Tracing Forwards –––––– the question of (human) nature

Dear Members of the IDOCDE Community,

The time of the Symposium approaches. As you might have learned already, the title of the upcoming IDOCDE Symposium, our 7th, is:

Tracing Forwards ––––––
intersecting (somatic) legacies and future (art) practices.

There are several key interests this Symposium wants to unpack. The question of somatic legacies, for example. What is somatic legacy outside the US-dominant history model? What is somatic legacy outside the West-dominant history model? How do we re-cognise those histories, those herstories, those stories which were hidden from us and re-activate their ethics, their politics, their aesthetics?

There are stories in our herstories that tell of a different order of things to those we take for granted today. Stories about the relationship between “technique” and “choreography”, “technique” and “craftsmanship”, stories about the relationship between “life” and “art”, between “therapy” and “creativity”, between “breathing” and “working” and “making” and “celebrating” and “criticising” –– stories that might influence not only the way we see the world today, but the way in which we practice.

         Stay tuned for updates on the 7th IDOCDE Symposium at IDOCDE.net and IDOCDE’s Facebook page.

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Preparing for the upcoming Symposium, the majority of Team IDOCDE came together in New Zealand. For most of us, this meant going as far away from the ancestral land as possible, before “further away” turned into “coming back around” to where we came from. The trip, in itself, is triggering reflection: how did people come here, European settlers, without airplanes? How long did it take them? Why did they come here in the first place? Why did they stay?

Meeting the local community, learning about the relationship between the pākehā––the white settler, and the Maori, being conscious of the effort it took to get here, and the effect on the environment our trips caused, walking through the native bush, looking out at the ocean, being told that out there, just beyond the horizon, is where Antarctica is… we stand humbled.

More on this, in the wonderful words of Eszter Gál.

With love and devotion,
pavleheidler for Team IDOCDE

 being nature by Eszter Gál

      What is different now?

New Zealand; working, swimming, standing on the vast beach of the South Pacific,
feeling the wind in my face, touching the salty air, the salty air touching me.
spreading my arms, they intermingle –– like wings –– with the earth sky tree sand water
the space in between

I do not feel small, nor weak nor fragile against the power or/and the vastness of the endless,
powerful, imperious, awe-inspiring waves and solid rocks
and their millions of years of experiencing –– I am

the humanness dissolves, drops with a breath – yet stronger present then ever
i am not imposing myself onto nature, I am not living in nature –– I am

i am not in the nature, i am not with the nature,
–– I am

nature

the breath i take is the breath the Ocean takes
the cells, alive in my body live with the cells, alive, which surround me
in and out does not exist

      What is different now?

what does it mean to have this sense? how do i know i have it? what do I have? it is a something that has been there, inside, but forgotten?

i have been working on learning, knowing my body from within my whole life, more consciously for about 25 years. i have been arriving to places where i became one with the forces and energies around me. as a dancer i work with my body, from my body, in my body. i am a dancer who is danced by „visible and invisible” means. a dancer who is material, subject and object at once.

when you have the sense of self as nature, it is not something that can be forgotten. once you arrive to this place, you become it, no matter what you are doing, no matter if you pay attention to it or not.

lately i have experienced bodies dancing together, touching each other where my body turned into a living being, a substance, a one-unit cell that moves by the moving of the bodies around. this caused an enormous relief in my experiencing mind. i did not want to understand what that was or what that is, just simply i knew and i know i am one cell and every cell. the humanness is just „an addition” – a kind addition –– there to extend my learning about life.

this knowing moved further when I was on the beach, when i was standing in the sea.

      What is different now?

Am I thinking of humanness? the sense of “I am nature” purifies the complexity of western living and cracks the separation shell of me from the other. the totality of this sensation is a beauty and joy of being alive.

poem

nature me
standing with arms open at the beach,
letting the skin open for the wind to go through the layers of the tissues and bones
– dissolving in the salty spreads sparkles of Ocean drops
becoming one with all