the dance practice
Let’s be comfortable in our own skin” is a dance improvisational practice by Androniki Marathaki.It is shared since Dec 2021 to multicellular groups of people, in various spaces and different formats. It addressed to anyone who wishes to research the ways with which he/she/@ is able to move lustily and with pleasure into| with the world.
being comfortable in our own skin" might mean
-that I question if I am or not,
that I can move,
that I can move without effort, with health in terms of my needs - which I evaluate often - and in relation to external stimuli always, but not carried away by them
-that I desire sensing a unity within the different dimensions of the Body and between internal and external environment,
-that I am able to trace the resonance of what I perceive
that I can trace the relations and "conversations" of my movement in/within the world and of the movement of the world
-that even when I try it, I dance their intervals,
-that I am aware that my skin is perforated and this leaves no time for "second thoughts" in my communication with self and others,
-that I need a safe place in order to practice this with bare attention.
This is a dance improvisational practice that invests in discovering ways to coordinate our movement with sensorial stimulis. It is a direction of managing our movement in the world through processes that concern not an external observer, but how the movement itself informs, sensitizes and activates the various organizations and arrangements of the living and whole Body.
It is characterized by a study, contemplation and experience of the dance of "bare attention" of what we call "bodily sensations" and is centered around a precise quality of attention. A quality of attention that embraces the dual nature of subjectivity and what is for all is commonplace.
Its meditational quality focuses on the realm of the physical Body, expanding our attention to what arises before meaning, image, sound, language.
It seeks a "meaning" produced by the protoly principles that govern the movement of the human body and for this it begins with principles that permeate the biological systems, the energy centers (chakras), the meridians and the five elements of Eastern theory/practices that help in the interconnection of the various dimensions of the body.
It is a Way that cultivates personal development of “listening” and paying attention to the “feeling of movement” with primal ignorance and care.
It focuses on how this "bare attention" of sensory stimuli is actualized, that is, moves and is reflected in the world.
Thatway,it seeks through immediacy, alertness, honesty, homeostatic mechanisms, self-regulation and coordination
to reach an emptiness and to experience the piece of our healthy movement in the world.
It is a practice, meaning it is about the very experiencing of practicing or of the very practicing the experiencing and of questioning what a bodily sensation is, but most importantly how can we coordinate our movement to the feeling of them.
The quality of questions that inform the practice amplify a processing of constant change and an infinitely unfolding into movement.
In order to achieve a non-active but thus more than ever present move of our self within the world, perception can be our gate through and also a restricted mirror.
Driven by pleasure and aliveness, the practice emphasizes self-mobility, trusts the knowledge found in the ways we organize our movement through our bodily networks, and negotiates modes of communication in a more than human dimension, thereby liberating the dance from its mimetic mechanisms, visual references, control theories, linear natures in exploring/perceiving movement, instructions and commands that refer to the posture of the body or the form of movement (meaning to the movement analyzed by an external observer),as well as to strains/pain induced through external processing and perception of movement.
Skills that are cultivated are:
-body awareness through movement, self-regulation within shared environments, critical thinking-feeling, transparent disciplines and trusting the “learning to learn” process
-It makes an introduction to get to know|feel the systems of the human body, perception and cultivates homeostatic regulations.
-It stimulates personal explorations and initiatives, plays with articulating the experiencing, bridging body’s materiality to concepts, exploring Body's materiality as whole (front-back-left-right-up-down exist only for/as “language”), explore the "resisting of strain, stretch, efford",
-It rests into questions as thoso only create movement
-It reveales body networks, virtual-actual self and the distance between intention of action & action
How?
by putting forward the organization of the Body while moving -Its skeletal architecture, the sensorial world of Its networks, the ways in which we perceive self and environment-
-by pursuing variations which either constrain or facilitate the body's functional demands,
-by cultivating a precise quality of attention
- by negotiating modes of communication in a more than human dimension
notes from Androniki's diary
In this practice some of the basic principles of a dance improvisational practice are shared. The somatic practices, neurophysiology, natural sciences,eastern practicesand their philosophy, breathing techiques, healing tehiques, psychology, practices from my teachers,... all these are sources for me to get closer to how I experience Dance and to be able to tranvaluate myself together with its definition.
Mostly, they offer me tools and methods that I adopt, sometimes unchanged and others times through the lens of my experience and knowledge. They also help me by creating a common language, a common context, a togetherness in order to communicate and share what I experience as Dance with others.
At this very moment of my journey though, I mostly arrived only because I remain in the question levitated.
Because I listen carefully the question of how can I define Dance and before meaning or words “stuck upon its skin”.
With vulnerability and sensitivity to approach It before I become conscious of it, with bravery to gaze at it simply, with triviality, with eyes that touch upon it softly and observe it with bare attention.
I learned to observe it that way. And I protected It from others’ dreams. I did not allow them to define it for me.
On the other hand, in those dreams of others, there is something that everyone used to tell me anyway:that I am unable to dance if I am not my Dance, if I am not movement. Since humans were dancing, no one ever said the opposite and for this very advice of them, I am heartily grateful to all.
There is no subjectiveness to everything. There are some common grounds for each and everyone of us:
a) Consciousness changes according to the posture of my matterial Body
b)Skeletal structure can move without any burden to my flesh.
c) Inside of me is forged into presency simultaneously with my “outside”/the world I am creating.
d)There is always a distance between the intention of an action and action (what I call virtual-actual self)
e) In order to coordinate them, I need to enter into the same mood as the one in my everyday life. I focus on trivialities, on its twists and turns of its rhythm, on its lightness, on the “no-effortness”.
f) Because living in everyday life does not release every potentiality and range of movement, I need to trace the process step by step. There are stages. Every stage, every part of each stage is of significant importance. Do not neglect boredom.Do not neglect rest. And with all that, Do not be creative.
g) How I feel my flesh, how I visualize my skeletal, my organs, the sense of my vision, hearing, touch, smell, flavor, proprioception, interoception, kinesthesis, the what we call body schema, all these change and move. They do not have specific limits except those that are established by my perception and how I feel “them”. The energetic Body changes more fluently, it is refined and in becomes densed when there is efford.
h) My perception is not stable, it elaborates according to my communication with how I feel. Mostly, from an emptiness between virtual and actual self, between what precedes action and action. This emptiness (if I perceive it as an emptiness), is a matter of saving energy. It reflects perception’s mode activated every time I make the next step
movement is incipient action: a dance of the not-yet (E.M.)
Intention precedes action.Interval. Consciousness comes after the fact.
Be transparent in the action causing it a little (S.P)
Sensation of experience is awareness. Awareness is a skill. (A.S)
Pain/Negative perception is the triumph of consciousness (M.F.)
Let ‘s be comfortable in our own skin.
A dancing body is a sensing body.
A sensing body is a moving body.
A moving body is a dancing body. Is a sensing body a dancing body?
to move a relation. to move the interval.
dance, sense, move|move, sense, dance: a movement of folding inwards to unfold outwards
move, sense, dance|dance, sense, move: a movement of folding outwards to unfold inwards
I imagine the cat let me touch its belly. I imagine this probably happened because I surrendered to the interval of our difference.”
General principles that concern my artistic movement research often:
-sensing movement | feeling the movement: I feel precisly because there is movement
-being in the state of bare attention while moving
-differentiating my movement and movement as a physical force
-practices for characteristics and properties of eternal movementand relations with my motion
-dancing is there, in that very relation
-elaborating on practices of connecting movement and sensory stimuluses
-practices of bared realization of sensory stimuluses in movement
-resting in questions | questions create movement
Two levels
Let’s be comfortable in our own skin | Round A : Intro
It is addressed to those who wish to come into contact with this dance improvisation practice or have little experience in this practice but also to those who wish to recall their previous experience or maintain a more frequent contact with the practice (if combined with Round B ).
Let’s be comfortable in our own skin | Round B: relationscapes and relation to eternal movement: Addressed to those who have previous experience of this improvisational practice and wish to further their research.
Two versions
SNAPSHOTS of the dance improvisational practice (2 hours long | min 2 months period )
FULL VERSION of of the dance improvisational practice (5 hour long | 1 week period)
A residency and a dance performance
The dance practice informed the residency ISLAND CONNECT during which Androniki Marathaki, Natalia Manta and Elton Petri researched a third level of the practce that is inspired by the sensorial stimulusus and colous. Specifically they researced "greeness" in Limeric| Ireland (IICM) and "blueness" in Naxos island| Greece . More info here.
It also informed the dance performance "painfully painless" presented in Athens & Epidavrus Festival. More info here.
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