Within Limits: Movement Restraint as a Catalyst for Body

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.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Noland, Carrie. 2009. 'Inscription and embodiment: André Leroi-Gourhan and the Body as Tool', in Agency and Embodiment: Performing Gestures/Producing Culture pp.93-117

Olsen, Andrea. 2022. 'Underlying Patterns: Biography', in Moving Between Worlds: A Guide to Embodied Living and Communication, pp.72-79

Bonnie Bainbridge, Cohen. 1993. An Introduction to Body-Mind Centering <https://www.bodymindcentering.com/files/an_intro_to_body-mind_centering.pdf> [accessed 25 January 2026]

Braga de Andrade, Cecilia Carvalhal. 2025. 'It's Natural (and Other Frictions)' (published PhD Thesis, University of Maine)

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