Today we explored the collective and intimate spaces created both in the body and the external environment, through the guidance of music or the openness of silence.

We experimented with the exposure that we feel when dancing with no music to support us and drive our intention.

It is a common experience in dance sessions with people with Parkinson’s that music choices are made in a supportive and intentional way in order to enable the dancer to achieve maximum potential in movement – amplitude, strength, stability and fluidity of the body. These things are fueled by a drive to achieve benefits to bodily mechanics. From an aesthetic or externally driven place.

In this workshop we experienced the space to drive the movement from the internal environment and to consider movement choices from bodily suggestion rather than from the external impetus of music or accompaniment.

What we observed was a lived or phenomenological experience – somewhere between active expression and passive embodiment.

What the dancers experienced was something on the border between freedom and discomfort.

More soon…