Making Movement Visible. Multimodal Correction and Demonstration in the Dance Class

The contribution considers the ways in which expert dancers teach to enact movement configurations and sequences to their students. More specifically, it focuses on correction sequences and the demonstrations --or exemplar movement (re)enactments-- they involve. The expert tasks consists of making movement and its properties visible and reco- gnizable, publicly available. To this end, s/he employs a fully multimo- dal conduct, yet one constrained in multiple ways by the involvement of her/his body in enacting the targeted movement --a feature pecu- liar to the teaching of bodily practices. By the analysis of a correction sequence, we shall discuss, first, a typical format of hetero-correction in the dance class --i.e., differential dichotomic demonstration-- that contrasts an incorrect with a correct version of the movement confi- guration. Second, we shall examine the isolation move that precedes each demonstration in order to present the latter as such. Finally, we shall consider four dimensions of the multimodal, exemplar enactment of bodily movement --i.e., segmentation, slowdown, repetition and emphasis.