Exploring the embodied subtleties of collaborative creativity: What organisations can learn from dance

Moving beyond individual bodies towards collective ambitions in a creative process

As we will describe, collaborative creativity was observed through spontaneous, nuanced variations in movements that were first created separately, and then collaboratively, by the dancers offstage. The interchange between individual ambitions and collaborative imaginings was a central feature of the creative process. For example, in the freelance dance production (see Figure 1), the two dancers separately created movements by following their personal ambitions and mirroring each other, and the choreographer let them move as they desired. Later, the dancers combined the movements they had rehearsed separately, which led to the emergence of new movement patterns as one of the dancers adjusted to the felt movements and sensory subtleties of their partner. When separate movements were combined into a coherent dance, no dancer ‘stood out’ as an individual, and the dancers seemed to work seamlessly to achieve a collective goal. This extended individual imaginings, allowing collaborative creativity to emerge as an embodied practice and, in so doing, producing interesting power dynamics between the dancers, as we discuss further below.

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Figure 1.

The two dancers and choreographer working separately yet collaboratively.

Importantly, this dialogical negotiation (see Craft, 2008) took place largely on an embodied level. Through separate practices, dancers showed others and the choreographer how they interpreted the dance piece rather than verbally describing it. Few words were exchanged, and the creative piece unfolded in a shared symbolic space that was sensed and communicated through the dancers’ and choreographer’s bodies and sensory faculties (i.e. seeing, hearing, listening and moving in relation to others). By sensing each other, the dancers mutually produced a creative outcome, as recorded in field notes:

The atmosphere is devoted and peaceful as I step into the rehearsal studio and sit down on the floor. The choreographer puts the music on, starts to explain to the dancer: ‘Use proud shapes; you can take some bourrée in between the postures. Try to stay up and curled in at the same time.’ The choreographer cannot stay still; she is standing, and her body subtly moves and empathises with the dancer’s body.

The music stops, but the dancer continues moving without the music, putting her soul into the role of the fragile roe deer. The choreographer encourages her: ‘Yes, yes! Just like that; that’s what I meant!’ The dancer seems to easily understand the verbal advice of the choreographer and turns it into subtle movement patterns. (Field note extract, freelance dance production)

By sensing and intuiting each other’s bodily presence, collaborative creativity seemed to unfold as a shared, yet unspoken, imagining of what to do and how. Another observation from the same rehearsal illustrates how collaborative creativity developed by merging individual and collaborative creativity:

After giving her certain suggestions of how to move, the choreographer lets the dancer create her own interpretation of the scene. The dancer reflects and conveys the story of the roe deer, and the choreographer follows her intensively and gives more detailed ideas about the scene: ‘Try to get some ethereal softness to your hands. Your body sends impulses to your hands; it brings a sense of bestiality to the movement. Let’s try it together!’ The choreographer starts moving beside the dancer, and together, they produce spontaneous movements that were not choreographed in advance. Extraordinarily, I feel as if my body is immersed in their joint movement, and at this point in the rehearsal, I totally forget to take photographs. (Field note extract, freelance dance production)

In the episode above, collaborative creativity developed from the dancer’s and choreographer’s individual creativity through their close presence, the sensuous nature of the experience and bodily sharing of responsibility for development of the piece (see Figure 2). The dancer expected the choreographer to interject, as revealed during an informal conversation between her and Suvi:

Dancer: It’s great to work with her within this piece. She gives us space to use our own creativity by being an equivalent part of the process, and not somebody who tells us what to do. She controlled us much more in the former production two years ago. It was difficult to follow the strict rules because every movement is performed differently by a different dancer.

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Figure 2.

Sharing ideas by observing each other’s fine-grained gestures.

This quote illustrates that when the individual ambitions of the choreographer are prioritised over collectivist goals, collaborative creativity is suppressed. The tension between individual and collective endeavours, which is related to power, is constantly present in work settings, especially in artistic contexts such as dance. In the freelance dance production, it was necessary to constantly balance between the choreographer’s personal views on one hand and the dancers’ desires about how to move on the other hand. Thus, power was an important but largely hidden part of the process of collaborative creativity. The power dynamics did become visible, however, in the small, subtle moments of negotiation between the dancers’ bodies in their offstage work. It is in this context that we see strong parallels to other contexts of management learning, as we elucidate further below.

In the retired ballet dancers’ production, both dancers had backgrounds as soloists, and thus they were used to dancing alone or with a partner in front of a ballet choir. In this production, however, they had to find ways to suppress their backgrounds and prevent individual ambitions from rising above collective ones. This required constant negotiation, mostly through their bodies. Very subtle movements and gestures were able to communicate whether the dancers approved of others’ ideas or whether they wanted to overrule them with their own ideas. The following example hints at a shared understanding of what was going on and the collective goal. Although the work could seem chaotic at times, shared understanding acted as a tool to overcome difficulties and combine different, even conflicting, ideas into a coherent whole:

It is morning, and I am observing the dancers working in a small rehearsal studio. Neither of the two dancers dominates the other. When one gets stuck on an idea, the other one helps them to get over it. I can sense mutual respect between these two artists. However, as it is eight weeks to the opening night, the overall impression of the production is one of fragmented chaos.

Although Kare [the male dancer] has mainly done the choreography, the final decisions are made collectively, as both dancers describe during an informal conversation with me between two rehearsals. During the last rehearsal of the day, they start a discussion:

Minna: Should the space start to divide as the end approaches? [with an insecure tone in her voice]

Kare: Maybe yes. But I have another idea. What if the lights just turned off, and you walked away at the end? [exchanges enthusiastic glances with Minna]

Minna: Good idea! We need to put it on the back burner. [sighs quietly and looks a bit frustrated] (Field note episode, retired ballet dancers’ production)

This empirical episode illustrates how the dancers departed from their personal views and collectively negotiated between the different ideas that emerged while they developed a shared understanding of the creative outcome. The power dimension of collaborative creativity was materialised through collective respect, which allowed for quick exchange of thoughts, movements and slight nuances of each other’s bodily movements offstage. It may seem as though the negotiation in the above episode was only verbal, but closer analysis reveals how it manifested on an embodied level. What this spoken – and now written – episode cannot show is that the dancers continuously performed detailed interpretation of each other’s embodied signals, such as sights, tones of voice and other bodily expressions, until they achieved balance between their personal thoughts and collective ambitions. This is also related to power; the dancers’ career-long relationship, based on mutual respect, trust and intimacy, means that neither is in a position to control the other’s movements. Instead of manifesting as authority (as in the example of the choreographer above), power appears in subtle and persuasive ways, such as quick changes of movements, as the dancers sense the slight nuances in each other’s bodies and their embodied ideas about how to proceed together.

Although in the above excerpt Kare expresses that he has an overall vision of the final piece, the actual performance emerged from the dancers’ shared vision, meaning that both dancers listened to each other and worked in favour of the collective goal, their bodies shifting between leading and following. The ability to understand colleagues’ thoughts through tiny gestures and movements is part of a genuinely collaborative spirit, as we discuss next.

Relating to colleagues’ micro-gestures and bodily nuances

The second embodied subtlety we identified was that the emergence of collaborative creativity was always rooted in a specific time and place. The dancers’ sensory experiences varied from day to day and featured various affective states and moods shared between them through non-verbal interactions and fine-grained gestures. The episode below illustrates the dynamics related to the subtle, sensory nature of dancers’ collaborative work during rehearsals:

The choreographer stands in the middle of the rehearsal hall, surrounded by five young dancers who listen to her carefully. She explains, ‘Let’s divide you into pairs now!’ The dancers quickly form pairs without a word, just by making quick glances with each other, and without allowing the choreographer to say much, one of the dancers suggests, with a glint in his eye, ‘Let’s do this section like it was an Argentinean tango. No eye contact . . . just the feeling’. He grabs the female dancer, and they start to dance a tango with serious faces, closed eyes and exaggerated, rigid movements. The other dancers and the choreographer double up with laughter. Field note episode, freelance dance production)

In this rehearsal, dancers continuously sensed the choreographer’s and other dancers’ moods and the overall atmosphere, and they started to work accordingly. It is important to note that this is a body-first process, in which the details about the current moment are communicated through subtle gestures and nuances. As work on the dance piece proceeds, collaboration intensifies, and the ideas of the choreographer (which are mostly expressed verbally) and those of the dancers (which are expressed through the fine-grained nuances of their moving bodies) become blurred. The sensory, charged nature of collaborative creativity requires the dancers to remain sensitive to their colleagues’ feelings and micro-gestures, as this is how they intuit their thoughts. Movements are created through mutual interpretation of the expressed sensory states of the dancers’ bodies. Thus, in this collaborative work, the dancers must be open and honest with one another because of the physical closeness and emotional intensity that characterise their work:

We share everything with each other. One would notice if someone had some worries. In this work, it is impossible to hide as we work so close to each other. You have to be fully who you are. (Field note extract, retired ballet dancers’ production)

As the above quote illustrates, trust in your own and your partner’s capabilities is a central part of collaborative work. In the dance productions, mutual trust was manifested in the bodily interactions of the agents:

The dancer starts moving as the choreographer puts on the serene music. The choreographer follows her intensely, following her movements around the rehearsal studio and not interrupting her. Fascinatingly, the roles of the two are turned upside down; it is now the dancer who is leading the current moment, and the choreographer is just following her, giving her the space that she clearly needs, and appreciating every single movement she creates. (Field note episode, freelance dance production)

The above observation illustrates what we see as the construction and blurring of subjectivities in collaborative creativity, which take place on an embodied level through sensory, intuited micro-gestures and interactions. The dancer seemed to adopt the choreographer’s role, and for a moment, the dancer was the choreographer and the choreographer was the audience. This change in roles was smooth and easy, and it showed the importance of subtle gestural interactions. In addition, there did not seem to be competition between the choreographer and dancer; both were engaged in each other’s bodily work on a sensory level and involved in collaboratively creating movement, and due to mutual trust and respect, they shared power.

Similarly, the retired dancers’ caring, respectful attitudes towards each other and the unashamed way in which they expressed their vulnerabilities and moods were evident in their movements in relation to one another. Take, for example, the bed scene (see Figure 3), which was one of the most emotionally charged scenes in their production. As Figure 3 shows, it was possible for the dancers to work on subtle micro-gestures and immerse in the emotional state of the current moment without a real bed and other set pieces, which the dancers did not have access to until a few days before the premiere. For the dancers, embodied sensitivity towards each other enabled collaborative creativity to emerge, despite the chaotic work offstage. Their focus was on the micro-gestures and fine-grained dynamics between their bodies in that specific time and place.

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Figure 3.

The dancers immersing themselves in each other’s movements and presence offstage.

The dancers’ bodies were implicated in the situation in a bodily primitive way, as captured in Figure 3. Full bodily immersion and concentration were required to act out the scene. Appreciation of the dancers’ fine-grained gestures and ‘being in the moment’ led us to recognise the third aspect of collaborative creativity, which we discuss next.

The role of ‘serious play’ between bodies in setting the scene for the first two aspects to occur

‘Serious work’ refers to the concentration and full immersion in collaboration that we have described above, which require a deeply embodied understanding of colleagues’ emotions and intuitive capabilities. ‘Playful work’, on the other hand, is humorous and childlike. Collaborative creativity was actualised through variation of – and a kind of dance between – these sensuously different ways of working, as illustrated in the following episode:

Minna enters the room, asking Kare how he is feeling today and explaining to me that her body feels different every day. They start working on a serene section of the piece. As they fully concentrate on the present moment, new movements are created through immersion in the music, movement and each other. As Minna touches Kare’s head and looks into his eyes (see Picture 5), I am sitting in the back of the rehearsal studio, and it feels like my presence fades away. They are creating something unseen together within that moment, which is filled with slight bodily nuances, light touches and delicate whispers.

Suddenly, they jump to a totally different section, which is still messy and unfinished. It doesn’t seem to bother them, as they concentrate on improvising a series of unfinished movements. They laugh and play with the movements as they are stuck with how to proceed. Kare plays the fool with the movements, while Minna acknowledges his jokes by continuing to improvise in the same spirit. (Field note extract, retired ballet dancers’ production)

In the above observation and Figure 4, collaborative creativity is generated through playful interactions between the two dancers as well as their serious work. We argue that this interplay is only possible because of the shared bodily intuitions we have already described. The dancers get ideas from each other’s expressions and movements about ways to develop the piece in a playful, cheerful way, which complements their serious and concentrated work on other sections.

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Figure 4.

The dancers’ playfulness in spontaneous moments offstage.

As the atmosphere of Figure 4 suggests, the space is filled with laughter and joy. Bodily movements express humour, but seriousness and concentration are also fully embodied, as the outside world ceases to exist and the dancers focus solely on each other and the music.

In the freelance dance production, the playful aspect of the dancers’ work is visible in the episode below, which describes a rehearsal of the slide scene:

We are in an abandoned, dark, rusty shipyard in the harbour. It is a complete contrast to the neat and bright rehearsal studio they have been rehearsing in until now. The dancers build the slide from wooden pieces and begin contact improvisation following the comments of the choreographer: ‘Feel free to try and explore the movements!’ Both the choreographer and the dancers are in stitches [i.e. laughing uncontrollably] as the dancers playfully improvise by trying different kinds of slides while in contact with each other. The dancers need to adapt to the circumstances of the different places in which the rehearsals are held. ‘We just need to pass through this with the material that we already have’, the choreographer explains and continues, ‘This slide scene should be the climax of the story’. (Field note extract, freelance dance production)

The creative process is a set of experiments conducted with a playful attitude regarding colleagues’ presence and bodily dynamics. Figure 5 captures the work performed in these experiments; the wooden slide is covered with black fabric, and the dancers slide, relaxed, without knowing exactly how this experiment will end. The choreographer, who is standing on the left side in Figure 5, follows the dancers quietly and intensely, commenting ‘yes’, ‘mmm’ or ‘oh, that looks good’. Importantly, she cannot avoid moving her own body while immersing herself in the gestures of the dancers. These disengaged experiments, which do not have a predetermined result, capture serious play in the embodiment of collaborative creativity. While watching the practicing dancers, the choreographer is not only looking at them but also feeling them, as if she was one of them, and their movements are reciprocated by her own body so that she can fully understand them, not in her mind but in her felt experiences. She joins the process of playful experimentation, sensing the process in her body as the improvising dancers lead her. This is a reversal of the power dynamics we discussed above.

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Figure 5.

The dancers trying different ways of sliding.

To conclude, the embodied creative work in the two dance productions was characterised by switching between serious and playful moments, both of which appeared to be essential to the development of the pieces into coherent performances onstage. While the seriousness of the dancers’ work allowed them to analytically process the pieces, the playfulness was characterised by spontaneous humour and unexpected experiments. Moving between these two complementary ways of working – which can collectively be called ‘serious play’ – led to unexpected and fundamentally bodily collaborative results. Next, we discuss how these findings can be applied to everyday organisational contexts in which management learning takes place.

Embodied subtleties in the self-managed organisation

In the productions we described above, embodied sensitivity towards others was developed as the dancers moved and the boundaries between them began to blur, transforming the participants into a creative entity as opposed to a group of people just working together. The choreographer felt the dancers’ movements in her own body, and the dancers felt each other’s movements; bodily boundaries were dissolved and the inter-corporeal (and therefore inherently collaborative) character of embodiment was revealed (e.g. Riach and Warren, 2015).

Although we believe that creativity emerged collaboratively, this process often began with one dancer taking the lead (most clearly seen in the actions of the choreographer), while others followed. This has implications for management learning in knowledge-based economies, in which organisational members have high autonomy and are not subject to traditional authority structures, such as bureaucratic hierarchies (e.g. Pearce and Manz, 2005).

Despite the illusion of egalitarianism, power dynamics still emerge in the so-called ‘self-managed teams’ that characterise many knowledge-intensive firms due to the social, intersectional characteristics of their members, such as their gendered and racialised perceptions of expertise and leadership (Foldy et al., 2009; Liu, 2019). As our data indicate, for collaborative creativity to emerge, power must be dispersed such that less prominent members of the group are able to enact what Satama (2017) called ‘embodied agency’. This could be observed when the dancers improvised the slide scene. Each dancer’s movements led the choreographer to feel the creativity expressed by the group. We suggest that when training self-managed teams, managers should implicate the body and embodied, sensory interactions as forms of learning needed to create collaboratively (Rigg, 2018). Sensitivity towards others and oneself could – and, ideally, does – enable more open and plurivocal conversations in organisations about difficult and sensitive issues. As Simpson et al. (2018) argue, relational sociality can be understood as an imaginative engagement with others’ experiences, as if one is the other, bringing an embodied and emotional level to collaboration that is crucial for learning. The next section discusses the potential applications of our finding that learning physically evolves as a process between bodies.

Embodied subtleties, micro-gestural power and the dynamics of virtual teams

Throughout this study, we have conceptualised collaborative creativity as ‘a complex, messy, embodied and non-linear process’ (Stierand et al., 2017: 165) through which dance performances evolved. Leadership was shifted between participants through subtle, gestural interactions, which sometimes made it difficult to say who was leading and who was following. The importance of this finding is underscored by literature on the development of artificial intelligence with embodied cognition. For example, Breazeal et al. (2009) explain that robots need to be taught to read the nuances in humans’ gestures and expressions in order to read their minds. This is usually taken for granted in organisational life. For example, in strategy development (e.g. Dameron et al., 2015), tiny details of actors’ movements play a crucial role in how plans come to fruition (Gylfe et al., 2016). Similarly, Hindmarsh and Pilnick (2007: 1395) describe the importance of ‘ephemeral teamwork’ (i.e. the barely intuited co-presence of surgeons and anaesthetists) for smooth running of the operating theatre.

Our findings and those of previous studies suggest the importance of a predominantly equal balance of micro-gestural power in workplace relationships, in line with contemporary theories of relational leadership (Biehl, 2019; Ryömä and Satama, 2019; Uhl-Bien and Ospina, 2012). However, it is important to proceed with caution when applying these results, particularly in the context of larger, more formal organisational situations. Bell and King (2010) critically explore the significance of body pedagogy in socialisation, arguing that white, masculine, hegemony is maintained in academia through embodied dynamics learned by newcomers. They explain how the ethics and culture of a dominant group is learned by newcomers observing ‘the bodies of participants [. . .] onto which the culture is inscribed’ (Bell and King, 2010: 438). This suggests that some bodily movements and demeanours have enough value that others must imitate them to fit in. However, Romberg’s (2017) analysis of gesture among religious shamans highlights a slightly different dimension of embodied power. Through performance, gestures, dancing, touching, blowing and other actions imbued with symbolic power, this power is transferred to the shamans, further legitimising their right to make those movements. Gestures do not serve as manifestations of pre-existing power; rather, power comes from movement. We argue that similar processes can be observed in our empirical material when the dancers found their colleagues’ movements to be favourable and built upon them with their own movements, thereby transferring power back and forth in a reciprocal manner.

As we noted at the start of the article, organisations have intended to exert control over workers’ movements for over 100 years, suppressing opportunities for creativity in order to improve the efficiency of production lines (Gilbreth and Gilbreth, 1916). Power has long been exercised through top-down authority over the micro-movements of workers, and this is still evident in the modern workplace (see, for example, recent reports of excessive bodily regulation by Amazon in their warehouses (Solon, 2018). So although here we suggest the opposite, locating embodied subtleties as the very stuff of creative engagement, we also remain mindful of the bio-social power dynamics that will always be present in organisational situations.

Embodied aspects of collaborative creativity are also affected by the contemporary shift towards virtual teams and work. A lack of co-presence has often been identified as a potential limitation of technology-enabled collaborative work, but it has rarely been discussed in depth (see Dulebohn and Hoch, 2017). We do not aim to argue against virtual work, but to invite those who manage virtual teams to provide enough space and opportunities for face-to-face encounters or other sensuous ways of communicating. As we noted at the outset, this need has become particularly pressing during the Covid-19 pandemic where millions of workers have been forced to work from home and communicate with each other exclusively via remote means, often using video-calling platforms. All of a sudden, all organisational work – routine and creative – had to be performed without co-workers being physically present. The use of video enabled platforms speaks to our desire to see who we are interacting with, even if we cannot be co-present. However many people reported finding this new way of relating to each other to be physically exhausting, and emerging research suggests that the absence (or ambiguity) of embodied subtleties was a key reason for this. “On a video chat, we need to work harder to process non-verbal cues. Our minds are together when our bodies feel we’re not. . .” (Sander and Bauman, 2020). This is undoubtedly a fascinating area for future research as we note below.

Feeling or sensing other agents move and become excited, determined, afraid or defensive through exchange of embodied subtleties is also a powerful way to understand the contagiousness of moods and other group dynamics. The need to socialise teams to work well together is not new (e.g. Druskat and Wheeler, 2003; Rickards and Moger, 2000), but based on our findings, we encourage organisations to enable more body-first processes that take into account the subtleties of bodily movement. Ironically, it seems that dance could be an ideal body-first vehicle for socialising teams, as we and other management scholars have proposed (Biehl, 2017, 2019; Chandler, 2012; Hujala et al., 2014; Satama, 2017), but other arts-based interventions could be equally valuable (e.g. Antonacopoulou and Taylor, 2019).

The embodied subtleties of serious play: The fun organisation

Finally, the playful – but serious – work that was realised through subtle movement characterised the dancers’ attitudes towards their own and others’ bodies. As Küpers (2017: 994) notes, ‘Etymologically, play refers to “dlegh” (from Indo-European meaning, literally, meaning movement, motion, energetic engagement, discovering new possibilities), which implies moving bodies and embodiment, venturing toward the novel’. Therefore, to extend the view that a collective consciousness, shared thinking or understanding is required for collaborative creativity (Hargadon and Bechky, 2006; Harvey, 2014; Kenny, 2008), we demonstrated that physical and mental closeness, embodied sensitivity and micro-gestural negotiations within a playful yet serious situation are crucial. This suggests that, in everyday organisational life, it is necessary to reduce formal control in order to allow the playful attitude needed for collaborative creativity to develop.

The extent to which true play is possible in large, rule-bound organisations is questionable; as Warren and Fineman (2007) have shown, the concept of serious play has come under scrutiny for its apparently paradoxical nature (Statler and Heracleous, 2011). Nonetheless, play at work has long been associated with creativity (Anderson, 1994) and has interested management scholars for some time (see the contributions to Ephemera, 2011). The shift towards playful and/or fun work environments in order to improve organisational outcomes, particularly in modern knowledge-based organisations (Spraggon and Bodolica, 2017), is well-established. This likely means that organisations are already a fertile ground for collaborative creativity.

In addition, play, serious or otherwise, is laden with power dynamics. Humour and play are often used to protect instigators from accusations of bullying or harassment disguised as joking, and workplace banter is a feature of many high-pressure and psychologically damaging organisational environments (Plester, 2015). Thus, it is important for managers to foster an environment of mutual trust and respect in order for play and fun to be perceived as beneficial (Tews et al., 2015). However, play is also a productive way to release the tensions that can arise when working with others, as described in some of the empirical episodes. For example, the playful experimentations with sliding described in the last section of our analysis seem to be inseparable from the creative process (Stierand et al., 2017). Play is often used as a means to divert from the actual creative work, affecting creativity more indirectly (Mainemelis and Ronson, 2006).

In sum, following Küpers (2017), our contribution to the literature is explicit recognition of the role of embodied subtleties in serious play and the need for organisations to foster the conditions for not only minds but also bodies to play.