dance #134, leafing and movement as proposition

Monday May 4, 2009

Leafing and movement as proposition

9:20 p.m. A 10 minute improvisation in the study, dancing with Erin Manning and Isabelle Stengers. Manning (2009) proposes that thought moves bodies (p. 6). Thought and movement are entangled. Stengers suggests that concepts move, that they have agency. And they also pull. Abstractions are for her propositions that lure, pulling curious bodies into new lines of flight. How might movements be kinds of propositions? Modes of articulation? Different ways of telling stories? This dance begins with leafing: a becoming-plant that hitches a ride on the huge unfurlings heaving out of thickening buds on the horse chestnut trees that grow across from my house. Leaves are busting out. Expanding.  Leafing as a proposition danced into the world. This dance shifts from from a becoming to learning about leafing as a gestural proposition, as something articulated. What can leafing do to/for/with a dancing/thinking body? What does it propose? The dance that unfolded lunged and lurched and pulled and surged. Alice is calling out from downstairs. It was a bright day and warming. The night is calm and the neighborhood trees still vibrant in the cooling air.

~ by nmyers on May 4, 2009.