somewhere between mind and body

i feel like there is something bubbling in my brain – somewhere in the unconscious, not too close to the surface, but not too far away either. i can’t put my finger on it – only gesturing towards it seems to be the only way to begin.

during our Laban session with Lian Loke today our mirroring of our partners tasks played out as a little animation in my head. Maggie was the 3-D version of a character smelling the flowers, and i was the black and white 2-D line-drawing animated character… sometimes slipping into a three-dimensional moment… only to realise that while i’d been smelling the (imaginary) roses, Maggie had shifted places and moved onto smelling other flowers altogether.

The other thing that is sitting there in the back of my mind, is that of personality. Mirroring my partner, i realised how much i was not just mirroring her movement and gestures – i was mimicing her presence in the space and her overall personality. Lizzie then spoke of the differences between her natural physical movement and posture when undertaking a “picking up cat” gesture and Catherine’s. The learned body movement that we repeat – these habitual responses to a single stimulus/object.

This for me raises the question of whether my notions of “putting someone into someone else’s shoes” is this really possible? This is the premise behind my Suspect Backpack work – but given that our fundamental body learning and how we exist and interact in space can be so different (with so many variations between people) is it possible to put on someone else’s shoes – or are they always just going to be too big/small, or just not fit “quite right”.