Engaged and confused: Aesthetic appreciation of live and screened contemporary dance.

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Lee, Haeeun; Ashwell, Charlie; Sperling, Matthias; Rai, Laura and Orgs, Guido. 2025. Engaged and confused: Aesthetic appreciation of live and screened contemporary dance. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, ISSN 1931-3896 [Article] (In Press)

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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1037/aca0000727

Abstract or Description

Aesthetic cognitivism assumes a positive relationship between aesthetic experience and knowledge acquisition. Here, we study this relationship in the context of contemporary dance. 207 audience members watched either a live performance or a screening of a contemporary dance duet and reported on their aesthetic experience after the show. Qualitatively, a thematic analysis of open questions revealed that the audience recalled the performance in both descriptive and imaginative ways, highlighting ambiguity and meaning making as recurrent ways of engagement. Quantitatively, a principal component analysis revealed two distinct dimensions of aesthetic experience: engagement and confusion. Simple group comparisons suggested that engagement was higher in the live than in the screened performances and among spectators not equipped with additional measurement devices (mobile electroencephalograms). However, these effects disappeared when prior dance experience was taken into account. In contrast, perceived confusion did not depend on live or screened performance context, wearing measurement devices, or prior dance experience. Our findings suggest that dance experience is an important predictor of how people engage with dance across both live and recorded performance contexts. Moreover, we show that ambiguity and confusion are not necessarily aversive components of aesthetic experience but can be experienced as artistically intended features of an artwork, and in the process become a form of engagement, more so if viewers have sufficient experience with the art form. Our findings therefore challenge a conceptualization of aesthetic experience as a simple by-product of insight and suggest a distinction between pleasure from experiencing and pleasure from understanding.

Item Type:

Article

Identification Number (DOI):

https://doi.org/10.1037/aca0000727

Additional Information:

Funding: This research project has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (Grant Agreement 864420—Neurolive).

Keywords:

aesthetic cognitivism, liveness, dance, expertise, ambiguity

Departments, Centres and Research Units:

Psychology

Dates: