Dancing Practices

Abstract

This article aims to explore the relation between body and space – specifically how the relation between the embodied awareness of movement and the sense of one’s body-space can be modified and changed deliberately in different kinds of dance practices. Using a multi-sited design, the ethnographical fieldwork, which formed the empirical ground for the study, was from the outset focused on acknowledging the diversity of the dancers’ practices. Each in their own way, the 13 professional dancers involved in the study relate to and experience bodied potentialities, body-space and the spatiality of movement differently. Through their practice, they indicate that the body image is shaped through a multisensorial process of reification, and that seeing is to be related to a broader perceptual engagement. Furthermore, they exemplify how seeing can be deliberately used to expand the sense of their body-space and thereby to affect the spatiality of the fields of their embodied interaction.

Improvisation and thinking in movement: an enactivist analysis of agency in artistic practices

“…Her professional practice is related to German expressionist dancing, Butoh-related performance training (especially the "Body Weather" work of Min Tanaka; see Fuller 2017), and "Body-Mind Centering" (Cohen, 2008). That is to say, processes of energy transformation are key to Johnson's practice, and to the research laying the groundwork for her solos (Ravn, 2017;Ravn & Hansen, 2013). The interview with Johnson lasted about seventy minutes and incorporated insights based on the first author's active participation in workshops with her attendance at her performances and several other interviews with her over the past decade.…”

“…When asked to specify what aspects of movement she includes in her notion of "energy," she explains that it depends in part on the context and actual performance situation, but that the notion can refer to its quality, tension and/or intensity and intentionality. Recent analyses also indicate that the energy in Johnson's work derives from her sense of the current state of her body, the energy to which she connects in the actual situation, and the energy of the imaginary landscapes and themes with which she engages (Ravn, 2017;Ravn & Hansen, 2013;). In her artistic work Johnson uses and relates to improvisation in different ways.…”

“…In the hours leading up to a given performance, Johnson focuses on what her body feels like and whether she needs to stretch, run, or do something else to feel, "grounded and in connection with it all". As discussed in former analyses of Johnson's practices (Ravn, 2017;Legrand & Ravn, 2009) this attunement of her body demands work from her side. Using a dance scholarly interpretation, Johnson deliberately attunes the "matter of her body" so as to be prepared to handle the improvisatory performative encounter in a skillful way, where 'matter' denotes the "live unstable 'body states' of the dancer which are her/his primary material" (Gardner, 2010, p. xv).…”

Bodily Changes: Castration as Cultural and Social Practice in the Space of the Forbidden City

“…At the same time, however, the culturally laden space of the Forbidden City “cannot be understood without attention to active persons moving” (Farnell, 2000, p. 399). In other words, “an exploration of how space is produced necessarily also requests an analytical awareness of how potentialities of the body and the spatiality of movement unfold as space is taking shape” (Ravn, 2017, p. 58). Human actions/reactions realized within makes the space “simultaneously physical, conceptual, moral, and ethical” (D.…”

“…Body studies has been developed extensively since the 1980s with a focus on body and embodiment, and it has spread into diverse disciplines in both humanities and science. Correlated current issues, such as bodily changes, which “disrupt the way the body ‘normally’ functions as a silent backdrop for intentional actions” (Ravn, 2017, p. 58), have been discussed in cases like transplantations (Shildrick, 2008), cosmetic surgery (Featherstone, 2010), and amputations (Sobchack, 2010). The flourishing of body studies “displace[s] the view that a body can be studied in isolation, abstracted from its very real conditions of existence and living” (Blackman, 2012, p. 2).…”