03 INSIDE THE MIND: FREYA VASS
Dr Freya Vass is Lecturer in Drama and Theatre with a specialism in dance at the University of Kent, as well as the founder of the Kent Embodied Research Collective. She has been an instructor at the University of California, Riverside, Saint Mary's College of California, and the Frankfurt University of Music and the Performing Arts.
From 1982-1997 and prior to entering academia, Dr Vass was engaged in the ballet industry with Ballet Nacional de España (Madrid), Tulsa Ballet Theater (USA), Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz (Munich) and Salzburg Landestheater (Austria). She was also a freelance choreographer from 1991-1997 and a ballet mistress at the Salzburg Landestheater from 1995-1997.
Dr Vass’s academic research spans postdramatic theatre and dance and interdisciplinary cognitive studies. Her research uses the work of choreographer William Forsythe, with whom she collaborated as dramaturg, as a lens into the cognitive processes occurring during the creation and experience of post-dramatic dance, respectively. Here, we discuss the relationship between choreography, cognition, sensory processing and interpretation. Additionally, we highlight the importance of balanced collaborations between research practitioners in science and the arts.
Dwaynica Greaves (DG): You were a dancer, freelance choreographer, and ballet mistress for multiple international ballet companies prior to academia. Could you tell us what inspired you to shift focus from the ballet industry to the study of linguistics and cognitive science? How might linguistics feed back into dance?
Dr Freya Vass (FV): When I finished dancing, I wanted to complete a Bachelor’s studies I had begun a few years earlier during a period of injury. I had no idea what to take as a major, but I knew that I did not want to go into an undergraduate dance programme – my idea was to become something completely different and get out of dancing entirely! So, I spent a lot of time thumbing through thick university prospectus catalogues trying to find something that was going to kick off my interests. When I hit linguistics, I said to myself, ‘Great, that's something that I think I'm good at. I learn languages quickly.’ I was also interested in the way language works on a cultural and psychological level, and Forsythe’s work had also intrigued me from a linguistic perspective given that he had utilised language on stage in interesting ways early on.
Once accepted into UCLA’s linguistics programme, I began adding classes in cognitive science, an area I hadn't previously really thought much about. Studying how the mind works was absolutely fascinating to me, and I became very interested in how we make sense of dance movement, or at least try to. I also took an applied linguistics module with Professor Charles Goodwin, called Talk and the Body, which focused on the need to consider linguistic analysis in the context of the environment and the actions and aims of participants. All of these kept bringing me back to what Forsythe had seemed to be doing, and I wanted to understand it better. This became my proposal for an interdisciplinary PhD study. As fate would have it, Forsythe visited UCLA in my final year there; we talked about my research and he was very supportive, inviting me to Frankfurt to talk with the ensemble. That’s how I wound up back in Frankfurt – three months turned into seven and a half years!
DG: Thank you for sharing your journey into academia. Currently you are lecturer at Kent University, where you founded and lead the Kent Embodied Research Collective (KERC). What is the purpose of KERC? And what practical considerations and course contents are important when designing interdisciplinary research collectives and modules such as ‘Psychology of the Arts’ for your students?
FV: KERC is a platform created to draw together researchers with shared interests in embodied research, from across a wide range of disciplines. The aim of the platform is to encourage and enable these interdisciplinary connections and conversations, leading to the generation of new ideas. I'd also like KERC to interface with other similar groups in the UK and elsewhere. But right now, it's just getting on its feet.
Both KERC and Psychology of the Arts module which I run, reflect two big commitments that are particularly important to me: (1) to build interdisciplinary engagements across a really wide spectrum of disciplines, not just engagements between disciplines that are historically in close proximity, but engagements that require one to walk all the way across campus to a collaborator in a different school, and (2) a commitment to liberal arts education, which is less prevalent in the UK.
The typical programme at a US liberal arts institution starts with two years of general coursework, during which students take modules from the arts, humanities, sciences, social sciences etc., while taking initial modules in their individual fields of focus. This is followed by two more years of specialised study. I was a little bit surprised when I got my job here in the UK and discovered that most bachelors’ programmes are very tightly streamed, unless you're specifically completing a BA in a liberal arts programme. You don't have a lot of wiggle room to gather ideas from outside of your discipline!
In response to this, I teach a broad third year arts/psychology module which encompasses many different art forms. After a solid grounding in the history of empirical arts research and different psychology paradigms which have developed, we look at the senses and how they work both individually and in conjunction. Then, we look at the visual arts, music, dance, theatre, architecture, and even culinary arts through current psychological and cognitive research. The main focus of the module is to promote interdisciplinary literacy about how minds and bodies work in order to help enable art students to bridge the disciplinary gap.
DG: Science communication is definitely important, and it is interesting to highlight the importance of arts communication too. KERC and Psychology of the Arts sound like a utopia for up-and-coming neuroaestheticians! Shifting focus to your research direction, your academic profile states that one of your research interests is the ‘interdisciplinary interfaces and meta-critical terrain between dance research and scientific research.’ Which intersections are you most interested in and why?
FV: I'm primarily interested in postdramatic dance because it sits within the aesthetic framework of what Hans-Thies Lehmann calls ‘postdramatic theatre’. Postdramatic works tend not to have the typical dramatic arc of exposition, complication and climax, and for Lehmann they also have a set of unique aesthetic features. Postdramatic theatre and dance align with questioning which began in the early-mid 20th century, about the ways in which theatre can be different from that which had been known before. This led from 20th century avant-garde dance, up through the postmodern dance movement, and onwards, into more contemporary dance theatres. Contemporary dance offers the audience experiences which do not necessarily involve a story or a linear narrative. These new structures make different demands on the audience.
With respect to science, when I first started academic research I was most interested in sensory perception, particularly intermodal perception. I found that academic dance studies seemed to treat dance almost entirely as a visual art form, despite it being an art form which involves both sight and sound. Professor Stephanie Jordan, from the University of Roehampton’s Department of Dance, carries out important choreo-musical analysis, looking at the way that steps are fitted to musical scores. However, some choreographers create works which are not predetermined by purely rhythmic structures, but which are, instead, much more elastic in terms of their relationships to set steps, rhythm and performance structure.
DG: And, why is interdisciplinary research important to you?
FV: It is important to me because disciplinary isolation creates what Julie Klein referred to in 1990 as an ‘interdisciplinary archipelago’. Metaphorically speaking, researchers from various disciplines work on their individual islands, and it’s difficult but important to build bridges across the methodological and ideological waters which separate them. Another issue is that the traffic of collaboration across the arts-sciences ‘bridge’ has been, to some degree, restricted in its direction – psychologists do research which focuses on or involves artists, but the write-up procedures have tended to be less interdisciplinary. It’s important to foster settings where more even-handed interdisciplinary dialogues can arise, as there is equally valid knowledge on both sides. Additionally, we must emphasise the idea that artistic practices can also educate scientists, rather than the scientist being the only one qualified to investigate and distribute interdisciplinary knowledge. These engagements open up new pathways for interrogating both artistic and scientific disciplines.
DG: This leads me to think about similarities between the arts and the sciences which might enable this transfer of knowledge. In our pre-interview conversation, you mentioned that you are interested in the ways in which ‘postdramatic choreographers are like cognitive scientists – experimentally studying the mind in their own laboratories of their works and working processes’. Could you expand on your thoughts here?
FV: This is an idea from Semir Zeki’s book, Inner Vision (1999). He writes:
‘. . . I hold the somewhat unusual view that artists are neurologists, studying the brain with techniques that are unique to them and reaching interesting but unspecified conclusions about the organization of the brain.’
When I read this, the bells really went off; the idea made complete sense to me as a practitioner, a dance teacher, and as a member of the audience. I had been watching Forsythe and the company carry out psychological experiments for decades. But, they were doing it in a more enabling way than the laboratory-based studies are capable, due to the necessity of minimising variables. Channelled through their works, Forsythe and his dancers were thinking about the ways in which we see and hear. And that opened the door for me to put this into dialogue with cognitive research about perception. I wanted to run these ideas up against each other and ask: is there a fit? Have they come to the same conclusions? What about the differences in laboratory cultures and the differences in constraints? Does Forsythe seem to recognise something that the scientists don't know? Or is he interested in different aspects of seeing and hearing than scientists are?
Under the right circumstances, artists can get a head start on scientific knowledge, as Jonah Lehrer pointed out, and even teach something to scientists. In the same ways as cognitive scientists do, a choreographer and their ensemble are thinking about how other minds are thinking in the context of the specific event. Beyond understanding the concept of the piece, possibilities open for encouraging audiences to think about what their senses are experiencing. Work that doesn't necessarily convey meaning in a linear fashion, but calls on the reader, the viewer or listener to create meaning – that can be very idiosyncratic. Furthermore, such approaches open up the need for the viewer or listener to engage with – and trust – their own interpretations.
DG: It’s fascinating to hear how Forsythe’s creative process contributed to your research. How did you become acquainted with Forsythe’s work and what intrigues you about it?
FV: Over the years, Forsythe’s work has taken many different forms. But, when I first saw it, he was working in the aesthetic for which he is perhaps best known: a really hyperkinetic engagement with the rules in the ballet codex and finding out, as he often says, how can this be otherwise? He took this approach to ballet movement and to the thematics of his pieces. From there his aesthetics changed throughout the 1990s and into the 2000s.
I think what fascinates me most is his work process – the ways in which his works are produced in the studio. Forsythe is not a dictatorial director, standing in the front of the room telling people what to do. His work is a dialogic process that produces genuinely collective work. There's a lot of suggestion; he'll ask the dancers to do something, but he doesn’t expect them to follow his instructions exactly. One dancer in the company described to me how she would work at the ‘edges’ of what he asked for, or even beyond them. As Forsythe puts it, he wants to see the dancers have an opinion about what he asks them to do. When they show that opinion, he then adds his own viewpoint, and together they build a dialogue, developing material in that way. This keeps learning going on both sides. Then, out of the huge mass of different bits of material that have been co-created, Forsythe selects, composes, and synthesises his pieces, reserving the freedom to alter, or even fully reconceive them, later.
DG: An interesting inside perspective on Forsythe’s creative process. As mentioned, you were his dramaturg. Could you tell us more about this role and what it entailed?
FV: For seven years, I was figuring out what Forsythe meant when he said dramaturg, as it's unique to every choreographer to determine what they want from a dramaturg. Dramaturgy in general is being a brain and eye for hire. In a more traditional model, you might be tasked with historical research, cultural research, or researching other productions. With Forsythe, though, I was a process dramaturg; watching artists create whilst listening to the room, as ideas were generated. I looked for opportunities to delineate what was happening in the process itself, while also being part of the ongoing dialogue with the director and ensemble about what the work might potentially become.
Forsythe’s dramaturgical process is a very distributed one. There's somebody in the room who's called the dramaturg, but the reality is that everyone is dramaturg-ing. The performers, musicians, designers, and the people who aren't even there. There's a sort of communal dramaturgy happening in the room, and my job was to participate in it from my own perspective, without nailing it down. Accordingly, programme texts were always brief (and made after premieres, not before) and audience talks focused on ‘the making of,’ rather than on what pieces were supposed to mean. This gives audiences the opportunity to think in the moment and think about what they are thinking. Although presenters were always desperate to be able to say and print more about works than ‘a new work by The Forsythe Company.’ Thankfully, someone else had the job of saying no!
DG: I’m curious about a conversation you had with William Forsythe for the Forsythe Lectures (Forsythe, 2014), during which, he mentioned that ‘… people are reading on stage … and the purpose for example of synchronous objects or improv technology which is the digital tool we made, was to help people read better … help audiences become more choreographically literate or dance literate.’ Could you define choreographic literacy and discuss it in reference to Forsythe’s work?
FV: Choreographic literacy is when audiences have an understanding of how dance performances work and can communicate their ideas. However, performances may not easily yield to interpretation or may have multiple interpretations or multiple visual centres of focus, or relationships to music or sound, which are not necessarily straightforward.
Forsythe once said: ‘Are we teaching people about the aesthetics at hand? No, we're teaching them about watching, about being a viewer. I'm not trying to refine someone's taste. I would like to make people who watch dancing better dance viewers’. So, choreographic literacy can be thought of as a skill set. Forsythe’s choreographies can be very complicated in terms of what I refer to as their visuo-sonority. Watching and listening to these types of dance performance is less straightforward and more visceral; it is not only sitting, watching a story pass before your eyes, not only watching as one dancer goes off and another dancer comes on, or the two sides of the stage reveal exactly the same thing, so you can watch either one and not feel as though you’re missing something. But, it is not chaos either. Very deliberate, if not necessarily conclusive, events are happening. Forsythe wants audiences to learn something about themselves and about theatre in general – it’s a perceptual didactics.
DG: This reminds me of your observation that ‘theatrical attention, like all attention, is guided by manifold cognitive goals and strategies of which we are commonly not consciously aware. These attentional strategies are the subject of research on intermodal perception, which aims to define the faculties that underpin our cognitive engagement with the world’ (Vass-Rhee, 2011). Could you please elaborate on some of these ‘manifold cognitive goals’ of theatrical attention?
FV: Theatre is a high-stakes environment where you’re primed to take in as much of what is happening as possible. This intake is not always easily facilitated in postdramatic theatre. But as humans we want to be able to see and hear as much as possible – to make connections between these different perceptual modes, and try to decipher narrative, even if there is no story being told. We are story-making creatures who understand cause and effect at a fundamental level. Our minds predict potential scenarios. For example, if we see someone running up the street, we project reasons why they might be running up the street. And we do the same when we watch dancing, in spite of its abstract nature. George Balanchine once said that, if you have two people standing on stage, you already have a story (Balanchine, 2004). Postdramatic dance, including the work of William Forsythe, also often complicates your viewing experience. Not everyone likes this. As the company’s production assistant, which entailed keep a running clock of the length of scenes in the booth every night, I noticed that a few audience members would often leave exactly twenty-seven minutes after the shows started. It was uncanny!
DG: How curious. Perhaps your observation of the twenty-seven minute threshold could inspire a hypothesis for a neuroaesthetics based experiment?
FV: Perhaps. But, maybe they were just thinking: ‘Well, it’s not 8pm yet – we can still do something else tonight!’
DG: Very true. I’d like to ask a little more about your insights into cognition for a moment, for example, that ‘a cognitive approach offers a valuable opportunity to reassess and perhaps even retool extant and developing theories of art-making and reception’ (Vass-Rhee, 2011). Could you explain why you favour a cognitive approach?
FV: I choose cognitive approaches because I prefer explanatory models to interpretive ones. They’re comforting in some way. But, scientific explanations are not necessarily truths with a capital ‘T’, and are not usually regarded as such by the scientists who offer them. In terms of the survival of the art form and understanding dance-making as the highly intelligent and canny research craft that it is, empirical research might help it survive and thrive as an artistic practice. So, I think it’s important that this gets done. I’ve also heard people express concerns that knowing too much about how an art-form or dance works might ruin the experience – but I believe that quality art retains its power regardless.
DG: On the topic of research, from 2011 to 2015, you were an associate researcher with the Dance Engaging Science workgroup of the Motion Bank Project, The Forsythe Company, Frankfurt. Could you give us some insight into what inspired this project and what occurred?
FV: Professor Scott deLahunta was responsible for both Dance Engaging Science and the larger Motion Bank Project of which Dance Engaging Science was a part. Motion Bank was meant to develop ways of promoting understanding of the choreographic process for four different artists, with Forsythe’s ‘Synchronous Objects for One Flat Thing, reproduced’ as the project’s cornerstone.
Scott had a history of conducting initiatives which brought dance-makers, dance theorists, and scientists into dialogue with each other. Dance Engaging Science brought together cognitive psychologists, philosophers, anthropologists, dancers, and dance theorists for a series of meetings. The idea was to have collaborative dialogues, including getting the scientists into the studio and having them engage in movement practice and discuss the experience. It was a really fruitful project. Some of the researchers are still collaborating ten years on, and some of the dancers have gone forward with their own research; co-publishing with scientists, moving into PhD programmes, and developing their own choreographic practices.
DG: And, now to go full circle and turn the focus back to your academic pursuits. What would you like to research next and what do you think is an important direction for new researchers to take?
FV: I am wrapping up a book manuscript on Forsythe’s works and working methods, and moving towards more applied directions. In particular, I’m looking at dance and ageing, which connects with work that I’ve done on the curation of expertise. Since funding for research in the arts and humanities has become ever more scarce over the past ten-fifteen years, the applications and impact of research have become more and more important, and it has also become more and more important for artists to share their knowledge for the benefit and education of the general public. I believe that interdisciplinary literacy is absolutely key.
For more about Dr Vass and her work, please visit: https://www.kent.ac.uk/arts/people/2144/vass-freya
References
Lehmann, H.-T. (2006). Postdramatic Theatre. Routledge.
Vass-Rhee, F. (2011). Audio-Visual Stress: Cognitive Approaches to the Perceptual Performativity of William Forsythe and Ensemble[UC Riverside]. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/24q5c71p
Vass-Rhee, F. (2012a). Still failing after all these years: William Forsythe’s Yes We Can't: dramaturg's note. https://kar.kent.ac.uk/66300/1/Still%20Failing%20After%20All%20These%20Years%202012.pdf
Vass-Rhee, F. (2012b). William Forsythe’s I don’t believe in outer space: dramaturg’s note. https://kar.kent.ac.uk/66301/1/Dramaturg’s%20note%20Outer%20Space.pdf
Zeki, S. (1999). Inner vision : an exploration of art and the brain. Oxford University Press.
All images shown courtesy of © 2021 Freya Vass and © 2021 Dominik Mentzos