This project explores the following research question: In what ways can movement restraints enhance body-mind awareness in movement practices?
This inquiry emerges from an interest in how the limitation of physical possibilities, which are natural to the individual participants, can redirect concentration towards internal sensation, intention, and habitual movement patterns. This practice-as-research also considers how individual movement histories have shaped, and continue to shape, the movement experience and awareness within embodied practice, as well as the relation between body and mind from a somatic aspect.
In contemporary and somatic dance practices, body-mind connection and awareness is often cultivated through a structured exploration, and expanded movement choice. Restriction, by contrast, is perceived as a possible inhibition to this connection, and movement expression. This research challenges this assumption, through the examination of restraint as a productive tool for a heightened somatic experience, relating to the body-mind connection.
Furthermore, through focusing on limitation as a potentially generative condition, this study contributes to ongoing conversations around perception, individual movement progression, perception, and agency in practice and dance pedagogy.
The aim of this practice-as-research is to investigate how movement restraints can be used to enhance body-mind awareness, through practice-based explorations.
The objectives of this project are:
- To design and facilitate movement workshops using physical restraints
- To explore and notate participants’ somatic and perceptual responses
- To consider and the influence of individual movement histories
- To reflect on embodied knowledge generated through practice
- To compare and contrast the findings of the technically-trained and untrained dancers
This exposition proposes that movement restraints can deepen body-mind connection awareness, by heightening somatic perception, intentional movement choices, and reflection and recreation of habitual patterns. Rather than limiting movement possibilities and expression, restraint is positioned as a catalyst for embodied attentiveness, presence, and body appreciation.
The exploration was conducted through four practice-as-research workshops, involving two groups of three participants. These groups were divided, such that the first group included participants with little to no formal dance technique training, whilst the other group featured participants which have been technically trained across various classical and modern dance techniques. Each group participated in two two-hour workshops, which explored movement restraints through different body relation connections, through guided improvisation, somatic-based tasks, and reflective documentation/discussion. Participants were invited to engage in the physical restraints, while attending to the shifts in body sensations, and relating to their personal movement histories. The documentation for these workshops included video footage of each individual task, written and graphic reflection, observation notes, and participant feedback.
Existing somatic practices address body-mind connection awareness through attention, improvisation, and reflective movement tasks. However, the role of physical restraint as a deliberate tool for the cultivation of heightened awareness, remains underexplored within practice-based research. This practice-as-research addresses this gap through focusing on restraint as an experiential strategy, generating embodied knowledge through practice, rather than solely theoretical abstraction.
This project’s practice-as-research methodology foregrounds embodied experimentation and reflection as modes of knowledge production. This exposition documents the workshop process and reflects on the insights which emerge from this practice. Following this introduction, the exposition outlines the methodological framework, presents the workshops and reflections, concluding with the discussion of key findings and implications.