Objectx
Objectx is a teaching and research initiative that explores an inclusive, collaborative, feminist approach to dancing with objects.
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In the current iteration of Objectx workshops, participants move in the studio with an ensemble of ten-foot-long PVC pipes, building skill in interacting with multiple bodies—sentient and inanimate—while moving. Participants in Objectx classes work individually, in partners, and in large open scores that encourage collaboration, spatial awareness, and cultivation of multiple loci of attention.
In Objectx workshops we practice embodied object-oriented ontology and consider objectx as co-inhabitors of a shared space, not as accessories to the human “stage.” We explore the generative potential of moving with objectx, and build a movement vocabulary driven by function and real-time problem solving, not aesthetic design.
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*Please note that we use the “x” in Objectx to indicate our intention to create a space actively committed to de-categorizing all bodies, organic or inorganic.
Some of the theoretical considerations that underpin Objectx workshops include:
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Practical exercise for entering into relationship with any unfamiliar body.
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Investigation of objects-as-bodies in service of combatting the treatment of bodies as objects.
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Noticing our habituations towards appropriating, assuming, and relinquishing power over.
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Collective decision-making, patience, listening, efficiency in indirectness, and alternative expressions of “force” and “strength.”
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Opportunities for re-imagining dance spaces and creating new realities.
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We have facilitated Objectx workshops at the 2021 Dance Studies Association Conference (theme: Galvanizing Dance: building anti-racist praxis, transformative connections and movement(s) of radical care), Sam Houston State University and the University of Washington, and are developing a single and multi-day iteration of this studio-based research.