| Performing artists experience anomalous phenomena during artmaking, including altered states of consciousness, psychic events such as telepathy, synchronicity, extreme somatics, and other products of nonlocal awareness. These phenomena are both cultivated and emergent, and occur with predictable frequency. Optimal precursors for the appearance of these phenomena in individuals and groups include rigorous training over time, ongoing education and practice, and the presence of personal risk and other forms of emotional affect.;Eight performing artists participated in long semistructured interviews. Drama, dance, music, and performing arts education were represented. Conditions of hyperawareness, individual and group flow, spatial and temporal alterations, and out-of-body sensations were among the phenomena reported. Performer experience is not limited to these events.;Commonalities in experience are found in indigenous shamanic practices, mysticism, and extreme sports. Relevant research has been done in parapsychology, transpersonal psychology, human potential, new science, shamanism, cognitive archaeology, and creativity, performance, and integral studies. Performing artists may possess an above average affinity for anomalous experience.;Performing arts education and practice encourage the capacity for anomalous experience, and rehearsal and performance protocols provide altered state induction pathways. Sensory potentials may be creatively crafted to provide induction for audience members who experience altered states of consciousness and participate in performance processes.;Performing arts domains are nested complex autopoietic systems, propelled by the energy and intent of performing artists, which respond to the needs of creative projects. Performing arts systems facilitate creative and interactive social activities that trace theatrical practices and anomalous effects to ancient shamanic ways and foster conditions conducive to learning, growth, and transformation. While nonlocal phenomena are experienced across the spectrum of humanity, in the performing arts they are integral to creative processes. |
