The Place of Dance: A Somatic Guide to Dancing and Dance Making

Change levels and explore new spatial orientation. Stay rooted. Don’t judge. Let the little ticker tape of self-criticism become background noise that you ignore. Return to sensation.

I feel that dance, in particular, has a unique role to play in rehabilitating humans’ relationship with Earth. We need both a cognitive (mental) and an experiential (embodied) understanding to make a change in behavior. Drawing on the depth and detail of our research and experiential knowledge, dancers bring an embodied, integrative, cross-discipli

Slowly

effort involved within any shape as part of a continuum of effort, space, weight, time, and energy. Within

Repetition is a kind of incantation, a cycling back and calling forth. A phrase or image appears once, repeats, or develops—it’s not the same.

Remembering the roundness of the three body weights (skull, ribs, and pelvis) releases tension.

roll the circumference of your skull on the floor. Take your time; the rolling of the skull moves your body. Sometimes it feels like a hard-boiled egg, slowly cracking and softening. Allow the sensation of touch to bring awareness of the globe of your skull. Roll to the top center of the skull; touch all the surfaces. • Slowly roll the circumferenc

Spatial patterning is the pathway the body takes. Axial is generally spine-centered movement, and gestural is more limb-centered. Movement can be both stationary, when fixed in place, and locomotor, when the body travels. Spherical movement arcs through circular, omnidirectional space, including the globe around the body. Level moves from floor to

Move within an imaginary sphere of space, your kinesphere. Maintaining awareness of spherical movement, let the globes of your three body weights meet the spatial globe. Explore roundness in your movement. Feel the roundness inside, the roundness outside.

This includes the skinesphere—space within the skin3—and kinesphere—space around the body.