The Ontogenetic Body – makes us aware of developmental processes and gives us a way to embody the forms, mind states and movement patterns of our cellular histories.
Written by Róisín O’Gorman, a theatre artist and lecturer at University College Cork, Ireland, this chapter explores movement and performance through the somatic practice of Body-Mind Centering (BMC).
The Intersubjective Body
The Intersubjective Body – explores the inter-relationship between dancing bodies and the environment, within the context of site-responsive performance practice.
Written by Natalie Garrett Brown, this chapter discusses ideas of the body in flux and is informed by Deleuze and Corporeal Feminism and advocates an affinity between them and somatic informed movement practice
The Autobiographical Body
The Autobiographical Body – examines somatic performance practices that explore autobiography as a fluid experience based on relationships with other people and places.
Author Emma Meehan draws on Object Relations theory to show how autobiography is negotiated between mover/performer and environment.
The Resonant Body
The Resonant Body – proposes that ‘cellular-body-mindfulness’ - while paying particular attention to the sensory world of sound - moves towards a definition of the Resonant Body in site-responsive improvisation.
Author Pam Woods reflects on, and provides insights into, her personal practice of ‘Sounding Dance Improvisation’.
The Learnt Body
The Learnt Body – proposes a training of the performer’s body which isolates the socio-culturally ‘learnt’ aspects of its place-memory in order to consciously transcend socially coded habits and movement patterns.
Written by actor Nicholas Hope, the chapter draws on the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Edward Casey, Jaana Parviainen and Rudolf Laban.
The Resilient Body
The Resilient Body – through the adaptive capacity of the human body the performer can develop resilience and potential, establishing a vital awareness of the constantly shifting movement of lived experience.
Author Campbell Edinborough frames his discussion of the resilient body with an analysis of the pedagogical approach used in the Feldenkrais Method.
The Imaginal Body
The Imaginal Body – rooted in the Alexander technique, this lens suggests using anatomical images, specific thinking, touch and visualisations to let go of habitual restrictive patterns and release imaginative potential.
Author Niamh Dowling is Head of School of Performance at Rose Bruford College of Theatre and Performance in London. She has worked extensively internationally as a Movement Director, leading workshops in UK, Europe, USA, Asia, South and Central America and Russia.
The Kinetic Body
The Kinetic Body – demonstrates how, underpinning the kinetics of breathing, ‘foot’ produces temporality, which is the fundamental source of the presence of the body.
Authors Arya Madhavan and Sreenath Nairinvestigate the nature of the actor/dancer’s presence through a range of vocabularies and practices derived from Indian martial arts and classical Sanskrit theatre known as kudiyattam.
The Cognitive Body
The Cognitive Body – uses Damasio’s 'body-minded brain' and his 'somatic marker hypothesis' to articulate ways of physical devising for performance.
Author Kate Hunter describes how she uses movement
improvisation as a component of her performance practice, with specific
attention to the ordering, remembering, re-working, and manipulating of gesture, shape, dynamic
and memory.
The Vocal Body
The Vocal Body – moves beyond the idea of the body as a facilitator or homebase of vocal emission and offers through praxis an integrative approach to physiovocal unity.
Author Konstantinos Thomaidis is the Head of Movement of Opera in Space and an Associate Artist of EVDC-UK.
The Dwelling Body
The Dwelling Body – sees the practitioner as a conduit: experiencing body and place as continually in process and recognising the vital inter-relationship of place and identity.
Author Suze Adamsexamines
ways in which habitual responses might be disturbed using yogic breathing as a
practice of attention
The Musical Body
The Musical Body – a re-intepretation of Stockhausen’s Tierkreis offers a physical approach to performance where the body is the driving force behind musical interpretation.
Authors Imogene Newland and Franziska Schroeder investigate the intrinsic relationship between the body and the music and point to a choreography that is shaped through the musical body.
