Danced by Invisible Forces

Written by Megan Bridge
Published in Dance Chronicle, October 28th 2024
Link to original publication.

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Danced by Invisible Forces

Megan Bridge

megan@thefidget.org

A review of Nalina Wait’s 2023 book, Improvised Dance: (In)Corporeal Knowledges

Published in Dance Chronicle: Studies in Dance and the Related Arts, October 2024

In Chapter 5, “The Aesthetics of an Ethics of Being,” Wait posits the somatic approach to improvisation, especially as developed in pedagogy and practices like Authentic Movement (a form of dance therapy developed in the 1950s adopted by improvising dancers for artistic purposes), moves towards Spinoza’s concept of an Ethics of Being. This is because somatic improvisation is concerned with being attuned to the interconnectedness of bodies and forces in the present moment. Using Karczag as an example, Wait explains that dancers use touch and attention to create a hyperawareness of forces at play. In Wait’s model, an ethical approach is the “psycho-physical capacity to be aware of forces at play and to follow that which is rational and/or positively empowering” (p. 121). Thus, movement improvisation can also be developed as a kind of ethical life practice.