the self as revealed through movements and words
The experience of the moving body,
Softly softly as it graces an awareness. The hand that reaches the mouth. The leg that moves sliding along the cold floor.
The stage function as a conduit; where the embodied self can appear and conceal itself. To whose direction becomes apparent; the dancer in free expression; a unity of body, mind and self unfolds effortlessly into the light; but when another leads, guides expression, the self cannot disappear, adapt, perhaps, evolve, perhaps, but always remains the self in stance on the stage.
The Presentation of Self; (Goffman) keeps appearing in my mind. In dance classes; where the body is ‘free’ to express; certain questions constantly re-emerge;
• How far does my body communicate my history?
• How far does codified movement training distort authenticate movement practices?
• How far do the subtle nuances of my life world appear in the folds of flesh and solid bone which make up my physical self.
In this sense; the moving body becomes a portrait; a constantly emerging complex tapestry which engulfs and encapsulates the very essence of our lived experience. How I touch and how I am touched by another becomes something more than instantaneous; rather it becomes a conclusion to a further complex series of choices, patterns and routines which we have previously experienced; digested and understood as some form of knowledge.
The body holds experience; in a harsh light as tension, in a softness of collapse. As my body lays on the floor, moving only slightly; folding, writhing, uncurling, I watch it with my mind; a confusion of exhaustion and relaxation in an endless duet, I try to remember where I learnt such complexities from where I was able to consider certain articulations possible. I enjoy denying the mind a place in this duet; forcing it to a void; and indulging myself in the limitless potential of the authenticate as it emerges and subsides.
How far can the moving body become a dynamic reflection as to the entirety of a life world? I find myself frustrated with this assumption; each movement piece being only a reflective of a portrait of a particular and selective reality of time, space and place experience; just as photograph can only capture one frame in time and place; I wonder how in some way; the moving body also alludes as such;
‘The camera can only photograph a series of disparate elements,
details which hint at a larger unity but remain as fragments of an indefinable process. The city as such remains oblivious and impervious to the photographer’s attempts to ‘capture’ it in visual terms ’Clarke. G. (1997) The photograph. Oxford. Oxford University Press.
How far a city allows the individual to collect and generate narrative without being influenced by a constant schema of interaction with others; hence perhaps this means that that an original narrative becomes impossible.
Durkheim’s codes and patterns of society infiltrate interaction and responses; ‘When I fulfill my duties as a brother, husband or citizen… I perform duties which are defined, externally to myself and my acts in law and custom. Even if they conform to my own sentiments and I feel their relative subjectivity, such reality is still objective for I did not create them’ Durkheim. E (1938) The Rules of Sociological Method. USA. University of Chicago. P1 He notes ‘A thought which we find in every individual consciousness, a movement repeated by all individuals, is not thereby social fact.’ That patterns and similarities can be ascertained does not generate a method of substantial critique.
The body; under a light; performs. So complex in its inversions and experiences; holding us so lightly, so firmly; it performs itself and yourself and myself in a bliss web. Endless and unforgiving.
Urban re:passages 