CORPOET(H)ICS ANATOMY IN (DE)COMPOSITIONS: THREE CORPUS OF SOMATIC PRAXIS IN DANCE
Somatics. Dance composition. Embodied anatomy. Poetic anatomy. Body-Mind CenteringTM. Articulation and Muscle Chains GDS.
This research promotes an inventory of parameters for dance creation that
stimulate procedural and emancipatory somatic networks towards a movement of
growth. The fundamental theme addressed herein is the integration of two complex and
open somatic systems – Body-Mind CenteringTM (BMC) and Articulation and Muscle
Chains GDS –. Both systems encompass embodied anatomy principles that hold the
power to transform the poetics of dance composition processes into new scopes of
possibilities. Therefore, three bodies (corpus) of somatic praxis in dance are identified,
described, tensioned, performed and somaticized as a poetic path for the organization
and embodiment of the thesis as well as the artistic processes moved by the author:
CorpoEstuário (EstuarineBody), CorpOásis (OasisBody) and CorPoÉtico
(CorPoEt(h)ics). Each corpus is related, in an allegorical paraphrase, to specific natural
environments as well to three ontogenetic embryonic layers: endoderm (front body),
ectoderm (back body) and mesoderm (middle body). Assuming the stance of first-
person narratives and the somatic-performative approach, it is presented, discussed,
danced and drawn the main aspects of five dance pieces created in the period when
the research was carried out (2016-2020). In this context, the field of Somatics is
evidenced as a contemporary epistemological turn and supports a definition of it as a
contemporary transdisciplinary Western epistemological field of deep ecology in the
first person plural. The search for the promotion of a somatic culture in dance
composition processes calls for an expanded view of the field of Somatics as a way of
being in the world. Within a movement that goes beyond the limiting disciplinary views
promoted in the twentieth century, often in a reductionist way, specially by labeling it for
instance as Somatic Education. Through artistic experiences driven by the embodied
anatomy of Somatics, three thematic axes are discussed throughout the three layers of
the thesis as identified: 1 – Somatics as an epistemological field; 2 – Dance as a state
of presence/the mind of the cells; 3 – Somatics as a mode of embryonic/fluid
compositional creation in dance. Respectively, these themes are related to the
procedures within processes identified as: organismic self-regulation, through body
fluids and cellular patterns, moving multiplicities; the organization of posture and
functional gesture in the construction of verticality, finding openness; the creative
exploration of movements in the pathways of performativity. Within this tangled spiraled
poetics carried out by this research, it is developed a practice of dance composition
that are moved by Somatics, which in turn can be called CorPoEt(h)ics Anatomy,
meaning the art of sensitizing a multidimensional and multi-referential existence to the
creation of (im)possible worlds.