Chapter 1: Foundation of the inquiry


Gateway to dance

When words fall short of expressing the emotional depth of experience, dance has always served as my gateway to self-expression and discovery. In this non-verbal space, where the body speaks, I have found my own voice, and through it, I guide others to connect with what their bodies may silently carry. After over thirty years of teaching dance in secondary education, and more recently, leading intergenerational community dance projects outside of traditional school settings, I sought to understand the intangible nature of this form of expression from a more physical perspective, moving beyond my reliance on narrative-based approaches. My aim was to deepen my understanding of how to shape this gateway to self-expression more consciously, and to move away from intuition alone in my community-based choreography practice.

 

To achieve this, I needed to return to the core of my own being, my own narrative, before I could guide others on a deeper, more embodied level. Twyla Tharp (2003) speaks to this:


"If you understand the strands of your creative DNA,

you begin to see how they mutate into common threads in your work.

You begin to see the 'story' that you're trying to tell" (p. 44).

 

This inquiry culminated in Equilibrium, my final choreographic project, which became both a testing ground and a manifestation of the insights gained through this research.

Overview of the chapters

In the chapters that follow, I unfold the stages of this artistic inquiry, each building on the previous one to trace the evolution of Equilibrium and my artistic practice.

 

Chapter 1, Foundation of the inquiry, begins by delving into the psychoanalytic and philosophical foundations that shaped my research focus. Here, I explore how these insights revealed the deeper undercurrents of my work and led to the formulation of my central research question.

 

Chapter 2, The Artistic Process, focuses on the studio-based approach with the dancers. I describe how I structured the creative journey into four phases, exploration, composition, structuring, and refinement, allowing embodied experiences and critical reflection to intertwine, gradually shaping the artistic language of Equilibrium.

 

Chapter 3, Emerging Insights and Evolving Practice, reflects on the main discoveries of the project and considers how these insights are laying new foundations for the ongoing evolution of my choreographic and educational practices.

Together, these chapters offer a roadmap through the unfolding inquiry, leading from inner exploration toward collective creation and outward reflection.

 

My early memory

A vivid memory from my early childhood has stayed with me. As a toddler, I would lie motionless when placed in my crib. My mother shared that only when taken out of the crib did I seem to come to life. This image has stayed with me, perhaps a clue to my creative DNA. When reflecting on it in adulthood, I often find myself experiencing a state of apathy, a form of self-imposed confinement. It is only when I manage to break free from these invisible boundaries that my creativity is able to flow and set me in motion. This early pattern of self-censorship and eventual liberation has echoed throughout my creative life.

 

Clarifying my essence 

In seeking to understand the common threads that run through my work, I realized that I first needed to clarify my essence. It was only through this clarity that I could begin to formulate a research question that would resonate deeply with me. I explored various themes, such as longing, emptiness, abandonment, survival strategies, and examined previous works I had created, with themes like Loneliness, Who Am I?, Following the Rules, Expectations, Connections, and Facades. Beneath all of these themes lay a fundamental duality: the struggle between what to reveal and what to conceal, between following others and listening to my own voice. 

 

This exploration eventually led me to a search for harmony, a sense of peacefulness in the middle of these tensions. But why this need for harmony? What lay beneath this yearning? It took deeper reflection to realize that this longing was rooted in a sense of never being good enough. This feeling of inadequacy has shaped my search for self-acceptance, stemming from early experiences of emotional neglect.

 

Emotional self-regulation

In my quest to understand these inner dynamics, I turned to psychoanalytic theory, particularly the work of Melanie Klein (1952, as cited in Hagman, 2010). Klein's ideas helped me grasp how early disruptions in emotional development can lead to self-criticism and defensive mechanisms that hinder the ability to self-regulate. I recognized that my own experiences of emotional neglect had led me to develop coping mechanisms that suppressed my authentic self, leaving me to grow into an adult plagued by feelings of inadequacy and low self-worth.

 

The issue of emotional self-regulation is not confined to those who have experienced trauma; it is a widespread phenomenon, often hidden behind the high-functioning behaviour and cultural ideals of control and perfection. Studies have shown that only a small percentage of individuals develop strong, consistent self-regulatory capacities (Baumeister & Vohs, 2016). Many others, like myself, quietly struggle with feelings of inadequacy, emotional overwhelm, and a deep sense of being "less” than others.

 

Shame

This feeling of inadequacy is often accompanied by shame, and as a result, it remains deeply hidden. Yet it is precisely this hidden space, the dark, often unspoken parts of ourselves, that I find most intriguing in both teaching and choreography. As Bessel van der Kolk (2014) states, "the body keeps the score." This insight resonated with me deeply, as I believe the body holds stories that words cannot easily express, especially those stemming from subtler wounds, such as emotional neglect. Van der Kolk highlights the challenge many individuals face: it is often easier to recount what has been done to them than to face and articulate the internal experiences they hold.

 

This insight deepened my belief that dance can give voice to what cannot be said in words. As Kleinian analyst Hanna Segal (1991, as cited in Hagman, 2010) suggests, artistic creation can be an unconscious attempt to recreate a lost, harmonious internal world. This aligns with my own desire to create works that bridge internal conflicts and outer expression.

 

The role of dance

Twyla Tharp (2003, p. 10) expands this idea, stating that "everything is raw material. Everything is relevant. Everything is usable." For Tharp, the artist's unique character is key, and the artist must grapple with their own personal demons. These demons, however, should not be blocked but embraced. Only by doing so can the artist reveal the "story" they are trying to tell through their work.

These reflections led me to my initial research question: "How can the feeling of 'not being good enough' serve as raw material to shape into art?"

 

Expanding the inquiry

I saw that these internal conflicts were not unique to me. Nearly every human being experiences some form of this tension, between striving and surrender, between perfectionism and self-acceptance, also the participants I worked with on Equilibrium, my final choreographic project for the Master. This realization expanded my inquiry to explore how embodied conflicts manifest in and between bodies.

 

At first, my focus was on creating a safe and meaningful space where participants could explore these themes and translate them into an artistic form. Yet, as the process unfolded, I realized that it was not just about the space itself, but about how the internal conflict could be physically embodied. This shift led me to refine my perspective: it became less about talking about the tension, and more about how it could live and move through the body.

How, I asked, can we meet ourselves and each other in movement when shame, fear, or the urge to control are present? What kind of physical spaces are needed to allow vulnerability and trust to emerge, and how could this vulnerability be translated into expressive, artistic dance?

 

Embodied memory and the role of trauma

In the case of subtle trauma, such as emotional neglect, the body carries stories that are difficult to articulate. As van der Kolk (2014) writes: "We want to live in a world that is safe, manageable, and predictable. Trauma survivors remind us that this is not always the case... we must develop the courage to look at the realities of trauma and listen to the testimonies of those who survived it" (p. 194–195).

 

His words underscore the importance of breaking the silence and creating space, socially and artistically, or what is often hidden from view. In Equilibrium, the emphasis on bodily awareness and improvisation offered pathways for these silent narratives to find form through movement.

 

Influences from philosophy and somatics

This shift towards embodiment was strongly informed by the writings of philosopher Erin Manning and somatic educator Thomas Hanna. 

In Politics of Touch (2007) and Relationscapes (2009), Manning presents movement as a relational process, emerging from sensation, responsiveness, and connection. Her concept of "pre-acceleration," the subtle micro-movements that occur before conscious decision-making, encouraged me to move away from creating fixed choreographies. Instead, I began to explore how movement could emerge from the very beginnings of sensation, allowing for a more organic and responsive process of creation.

 

Similarly, Thomas Hanna's somatic philosophy (1988), which emphasizes the release of unconscious tension through sensory awareness, contributed to this change. While Hanna’s focus lies primarily on personal awareness, Manning extends it into the relational field between bodies.

 

Together, these ideas deepened and validated the direction I was beginning to explore in my own practice. They offered a theoretical framework for working in a more open-ended, somatically driven way, and encouraged me to trust the unfolding of movement from lived sensation and interrelation. 

This approach resonated strongly with the participants I was working with, reinforcing my belief that dance could emerge from within, rather than being externally shaped.

 

Diversity as a creative source

Most of the participants in my projects don’t have formal dance training; they come from a range of backgrounds, ages, and levels of experience. This diversity had a significant impact not only on how I guided the creative process but also on how the artistic choices were shaped.

 

Rather than focusing on technical mastery, these dancers brought an emphasis on self-discovery and personal experience into the process. Their movement arose from individual associations and embodied memories, rather than from the pursuit of a polished aesthetic. To support this, adopting a somatic approach was a smart choice, because that encouraged the participants to connect to their own physical sensations and inner tensions, which allowed for authentic and personal translations of the movement material to arise.

 

Working with such a diverse group made me deeply aware of how diversity itself can serve as a powerful creative source. In this context, I found further support in the principles of community dance. Community dance as described by Amans (2017, as cited in Roche & Burridge, 2022), values participant-centred processes, collaboration, inclusivity, and the recognition of diverse bodies and life experiences as artistic resources. These principles closely align with the way I work, both within Equilibrium and in my broader teaching practice with secondary school students and intergenerational groups. Here, the focus is not on perfecting technique but on exploring movement as a form of personal growth, self-expression, and shared artistic creation.

 

Final research question

Through these shifts in approach, I moved away from choreographing from the outside in and towards facilitating embodied inquiry. This evolution culminated in my final research question:


"How can a choreographer guide a diverse group of participants in physically embodying the inner conflict between self-criticism and self-acceptance, and translate this embodiment into an expressive and artistic dance form?"

 

Context and artistic translation

My approach emphasizes somatic awareness, improvisation, and shared exploration. Rather than relying on fixed choreography, pre-structured composition tasks, or music-driven narratives, methods I deliberately set aside, I chose to work somatically in order to reach interpersonal themes through the body itself. I hoped that by starting from micro-movements and embodied sensation, a deeper, non-literal communication would emerge, allowing the body to speak without imposed dramatic narratives. Improvisation became a necessity, as each dancer’s somatic response is unique and could only develop authentically through real-time exploration and interaction.


This practice-based methodology allowed the creative process to unfold through the dancers' individual embodied discoveries and their real-time interactions with each other. From their somatic solo explorations, I supported them in shaping the material into artistic forms by introducing compositional tools such as repetition, spatial variation, and relational dynamics. In this way, their deeply personal movement vocabularies could be shared, expanded, and abstracted into a collective choreographic landscape.


Informed by my educational background in secondary education, I draw on principles of social constructivism (McLeod, 2024), where knowledge is seen as evolving through individual experience and collaborative interaction. This idea resonates with the work of Erin Manning and Thomas Hanna, who both emphasize that movement and dance are not static entities but are continuously constructed through lived, relational experience. Each, in their own way, highlights how embodied understanding and existing knowledge serve as the foundation for new creation.

 

Through this approach, Equilibrium became a collaborative and embodied exploration, shaped by the unique experiences of its participants and by the interplay between individual and collective creation.

 

Building on these processes of embodied exploration and shared creation, the resulting dance performance Equilibrium brings these themes to life on stage. 

The piece explores the internal conflict between self-criticism and self-acceptance, drawing on somatic practices and embodied experiences to reflect the tension between personal struggle and the pursuit of harmony. In this context, the tension refers to the internal push and pull between limiting beliefs, rooted in fear, trauma, and self-criticism, and the yearning for self-trust, freedom, and authentic expression. It is 

 

not about eliminating these opposing forces,

but about embracing the fluid space between them:

a space where vulnerability and strength coexist,

and where growth emerges not from control,

but from the willingness to move with uncertainty. 


This work is not about resolution, but recognition, acknowledging the complexities within ourselves and allowing them to exist in a dynamic, ongoing relationship.

At the same time, it serves as an invitation for the audience to reflect on their own internal imbalances. Drawing inspiration from Bessel van der Kolk’s work, the performance seeks to break the silence around inner struggles and to bring attention to what often remains hidden beneath the surface. By inviting viewers to engage with these deeper layers of their emotional lives, Equilibrium encourages a broader conversation about the unspoken struggles that many people carry within.

Methods

 

Research approach

In this research, I applied concrete, practice-based methods in the studio, focusing on co-creation, somatic exploration, improvisation, and choreographic principles. By choosing somatic methods and improvisational practices, the research aimed to activate bodily memory and emotional imprints without cognitive mediation, allowing the direct relationship between tension, self-criticism, and movement quality to surface. The shift from technical virtuosity to embodied authenticity made the research accessible to dancers with diverse physical and emotional backgrounds, supporting the artistic goal of an inclusive, experience-based movement practice.

 

Collaboration with external experts played a vital role in translating embodied experiences into expressive and coherent artistic forms. Dramaturg Sara Wiktorowicz helped deepen the thematic layers and supported the structural development of the choreography. Artistic coach Jordy Dik provided feedback on composition and guided solutions for choreographic challenges, shaping the material into a dynamic and accessible performance. Additionally, composer Terence Hansen created an original soundscape that reflected and enhanced the dancers’ emotional journey, weaving the inner themes of self-criticism and self-acceptance into the musical dimension of the piece. These collaborations ensured that the somatically generated material could grow into a fully realized and artistically refined dance work.

 

Modalities

Various modalities supported the research process by providing different ways to document, structure, and develop the artistic material. Some of this material is illustrated through video compilations referenced in Chapter 2.

Video recordings during rehearsals captured, among other things, exploratory improvisations and pre-choreographic material such as solos, duets, and early scene ideas. Reviewing this footage informed, for example, spatial adjustments, relational nuances, and individual coaching decisions.


To guide the exploration phase, I drew on my pedagogical expertise by creating lesson-like structures, offering somatic work step by step. Preparing these session plans helped create a clear progression and provided tangible reference points to reflect on the artistic evolution rather than relying solely on intuition.

After the exploration phase, I documented focal points for developing the choreographic framework rather than scripting full sessions. These written focus points served as helpful checklists during rehearsals.

To structure emerging material, I used movable post-its for each solo, duet, or scene idea, such as the 'crab bucket', 'shadow figure', or small motifs like the 'lateral walk' allowing flexible composition experiments.

Figure 1. Post-its used to test and reorganize structural options in the creative process.

Working with external partners also shaped the process. Collaborating with the composer, based in the US, involved frequent email exchanges. Written communication proved valuable in allowing me to revisit what I had communicated when unexpected musical outcomes occurred, for example, when a requested waltz rhythm les to a driving, syncopated version. Being able to reread our exchanges gave me greater insight into how my instructions might have been interpreted differently, and how small nuances in phrasing could influence the artistic result.

Conversations with my dramaturg and artistic coach were recorded and transcribed to capture insights and nuances that might have been lost in the flow of discussion.

Altogether, these working methods helped me balance intuitive creation with critical reflection, offering a layered foundation for the artistic development.

 

Participants

To invite participants, I distributed a call for dancers via social media, a local newspaper, and by placing flyers (figure 2) in community spaces such as libraries and theatres across Voorne aan Zee. Below is the Dutch flyer, which illustrates the announcement for the audition workshop.

From the audition workshop, eight female dancers were selected to participate in the project, ranging in age from 18 to 45. Six dancers did not have an academic background in dance; two had semi-professional or academic training. Three participants were former students I had mentored years ago at SG Helinium, where dance is offered as an art subject. Their familiarity with a creative, improvisation-based approach supported the group dynamic. The remaining dancers brought several years of experience in modern dance, contributing to a varied, intergenerational ensemble. The participants were engaged as co-creators and performers, contributing their own embodied experiences to the process.

Figure 2. A and B. Front and back of the Dutch audition flyer used for participant outreach.

English translation of the text of the flyer.

Rehearsal Structure

The creation and research process in the studio included twenty-two rehearsals of two hours on Wednesday evenings, supplemented by three intensive Sunday sessions of five hours each. This schedule led to the development of a 52-minute choreography. The initial phases focused on embodied exploration, while later stages, aimed at refining and shaping the work for performance.

 

Following the premiere of Equilibrium at the BREStheater in Brielle on March 21 and 22, we continued developing the piece through three additional Wednesday rehearsals and one more intensive Sunday session. This second phase focused on deepening and refining the work in preparation for its presenting as the final choreographic project at the #4COMMA Festival on May 24 at 6 PM at De Nieuwe Vorst in Tilburg.

 

The post-premiere rehearsals were crucial for the piece to mature further. They allowed for greater nuance, emotional depth, and clarity in the choreography. The collaboration with the dramaturg, artistic coach, and composer during this phase supported the artistic refining of the work. The structure of the piece became more coherent, the emotional layers sharper, and the dancers’ physicality grew in both clarity and depth.


Structuring the creative process

Throughout the process, I sought to create an environment where dancers could physically embody the central themes of Equilibrium, the inner conflict between self-criticism and self-acceptance, while also guiding the translation of these experiences into performative material. These two tracks, guiding personal exploration and shaping artistic form, ran side by side and often intertwined.

 

In the early stages, I embraced a facilitative style of leadership, creating space for the dancers' contributions to emerge organically. I maintained a balance between intuitive, process-driven research and critical reflection, allowing the process to unfold while attuning to what was needed next. Avoiding premature control was crucial, as it could have limited the dancers' embodied discoveries and reduced the richness of the artistic translation.

As the work progressed into structuring and refinement, my leadership gradually became more directional. Shaping a cohesive choreographic structure required greater clarity and decisiveness to guide the dancers into a more concrete phase. Once the structure was established, space reopened for dialogue, co-creation, and intuitive adjustments within the emerging form.

Looking back, I realize that the roles of educator and choreographer naturally merged throughout this journey, a dynamic I have come to describe as that of an educational maker.

 

Drawing from the dancers' diverse backgrounds and ways of moving, I structured the creative process into four defined phases. Each phase offered a framework that balanced individual exploration with collective creation, while gradually shaping the material into an expressive and artistic dance form:

 

1. Exploration – Using somatic practices, breathwork, and guided improvisation to help dancers tune into their internal landscape.

2. Composition – Encouraging dancers to develop solos and duets based on the themes uncovered during improvisation, while gradually introducing structured elements.

3. Structuring – Arranging material into a cohesive whole, focusing on spatial relationships, timing, and group dynamics.

4. Refinement – Deepening the nuances of movement, energy, and transitions, incorporating feedback from dramaturgy and music.

 

In Chapter 2: The Artistic Process, I will describe each of these phases in more detail, illustrated by video fragments that capture key moments of development.
Following this, in Chapter 3: Emerging insights and evolving practice, I reflect on the main lessons learned and open up new questions for future inquiry.

 

 

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