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Dancing the Face Of Place : Environmental Dance and Eco-Phenomenology

I explore how environmental dance can generate ecological knowledge and deepen environmental values by enhancing human consciousness of non-human nature. To do this I compare environmental dance, in particular exercises I developed with US dance artist Jennifer Monson, with two processes that eco-phenomenology has adapted from Husserlian phenomenology: firstly, the epoché, redefined as the refusal to reduce the natural world to Cartesian abstractions; and secondly, eidetic reduction, through which it is possible to discern dynamic structures in the life world, here the structures of centrifugal and centripetal forces revealed by improvisation practices, and creative writing about those practices, on the vast sands of Morecambe Bay. This leads to a particular experience of gravity as a unique means of grasping nature’s alterity.

This article is related to two published essays about my recent work in environmental dance:

-“The Weathering Body: Composition and Decomposition in Environmental Dance and Site-Specific Live Art”, published in The Dynamic Body in Space: Developing Rudolf Laban's Ideas for the 21st Century, edited by Lesley Ann Sayers and Valerie Preston Dunlop (London: Dance Books, 2010), and developed through four international conferences: Dynamic Body in Performance, London: Laban, 24?26 October 2008; Sites of Performance: Mapping/Theatre/History, Nottingham: University of Nottingham, 02?04 April 2009; Living Landscapes, Aberystwyth University, 18?21 June 2009; and Silent Voices, Forbidden Lives, International Federation of Theatre Research, Lisbon: University of Lisbon, 12?18 July 2009.

- “Lune: Dancing As Land Surveying”, published in the catalogue and DVD section of Practice-as-Research in Performance and Screen, edited by Ludivine Allegue et al. (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2009), and originally presented at two conferences: PARIP International, Bretton: Bretton Hall Campus, University of Leeds, 29 June ? 3 July 2005; and Documentation of Fine Art: Processes and Practices, Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts, Lancaster University, 2 December 2005.