Echoes from the sector | Enhancing bodily expression through sensory experience by Melia Boivin
by Rymel Laroui
Dance invites me to collect clues, to investigate, to discover infinite potential. Lately, I’ve been taming and tasting certain approaches to somatic education that inspire me to think and act differently. This daily quest motivates me to renew myself both personally and professionally. What I acquire by visiting the unknown feeds my thirst for learning and propels me forward in my reflective and creative impulses.
My previous university career in social and cultural anthropology sowed in me this curiosity to research and deconstruct. In my dance practice, I’m challenged by the idea of tracking down the territory of sensations. One of the challenges I face is to put words to my sensitive experience through somatics. I’m then interested in everything that punctuates the process of taming the body in its entirety, adopting a receptive attitude and demonstrating adaptability. Although quite a confronting experience, sometimes even a headache, but never a body-breaker, I’m learning to take care.
As I write these lines, I find myself halfway through my masters studies in somatic education in the Dance Department at UQÀM. It’s in this context, and even during the course of my bachelors in dance (2019-2022), that I’ve been able to rub shoulders with Linda Rabin (Continuum Movement), Mariko Tanabe (Body Mind Centering), Lucie Beaudry (Feldenkrais), Johanna Bienaise (emerging field of ecosomatics) and many other practitioners from other approaches and methods in the discipline. These different encounters have significantly contributed to the development of my practice and my personal emancipation.
In my artistic approach, I seek to enhance bodily expression through sensory experience. I question the direct and indirect effects of a sensation, trying to situate it in its relationship with time, space and other components of the environment. I enjoy going through long improvisation sessions and observing this vast field of possibilities unfolding. I am mainly stimulated by the plural and ephemeral encounters between the body and its sensations. The body’s states are changeable, and the studios, halls or open-air spaces I visit constantly ask me to adjust. Nothing is set in stone. Each context, formal or informal, teaches me a great deal about my strengths and challenges.
My explorations influenced by somatic practices have interested me in the notion of “pattern”, often associated with a negative connotation such as a bad fold or bad habit. I see somatic education as a playground where, through keys such as attention, adaptability and awareness, it’s possible to take action and intervene with ingrained habits. These keys are tools for acting with care and sensitivity on my gestural habits, which are sometimes comfortable or uncomfortable, sometimes appreciated or hated. Somatic approaches enable me to challenge my dance patterns without rejecting them. They are interesting to study because they have a significant influence on our locomotion and posture. They are at the heart of the development of our subjectivity, especially in the context of a performing arts practice where bodily expression is closely linked to our more intimate life baggage. My patterns allow me to constructively question how and why I dance in certain ways. In my view, it’s an invitation to renew my practice. Ah, those “good old habits”, I embrace them more today.
This experience in movement through somatic approaches has helped to instill in me a reflection about how, instinctively, I situate my relationship with the world and how I can let myself be led to see and perceive differently. To question, too, what these encounters with the non-human evoke in me (animals, vegetation, the elements water-air-earth-fire, for example). This invaluable exercise in thought has also enabled me to reflect on who or what I identify with, thus contributing to the sense of belonging I have to somatic approaches, which have come to play a major role in my daily life and in my artistic practice.
Dance has been a part of my daily life for many years, and the movements that surround me seem to stem from an eternal choreography. Dance is a living expression that feels good.
Mélia Boivin
photos credits :
Performance solo à Passerelle 840 – été 2022, exploration tactile et textile © Jeanne Tétreault
Recherche en studio: découvrir l’expression du corps par le toucher © Flore Bibeau