The sensing eye: Intimate vision in couple dancing

Abstract

Vision tends to be associated with the mind and theorized as the least bodily sense. Notably, the eye often symbolizes distance. Foregrounding the fleshy embeddedness of the gaze through an analysis of jitterbug, the present article stresses the bodily and intimate significance of vision in dancing. Analyzing ethnographic observation and interview data, we develop a phenomenological approach to dance and gaze that stresses the need to address multi-sensoriality, adding vision to the perspective of tactile-kinesthetic touch. However, the article develops a more-than-optic perspective on “dancing as vision.” The “sensing eye” is analyzed, first, as a body technique central to couple dancing and, second, as the use and meaning of vision across spatial distance, as between dancers and bystanders. Throughout the article, the dance floor unveils connections between eye and body, self and other, and passive and active and thus pushes notions of emplacement and embodiment.