On the Embedded Embodiment of Dancers in Language-based Site-specific Choreography

Abstract This keynote presentation, held at the 16th Nordic Forum for Dance Research (NOFOD) conference, scrutinises how two cases of progressive forms of site-specific and language-based choreographic practices by performing dancers enact embedded embodiment. The addressed works of Paula Kramer (2021) and Kirsi Heimonen and Leena Rouhiainen (2022; 2024a) both entail motional exploration of chosen physical environments as well as their language-based articulation. The presentation introduces concrete examples from these works and discusses the site-specificity and language-use by the dancer-performers in dialogue with conceptions from embodied cognition and phenomenology. The examination of the notions of embedded embodiment or intercorporeality and the gestural base of language is the means through which the presentation suggests that there is a continuity between situated lived bodily experience and writing. The presentation likewise recommends that we consider language and linguistic expression integral to the medium of dance.