what we are doing in the practice is delicate

I’m wary of this kind of digging as well. Because of it’s … because I think what we’re, what we’re doing in the practice is delicate. And yeah, I’m wary of it, as you’ve already expressed previously about planting seeds or … addressing something that you’ve seen, and the risk being that it becomes a preoccupation … or self-conscious …

– from conversation with Katye Coe, post-dancing, 9 February 2024

Although this description is a bit garbled, what it’s getting at is the slight concern that by discussing in detail the moving experiences that aspects of those experiences might become a “preoccupation” or a point of self-consciousness.

Here’s Guy Claxton from Intelligence in the flesh (2015):

This means we have to acknowledge and value ways of knowing that are not capable of being unfurled into language, because any language, like the symbols on a map, creates distinctions that are not actually present in the neurochemical territory of the body. All maps have to be crude (mis)representations, or they will not be useful for finding our way about (Claxton, 2015: loc 3170)

And also:

Nevertheless […] the struggle to get closer to being able to articulate your tacit knowledge, while ultimately doomed, may be very productive. It makes you think, and it connects you with other sources of support and criticism. Any deep process of verbal creativity will, of necessity, involve an uncomfortable groping for phrases and images that try to do justice to something ‘real’ in the territory that cuts across the conventions of the map (Claxton, 2015: loc 3176)

This tension between that which can be described or articulated and that which can’t is an old one in dance and movement research. I tried to talk and write about it years ago in Hands that don’t want anything (which, by the way, is pretty difficult for me to read these days).

What became clear to Katye and I over the course of the practice was that none of the things we discussed became a preoccupation during the movement sessions. Perhaps we didn’t go far enough into the mangle of articulating of that which cannot be articulated?

References:

Claxton, G. (2015) Intelligence in the Flesh: Why Your Mind Needs Your Body Much More than It Thinks. New Haven (Conn.) London: Yale University Press

Ellis, S. (2009) Hands That Don’t Want Anything. Presentation at TaPRA, University of Plymouth 8 September 2009. <https://www.skellis.net/hands-that-dont-want-anything>