Turner, J., 2015.

The disenchantment of western performance training, and the search for an embodied experience: Toward a methodology of the ineffable

A paradox: the experience of deeply embedded embodiment can often elude us. Embodiment here will be explored in relation to the author's experience of ethnographic, participant observation research. Specifically, the chapter will focus on the author's experience of learning Balinese Topeng Pajagen (a dance theatre form that has both secular and sacred functions within Balinese culture), as a white European. The chapter will examine the implications of reconstituting a process of knowing by doing and feeling, into a form of textualised embodied knowledge where the pluralism of knowings are not reduced and sensory experiences are not excluded. In this way, the notion of embodiment as a methodology itself is analyzed and questioned. Working with Gablik's sense of re-enchantment (1992, 2004), in conjunction with Weber's thesis on disenchantment (in Gane, 2004), this chapter will re-establish the importance of value systems when engaging in textualising embodied experience as a methodology. The cultural differences that exist between notions of the body, notions of knowing and notions of affective states, or transformations of consciousness, are critically considered: to what extent are these concepts achievable in relation to embodying an 'other' cultural practice.