by Jessica Lu
In the midst of living moving being, all boundaries are blurred. Our feeling and sensing body does not end at the external layer of the skin, yet extends and mutates infinitely along with the actions we perform and the images that we perceive. We are, in actuality, living examples of paradoxes. We can talk about inside and outside and know what they refer to in the common sense of the body, yet we cannot distinguish them in embodied experience. Suprapto Suryodarmo, the founder of Amerta Movement, once said that “when the flower blooms, there is no inside or outside.” Throughout years of somatic studies and practice, the contemplation of a phrase like this lead me to the embodied experience of the “world as reflection on my inner stage.” When the flower blooms, that is when one experiences the capacity to receive and hold all worldly phenomena on the Inner Stage, then there is no separation of inside from outside.
Jose Gil, in his Paradoxical Body, stated that this sensation results from “a kind of secretion or reversal of the inner space of the body toward the exterior. This reversibility transforms objective space, giving it a texture close to the one of internal space.” So that when my body is moving in space, I no longer perceive it as an object in an exterior space, but as a body that moves in its surroundings that are also part of itself. The external environment is taking on a texture similar to that of the physiological body, a natural milieu.
The process of becoming part of one’s environment is constantly happening, and it is also a process of shedding one’s former identification of the self. It begins as a dancer or an actor stands in a space, and all of a sudden, the atmosphere changes just by the presence of the person. Spaces are infused with stories and textures, and a sense of suspense that “something is about to happen.” Before an arm is moved or a word is spoken, the person’s presence is already changing the space, and at the same time, changed by the space. Subjective and objective worlds no longer holds separate, the paradox of our living experience.
From a more scientific standpoint, we can identify that the brain is actively integrating objects close to oneself as part of the body space. This is the reason why when someone approaches you and enters into your personal space, you may feel intimacy or dislike according to your preference for that person. Every person is a living halo, and each carries with him/her a morphing sphere of sensory cloud when moving in space. And this is precisely what allows us to feel the extreme proximity of ourselves with the world.
In practicing dance or movement, we are cultivating the qualities of sympathy, empathy, and resonance. We are surrendering our own identifications, and becoming the others. Therefore any space we pass through, any place we travel to, are being transformed into a subjective territory. We are investing part of ourselves into these spaces, and in turn, receiving new movement vocabularies
offered by their landscape. To talk about the story of life is to talk about the roads we have trenched, the benches we have rested upon, and the lands that are treasured and lost. Those are where our virtual bodies reside. As we continue to experience the world, we will extend more virtual bodies in the world that create multiple point of views for our perception. The lived experience of the body is never just the flesh as seen from the outside. It is so much richer than that. The lived experience of the body is imbued with imageries, depth of sensations, emotions, and orchestra-like dialogues with the world. And the dancer’s sole purpose is to practice becoming transparent - so that his/her interior space “partake so intimately of exterior space that movement seen from the outside coincide with movement lived or seen from the inside.”
Movements flow. They flow through the body, transferring internal energy to gestures and gathering external forces to move again. Movement only flourish when one is rid of the impediments posed by viscosity embedded in different structures of the body, the muscles, bones, fascia, and organs. The practice of awareness training is precisely to identify and let go of these impediments. But even then, the dancer still lives the paradox of sensing infinity in a finite body.
This brings us to another problem - the problem of viewing dance. In Amerta Movement, we practice to greet each other not through the horizontal plane of social interactions, but through the vertical plane of shared spirituality. It is as if a bare soul meets another just like it self. The practice is asking us to see the other as myself, and see our shared humanity. By seeing others like this, I begin to embody and understand their emotions, intents, and atmosphere that lies beneath or beyond the actual shape of the body. When viewing dance, the audience necessarily transports him/ herself to the body of the dancer, embodying and interpreting the dancer’s lived experience and capturing minute details of the inner excitement picture.
As Merleau-Ponty described so well, a seeing body enters into a field of vision that sends back its own image, as in a mirror: to see is to be seen. The body carries with it this reversibility of the seer and of the seen. In a performance, the performer becomes the audience of his/her sensations, emotions, motives, and of the atmosphere of the space. This reversed role alleviates the need to ‘perform’. It allows one to express through responding to what is received. This is the basis for many forms of contemporary improvisation techniques.
The reflexivity of the body is a congregation of the senses. From each sense is a point of view where the contemplative mind can dwell upon. Seeing, sensing, hearing, tasting, smelling, and other points of views from the landscape of the body present endless inspiration for movements. In such a way, dancing is always a dialogue. The “I” of the dancer is always demanding an “other” to dance with. This other can be oppositional and coupling forces, like the Yin and Yang in Chinese philosophy. It can also be another object of being which the “I” identifies to/with. In a dialectical process, dance emerges with tension and beauty.
The sameness and differences in these duets take on a deeper meaning as explained by Deleuze. Sameness is not formal mimicking but a deeper resonance of internal experience and energetic states, whereas difference is not different per se, but a re-iteration of sameness with another aesthetics. They can be detected through the rhythms, textures, feelings and energies that each duet-partner carries. In such a way, another plane is formed that overflows each partner and create a common field, an informative space, and a sense of I in We.
We can say that the body is a meta-phenomenon. It is simultaneously physical and spiritual. It inhabits both itself and the other. It can empty itself to become the tree, the ocean, the animal, the landscape, space. It is a cluster of complex systems and transference of forces. It carries with it the entirety of its past at the present moment. It can become totally outgoing or retreat into silence and seclusion. The body is a constantly moving home for the soul. The body is a stage for the world as you are perceiving it.
Reference: Gil, Jose. Paradoxical Body. TDR: The Drama Review 50:4. 2006. Translated by Andre Lepecki. Lavelle, Lise. The Roots of Amerta Movement. Triarchy Press. 2021. Deleuze, Gilles. Difference and Repetition. Presses Universitaires de France. 1968. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. The Visible Invisible. 1964.
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