Landing and Dispersing at the Same Time: Embodied Awareness in Virtual and Physical Spaces

The encounter of dance with technology through embodied philosophical practices of awareness expands the territory for embodied experience in digital spaces. Questions arise about how sensory experiences ordinarily invoked by touch and proximity can extend into the virtual and how we can further expand sensorial experience between and beyond the body in more-than-human assemblies. The authors use the tenets of Skinner Releasing Technique and Micro phenomenology, as parallel approaches emerging across their respective practices as valuable methods for understanding and articulating bodily awareness in the encounter between dance and technology. André Lepecki, Erin Manning, and Brian Rotman’s theories regarding the digital capture of dance further support this sensory rich articulation. This chapter reveals the importance of improvisation, kinesthetic awareness and an ethics of care so that our somatic sensibilities can inform how we and our audiences enter and exit from these virtual spaces that alter a felt sense of embodiment.