Embodying the Feeling of Trying to Embody Something

By Zara

I embarked on creating a dance to an accumulation of animal noises we had at this stage, a dance that could translate and embody how it would feel, to me, to transform today into what I have learnt and interpreted as more ‘natural’; to fulfil ‘natural’ roles and to behave and experience life more naturally in a very unnatural world.

What manifested from this generally was an abundance of movement on the floor, movement that was limp, powerless and flaccid, and that resembled squirming. My movement also involved manifesting dynamic qualities and gestures that to me resembled fatigue and consumption of energy.

I progressed through movement tasks focusing on specific elements that could be interpreted as explanations for the animal noise, beyond just that of an animal in pain, explanations which I identified as supposedly ‘natural’  such as fertility, territory or self-protection/vulnerability. I did this in order to create a corresponding accumulation of movements for each explanation. This involved attempting to embody the sound in each task, as if I were convincing others that I was the animal I was hearing, in the context I was interpreting it as being in. I was seeking to convey and reference each of these different elements of my conceptualisation of the ‘natural’ through this.

I then combined the accumulated movement into one overall vocabulary that could be used to accompany the animal noise. I then developed this overall vocabulary by performing movement in a way that also expressed how it would feel to attempt to become something I was not in such a manner; the feelings of trying to become this creature and all of these supposedly ‘natural’ explanations at once.

My approach to generating initial material was purposefully raw; I wanted to investigate how I would intuitively embody my own concepts and intuitively translate a feeling into movement, and to use this as a foundation for my improvisatory practice. This allowed me to develop a combined movement vocabulary initially from the inside-out, and to base this vocabulary on a raw embodied and emotional response. I incorporated into these vocabularies my rendering of imagined animal behaviours and also the feeling of trying to render them as myself.

Although this was a more fundamental approach to generating material, it was capable of being as rigorous as choreographic tasks that systematically deter how space and/or time is used. The longer I immersed myself in becoming and rendering a specific entity and feeling, the more mentally connected I felt with the movement, and I incorporated further detail into the movement I created as I practiced more. I practiced mindfulness exercises prior to creating material, to warm up my focus and sensitivity. In essence, I developed movement by focusing on exercising and strengthening my connection between feeling and movement. I saw this method as most appropriate for the themes and ambitions of this work.