SHORT REPORT Bodystorming: effects of collaboration and familiarity on improvising contemporary dance Catherine J. Stevens 1 • James Leach 2,3 Published online: 2 August 2015 Ó Marta Olivetti Belardinelli and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2015 Abstract In contemporary dance, cognitive events are not necessarily restricted ‘‘to the skin or skull of an indi- vidual’’ (Hutchins in Int Encycl Soc Behav Sci 2068–2072, 2001) but distributed across dancers during collaborative improvisation. There is some experimental evidence of greater output when people perform problem-solving tasks alone. However, when a task is challenging and paired participants are familiar with each other, pairwise and emergent outcomes are more plentiful than solo outcomes. We investigate these factors in the context of dance with the broad hypothesis that innovation is enhanced when dancers improvise together compared with when they improvise alone. Dancers (N = 10) in a professional company improvised for 2 min alone and then with another dancer. Dancer familiarity (familiar, unfamiliar) and task (expressive, non-expressive) were crossed (within-sub- jects). The improvisations were video-recorded over 2 h in the dancers’ usual improvisation space. After each impro- visation, the dancers: stated the number of movement ideas expressed and rated task ease, satisfaction, interest, nov- elty, originality and clarity. In both tasks, there was a tendency for self-report of a greater number of movement ideas expressed in familiar and unfamiliar pairs than alone. Ratings of task ease, satisfaction, interest, clarity, etc. were slightly higher in the unfamiliar pair condition. In the non- expressive task, ratings of the task were higher in pairs (M = 3.02, SD 0.82) than in the solo (M = 2.67, SD 0.96) condition. Distributed creativity, relational cognition and social facilitation are used to interpret the results. Keywords Brainstorming Á Creativity Á Dance Á Distributed cognition Á Group processes Á Improvisation Á Social facilitation Introduction Exponents of contemporary dance epitomize cognition that is multimodal, embodied and distributed. Knowledge of contemporary dance is visual, spatial, motoric, auditory and kinesthetic. Rarely notated, the dancers’ embodied memories are the storehouse of previously performed works of art. And rather than such knowledge being restricted to the skull of an individual (Hutchins 2001), it is distributed across a dance ensemble (Kirsh et al. 2009; Stevens et al. 2003). The experiment to be reported here investigates concepts of distributed cognition, and social and relational processes through the medium of improvi- sation by a group of professional contemporary dance artists. More specifically, we investigate the effect of solo versus a collaborative dyad setting, and dancer familiarity, on the improvisation of new movement material. Creativity involves problem finding and problem-solv- ing, generativity and exploration (Finke et al. 1996) and divergent thinking (Guilford 1950). It works through combination, recombination or pattern generation produc- ing novelty, and requiring recognition (Leach 2004). After decades of research and debate, creativity has been & Catherine J. Stevens kj.stevens@uws.edu.au 1 MARCS Institute and School of Social Sciences and Psychology, University of Western Sydney, Locked Bag 1797, Penrith, NSW 2751, Australia 2 Centre de Recherche et de Documentation sur l’Oce ´anie, Maison Asie Pacifique, Universite ´ d’Aix-Marseille, 3 Place Victor Hugo, 13003 Marseille, France 3 Department of Anthropology and Sociology, University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia 123 Cogn Process (2015) 16 (Suppl 1):S403–S407 DOI 10.1007/s10339-015-0682-0