Performing Limits as an Opening

• In Event: Dance, Body, and Presences

Abstract

Dance cracks open embodied ways of learning, connecting human beings to their bodies, minds and heart. The relationship between movement, dance, body and language becomes a place of inquiry and I will explore its relationship to limits and possibilities. As an aging dancer, and one with injuries, I play with limits and constraints as a place of vulnerability and opening. Central to my own teaching and artistic practice is to integrate physicality of movement and writing from the body. I open a way for theorizing through flesh and recovering a visceral language and draw on arts-based research methods and embodied ways of inquiry (Blumenfeld Jones, 2008, Cancienne &Author 2, 2003, Cancienne, 2008, Author 2, 2002, Author 2, 2016, 2017). Being fully present in the body is necessary for deeper understanding of what it means to be human in this world. Part of that fullness, is to excavate the places of absence and presence within us. For example in dancing with a knee replacement I explore what it means to move in the constraints of the present, and explore the connections between humanness, humility and humour.Dance invites us to think on our feet, and get our feet in our thinking. As humans, we teach with and through our bodies. I call it body pedagogy (Snowber, 2005) and integrate dance, creative movement, and improvisation as a way for students to access their bodies and make friends with their bodies. The physicality of learning becomes the invitation to think with one’s entire being and dance ushers in a way to connect biology and body, cognitive and intuitive thinking, human geography and physicality. Dance accesses many kind of knowledge beyond kinesthetic intelligence, including visual, tactile, mental, cognitive and emotional intelligence. How are questions changed when we ask them through our bodies? How does the body connect to what is happening in the ecology and spirituality of our bodies? How can dance connect to grief or trauma situated within the belly and tissues? The curriculum of our lives have the capacity to become the canvas from which is drawn upon as a place where theory and practice meet. Accessing this canvas is much more possible, when the language of dance can touch to the roots of experience and knowing. The body has constant data that speaks to us, whether that is the flurry in the stomach, the stretch of an elbow, or the abrupt contraction. By dancing our questions, one can uncover the questions underneath the questions, and open up a deep listening to the body’s knowledge. This performative presentation will explore the relationships to what might be conceived as limits, whether that is a limb that does not function, or trauma in the body through the history of Armenian genocide and let dance and words emerging through movement to ask the questions. Here will be a performative piece connecting dance, poetry, and spoken word that serve as a portal to what is hidden in the body.

Author

• Celeste Snowber, Simon Fraser University