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Choreomanic NeuroDance and Its Aesthetics: Dance Research and Controversies Connected to Cognitive Neuroscience and Meme Theory

Hecker's nineteenth century study of the compulsive dance (his insight into a massive-scale " common delusion " widespread in Europe with detailed description of its health hazards and fatal outcomes) gains on relevance when reread from the contemporary perspective. The research of the Medieval dancing mania should not stop at discovering mechanisms of health and disease that lie behind this phenomenon. Social sciences method-ologies are applied to improve health, but there are some areas of research that remain in the theoretical no man's land between medical social sciences, cognitive neurosciences, memetic theory and – in this particular case – performance theory. Neuroscience research has demonstrated common neural mechanisms between executed and observed action at the neural level. Neuroimaging experiments in humans have showed the activation of a fronto-parietal neural network that is involved in the observation and imagination of action. There are also new insights into the problem of the self representing the other, with the new cognitive neu-roscience view of psychological identification. Contemporary research in developmental science , cognitive psychology, and neuroscience provides cumulative evidence for a view of similarities in the construction of representations of the self and others. Trevarthen's term (1979) intersubject sympathy – a predisposition to be sensitive and responsive to the subjective states of other people – gains in relevance in the light of the newly conducted experiments with neonatal imitation. These findings have led Gallagher and Meltzoff (1996) to propose that the understanding of the other person is primarily a form of embodied practice. (2004). Reciprocal imitation is now seen as a natural paradigm to explore self–other connect-edness. We can hypothesize about neurological aspects of empathy where the shared representations model (visible in the choreography) may also be applied to the processing of emotions so that the perception of emotion would activate the neural mechanisms that are responsible for the generation of emotions, prompt the observer to resonate with the state of another individual. The fresh insight into the phenomenon of medieval choreomania shows its benefits when it comes to discussing controversies in Meme Theory, for example the confusion regarding the distinction between replicator and phenotype, the problem of inheritance of acquired characteristics, the relationship between memetics and sociobiology, and the selection or mutation of memes being carried out by conscious foresight. The analysis ofchoreomania is potentially rewarding because it gives possibility to see (in a most drastic way) the effects ofgerm-line replication. A particular choreo-memeplex is instantiated on neuronal level. The most intriguing element of analysis of the dancing plague choreo-memeplex is on the crossroad between the subconscious and the conscious where the process of pairing of memetic phenotype characterization with the ideal thematic primitive takes place. It is doubtful whether we should interpret the particular germ-line replication process (choreo-mime symptomatology related to the dancing plague) as pathological condition. From the sociomedical perspective it is clearly so. On the other hand, from the point of view of memetic theory, it is not deviance from the norm in the process of creating meme-products.

dance, choreomania, meme theory, neuroscience, performance studies

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