In her Introduction to Dance Therapy Redefined (1994; xxiv) Johanna Exiner wrote:
The evidence for monism, or systemic synchronism as other scientists referred to body-mind unity, gave me sufficient confidence to build a new approach to dance therapy on the conviction that we can reach the whole human organism through the body.
Monism is the belief that there is no divide between the mind and body.
An extension of this idea is that knowledge can be experienced and communicated through the body.
A theory I am testing is that animating gestural responses to Antarctica can reveal knowledge of the profound connections some have made with this landscape.
A possible outcome may be an understanding of how differently people respond to the Antarctic landscape compared with others.
Methods of inquiry include:
Working with other people to observe and visually annotate movement responses to the Antarctic landscape and its texts. Attention is being paid to the body’s use of time, space and energy, and to evidence of metaphorical interpretations.
Making drawings of movement responses experienced and observed.
Animating gestures and movement phrases from drawn annotations.
.
This research builds on the work of:
movement analyst Rudolph Laban
dance therapist Johanna Exiner
movement improviser Al Wunder
animators Norman McLaren and Tim Webb
choreographer Siobhan Davies
.
Dance Therapy Redfined: a body approach to therapeutic dance
Johanna Exiner and Denis Kelynack, Charles C Thomas, publisher, 1994
Extracts:
A distinctive body-mind connection is known to those of us actively involved in the arts. As dancers, we know the experience of being in the dance “body and soul,” sometimes only for a moment, but a moment remembered long afterwards for being other, unique, transcendent, a moment of wholeness.
(p.4)
In their search for references to the mind-body issue, Exiner and Keylack chanced upon the work of Stanley Burnshaw, who wrote:
Poetry begins with the body and ends with the body.
The Seamless Web, 1970, p. 1
…the entire human organism always participates in any reaction.
(1970; 10)
…paraphrase invites distortion.
(1970; 14)
Rollo May (1969) looks at body-mind from a different, rather more practical perspective: “My body is an expression par excellence of the fact that I am an individual. Since I am a body separate from others as an individual entity, I cannot escape putting myself on the line in some way or other – or refusing to put myself on the line, which is the same issue.” And further, “The fact that my body is an entity in space, has this motility and this particular relation to space which my movements give it, makes it a living symbol of the fact that I cannot escape in some way or other ‘taking a stand’.” As May points out: “we say someone is ‘upright,’ ‘straight,’ or the opposite, ‘cringing,’ ‘ducking,’ all referring to will and decision as shown through the position of the body.” (p.240)
Exiner & Kelynack, 1995, p. 6-7
.
Choreographer Karen Sherman asks:
What can be longed for in the only place on earth no one owns and no one is from?
Cold Comfort
Although March is supposed to usher in spring, P.S. 122 will bring dance audiences back into the heart of winter this month when it presents Karen Sherman’s Cold Comfort. A dance/performance piece set in Antarctica, Cold Comfort explores desire, hypoxia and something called “penguin envy.” Sherman claims to question what can be “longed for in the only place on earth no one owns and no one is from?” March 11-14, Thurs.-Sat. 7:30 pm, Sun. 5:00 pm. Tickets $15. P.S. 122, 150 1st Avenue at East 9th Street. (212) 477-5288. www.ps122.org
The Brooklyn Rail – Critical perspectives on art, politics and culture
Dancing on the Rail
by Vanessa Manko
March 2004