Bodies talk
Description
This paper weaves together theory and research in the areas of musicology, dance studies, gender studies, art, history, science, and philosophy. The author makes the claim that a post-modern treatment of the body in the arts has political implications. The paper explains how sound-movement reciprocity reveals the body’s innate capacity to shape itself and the environment. The dissolution of constructed identities, including the ostensible categories of ‘man’ and ‘woman,’ make way for the ‘intentional body’ — a philosophy of being, in which the mind and body are indistinct from one another. Exemplifying the performative nature of identity and destabilizing normative understandings of gender, race, and nationality, Grace Jones is included as the practical application, or living representation, of this phenomenon. The culmination of the author’s research is a pedagogical book of piano études based on the theories of Rudolf Laban and Sonata 9, a multi-media, interdisciplinary dance performance, which is discussed at the end of the paper.