The power of interactive flow in salsa dance: a motion-sensing phenomenological inquiry featuring two-time world champion, Anya Katsevman

Abstract

What might it be like to sense one’s motile power as a follower in salsa dance, particularly in moments when flow manifests? Does a follower simply go along with the lead’s flow or does a different kind of flow emerge? Such questions guided this motion-sensing phenomenological (MSP) inquiry into the felt sense of power experienced in the movements of interactive flow that features two-time world salsa champion, coach, and international judge, Anya Katsevman. Over the course of four years, interviews, observations and coaching sessions were analysed through theories purported by dance phenomenologist Maxine Sheets-Johnstone, Daniel Stern, a psychologist who inspired much of Sheets-Johnstone’s writing on the primacy of movement, and the radical phenomenology of Michel Henry who provides a philosophy upon which one may frame the phenomenological ‘search’ for meaning in kinaesthetic terms. The conceptual structure that guided the motion-sensing gathering of data and analysis was the interdisciplinary Function2Flow (F2F) model with its constitutive dimensions of movement Function, Form, Feeling and Flow. As such, the MSP analysis organized in accordance to the F2F model afforded the emergence of micro nuances, detailed physical sensations of this practice, within this macro themed structure. Hence, in detailing the bodily functions and forms of the nuanced gestural communication in salsa dance, with particular attention on the motile sense of power experienced by a follower, a physical pathway to better understanding existential feelings of interactive flow emerged.