Interfaces Between Don Idhe, Merleau-Ponty, and Gretchen Schiller´s Embodiment Concepts Applied to Mediadance

The artworks that fall nowadays within the umbrella term ‘mediadance,' characterized by the hybridism on the intersection of dance, moving image, digital technology and communication and information technologies, are representing and simulating not only new types of dancing body configurations but also promoting a new way for the audience to experience dance. This article presents and reflects on Gretchen Schiller's (2003) concepts of ‘mediadance' and ‘kinesfield,' revisiting Maurice Merleau-Ponty's (1945, 1962) thoughts on phenomenology of perception for theoretical support to analyze the forms of embodiment that mediadance promotes. Finally, we adopt Don Idhe's post-phenomenological claim that the experience interlaced between body and digital technology is a re-embodiment stage and never, as some authors can propose, a disembodiment stage.