Ontogenesis describes the developmental journey from our embryonic forms towards our full maturity. The ontogenetic body is a mode of perception and a way of moving. O’Gorman (2013:9) found that ontogenesis “makes one aware of developmental processes and gives us a method of embodying the forms, mind states and movement patterns of our cellular histories.” Hence, this challenges the way we see others and make us more aware of our interconnections and inter-vulnerabilities.
The ontogenetic body can be a site of the discovery of movement and images for devising work. The ontogenetic subject is alive to performance as a mode that works to access to the fluidity of creativity. The ontogenetic body is also a relational body, continually experiencing its own becoming within a temporal and moving environment. This awareness can assist the performance to find new avenues of opening to a certain vulnerability and presence. This can create pathways to express and exhibit internal experiences and to find support in the environment for their internal work (Reeve, 2013:15)
The ontogenetic patterns provide performers a means of analyzing their movement habits and provide them with a framework for characterization or movement vocabularies. In BMC, embodying a body system or pattern is described as having a particular state of mind. This quality can support a specific expressive need in discovering new choreographies, character choices, support for vocal expression, atmospheric co-presence in performance. (Reeve, 2013:19)
This section offers a reflective account of working with an ontogenetic approach to embodied movement practice for performance with material drawn from Body-Mind Centering.
The body is the rich terrain of Body-Mind Centering, which explores all body systems and developmental movement patterns in detailed. BMC serves as a platform for a conscious, playful re-encountering of our ontogenesis renews and allowing the expansion our movement vocabularies and our perceptual ranges. It allows us to shift or expand our sense of subjectivity.
BMC offers myriad practices for embodying the ontogenetic experience through the use of touch, movement, sound, play, imagination and observation. BMC maps the embodiment of ontogenetic (human) and phylogenetic (animal) patterns of movement and development. These maps are created and explored as cartographies of being and they offer many movement pathways through moving structures and internal landscapes.
Working with BMC, one realizes the presence of these patterns and embodiment of their ontogenetic patterns. They can experience new articulations, discover new ways of building vocabulary and experience deeper resonances with familiar movement practices. (O’Gorman. Reeve, 2013:11)
BMC offers an opportunity to explore awareness and presence, find openings and free oneself from habitual choices or patterns. It allows space for the paradoxes and complexities of lived experiences and finds avenues of creative potentials. BMC allows anyone to explore an embodied experience of his or her cellular experiences.
Bainbridge Cohen’s studies of the human formation of embryonic structures describe this process as moving from embodying structures (through a cellular awareness) to an embodying a space. The “embodying structures that does not exist anymore but whose processes still informs us” (ibid:167). In the exploration process, students play as a way to magnify the embryonic structures to a larger external world and followed the proceeding opening impulses to find new movement.
General framework of questions for students
1. What does it feel like to embody space?
2. What are the spaces we embody internally?
3. How does embodying space shift the mind?
4. What potential is here for performers to increase their expressive range and to understand and shift habitual patterns?
5. How do I experience internal support with the external environment and with others?
6. How does this process operate in performance?
These questions encourage the student to discover and analyze his or her bodily function and initiation and interaction within oneself, others, and the environment. Dancers began to build movement understanding, vocabulary and discover new articulations that can lead to a different quality and state of moving.
Reference:
Reeve, S (ed.) (2013) Body and Performance. Devon: Axminster Triarchy Press.
The ontogenetic body can be a site of the discovery of movement and images for devising work. The ontogenetic subject is alive to performance as a mode that works to access to the fluidity of creativity. The ontogenetic body is also a relational body, continually experiencing its own becoming within a temporal and moving environment. This awareness can assist the performance to find new avenues of opening to a certain vulnerability and presence. This can create pathways to express and exhibit internal experiences and to find support in the environment for their internal work (Reeve, 2013:15)
The ontogenetic patterns provide performers a means of analyzing their movement habits and provide them with a framework for characterization or movement vocabularies. In BMC, embodying a body system or pattern is described as having a particular state of mind. This quality can support a specific expressive need in discovering new choreographies, character choices, support for vocal expression, atmospheric co-presence in performance. (Reeve, 2013:19)
This section offers a reflective account of working with an ontogenetic approach to embodied movement practice for performance with material drawn from Body-Mind Centering.
The body is the rich terrain of Body-Mind Centering, which explores all body systems and developmental movement patterns in detailed. BMC serves as a platform for a conscious, playful re-encountering of our ontogenesis renews and allowing the expansion our movement vocabularies and our perceptual ranges. It allows us to shift or expand our sense of subjectivity.
BMC offers myriad practices for embodying the ontogenetic experience through the use of touch, movement, sound, play, imagination and observation. BMC maps the embodiment of ontogenetic (human) and phylogenetic (animal) patterns of movement and development. These maps are created and explored as cartographies of being and they offer many movement pathways through moving structures and internal landscapes.
Working with BMC, one realizes the presence of these patterns and embodiment of their ontogenetic patterns. They can experience new articulations, discover new ways of building vocabulary and experience deeper resonances with familiar movement practices. (O’Gorman. Reeve, 2013:11)
BMC offers an opportunity to explore awareness and presence, find openings and free oneself from habitual choices or patterns. It allows space for the paradoxes and complexities of lived experiences and finds avenues of creative potentials. BMC allows anyone to explore an embodied experience of his or her cellular experiences.
Bainbridge Cohen’s studies of the human formation of embryonic structures describe this process as moving from embodying structures (through a cellular awareness) to an embodying a space. The “embodying structures that does not exist anymore but whose processes still informs us” (ibid:167). In the exploration process, students play as a way to magnify the embryonic structures to a larger external world and followed the proceeding opening impulses to find new movement.
General framework of questions for students
1. What does it feel like to embody space?
2. What are the spaces we embody internally?
3. How does embodying space shift the mind?
4. What potential is here for performers to increase their expressive range and to understand and shift habitual patterns?
5. How do I experience internal support with the external environment and with others?
6. How does this process operate in performance?
These questions encourage the student to discover and analyze his or her bodily function and initiation and interaction within oneself, others, and the environment. Dancers began to build movement understanding, vocabulary and discover new articulations that can lead to a different quality and state of moving.
Reference:
Reeve, S (ed.) (2013) Body and Performance. Devon: Axminster Triarchy Press.