Body Language

In 2004, Physical theatre, DV8, made a film based on their one stage production named “the cost of living.” When I was reading about holism and fragmentation of body, subjectivity and objectivity, I couldn’t help think about some moments in this film.

If A body is a intermediary in-between the subject and the world, the legless dancer saw himself as a holistic existence through his mirror of unconsciousness. But the world he perceived (or we perceived) reflects merely a fragmentation of his body. As Merleau-Ponty said, the dancer linked his subjectivity and the objects of the world by weaving them into his flesh.

There is another more interesting phenomenon. If we agree Heidegger’s linguistic theory: Language is the house of being, then how about body language? For me, I firmly believe that the dancer spoke to others through his physical movement. Which means he dwells in his own thoughts of the body, the interface he communicated to other beings through. Moreover, it may across the boundary Heidegger set for differentiating human beings and nonhuman animals. It is not only about dance, we could even see the dancer standing out side of his embodiment of body image and transforming into his own essence.

 

At least, we may admit that we all have some redundancy of our bodies after witnessing his lightness of movement.