Circling, tumbling, dancing around: Back pieces

Abstract

This article consists of six text–image pieces that share practical research into modes of moving, perceiving and thinking through the back and extended notions of dorsality. Since 2019, through workshops, studio residencies, presentations and collaborative moving, conversational, drawing and writing practices, I have been developing physical exercises and choreographic devices for tuning into the back, bringing attention to and exploring the unseen surfaces and axial technologies of the back. These dorsal practices are evolving through movement and sensory research as well as opening a wider set of philosophical concepts and possibilities for orientating in and co-habiting a world amongst other bodies and things. The pieces combine short written texts, sidenotes and images. The texts have evolved from sensory observation in practical movement tasks and conversations, in the form of notes and recordings, often working in a dynamic process between embodied experience, memory and imagination. The footnotes are a playful device for allowing other peripheral ideas such as light, moth, vestibular labyrinth, tree, tracing paper, ghost, voice, front-crawling to enter and generate gaps for the reader in which to linger, skip, skim, imagine, (re)connect. The still images, diagrams and drawings are another way of taking note, testing, proposing, articulating and reading.