Musical movement: lifestyle, the reality of non-traditional art, the space of learning and self-education (three comments on the concept of Aida Aylamazyan)

Rozin Vadim Markovich Doctor of Philosophy Chief Scientific Associate, Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences  109240, Russia, Moskovskaya oblast', g. Moscow, ul. Goncharnaya, 12 str.1, kab. 310 rozinvm@gmail.com Other publications by this author

Aida Aylamazyan is not only a well-known psychologist, but also a "direct heir" to the dance practice of the musical movement, created by several girls from Bestuzhev courses (Stefanida Rudneva, L. S. Generalova, O. K. Popova, E. M. Fish, etc.) even during the visit to Russia by Isadora Duncan.

                  Aida Melikovna Aylamazyan

Aylamazyan is the artistic director of the Heptahor Music Movement Center. In this capacity, she continues the work of her teacher Olga Kondratievna Popova, and as a psychologist and teacher (practitioner and theoretical methodologist), she spent a lot of effort analyzing and comprehending the practice of musical movement. In recent years, Aida has published several articles, which, in my opinion, together constitute an original concept of the practice of musical movement and its formation.

I have been observing the formation and development of this practice since the very beginning of Aylamazyan's work, I am also familiar with the basic ideas of this concept, I share them. Nevertheless, I would like to comment and discuss some of these ideas, which, in my opinion, will contribute to a better understanding of them, and possibly clarification. I will immediately draw attention to the importance of the practice of musical movement in modern culture. We have before us one of the new forms ("hotbeds", as they said at the beginning of the last century) of life, which in a peculiar way combines an unconventional art form (serious music and dance), a new way of life, partly opposing the established sociality, contributing to the formation of a new personality (subjectivity), and finally, an organic symbiosis of alternative learning and self-education. Such, I would say, blooming complexity of forms of existence and realities is very interesting and important as a subject of reflection, which will allow us to better understand and understand the "quiet revolution" taking place today in the field of education and art ^{[10; 11]}.

What does an inexperienced, ordinary spectator see when he gets to a class or a performance of a musical movement? A group or an individual performer, judging by the movements, poses and clothes, very reminiscent of dancing figures on antique vases or sometimes, if you're lucky in skill, images of Isadora Duncan. Naturally, such a viewer perceives what is happening in the usual way:

the girls dance to very serious music, imitating antique dances or directly Duncan ^[6].

But Aida Aylamazyan says something else in her articles: a musical movement is not a dance to music and not an imitation of an ancient dance. "Dance," she writes, "can flow from music (and not just superimposed on it), it is the effect of music on a person that should prompt movement in him, but not directly, but as if passed through the active perception and feelings of the dancer. Listening to this inner response to the music, the dancer transforms it into a movement, a gesture. A. Duncan describes this moment as follows: "On the contrary, I, on the contrary (we are talking about the opposition to ballet – AA), was looking for a source of dance movement that would penetrate into all the pores of the body. After many months, having learned to concentrate all my strength in this single center, I discovered that when I listen to music, its vibrations flow to this single source of dance, which is, as it were, inside me. Listening to these vibrations, I could translate them into dance" ^{[7, p. 71]} ... But how to teach such a dance? How to awaken in a person the ability to respond to music with movement, improvise and create their own dance?" ^[1] In ballet and most traditional dances, Aylamazyan notes, there is no holistic "interaction with music at the semantic level, and, therefore, the main thing does not happen in them: movement does not acquire an expressive character, there is not that dual a reality in which movement connects the physical world and the symbolic one" ^{[2, p. 181]}.

  Here I will make the first comment. Revealing his position, Aylamazyan talks about the response (response) of movement to music. "So, the creator and theorist of MD S.D. Rudneva," she notes, "has repeatedly pointed out in her methodological works that the purpose of training in MD is to form readiness for a motor response to sounding music" ^{[3, p. 116]}. It turns out that there is music in itself and there is a motor response to music. But Duncan writes that music is the source of dance movement and they are both located "inside" a person, his personality. And I, participating as a listener and spectator in the performances of the musical movement, perceived the artistic reality of these works in the unity of music and dance. In my opinion, the musical movement demonstrates a new vital and artistic reality, in which music is structured (articulated) by dance movement, and dance is music. Not music and response to it, but music structured, realized through movement (dance); not a dance movement, as depicting music or synchronized with it, but a dance structured by music. Moreover, music and dance are two sides of the same thing, namely the inner life and activity of the individual.

Aida Aylamazyan writes about the same thing: "The A. Duncan school, despite the improvisational approach, remained similar to traditional pedagogy in the main thing – in the separation of movement and music in the learning process. The explanation and learning of the movement took place separately from the music, and then it was connected with the music. The music for the exercises served more as a background; it could change, but the exercises remained the same.

Combining music and movement in the learning process itself, making the perception of music a semantic source and an emotional motivator of movement, "Heptahor" embarked on the path of creating an original method of musical movement… The method itself consisted in listening to one's own motor impulses that arise in response to music, to the "spontaneous" movements that are born and releasing them in an expanded motor form…Movement is not invented separately from music and is not superimposed on it. Music acts as the main character" ^[1].

It is another matter if we are talking about learning, provided that the student in mastering the musical movement has already entered music separately from dance, for example, listened to it in concert or on a mobile phone. In this case, initially, indeed, he has to respond with movement to the sounding music. But then he should have the ability to listen to music through movement, and it will be a different music than before.   

The second comment concerns the grounds or, as Kant would say, the "conditions of conceivability" of a new view of the relationship between music and dance movement. Was it by chance that Duncan and Aida Aylamazian began to insist on a new understanding of music and dance? I think not. They reacted to two main ideological turns and the problem of a new anthropological synthesis. The first turn can be called psychological and personalistic. The inner world of a person, personality, its activity and experiences become the center of knowledge and art. Moreover, almost from the very beginning, this turn was understood as being realized through art and language in a broad (semiotic) sense. A vivid example of such a worldview is the story of Olga Popova.

"I was," Popova recalls, "a child of terrible mental responsiveness. <...> It was very easy to get to anything, because my psyche was very sensitive, vulnerable, and life is such that… I have been thinking for a very long time, and all these years, and the previous ones (the girls <students> know), I have often asked myself: what did the musical movement give me – support? or vice versa? And only now I can say with absolute certainty: if there were no musical movement, I could reach any degree of mental illness. Absolutely. What is it? And this is the ability to pour out all your unrealized experiences, and maybe this whole life... I am given a real opportunity to speak out. To pour it out, not to keep it all in myself, not to push and worry in silence, and I am given a motor path in this activity to survive… After all, I repeat again: we are not swinging, that I dance exactly like Bach – yes, this will not happen in my life! I'm dancing my idea in Bach, right? Your experience. And at this moment, apparently, such states and such moods are realized, which otherwise I would have had in my soul forever. And they would gradually kill me. That is, apparently, this activity is some kind of powerful breakthrough and a stream that I release from myself. Now I am deeply convinced of this. This is an opportunity to live. And the ability to regulate their states" (quoted by ^{[5, p. 227]}).

If Duncan took only the first steps within the framework of a psychological, personalistic turn, at present his supporters rely on the entire huge arsenal of concepts and tools of modern psychology. Aylamazyan's articles, on the one hand, are an example of this, but on the other ? the next step, namely, the expansion of psychological discourse in the direction of anthropology, history and philosophy of art.

The second turn can be called "sociovital", it is associated with a revision of the understanding and values of individual life. The beginning of the twentieth century, Aylamazyan notes, was a time of "searching and creating new ideals, paths in life. Above all the searches, the emerging image of a man was visible – a free personality, realizing himself in work and art harmoniously and joyfully, revealing his essence in creativity…A special place among these searches is occupied by the current of thought that connects the reconstruction of society and man with the special role of art that transforms human nature" ^{[3, p. 116]}.

At the suggestion of Duncan, a new ideal of human life in art entered this period: not for the public and aesthetic pleasure, but for himself and society (Isidora believed that anyone could master a new art), not artificial constructions, but natural reactions and manifestations. "Dance and the experiment with movement,– writes Aylamazyan, "are inextricably linked with the "experimental" lifestyle…Pioneers of free dance, such as Isadora Duncan and Emile Jacques-Dalcroze, were close to ancient ideals in art and life. They create schools – oases of a new life built according to the laws of beauty, harmony of the soul and body in man, Nature and art" ^{[4, p. 17]}.

 Aida Aylamazyan adds to Duncan's ideas, as I would say, a number of socio-esoteric attitudes: to opposition and opposition to forms of sociality, which neutralize the identity of the individual, block the ability to think and act independently, involve in the whirlpool of consumption, destroy health, do not allow you to live in harmony with yourself. The ideal is different ? creativity, work, culture, understanding, communication and thinking, the joy of life, communion with beauty, the right values, living in harmony with oneself and others (this is how I see the worldview  Aylamazyan, I don't know if she will agree with such an interpretation). 

Aylamazyan needed a new anthropological synthesis in order to comprehend the practice of the musical movement. It includes at least three areas of work: criticism of ballet as an example of the traditional understanding of dance and the person in it; characterization of the specifics of a new, free dance and its formation; the concept of a person who meets the practice of musical movement. In the ballet, Aylamazian, following Duncan, sees an unnatural physicality. Duncan, writes Aida, criticizes the principles of "building movement in ballet, considering them artificial, destroying the beauty and harmony of the human body, contradicting the natural laws of movement: "Movements taught by the ballet school of our days, movements that struggle in vain with the natural laws of gravity, with the natural will of the individual and are in deep contradiction with both movements, as well as with forms created by nature –these movements are essentially barren, that is, they do not necessarily give birth to new future forms, but die just as they occurred.” ^{[7, p. 19]}. The approach to teaching dance in a classical school also seems unacceptable, since it divides the movement into separate “steps”, elements and mechanically fulfills these selected movements, further mechanically connecting them with each other ... Beauty in ballet is understood not as a natural property of the human body (all natural is overcome), but as something that what the human body should look like: an obediently moving mechanism, an incorporeal being for whom gravity does not exist, etc." ^[1].

What does unnatural physicality mean? Why is it not natural to lift your legs above your head, hang in a jump like a bird in flight, twist the fuete many times in a row? If we are talking about art, then all this is natural and beautiful, bearing in mind a certain time, audience and aesthetic concepts. For example, in the era of Louis XIV, the Sun King, who felt like a God and expressed this feeling in the dance, which he partly created, the limitations and new figures of classical ballet looked natural and beautiful at his court and at the Paris theater. It's another matter, Duncan's time or ours: a different understanding of art, different aesthetic concepts and ideals of man.

Aylamazyan has devoted many of her works to the specifics of the practice of the musical movement, and they are quite convincing.

Now the third comment concerning the new anthropological synthesis. It was sketched out already in the thoughts of Duncan and her Russian followers, the creators of the musical movement. Aida, within the framework of the psychology of art, proposed a new version of such a synthesis. It contains the following conceptual ideas.

Firstly, the above-discussed interpretation of the relationship between music and dance movements as two sides (organizations) of one whole. At the same time, Aylamazyan, in my opinion, legitimately expands the interpretation of the musical movement, including in it a semiotic plan (for example, gestures, images and other bodily statements), psychological (experiences, emotions, energies), socio-psychological (communication, joint actions).    

Secondly, he attributes dance movements and the experience of music to the individual, as well as partly to the dance community. Here a doubt may arise: is there a personality in the musical movement, as well as a self-aware community? If we follow the definition of A.N. Leontiev's personality ? an individual becomes a person when he is able to decide "what to be in me", then, of course, a personality develops in the practice of musical movement. Doing music movement is "not a walk in the moonlight", but a form of life, serious creative work involving life choices, awareness of what you are doing.

It is more difficult, of course, with the question of the community. But I am sure it is also being formed, and the center of crystallization (formation) of the community of the musical movement is the teacher (mentor, master), in this case Aida Aylamazyan (and for her at one time Olga Kondratyevna Popova played such a role). I think that the community of the musical movement is very lucky with its master, not only because Aylamazyan is a "direct heir", but also an excellent psychologist, teacher and, partly, a philosopher of art.     

"The collective, collaborative nature of the musical movement," writes Aylamazyan, "on the one hand, expands the field of improvisation possibilities, increases the degree of uncertainty of the situation, and on the other, helps to make the movement meaningful, dialogical. Communication with another person reflects a musical experience and the meanings inherent in music (appeals, questions, pleas, etc.). The dialogicity of dance allows you to go beyond individual experience, personal, always limited opinion and see or create something that exceeds the capabilities and horizons of individual participants, a separate consciousness. In dance, there is a real return to co-knowledge and to the primary ways of creation as co-creation" ^{[6, p. 187]}.

Thirdly, the inclusion of the practice of musical movement into a broader whole of culture, sociality, art and its concepts can be attributed to the number of conceptual ideas. As a result, this practice is understood not only as an art form, but also as a modern way of human life. In my opinion, the way of life is very modern and humanistic, working, among other things, to save our civilization. The latter may seem like an exaggeration, but it is so, I will not abandon the statement made. In the period of a double transition ? a deep crisis of modernity and the formation of a "future culture" ^[9] ? new anthropopractors and personalities like Albert Schweitzer, Duncan, Popova (well, of course, not only them) contribute to the preservation and transformation of life, culture and man.  

Fourth, the practice of musical movement is understood as training and self-education, which is very natural for the centers of a new life. Since they are just becoming, the educational plan is a necessary condition for their existence. Aylamazyan notes and discusses such characteristics of the formation of a musical movement as the expansion of degrees of freedom, variability of action, meaningfulness and independence, improvisation, etc. "Musical and plastic improvisation," she writes, "is initially aimed at making the movement alive, making the person himself alive, which means feeling, caring, open to the meanings of music, and at the same time unpredictable, free from patterns and predetermined. It is no coincidence that in the very language of practice an important place is occupied by the use of the opposition “living – inanimate”, and many participants, revealing their mental and bodily lack of involvement, designate this state as non-life, deadness of some part of themselves, their body, personality. On the contrary, by engaging in improvisation, feeling their contact with music, other participants, they say that they feel alive, real, authentic, full of energy.

According to our assumption, the principles of teaching and technique in the practice of musical movement are aimed at maximally expanding the degrees of freedom of movement, increasing the search area and returning its multidimensionality and diversity to the movement. This way of performing the movement allows you to gain access to spontaneous impulses and involuntary aspects of expressiveness, to return sensitivity to the possibilities that a person possesses. It is appropriate to recall the words of V.P. Zinchenko devoted to the living movement: “The main paradox in psychology can be formulated as follows: obtaining a strictly – in the limit – a single result is achievable only if there are a huge number of possible ways to it. Otherwise: freedom is a condition of creativity"" ^{[8, p. 207; 6, p. 182-183]}.

Concluding the comments, I want to emphasize once again: the concept of the musical movement is described in detail in the works of Aida Melikova and is supported by the practice of the musical movement. This is a happy case when conceptual and pedagogical provisions are expressed not only on the basis of theoretical considerations, but also reflection (and awareness) of practice.