Fluid Confluence(s): Plural Ways of Knowing in Dance

This article recognises that the dance class, and the fields of practice that we relate to in dance, pull along values, ways of knowing, normalised beliefs and cultural histories. Practice is never isolated: it is always relational and distinct. Using the 2024 Montreal Movement Educators Forum: Fluid Confluence(s) as a case study, this article explores how to unsettle dominant ways of knowing by way of attention to multiple relations, positionality and the singularity of practices through embodied engagement. Over the course of a week 5 invited dance artist-teachers representative of diverse sub-communities of dance (contemporary, Haitian dance, hip hop, jiu-jitsu, and manual therapy) were invited to teach a class to local dance/movement educators. Guided by the attentional prompts: What is meant by fluidity? How does each invitee summon, or cultivate sensitivity to, the fluid body? How does the fluid body listen? What does each fluid body surface submerge? Each class was followed by a collective documentation process, semi-facilitated interview and/or peer discussion. The aim of the Fluid Confluence(s) was not to reach a consensus on what fluidity is or how to better "fluir" the body in movement but, aligned with Isabelle Stengers call that “no practice be defined as 'like any other'”, to hone attention to practices as they diverge (2005). By drawing on the unique ways that each invitee summoned fluidity and through participant accounts, this article posits embodied engagement and commitment to practice as instrumental to unsettling assumptions, troubling dominant knowledge, and to renew and re-enliven a practice community capable to host and hold plural ways of knowing.
Keywords: Embodied practice, attention, positionality, sensory education, dance

Johanna Bienaise ∆ (UQAM, Canada)

Ecology of Movement and Ecosomatic Pedagogy

Eco-somatic practices are rooted in embodied and experiential knowledge, based on the awakening of attention and perceptive and sensory awareness (Bardet, Clavel et Ginot, 2019; Fraleigh and Bingham 2018; Pantouvaki, Fossheim et Suurla, 2021). Particularly relevant to the field of dance and performance practice, they offer spaces for bringing together our ‘inner collectives’ (Damian, 2019) and our human and non-human companions. As a university lecturer, I've had the opportunity to offer 2 master's seminars (UQAM, Dance) on these ecomatic practices, while also conducting research (SSHRC-Développement Savoir) on the subject. By listening to the values, concepts and new narratives guiding ecomatic practices, I navigated a pedagogical research in motion, allowing me not to question what I could pass on to the students but mainly what the ecomatic practices themselves had to teach us collectively. In this talk, I will share my thoughts on this emerging ecomatic pedagogy, through the central concept that emerged from the research, namely that of an ecology of movement rooted in in the knowledge of the body and the senses, and in a frontier posture that is constantly on the move.

Keywords: Ecosomatics, dance, performance, pedagogy, ecology of movement

Leila Chakroun & Joanne Clavel (Laboratoire Dynamiques sociales et Recomposition des Espaces (LADYSS), Université Paris Cité)
Deploying multispecies choreographies for nurturing landscapes: Ecosomatic perspectives

The shift towards sustainable agrifood systems remains largely examined from the perspectives of agriculture economics and socio-technical transition studies. This overlooks the role of place-based sensory experiences and somatic attunement in navigating the complex human/other-than-human assemblages of ecological farming practices.

Our paper addresses agroecology and permaculture experimentations through the lens of gestures, understood as resulting from body-milieu interactions, and thus shaped by and shaping human senses and more-than-human milieus. We make use of ethnographic data collected in agroecological farms in Switzerland, France and Japan to illustrate the ways the senses guide daily and collective gestures of care, repair and resistance: the smells and textures of soil, the colors of healthy and diseased leaves, the sounds of harvesting without heavy machinery, and the less common sense of proprioception (kinesthetic awareness). To reflect on the role of those bodily engagements for more resilient and biodiverse foodscapes, we draw upon the emergent field of “ecosomatics”, for it conveys an ecofeminist vision of the body, as relational and political, multisensorial and itself a more-than-human milieu.

Our contribution thus strengthens the dialogue between sensory studies and environmental humanities by narrating the intricate multispecies choregraphies needed to support nurturing landscapes and alternative agroecological futures.
Keywords: Agroecology, ecosomatics, gestures; prefigurative politics; sensing, nurturing landscapes