When I lose myself in dance, it’s via the process of struggling with the question of how to move.
Should I brace my midsection?
Am I integrating my shoulders?
Should I loosen my neck?
What if I count, 1… left …. 3 …. Right
There’s a sort of test sequence, cycling through frameworks for moving until something catches.
The test sequence has some probable outcomes:
- Liftoff
- Self-consciousness
- Dissipation
Certain techniques are more highly correlated with ‘liftoff’ — techniques of full body awareness, of immersed listening.
When it connects, I feel myself a sound sculpture.
Dance paralysis is a sort of recursive error of self-consciousness.
There’s an analogous paralysis in the front of the camera.
Being photographed surfaces the feeling of stagefright in the most innocuous places.
Something sudden and all consuming, some overflow error, of how one is seen by others.
“People have an urge to perpetuate themselves by means of a portrait, and they put their best profiles forward for posterity. Mingled with this urge, though, is a certain fear of black magic; a feeling that by sitting for a camera portrait they are exposing themselves to the workings of witchcraft of a sort”
