Abstract
In this paper, I unite dance theory and practice and geopoetics in order to reflect on edges, peripheries and borders in a geographic region, the Scottish Borders, where the dominant cultural narrative is and has historically been based on rivalry. I draw here on the writing of the Scottish poet-philosopher Kenneth White, the practices of specific dancers and choreographers and on relational accounts of place and more-than-human perspectives. Rather than ‘sense of place’, my interest is in sensing place and thinking through sites. Threaded throughout are descriptions of perception practices exploring woodland, stone and riverways, which take the reader into the more experiential realm of embodied knowing. These passages are an invitation to be present with more-than-human others, to be in contact with the vitality of materials and to allow for being shaped, rather than being the shaping force. The intention is to bring different bodies of knowledge into contact as a way of revealing other vocabularies within place, which suggest alternative cultural narratives and help create the conditions for place—making a more collaborative, ethical and less anthropocentric endeavour, open to the influence and organising principles of the more-than-human.
Highlights
This foray into the Scottish Borders draws on the dwelling perspectives of being both an inhabitant and a dancer working in improvisation and somatic movement techniques with a collaborative, place-based choreographic practice
Ridingride-outs festivals on continue to reinforce thisplace demarcation of territory in the many of territory in the many horseback that take throughout the summer. This ride-outs on horseback that take place throughout the summer. This geopolitical border is of little geopolitical border is of little interest to Kenneth White, and his description is of a more-than-human interest to Kenneth
The woodland way, stone way and riverway investigations each generated practices or scores for dwelling inspired by more-than-human interactions and with some of the people who work in these environments
Summary
This foray into the Scottish Borders draws on the dwelling perspectives of being both an inhabitant and a dancer working in improvisation and somatic movement techniques with a collaborative, place-based choreographic practice. It is a project in the spirit of the Scottish biologist and town planner Patrick Geddes (1854–1932), who embraced ‘vivendo discimisus’, by living we learn, and ‘creando pensamus’, by creating we think or, by dancing we think. Leah Gibbs’ ‘passing through place’ (Gibbs 2014) foregrounds moving-through as an organising principle, which segues into Erin Manning’s expanded choreographic thinking, where ‘movement is not of a body It cuts across, co-composing with different velocities of movement-moving. My interest here is in somatic practice and in the compositional processes of movement as a way of enquiring, and the work lies and remains mainly within the body–mind rather than through another media
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