Dancing New Habitual: Relational Embodiments in Improvised Dance Practice

This essay explores dance practice-as-research and phenomenological methods to articulate an experiential, embodied dialogue with the material world. Drawing on practice notes from a phase of embodied research, the text argues for dance as a salient tool in reimagining, traditional forms of knowledge production and imagines the speculative possibilities of our communicative capacities with different bodies, human and non-human. Using practice-as-research as a frame I posit that dance-based systems of improvisation have the potential to deepen and articulate our habitual sensory faculties, expanding relational dialogues. Using scores and task-oriented improvisation in practice with more-than-human bodies, the text focuses on a process of discovery through the lived body and articulates an experiential practice, as one that enlivens bodies and builds worlds.