On the Lived, Imagined Body: A Phenomenological Praxis of a Somatic Architecture

Abstract

"On the Lived, Imagined Body" is a reflective remembering from the point of view of a movementperformance artist's training session learning to dance with imagined wings when in her livedexperience, the body of the dancer is aware somatically of moving with wings that do not actuallyexist. The overarching conceptualization in this article describes the inner-outer tensions, thekinesthetic, somatic, proprioceptive penetration inward and the visual-kinetic, imaginative reachoutward. The landmark work from dance phenomenologist Maxine Sheets-Johnstone (1966/2015),The Phenomenology of Dance, prompted the author of this article to translate an embodiedexperiential and imagined event for readers who might never have had the experience of a somaticmovement training of dancing with imagined wings as a lived experience. The phenomenology ofdancing as if with lived and imagined wings is developed further as a result of two week-longpresencing workshops taught by contemporary dancer-choreographer and somatics teacher BenoîtLachambre (2015/2016). For movement artists and dance practitioners, experiencing imaginarywings as lived wings means experiencing movement through mindful awareness and consciousintention of a praxis of somatic architecture.