Kinesthetic Empathy: Concepts and Contexts, University of Manchester, England, April 22-23, 2010

The conference Kinesthetic Empathy: Concepts and Contexts, held at University of Manchester, England, on April 22-23, 2010, mapped new academic territory by presenting kinesthetic empathy as a pivotal concept that provides innovative insights on intersubjective communication and on spectators' engagement with a wide range of cultural and creative practices. The event convened researchers and practitioners from neuroscience, dance, film, music, and contemporary embodied practices, involved with kinesthesia, empathy, and kinesthetic empathy as objects of inquiry. The conference was concerned with interrogation into notions of affect, presence, embodiment, and the senses; was influenced by the re-examination of phenomenology, and involved a currently widespread interest in neuroscientific investigation (notably in the "mirror neuron" system). The conference was organized by the Watching Dance: Kinesthetic Empathy project, funded in the UK from 2008-2011 by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (see also Reason and Reynolds, 2010).

Dee Reynolds's welcome address opened with the image of the goddess of Pele. It was a poignant moment, given the effect of the Icelandic volcano, Eyjafjallajökull, on the conference. The image of Pele, a Hawaiian volcano and fire goddess known for her powerful energy in dance and her lightning, provided a poetic connection between nature, dance, science, creativity, imagination, and the travel dilemmas caused by the volcanic ash cloud. The conference went ahead despite these difficulties, with a few program substitutions, presentations in absentia, and general resourcefulness and good will.

Four interdisciplinary panels, entitled "Audiences," "Kinesthetic Experience and Embodied Practices," "Creative Practices," and "Looking and Listening," included presentations by artists, academic scholars, and researchers. Invited speakers on the panels were photographer Chris Nash, filmmaker Rachel Davies, and film director Alex Reuben, who gave a practitioner's perspective on kinesthetic empathy. Each day began with movement workshops, and further workshops were interspersed throughout the two days. The workshops provided an application of the content of the presentations and allowed for exploratory investigation into the processes often associated with mirror neurons. For example, Bonnie Meekums's workshop used a range of movement exercises to explore embodied experience of mutual recognition and intersubjectivity. Embodiment accessed through visualization, imagination, intention, and touch was examined, and indeed, one of the delegates said, "The ability to actually explore some of the ideas at the conference with my body was most useful for my dance practice." In addition to the presentation and workshop program, a double performance bill was scheduled for the first evening, aptly entitled KINESTECH: Dancing Across Media. Featured were Bridget Fiske's Red Rain, a solo performance presenting interrelationships between the live body, and interactive and visual media, and Melanie Clarke's Both of View, an improvised collaboration between a dancer/choreographer and a percussionist/composer. Throughout the duration of the conference, a Multimedia Gallery featured an interactive installation by Becky Edmunds and Gill Clarke, called Stones and Bones, which was shown on three televisions in the Gallery, with a further version of the work being displayed on iPods in the main breakout area, giving the viewer an alternative way of seeing a moving body on a screen that could be held in one's hand. The conference also attracted twenty-seven poster presentations, giving people the opportunity to present their research in a format that is familiar to the scientific community but innovative for those in humanities. The posters brought together research in neuroscience, movement practices, and dance exploring the concept of kinesthetic empathy, and included titles such as "The Mover Witness Exchange: Interdisciplinary Pedagogy and Communication Tool" (also translated into a movement workshop in Professor Emilyn Claid's absence) by Eila Goldhahn, which used an Authentic Movement method in experiencing links between embodied experience and articulate knowledge. "Bending Bodies, Acrobatic Feats, and Kinesthetic Empathy in the Human Brain," by Emily Cross, reported on an investigation into whether the observer recruited the mirror system when watching actions that the observer could not repeat with his or her own body. Liesbeth Wildschut presented her work "Moving Whilst Watching: Manifestations of Kinesthetic Empathy," which detailed research into a strategy used by a choreographer to explore whether the...