RIFL (2018) Vol. 13, n. 2: 31-43 DOI: 10.4396/20180208 __________________________________________________________________________________ 31 Dance and Embodied Cognition: Motivations for the Enactivist Program Carla Carmona University of Seville ccarmona@us.es Abstract This paper examines dance instruction and choreographic work within Western contemporary dance practice. Its goal is to re-contextualize the later Wittgenstein’s ideas regarding the nature of our linguistic competence and cognitive abilities at large in the light of the rise of enactivism. I discuss examples within dance practice that show that cognition is distributed across brain, body and environment. In the process, this paper supports a good number of sensorimotor enactivism’s fundamental claims. However, its main purpose is to bring insight into embodied cognition that is non-representational at root, which could motivate the radical version of enactivism. In this regard, I provide evidence against the conception of perceptual experience as like snapshots. I also argue that sensorimotor enactivism – due to its focus on visual experience – is held captive by such a picture, despite its battle against it. In this regard, I refute sensorimotor enactivism’s idea that practical knowledge mediates in perceptual experience by means of examples. I explore instances of non-conceptual, non-mediated perceptual experience that are a product of embodied engagements with the environment. As a result, I propose an enactivist view of embodied cognition that accounts for non-representational processes. Keywords: Dance, Wittgenstein, Embodied Cognition, Extended Cognition, Enactivism Received 12 August 2018; accepted 6 December 2018. 0. Introduction This paper is primarily motivated by the idea that dance practice can bring more insight into the relationship between an agent’s cognitive activities, bodily features and interactions with the environment. I examine dance instruction and choreographic work within Western contemporary dance 1 . My goal is to re-contextualize the later Wittgenstein’s ideas regarding the nature of our linguistic competence and cognitive abilities at large in the light of the rise of enactivism 2 . 1 For a clarification of what I mean by contemporary dance, cf. Cvejić (2015: 5). 2 For the affinities between the later Wittgenstein and enactivism, cf. Hutto (2013).