we have the brains for a Nobel Prize

This week I finished my first year of Graduate School at Ohio State (hold your applause, please) and have two more years to learn things such as the interesting correlation I am writing about below. In an Audience Development class I took through the Arts Education department, one of many articles I read included evidence that the creative process is, in fact, the same process as advanced problem solving in any area (see my previous post for my approach). Educational psychologist Ellen Winner describes the Creative Process in four stages (from her book "Invented Worlds: The psychology of the Arts):

1. Conscious deliberation of the problem
2. Subconscious deliberation of the problem while attention is turned elsewhere
3. Insight
4. Development of the idea from insight

This is oddly similar to the hallmarks of "competent strategic behavior" to solve academic problems (from "Transfer of Learning: Contemporary Research and Applications"):

1. Comprehension of the problem
2. Application of problem-solving strategies
3. Monitoring of strategies and possible discovery of the need for change
4. Processing shifts.

The process of creating art is cognitively similar to the process of solving problems in academic areas. I find this rather reassuring, any type of order that places dance-making in scientific terms and boosts the status of the research of making dances in the public arena. The societal impression of choreography/performance is that it is outside the normal person, that there is inspiration and emotion and some sort of magic that has been bestowed to do the art form. But as I have always felt, the dance life is definitely a field of skill, practice, hard work, problem-solving, social compatibility, critical thinking, and essentially in its complete fruition needs a thorough process to be successful. Unlike the sciences/maths a little thing called 'ego' often gets thrown into the pot in such a way as to thwart or fully realize what a dance work can be. Works that fall short, I wonder if they are missing part of the process, struggle at a certain stage. Many choreographers create guidelines, rules for making new dance works to keep the vitality of dance. And this is how the dance form exists amidst the push backs, and this is what we need to reveal to our audiences - take away the mystery and be transparent.