Force & Relational Power: Dance Notes
Two weeks ago I took the space to explore dance and movement—with artist, dancer, and healer Juliana Mendonca graciously mentoring me in a one-on-one improvisational dance container. Below are my reflections on the body after our first session.
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When it comes to occupying the flesh and skeleton of one’s own body, I think about structural integrity. I was given feedback by Juliana to try to focus more on maintaining the structure of my torso and body. Indeed, I too noticed is that I was very reactive to external elements. When confronted with another force—be it a hand, or an atmospheric tone in the music—I would readily “break” or “fold” in the structural integrity of my body. Rather than occupying the solidity of flesh and bone, the centeredness of a core, I would bend and succumb immediately to comply with the other force.
I imagine this way of moving similarly to a body of water not being in possession of its own structure or form—but instead, readily taking the shape of any vessel it is placed in. Outside of a dance container and in everyday life, a body that is formless, amorphous—having no “structure” of its own to rely upon—is equivalent to a body with no boundaries. This is a body that becomes susceptible and purely reactive to whatever force is applied to it.
Relationally to other people, this body looks like that of a people-pleaser, an impressionable reactor—one who will dissolve themselves in order to complement (or concede to) the identity of another. This becomes a very uneven, unsafe balance of power. When you possess no structure, no internal anchor, the power to be your anchor is then deferred to something or someone else—either by you readily giving it away, or by it being forcefully taken.
In the same vein of structural integrity and maintaining the frame of a torso, I also reflect on the verticality of spine. In the everyday, I think about the slumped posture, the inward curvature of a spine. Humans are evolutionarily vertical beings, rooted by feet to the earth and growing upward toward the cosmos like a tree. By refusing a body’s verticality, one’s force (attention, energy) does not get to flow upward or frontward the way our bodies innately exist—instead, it travels downward and inward, like a dying flower. In this way, one can bleed their energy into the ground, giving it away and away.
Being a body is a relational act. Coexisting with other bodies (human or otherwise) is an act of interdependent exchange. If you are readily melting or breaking your form at someone else's hand, you are giving away all of the power within your own body. When your chest is collapsed inward, it is a position of submission—and physically, you are unable to receive in reciprocity. You are also unable to give in return while still being in possession of your body. Genuine reciprocity, giving and receiving, is mutuality—it runs both ways. To be in mutual exchange, it requires two individuals to fill their entire frame. This allows one to give to and receive from the other—without either body collapsing.
In my mind this relational application of force is very clear, but I’m having trouble articulating it. If you have ever thrown clay on a wheel in a pottery studio or class—personally, I’ve only thrown on a wheel a handful of times in my life—you may have an innate understanding of what I mean. The relationship between one’s hands and a slab of clay is a force negotiation. The amount of force you apply with your hands depends on the resistance of the clay’s material. As the foot pedal applies speed to the clay’s spin, it becomes a balance of push and pull. Perhaps the force applied by one’s hands finds its rooting as feet against the floor—traveling up the leg, through the squared torso, across the back and shoulder blade, down the forearm, and out from the palm. Being too heavy-handed will collapse the clay, and being too weak-handed will have little impact as the clay pushes your hands around. It is a dance between two bodies in relation—that of the potter and that of the clay.
Dance, then, is an exercise of how to be in possession of one’s own body, as this body relates to the other. It is a dialogue for safe exchange, a practice of interdependence, and a balance of relational power.