Within Limits: Movement Restraint as a Catalyst for Body–Mind Awareness
(last edited: 2026)
author(s): Lea Bitri
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
This practice-as-research project investigates how movement restraints can enhance awareness of the body-mind connection within dance and movement practice. Drawing on individual participants’ movement histories, this exposition explores movement restraint, not as limitation or hinderance, but as a generative condition for heightened perception from a somatic perspective.
This study was conducted through four workshops involving two participant groups, of technically-trained, and untrained dance backgrounds. Using physical constraints, and task-based improvisation, the workshops aimed to examine how restraining movement choices influenced sensory awareness, presence, and memory.
Through reflective documentation, observation, and participant feedback, this practice-as-research intends to identify shifts in kinaesthetic perception, and body-mind connection. The exposition contributes experiential knowledge, referencing somatic and contemporary dance practices, proposing connected movement restraints as a tool for cultivating this somatic awareness, rather than restricting movement vocabulary potential.
