Movement and emotion
When I left Glasgow for London, and a full-time job to freelance and explore new disciplines, I was becoming more and more curious about companies who worked beyond visuals, products and services -with experiences, the likes of Coney, Random International, PAN Studio, Nelly ben Hayoun and Bompas and Parr.
I had conversations with some of them. I felt there was a connection with the work that I had done previously in my Master’s, where I had designed a tactile experience about blindness.
There was a thread running through my work, and it had something to do with tactility, emotion, embodiment and physicality — how they can connect us rather than bring us apart. In retrospective, it looks like to me that I was searching for connection, emotion and equality.
Once at a summer party a colleague called out to me: ‘you dance like an animal’. At first I felt offended, but then I realised I never really thought much about why it was rare to dance like that. I needed to find my tribe and so I enrolled on a Dance Foundation course and for the next two months, spent whole Saturdays learning and sweating ballet, jazz, street and contemporary dance.
A year later, after training in classical ballet, contemporary floor work and capoeira, I shifted gears from technique-oriented courses, to a course focused on improvisation and interpretation, Am I a Dancer. This is when I started exploring the overlap between thinking and movement. I created Anxy Dance, a small sequence of steps developed in response to the shape of a square taped on the floor. I later continued to explore the intersection of words and movement during a short residency at the Roundhouse.
Our hands criss-crossed each other, reaching out towards the floor. Our eyes followed our fingers sweep through the air. I moved, we moved, we moved, I moved. No one leading, someone leading. I wanted the whole world to feel what I felt. Dancing with two people I had only met for a few hours, I felt wonder and curiosity and openness.
I wanted to take that openness outside the therapy room and into the streets. Dance therapy brings me emotional complexity but sometimes emotional complexity feels less present in the streets and more hidden behind closed doors. Am I becoming more or less part of the culture I live in? And if the latter, then how do I build a bridge?
What would it look like if we brought movement into public spaces, into our workplaces, learning communities, schools, universities and in our increasinly culturally-diverse communities? And also, how might bringing movement into our public lives influence the emotional openness of our conversations? What kinds of groups and contexts would benefit from this openness? How would we make this new emotional opennes safe, and how would we make it sustainable?
When I breathe, my body relaxes. And my mind, too. Over-relaxation can be scary in our everyday public spaces. For good reason, tensing my body helps me protect myself to fit my daily responsibilites. Breathing is either left unobserved or reserved for the confined spaces of gyms.
But what we do individually matters collectively. Think self-organising systems i.e. birds and bees — what do our body gestures and postures look like as a collective? You scratch, I scratch. What gestures are allowed in public spaces? What do we see? What do we copy? What is our range of movement and flexibility? How would a larger spectrum of movement change how we interact? What if we created public transport, and public space and public time that allowed for richer interactions to happen?
In Enrol Yourself’s first Learning Marathon we experimented with this question and integrated movement in our bi-weekly meet-ups. Here are some reflections on what we’ve learnt about movement, learning and community. The movement went hand in hand with our coaching sessions increasing our comfort with each other and our emotional presence.
We used Coachbright’s model for coaching to share individual barriers and help each other nagivate through them. Personally, this made me feel connected with the group. Every time I shared my mental barriers with the group, their power dissipated and what remained was a shared struggle rather than an individual one. How do we create more public spaces like this where fear is welcome in the middle of the room?
Our emotions are already there, where we are — in our workplaces, in our relationships, in our governments. And yet, we work and live as if they’re not, keeping them in for when we get home. Yes, an embodied emotionally-complex culture is one that requires emotional labour. But if we are to talk about productivity at work, we need to talk about emotion at work.
I believe in a society where self-understanding is valued and shared. In my experience, if I connect with my own jealousy, greed, guilt, shame I am less likely to blame others for what I feel (St Ethelburga) and what I should be taking responsibility for. And maybe more likely to be understanding when others project those feelings onto me.
Being more emotionally present in the world is helping me grow in my work relationships and friendships. When I make time for self-understanding, I open the possibility for dialogue. When I make dialogue possible, I invite the wide range of human emotion, expression and life.
‘Our humanity is our burden, our life; we need not battle for it; we need only to do what is infinitely more difficult — that is, accept it.’
— James Baldwin
I’d like to hear from you
Get in touch: @RoxanaBacian or on roxanabacian@gmail.com.
