Papers by Sondra Fraleigh
Butoh Shapeshifters
Hijikata Tatsumi and Ohno Kazuo, 2017
Back to the Dance Itself
Back to the Dance Itself
The Words of Hijikata and Ohno
A Phenomenology of Being Seen
Performance Phenomenology, 2019
Being seen is an essential phenomenon of performance. This chapter explores this preliminary intu... more Being seen is an essential phenomenon of performance. This chapter explores this preliminary intuition. First section, “Phenomenology as a Method”, explains phenomenology as a method for studying being seen in performance. Second section, “Being Seen in Performance”, examines being seen through a variety of performances, while focusing on somatic practices. Third section, “On Being Seen: Performance Maps for Somatic Experiencing” makes a shift towards somatic explorations. It continues phenomenological reflections on being seen and provides simple templates for practice. At the end, consideration is given to a key question: what are the values of being seen in performance? This essay holds that being seen is an experience consciously (or sometimes tacitly) initiated in performance, and that there is intention and agency in being seen. It is worth noting, however, that Husserlian phenomenology usually delineates the intentionality of the subject, the one who sees. In this chapter, we focus more on the affective life of the one who is seen, not the seer.
Ohno (1906–2010) and Hijikata (1928–1986)
The Routledge Companion to Studio Performance Practice, 2021
Everyone needs to breathe
Dance, Movement & Spiritualities, 2020
This article is written with an eye towards the future and a foot in the past. It is partly autob... more This article is written with an eye towards the future and a foot in the past. It is partly autobiographical, and in each of four parts offers reflective somatic practices. The author is sheltering at home, so her thoughts centre on the meaning of home, family and pets. At the same time, she articulates somatic skills to cultivate embodied presence, insightful verbal interactions and healing touch. Her writing invites readers into somatic movement explorations and somatic communication practices through poetry. Life and death, love and war, ground her article. The section on Simbi involves global shadow work through butoh and the healing essence of water. Golden shadows appear as elemental and ecosomatic in Morphic Curiosity, a butoh invitation to site-specific dance. Video links and photographs further embody the work. The final section, Dance back the world, presents somatic witnessing as an extraordinary process of intimate notice and care. Becoming friends with the whole world i...
We Are Not Solid Beings: Presence in Butoh, Buddhism, and Phenomenology
Asian Theatre Journal, 2020
Back to the dance itself: In three acts
Journal of Dance & Somatic Practices, 2017
Back to the Dance Itself: Phenomenologies of the Body in Performance edited by Sondra Horton Fraleigh. 2017. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. 312 pp., 8 color photographs, 59 black and white photographs, 1 table. $28.00 paper. ISBN: 9780252083730
Dance Research Journal, 2019
Ethical world gaze
Dance, Movement & Spiritualities, 2017
Performance Philosophy, 2019
Nature relative to subjectivity is an under theorized area of performance philosophy, one that we... more Nature relative to subjectivity is an under theorized area of performance philosophy, one that we ignore at our peril. There is such a thing as nature. It encompasses all that humans are not, and suffuses all that we are and do. It is not merely a social or cultural construction, as we consider in this essay. In order to speak more definitively of nature and the body, we employ the phenomenology of Paul Ricoeur and reach back to the lifeworld (lebenswelt) philosophy of Edmund Husserl. Some read Husserl as an essentialist, but there are other readings, such as the one developed here. One of Ricoeur’s major works, Freedom and Nature: the Voluntary and the Involuntary, concerns motives and values at the organic level, studying how habits inform individual habitus and become embodied as nature in flux. Accordingly, this essay explores subjectivity, intentionality and nature in performance using examples from butoh relative to metamorphosis, a ubiquitous process in the rhythms and multi-...
On dance and phenomenology: An essay interview with Professor Sondra Fraleigh, University of New York
Dance, Movement & Spiritualities, 2015
Dancing Becomes Walking
University of Illinois Press, 2017
This chapter reflects on the author’s personal transformations in developing Shin Somatics throug... more This chapter reflects on the author’s personal transformations in developing Shin Somatics through study of several forms of yoga, the Alexander Technique, the Feldenkrais Method of Somatic Education, craniosacral therapy, and Zen mindfulness. In particular, it explains how dancing became a form of walking meditation for the author. The author also talks about finding ways to introduce somatic concepts into her teaching of dance and yoga in university and community settings, including a simple method of mindful meditation that attends to the breath, non-judgment, self-care, and forgiveness through the lens of Shin (Oneness). Finally, the chapter discusses how the author’s travels in Japan and India inspire much of the “East” in the Eastwest name, along with her involvement in butoh and the ways it has taught her about its somatic basis.
Why Consciousness Matters
University of Illinois Press, 2017
This chapter examines consciousness, or more accurately “extending whole body consciousness,” as ... more This chapter examines consciousness, or more accurately “extending whole body consciousness,” as the core purpose of somatic studies. It first considers the notion of ethereality in dance, noting how contrasting subtle ethereal movement would be solid strongly delineated movement, restrained and earthy; some of these strong qualities are found in the invigorating stamping dances of India and Africa. The chapter goes on to discuss somatics in terms of somatic affectivity and phenomenological awareness, arguing that how self and community are cultivated makes a difference in somatic contexts for performance; the important role of the teacher in transformational dance somatics, insisting that she and her consciousness are a living part of it; dualism from a gender perspective; and the use of phenomenology in terms of its critique of dualist theories of body and mind.
Somatic Movement Arts
University of Illinois Press, 2017
This chapter discusses somatic movement arts and provides an extensive definition of movement-bas... more This chapter discusses somatic movement arts and provides an extensive definition of movement-based somatic practices. The chapter describes somatics as a kinesthetic field for study and cultivation of movement arts, including the author’s experiences and conceptualizations of somatic methods in dance performance. The chapterbegins with a thumbnail sketch of somatic history, noting how somatic inquiry was buoyed by growth of existentialism and phenomenology, before considering the relationship of somatics to affect attunement, kinesthesia, and matching through touch. It also explains somatic methods, including those based on movement, and possible selves; the somatic affects of butoh; haptic perception, clearing processes, and repatterning; and the ways that soma promotes healing. The chapter concludes by outlining some Shin Somatics movement-based experiences and methods that the author and her colleagues explore with students and clients.
Butoh Translations and the Suffering of Nature
Performance Research, 2016
Butoh, a form of dance and theatre having its roots in midtwentieth-century Japan, continues to m... more Butoh, a form of dance and theatre having its roots in midtwentieth-century Japan, continues to migrate across cultures through translations that are individually crafted and understood. It has never been a progressive art, sinking as it does toward mud and disappearance. It is not based on steps, but rather on images and atmospheric change, eliciting affects of bodily being. Most significantly for this essay, butoh brought marks of suffering into dance, sublimating the body while extending its liminal, intermediate states. Butoh seldom lands anywhere: it keeps morphing.
Attunement and evanescence
Dance, Movement & Spiritualities, 2015
Essay Review of Maxine Sheets-Johnstone's the Primacy of Movement (Summer, 2002)
Dance Research Journal, 2002
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Papers by Sondra Fraleigh