Nobonke-together

• The planet is transforming in ways that are challenging to us.
• Yet we are intimately connected with everything.
• As a human species, we may end.
• Because of this potential reality our consciousness is moving in radical ways.
• Any human act – like a dance – is part of the entangled reality of our planetary existence.
• The effects of an act are unknowable.
• So, what is a movement now?
• This is Posthuman Dance.

• The question should really be: What is actually happening when we dance?
• Generally, people dance without thinking about their immediate and interconnected existence with the external world.
• Mostly, people dance either as an internal or an external experience. Let’s say we are either “into it” or “out of it” – we move with alertness to our senses, or our attention is on for instance what we may look like when we move. Or we may just follow a frenzy of movement, of sorts. Of course, none of these are ever clear-cut distinctions.
• Posthuman, thinking dancers do all of these at once. We sense our movement on various levels of intensity and intimacy, while we consciously roam freely into spaces beyond our immediate body. This is where the philosopher of the body is born. But there is more. (See what I have written on performance below.)
• We may find that we have images entering our awareness and emerging as a thinking movement. This moment is often a breakthrough into a new perspective on an event or reality that we live by.
• The content of the sessions in posthuman dancing will open up this field with ideas relevant to the posthuman era.

• Moving with other bodies is a growing practice in many fields of human development. It requires an ethic underpinned by technique and a clear sense of boundaries and openness.
• Since for many this is an unsure and unknown territory, various movement techniques are offered to help dancers connect with other dancers.
• Learning and embodying these techniques make the dance experience one that is safe, explorative, and deeply humane. And ecological, more-than-human. (See more on face and voice below).
• The depth of the humane aspect of moving with other bodies is what is often missing in social dancing. We need other bodies to counter much of what has isolated us from a bodily felt sense of who we intrinsically are in a community of humans and non-humans.
• A specific sense of personal balance is enhanced in the training that appreciates the uniqueness of physical contact with other people.
• In addition, we need a reconceptualized connection with our planetary existence. Our mediation with other human bodies brings a much more nuanced and humbler sense of who we are in the more-than-human world. This often leaves us with a sense of relief that we are indeed entangled, yet we learn of new ways in which our entablement manifest from moment to moment.

• All my dancing is done as expressions of my inner world in an effort to constantly evoke and study new understandings of who I am. This is ongoing research into how we could apply movement as the most immediately available tool to bring a thoroughly grounded sense of well-being.
• Of course, this is a practice, one that enriches itself the more one is on the floor in movement by oneself or with others, and with objects of significance. (More about objects later.)
• We benefit most when our understanding of what we are doing is grounded in an inherently caring sense of interest, and genuine curiosity in ourselves. We want to be curious not only about our past but about our presence at the moment, our becoming over time – the constant reinterpretation of our larger story.
• We evoke our future through authentic movement, listening deeply to ourselves. This settles much-hidden turmoil that we manage in complex bodymind constellations. Of course, this is enhanced by aesthetic connection and attention to ourselves as interesting, beautiful, and beings with integrity.
• This, and much more could be called therapeutic. However, with a keen observation of who and what we are from moment to moment, we are constantly balancing and rebalancing ourselves, quite remarkably.

From my NY voice teacher Meredith Monk: Why do we make a separation between art and spiritual practice? We don't think of art anymore as an offering.

• In the 1980’s I discovered that many people in my dance classes would not allow themselves the freedom of movement. What they were familiar with was a technique that they expected to execute as best they could. I was astounded at how people carefully broke out of certain movement vocabularies to align more closely to an inner impulse that they began to discover on the floor. Over the years I developed an eye for that moment of initiation in a moving body. It is a sacred moment and one that I always feel much respect for, and privileged for being the witness, possibly the only one.
• This moment of initiation, so to speak, can be visibly spacious, large, or infinitely small. It does not matter. What does matter is the energetic, invisible process that realigns the person we are, with something more truthful about ourselves, a settling as if we have come home.
• This is but one principle, amongst many in PHD, that correlates with the posthuman philosophical movement, which I will study, always, as a beginner, mind you. If you have an interest in quantum physics, you may appreciate that consciousness is not necessarily linear, visible, logical, rational, or controlled, and all those modes of thinking that we yearn for when we want to make sense of something – all based on the past, mind you. So, something in us may feel like a shift in consciousness but we may not have an explanation for it at the moment of its occurrence. This is something we get used to in PHD. In fact, we accept the surprises, the unexpected, the revelation, and even moments of a welcome nothingness of being. It remains a learning process though, and each movement we do is filled with a fond expectation without a grip on its outcome. Movement has this magic.
• The (Buddhist) notion of the movement of the ego could be used here if we are so inclined. It is practiced in meditation. Suddenly, our sense of self is replaced by something much larger. Since we either meditate or move, this is not such a surprise. If fact, it feels utterly normal, and then we are free, even just for that moment.
• The human spirit is essentially free, with choices at all times. How to move ourselves to experience this freedom takes some unlearning, and a willingness to discover our subtle will.
• Our socio-ecological realities gaining greater consciousness during this century rewards us with calibration between what we know of ourselves and how our will is prepared to gain density of action. Or, recede in humbleness, submission, release, all forms of re-centering our existence to fit a consciousness that we are not the only ones here.
• By the way, even though the last statement indicates duality or binary thinking, much of PHD is a unitary experience.
• In truth, this question requires an infinite discussion. You can sense the psycho-spiritual at work you, not so?

• We are encouraged to develop a vast body movement vocabulary that would comfortably accommodate the inner world in all its facets. Sometimes this could be illustrated and we try it on, like a garment, so to speak. Sometimes this fits just right, and other times it needs to be customized through our own genius of intuition, daring, extending, limiting, witnessing others, and feeling things out through sensation, intelligent adjustment, and pure chance.
• Another channel to our dear selves is our face. Most dancers never use their faces. Whatever the reason, our faces are the Rorschach to our inner worlds. There is so much nuanced, sensation information that we could use for our sense of psychological balance on a much deeper level than only where body movement stops. The face says it all. You want to know this.
• If we would free up our voices in direct alignment with our movement and facial creativity more information about our examined life would become available. This is a powerful tool. If well applied it could bring about major shifts in the psychological spectrum of our existence.
• I welcome contained discussion, reflection, and sharing whether this is in the group or with me privately. I do not underestimate the penetrable value of the intellect, action that can bring about major shifts, understanding, and settlement of the nervous condition. People often feel they have to be given permission to penetrate an idea. PHD offers this opportunity.
• I have always taken great pleasure in journal writing. This daily activity has many faces. We will discuss this possibility as a further research device for PHD if you are interested.

• One could say that a fair amount of the work on the floor has a shamanic element to it. The field of transpersonal psychology has expanded into much of what many people practice today as everyday activities of transcendence. The world of healing practices is a good example.
• The transpersonal world suggests that we extend ourselves into the more-than-human world. This may be into objects which we suddenly find as having a different significance from before. An object could change its meaning because we move with it. For instance, a piece of cloth could turn into a veil and the story following may evoke all kinds of imagery of significance for the dancer.
• But in PHD we also open ourselves to the objects in our environment which are transforming in meaning and therefore expand our interpretation of them. Daily, we may discover that the water we take in is no longer how it used to be, yet we still take it in. The internal adjustment to how water has become, plus the necessity to use it for survival, place us in a new position: perhaps water is no longer an object, but a strange stranger (a term by Timothy Morton) which we are prepared to dance with as an integrating act.
• I hope you appreciate the difference between the transformative meaning of moving with an object and our own openness to being moved by it.
• Once your embodiment holds an ethic shaped by the post-human consciousness your movement gains a depth of emission and illumination. Here, you no longer “ground” yourself, rather, you are the ground.

• The term performance here has a radically wide interpretation. It is important that we know that PHD always has a potential artistic, or aesthetic element to it. Frankly, a moving body is a beautiful thing no matter how you may look at it.
• But when we dance, especially in a group, new relations and engagements move us into areas that we do not, and cannot control too much. We want to flow with what wants to move (in) us. Often this has a specific resonance of being, one that affects the witnesses (often just me), in a stunning way. This heightened quality of being and witnessing (a term for observation) is part of what makes PHD an extraordinary experience.
• The term per-form could be seen as a human becoming through form, new form, new manifestation, and often with a heightened sense of being.
• A new story could move us in constellations of two or more dancers, and being open to this phenomenon, underpinned with technique and a growing understanding of the ethic of this work, we forge an unfolding identity of the self, fluid yet deeply settling of ourselves as beings, more-than beings of this evolving planet. Meredith Monk: I am striving for theatre as a transformational experience and also as an offering.

• Over the past 42 years of my dance career as an adult, dance has taken many turns. Today I welcome each and every possibility of dance that opens up movement for the public globally. In itself, dance heals. That’s it. Dance has never been so prolific to so many.
• My interest in personal development in the context of Africa, the global South, the Anthropocene (which manifests as disruptions of climate, biodiversity depletion, food and economic insecurity, political instability, and loss of ecological balance), investigations of gender, race and age resilience, sexuality and extraordinary inquiries into human creativity adds a flavor to my teaching. In this era, we begin to see a dis-reality (of our centredness) for the first time.
• For me it is important to think as well as feel when I dance. When we have a wide spectrum to play in, we feel more resilient and robust.
• All of the above requires a keen interest in the world. And discussions with colleagues, friends, and students inform me about the manner in which my people are in this world. My teaching aims to meet them at this juncture of transformation.