Maria Rutanen
Teaching
and practicing
Through movement research, we become more attuned to listening to our bodies and the different possibilities of our bodies, which we may not always be aware of at the time. I explore and compose the body and the body in space, as space. In my teaching of dance, I am interested in examining the tonality of our bodies, how a body tone affects the flow of movement and the experience of gravity. I am exploring bi-directionality as a spatial and bodily phenomenon, the notion of pull and drip, counter-directing, fall and rise, including what it means to be internally and externally feel-felt body, simultaneously. I research the body as a watery mass that is always in constant plasticity and relation to the movement of others. I think of the body as matter within matter, that attaches, disappears, and participates in the planetary movement. We move as landscapes move, we think as bodies. Through our bodies, we become part of the tactile experience and inherently move towards and away from touch. I view touch as an opportunity to create a more egalitarian way of coexisting with all beings, the ability of touch to enhance empathy and influence the way we move. Through touch and gaze, the body acquires meaning. I'm interested in examining how we construct and deconstruct those meanings. The body is political, the body is poetic.
Contact improvisation is a form of dance that happens in physical contact between two or more bodies, with an emphasis on sharing the weight of the bodies, relationship to gravity, acrobatic lifts using momentum and inertia, listening to the direction of movement, and sensing the structure of the other body. Contact improvisation dance is a continuous co-negotiation of movement direction, velocity, and depth of touch. Solo dancing and moving with another without physical contact are also part of the practice of contact improvisation.
In the practice of contact improvisation, I am interested in the effortless sharing of weight, the ability to suspend, expand and soften in movement, and how the body sensitizes to another body. In my teaching, I aim to incorporate technical exercises and the exploration of movement, utilizing listening and sensing as the primary approaches to the dancing body. In dancing, we navigate from spiraling flow of movement, weight falling into each other's structures, the elasticity of our bodies and between bodies, to shared improvised moments that range between proximity and distance. Through dance, we get to explore the different qualities in which our bodies inhabit and communicate, and from time to time let go of verticality.