Indecipherable describes a piece of language that is difficult or impossible to understand or attain meaning from. It can be defined as not being able to be read or understood. Something that is not understandable and not possible to deduce what the words or language are about.
In Dramaturgy in Moton, Jones stated that Paxton was avoiding recognisable choreography that may allow the audience to more clearly perceive the performance. Paxton responded by saying that when one has researched a branch of an art form, there will be research that does not connect. This is due to the very nature of research as discussed by Profeta previously, while doing research there will be new things to be discovered. Subsequently, there will be concepts that can not “be languaged” coherently (p. 26). The first ideas articulated about certain moments will subsequently be indecipherable.
The dialogue exchanged between Jones and Paxton reminded me of something Profeta had mentioned earlier. Movement artists frequently talk about issues around putting something into language, or in their linguistic shortcut term, “languaging” (p. 26). This implies that language comes second, as there is something previously “to be languaged”. Subsequently, Profeta draws on the conclusion that the languaging process is applied to motion. However, when the motion remains ambiguous, it will be extremely challenging “to language” something, subsequently creating an indecipherable situation. I had never viewed language in such a way where the discovery of a motion could be truly indecipherable. I always held the belief that language had the ability to explain everything in a clear and concise manner if we found the right words, phrases and structure. However, this text has challenged my beliefs.
Profeta, Katherine. 2015. Dramaturgy in Motion: At Work on Dance and Movement Performance. Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press,
Hi Lubnah,
As you take more humanities courses, you will discover that so many have written about language’s failures and deceptions. That is too large a subject for me to get into in this post, but I will briefly talk about it in terms of movement. There was a moment in class where we watched one of your peers talk and make expressive facial and hand movements and we asked “why?” If language was complete, why did anyone need to expend energy adding on the physical effort? Bodies are expressive — but not just of the word that language signifies. On a very biological level, breathing is expressive. The word denotes the fact of air’s intake and output — but not all the qualities of any singular breath, how it fills up the lungs, how the quality of air effects the body (I could go on and on). Movement may signify some of the effects of those qualities — not just in addition to the word but it could change an emphasis that the word or phrase does not have the capacity to convey. But most importantly, movements can express energetic states in specific forms that may yet have not been imagined and so the struggle for “languaging” which is actually not defining what just went on (for it probably cannot fully describe the exploration) but instead marking or noting that it did happen — and that it is a verbal or written “sketch” or indication of a new phenomenon that might be able to be repeated or explored more thoroughly.