Coming home: devised somatic dance

Abstract

ABSTRACT Fat bodies in movement are often marked as a “travesty” and met with mockery. Particularly, fat people are commonly constructed as out of place in movement and exercise. Movement such as dancing may be assembled as a form of artistry that fat bodies cannot or should not embody. In particular dancing in a fat temporality that celebrates the ways fat bodies move with flesh, rolls, and marks is seldom celebrated or seen in many spaces. In the frame of resistance, dancing fat embodiment can be a strong form of fat activism that breaks barriers within spaces such as dance. In this article, I highlight the implications of fat bodies in dance within fat studies and activism. I introduce and contextualize my articulations with my experience as a fat artist, scholar, and doctoral student dancing and performing in a six-day somatic dance course. The time spent in class and performing my solo illuminated and created fat time where my body existed in a space often denied for fat people. Specifically, I created fat time where my fatness moved through its tempo of being, resisted containment, and stretched boundaries of space. This act of resistance to the thin normative within dance space was a powerful form of fat activism. Using visuals, sounds, and my own narrative, it is my hope that this article will highlight implications for fat studies scholars and activists, specifically how performance and movement-based arts such as dance can disrupt dominant and pathological assumptions about fat bodies in movement.