Choose what the movement is doing in the inquiry
Begin with a consequential question and an encounter participants can actually attend to. A dancer may supply a familiar movement; a learner may bring a puzzling sensation; a maker may select an image. Preserve the participants’ own description before translating it into technical terms. “Heavy”, for example, may name a sensation, a movement quality, a mass or a viewer’s interpretation. Ask what changed and how it was noticed before selecting a measurement or an explanation.
| Intended result | What the movement contributes | What makes the next action possible |
|---|---|---|
| A physical explanation or prediction | An observed event with selected system, phases, contacts and conditions | Relate the observation to a model and a quantity that can distinguish explanations. PHY.5–.6 supplies physical modeling; PHY.9 supplies the measurement construction; PHY.10 supplies a discriminating experiment. |
| A more available bodily action | A familiar task in which a difference can be felt and used | SOM.1–.5 develops the perceptible contrast, regulation and return to the whole; HCD.6 and HCD.9 organize an attainable attempt and informative feedback. |
| New movement material | A bounded task, question or image that directs attention while moving | Keep the generative constraint long enough to find alternatives, then recover material worth developing. An existing phrase is optional at this entry. |
| A composition | Material whose relations, transitions and presentation can be changed | Develop and compare whole candidates with MDPE.9; specify prepared and live choices with MDPE.11. The following application develops two complete fixed scores. |
| A changed understanding of perception or representation | A performance, encounter or trace seen from a stated position | Compare what performers and observers can notice, interpret or recover; change the arrangement or representation in response. MDPE.5 and MDPE.18 supply presentation and memory questions. |
These are useful alternatives and connections, not levels of one compulsory lesson. For example, an observation can motivate a calculation, whose surprising implication motivates another movement exploration. A scientific idea can instead begin as an image for making material. In that case, checking the source idea prevents misdescription, but does not require the dance to serve as a physics demonstration.