Sensuous interfaces – Dancing Anima in Aotearoa New Zealand

Sondra Fraleigh has described the body as bounded by skin and having form, yet merging, relational and metamorphic (Fraleigh 2012). In this article I draw on the making of a short four-minute film Anima (2005), co-directed by myself and videographer John Irwin, in order to discuss the ways that the intuitive sensuous soma may be presented in film. The purpose of the film was to explore ecological notions of perception, to engage the viewer in ‘relational seeing’ (Sewell 1999) and to lead the eye downwards and inwards in order that the viewer might perceive human skin and rock, seaweed and hair, land, ocean and body as the same yet distinct, separate and merging. At the same time, what is revealed in the film by the solo female dancer is the soma, whole and articulate, part of the ecology of place, and ‘place’ itself.