Body Knowledge/Body Prejudice (LizB)

This article addressed several points of interest for me in my choreographic work this semester. I am currently also reading Metaphors We Live By (also by Lakoff, who was quoted in this article) and I am curious about the possibilities of the body for symbolic communication and how we relate to metaphor on a visceral level. (For example, “we know in our bones” pp.73). As a choreographer I am interested in identifying, exploiting and exaggerating these “expressive or playful movements that become ritualized” (pp.74) and unthinkingly come to make-up our personal identity.
Secondly, I believe that the point made by Lakoff that categories are fundamental to our ability to make sense of the world is a crucial one. One of the aims of my choreographic process is to expose and push the boundaries of known categories. I found the author’s conceptualization of cohabiting two worlds—one visceral and personal, the other disembodied and symbolic—very useful. Part of my project will be to explore ways of translating the symbolic (language, poetry) into embodied experience and back again, such that the boundaries are constantly being crossed and re-crossed. The author notes that we are often most aware of movement when we are attempting a new or difficult task—thus challenging our known categories of movement and our known perceptions of ourselves. Part of my strategy for generating movement material will be challenging my dancers to perform purposefully “uncomfortable” tasks. The element of surprise will emerge from playing this line between knowledge/prejudice, what’s assumed and what’s the reality (and there might be multiple realities!!)
Finally I just want to conclude with the following quote: “Paradoxically, body movement is at once natural and contrived, visceral and symbolic, personal and social, ever present and constantly disappearing” (pp.85). The reason that I love this work is because it is a paradox; because if it wasn’t a paradox, it wouldn’t be interesting…