How might movement be used to cultivate body – environment correspondences ?

The online workshop will introduce Souvenir (Farman 2020); a site-dance project for twelve dancers who were directed remotely via audio – recordings during the first national lockdown in 2020. Souvenir investigates how anthropologist Tim Ingold’s (2011,2013) notion of correspondences might be applied to movement practice. Correspondences offers the possibility for materials to ‘join(ing) with’ (2017:12.) each other in order to achieve a mutuality that produces the ‘artefacts’ themselves. Considered as thinking through making, in Souvenir I used audio -recordings to initiate an improvised correspondence between participants and environment; the aim being to cultivate reciprocity between the physicality of the dancer and the site. Dancers were asked to document their interactions on video and this material had been edited into four short dance-films.

In the online workshop I will show the films, lead participants in an audio-led exploration of an outdoor area and chair a discussion based on the concept of body – site correspondences, agency and attention.