Chapter 2: the artistic process
Throughout this chapter, figures, including photos and video’s, provide a visual insight into the artistic process.
Phase 1: Somatic awareness and embodied research
To initiate the inquiry into how the inner conflict between self-criticism and self-acceptance could be physically embodied, I began with a period of somatic exploration. My mentor Dirk Dumon had already pointed out last year that this could be meaningful for me. To support this approach, I drew on my earlier experiences with somatic dance practices. In the early stages of my dance journey, about twenty years ago, I explored different practices with strong somatic elements, such as Skinner Releasing with Bettina Neuhaus, Authentic Movement workshops by Marisa Grande, and dance and voice sessions with Jaap van Maanen.
More recently, around five years ago, I deepened this orientation through several courses in the Amenti Movemeant Method.
With Amenti, I encountered an approach where dance is rooted in deep emotional landscapes rather than aesthetic form. Their system of "layers," inspired by Jungian psychology and chakra theory, links emotional fields such as fear, anger, shame, and regret to different zones of the body. Through guided dance meditations that began with subtle sensation and gradually expanded into full-body movement, I learned to listen to inner impulses and trust non-verbal intelligence.
Although I don't apply their method literally, their philosophy invited my to see movement as something that may emerge from emotional memory rather than from external shaping.
This orientation informed the structure of my early rehearsals, which centred around embodied awareness and internal sensing.
I structured the rehearsals with a clear rhythm: two-thirds of each session focused on physical and emotional embodiment, while the final third served to translate these explorations into pre-choreographic solo and duet material. These were not treated as fixed compositions, but as forms in the making, shaped and tested through practice, without yet entering choreographic selection or ordering (Bermúdez & deLahunta, 2022).
Body scans and tension mapping
As a first embodied practice, I invited the dancers to attune to their internal landscapes through guided body scans, with a specific focus on identifying where in their bodies they felt tension. They started lying down with their eyes closed, simply sensing. Gradually, they located areas of tension, such as tightness in the shoulders, a constriction in the chest, shallow breathing, or a hard-to-place pressure in the abdomen, and moved carefully from these sensations, allowing them to grow into fuller, freer movement through space. In this phase, sensation was prioritized over form, inviting movement from inner landscapes rather than external shapes.
Building on my intuitive experiences with Amenti, I also drew theoretical inspiration from Thomas Hanna’s (1988) understanding of sensory-motor amnesia: the idea that when we carry tension in our bodies over time, it can become automatic and unconscious. For example, always lifting your shoulders without realising it. Hanna says that these habitual patterns can be brought back into awareness through slow, conscious movement.
While I valued this principle, I approached it differently: I invited dancers to use these habitual tensions as fertile starting points for improvisation. Instead of trying to "fix" them, they moved from them, allowing these embodied traces to become material for expressing the inner conflict between self-criticism and self-acceptance.
This somatic focus also resonates with Erin Manning’s (2007) concept of pre-acceleration, which proposes that movement begins before we consciously decide to move, that the body knows, senses, and prepares for action in ways that precede thought. In my research, this became visible in how participants started moving from inner tension, not by planning or thinking first, but by following subtle impulses. The body led, the mind followed.
Taken together, Hanna and Manning offer a complementary framework: Hanna sees the body as an archive, holding traces of past experiences in habitual tension, while Manning sees the body as an oracle, capable of generating new movement before we consciously understand it. Hanna helps us locate where movement might begin, while Manning encourages us to trust that the body will know how to move from that point onward.
Pre-choreographic material
These explorations gradually expanded into fuller improvisations. As the dancers followed the access points of their tension more freely, they began to shape short solos, in which the tension remained present and physically perceptible. The task was not to “express” an emotion, but to allow the quality of the tension to inform and repeat itself through the body.
These physical sketches functioned as what Bertha Bermúdez (2022) calls pre-choreographic material, movement that is still in development, not yet structured, but charged with potential. In this phase, the dancers didn’t compose in the traditional sense. Instead, they created through listening, sensing, and repeating, trusting their inner landscape as a source of form.
As one participant said:
“Dance allows me to express and release emotions through movement.”
Another reflected:
“Only in retrospect did I notice how much tension I carry. The process brought me into the present, into the physical feeling of not being enough.”
These insights confirmed that somatic awareness not only restored body consciousness, but also offered a way to give shape to internal states. What began as unconscious patterns became visible, repeatable, and shareable, not through stylised gestures, but as anchored physicality (see Figure 4).
Partner work: Push and pull – Rehearsal 3
Building on Erin Manning’s idea of movement as relational field dynamics, where movement emerges between bodies rather than from a single individual, I wanted the dancers to explore how their habitual tension patterns show up in connection with others. The focus was on responding authentically to what they received, letting the body react before the mind could step in.
To facilitate this, I introduced partner work based on push-and-pull dynamics. Working in pairs, dancers gave each other small impulses, either yielding to or resisting the push or pull. At first, they returned to their center after each impulse, but gradually, they allowed the energy to move them through space.
As Karen, a participant, insightfully reflected, resisting made it harder to breathe and move freely, showing how physical resistance mirrored emotional restriction.
This task revealed physical metaphors for self-criticism and self-acceptance: resisting impulses often brought tension and heaviness, while yielding created flow and trust.
Breath as movement driver – Rehearsal 4
Building on the relational sensitivity developed in rehearsal 3, I shifted the focus in rehearsal 4 towards breath as a starting point for movement. We began with a breath-led improvisation where dancers were encouraged to make their breath audible. Some initially found this uncomfortable, as Bessel van der Kolk (2014) suggests, audible breath can expose how the body archives stress and self-protective patterns.
To ease into it, I guided them through a playful scale: from 10% to 90% audible breath. This gave dancers room to explore without overthinking it, offering a structure that made the vulnerability of the task more accessible. Gradually, breath became not just supportive but an initiator of movement, moving the body from within, before thought could frame it.
Karen later shared that following the breath made her movements feel more natural, yet also more impulsive. Letting go of control and surrendering to this felt liberating, though it took her some effort to cross that threshold.
In duet work, dancers began incorporating breath as an active layer: shifts in breathing influenced how they gave weight, connected with each other, or lost balance together. Breath turned into a shared language for resistance, tension, and release.
Refining duets: Expanding space and emotional nuance – Rehearsal 8
By rehearsal 8, dancers had internalized the principles of push-pull dynamics and breath work into their duets. Reviewing video recordings, dramaturg Sara encouraged the dancers to move beyond linear interactions: to experiment more with three-dimensional space, and to maintain a sense of groundedness in their contact.
This sparked new possibilities. Dancers explored with movements expanding in different directions and deepening their connections through grounded weight-sharing. Some duets opened up more easily than others, but across the board, the work deepened, inviting richer textures of physical and emotional interplay.
Through the physical parameters of push-pull dynamics and breath, emotional undercurrents became visible and tangible, translating internal states into artistic form (see Figure 6).
Thematic insight: Letting the body lead
These rehearsals showed that authentic dance material can emerge when we start from somatic awareness and simple, physical principles, like tension, breath, push, and pull, rather than imposing shapes from the outside.
By trusting their bodies' responses, dancers created raw, embodied material that resonated with the focus of Equilibrium at that time: making visible the internalized patterns of self-criticism.
Instead of trying to shape movement from the outside, the dancers allowed their own lived experiences to shape the choreography from within. This meant that movement emerged from felt sensations and internal impulses, rather than being constructed through externally imposed shapes or illustrative gestures.
Self-acceptance through softening – Rehearsal 10
After weeks of physically and emotionally demanding rehearsals exploring tension and resistance, rooted in my fascination with inner conflict and the expression of inner wounds through dance I introduced the theme of letting go. This rehearsal invited the dancers to embody self-acceptance as a tangible, physical experience.
As can be read in chapter one, I am drawn to the places where people wrestle with their innermost struggles, and searching for its embodiment and translating this into dance meant asking the dancers to engage their bodies in intense states of contraction, breath-holding, and muscular effort. This physical and emotional labour took its toll over time, making the invitation to soften and release in this rehearsal especially welcome.
We began with a standing body scan: eyes closed, sensing areas of tension, and imagining an invisible burden resting on them. Through breath and awareness, dancers softened these areas, accessing sensations of release and ease.
From this somatic foundation, we moved into explorations around self-acceptance. Qualities of softness, grounding, spaciousness, and intuitive flow were embodied through breath work, yielding to gravity, expanding into space, and surrendering to spontaneous impulse.
Inspired by Thomas Hanna’s (1988) sensory-motor re-education, where conscious movement disrupts ingrained patterns, dancers worked in pairs with affirmation-based prompts such as “I am open,” “I am here,” and “I am enough.” These affirmations bridged bodily awareness with inner narratives of self-worth.
In this mirroring exercise, one dancer led intuitively with closed eyes while the other mirrored without judgment, fostering trust, intuitive sensing, and embodied presence.
Each dancer then shaped their experience into a short solo, integrating grounding (earth-connection, present-moment awareness), spaciousness (breath and expansion), and flow (ease, intuition, surrender).
For instance, Merisa moved fluidly and expansively, letting movement unfold without force, while Olga danced with slow, grounding gestures, shedding and renewing. These solos offered embodied alternatives to tension and control, allowing self-acceptance to be experienced in movement qualities like continuity, lightness, and openness (see figure 7).
Captured as raw phrases (Bermudez, 2015), these spontaneous compositions were carried forward into the choreographic process.
Reflecting afterward, dancers shared how freeing it felt to move from self-acceptance.
Merisa described:
"Dancing from self-acceptance felt very liberating. It gave a beautiful, fulfilled feeling to release tension and move without overthinking. I became very happy during the session, especially from mirroring each other's movements, it energized me, while dancing with tension in earlier rehearsals often drained my energy."
Karen reflected:
"It was truly a relief to be able to dance freely again. I had a smile on my face, and it brought lightness to my whole being. I allowed my intuition to lead. Yesterday really gave me the outlet I was seeking, it gave me energy."
This rehearsal deepened the inquiry into how self-acceptance can be physically embodied. It showed how somatic exploration not only expands physical vocabulary but also nurtures a cohesive state of being, where physical, emotional, and intuitive processes align, offering a resilient foundation for the choreographic process.
As the dancers gradually transitioned from introspective, somatic exploration into compositional thinking, a natural transformation unfolded. The focus expanded: no longer solely exploring how inner conflict lives within the body, but also how it could be shaped and communicated through form.
Phase 2: From embodiment to composition
Revisiting and reshaping movement
The pre-choreographic material developed in Phase 1 provided a foundation upon which the solo, duet, and group improvisation work could unfold. Dancers revisited their embodied explorations, deconstructing and reconstructing them through fragmentation, repetition, and spatial redirection. This approach allowed movement to be treated as material that could be reshaped, sometimes magnifying its original meaning, sometimes departing from it, without erasing the emotional traces embedded within.
The solo and duet material acted as seeds for collective improvisations, where dancers absorbed, echoed, and transformed each other’s movements. Working responsively in real time sharpened their awareness of breath, weight, space, and timing, enabling a shared physical language to emerge. Here, personal experience was not erased, but abstracted into a form that carried its energetic imprint. As Nadra described: "A playground for movement with an abundance of material… only when all senses are engaged do beautiful things emerge."
Improvisation as collective negotiation
This process aligns with Manning’s (2007) notion of movement as relational: arising not from isolated intent, but from the affective space between bodies. Through this lens, improvisation became a site of collective negotiation, balancing individual agency with group sensitivity. Moments of synchronicity and divergence within the improvisations mirrored the internal tensions between control and surrender that lay at the heart of the research theme (see figure 9).
Figure 9. Video compilation of the group improvisations in the studio as well as during De Zandwacht presentation.
As part of this phase, we presented a work-in-progress sharing at De Zandwacht, a monumental artwork in public space. Choosing collective improvisation for this context proved beneficial for the process: dancers not only learned to listen and respond more intuitively to one another, but also experienced how the environment shaped their movement. The sandy surface enhanced groundedness, the public’s proximity heightened spatial awareness, and the open setting naturally encouraged three-dimensional orientation. Although initially sensed intuitively, it was through Saras' dramaturgical feedback that these effects became fully tangible. Het insights led to three key compositional adjustments: making breath more audible and visible, integrating a grounded sense of weight, and expanding movement into three-dimensional space. These refinements deepened the he dancers’ emotional resonance and physical presence, preparing the dancers for translation into larger choreographic structures.
In this way, the transition from somatic research to composition was not a departure, but a deepening. Movement became both memory and metaphor: tension in the chest spiralled outward into breath-driven solos; partnering explored the paradox of vulnerability and resistance. Compositional methods such as deconstruction and spatial transformation ensured that the emotional core of the material remained intact, even as it evolved into structured, performative forms.
Ultimately, collective improvisation proved vital for expanding the personal explorations into a shared choreographic language. This shared language emerged not from predefined structures, but from the embodied familiarity with each other's solo and duet material, somatic principles (such as breath, tension-release, and push-pull dynamics), and the improvisational strategies we developed. By learning and fragmenting each other's movements, like a shoulder pull or a lateral walk, dancers could choose to echo, contrast, or extend motifs in space and time, allowing a dynamic, relational vocabulary to unfold. Rather than standardizing expression, this approach preserved individual nuances while creating a cohesive physical dialogue across the group. In this evolving dialogue, the body became not only an archive of lived experience but also an active composer, shaping, responding, and transforming internal states into a layered, resonant dance vocabulary.
Phase 3: Structuring and leadership
From exploration to structure: containing the raw
As the improvisational and compositional processes matured, a need for structure emerged, both in terms of artistic form and group dynamic. The movement material generated in earlier phases was rich in emotional texture and bodily resonance but remained open-ended. In this phase, I guided the dancers toward crafting a performative arc, in which solo, duet, and group sections could be situated within a coherent whole. Drawing from snippets of the generated material, I helped them place their movements into a compositional framework, creating a sense of continuity and form.
This shift from inquiry to containment was essential in translating the embodied research into a work that could be performed and witnessed. The transition called for clarity, decision-making, and editorial framing, requiring me to adopt a more directive choreographic stance. Movement phrases were ordered, transitions crafted, and the thematic arc of Equilibrium began to take shape through recurrence, accumulation, and energetic flow.
While this shift mirrored the research question’s second component, how to translate embodiment into an expressive dance form, it also fed back into the first. The process revealed that a long research period of open exploration, though essential for somatic depth, can create unease for participants who do not identify as professional dancers. Several expressed a desire for “concreteness” or “knowing where this is going.” This feedback illuminated a tension between the openness required for deep embodiment and the need for containment among participants who carried personal motivations for joining but not necessarily a professional dance background. In this way, the participants’ need for structure reflected the very inner conflict we were investigating: the balance between uncertainty and control, acceptance and judgment.
To shape the overall composition, I used a very intuitive yet deliberate method. I wrote fragments of movement, emotional arcs onto countless post-its and spatial ideas on paper and experimented with various sequences.
As the framework took clearer shape, I realized that my role within the group also needed to adjust accordingly.
Shift in leadership: focused rehearsal
This phase marked a pivotal transition in my choreographic leadership style. In earlier phases, I had primarily operated as a facilitator, holding space, offering prompts, listening, and stepping back. But as the need for composition and coherence grew, so did my responsibility to choose and guide.
During one extended rehearsal session, I addressed the dancers directly: I made it clear that, for the sake of progress, this would not be a moment for collaborative questioning. I asked them to adopt a focused, pragmatic work attitude, to follow the structure without challenging it, and to trust that this phase was necessary to move forward. The goal was to internalize the transitions and structure by the end of the session so that we could build upon it in subsequent rehearsals.
As we rehearsed the new framework, I supported the dancers in internalizing the spatial patterns, coordinating timing, and embodying the emotional currents that flowed through the emerging composition. Their ability to absorb and embody the structure was crucial. Though the session was intense, the clarity it brought was transformative, allowing the work to grow into a shared, performable whole. This breakthrough sparked a wave of energy, as the dancers finally recognized the hidden architecture that had quietly been forming through their previous explorations.
This navigation between more directive leadership and moments of openness was not static. It revealed itself as an ongoing rhythm throughout the project, where phases of structured clarity alternated with phases of creative autonomy.
Navigating leadership and collaboration
This evolving leadership dynamic resonates with theories of embodied knowledge and participatory choreography. As Parviainen (2002) suggests, bodily knowledge does not pass linearly from expert to beginner but emerges in the interaction between bodies, intentions, and contexts. Butterworth’s (2004) reflection on the continuum between teacher-led and student-led processes also sheds light on how leadership can shift responsively rather than remain fixed.
By recognizing the dancers as active agents in both the creation of the movement material and the meaning-making process, I positioned them as co-creators in shaping the work. The pre-choreographic material, including solos and duets, emerged through their contributions, allowing the movement to evolve organically and reflect our shared inquiry. Even within a structured framework, I was able to honour their embodied insights while offering the clarity they needed, holding the collective explanation together without losing its authenticity.
Following Butterworth’s process continuum, my leadership moved fluidly between more facilitative and more directive modes, depending on the needs of the creative phase. In the early exploratory stages, a facilitating style prevailed, encouraging autonomy and openness. As we moved into the structuring phases, a more directive approach became necessary to shape the overall composition without compromising the dancers’ ownership of the material. Throughout, leadership remained a responsive and relational practice rather than a fixed position. These insights led to several key findings about the relationship between structure, leadership, and embodied research.
Phase 4: Refinement & dramaturgy
External eyes: from felt to readable
In this final phase before the premiere on 21 March at BREStheater, Brielle, the focus shifted to refining the overall composition of Equilibrium in collaboration with dramaturg Sara Wiktorowicz and artistic coach Jordy Dik. Up until this point, the process had been largely emergent, rooted in somatic research and participatory improvisation. Now, the challenge was to clarify the internal logic and energetic flow of the work, not by imposing fixed meaning, but by strengthening the coherence and communicability of the embodied material. While reworking transitions and questioning compositional choices, I found myself returning to a recurring note in my process log: “The goal is not to impose what is considered aesthetically pleasing or impressive, but to ask: what needs to be revealed?” This guiding question became a thread throughout the refinement process.
Dramaturgical perspective: illuminating the unspoken
The dramaturgical perspective helped illuminate what was intuitively present within me, but not yet verbalized: where tension remained, where energy dropped or surged, and how moments of collective or individual vulnerability could be better framed to retain their impact. Sara’s input emphasized the energetic and thematic cohesion of the overall piece, drawing attention to subtleties like residual energy, groundedness, and the three-dimensionality of the body in space. Her feedback framed the performance not merely as a sequence of scenes, but as a living texture of presence, attuned to what echoes, resonates, or remains unfinished.
Artistic coaching: relational dynamics
In contrast, the artistic coach, Jordy, focused on refining the relational dynamics of the choreography ad helped out with ‘hands-on’ ideas. Through concrete feedback such as "make it more relational," "build a scene gradually, instead of all at once," and "add gestures while travelling from A to B," he helped me identify how transitions and movement phrases could gain depth and clarity. His perspective emphasized the unfolding of inner logic within scenes, how actions connect, and how dynamics evolve between dancers.
Integrating community dance theories
In this phase, I applied community dance theories, particularly Amans (2017), which emphasize collective embodiment and relational dynamics. The feedback from dramaturg Sara and artistic coach Jordy helped deepen this approach, particularly in our exploration of energetic connections between the dancers. A key moment of awareness came when the group moved closely together, following the lead of the front dancer, with constant shifts in who takes the lead. This exercise, though intuitive, highlighted the importance of space, responsiveness, and attention to each other’s energy. For academically trained dancers, this might seem instinctive, but within community dance, it becomes a tool to enhance cohesion and performance presence, going beyond technical outcomes to foster a deeper, more collective awareness.
Somatic awareness and embodied presence
This refinement served the second half of the research question directly: how to translate embodied experience into an expressive and artistic form. But it also reflected back on the first. One of the most significant discoveries was that the energetic dimension of the work required as much attention as the choreographic one, especially when working with a diverse, non-professionally trained cast. For participants more familiar with choreographic cues like rhythm, form, or spatial pathways, the more subtle energetic registers, such as sensing group dynamics or residual presence, were initially less accessible. Without prior training in grounding techniques or somatic awareness, they initiatevily needed clear frameworks. Yet once attuned, these dimensions became powerful tools for building cohesion and depth beyond technical skill, echoing what Eddy (2009) describes as the importance of somatic attentiveness for cultivating embodied presence. According to Eddy, somatic practices engage not just the physical body, but the inner awareness of the self in relation to its surroundings, which is crucial for refining both personal and collective movement dynamics in dance. In this case, refining presence became a core element of Equilibrium, as the dancers began to tune in to the energetic and spatial cues, allowing them to negotiate tension, release, and connection more authentically.
Relational movement and group dynamics
For example, the group explored how a single moment, such as a dancer pausing downstage (near the front of the stage), could hold affective weight if the rest of the group responded somatically to that pause. The presence of what had just occurred, the residue of emotion or breath, became a compositional anchor. These discoveries revealed that meaning in dance often lives not in what is done, but in what remains. Creating awareness for this kind of presence was especially meaningful within a non-professional ensemble, where traditional technical training was absent. The dancers began to attune to these energetic dimensions, shifting from doing to sensing, from movement as execution to movement as relation, what Manning (2009) might describe as “relational” movement, where dance emerges through the shifting field between bodies rather than from fixed positions.
Initially, when it was a dancer’s turn to perform a solo, the energetic connection with the group would often break: the dancer would step forward with her energy directed towards her solo, momentarily "forgetting" the group. As a result, the relational energy line was cut, producing a transition that felt abrupt and revealed the "amateur" status of the group. By making the dancers aware that even when stepping into their own solo, they were leaving energetic traces behind and maintaining a subtle connection with the group, the transition became much softer and more organic.
This practice also touched on a deeper realization about the ephemeral nature of dance itself. As a performative and fleeting art form, dance vanishes the moment it is enacted, yet something remains: an energetic residue, an emotional imprint in the space between bodies. Cultivating the dancers’ awareness of these invisible threads not only improved the fluidity of the composition but also foregrounded how meaning in dance often lives precisely in what lingers after the movement has passed. In this way, the group learned to co-create a shared field of presence, allowing the performance to resonate beyond what was visibly happening, and inviting both performers and audience into a more embodied experience of relation and remembrance (see figure 15).
With the completion of the creative process, Chapter 3 moves into a phase of reflection and synthesis. In this chapter, I will distil the main insights that arose throughout the making of Equilibrium, articulating how the work evolved both artistically and methodologically. This chapter also outlines new questions that emerged during the research and looks ahead to future directions in my choreographic practice.