The body performs definition
The body | the spaces I fear in-between embodiment
The body; as it sits; as it stands; adjusts; readjusts. Minute articulations, statements of self and autobiographies which we reflect. The body; as container and plethora of events; detailed and articulate. The body as sensitive plane; data storage of the language of events from which the mind articulates certain detail and informalities.
What then is the performing body?
The body on a stage; in a landscape; in the supermarket. The performance of performance or the performance of everyday life. What movements are seen as ‘worth watching’; the moments in the supermarket when performance seems a game to a new perspective;
My finger clicks
I adjust my ribs at the desk
Elongate my back
Arch my spine
Uncross my legs
The sole of my feet now flat to the stone
And breath
Constant deep inhale
Filling my rib cage
It makes a sound; deep and unsettling to a passer by
When in class; I lay on the floor; I roll softly over a strangers body; get hurled into the air by another; my sack of skin malleable; content in these exchanges. On the bus I am unnerved by a man who sits to close. Situational control and manipulation of social conduct. In the flexible spaces of studio I can be contented in such immersion; at a desk; in the rise of the ‘organisational man’ the body becomes tool; weapon; at times defenceless at times potent symbol.
Walking in the wild; I can play; sometimes a dancer, sometimes a walker; sometimes a thinker; all these states played out by my arrangement of bones and muscles and expression.
The body on stage; alert; ready to execute series of motions and arrangements which we call dance and which we allow to form a specific cultural genre; but when can this end? When does the dancer stop dancing? The argument of definitions, semantics and the ability to deconstruct words is endless; but can it exist thus a personal decision? A personal formation; a social construction of personal movement reality; my desk becomes stage; the stage becomes desk; does this work if the man sat beside me has not caught up with my shifts in definition.
I sit
Ribs contract
Tail expand
Feet flat
Entwined in an argument with semantics.
Urban re:passages 