Explorations of fluid boundaries of Lough Foyle through ecosomatic practice

Themes: Water as archive / Archivist / Narrating / visualizing / performing water / Trans-corporeal relations: permeable and viscous bodies /Borders / Lines / Place / Ecosomatics / Semantic Wring / Expanded Choreography This sacred search. This paper delicately stomps and marches along the shores of Foyle, a delicate, fierce, sodden dance from mountain to shore line, from water to rock. Singing with a seal and questioning fluidity, authenticity and the senses stimulated by the Atlantic air. Here, in this walk, this paper, lies my search for the return to the fluid self, the border of northern and southern Ireland, questioning this state of the in-between and how somatic practice may address this. This fluid intermingling of landscape and self is a delicate duet, this paper explores how can such a process allow us through a process of experiential learning encounter ourselves and place in deeper and more authentic manner. When addressing the future of the border of Ireland how can we can also address the borders and boundaries we also carry within, what does a line mean in practice? How can somatic practice help us navigate terrain? What does a duet mean in contemporary Irish society and can the languages and experience of choreography and somatic work help us explore place and belonging? How can water teach us about movement, how can watching the breath of waves develop a fluidity in our blood and bones that has stagnated and paused. Drawing from core principles of PaR. within Ecopsychology, working over a durational period this paper explores a somatic process based work made in collaboration with Dowd Dónall Gillespie which develops the concept of learning and receiving directly from water and landscape as stimulus and the body as reactant reflecting on findings in a wider social and political context of Irish history. This work crosses the Foyle from Greencastle to Magilligan; exploring through movement, music and semantic writing the experience of place. How can the body embody the quality of the sea and take such vocabulary to the highest point of the mountain? How can we carry the sea within each step? Traversing terrain and disciplines, between dance, long distance walking, personal pilgrimage and environmental reactionary practice; this paper documents the sensitive and poignant synergy between water and the body and explores the bridge between personal practice methodology and collective workshop environments, discussing where we may situate somatic learning and knowledge in wider socio-cultural frameworks.