Verbalizing Physicality

By Sesselja Magnúsdóttir, August 12, 2013

Verbalizing Physicality

The next Writing movement event in Iceland will be held in cooperation with Reykjavik Dance Festival 2013. Sunday 25th of  August , in between the ongoing physical performances of the Festival, two distinct scholars, dr. Camilla Damkjaer and dr. Leena Rouhiainen, involved in new circus and dance will show, discuss, and ask audiences to try out verblizing physicality.

 

Hafnarhúsið (Reykjvik Art Museum)

@11:00 – 13:00

Free entrance

Dr. Leena Rouhiainen is a professor in Artistic Research and Head of Performing Arts Research Centre at The University of the Arts Helsinki. In her two hour workshop; Writing in and for dance

participant will be introduced to issues related to embodied writing, especially from the perspective of phenomenology and dance research. Dance and dancing involve bodily experience and knowledge that are best conveyed through evocative writing. The participants are introduced to a few authors working with phenomenologically inspired forms of writing as well as some principles of such writing. The workshop also contains short writing assignments tied to movement exploration and observation of dance.

 

Lunchbreak  13:00 – 13:45

 

Hafnarhúsið (Reykjvik Art Museum)

@13:45 – 14:45

Free entrance

 

Camilla Damkjaer is a Senior Lecturer in dance theory at the University of Dance and Circus, Stockholm. Her work is centred on contemporary circus and dance, the philosophies of Gilles Deleuze and phenomenology and how they can inform the study of movement practices, as well as the paradigmatic relations between the arts and the humanities and how they frame different forms of research related to the arts.

In her one hour presentation/performance:

Hand-balancing: one figure – many techniques: a selected genealogy of my/a practice

She examines the different cultural and historical meaning behind the simple act of hand-balancing in three movement practices, Danish performance gymnastics in tradition of Niels Bukh, contemporary circus and the so-called Russian technique of handstand, and Ashtanga yoga.

 

“The figure of “handstand” or “hand-balancing” exists in several different historical and contemporary movement cultures, but the techniques and practices differ and the functions and meanings ascribed to it vary. In this presentation I will explore hand-balancing in three different movement practices: Danish performance gymnastics in tradition of Niels Bukh, contemporary circus and the so-called Russian technique of handstand, and Ashtanga yoga.

The purpose of this lecture-performance is to show how different cultural and physical practices construct different understandings and knowledge’s in and around this apparently similar figure. At the same time, it is an attempt to explore the genealogy of my physical practice, and the contexts, cultures and research paradigms that have influenced it.

Starting from this, I intend to discuss some of the research methodologies that can be used within practice-based research (for instance auto-ethnography or participant observation), and the on-going development of methodologies within artistic research. Furthermore the presentation serves as a starting point for discussing the dialogue that one may establish between a physical practice and theoretical frameworks, in this case between the practice of hand-balancing and some aspects of phenomenology and Gilles Deleuze’s philosophy.”