Embodied

Dance, Academia, Environmental Stewardship

Context: I wrote this in 2024 when we were asked to justify to the university (a Christian Institution) what we felt was mission critical work. To onlookers, viewing dances (and contemporary dance) can seem inaccessible and inconsequential in the grand scheme of academic pursuits & social impact. I know my place in the schema and it’s not at the top. Therefore, I write with earnestness moving my body and words around trying to take flight so I can migrate with others on this path towards embodiment not only with ourselves but in relationship to the land as well.

Photo: McCall McClellan “Within the Canyon” Leprechaun Canyon, Utah

The Justification for Mission-Critical Work (A Reflection Response)

An NPR report found that 85% of jobs are sedentary and 92% requires digital literacy (2023). These astounding statistics reveal a body culture void of mobility and movement literacy; thus, creating a disconnect not only within one’s own body but a disengagement to the natural world. The loss of movement agency and a dissociation to the Earth generates a schism between us on God. Through negligence and digital optimization, we devalue three universal gifts from the Creator: the body, agency, and the Earth.

While poverty often is viewed through the lens of socioeconomic mobility, it can be argued we are moving into an impoverished movement endemic that directly influences the taxation on ours and the earth’s body. The antidote is a reconnection to movement through a communal experience connected with and in awareness of the Earth. Agrarian Essayist Wendell Berry states, “Healing is impossible in loneliness; it is the opposite of loneliness. Conviviality is healing. To be healed we must come with all the other creatures to the feast of Creation.” (Berry, 99) Moreover, Author Resmaa Menakem states, “Recent studies and discoveries increasingly point out that we heal primarily in and through the body, not just through the rational brain. We can all create more room, and more opportunities for growth, in our nervous systems. But we do this primarily through what our bodies experience and do—not through what we think or realize or cognitively figure out.”(Menakem, 13)

It is no surprise then that the great healer, even Jesus Christ, revealed his power to heal the spirit through the miracles of the physical body within disparate communities and demographics. As stated in KJV Luke 7:22 “Then Jesus answering said unto them, Go your way, and tell John what things ye have seen and heard; how that the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, to the poor the gospel is preached.” In other words, Christ sends his friends to move, speak, and witness to others ability to see, walk, heal, hear, and rise.

Dance Research and embodied ecology serves as a petri dish to the actions of seeing, walking, healing, hearing, and rising. These community actions and movements bear witness of Christ’s healing, atoning power of the spiritual and the physical. Movement is Christ’s miracle, but through negligence and atrophy, it may lay dormant and unrequited.

A simple definition of dance describes it as “moving rhythmically to music, typically following a set sequence of steps” (Oxford). Yet, it is even simpler than that; dance is in the breath, the somatic/interoception (the perception of sensation within one’s body) of existing, and walking alongside others. It is noticing, witnessing, and embodying so healing can happen. It moves beyond rhythmic steps towards the valuing of individual phenomenology. Movement propels us beyond parochialism as we share space, culture, and empathy/mirror neurons with others- an olive branch of peace.

Therefore, in reflection on mission-critical scholarship, dance/movement provides the harmony and realignment of EVERYbody’s body in connection to the earth. Considering the celestial kingdom will become this earth composed of familial relationships and associations, it behooves us to become intimately familiar with it in the flesh. Therefore, the moving, eternal body will be the “work undone” if not here.

References

Berry, W. (2015). Unsettling of America: Culture & agriculture. Counterpoint.

King James Bible. (2017). King James Bible Online. https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/ (Original work published 1769)

Menakem, R. (n.d.). My grandmother’s hands: Racialized trauma and the pathway to mending our hearts and Bodies. Penguin Books, 13.

NPR. (2023, October 2). NPR’s new series Body Electric wants to fix the relationship between Tech and health. NPR. https://www.npr.org/about-npr/1202722185/npr-s-new-series-body-electric-wants-to-fix-the-relationship-between-tech-and-he#:~:text=In%20an%20era%20when%2092,Columbia%20University%20Irving%20Medical%20Center.

Oxford. (2024, January 19) https://www.google.com/search?q=define+dance&oq=define+dance&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIGCAEQRRg7MgYIAhBFGDsyBggDEEUYO9IBCDE1NjFqMGo0qAIAsAIA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8.