Roots/Routes
In dialogue with the 2023 Performance Studies International conference theme of “uhambo” and “Uhambo Luyazilawula” the Future Advisory Board, in collaboration with the PSi Lexicon Officer and a network of postgraduate and early career researchers, artists, and arts workers, reflected on the meaning of “roots and routes”.
Unlike other PSi Lexicon entries, this entry is developed across two workshops and embodied forms of exploring concepts related to roots/routes in performance studies.
This reflection took the form of two workshops—one led by Smangaliso Ngwenya, an embodied practice exploring the relationship between African dance and conceptual, ancestral, and whole-body rootedness, and one led by Linda (Mdena) Thibedi, mapping the body as a repository of critical movement, exploring the experience of bodies in the aftermath of crises.
Departing from embodied wandering as a set of methods for unravelling performance studies, we gathered first in digital space and then in-person, to embrace and question our rootedness and the creative negotiations, tensions and entanglements of definitions. We traced ideas and concepts, noting how they travelled and developed across places, times, languages, people and communities.
Roots/Routes – partial records and fragments of movement
Here we offer fragments, partial records, and terms that this group offered, unpacking “roots and routes” in Smangaliso Ngwenya’s workshop:
Care—as in: care for the ground, care for my Memaw (grandmother) who has passed, care for my own bodymind movements, and care as in moving with an injury (remembering to stay grounded and rooted).
Gratitude—finding focus by being in your body, grounding. Be gentle to the ground.
Guidance to the ground and being kind to our support systems.
Heatwaves—invitation to soft feet and fast moving feet.
Complexity and simplicity—which roots are in the body and what is there and when it is collaborative.
Grounded—speed vs grounding and finding balance. Be as my body.
Thinking about complexity and simplicity—what are the easy routes through the body (movement)? What are the routes untraced/unpracticed?
Ripple—finding ways to have the mind and body collaborate on the ripple. A need for a lot of flow. A need for awareness. Something that speaks to your arms.
Roots/Routes- material traces
And here are the artefacts and partial records of choreographies that the group offered, unpacking “roots and routes” in Linda (Mdena) Thibedi’s workshop:
Entry authored by Future Advisory Board, with thanks to Smangaliso Ngwenya, Linda (Mdena) Thibedi, and workshop participants at the PSi #28. This entry was part of the collaborative project between PSi Archive and PSi Lexicon- Synsorial Project: Offerings from Uhambo Luyazilawula.