I experience dance as a binding, expressive, and ancient language—traversing the boundaries of verbal language and cultures, generating communication and connectivity via the explicit and nuanced moving body. As a dance artist, I notice that much of my inspiration comes from the moving bodies I choose to witness.
In February of 2002, while witnessing the brotherly interplay between my two- and four-year old sons, I became intrigued with “the dance” materializing before my eyes. I began to scribe their spontaneous interactions and experimented with the documentation as a movement score for dance making throughout 2005-2016 in various residencies, workshops, and devised performances. I titled the “brotherly” score, “You Are Not My Enemy,” and titled the methodology, “directography” → written directives for choreography.
“You Are Not My Enemy” directography has been used as a movement score for youth and high school students, college students, professional dancers, and with people who think they can’t dance. The directography also has been used as a technique for building inclusivity, empathy, and trust for church, business, and community organizations. In these workshops, participants are directed to find a partner based upon the idea of “contrast” to their self, whether internally sensed or externally (visually, physically) apparent. Most recently, the movement score was used to unpack the social construct of inequality between white and black performers through an embodied dialogue entitled, Issues of Color: it’s more than black and white.
Working collaboratively yet independently, each duet rehearses within a 10×10 frame. While witnessing the duets materialize, similar movement themes appear, such as patterns of undeniable vulnerability and explicit abandonment.
Humans are unique based on color, size, thoughts, religion, culture, society, and experiences. Yet, human DNA is 99.9% identical across the human population. What fills the void between our great similarity and our undeniable differences? How do we create human connectivity?
Jane M. Hawley @ 2002 – Movement Fundamentals™ Directography