Photos
Dancing Body
Video stills paired with words form an ongoing autobiographical series of stories about the dancing body. The work is an affirmation of the infinite potential of the human body as an archive for physical knowledge. Movement is energy. Energy is power. The dancing body has the performative power to change the present.
Video stills courtesy of Jean Rim and the author
From the Artist:
Looking out over the ocean
where memories spiral around.
Turning time into suffocation
when fear arched up and drowned.
– Natalie Mik (from Dancing Body, 2018)
Movements paired with words are forming an ongoing autobiographical series of stories about the dancing body. At this time, the dancing body struggles to negotiate and decolonize itself from cultural, political and gendered oppression. It seeks to break its choreographed past by accessing embodied memory. Knowledge of the past that can break the spiral of haunting memories. The spiral of the invisible.
How much air is too little to break the mirror?
Which of us is really free of blame?
Who can throw the first stone?
– Luisa Valenzuela (from Other Weapons, 1985)
The dancing body will eventually move freely. Reenact as a method of urgency. Injured and resistant. Resist the fear. Resist the blame. Affirm the potential of the body as an infinite living and dying archive for an embodied knowledge. Dance away from death and survive by rebirthing the present self.
Dance is
time made visible
movement to energy
energy to power
power to change the now
-Natalie Mik (from Dancing Body, 2018)
The dancing body is ultimately spiritual. It can access sensory modes of awareness leading to a psychological journey and an emotional discovery of oneself.
