in particular situations using certain signs (the chakras on the mental sphere) represented in the written score for the dance piece Constrain created by the choreographer and dancer Myriam Gourfink. The concept of mind in this workpiece has two purposes: it serves as a metaphor for developing a poetic image of the choreography, and as a guide for the coordination of physiological states (movements, breathing) and mental states (mind control and attention to different parts of the head). The analysis of the reappropriation of these signs by the dancers (their reading, analysis, research of meaning), provides the opportunity to question the analogy drawn by the choreographer between two categories of signs, physical and mental. I will explore in particular the difficulties that this recovery of one category by the other means for the dancers.