Musings #1: Developments of a paper for Undisciplining Dance Symposium 2016: Parental Practices and Performance

I thought that it might be interesting to revisit the thinking process I underwent to present a paper at the Undisciplining Dance Symposium in July this year. What I eventually presented was quite unlike the earlier versions, and was based on quite a different and more specific subject matter, but in the process of arriving at this subject matter, quite a lot of other interesting things came up. Re-reading them now, I'm interested in developing more conversations with others around these ideas.

These are purely cut and pasted form word docs I wrote in kind of note/stream of consciousness form..

What does parenthood do to undiscipline a body, practice, performance?

What does parenthood do to discipline a body, practice, performance?

 What does an ‘attachment’ or ‘responsive’ parenting model do to a body, practice, performance?

What do these parenting practices offer to us as dance and movement practitioners?

Hierarchies of teacher/student, choreographer/dancer?

Bodies in fluidstates, bodies exploding, food and sleep cycles, community, families of support, roles of mothers and fathers, roles of women and men, how do we feel in our skin, in the skins of these roles.

What are the expectations of parents, and in particular, mothers, to be able to work after baby? What are mothers expectations? What are everyone’s needs in relation to the work they hope to continue with? How do families negotiate everyone’s needs? What are ways in which they feel supported, or let down by the people they are working for, by the institutions, companies, families they work for?

How do mothers, fathers, parents, negotiate bodily needs and the shift from disciplined to undisciplined bodily experiences, and sometimes back again?

What is the perception of a disciplined body, and it’s usefulness within the wider experience of life outside of a dance box? How have parents used their dance practice within their family life? Punishment? Self control? Physical interaction with children? How do dance practices come into the small everyday details of family interactions?

In the absence of a studio practice, where do dance practices exist to enable parenting dancers to continue to feel like they practice?

What communities exist that encourage parents and children to dance together?

26 August 2016

Clare rolled around the studio for most of the morning whilst I was attending to my daughter...

When I got there we played with 'domestic' interactions of objects, noticing movement patterns and bodily co-ordinations, then moving these co-ordinations, patterns and movements around the room, abstracting them out and playing with object-body interactions and characters.

We then played a made up game, which consisted of: only being allowed to sweep a small spiky ball with brooms at the same time as only being allowed to kick a larger squishier Pilates ball around the room. Both of us had brooms but were chasing the same balls... a lot of laughing and remembering why people like to play ball games.

Lastly, we set up an 'object' obstacle contact course, which we approached from one end each. I was enjoying the different textures and densities of the objects, the way in which they became second, third or fourth 'partners', who were at once both less predictable, or maybe less 'known' as a body, but also more passive in their trajectories. They still all had their own movement qualities, affordances, ways of responding or not, that seemed to be endlessly interesting.

These tasks were felt to be fruitful and would be something to explore more.

First Friday Morning Moves 19th August 2016

Friday 19th August:
Consisted of:

A soccer ball being kicked, thinking about how you learn an action, replay the action for both sides of your body, become familiar with an action and then abstract it so you can create strange sequences.

A greeting and excitement of gathering, new opportunities, opening, checking in.

An offering of a grounding Thai bodywork practice from Clare.

An offering of spiraling MnB practice, moving through the joints from feet to head to arms, with attention to the sexual organs of the body and relationship of hands and feet to organs, reflexology style.

A play with objects, contacting them. Then contacting a partner as if they were the object, firstly without their engagement with your contact other than their body being material to work with. Then swap roles. Finally, both people engaging with the other person as though they were the original object. Plus observation of the other partnerships.

Much fun.