Carolyn Roy

Eclipse – using somatic methods as tools for translation

A combined spoken-word and powerpoint slide presentation of my work Eclipse, a translation of Jean-Luc Nancy’s essay ‘Of Being Singular Plural’ that transforms his work from conceptual to visual material. With Eclipse I dissected Nancy’s texts into pieces, metaphorically and materially, distilling from this process the understanding that I might encounter philosophical texts as matter, or bodies of thinking, thus unsettling my former conception of texts as repositories of theoretical knowledge.

My dancing and writing practice engages in dialogue with philosophical concepts and writing. My PhD research, ‘The Work of Not Doing’ was concerned with the encounter between philosophical texts and somatically informed dance practice, focusing specifically on Jean-Luc Nancy’s essay ‘Of Being Singular Plural’. Its outcome was a new PaR methodology for working between two different modes of thinking/making sense – philosophy and dance – that I call elliptical practice. Research included experimentation and reflection on how to approach and read a text using methods developed in the context of somatic dance enquiry, such as touch, listening, being present with. I came to think of this process as a form of translation, building on the work of Walter Benjamin, Jacques Derrida and Daniela Cascella.

Eclipse is the trace of one of my many elliptical readings of Of Being Singular Plural. It is what remains of one encounter, where I attended to words that floated to the surface of the page – those that came towards me. Those left behind, I erased. Eclipse is a material remnant of that reading, at that time. As the evidentiary remains of a close reading, as a transforming intervention into the material and signification of Nancy’s text and as an act of translation, I think of it as one of many possible afterlives of Of Being Singular Plural.

 

Bio:

Dr Carolyn Roy is a freelance dancer and writer who has worked in the independent dance sector for over 30 years and also teaches on MA and BA programmes at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance. Her work crosses disciplines, with outputs in the form of performance, writing, audio work and political action. Her practice is concerned with improvisatory and somatic processes, particularly in durational performance; politics and the social agency of dancing; trans-disciplinary encounter and exchange; the pedagogy and writing of dance practice.