‘’I believe this is where the true aspect of this project comes in. The power of dance. Of sharing. Through experiencing. This round there were less of verbal conversations between me as a project leader and the local people. It was the dance that brought ideas/experiences/emotions to the forefront. When the local children came to the studio for the first time, I felt an urgency to go close to them to share the dance. Not with an intention of forcing anything on them, but rather share my dance and the transmitting of movements.’’

Fieldnotes Mozambique, 4^th Feb 2024

This presentation draws on experiences and reflections in relation to my artistic research project, Dancing Through Grief, where I aim to develop knowledge about shared affects through dance performance(s) as a psychosocial practice space.

I will focus specifically on two residency periods in Mozambique which guided me to experiential learning through the lens of my artistic practice as a choreographer and dancer. I want to share how and why the experiential learning/un-learning/not learning was related to an affect from my dancing body in a psychosocial space. I reflect on which processes and methods gave more accessibility to the ‘experiential-ness’ that is still present and unfolding. I give insight into the evolution of artistry based on a bodily approach that could embrace both the performer’s and the participants’ life experiences with grief. In my experience, the non-verbal and tactile experience of the shared dance becomes a vehicle for understanding, as well as further ways of questioning, the importance of meaning making that is not shared verbally but evoked through the body and expressed through dancing.

The paper resonate with the conference theme in terms of its relation to experiential learning, social memory and its erasure, and imagination.

Her body fits perfectly inside of the door frame.

She is about to leave to eat pizza with her friends when her father enters the room.

His eyes have watered already.

She has never seen him cry before.

Somehow, she knew what was coming but had no clue at all.

This artistic sharing will resonate with the conference theme in terms of its relation to experiential learning, social memory and its erasure, and imagination – all aspects of the psychosocial affects of grief and its aftermath.

Grief is not a stable object of inquiry. Grief can be viewed as a journey, moving from one dance to another. In my artistic research project Dancing Through Grief, I invite myself as a performer and the audience to expand emotional awareness of grief by creating and part-taking in art. I am interested in exploring how affect may be set in motion and circulate through a dancing body in a psychosocial space, where the artistry includes a bodily approach that can embrace both the performer and the audience’s life experiences of grieving/losing a loved one. By applying such an approach creatively, I hone in on the grieving journey both as an object for practice-based research, and as a tool for exploring shared experiences and feelings.

Dreamy memories but at the same time radical experiences. Intentionally honest. Sometimes brutal to the body, but with a gentle acknowledgment of what I call the “fluxual” affects of grief. In this specific dance performance sharing I propose a number of what I call grief invitations to conference participants. It is a collection of physical letters/proposals/invitations that offer reimagining our relationship with grief, through movement and spoken word.