Moving from the Inside Out
Moving from the Inside Out is an example of a singular process in which movement provided the answer to the questions: how can I exemplify a singular point in the body as the origin of movement initiation and how can I develop choreography that travels through two medial, meridian pathways? Although the practice is consistent, the movement uncovered in this process is quite different. As a dancer of codified techniques that value expansive exploration of the lateral and posterior parts of the body, my choreographic portfolio is almost exclusively a manipulation of exterior space without a regard to the interior space (inside the body). Described by Parker-Starbuck and Mock: “Often there still danger of falling into bodily cliché as a choreographer…Or perhaps the danger is in writing or speaking the ‘body’ rather than the ‘experience." The process of Moving from the Inside Out challenges my propensity for movement that explores the reach of the kinesthetic sphere and instead insists on attending to the finite intricacies of manipulating anterior/interior space. Movement phrases were pieced together based on video documentation of movement responding to the above provocations. However, in the process of reconstructing the found moments in the effort to weave together choreographic phrases, I noticed a tendency to recreate the shape of the archived body as opposed to recreating the conditions that provoked the shape. Through an intensive daily study of the archived material, I eventually identified a process, that included an environment void of mirrors, in which the movement was reinstantiated. “As dance belongs entirely to the moment, existing only in performance (and performances are never entirely identical), it is difficult to pin down” (Patricia Leavy). In this way the performance acted as a “methodology that privileges embodied knowledge…using the situated body to generate new understandings and research trajectories” (Parker-Starbuck and Mock). This approach is the necessary first step to the prevalent method (and that in which I am most interested in further investigation) in my practice of intercorporeal exchanges in which the discoveries made in the body inform the relationships that exist between bodies that share space.