Part One: Considerations of Dance as Language
In arriving at a definition of language that includes dance, how is it distinct from other language structure?

Language can be defined broadly as acts that carry meanings organized in a regenerative system of recombinable elementary meaning units. By this definition a wide range of coded communicative behavior becomes eligible for consideration as language. This range includes such different types of acts as the practice of mathematics or music (which are commonly thought of as employing a structured language) as well as yoga, traditional or indigenous dance, pantomime, religious rites, public sports competition, mountain climbing, even political speeches or executions of criminals. Each of these activities are governed by codes and carry varying degrees of public/private intentionality inherent in their expression.

While the expansion of the definition of language to include essentially physical and therefore often culturally devalued activities, may serve to elevate them as vehicles of information, the primary goal of this study is to make linguistic structure visible wherever present in the belief that like the inferences drawn from verbal language such understanding can be applied to the understanding of human-ness. Vocal language arbitrarily employs articulable sounds and thus is more available to analysis than gesture which inherits meaning from experience (Adler, 1979). Experiential dependency renders deep structure more transparent, paradoxically, to see function and relationships clearly we need the structure to be opaque. For opacity sake, further winnowing is needed of the activities captured by this definition of language. Two criteria can be applied to codified physical communication to glean a more useful analysis and place it within the framework of cognition. I suggest placement of a range of communicative behavior in an axial array, that is along intersecting axes. By setting one index as intentionality (scaled from public to private) and the other as a ratio after Shannon's approximation of signal to noise in a message (Saporta, 1961), a matrix of more or less concentric regions of increasingly intentional, meaningful behavior are produced, in contrast to a series of linear continua use of this matrix is meant to emphasize the interrelationship of elements within the set of considered behavior. ( see figure 1)

The picture maps relationships between "dialects of non-verbal behavior" (Key, 1975) already available to intuition. For example: While swimming 30 laps may be a statement that affirms personal strength, each stroke doesn't carry much significant information. Again, Shannon: "if there is no indeterminacy, no element of choice, there can be no transmission of information. The larger the repertory of possible messages, the larger is the capacity of the system for information". (Saporta,1961) Contrast the swimming message with a 20-minute dance performance in a public plaza. Contemporary dance defines itself as expression through patterns of the body in space and time. The danced message in the plaza could encompass the swimming message, operations of chance (as in Merce Cunningham & John Cageıs long collaboration, 1949-1996) or the gestures of visitors to the plaza during the performance. Contemporary dance falls in the region delimited by highest levels of content in messaging and greatest degree of intentionality.

As contemporary dance code maintains or deconstructs indigenous or traditional forms (Afro-Haitian, ballet) and absorbs affect from social context (Congressional defunding of the National Endowment for the Arts., large numbers of people infected with AIDS virus) various dimensions of dance behavior are emphasized. (Key, 1986) Since dance behaviors are far from homogeneous how can their contributions and relationship to cognition be understood?

Another axial array can be applied within the disciplines of dance. Axes can be constructed, one: for a ratio of intentional/non-intentional meaning; and another: for significance of context. Place genres of dance (with respect to their relationship to meaning: mimetic, abstract, metaphorical) along the axes to reveal regions of interrelation. A matrix emerges of linked orientations and expressions which could be considered a dance or coded movement module. (see figure 2)

This matrix of dance elements significant in codified communication can be thought of as representing one channel of linked orientations and expression among other sets of sensitivities: verbal, musical, mathematical, spatial. A description of brain and mind cooperating dynamically through channels or modules to know the world and self is known as modularity and represents one pole in psycholinguistics discourse. Modularity is supported by the phenomena of regeneration and/or reassignment of function after brain trauma and by the prospect of retraining children who process acoustic energy milliseconds more slowly than most other people (Tallal, 1996).

Modules, subject of much dispute, would appear to be specialized associations of ability that are ³remembered² over time as sensitivity- such as to linguistic sounds or pattern recognition-by a plastic brain which adapts its own genetically hard-wired patterns in response to stimulus (Pinker,1994). Language systems specifically codified in and from kinetic intelligence would have their own realm of information to teach about cognitive process. Denotive, narrative forms of dance suffer in comparison to verbal/vocal expression for lack of economy but abstract and metaphoric forms of dance excel at the "establishment of empathic subliminal communication" (Royce,1977). It is tempting to think that the kinetic intelligence/ communication module might be characterized by a high capacity for non-linear messaging. But the body and mind are both the subject of and the instruments of investigation; by definition this rules out objective proof which belongs to linear thought. While much has been learned about brain structure and verbal structures of mind have been inferred from speech and writing, danceıs clues to deep structure largely remain to be decoded.

The processes of invention, transmission and retention of movement patterns are typically set by dancers directly upon physical bodies (Weschler, 1997). Choreographers tend not to appeal to intermediary tools such as scores, computers, software or even video cameras. Fundamentally dance acts as a temporal and spatial mediation of physical presence. Immediacy and muscle memory are definitive elements of dance expression. In my own practice of dance, the use of coded movement as a tool to consolidate other types of learning figures much more prominently than performance. Through dance I have been able to build scaffolding to support other more abstract knowledge systems. This process feels like a kind of pattern matching, as is described in the process of procedural learning (Anderson, 1978). The sensation is of moving things around both exteriorly and interiorly, and through this movement , synthesis.

If dance is a form of language it must be subject to grammar. Chomsky argued that grammar must be reversible (Chomsky, 1957) that is -if the grammar is true, language generated by it will feel fitting to a native speaker. Verbal language stores and communicates meaning in chunks known as E.M.U.s. The elementary meaning units employed in dance are a kind of dimensional bundle, time and space relations coded together. Raw gestures operate as phonemes do in verbal expression-they only carry meaning when grouped. Grouping of gestures in relation to time and space or bundling, is the fundamental linguistic activity in dance. When a computer organizes electrical energy into meaningful statements it is called parsing. Parsing in dance is made of and signaled by changes of state -the sustained movement percusses, the percussive movement ceases, the mover changes level, the elongated shape contracts. As acoustic energy (and silence) is to verbal language so is the presence or absence of the silhouette to danced messages.

This paper is the beginning of a course of study as well as the result of one. Its main function has been to discover which questions make the most sense to ask in the context of learning what dance structure has to teach about cognition.

Part two: Some Implications for Study of Human Cognition
Exteriorization as a way to learn from dance language.

Computation and psycholinguistic understanding have grown symbioticly and exponentially because the former afforded the latter a dynamic exteriorization. This was possible due to fundamental similarity in the two systems -both are electrically powered and therefore are bounded by laws of circuitry. Through computation it is possible to see verbal language in motion.

Analogously, how might kinetic coding be exteriorized? The intuitive survey (in Part One, above) of a cross-section of non-verbal communicative behavior reveals that live performance has been the primary means for transmission of kineticly understood and interpreted experience. The pageants of organized religion or political structure and competitive sports from javelin to figure skating display the body (the medium) and its virtuosity (the message) primarily to elicit and make use of the empathic connection that human bodies know for each other. That there are other messages possible is the realm that contemporary dance is often concerned with. The desire to transmit dance over space and distance has fostered a tradition of accompanying notations, but nobody dances these notations, they are not natural language systems.The need for a dynamic system that abstracts out kinetic code begs for computation but there are also problems inherent to this translation as we know it now. Even sophisticated simulations such as Virtual Reality do not meet the requirement for connections between physiques. Without physical immediacy (resonance) an essential element of danced language is lost: the empathic communication.

In Guest's exhaustive survey of 88 dance notations from the 15th Century until the present (Guest, 1989), what becomes most obvious is in its absence-there appears to be no external system that speaks dance natively so that a dancer can apply its grammar and generate recombinant forms that feel true to the body. Conversely, line drawings of gesture (Servenka, 1972) which make no pretense of realistic representations of body position have more power because they allow the mind to fill in the blanks, supplying missing information in a way that no drawing can compete with. Most dancers do not compose using notation or even video but devise works set upon bodies whether their own or others, meanwhile this same group will assert that dance is indeed a language. But from what is missing in dance notation, something of dance's relation to cognitive structure and function can be learned. Guestıs analysis shows that various forms work best for particular concentrations. This is because the dance-to-map processes are always constrained by translation of multiple dimensions onto two. The problem is-which two do you choose? In an effort to address this problem software has been written for purposes of movement training, kinesiology or dance transmission. World-in-Motion was devised for physicists' use in the analysis of physical forces in movement. Merce Cunningham uses LifeForms software to record many of his compositions . While the software is dynamic in comparison to notation no dancer would likely say that they are wholly satisfied even with this mapping. Itıs true that part of the frustration lies in struggling through the awkwardness of the interface. We are still talking about screens and keyboards and their fractional use of the body. But more fundamentally, instead of moving toward VR (better TV), toward simulation, a new elevation of the realm of the physical and experiential is warranted as there is no substitute for it- just ask the student in the distance learning class. A better solution to exteriorizing dance than simulation is emulation.

Are there other disciplines with similar difficulties? Music, like dance is performed but seems at least in some part (for some musicians) to lend itself more readily to mapping. Pitches and rhythms can be inscribed, mathematical relationships recorded, but subtler though no less significant aspects of music elude the cartographer and are available only to those in the same room with the music. At the risk of restating the obvious, music and dance have something in common with each other. The "something" is physical presence in highly codified circumstances.

Design also has to mediate space and time and then communicate its relationships. Christopher Alexanderıs approach to architectural design (Alexander, 1964) gives some hope of finding or devising an external system collateral to what I am calling the kinetic module. Alexander employs pattern language in a modular and opaque method for determining fit; that is, the appropriate interrelationship between elements and conditions so that the satisfaction of one set of conditions doesnıt preclude the satisfaction of others that are also necessary to usefulness. Through Alexanderıs conceptual tools it is possible to generate entire urban landscapes by abstracting their complexity and detail. He has found mathematical means to mediate complex spatial needs by making the intuitive processes native to design opaque-an emulation of design process.

A system to pair with dance that is adequate to the task of revealing the underlying kinetic code would need to be a dynamic emulation, a resonator bounded by the constraints of the body's unique electro-chemical situation. Beyond computers in boxes as an interface and into performance architecture-imagine a kind of live room , sensitive to movement, able to transmit patterns in space and time and the sense of presence that creates empathic bridges between performers and audience. This live room should have memory, as muscles are felt to have by dancers who usually must "mark", or approximate movements in time to remember how they fit together rather than tell them or even draw them. Memory exteriorized or architectural memory could help illuminate kinetic structure. Architecture capable of transmitting physical memory traces would come close to emulating the body's special empathic sense of movement as well as releasing dance from linear time constraints.

It seems certain that as I write these words with a word processor to be printed on paper and later read one after another-there are various realms of cognitive sensitivity even though there is great debate as to how these realms arose / arise and how they are structured. Just as some of our senses are active in one range of the electro-magnetic spectrum of radiation while others operate nearly exclusively in another, various modules of cognitive function probably serve different kinds of awareness. Gardner suggests that in determining what their boundaries may be we look to evolutionary history to understand what early humans needed to mediate their environment (Gardner, 1982). We could expect that if Gardner's model describes the developmental apparatus, sensitivities would be grouped by need developed over time. We would see patterns of effects of selective processes such as economy (the least effective difference), redundancy (vestigial forms tag along after they are no longer needed for survival ) and feedback loops (which promote success of the successful). Although I am looking for such evidence, I donıt yet see it. Caution is especially called for when looking into the arts, there is great temptation to make grand unsubstantiated claims for what art is or does. When looking into human structures that are not verbal in nature there is an additional danger of falsely imposing verbal organization upon it.

The main perspective that I have gained from this study is that language can be seen as an organizing principle of cognition rather than as a discreet module within mind and brain. As UG mediates between the human and the world in all its complexity the plastic brain differentiates in accord with its own electro-chemical propensities into modules of sensitivity-with correspondently differentated communication components. These patterns are fed back to individuals and then through groups of humans and passed on over time as culture. These patterns give rise to disciplines of thought, ways of knowing the world. The study of the way kinetic awareness likes to organize and communicate itself as well as what is missing in translations of it into other forms of communication may provide deeper understanding into human information processing in its full breadth.

This limited research is valuable in that it indicates a potentially useful path of investigation. I am encouraged to look further into dance and language, convinced that through them much can be learned about being human.