After having been working with circus for several years I have later, in combination with dance, developed a balancing research method- based on slackrope practice. The practice departs from examining balancing as the essence of movement. It happens through the notion of eliminating the ground as a stable ground to instead look for constant instability on a moving ground (the slackrope.) The slackrope becomes the potential of the extreme version of a ground that distinguishes multilayered direction whom demand the body to reflect on its ability to remain balancing. The developed method is called ”Negotiating Balancing” (NB) and works as a training method for bodies and dancers to develop their bodily understanding of balancing. I teach and have been holding workshops in NB since 2020.  

Following texts is assembled reflections, both made by me and collected from teachers, colleagues and friends;

Thoughts about balancing:

Imbalance is the constancy of maintaining balancing. 

Balancing and Balance is not the same. Balance is the perfect point of equality that is impossible for the human body to enter. Balancing is movement, where the body is negotiating to weight shifts in order to maintain balanced. 

Stability is only a perception of being in control of our balancing. 

Searching for stability within instability.  Allow instability to exist within stability. The fluctuation of stability to instability back to stability is the continuation of movement. Where there is no purpose, there is all the purpose.

Balancing is momentum, the act of maintaining present in the body. 

Disconnecting from something will not lead to nothingness, you will always connect to something else.

Falling is the giving in to gravity and balancing is the attempt to refuse falling. 

There is no destination of movements. It never arrives. As long as we live, we move.

The philosopher Jonna Bornemark describes it as that the act of riding a horse is to ”develop a shared corporeality”, Stating that we can become a common body without being in a common body, for a momentarily time. This perception can appear in short moments when not transforming ourselves nor the other body (as in here exemplified as a horse (or the rope)) to be separate ’objects’. Instead we let us sense a common movement as a flow, that are not separated into different parts (bodies). This means to not reduce the movement of only one of the parts, and allowing to instead becoming ’something else.’ A third and common body/movement/flow. To put this in context to the embodiment of balancing becomes another tool of extending ones understanding of physical capacities through a parallel embodiment of other physicalities in a common (even if imaginative) third body.

The body feed the mind with information. The words and thoughts feed the body. We are not our thoughts, we are our bodies. At the same time the body and mind are one inseparable entity. The richer we specify the information to the body, the more enriched the physical experiences will be. We embody the information since dance is a physical experience, we re-embody to keep feeding. We don’t stay with one embodiment, we keep embodying to develop.

Researching limits is to go beyond familiar limits. Our aim should be to always re-start at 0.

Balance= Intuition. 

Stillness is also movement. 

Constant flow of recycled energy. 

Conscious is not to master or capture it, it is to listen and become aware. 

Momentum- its the suspension, the gravity of the movement, the weight of the body. 

Weight is a matter of allowance, we don’t create weight.

Floating approach= Balance is movement. 

Balance= activity not stagnation. It is an act of maintenance.

We have a floating point of gravity. Imagine a point within the body that is the center of up, down, front, back and sides. Imagining that this is the center of weight and our point of gravity. Meaning that if we bring our bodies out of balance, the center will not anymore stay. Imagine leaning towards a wall, the weight of the body is shared with another ”body”, then the center will shift to be in-between the bodies and becomes a new equilibrium of weight. When moving this point is constantly floating around inside and outside the body.

Moving = weight shifts 

Balance is a bodily reference, a sensorial experience. Words can enhance experiences, experiences make references. References make knowledge. 

Balancing is a personal bodily experience= Embodiment of ones body. 

Don’t consider the urge of managing, urge for the experience of trying. 

What we think becomes our truths and this becomes our body and experience. A start to make development is to change what we think. (Or at least to open up to think a lot of thoughts, multiple thoughts.)  A thought is not necessarily the truth but it helps and guides the physical experiences.

Imaging the body contains a vertical alignment running through the center of the body mass. Imaging the perfect weight division with equal weight all around our 3D bodies being ”balance”. Imaging movement being spiraling around this vertical alignment line. When passing by the point of 0 (the line), we are in balance. This balance is impossible to be hold. This is only a passing by within movements. Bigger movements makes bigger curves in and out of balance. Smaller curves stays closer to the vertical line and makes us perceive more stability.