The State of Dancingness: Staying with Leaving

Borrowing from Cixous’ ‘State of Drawingness’ (1993), this article proposes a ‘State of Dancingness’ as method of inhabiting the practice of writing as dancing. Understanding the dancing body as a place of virtuosic attention, the practice of writing is activated as a ‘continuation’ of dancing; neither as creative response or description but as frame for housing (staging) emergent content. The work proposes that the dancer begin on the page from the vantage and experience of entering the stage as solo improvising performer. These words come with this body tucked and pressing inside them. Pressing. The State of Dancingness enables the practice of writing as dancing through specific and long-time harnessing and accessing of physical, energetic and imaginative states; my body has always known and been ready before I have. A project of rendering dance in the form of creative nonfictions; the State of Dancingness proposes a multiplicity of focus, permeable sensing, complexity in composition and the immediacy of decision-making. Inside the apparent visibility, presence and transparency of the solo improvising performer, dancing can also be an incredible place to hide. This paper invests in writing the hidden and the potential of the State of Dancingness in working with the 'outing' of embodied knowledge.