Performative teaching and learning: on the instruct-ability of kin/aesthetic properties

This chapter investigates instructions, instructed, and instructive actions in the theatrical dance studio. Focusing on performative learning as the instructed production of expressive, aesthetic conduct such as dancing, I explore its instruct-ability and the role observability and intersubjectivity play in that. I examine how and when teachers intervene with directives, hints, corrections, and demonstrations, which can be produced along with, after, or by interrupting the performance. Different instructions require different temporal and sequential organization, multimodal format, and recipient design. Verbal, vocal, and gestural prompts punctuate dancers’ performance. Corrections concerning what to enact when are easily accomplished verbally, and produced during dancing, whereas how to perform often requires (re)demonstration, hence postponing the correction or interrupting the enactment. Instructive actions are equally important and include the dancing of fellow practitioners, whose conduct is consulted continually to learn just – what to do (“copying”) and for confirming whether one is moving properly (comparing). Self-monitoring and self-initiated correction are crucial and sustained by the mirror as an intersubjective technology. The “pan-visual” organization of activities in the dance studio makes instructed actions instructive themselves and supports a collaborative component, as dancers also offer explicit instructions (peer-to-peer coaching).