Between a Kick and a Cuddle: A fluid-methodology based on Doubt and Confusion
Irina Baldini
2019-2021
This works stands in response to the notion that dance has become stuck in its privilege of knowing (having at times been a provocative act, and has now become lost and oblivious, a repetition of existing forms). Prior work, among others Rudolf Laban’s Movement Analysis method, Rosalind Crisp’s methodology and Patricia Bardi’s Vital Movement Integration practice, have been addressing psycho-physical expression and repatterning of habits as a potential approach to this concern. What deserves further attention, are the ways in which these processes can be shared in real-time, between dancers in their practice and between them and an audience in a performance, becoming a generative tool. With a fluid-methodology, designed to help dancers identify their habits, challenge their ability to attend to multiple stimuli at once, and to provoke situations which embrace confusion, doubt and uncertainty, my work focuses on integration of states of doubt and confusion, decision-making and an embodied cognition emerging from these, with the aim of rendering dancers resilient to the discomfort and able to share the uncertainty it may provoke. To accomplish this, dancers are given tasks, also called ATE, aimed at taking them out of their comfort zone. The result is an experience that can be described as an exploration of the unfamiliar.



















