Bodily rhythms: Corporeal capacities to engage with festival spaces

Abstract

This article examines what an embodied sense of rhythm can add to understandings of the relationship between festival spaces and people. Insights are given to how the rhythmic qualities of sound help orientate bodies in festival spaces, and how bodies produce festival space through embodied responses to the rhythmic qualities of sound. Our interpretation draws on extending examples of how researchers are using their bodies as ‘instruments of research’ by reflecting on a project conducted on rural festivals in Australia. We explore the different embodied rhythmic sound qualities of two parades held in the twin towns of Daylesford–Hepburn Springs, Victoria: the Swiss–Italian Festa and the ChillOut, pitched as Australia’s largest lesbian and gay rural festival. We pay close attention to how the rhythmic qualities of sounds trigger embodied responses. Incorporating the embodied knowledge of bodily rhythms triggered by sounds is a crucial component to understanding the analysis of festival spaces as sites-of-belonging.