Agency in instructed action, or the order in motion: A dance lesson for the
                             Students of Religions

   Introduction

   The last year at this conference I was advocating the Actor-Network-Theory
   (ANT) approach to the study of religion. In the meantime I got a unique
   chance to study the dancers during a semi-annual project of a dance
   improvisation. I welcomed it as a rare occasion to study social order in
   making. Under the influence of John Law´s Organizing Modernity I decided
   to study it as organising practices which make - in this case dancers, not
   scientists and their managers - manage their achievements.

   So my presentation concerns the ordering of dance improvisation. Yet, I
   believe that this presentation on dance can illuminate also the way we
   research religion. As I said, I am primarily interested in the problem of
   order. By referring to John Law I am saying that I do not think that we
   can achieve much by taking "order" as a kind of stable object. The order
   means, first of all, the many different practices and aims of ordering.
   This is a lesson the ANT scholars have learned from Harold Garfinkel´s
   ethnomethodology. That the order is temporary achievement of hard efforts
   of all involved actors.

   Relation to the Study of Religions

   Students of religion believe that religion has something to do with social
   order either. They take it for granted, I think, when they speak of
   cultural and social significance of religion. Yet, too often they
   presuppose that religion is something quite stable, that it is some
   structure, some organization, some knowledge, some habits which organize
   society. This way of thinking I would say, is both inappropriate and
   harmful. It is one of the sources of our tendencies to marginalize all
   those whose voice is weaker, difficult to hear. It is this tendency to see
   things as naturally stable, and to see religions, cultures, societies as
   monoliths, what makes us overhear dissenting voices, weak voices, and what
   makes us neglect ambiguities, uncertainties, and controversies. One of my
   aims then, is to highlight dissent, ambiguity, uncertainty and controversy
   as the common part of our everyday life and a crucial aspect of ordering
   reality. As such, it is, I would claim, also a common and crucial part of
   whatever we call religion as well. And definitely, much of religion
   consists of an instructed action. On this ground I hope that my following
   lesson of dance might be of use also to the students of religions.

   The bottom line of this is that (a) much of what I say of the instructed
   action will apply also to those kinds of instructed actions we might find
   in religion, and (b) that "religious" activities can serve, just like the
   dance, as a laboratory to study the order in everyday making. By "everyday
   making" I am referring also to the fact that all the stories I am going to
   narrate are concerned with very ordinary things, which everybody is
   familiar with.

   The Data and the Field

   Before I start narrating let me say few comments on the data I am using.
   These are mostly my field notes which I recorded due to having a chance to
   accompany the dancers throughout their trainings and weekend intensive
   programs, through the work meetings of the (two) choreographers and their
   meetings with whoever else involved in the project. I followed the dancers
   after trainings in their coffee-house discussions, I spent some weekend
   leisure time with them, was on their mailing list and had access to
   whatever documents I asked for. As a matter of course I have became the
   part of the project, involved also in other work than just making my
   notes.

   So now let me come to the three stories of instructed action I would like
   to tell you.

   Story 1: The story of intervening mirror and creating the shared skill

   The first story consists of a very simple instruction. We are at the third
   training evening. The worming up slowly turns into the first training
   activity of a simple walking with a demand on all dancers to react to the
   movements of others. The instruction (from the end of warming up) is
   described in my field notes thus:

   Mutual massage of legs, afterwards laying on the back again [...]

   "I´ll try what I am able to achieve."

   "How far I am able to attune [with others]."

   After the relieve of the head, rolling down and stretch in the "roof": "I
   look who all is here."

   "Let´s walk." "So that you don´t just hang around, so that you know where
   you are going, which trajectory you choose."

   "You can go faster, slower, play with tempo."

   "Realise what in this particular space, with these people you can do."

   "And try not to use the mirror[1]^1."

   Monika is smiling - she seems to have been using it - [she says:]
   "Potrefená husa" [shot goose; en expression expressing that the one to
   whom a general comment was targeted proved himself guilty by reacting to
   that]. (37:4)

   The activity is slowly led to an end and some other tasks are added to the
   walk so that it becomes slightly more complex. And Markéta [one of two
   choreographers] continues in instructing while the activity is going on.

   "Take it just as an information. You don´t need to SPEKULATE about it."

   Lenka: "And I cannot then also check the mirror?"

   Markéta: "You don´t need to, try not using it, don´t look in it." (37:8)

   Then she observes them carefully. After a time the activity comes to an
   end. She explains that the aim was just to work on developing sensitivity
   for relations in the space. So she stresses that she wanted ordinary walk,
   not any special hoping, and points out again that next time they should
   still less check themselves in the mirror. They wan´t have any on the
   stage, so they need to be sensitive to the movement of others without it.
   “Monika complains that it is not possible and shows how she was discreetly
   checking the mirror. So the girls start to discus what to do with the
   mirror: cover it by paper or cloth. Maruška maintains that the problem is
   not in the mirror, but in fact that Markéta was standing by the mirrors
   while instructing.” (37:14).

   What can we learn?

   What can we learn from this story? First of all, that things quite
   normally do not go as they were planned. Forbidding of checking the mirror
   was an ad hoc, situational instruction. It was not planned. We come to
   appreciate this fact in the second story. Now, it is quite common that the
   dance halls have mirrors installed to serve the dancers to watch
   themselves. Quite strange if we see how they interfere in doing properly
   the activities aimed to develop the skills necessary to dancer, at least
   for those who want to improvise on the stage. And we see in Monika´s
   complain that the mirror interferes quite strongly.

   This have something to do with the order of dance halls. They are mostly
   designed accordingly to the ballet tradition and they have mirrors. But
   there is more to this. There is also an order of performance and the order
   of training. There are no mirrors on theatre stages. That is a paradox:
   the training aims to prepare one for an actual performance, yet it is an
   activity of a special kind, much different from the performance. The
   dancers are aware of it so they manipulate the conditions of a training
   space if it is possible. They proposed some manipulations in this case as
   well. But the proposal was not fulfilled. There is not a single note on
   covering the mirrors in my later records. How is it possible? The mirror
   lost its agency. It was quite difficult in the beginning, but after a
   continual pressing by a choreographer it proved possible to learn not to
   use the mirror. This seems to be the case. The activity was being
   developed further in later trainings, but I cannot say that Markéta or
   Šárka (the second choreographer) would stop instructing with the mirror
   just behind their back. So the agency shifts from the mirror to a dancer's
   shared skill.

   Story 2: The story of inevitable distortions of shared experience and
   difficulties in gaining shared knowledge

   The second story is a story of more complex, yet still very simple,
   instruction. First of all, the dancers are forced to use less then a
   quarter of the training hall – the small space which should force them to
   interact. The choreographer instructs seven dancers dispersed on their
   spaces in a training hall and pursuing activity called the “tree”:

   "Make your legs deeply rooted, stand as comfortably as you can, breath
   deeply, feel the air coming through your nose. And imagine the tree - on
   the rock. Not very fertile soil, but enough; it stays solid and reliable.
   Notice its shape, the directions of its roots, its stem, stem´s structure,
   how the sap flows through, how it moves. Try to be as credible as you can
   to its movement in your movement. [...] Try to make your movement the
   closest possible to your vision. Resemble its largest as well as its most
   tiny movement, which you can notice. [...] And make sure that your
   movement resembles as accurately as possible the movement in your
   imagination. [...] During that Šárka [the choreographer] moves around the
   girls (...) and speaks, and inspects what is going on. "Notice if the tree
   moves still the same way." This she said after I have myself noticed that
   Lenka and Martina, once again create much more expressive - outstretched,
   outwaved - movements then the others.

   And as you are getting your movement to resemble the tree, start slowly
   leaving your vision so that you can divide from your tree. The tree will
   remain available to you, you can come back to it whenever you like. And at
   the moment you can do it, move out.” (23:7)

   And the dancers move out and the following instructions instruct them to
   go their own way to locate the thing they need. It can be whatever, may be
   the food, may be something else. Go, collect it, and get back to the tree.
   So all the dancers move around searching something and after a time come
   back. To the surprise of the choreographer, not even one of the dancers
   needed to cope with someone else crossing his path and forcing him thus to
   interact.

   A part of the following reflection of the activity in the cycle looks like
   this:

   Šárka: Good. Let´s take it one by one. First of all: It does not have to
   be an aesthetic movement, not at all.

   Lenka: Yes, as one feels it, isn´t it?

   Šárka: Yes.

   The second thing. Have your legs rooted even deeper.

   And Lenka stares into nowhere, as if she was thinking of something.
   (23:26)

   Yes, Šárka felt troubled especially by Lenka. All the special, ad hoc
   added instructions we find here are addressed to her specially:

   "To get deeply rooted", due to her moving around; not to care for
   aesthetics, due to her employing of, as Šárka expressed it, "empty forms",
   without "really feeling the tree moving like that". For that reason "try
   to be as credible as you can to its movement in your movement", or "make
   sure that your movement  resembles as accurately as possible the movement
   in your imagination", or "notice if the tree moves still the same way".

   What is important about it? Šárka issues general instructions seemingly
   addressed to all the dancers, but meaning them especially for particular
   ones. The setting is like that, she cannot navigate each dancer
   separately, she does not have tool to do that. And she also does not want
   to create more tension between her and Lenka. There is already some. My
   notes for example say:

   “Markéta [the second choreographer] switches of the music, and Šárka takes
   on her part [of the training]. And Lenka says immediately: "I am already
   afraid of what you´ll say." (23:8)

   So Šárka issues her instructions carefully, and generally. This is
   inevitable in a given situation. Yet, it creates confusion. Similar
   confusion as the one which led to the surprise of Šárka by dancers not
   getting to any interaction in the second part of the activity. Helen and
   Maruška made it clear in a discussion after training. The first simply
   understood the instruction "your own way" as "my way in which nobody
   interferes”. The second did not want to contact anybody, because she
   understood the contact in technical terms of the contact improvisation as
   "sharing weight", but she did not liked to do this kind of the contact
   today. But Helen made it clear, that she could not understand my "own way"
   to include a contact, because she also understood contact as sharing
   weight, which was not suitable for the situation. Yet Šárka had different
   meaning of contact in mind – whatever kind of contact, which the dancers
   were already experimenting with, in previous trainings. But during the
   last training, due to noticing that some of the dancers (some of them
   being a ballet dancers and modern styles dancers) have serious problems
   with the principles of contemporary partnering, she emphasised these
   principles of sharing weight and guided some activities to elaborate their
   experience with this kind of contact. So this, as Maruška and Helen made
   clear, was the pattern – it became an authoritative meaning of “contact”
   for them.

   When we come back to Lenka, we find, in the coffee-house discussion, that
   the pattern of her understanding of the tree activity, originated seven
   and half months back, during a weekend program in which the choreographers
   experimented with some interested dancers and the style of work they
   planned to apply. That time nobody knew exactly even when will the
   improvisation project start and who will participate. The tree activity
   then was guided not by choreographers, but by Alena, a person, who
   participated in the project as a (visual) artist working on the scene.

   What can we learn?

   What can we learn from that? While the first story taught us that an
   instruction may be internalised as a skill, it is also problematically and
   ambivalently bound to the situation of its performance. There is a plan
   definitely behind the instruction, the choreographers spend two hours
   before every training to discuss and prepare it. Still much improvisation
   is demanded to enact this plan when things go otherwise then expected –
   what is – to a certain degree – all the time. So the plan and the
   situational interferences need reconciliation, and it must be achieved in
   a second of a decision in a situation which will never repeat. So the
   stability and intersubjective unity in the meaning of an instruction as a
   collectively shared experience is almost impossible to achieve. Or more
   precisely, it cannot be achieved as a stable achievement. If it is, its
   breakage is just a question of time. The agency is too much dispersed and
   unpredictable. To be sure, the shared experience can be built, the
   awareness of the same aim is definitely achieved. All the dancers learn by
   the time “what it is all about”. Otherwise the dance improvisation like
   this could not be carried on as a performance. And it was carried on,
   successfully! But the surprise and distortion comes as a matter of course.
   Yet, the people – not only the dancers, but all people (maybe all living
   beings ?) – are able to deal with it. They know how to, say ... improvise.
   Yes, its their daily business, to improvise.

   However, there is something important missing in this account. And the
   crucial question is why is it missing. The answer is: due to my
   asymmetrical approach. I have somewhat tended to side with Šárka over
   Lenka. So let me explain this in the following note on a/symmetry. I want
   to keep this note separately – instead of correcting the second story – in
   order to emphasise huge theoretical significance of the concept of
   symmetry, which in the following remark, will take on primarily ethical
   dimension. So it is also a story of theoretical significance of ethical
   considerations. But again, it will prove to be more complex.

   A note on a/symmetry

   So what is this asymmetry about? It is about Lenka. Look at her role in
   the account provided above. She looks somewhat like a trouble maker. So
   what would she say, if I sent this account of an instructed action to her
   to get a feedback? And I plan to send it to all participants, since I find
   their feedback important – theoretically as well as ethically. This was an
   ethical moment. But there is a pragmatic moment as well. What if she says
   that if writing like that, I cannot use her data any more? This she can do
   – as I explained to the participants at the very beginning – at any time
   during the project, including the time of analysis, of course.

   So I had to think, if I was righteous enough to her in my account, and if
   I can honestly defence symmetrical character of it. And here is what I
   have found. I omitted a crucial controversy between Lenka and Šárka which
   seems to be quite important. I recognized it during analysis, but at first
   I did not find it revealing something important in this particular
   context. Yet after having taken into account the problem of symmetricality
   I have come to understand what it reveals.

   The controversy was about a theory: the aesthetics of a dance movement.
   The conflicting theories Lenka and Šárka were maintaining might be termed
   as Lenkas's visual-art theory and Šárka's psychological theory. While
   Šárka maintained that the aesthetic quality of movement lies mainly in the
   emotions, feelings, thoughts it expresses, Lenka would partly agree with
   it but maintained that the spacial visual quality of the movement is of
   the same importance. She argued that dance is also a kind of visual art
   and must have a quality of an artistic image. But to Šárka this quality
   resembled rather something she would term as an “empty form”, or what she
   termed so at least in this case. The discussion on this issue between
   Lenka and Šárka, with occasional statements of another participants –
   including myself – went quite long in the coffee-house. Yet, it was not
   resolved. Šráka and Lenka got on respecting their mutual right on
   maintaining their opinion, but did not get any closer to resolve this
   issue.

   And this issue proved to be quite important for the whole project. The
   project was framed by Šárka's aesthetic theory, she shared it with the
   second choreographer as well as the crucial part of the dancers, and even
   musicians. There was one dissenting voice, Lenka and there was some more
   dissent not expressed so clearly. There was also a dissenting set of
   practices based on the same theory. These practices were carried on not
   only by some of the dancers, but prominently by the visual artist
   responsible for the scene, Alena. She did not enter such discussions, as
   the one between Lenka and Šárka, too often. She lives some fifty
   kilometres from Brno in the countryside, and was pregnant during the whole
   project, delivering a baby few weeks after the performance. So she kept in
   just an occasional contact with others and worked on the scene as she felt
   it to be just right. And the outcome of her works was received with
   somewhat mixed feelings by the choreographers and some of the dancers.
   Furthermore, Alena was the one who guided the tree activity seven and half
   months back during the occasion which served to Lenka as a pattern for
   understanding the “tree” instruction.

   By this I want to point out that theory is also an important part of
   instructing and following instructions. Both instructing and following
   instruction is based on a theory of action which comes out as an
   instructed action. Conflicting theory then complicates the relation
   between instruction and instructed action as its desired result. It is a
   problem of understanding, and also a problem of will to follow the
   instruction the way one expects that the instructor expects that it should
   be followed. It is difficult to conform if one thinks that it all should
   be other way round.

   But this problems opens then the more general question of order of a dance
   performance. It is the order of selecting the dancers into the project and
   of the power of a choreographer. And this problem in this case proved to
   be more complicated then the difference between the professional and
   amateur setting of the project. This project was an amateur project. But
   this was project ran intentionally in a different settings then the older
   projects of the same company.

   First of all, this project was the first in the company's history to be
   based on an improvisation instead of a prepared choreography, choreography
   prepared rather according to a visual-art theory of the dance. So there
   was this divergence, and it was made possible by the growing significance
   in the company of the couple of choreographers. This significance comes –
   apart from another sources – from the fact that these two choreographers
   at the moment are the two of three dancers able to prepare trainings for
   the rest of the group, and two of few more with a relatively clear ideas
   concerning the activities and development of the company. In other words,
   the two with an idea of what is there interesting in the dance for them,
   and hence what might be good to explore and elaborate. And these two and
   the third one, Helen, are prominent now in the group partly due to that
   babies and the care for the family does not allow some other strong
   personalities of the company to drive its activities in a particular
   direction. So this project was moving in a new direction also because of
   the number of its members are young mothers busy with their families.
   Šárka is also busy this way. But her children are of a kindergarten age
   and also the dance is a must in her life. She cannot dedicate it regularly
   more then few hours a week, but she must dedicate it at least the time she
   can. She cannot live without dance.

   So the influence on the company's activity has something to do with dance
   skills, available time, personal priorities and preponderance with dance,
   an urge to explore its possibilities. But this new direction was not only
   about exploring the new dimensions of the dance itself and the dance work.
   It was also about mobilizing people for the performance not only in the
   company itself, but in a wider pool of the dancers interested in
   developing dance in the same direction, exploring the similar or the same
   dimensions, and working the same way – the way of creative improvisation.
   And two such dancers were mobilized for the project, and unlike Lenka, who
   finally decided not to dance on the stage and took on only her
   organizational duties – through which she helped the realization of the
   project fundamentally –, took part in the performance and continue in
   cooperation up to now.

   And the third, it was not only of mobilizing others, but of mobilizing
   whoever felt ready to work the way choreographers planned to. The older
   projects of the company had a more restrictive policy and only a handful
   of its members used to appear on the stage. At least, so Markéta explained
   it to me when I was discussing this paper with her [in personal discussion
   in Brno, 28.8.2012]. So some of the dancers in this project might not get
   chance to perform otherwise.

   These are then agencies driving Šárka to occasional complains that she
   must be satisfied with the dancers she has at hand and has to deal with
   it. It might be easier to her to work with a group of professionals and
   only those subscribing to her aesthetic theory of dance, to have more
   power to urge the dancers to do exactly what she likes. The result might
   be more secure, however I seriously doubt it, because I have witnessed, I
   think, the rise of the quality in performing with the widening
   possibilities of all dancers to express their ideas and to influence more
   the training activities. But, as Šárka pointed out to me during our
   discussion concerning her approval of my entry into the field, the result
   was important to her, but the process was even more – how it grows and
   evolves. This was our common interest, and on this ground she was ready to
   accept my interference into the project. So with having more power over
   the selection of the dancers the work might be easier – what does not mean
   necessarily more successful –, but the process might be less interesting.
   The process itself was revealing and enriching. Not only in exploring
   dance improvisation, but in exploring ourselves. It was a kind of intense
   semi-annual dance therapy, as Helena expressed it. So the process was
   quite important and the lack of power over dancers was a part of its
   revealing capabilities. And with reference to the dancers Šárka had
   formulated it clearly shortly before the performance on her Facebook page:
   “Very often I am wrong and due to that I make also my surrounding
   perplexed. But one thing I am sure about. I have a team of amazing people,
   growing just before my eyes. ME-MY will be a good performance. ME-MY will
   be worthy of experiencing.”

   Story 3: The story of productive uncertainty

   So there was necessarily some confusion, and was much of uncertainty and a
   lack of control. Yet, it did not cripple the performance. It seems that it
   was an important part of the revealing quality of the whole project, an
   important source of experience. That people can act and perform without
   being certain, we can learn again from the last story:

   Some two weeks before the performance the dancers came to this discovery:
   Last time, the dance looked quite strange, yes. But at least, we felt that
   something is going on among us, an we enjoyed it. Today we even bored
   ourselves. That was the bottom of a depression. After that the strategy of
   training was changed and it really brought some positive results. The
   improvisation is not perfect, says the general consensus, but is getting
   much batter again.

   And we are few days before the performance in a theatre. Šárka sits in the
   auditorium, the dancers are improvising on the stage. Šárka stops the
   improvisation after 20 minutes, while normally it takes more then 40 to
   finish whole piece. All, including the musicians and myself make a circle
   on the stage and discus the situation, me taking also notes.

   First of all, Šárka wants to hear what the dancers have to say, what is
   their feeling about what was happening on the stage. They are mostly quite
   surprised that Šárka stopped the performance so early. Of course, not
   everything went smoothly they mean. But most of them expresses that they
   feel something interesting was going on, they experienced it intensely.
   Šárka then formulates what she did not like about it, framing it in a
   picture of emptiness: "I could not get any impression who you are". Helena
   is quite surprised: "Now I already understand nothing. When we think its
   quite fine and something is really happening, you say that it looks empty
   and useless, when we feel it´s quite useless and empty, you say that it
   was perfect". Few days before an opening night, the first and finally
   successful performance Helena posts the text on a Facebook page of the
   company with the following comment:

   "Do not we want to change the text of the program? I think that this
   nicely expresses our semi annual achievement :))"

   The post says:

   "Theory is when you know everything but nothing works.

   Practice is when everything works but no one knows why.

   In our lab, theory and practice are combined: Nothing works and no one
   knows why."

   But all the participants are happy with continuing the work, looking
   froward to more performances of the piece. We have actually much to learn
   from a fact that Helen was not an author of this post, she just shared it.
   It is a common experience. Things do not necessarily work as we expect,
   often we do not know or we are uncertain. Yet it does not cripple our
   activities. If it did, we might not do anything. It rather urges us to
   explore, and to have some challenge, and even fun. Would not it be boring
   otherwise?

   [2]1All the bold letters and italics are my emphasises. In a field
   notebook I used only words written by capital letters to mark emphasises
   by the participants. I also consistently used quotation marks to mark what
   I was writing on behalf of myself, or paraphrasing the words of others off
   the exact quotations.

                                     13/13