Exploring Embodied Imagination in musical performance
I recently attended the Stellenbosch International Chamber Music Festival. It’s an event that has been ongoing for the past nineteen years, with next year, 2025 marking its twentieth anniversary. Besides being blown away by the world class performances by superb international artists, I was particularly impressed by a violin master class presented by Madeleine Adkins, Concertmaster of the Utah Symphony Orchestra.
Waiting for the class to I begin I was pondering; given the high standard of the students, what technical advice she would give if the student was technically perfect? Or perhaps what could she “add” to their performance and what on earth could that be? From my seat (as a layman) I was quite nervous on her behalf.
The previous day I watched two of the students participating in this masterclass play in a string quartet and was blown away by their technical brilliance and depth of performance. If anything this was certainly going to be entertaining.
The young violinist, a second year student at Stellenbosch University, walked onto stage, confidently told the small audience what she would be playing, and proceeded, without the score to play with absolute brilliance and precision. It was clear she had spent much time on this piece and knew it perfectly. Astounded by her technique and infallible memory I thought, “a masterclass indeed!”
Having just witnessed a brilliantly executed piece, with all the hallmarks of dedicated practice, I thought that surely Madeline could find no fault. To my unexpected delight, Madeline brought the audience along into an entirely unforeseen direction; with a soulful class in the embodiment of musical imagination. To think that Embodied Imagination would show up here of all places… I found my heart pleasingly warmed by this turn of events.
In the words of Robert Bosnak (founder of EI), Embodied Imagination is a ‘world creating power’. It is the embodiment or the ‘bodying forth’ of the creative cosmogonic force of pure, ontologically “real” imagination. It is therefore the act of giving or receiving tangibility or sensory perception for/of an idea, sense or feeling. In other words it is providing (in any direction, either to the image or from the image) physicality to imagination.
Embodiment has become somewhat of a buzzword within the ever expanding Body-Mind wellness industry. From this perspective, ‘embodiment' refers to paying acute attention to the body and its sensory experience. Effectively bridging the gap between mind and matter, embodiment encourages one to appreciate the fact that the body plays a significant role in the way you not only perceive reality but also the in way you are in reality.
Embodied Imagination, focuses less on proprioception (although still a very important aspect) and more on interoception, the internal sensate experience. Beyond that, it also integrates the imaginal faculty with the awakened senses of the body. Essentially it is initiating an active dialogue between the ‘self' and ‘other’ as creative conception. I think of it as similar to the Hindu concept of ‘Lila’; the active dance between the Absolute (Mind-at-large) and the contingent physical material plane.
Returning to the masterclass with Madeline, the focus had shifted from technical prowess to the felt-sense of the music itself. Madeline skilfully guided the student to feel into the music. She had the student look beyond intonation and technicality and initiated an exploration into the feeling and emotional quality of the music. She did this by asking the student to sense the intention within the music, to sense into its various qualia, into how it feels…
In Embodied Imagination this act of perception occurs from the stand point of ‘negative capability’, from a blank page so to speak, without any preconceived notions, ideation or projections. We let the imagination, in this case the music, come to us, guiding us into its autonomous and independent intention. We do not “role play” or pretend what the imagination or the music is saying. Instead we wait for truth, for the creative imagination within the music to guide us and to move us according to its volition.
This act of virginal perception; allowing the dynamic effect of the music to affect one’s body, is to open our heart to the living imagination within the music. As the heart opens to this living imagination we are able to see into the heart of things, what Rainer Rilke called divine “in-seeing”.
From an Embodied Imagination perspective, as Madeline encouraged the student to focus her awareness into the music and let the music dictate her movements and her style of playing, consciously or not, she had to open her heart to “live” in the music. This “in-seeing” and opening the heart moves her into the realm of creative imagination and the world of soul. In Embodied Imagination, following the teachings of Islamic and Sufi scholar Henry Corbin, we call this the Mundus Imaginalis; the in-between realm where creative imagination (and your dreams) originate. As an artist it is that mercurial space where we can “be” in pure creativity, where immanence and transcendence exists simultaneously in the very moment of the now.
To be fair, this is not an instinctual or façile space to locate and access. It requires one to let go of one’s persona; In the case of the student studying music, that persona who has to memorise the piece and play it perfectly. You have to empty yourself and make yourself available to receive the intention coming from the music. This letting go is in fact only half the process. The other half is the practice of waiting and sensing. Slowly, and with time, this quiet feeling whispers from within and begins to radiate outwards through the body. Often this feeling finds its focused expression in one particular bodily place or anchor point. It requires trust in the process to follow this feeling and let it dictate its own intention.
I’m not sure if this kind of embodiment practice happens often in a music class, I don’t think so? I don think it happens much in any academic situation for that matter. We are forever busy in our minds, constantly learning new information, new compositions, repertoire, history and theory. There is very little place for embodiment in our cognitive-orientated world view. As Madeline’s masterclass demonstrated, once your technique is perfect and you have flawlessly memorised the piece, its only through embodiment that we can penetrate into the true heart of the music.
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