I’ve been dancing since I was seven years old.

I’ve danced on live TV, on film, on stage, in run-down office spaces and on abandoned factory floors. I’ve danced in hospitals, in museums, and in countless dance studios. I’ve danced for educated theater audiences, non-educated theater audiences, and specific demographics. I’ve danced with specific demographics, e.g., senior citizens, babies, and those of us who are considered to be disabled, in work that is classified as immersive (which is not to be confused with work that is classified as participatory). I’ve danced for choreographers, researchers, fashion designers, visual artists, writers, and film-makers.

As a dancer, rehearsal director, outside eye, mentor, coach, colleague, and—of course—a friend, I’ve helped others make their dances. Others have, in turn, helped me discover and share my own.

My experience taught me that—contrary to popular opinion—dancing isn't determined by the shapes a body makes. Dancing is

You can think of dancing as the art of the how, not the what. Dancing is thinking, and feeling, and sensing, and moving. Dancing is anatomy.

I started teaching when I was 17. Croatia did not provide dance studies at a tertiary level until 2010. Before 2010, anyone who got the opportunity to study abroad spent their school break back in Zagreb teaching. Teaching was a way to give back, it was a way to share the excitement, it was also an act of resistance.

It took a decade for me to realise that “the classroom” was consistently the place where I performed and witnessed some of the most exciting dancing. And that it was consistently where I made the most exciting, useful, and informative observations.

It took two [decades] to realise that any space I was ever in charge of—be it a space of making, a space of study, a space of exchange—”worked” when sensitised to those same tones (hues or values) I’d learned to recognise “the classroom” by.

What makes “the classroom” special? In “the classroom”, dancing is not in service of something or someone else. Dancing itself was the point.

An educator and activist, Jane Elliott was the person who informed me—via youtube—that the verb to educate comes from the Latin root educere meaning to lead out. “An educator,” Elliott concludes, “is one who is engaged in the act of leading people out of ignorance.” I am drawn to Elliott’s associating educating with leading (local, action) and leadership (global, profession). Thinking about what it would take to lead anyone out of ignorance reminds me of what trail leaders do for amateur hikers, or of what skippers do for amateur sailors. (Amateur comes from Latin for the lover of.)

circle

I tend to start my classes with or in a circle. I find a circle in most cases to be the best way to situate the room. I usually open the circle with a brief introduction and a question formulated along the lines of a how are you?, and what are you currently working on?. I tend to come up with the day’s protocol after the responses to my question(s) have been shared and the circle has been closed.

dialogue

I like to organise my classes in dialogue with the participant. This is both to ensure that the participants get the satisfaction of having their specific interests addressed, and to create an opportunity for bonding. Additionally, it’s a way for me to learn about the context that I find myself in and the people that I’m relating to. Plus, it’s a fun challenge for someone like me who is both neurodivergent and a skilled improviser.

I like to know what the people I’m working with are dealing with; what kinds of challenges they are facing, what kind of goals they might be trying to reach. I like to make material that will serve the community I work with. The work I share is not meant to be easy, tried-and-true, or self-serving. It requires dedication, critical observation, and risk-taking. That being said, in my experience, the work I share has proven to be useful, inspiring, and empowering.

language

I like speculating, fabulating, philosophising, and above all, writing. In class, for example, I do a lot by way of storytelling. Storytelling is how I manage atmosphere, it is also how I navigate group dynamics through embodied dives. My relationship to and fascination with language and languaging is an integral aspect of my practice… but it is also evidence of my neurodivergence. I like to be conscious of that.

Although conducted largely through storytelling, my classes are meant to be deeply embodied. I take care to communicate that in class.

situatedness

There are several reasons why I choose to work like this. The most important has to do with situatedness. Working as a freelance pedagogue, my time is often extremely limited. I’ve learned over the years that I can get the most out of the time I’m given when I situate my work within the context of the participant’s immediate experience (need, curiosity, or desire). When addressing the participant’s immediate experience, I’ve observed that participants tend to respond positively (A) because they feel seen and (B) because they’re offered access to skills that they recognise as immediately and specifically useful. As a result, the participants tend to feel encouraged and empowered and appreciated, which i care about very much.

regarding situatedness

I situate my practice within the expanding fields of dance and choreography, where dance and choreography are understood to be critical practices; critical as in critical for the development of the general field of body-based knowledge, and critical as in analytical and self-reflective. The expanding fields of dance and choreography I situate within the western tradition of staged dance and choreography, the development of which stems from the court of Louis XIV and thrives in the present moment there where the artistic and academic modalities are encouraged to intersect.

One of my main areas of research concerns the notion of Cartesian dualism, i.e., the mind-body split. Within my practice, I am observing some of the ways in which the application of Cartesian dualism in the West complicates the study of dancing, e.g., by forcing us to associate our thinking with a single part of our anatomy, thereby restricting our relationship to thinking itself with linear, language-based standards. Most dancers have, of course, experienced thinking beyond the linear, and beyond the language-based. My question is, what happens when we consider all those non-linear and non-lingual experiences as cognitive experiences? How does our practice change when it becomes knowledgeable even when its, e.g., intuitive? I often identify my aim within this area of research with the term embodiment; I intend the term embodiment to represent the effort opposite to that of a split, i.e., the effort to integrate that which we traditionally associate with “the mind” with what which we traditionally associate with “the body” into a dynamic operative unit.

Within the context of my research, experience comes first. this means that, by the time I come to reading, I am reading to help me understand how to relate to my experiences. most frequently, i find reason to read fantasy and sci-fi, black and diversity study, and memoirs written by queer folk. Here is a short list of books I am very fond of and refer to frequently.

In the way I understand and practice it, Body-Mind Centering® defines an experimental principle-based approach to studying anatomy, where anatomy describes the fundamental condition for the emergence of movement, experience, and consciousness. This is evolutionary anatomy; anatomy as has been felt, anatomy as has been sensed, and anatomy as has been known to each one of us in as much as we’ve already embodied something of our experience of having and being a body. This anatomy, of course, is not the only anatomy. There is also the learned anatomy. This is the anatomy of sciences, the anatomy of measurements, and the anatomy of competing values.

Assuming that we’ve been embodying our experience of having and being a body successfully—we are alive, after all—the question emerges: how have we done that? What have we done to embody our experience of having and being a body? How much of that have we done consciously, how much of that have we done intentionally? And how much of any of that brought us any pleasure? Furthermore, what have we learned about evolutionary and learned anatomies in the process? Have we learned where they differ from one another, and where they are similar, compatible even? Have we learned to relate to either in a way that specifically and critically co-responds to its conditions, and its limits? And transforms its resource from pure potential into the experience of actual, affective support?

BMC® and Body-Mind Centering®  are registered service marks of Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, used with permission.

body-mind centering® in the context of a dance class

when asked to feature BMC® in the context of a dance class, and when meeting a new group of participants i need to determine who of the participants has what level of experience with BMC® (or another somatic technique) before suggesting engagement in any specific activity. depending on the level of experience and the kind of experience participants may have, i will consider reflecting on the following topics:

1. somatics in a dance class, a brief history of somatics and a note on ethics (what to pay attention when teaching and being taught somatics in the context of a dance class) + performativity (how do we “read” bodies when working with somatics in a dance class, procedures); (what is orientation?)
2. basic structure of the nervous system: peripheral, central, and local, somatic and autonomic, sympathetic and parasympathetic + proprioception, interoception, and vestibular; sensory input and motor response; lower and higher cognitive processes, what is a reflex and how to recognise it; the macro and micro sensing apparatuses; (what is sensing?)
3. what is cellular consciousness, how does the concept of cellular consciousness challenge our understanding of cognitive hierarchies and the way we think of “self”, maybe even “personhood”, brief history of the mind-body split + the potential of this inquiry to inform our understanding and practice of democracy. (what is thinking?)

the question of ethics + performativity, how do we read bodies would potentially require some examination of:

4. performativity in gender and queer theory, a brief introduction to the work of j.l. austin and judith butler;
5. application of performativity to dancing and choreography, an introduction to reading dance history from the perspective of performativity studies;
6. differentiation between dancing and choreography relative to the concept of embodiment and expression, a brief introduction to the treatment of expression in BMC® + affect theory;
7. examination of choreography relative to writing and the concept of principle-based performative-practice.

please note, all these points refer to actions that can be performed as movement-based experiments in the context of a studio practice. experiment is the primary method i will be referring to in the studio. “experiment” will be defined in real time relative to all or any of the points above (how do you conduct an experiment when you’re both the observer and the observed?).