Abstract
What happens to the ludic in movement systems such as ballet and Tai Chi? The concern here is to understand the physical nature of the ludic, how the comic is embedded in bodily actions and gestures, and how comedy then appears in the bodily practices of theatre, dance, and Tai Chi. How is it that dance gestures and dance meaning often become caricatures, and are even theatricalized, when comic sensibilities are expressed? Merleau-Ponty’s discussion of the gesture will be used as evidence for understanding the interior physical smile found within aesthetic forms of body training.
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Notes
- 1.
Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture (Boston: Beacon, 1962), 14–15.
- 2.
Norman Cousins, Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient (New York: W. W. Norton, 2005), 44.
- 3.
Ibid., 91–2.
- 4.
Ibid., 166.
- 5.
Ibid., 172–3.
- 6.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception. Trans. Colin Smith (New York: Routledge, 1966), 186.
- 7.
Ibid., 197.
- 8.
Ibid.
- 9.
Ibid., 185.
- 10.
Elinor Hitt, Interview with Jonathon Robinson-Appels. Personal Interview. March 28, 2018.
- 11.
Huizinga, Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture, 14.
- 12.
Adison Martin. Interview with Jonathon Robinson-Appels. Personal Interview.
- 13.
Gregory Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2000), 182.
- 14.
Ibid.
- 15.
Ibid., 183.
- 16.
Ibid., 181.
- 17.
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, Volume I. Ed. G.E.M. Anscombe and G.H. von Wright, Trans G.E.M. Anscombe (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1988), 75.
- 18.
Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past, Volume II. Trans. C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin (New York: Vintage, 1982), 180.
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Robinson-Appels, J. (2021). Comedy, Physicality, and Ludic Dance Gestures: The Comic in Ballet and Tai Chi?. In: Rapti, V., Gordon, E. (eds) Ludics. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7435-1_11
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