prescribed dance - MISCHA BAKA

Wednesday, December 5, 2018

prescribed dance



Met up with Ella Dumaresq and had a great chat about the lines between dance, therapy and medical practice. We mused on the idea that dance could be prescribed like a medicine in a very clinical and methodical way. Seeing a doctor and having them prescribe a dance, writing a prescription. Ella shared ideas about exploring resistance in the body. We spoke about the natural environment providing challenges that are not imbued with human motivations or human notions of evil, coercion or desire. The built human environment doesn’t allow resistance to a natural force. The natural environment allows liberation from human intentions while still allowing the body to play and explore its resilience and power.

We played with the stones along the beach.








Rocks are Breast 

1 comment:

Ella Dumaresq said...

Prescription: Take 2x hands and fingers that are grippy in vision, allow them to sense their way through darkness toward crumbling rock and stone. Grab hold for a moment and release. Feel the cave features lose shape and integrity. Touch the stone. Stop. Feel the fragile crag release grains that spit into your eyes. Repeat. See through the sand, reach and pull yourself up - hold for 10 seconds - until resistance brings you down and down and please, fill yourself with heavy rocks until you go nowhere. Now do it again. Drag your body along with you. Drag it like a tired old dog. Carry your feelings in that bundle of blood and bone. Turn around slightly and scrape and flow like a congealed river. Pick up new debris, put down your head, fold into the creases of an old cave and become a wrinkle in the strata of time. That is your cure.