Creating Thinking: Immersive Dance Theater as 4E Cognition in the Wild
Journal of Dance Education July 3, 2021 Denise Purvis 4 citations
The creative dancing body exemplifies the embodied mind, yet creativity research has stagnated because cognitive science has not adequately studied embodied cognition. Engaging 4E cognition—embodied, embedded, enacted, and extended—through rich dance experiences can maximize students' creative potential. In a secondary dance classroom, an annual immersive dance theater project illustrates 4E cognition by pressing creators to produce an art event that encourages real-world problem-solving. The article explores cognition through a 4E lens, discusses how immersive dance theater projects catalyze each E, and suggests that future creativity research may benefit from extensive study of this genre in K-12 education.