SESSIONS

Paper

Can an elemental experience of LMA help ethnology students researching dance theater and performance?
LYNTON, Anadel - Mexico

Over the past three semesters I have been teaching a seminar on ethnographic research for students of the National School of Anthropology and History in Mexico City. These students chose this seminar because they are interested in writing their thesis on themes related to dance theater and performance.

Some of these students have studied dance in classes of Spanish, Oriental, African, Mexican traditional or contemporary dance and even butoh. Others are enthusiastic participants in social dance forms such as swing, danzón, cumbia, salsa. huapango, son or dance at raves.

Others have been working with professional circus and wrestling in a non performing status or are active participants in a politically motivated batucada which uses Brazilian style percussion while marching or dancing in demonstrations marches and fund raising events.

Within the weekly 4 hour seminar I devote half the session to a discussion of bibliography and of students’ initial research projects and field observations. The other half of the time during part of the semester I have used for teaching the rudiments of movement analysis through experiential practice and theory in order to try to help my students observe movement in more informed ways and enrich their analysis using some elements of LMA in order to make elemental comparisons of differing movement styles and help support the construction hypotheses related to possible symbols and meanings.

Although a more thorough introduction to movement analysis would require a much greater investment in time than is available (the main focus of the seminar is in applying ethnographic research methods to field work and to the organization and presentation of research projects) I believe that the brief introduction I have been able to give my students has been of enormous value in helping them actually observe the movement and compare different ways of moving within and between groups and genres. Unfortunately, movement is still basically considered as irrelevant or unfathomable as part of ethnographic studies (which tend to describe the interactions of social institutions and identities) and I cannot assume that LMA can become be a major research technique for use in my students thesis. The fact that the members of their thesis committees would not be experts in LMA excludes its extensive use. One of my students who is participating in an regional ethnographic study of the Nahuas of the Sierra Norte de Puebla was told the directors of the project that she could study the occasions, dates, places and groups that participate in the traditional ritual dances that are performed in the communities but not describe the dances themselves.
We still have a long way to go to have dance and movement considered as a carrier of meaning just as significant as words architecture murals of sculpture.

Since I graduated from the school 40 years ago several attempts have been made to help dance become an area for anthropological study of equivalent importance as ethnomusicology or visual anthropology. The existence of this 2 year seminar is one more try at focusing on live movement performance in contemporary society and has attracted the interest of quite a few students.

I will describe several of the students’ projects and how they have used LMA as a general approach to understanding movement along with a few more specific and technical applications carried out by a few. I will conclude with some reflexions ways I hope that in the future LMA may become an important tool in anthropological studies of movement performance.