International Federation for Theatre Research Conference
Organiser: Shanghai Theatre Academy
Embodied Research Working Group

Tittle: An embodied encounter with stillness, space/place and the imagination

Abstract
How does the body move within a space, and how do images take its shape?
In this interactive proposal, I am exploring how a body moves within the space and ask what the various images that are taking shape through the body are.  Expanding on the idea of divestiture particularly that on stillness, I begin to explore one’s regular set of movement versus one’s reluctance to move in any systematic manner.

These embodied images conjured in the two manners raise questions of what is a habitual body and from where do these set of movement come. What if the body refuses to move in its usual manner and play with the concept of imbalance and falling? What does it mean for the body to be imbalanced? Playing with the concept of falling and imbalance can provide a kind of transitional phase for how the body moves between and through the space encountered and perhaps articulate a different set of movement?

However, what if the body gives in to this disequilibrium and fall, this sense of falling will require the body to let go, to lose control and so open up this sensation of fragility and in this opening, perhaps the body can reclaim itself? In this reclaiming, I am suggesting a process of decolonisalisation, because, this falling/imbalance, finds the body to be more in a state of stillness and yet moving, yet experiencing.