Unraveling threads – revealing body through dance

One of the ways I experience dance is as a series of body images.‘instilled,’ a solo dance performance (2010) contains many elements that express how I image body, both mine and others. These include images that are visceral, infant-like, in-culturated as woman, as feminine and as a distorted figure of disease. ‘instilled’ was an expression of many elements of my self-body-image without it necessarily
being about me. What follows are excerpts from a major thesis titled: “Vulnerable body: intersecting life, practice and performance” 2010 and developed alongside the performance. There are five descriptive creative reflections from each section of the performance.

Section One: ‘unraveling threads’
Enclosed in the glass foyer reminiscent of shop front displays, surrounded by black paper walls covered with writing (my implicit and imagined history) and dirt covered ground (innate nature), I revealed a multi-layered experiencing of self-image. I slowly revealed the skin of my bare back (explicit body) before disappearing into the blackness of the night/earth. After which the audience were invited to walk through this same room where they were invited to connect with a dialogue between their inner world of perceptual, sensorial and corporeal imaging and the environment they were entering into. In the immediacy of the inter-sensory and inter-corporeal arriving-in-performance there was a heightened awareness of how body images are held within a fluctuating sphere of being as opposed to fixed notions or pre-existing memories.

and no where and somewhere…in between
present and past, in between here and there,
memories and forgettings, life and
death…always sandwiched, never existing
purely because (Strapps 2010)