About ‘embodied’ – notes from the Artistic Director Tim Podesta

Embodied is a selection of short films and live dance works that builds on the success of our 2009 season of ‘6’. I am thrilled to continue the vision with innovative new works in collaboration with celebrated artists.

All of my experiences as an artist stem from an innate feeling of physical purpose and a sense of needing to move. Working with the Dis/assemble Dancers has been an exploratory gift that has allowed me the opportunity to view my intellectual process when making dance work. This process prior to disability and dance was led by form and physical ‘correctness’ and was driven by aesthetic outcomes.

Embodied represents how daily we think and emote through our bodies. Popular psychology states; “Our feelings influence our physical behaviour and not the other way around”. My studio experiments and other much more educated leaders in dance therapy believe dance/physicality might just influence the physical behaviour and a person’s state of mind.

Embodied aims to bridge the gap between able-bodied and disabled and demonstrate the astonishing feats of body memory, spatial awareness and physical communication between the dancers and the audience. Embodied challenges ‘normal thinking’ creating an unspoken physical language that fits within the structures of mainstream dance and theatre. I want all viewers of the Embodied Dis/assemble Project, to feel a part of an experiment: an experiment that opens our minds beyond a night at the theatre and to feel inspired by the possibilities.