Sunday, 3 March 2019

Body positivism my reflections

Right now I have been tremendously ill for the last 10 days a throat infection that has moved into my chest. Heavy antibiotics and bed rest has been the call of the day. This has put me into a mode of deep reflection reading through my hand book for module 2....
Body positivism......I  remember using this as a core element in one of my dance pieces that spoke of shame as a woman.... Where her body is the main focus of attention. She is flooded with other females voices from different times of history who tell her to accept the status quo.. in a Muslim society the body as an extension of human self  to express is looked down upon it is considered a sin to show your body or even be confident about it... it is the grounds of where all illicit ideas are germinated... How do you separate yourself from your own body that wants to be....... to just express..... to be free to feel space.... to extend ..... My dance piece Purdah was my way of channelling and depicting what I felt about my body, the rules , the feelings that were aroused, the restrictions. The desire to break down, express beyond all the boundaries to break the frame work of society.... This reflection brought me to Martha Graham and her dance the way she had made what for some looked ugly in the body look beautiful.... She saw beauty in the most unusual usage and distortion of body application that she experimented with.... Since her father's background as a movement pysco analyst..... he had great influence in her life which made her question and push the boundaries of safe movement and a nice looking body dancing with defined lines and grace.... Dance was far from a body looking pretty her concepts about gravity and our relationship to the floort this pull was always part and parcel in her work she would throw the body to the ground in a thunderous manner. Her dancers were creatures of the earth constantly searhing for equilibrium.
The application of contraction and release in movement of her dance technique to hold and let go to tighten and flow...
Graham's dance depicted the dichotomies in life, desire and duty fear and courage.
The body would push boundaries her concepts her purpose of dance was to translate emotional experience in physical form ... This for me breaks all boundaries since nothing is right or wrong it's what we as dancers bring into the dance what we feel about our bodies where do we want to play with our bodies and to which extent are we willing to explore outside the influences of a conditioned society about our bodies and what's correct in its usage ...  

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