Melanie Friedman with Michaela Kaplan

This series is from an ongoing piece entitled, my body is my mother tongue. It represents the oppression of embodiment and movement in everyday life. I felt like the poem 178D captured the essence of this idea perfectly. It brought forth the complexity of being both ashamed to be seen and not seen, of acting and not acting. It called to mind how no matter what one does, there is always judgement. 

It has been my experience that expressing oneself through movement is often discouraged. As a medical student, I have agreed to sacrifice my bodily expression in certain spaces with the unfortunate result of impeded bodily autonomy in others. It has become very difficult to dance on the train during my morning commute as well as move the way my body urges when out in public. I wonder if this immobility is caused by the weight of societal pressure to act “normal” regardless of the cost to one’s physical well-being.   

This piece addresses how certain thoughts or emotions could be expressed in a physical vocabulary. It aims to reclaim expression from a purely intellectual space and bring it back to a tangible realm. For me, these three images represent three different movements my body craves when a certain emotion arises. After engaging with the Uninvited text I committed myself to paying attention to the movement cravings of my body and recorded these movements as best I could. My close friend and collaborator, Michaela Kaplan, photographed and edited these movements while upholding the essence of my performance practice. The poetic text for each image is a static representation of an ongoing and changing body vocabulary. Each poem was created by reflecting on the image while engaging with the movement. I expect the words to shift over time as my body changes and calls for something different. 

In submitting this piece for the Uninvited Project I hope that it encourages others to pay closer attention to their embodied states while working with their own movements. One day we may all be brave enough to have that dance in public. 

the way she moves is in her bones

should I could I did I

say what need to be

noticing bits others don’t

earthen delights i wonder,

does the smile yield happiness or happiness the smile?

snake uncoils, tending

dia-l(og/ect)ic becomes the same

back ache body cold

mind in name only, one becomes

too

contained within a microwave minute