The Neurocognition of Dance

Bettina Bläsing is a Responsible Investigator at the Center of Excellence Cognitive Interaction Technology (CITEC) at Bielefeld University, Germany. She studied Biology at Bielefeld University and Animal Behaviour at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. Bettina worked as science journalist and editor, as scientific coordinator at the University of Leipzig and as a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology before joining the Neurocognition and Action Research Group at Bielefeld University in 2006. Her main research interests are mental representations of movement, body and space, the control and learning of complex full body movements and manual actions, and expertise in sports and dance. Martin Puttke was formerly a dancer, headmaster and artistic director of the State Ballet School Berlin. He was also the ballet director of the State Opera Ballet Company Berlin and of the Aalto Ballett Theater Essen. He is a renowned ballet pedagogue. In 1988 he became a Professor at the Hochschule für Schauspielkunst 'Ernst Busch' Berlin. His main interest is the renewal of the school of classical dance by his new system DANAMOS. Thomas Schack is Professor and Head of the Neurocognition and Action Research Group at Bielefeld University. He is Principal Investigator at the Center of Excellence Cognitive Interaction Technology (CITEC) and member of the Research Institute for Cognition and Robotics (CoR-Lab). His main research interests concern mental movement representation, mental training, cognitive robotics and the neurocognitive basis of complex movement.

Ipke Wachsmuth: Foreword for the first edition

Freya Vass-Rhee: Foreword for the second edition

Bettina Bläsing, Martin Puttke & Thomas Schack: Introduction: Moving towards a multidisciplinary neuro-cognitive science of dance

Part II: The dance perspective

Martin Puttke: Learning to dance means learning to think!

Galeet BenZion: The Kinematics Teaching Methodology: Marrying kinesthetic stimuli with reading instruction

Elizabeth Waterhouse: In-Sync: Entrainment in dance

Gregor Zöllig: Searching for that 'other land of dance': The phases in developing a choreography

Scott deLahunta & Philip Barnard: Seeing the ‘choreographic mind’: Three analytic lenses developed to probe and notate creative thinking in dance

Part II: The science perspective

Thomas Schack: Building blocks and architecture of dance: a cognitive–perceptual perspective

David A. Rosenbaum: Shall we dance again? Action researchers and dancers can move together

Holk Cruse & Malte Schilling: Getting cognitive

Bettina Bläsing: The dancer’s memory: learning with the body from the remembered, the percieved and the imagined

Part III: Neurocognitive Studies of Dance

Beatriz Calvo-Merino: Neural mechanisms for seeing dance

Emily S. Cross: Building a dance in the human brain: Insights from expert and novice dancers

Guido Orgs, Beatriz Calvo-Merino & Emily S. Cross: Knowing dance or knowing how to dance? Sources of expertise in aesthetic appreciation of human movement.

Corinne Jola: Choreographed science: Merging dance and cognitive neuroscience