AMPD, Dance Studies

Being Ma lives at the nexus of ma and the lived body.1 Ma concept of space-time permeates traditional forms of Japanese Fine Arts.2 The essence of ma reappeared in the contemporary Butoh dance philosophy, and through it migrated as a spatial temporal perspective adopted by a number of movement art practitioners outside of Japan. Being Ma aims to describe a conceptual space-time as experienced in its relationship with the artistic intent of a moving body.
Having chosen to study a Japanese concept through the practice of North American movement art practitioners, I come across issues of translation and issues of movement approaches – or, stylistic forms of action. Of the many artistic expressions using the lived body paradigm, this paper addresses the experience of movement through the cases studies of Butoh dance-theatre, Somatic practice, and Durational Performance Art. These forms necessitate awareness of movement, which makes them great pilots for observation, description and analysis. Therefore, Being Ma looks at the experiential phenomenon of embodied translation in the action of dancing/performing a movement. In this paper,
I will define the term trans-acting, describe how ma trans-acts the dancing body, and illustrate its implication in movement performance art.
The process approach is fundamental in following the logical flow leading to the body-as-event qualifying the ma principle discussed in this paper. Ma is a contributory rather than a known or a delimiting principle. The study of ma augments the study of the philosophy of dance/movement as agent of cultural knowledge production.

“Being Ma” lives at the nexus of ma and the lived body. (1) Of Shinto Zen origin, 'ma' concept of spacetime permeates traditional forms of Japanese Fine Arts. (2) The essence of 'ma' reappears in the contemporary Butoh dance philosophy, and has migrated as spatial-temporal perspective in a number of movement art practices outer-borders of Japan. “Being Ma” attempts at describing a porous, fluid, indescribable concept as experienced in its relationship along and between the artistic intents of a moving body in spacetime.
'Ma' is a contributing rather than a limiting principle. The study follows a flow leading to ma-body-as-event. The study of 'ma' contributes to the phenomenal, cultural, and embodied knowledge production of Dance & Performance scholarship, and beyond, extending to fields of research mandating embodied inquiries. Having chosen to study a Japanese phenomenological concept through the practical framework (in some cases) of North American movement art practitioners, I come across issues of embodied translation and issues of movement approaches – or, stylistic codes and forms of ‘trans-action’. Aided by the artistic expressions of the lived body paradigm, this paper addresses the experience of movement: Shinto Zen rites, Nihon Buyo (Traditional Japanese Dance), Butoh practice, Somatic practice, dancing dream state, and Durational Performance Art. These forms call for movement awareness, which makes them ideal pilots for observation, description, analysis, and interpretation.

This article with artist pages is a self-reflection on danced engagements with land and lineage. In performing with elemental nature and at historical sites, I met my own broken memories of colonized land and severed ties to ancestral lands. These pages feature images of two performance series taking place in and near Montréal city, a cosmopolitan hub of the French province of Québec, Canada. Wise words from storytellers, artists and scholars in the field of Indigenous knowledge (Sto:lo and Anishinaabe nations) guide my textual narrative, and issues of ethical ethnography compel its performative embodied inquiry.

"On the Lived, Imagined Body" is a reflective remembering from the point of view of a movement performance artist's training session learning to dance with imagined wings when in her lived experience, the body of the dancer is aware somatically of moving with wings that do not actually exist. The overarching conceptualization in this article describes the inner-outer tensions, the kinesthetic, somatic, proprioceptive penetration inward and the visual-kinetic, imaginative reach outward. The landmark work from dance phenomenologist Maxine Sheets-Johnstone (1966/2015), The Phenomenology of Dance, prompted the author of this article to translate an embodied experiential and imagined event for readers who might never have had the experience of a somatic movement training of dancing with imagined wings as a lived experience. The phenomenology of dancing as if with lived and imagined wings is developed further as a result of two week-long presencing workshops taught by contemporary dancer-choreographer and somatics teacher Benoît Lachambre (2015/2016). For movement artists and dance practitioners, experiencing imaginary wings as lived wings means experiencing movement through mindful awareness and conscious intention of a praxis of somatic architecture.

This article aims at situating the ethnographic dimensional shift of a found object. This essay takes a look at the journey of a nail object and its many dimensions in relationship to the human encountering the nail-object, and in the situation of the many worlds the nail object inhabits. Burning Man festival, in this essay, serves as the dynamic stage for such study of relationships.

On the Lived, Imagined Body" is a reflective remembering from the point of view of a movement performance artist's training session learning to dance with imagined wings when in her lived experience, the body of the dancer is aware somatically of moving with wings that do not actually exist. The overarching conceptualization in this article describes the inner-outer tensions, the kinesthetic, somatic, proprioceptive penetration inward and the visual-kinetic, imaginative reach outward. The landmark work from dance phenomenologist Maxine Sheets-Johnstone (1966/2015), The Phenomenology of Dance, prompted the author of this article to translate an embodied experiential and imagined event for readers who might never have had the experience of a somatic movement training of dancing with imagined wings as a lived experience. The phenomenology of dancing as if with lived and imagined wings is developed further as a result of two week-long presencing workshops taught by contemporary dancer-choreographer and somatics teacher Benoît Lachambre (2015/2016). For movement artists and dance practitioners, experiencing imaginary wings as lived wings means experiencing movement through mindful awareness and conscious intention of a praxis of somatic architecture.

On the Lived, Imagined Body" is a reflective remembering from the point of view of a movement performance artist's training session learning to dance with imagined wings when in her lived experience, the body of the dancer is aware somatically of moving with wings that do not actually exist. The overarching conceptualization in this article describes the inner-outer tensions, the kinesthetic, somatic, proprioceptive penetration inward and the visual-kinetic, imaginative reach outward. The landmark work from dance phenomenologist Maxine Sheets-Johnstone (1966/2015), The Phenomenology of Dance, prompted the author of this article to translate an embodied experiential and imagined event for readers who might never have had the experience of a somatic movement training of dancing with imagined wings as a lived experience. The phenomenology of dancing as if with lived and imagined wings is developed further as a result of two week-long presencing workshops taught by contemporary dancer-choreographer and somatics teacher Benoît Lachambre (2015/2016). For movement artists and dance practitioners, experiencing imaginary wings as lived wings means experiencing movement through mindful awareness and conscious intention of a praxis of somatic architecture.

This article aims at situating the ethnographic dimensional shift of a found object. This essay takes a look at the journey of a nail object and its many dimensions in relationship to the human encountering the nail-object, and in the situation of the many worlds the nail object inhabits. Burning Man festival, in this essay, serves as the dynamic stage for such study of relationships.