Embodied creativity in the fine and performing arts

Abstract

Creativity studies has focused on creative thinking processes, problem-solving, and innovation, while the embodied dimensions of creativity have remained a tangential thread. In part, this is due to the challenge of running original, quantitative experiments in the embodied and performing arts. At a more paradigmatic level, it is also due to the valuing of cognition over embodiment that continues to structure academia and creativity studies. Not running counter to cognitive creativity, but interconnected with it, embodied creativity includes creative expressions and processes that emphasize or are generated by the physical body. It is a view of creativity that highlights physical responses within creative practice and is attentive to the influences of space, environment, materials, and the individual's relationships to other bodies. The fine and performing arts are exemplary places to study embodied creativity, and 4E cognition theory can assist in describing how and where embodied creativity exists. This article argues for embodied creativity as an important place of study that can move creativity studies toward decoloniality.