Holding Open Space

Nicola Visser

This practice-as-research (PaR) project explores how we use our eyes in seeing and being seen within the context of the mover and witness roles, as practiced in the ‘open space’ segment of Contemplative Dance Practice (CDP). As a dance artist-researcher, I am interested in how a witness holds space for another in ways that go beyond the concept of ‘non-judgement’. My PaR was animated by the question: How do we hold ‘open space’ across distance? Framed in the context of Covid-19 social distancing, it opened up a research inquiry into practices of looking for the witness and leads me to propose that witnessing is not only an embodied technique but an improvisational skill. Witnessing is a co-creative act, how we look changes what we see. My study was invigorated by the theoretical frameworks and writings of key thinkers—including Erin Manning on the Minor Gesture (2016, 2022, 2023), Eugene Gendlin’s practice steps of a Process Model (2017), and Lauren Berlant on transformational infrastructure (2017)—and finds re-orientation with/in the project of decoloniality. My methodology includes studio practice of MoverWitness relation in the open space segment of CDP, parallel methods of close reading, close talking (Schoeller 2022), ‘close drawing’ and ‘close dancing’, and interviews with artists about how they use their eyes in their practices. Ultimately, my PaR project formulates a principle and practice that I term Slow Seeing. The study of looking, attention and perception lead me to detail findings that contribute to ways of seeing as an epistemological concern. The insights are arranged into three broad fields. These include, first the practice as it pertains to contemplative dance training, where I propose a unit of embodied technique called ‘easy eyes’ and an improvisation score for the witness in a MoverWitness relation. Second, a reframing of CDP as a transformational infrastructure and a place of radical hospitality for fugitive gestures. And third, reflections on the socio-political implications of this eye practice and its potential to delink dance praxis as part of the project of decoloniality. A key insight is the notion that the eye technique and practice levers a shift in the sediment of our habitual unquestioned ordering of the world and cultivates courage in doing and knowing other-wise. It is strikingly significant because it wedges up a fulcrum and shifts the way we perceive small and big things —where we sit, how we stand, which tea we buy, movement, relation, migration, borders, identity, capitalism, power paradigms, ideology, the far away-nearby, love, everything-everything. So small. It makes a rupture, a crack, a glitch, and a fertile place for lively possibility

HOLDING OPEN SPACE

This is the exposition of a Practice as Research for a Masters in Dance (by Research) at the University of Malta (2025).

The frame of the dance practice is Contemplative Dance Practice as developed by Barbara Dilley in 1978. This is a collective improvisational dance practice that comes out of a radical experimentation with dance (for instance Dilley's key involvement in The Grand Union) and a meditation tradition. The practice begins with Sitting Meditation, followed by Personal Awareness Practice and finally Open Space. Dilley (2016: 23) describes it as 'entering a space free of constraint, free of structure, to meet the moment and to meet the ensemble -the gathered community - and explore together'.

The Open Space stage is the focus of the research. Here there is an exchange of roles between a Mover and a Witness. Imagine the rim of a bowl, the Witnesses witness Movers improvise from the edge of the studio while seated in a circle. It is the Witness in the MoverWitness (MW) relation that is the core of the Practice as Research and thus the title: Holding Open Space. The project inquires into the complicated territory of seeing and being seen. It is a little bit counterintuitive as the discipline of dance implies an audience, with its particular transcational agreement and power dynamic, where those who see are most often sitting passively in a darkened auditorium. It is helpful to remember that this research is in the realm of practice. It is not a performance, the witness shares the same space and the principle is one of equal exchange.

The research exposition outlines the step by step undertaking of the research that was animated by a question during Covid 19 social distancing restrictions: How can we hold open space across distance? It inquires into ways of looking and how our ways of looking relate to the way in which we can hold space open for the practice. It proposes an eye practice as an embodied technique for witnessing. As the study develops it is possible to understand that the eye practice is not only a technique for the witness, but supports the way in which we hold space for ourselves in terms of an internal witness while we move, and offers a glimpse into our co-creative participation with the world.

The conceptual framework of the research was invigorated by key thinkers: Erin Manning on the Minor Gesture (2016), Eugene Gendlin on A Process Model and his practice of Thinking at the Edge, as well as Lauren Berlant on transformational infratructures. This PaR finds re-oreination with/in the project of decoloniality. I am a community dance artist, with projects in South Africa and Denmark. In Denmark I host weekly classes in Contemplative Dance Practice for a group of trained and untrained dancers. The research is undertaken in both countries as it set out to explore what it means to practice across distance and what it means to see and be seen. As a community dance artist I am interested in the socio-political dimensions of the work of the body with the world, and the reorientation that this eye practice can jump-start. I propose the eye practice discovered through this research, coined 'Easy Eyes' and its formaulation as a improvsiational score for the witness, is an embodied technique that contributes to the project of decoloniality in dance praxis.

M = Mover, W = Witness

The inseparability of these two roles is graphically represented here. To the side of this graphic is a little stop motion in which you can see the M become the W and an M again. Of course it depends where you are posistioned which you might see first.The idea of difference without separability (Da Silva 2016) is a theme running throughout the research and fundamental to different theories. The reader will recognise it in the process philosophy (Manning 2016; Whitehead in Massumi andManning 2014; Gendlin 2017) that forms the framework of the thesis and in the dance practice of improvisation, the approaches of dance artists, somatic practitioners and artists interviewed as part of the project. It is also recognisable in the work of political and cultural theorists Lauren Berlant and Achille Mbembe whose thoughts guide me in the research. With reagard to witnessing I have leaned in to Janet Adler's theory of development of the inner witness (Adler 2002, 2022) within the MoverWitness exchange (Goldhahn 2024) in The Discipline of Authentic Movement. I refer to this mechanism in CDP for the purposes of this study as the MoverWitness relation.

Terminology

'Movement' / 'Dance'

I use these words interchangeably in the thesis. I value them for different reasons. The Mover Witness relation that is the primary research area is relevant to the practices of Contemplative DANCE Practice, Authentic MOVEMENT and Focusing. I value the term ‘movement’ as it is inclusive of quotidian movement and movement of the mind as thought as well as more-than-human movement. I value ‘dance’ for its discipline of study and inquiry, and the joy that spills out in excess of the confines of the concept.

'Glitch' , Figuring and Drawing Closer for explanation of symbols, phrases, mark making .

This is a stop motion animation of MW. It may be obvious, but it is satisfying to be reminded. The M and the W are always-already contained in the other.

Drawing Closer

Here are explantations of the symbols created and used in this research exposition.

'Easy Eyes' Symbol

This graphic symbol evolved from my research process. This is my rendering of the experience of 'Easy Eyes' and the attentive practice.

It represents many things found along the way through movement research, drawing and reading.

In this thesis it represents the finding: an eye practice of direct looking and peripheral vision at the same time. When you read about the five eye practices Barbara Dilley teaches, and follow this with the interview, it can also be named the 6th eye practice. In other words an evolution out of the original five. As evolution is the way with Practice as Research, there may be a 7th and so on. More will always arrive.

The spiral is significant. It is part of comic artist, Lynda Barry's drawing methodology. Do it and you 'centre down'1 and a 'certain state of mind' arrives that is generative to letting the drawing have it's own agency (Barry 2014). She does this - you could do it too - just a pen and paper and off you go - make a sprial very slowly, as evenly as you can without the lines touching......take your time.

If you click on the symbol you will find further information about the spiral and Lynda Barry. The reason I use this is becuase the 'Easy Eyes' eye practice that is the finding of this research invites, through allowing, the same 'certain state of mind' described by Barry. We have found this 'certain state of mind' in the research group and through the interviews. Lucia Walker, veteran Alexander Technique and Contact Improvisation teacher refers to the effect as encouraging a state that is 'relaxed and inerested' , or 'relaxed and alert' , a state that she likens to 'presence'.

This is photographer ...ah...what is her name?????

A guide for reading the exposition.

Red dot: Background

Yellow dot: My Methodology

Orange dot: Practice Stories and Paradocs

Pink Dot: Insights, Findings and Implications

Blue Dot: References

Rose Mandel, The Errand of the Eye, photographs, 1951–1953.

GLITCH

Cape Town, Devil's Peak Mountain. Sunset and streetlight. This short video is here to highlight a concept useful to the research: 'glitch'.

GLITCH

'Glitch' is a useful term in this thesis and one that corresponds with a number of different concepts and actions. I give some time to it here.

'Glitch' refers to the disruptions in normative structures of everyday life. They are often hastily repaired, only superficially examined and most often elided. They make a stumbling point and a pause, a hestitation in our ongoingness. A glitch reveals the instabilty and precarity beneath seemingly stable systems. A glitch offers a moment of seeing the unsustainability of our perceived attachments. It is a useful place to think from. It is just this combination of forces and forced excavations that is interesting to me in the project of witnessing unimagined movement. Two theorists write with clarity:

Legacy Russell writes ‘Glitch prompts and glitch prevents. With this (paradox), glitch becomes catalyst, opening new pathways, allowing us to seize on new directions’ (2020: 30). Glitch etymology is German ‘glitshen’-to slide. It is thus an active word, in that it implies movement and action from the outset. (2020: 29).

Lauren Berlant writes that a glitch is 'an interruption within a transition, a troubled transmission. It is the revelation of an infrastructural failure'(2016: 393). They are interested in a non-reproductive repair and what a repair beyond the glitch may look like for our social existence. They propose that we dont just judge positions and practices in the world, but consider terms of transition that alter the harder and softer, tighter and looser infrastructures of sociality itself.

I use the concept of glitch in two ways:

Firstly, to recognise discomfort or friction within the practice and to pause with it, feel for what is interesting and give time to what might be lively information contained there.

Second, to notice when things dont fit or when doubt arrives in my own thinking. It is often the place where I hold a conscious or unconcious cultural script, and I invite myself to unpick it.

Photographs: Scanned glass slides that underwent unintentional transformation in the computer storage mechanism. Artist: Sean Wilson.

Glitch.

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