Abstrakt
In this contribution, we investigate Maxine Sheets-Johnstone's concept of 'virtual totality' of danced movements, in which Sheets-Johnstone develops Susanne Langer's concept of presenting or creating an 'illusion of force' or 'virtual force' through the symbolic form of danced movements. According to Langer, the primary illusion of 'virtual force' symbolised by danced movements is related a secondary illusion of temporally and spatially ordered movements.
Sheets-Johnstone adopts this distinction between primary and secondary illusion and emphasises that the virtual dimension of dance itself must be 'spatially unified and temporally continuous'. Spatiality and temporality of dance are neither secondary illusions nor external supportive devices: they are the 'intrinsic structures' of the primary illusion.
In this context, Sheets-Johnstone highlights the existence of dance's 'ekstatic structure' that is always unique. This individual structure of the ekstatic nature of the flow of virtual force can be described in relation to various qualities: tensional, linear, areal, and projectional.
This approach to describing the structure of the flow of the virtual force enables Sheets-Johnstone to employ the concept of imaginary existence developed by Jean-Paul Sartre. Nevertheless, it should be noted that Sheets-Johnstone describes the ekstatic nature of the virtual sphere of dance with reference to other important phenomenological notions as well: she brings in Jean-Paul Sartre's concept of original temporality and the notion of spatial presence of conscious-body that had been developed especially by Maurice Merleau-Ponty.
The aim of this contribution is to investigate the status of this virtual wholeness of the ekstatic structure of dance. We highlight the specific nature of totality of virtual force, which constitutes an 'inviolable synthesis, both spatially and temporally'.
We emphasise that according to Sheets-Johnstone, the distinction between the spatiotemporal aspect of an actual force and spatiotemporal aspects of a virtual force is rooted in the fact that the virtual sphere cannot be split into points and movements. This sphere exists 'across' a divisible multiplicity of instants and points.
In the virtual sphere, space and time form a totality whose elements can be viewed separately but can 'never exist in isolation from one another'. Sheets-Johnstone states that dance always exists as a 'unified multiplicity', as both 'dispersed' and 'coherent'.
Nevertheless, this multiplicity must also be conceived of as a 'unique totality', a unique result of intermingling of movements developed in time and space. Each particular organisation of the 'past-present-future' within dance presents a specific spatiality and temporality, which particularises the virtual force or the illusion of force.
We suggest that one could generalise Sheets-Johnstone's account of the specific virtual totality of dance and regard it as applicable to the nature of any work of art. In other words, we claim that any work of art constitutes a 'wholeness' comparable to the unified and unique multiplicity of dance.