Relational Flow in Improvisational Tap Dancing: A Phenomenological Study

Abstract

This motion-sensing phenomenological inquiry explores relational flow moments experienced by five professional tap dance artists in improvisational inter-action with jazz musicians to better understand the meaning of feeling relational flows in inter-activities. Guided through the Function-to-Flow conceptual framework, interviews and study with the five research participants focused on the functional capacities required to feel relational flows (e.g. movement repertoire and listening being), the form and structures of feeling relational flows (e.g. visible, audible, animatable and tangible forms of relational flows), and the feelings of relational flow experiences (e.g. connecting to, disconnecting from and transcending the self, Other and spiritual world) to discern meaning from inter-active, improvisational jazz-tap experiences. A motion-sensing phenomenological approach, which combines Max van Manen's hermeneutics with Michel Henry's material phenomenology of life to turn not simply to the things themselves but to the how of their appearing - that is, to the affective resonances of living, of bodily being - enables a primacy of sensorial attunement to the affects of kinaesthetic being or the feelings of being a body in motion. Interviews with the participants reveal meanings of relational flow in improvisational tap dance practices, and align with Maxine Sheets-Johnstone's call to phenomenologically inquire into the extraordinary experiential movement realities of professional dancers to deepen our understanding of the effect of their honed kinetic capacities. This inquiry seeks to not only deepen our knowledge of relational flow experiences, but also to add to research on tap dance, improvisational practice, and dance education more broadly.