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Rethinking Performance
Posted by Joseph Riggio on Sunday, May 04, 2008Everybody seems interested in performance ... if not their own than that of others.
For some the fascination begins with the extreme performance of elite performers like Olympic level athletes, for others it can be the outstanding performance of renown entrepreneurs and investors, for others the master-class mental performances of world-class chess players are what catch their attention, yet for another group it will be the day to day performance of making a life worth living ... but regardless of the specifics what we’re talking about can be thought of as an aesthetic consideration
Folks,
Howdy ... I’m almost feeling like I have a head cold, all full up with something that I can’t quite get clear. Yet in this case I know that the experience I’m having has much more to do with ideas than anything else. I’ve been rolling around in ideas for days, weeks, months ... or maybe more correctly years. Most of this time the ideas have flowed pretty well ... and to a great extent that remains true for me. Yet there I find myself tending a new crop of ideas about some ideas I’ve had for a while. And these new ideas are iterations and referential to a lifetime’s worth of old ideas.
Specifically, I’m finding a few things that stand out:
What seems so significant to me now has to do with the way the ideas are coalescing into some new form. I cannot speak to it yet, but I sense that it will have a form that I can speak to very soon. I already have some sense of where these ideas are going, I’m pretty darn sure of where the ideas have been drawn from that are in the process of coalescing, and I can even speculate on where they could end up in the short-term. What I cannot do yet revolves around a common language that would express what seems to me to be new ideas, although I am perfectly ready to accept that they are more likely revisited ideas that are expressing in a new way.
What I’ve been putting out, the aspect of these ideas that has been accessible to me for the last couple of years at least, has been around the idea of performance as an aesthetic consideration. Most folks are looking at performance from an analytical position, seeking to quantify the components to create a impact on the total performance experience. This would be anti-aesthetic in my opinion.
The primary distinction of the aesthetic consideration begins with the perception of the wholeform experience, perceiving the entirety of the experience as a singularity as opposed to a set of linked fragments.
Beyond the perception of the wholeform experience operating from the aesthetic consideration the perception of either “well-formedness” or “ill-formedness” of the experience becomes obvious.
Well-formedness and ill-formedness are expressions of the pattern inherent in the experience and the context that the experience occurs within.
My simple take on performance as an aesthetic consideration lives inside of the idea that the aesthetic consideration resides in the sensual experience of pattern ... both pattern as resonant and dissonant forms. Thinking about form as the primary consideration ... the wholeform experience, how the entirety operates ... positions the performer in a different relationship with performance.
Instead of considering fixing the aspects of the performance that are somehow wrong or not working, the performer who operates from the aesthetic consideration operates in regard to the wholeform experience, which resides beyond any specific aspect of the performance ... in this way of operating intention informs actions and overrides analysis.
We can say that we’re discussing the concept of intentionality here. This concept has been at the heart of my thinking since at least 2002 when I began my research for my doctoral dissertation. In fact the concept of intentionality became the central concept of my dissertation. [If you’re interested you can read more about this in my full dissertation “Towards A Theory of Transpersonal Decision-Making in Human Systems”, which you can purchase from Amazon.com.]
What I’ve been putting my attention on has been getting these ideas together in a a coherent form and then out in some way that makes sense independent of the entire historical context in which they were fermented. The basis of what I’ve been doing has been rooted in literally centuries of material dating back to the early Greeks. I know that the culmination I’ve been moving to, must stand alone before I’ll be able to express it in a way that relieves the sense of stuffiness I’ve been experiencing. So I’ve been dancing around the absolute center of the idea until very recently. Now I’m much, much closer and sense I’m closing in on that expression that will pull it all together for me.
Joseph Riggio
Princeton, NJ
P.S.: There’s still time to get in on the Intentional Performance program in Denmark this July. If you’re reading here ... you’ll probably be thrilled to be part of what we’ll be doing there ... go ahead download the brochure Intentional Performance.
PPS ... we are also still offering the entire Intentional Performance program for only $1750 when you attend both this program and the 2008 MythoSelf Facilitator’s/Trainer’s Intensive Training ... that’s a full $1000 off the Intentional Performance program fee!
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