Abstract

The Philosopher and The Dancer is an act of spontaneous, solo, movement improvisation; offered here as one particularized instantiation and re-enactment of the corporeal situatedness and interrelatedness of self and world that characterizes Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy. The improvisation can take place in any indoor studio/space, ideally with a suitable floor - the ostensibly static nature of an indoor space/place serving as a clear context for the embodiment and modeling of some of Merleau-Ponty’s core philosophical constructs. As an improvised event, The Philosopher and The Dancer can last for a few minutes or for longer and is unaccompanied by music; it is the embodied weave of dancer and immediate environment - a cultivated sensitivity and practised responsiveness to one’s spatial and temporal inherence in a particular world - that is foregrounded. This demonstration/performance is offered as a place in which an alternative articulation of Merleau-Ponty’s thought will be evident.