On the Lived, Imagined Body: A Phenomenological Praxis of a Somatic Architecture

"On the Lived, Imagined Body" is a reflective remembering from the point of view of a movement performance artist's training session learning to dance with imagined wings when in her lived experience, the body of the dancer is aware somatically of moving with wings that do not actually exist. The overarching conceptualization in this article describes the inner-outer tensions, the kinesthetic, somatic, proprioceptive penetration inward and the visual-kinetic, imaginative reach outward. The landmark work from dance phenomenologist Maxine Sheets-Johnstone (1966/2015), The Phenomenology of Dance, prompted the author of this article to translate an embodied experiential and imagined event for readers who might never have had the experience of a somatic movement training of dancing with imagined wings as a lived experience. The phenomenology of dancing as if with lived and imagined wings is developed further as a result of two week-long presencing workshops taught by contemporary dancer-choreographer and somatics teacher Benoit Lachambre (2015/2016). For movement artists and dance practitioners, experiencing imaginary wings as lived wings means experiencing movement through mindful awareness and conscious intention of a praxis of somatic architecture.