Introduction

This introductory chapter sets the research question of the project and shares the rationale for it with the reader. It presents the conceptual framework for the project. Understandings of emotion and dance in common discourse within dance practice are discussed, together with terms such as emotion and mood. All these are found to be inadequate to describe the experiences of emotion in contemporary theatre dance. The chapter further discusses the spectatorial experience of dance, reviewing theories that have dealt with the experience of art, including aesthetic experience, disinterest, and kinesthetic empathy. ‘Emotional import’ is then proposed as a term which is based on the focus on the work, but includes context, background, and emotions of all agents involved (choreographer, dancer, spectator), because the experience of dance is understood as embodied affective cognition. Emotional import emerges from perceptual properties of the work, which are in turn both emergent from physical properties, and dependent on the experience of spectator and choreographer, hence the experience of emotional import is proposed as active and perspectival. Links between the experience of the choreographer when creating the work, and that of the spectator when watching are developed in the chapter. The chapter also sets up the research/analysis process and the case studies and introduces the organisation of the book.