ABSTRACT

When phenomenology is true to its intent, it never knows where it is going (Merleau-Ponty 1962: xxi). This is because it is present-centred in its descriptive aims, accounts for temporal change, and does not have appropriate and inappropriate topics. It might move from Zen to dance to baseball to washing dishes, and even isolate a purity of attention that under certain circumstances connects them all. Phenomenology develops unpredictably, according to the contents of consciousness. This is its first level of method. Its second level develops philosophical perspectives from the seed of consciousness. It holds that 'philosophy is not the reflection of a pre-existing truth but, like art, the act of bringing truth into being' (ibid.). Here I will discuss phenomenology as a way of describing and defining dance, shifting between the experience of the dancer and that of the audience.