unspoken knowledges

The network of dynamic and spatial relationships which characterises a fine choreographic creation is evidence of complex thinking in four dimensions. The subtle interactions between mind and motion necessary for the creation of such complex structures are the subject of this paper. But questions about form and structure are not only asked by artists. My students and other interesting people seek answers to questions which have only been formulated in the latter part of our troubled twentieth century by writers and thinkers from a range of disciplines. The words brain and mind have often been used interchangeably in the past. New knowledge from evolutionary theory and the neurosciences now allows us to see the brain as a biological given and the mind as a cultural construct. Contemporary thinkers in many disciplines ranging across philosophy, the sciences and the arts are beginning to find that the postmodern fixation on context has a venerable history. While a relational view of the cosmos was an idea brought to fruition by Einstein in the twentieth century, its echoes in theories of complexity and chaos now find resonance in the arts. The research project Unspoken Knowledges at the Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne has time to trace a complex choreographic journey and to ask questions about the way artists view the world and the relationship between the nature of choreographic thought and its relationship to more universal themes.

Key words: Structure, relational, evolution, emergence, dynamic, complexity.