The idea of prior existence immediately came to mind as soon as I became acquainted with movement within this class. There was a landscape of bodies, of visual and auditory landscapes all around the room as we moved throughout. I was surprised when I was not nervous closing my eyes and trusting someone else to guide me through a room filled of people, but I just was not. There was something about senses and embodying the senses. Proprioception took over sight and suddenly I realised how much my feet can do unprompted and independently of anything else.

There was an atmosphere of naturality surrounding the workshop we experienced with Trajal today. I had a wave of nervousness crash over me when I discovered that we had to create our own sequence of movement, but the air allowed for all of us to create our own comfort zones within the space and we all created something unique, which has resulted in me beginning to question the notion of sequential movement in the first place, as I immediately reverted to child like hand motions, sitting with my legs crossed. With all sense of self importance aside, although I still felt shaky when it Trajal watched us practise the beginning of the minimalist-vogue routine, there was a sense of communion considering everyone’s place in the space we found ourselves in. Subconsciously, I felt a sense of connection to the bodies and the music around me, mixed in with staccato, jumping nature of learning that we were experiencing. Something was there already, stirring in a pot with learning and intuition, something I didn’t know before.

When it came to the discussion at the end of class, discussing the ‘neutral body’ and ‘transcoding’ rang in my head after leaving. Especially that aspect of differentiation became the focus of my concern, and I started questioning the concept of differentiation of bodies and how we linguistically distinguish things. With dance, there almost seems to be something inherently less distinguished between objects, bodies, motions. There seems to be a different distinction than linguistic when it comes to a noun or an adjective or a verb. Is motion a distinguished concept, removed from the grounding, earthly notions of word groups?

I think I have taken my body for granted, accepting that because it exists its’ existence and movement is because of itself. But, today I began to question that. What does it mean to move and to communicate with my body? Is there anything neutral about it at all? These are the questions I am reflecting upon after reading and listening today.