Dance, Movement & Spiritualities - Volume 9, Issue 1-2, 2022

The experience presented here draws on my MA Dance and Somatic Wellbeing final study. Due to global pandemic restrictions, this was a solo and single witnessed inquiry into the resonance, in my body–soul experience, of traditional dances from my native land, centred on deepening into a ‘return’ to the homeland within. This perspective hoped to contribute to the field of somatic movement practices in relation to traditional dances as embodied inter-, intra- and trans-personal experience and in contexts removed from their place of origin. Through the emerging themes, a story unfolded, of unanticipated archetypal and imaginal phenomena, a rich, embodied and spiritual experience encompassing individual and collective rooting and transpersonal significance. These are, therefore, central to this writing and presented with extracts from journaling, video recordings and drawings by both dancer and witness, as samples of the lived material from which they arose.

This article examines the connections between embodied and somatic spirituality that are revealed in the making of the dancefilm Terrain: Dancing on Stolen Land, filmed and performed by the author on Maiawali and Karuwali Country, known as the Channel Country, in the Diamantina National Park in outback Australia. Through a phenomenological approach, the author investigates her responses to the vast Australian outback. Using the language of responsive dance captured on film and in text, she discusses place, site-specific performance, invisibility, listening and cultural mindfulness, as experienced through improvisational performances on a contested landscape. On this ancient terrain, she pays her respect and acknowledgement to the traditional owners of this unceded land, past, present and emerging.

https://vimeo.com/745881539

In this article, I present the concept of other-orientedness, the intention of focusing on one’s co-performer(s) and their impulses. I introduce this concept as a tool for performance spirituality, which I understand as a certain attitude that can underpin performance practice and pedagogy, an attitude that enables the performer to perform from a centre that is not referred to as ‘self’ but transcendent of the self. I argue that such a performance spirituality can be helpful to performers, not only to create more meaningful performance experiences, but also in the contexts of the postmodern societies and the globalized world we live in. In this article, I therefore also critique the current position of trained performers who, as I claim, have suffered from the influence of a performance industry with a persistent self-directed focus which impedes performance spirituality. I suggest reflecting on that performance industry and increasing empathy levels in both rehearsal or performance contexts is necessary.

Drawing on the work of Rudolf Steiner and more contemporary esoteric and exoteric scholars of Rosicrucianism, this article considers how engagement of Rosicrucian ideas within somatic movement practice grants the mover expanded routes to experiences best described as embodied spirituality or embodied gnosis. Further, the article points to the social nature of embodied spirituality, whereby engagement of the subtle body within somatic practice, combined with an understanding of Rosicrucian values, has relevance for the well functioning of our human relationships and society more broadly. Examples from my personal movement in Authentic Movement practice and pedagogic practice in Laban Movement Analysis are offered as illustrations of such ideas.

My creative, somatic and spiritual praxis combines the deep somatic trance work of authentic movement with ancient ritual technologies such as those found in the 2000-year-old Greek Magical Papyri. This article describes these embodied processes in and with wild nature places to facilitate visionary states which are recorded through poetic writings, and subsequently expressed in highly detailed drawings of ancient gods and mythic beings. I explore the nature of creative inspiration, not only in my own writings and drawings but in others’ artistic endeavours, that leads me to consider whether what is present in any great work of art is an indwelling animate force; a spirit or god. Working with this question, I am compelled deeper into this intersection of movement, creativity and spirituality, and from there, my life seems to become illuminated from within. Even as we all move through increasingly difficult times, we must continue to let ourselves be danced by something greater; especially for all those who cannot. We must continually open the seams to allow the movement of some vast majesty that we may never comprehend. Then we ourselves become a living work of art. As such, our lives become a ritual offering of beauty.

Religious rituals have often been traced to their origins in structured performances on the one hand, while on the other, trends in secularization of performance have also been studied. The larger inquiry, within the scope of this paper, relates to the possibility of situation of religious trends through an analysis of the origin and development of performative practices. The paper attempts to historically situate the performance practice of Sri Krishna Parijatha of North Karnataka within the regional, as well as, the larger corpus of Bhakti performance practices, so as to locate the development of the movement over time. The central hypothesis remains that Sri Krishna Parijatha, as a performance practice, emerges out of specific historical, religious and cultural contexts, and a change in these contexts stimulates a state of flux within the performative tradition itself, which is best foregrounded through an understanding of its changing effects on its audiences.

In this article, I explore the role of ancestrally connected sites as places of somatic orientation and potentially as sites of embodied memory. Inspired by seeking connection with my Irish great-great-great grandmother, Jane O’Brian and her lineage, I travelled to Ireland as a North American woman, undertaking a circling journey to a land of my Motherlines. In this article, I explore touchstone moments on the land in Ireland, including my serendipitous stumble to the Hill of Tara in County Meath, Ireland. The article explores, in particular, the communication between my own body and particular places on earth, undergirded by other literature that explores human-land-based connection. I draw on the methodologies of embodied inquiry and autoethnography. Echoing and contrasting with the journeys of other writer–researchers who have engaged in their own ancestral journeys, I ask questions about land-based connections, and how these connections are challenged and remembered in the process of migration and uprooting. Acknowledging the possibility of nostalgic projection by diasporic returnees I touch on the potential pitfalls of such an exploration while weaving an autoethnographic and embodied inquiry which explores land-based connections as dynamic, multi-layered and a potential site of somatic re-orientation.