Do you feel the same way too? How motor experience changes the way we see dance

As an audience member of a dance, theatre performance or a film screening, we often wonder what the person sitting next to us feels. Intuitively, we believe that as a result of watching the same thing, you would delve into the same emotions. However, personal experiences clearly affect the way we respond to certain narratives. In the motor domain, neuroscientists found a link between observation and execution in the so-called mirror-neuron network. Neurons in these brain areas are enhanced when we execute an action as well as when we just passively observe the same action. Hence, these areas are supposedly crucial in the process of understanding others. However, do these neurons really let you feel what the other person is doing?
Dance can provide valuable insight into the spectators’ state of mind. I will present my most recent work that investigated how personal factors (embodied practices, personality) affect how spectators’ respond to watching dance. I will also discuss the relevance of the type of stimuli used when studying action observation. In the studies presented, I used movement phrases of the dance company Emio Greco|PC which has a distinguished movement vocabulary that evolves through the lived intentionality articulated in and through the movements.