Impulse is an extremely widely used concept beyond performing arts. It’s used in everyday speech and also across a large variety of academic and other disciplines. I was taking a shibari (rope bondage) class 5.2.2017 at Eskus Performance Center in Helsinki where one of the facilitators of the course repeatedly stressed the importance of what kind of impulses you give as a top to your bottom (top being the one that ties and bottom being the one who’s being tied in this example). They didn’t explain what they meant by impulse nor anyone asked. Everyone seemed to implicitly know what it means. The facilitator of the class doesn’t have a professional performing arts background. They use the term because it’s useful in the physical work dealing with communication in their particular practice.
This is but one of the many instances where I’ve encountered the use of the term beyond performing arts. A more extensive research would be needed to deal with its many uses, but that is beyond this research. I’m starting with this example to show how it’s continually used as a term in other contexts than the performing arts.
Webster’s College Dictionary explains the word ’impulse’ f.e. by being ‘a single, usually sudden, flow of electric current in one direction’ (1991) and Concise Oxford English Dictionary defines it f.e as ‘A force acting briefly on a body and producing a finite change of momentum.’ (2002) In medicine impulse is defined as ’a brief electrical event transmitted along nerve or muscle fibers’ (McComas 2011, xxii).
If I’m trying to find the smallest element in performing, why not just call it movement or change? With movement, impulse turns into dance and change turns it into something too general. Impulse connects directly with action. When you look at the various uses and definitions of impulse they give one a combination of everyday speech, very exact definitions from natural sciences and key concepts of acting like motivation (impulse, n.d.).
As a concept impulse gives one possibility for great precision and at the same time freedom as to what is the exact form it takes. Compared to movement it also directly gives a sense of a combination of force, time and especially change. The impulse as a term is at the same time extremely physical and precise and boundless.
It’s also possible to already by these examples say that it’s an extremely used concept. It will not be possible for me to go through all the definitions and uses of impulse in the context of this research. In terms of this concept I’m not inventing anything new. Why I’m interested in impulse as a key term in performing is because it’s so widely used in especially in performing techniques with very rare instances of specificity on the term. At the same time it’s very closely tied with practice – I have myself heard it being used in the fine-tuning of the performer’s work both in Meisner classes I’ve took in Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts and in my vocational dance education based on postmodern dance. I have also encountered it systematically in rehearsals especially related to theatre and dance performances.