To perceive someone or something as doing or being a particular thing is your opinion that they do this thing or that they are that thing. In other words, it is to become aware of something using one of the sense, especially that of sight. Cambridge dictionary defines perception as, “to come to an opinion about something, or have a belief about something” It is noticing someone or something that is obvious.
Perception in Katherine Profeta’s Dramaturgy in Motion book shows what audiences to perceive from a set of choices. Not only it shows desirability but also arose in mysterious fashion. Profeta has stated in her book, “The implication was that he perceived what was ‘new’ each time in relation to what was the same” Itineration of dramaturgical motions creates multiple perceptions for a similar task which is the behavior of perception.
“Every movement is a dance” is a verse from a traditional rapper in my country, Ethiopia. Before taking Aakash’s class about how every movement means something meaningful, this quote was always in my mind but couldn’t reflect it out. If audiences are open minded to perceive things around all our movements in our daily life are dance, as we have discussed it in class. Perception shows how dance is integrated into our daily routine, how movement can be a language without words. That is why I found ”perception” an interesting word in showing how movement makes meaning.
Cambridge English Dictionary Accessed 5 Jan 2018. dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/fluidity. Profeta, Katherine. 2015. "Research" Dramaturgy in Motion: At Work on Dance and Movement Performance. 61-87. USA: University of Wisconsin,
Hi Yohannes,
So perception is primarily associated with taking in stimuli in a visual manner – although there are other ways to experience stimuli – like kinesthetic or somatic perception – which privileges touch as a kind of knowledge generated by a body in movement. But to perceive is not only to take in stimuli – but to prioritize all the stimuli you take in, to name and make associations between the stimuli (like oh – that is a green chair and Johannes, wearing a red shirt is sitting on it). You do many things when you “think” this thought – you have already received stimuli and processed them – but you interpret the stimuli based on prior experience (that is a person – that is a chair – I know that because I have seen many similar objects and interacted with them). Dance seems harder – it is not easy to fix on one “image” because what we were doing is perceiving images changing over time and both the images and the change (the motion) are prioritized. And then the patterns of motion themselves are imbued with cultural meaning – which also has to be learnt in order to think of dance as more than pretty patterns. While we all “dance’ and partake in its enjoyment, when our perceptions are educated and brought to the forefront, we can understand dance like we do language. When we don’t understand language we might like the sounds uttered but we still can’t understand specific meaning. When we don’t understand dance we might enjoy the motion and the plastic elements. But a deeper enjoyment comes with perception that can be synthesized and interpreted.