What internal and external information do I read to tell me where I am?

We first posed this question as a theme for solo movement studies in a forested urban greenbelt. We explored it again on a freshly mown lawn between a building and busy street, using a trio-feedback structure-- rotating duets, with a witness. These studies made us aware of how much visual, acoustical, tactile and inter-social information our bodies and minds read, process, and include in our movement qualities.

We took the question with us to Byron creek, to dance on ground recently vacated by Byron Glacier. Here, we played with simple counter-balances on precarious terrain. The trust and communication always inherent in the give and take of weight was heightened; reading our partner’s weight and the unusual surface underfoot fully occupied us. The buoyant spring of a branch changed to a brittle tension as soon as a second person added his weight, bringing attention to our potential impact on the terrain in which we move.

We read edges and surfaces, tone and resistance, both when we read the landscape and when we read a dance partner in contact improvisation. During Moving North, we encountered many surfaces — besides the dance studio floor, we worked on concrete, asphalt, mud, grass, peat, silt, gravel, rock. Besides the sensations created on skin—sharp, cold, rough, smooth, irregular, slippery-- each surface reveals the tone of what's underneath. When we dance, we register how a mass pushes back, providing information about the quality of support it can provide, and the kind of pressure we can apply--information about where we can go. We modulate weight to work with different surfaces, different masses, and different densities. The possibilities become especially interesting when the supporting surface is irregular, sloping or vertical, or perceptibly changing.