Paper short abstract

This performance works from one of the most fundamental principles in technical dance training - opposition - to explore how emplaced movement may counteract ideational polarisation. Against the walls that divide our conference rooms, how might movement enable us to reclaim connection and mutuality?

Paper long abstract

The notion of a 'polarised world' commonly uttered as a critique of politics or its failure today implies that polarisation is necessarily bad. Yet, differences, disagreements, and debates are also generative, in knowledge-making as in social life. This performance works from one of the most fundamental principles in technical movement and dance training: Opposition. Balance and counter-balance. Push against the floor, so the floor will support you. Newton's Third Law of Motion: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. We tend to think of walls as technologies of division and segregation; but what if we move against them, as embodied and emplaced persons? The proposed performance is an experiment to move improvisationally against the walls and with human and more-than-human others in the space of our academic conference. As bodies populate the edges of architecturally divided spaces, will they reduce the distance between persons, touch each other, or intra-act in unexpected ways? How could one invite others to move together? What kinds of relational movement may be generated by collective yet heterogenous pushes against walls in a shared space-time?