Loco-motion in between Mind and Matter: an autoethnographic view on Jungian synchronicity in dance improvisation

Abstract

This research explores the Jungian concept of synchronicity through the field of dance improvisation. The concept of synchronicity as introduced by psychoanalyst Carl Jung, has first been described as an “acausal connecting principle.” Other than the Newtonian principle of causality, synchronistic events are connected through the meaning they reveal. As the concept of meaning implies a subject who is doing the meaning-making, synchronicity is a subjective experience, where an internal states connects with an external event. Through a variety of research methods using both autoethnography and bibliographic research, and both the perspective of the creator and of the spectator, dance improvisation serves as the field to explore this Jungian concept. The research makes use of transpersonal psychology, dance and movement studies, Eastern and shamanistic wisdom, and performance art, to answer the question of how can dance improvisation serve in an understanding of Jungian synchronicity? One of the main lines of thought is that the performative practice of dance improvisation is exactly about the interaction between subjective states (impulses, sensations, and imaginations) and objective events (physical expression and performance), and that dance improvisation is an embodied mediation between psyche and matter, which serves both in an experience and in an understanding of synchronistic occurrences.