BODY AS SPACE : Space as a Transformative Place

The purpose of this research is to try to understand and be aware of what happens when space is transformed and the body becomes space. Space understood as the place where bodies and movement are situated or inhabit, commonly characterised as unlimited, continuous or three-dimensional, as well as, on the other hand, a limited surface with common purposes. The physical body understood as that with mass, energy and three-dimensionality, which does not distinguish between human and non-human, material and living. The manipulation of bodies as the action of manipulating with the hands, with other parts of the body or even with another instrument, is the idea of distorting reality, of transforming and transposing it. Through manipulation, or rather movement, space is changed and dialogues and stories are created. Since the concept of manipulation focuses on what the person wants to achieve, creating a hierarchy between bodies, and the concept of transformation can be understood as the exchange or dialogue between bodies, where everyone offers and receives, the term manipulation will be changed to transformation. Transforming space as a horizontal place where bodies and movement inhabit; understanding bodies as that human and non-human, material and living, and movement as the means by which they dialogue with each other and with space. The transformation of space as a leap from what has so far been known as the manipulation of objects, with the aim of understanding the relationship between bodies and space as a circus discipline through movement as dialogue. As an aerial harness dance artist working with suspension, distortion of reality and shifting perspectives between the vertical and horizontal plane, I seek to understand what happens to space when it is transformed through a series of methodologies and methods. The methodologies employed focus on the practice of circus and dance, spatial architecture, the art therapy and the adaptation of bodies as pedagogy. In terms of methods, there is a difference between those that already exist, such as the study of concepts and other projects, and others that emerge as a result of the research. The latter are new methods, concepts such as movement as dialogue, horizontality as a multidimensional space [the breaking down of boundaries between human - non-human and space – body], limitation and control as possibility, vulnerability as a potential, bodies as spaces; as well as pause, adaptation, installation and observation as means to understand the transformation of space and the body as space. Treat this study within the field of research of new materialism with the aim of developing the potential of interconnectedness, understood as that which reciprocally relates bodies occupying a space, and spaces occupying a body; the means of expression that arises between body and space; and the breaking down of barriers inside, such as between living and material bodies, space and body, or the human being and everything else; within the circus with the aim of transforming the space