Memory in performance: kinesthetic and procedural dimensions of skill acquisition in dance improvisation

Improvisation is central to creative behavior across artistic and everyday domains, yet it is often portrayed as either pure freedom or rule-bound execution. While research in music and dance has shown that improvisation draws on structured kinesthetic vocabularies, less is known about how cultural rhythm and embodied memory interact in real time within and across genres. This study addresses that gap through ethnographic fieldwork in West Africa, where the first author, trained in contemporary dance, engaged in learning and performing Malian djembe dance. Drawing on autoethnography with a phenomenological orientation, alongside participant observation and conversations with Malian drummers and dancers, the analysis examines how kinesthetic and procedural memories inform real-time performance. Findings suggest that improvisation operates through culturally specific ways of sensing and attending to movement: dancers navigate genre-specific repertoire, rhythmic cues, and bodily affordances to evoke and transform embodied material. However, rather than merely reproducing fixed repertorial units, dancers also reconfigure embodied resources such as movement qualities in responsive and inventive ways. Our research supports the view of improvisation as structured play rather than unbound invention and advances the discourse by emphasizing the reconstructive play of embodied recall-how cultural and personal memories are recomposed in performance. Overall, the study contributes to understanding improvisation as a cognitive and cultural process: not the free invention of form but the creative reorganization of embodied memories within shared perceptual and rhythmic systems.