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Abstract
Body Weather is an experimental, investigative, dance-performance practice which fuses ancient as well as contemporary Japanese and Western practice and thought so as to question the body and the imagination. In this article I describe how Body Weather proposes bodies which, rather than being organised as human-centred subjects, are instead danced by the environment. Drawing on training processes I directed in the Australian outback at Lake Mungo from 1991–1994, I will explore how the practice asserts, responds to, and is determined by the significance of non-human forces, and inanimate objects and processes. The outback of Australia presents deeply physical and mental challenges, in cultural as well as environmental terms, probing our collective intention, and indeed our capacity, to stand in a country with an ancient – and continuing – tradition of the first peoples, and a more recent history of colonisation. As a site of training and practice, the outback opens possibilities which are far removed from the everyday normative of globalised city life. The paper will show how Body Weather practice, engaging an omni-focused and non-hierarchic understanding of the body as, and within, such an environment affords perspectives and, more importantly, concrete experiences which interrogate human being. I propose that in the encounter between exterior and interior environments, our conventional understanding of a human is unsettled, and reframed as a process of co-constitution and interdependence, earthed in a material physicality – animated and interrogated by space, place, history and future.
Acknowledgements
Firstly, I respectfully acknowledge the Wallumedegal and Gadigal peoples of the Eora Nation, the Traditional Custodians and Elders – past, present and future – of the land where I live and work; land that was never ceded. Many thanks are due to the many practitioners and collaborators who have committed themselves to Body Weather processes, contributing to and enabling me to reflect on this body of work. I am also very grateful to the Lake Mungo Aboriginal Advisory Group for their guidance regarding this manuscript. Great appreciation goes to my supervisor Assoc. Prof. Ian Maxwell for vigorous conversations and incisive advice.
Notes
1 The training description in these early Workshop Flyers marks the beginning of a very gradual development of language articulating my own focus and interpretation of the practice. Workshop Flyers can be accessed in an archive currently under construction: https://dequinceyco.net/archive/workshop-flyers/ .
5 Peter Fraser, Leah Grycewicz, Claire Hague, Nikki Heywood, Stuart Lynch, Russell Milledge, Phillip Mills, Heike Müller, Lynne Santos and Peter Snow.
6 As requested by the Paakantji community to the NSW Geographical Names Board this dual name incorporates both the traditional name for the river 'Barka' (as a non-English word spelt multiple ways it has no set spelling) and the European name 'Darling' – for more information see: https://www.acmi.net.au/stories-and-ideas/when-the-river-runs-dry-darling-darling-by-gabriella-hirst-essay-shelley-mcspedden-exhibition/.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Tess de Quincey
Tess de Quincey is a PhD candidate at the University of Sydney. She is a dancer and choreographer who has worked in Europe, Japan, India, U.K. and Australia. Her experience as a dancer with Min Tanaka and his Mai-Juku performance group in Japan for six years 1985–91 has provided the main influence on her performance work based in the Body Weather practice founded by Min and Mai-Juku. In 2000 Tess formed De Quincey Co which is an Australian company conducting performances, training and research - www.DeQuinceyCo.net