I_AM

I_AM stands for: Improvisation, Awareness, and Movement.

Robin connects this to dancers’ own identity. A research-based movement research by Robin Nimanong. I_AM is where each dancer is invited to claim their ownership of movement and body through research. But also breaking down the performative relation to the body. It’s a journey with an endless alternation between organism to instrument, to identity expression and non-performativity.

Nimanong invites dancers into a movement practice that blurs the line between meditation and communication. Where expression, becomes a soft ritual instead of ‘performative exercises.’ Participants are encouraged to arrive as they are raw and ready to explore. Instead of result driven, Nimanong wants to be more ‘truly present.’ Constantly expanding imagined boundaries. Therefore, we don’t aim to replicate form, but dissolve into the personal energy and intuition as queer embodiment and self-care practice.

This practice as ongoing research is very much inspired by Ohad Naharins Gaga’s movement language, likewise the body thinks, the breath is free, and silence becomes a partner in motion. But also Marina Abramovic ‘Cleaning the House method.’ This freedom and meditation are described within I_AM, through a first fundament: ‘The body as an organism’and is aware of both internal and bodily landscapes. Alternated or in contrast with the second fundament ‘the body as an instrument.’ Which emphasizes, efficiency, measurement, movement qualities and calibration. This second fundament is often received as less ‘dancy,’ although physical. This is also inspired by Asian philosophies like Tai chi or Chi Gong.

Besides the dance technique aspects: queer thinking, and body positivity are deeply informing I_AM. Nimanong discovered as queer identity a lot through Ballroom Culture, where these concepts mentioned before are guiding the energy, confidence and characteristics (expression). Then a sense of embodiment, style and expression are liberated, cause for queer identities this freedom is often suppressed in daily life. This healing process, of taking away shame, can take many playful shapes.

Queer here is not about sexual-orientation, but its is about breaking the status quo through liberation of body and mind. Freedom of sexuality expression is part of this and intertwined. Queer expression can be a great tool to discover how as dancer not to hide’ behind movement, but to share energy and inner worlds on stage.

Even though these different worlds from Marina, Ohad and Queer Culture, look like contradictions, they can fulfill each other and therefore enrich the dancer’s toolbox. This opens ways towards innovation as dancer and maker. Nimanong is also conceptually as maker mixing commercial trends, with deeper dance knowledge, and plays with the abstract forms of known themes.

At Huis Conny Janssen - Bij Pien Duthmann