The Body Listens: On Contact Dance, Voice, and the Resonance of Being
- Delia Brett
- Jul 26
- 4 min read
Updated: Oct 13
The Reciprocity of Sensation and Being
To touch is to be touched.
To see is to be seen.
To move is to be moved.
To hear is to be entered.
To speak is to extend ourselves outward—to touch the world with our breath.
We are built from the same minerals as the inanimate rock. When we kick a rock down the path, the bones of our feet and legs – our mineral body – are meeting itself with itself, receiving its own tumbling thud across the parched grey grass into the glistening heat of the hillside.
The skin of our eyes, arms, and shoulders drink the same light that the membranous leaf offers the tangled root. To which our cells reply: “Yes, thank you. I am here, receiving.”
An Invitation: The Physics of Contact
When we touch something in a contact dance, there's an immediacy—a pressure that draws our attention. We become aware of a place. We bring our listening there. And we participate.
Contact fascinates our attention. It moves under our attentive gaze.
The pressure—the precise place of contact—rolls and shifts.
It enchants. Light or heavy, it draws more of us to it.
Other perceptions fade into the background as we attune to this single point of pressure, of friction, of connection.
And in that process, we are released from the mind’s grip—from the question mark we carry on our backs about our worthiness, our qualifications, our striving for things to be different.
Instead, we surrender. Even if we don’t know how.
We surrender—because we don’t need to know how. Not from the mind.
The mind becomes immersed in the body, that is with a body, moving as one point.
And that point begins to carve a pathway – to move and be moved.
We feel alive. We are enlivened.
We feel clear. We are clarified.
We are learning. We are growing. We are moving beyond the known.
As our attention sharpens, trust begins to grow—trust in the moment, in the body, in the intelligence of what’s unfolding. Our sense of place, of self, of the here and now expands.
Attending to the point of connection, we enter the both/and:
We are being directed and directing.
Choosing and being chosen.
It may sound abstract, but it’s not. It’s direct. It’s immediate.
And in truth, this is what life is always doing.
We come into the world without language. Open. Soft. Unobstructed.
We demand to be held, supplied, attuned to—through heartbeat, voice, oxygen, sunlight, skin, milk.
We learn through movement where up is, where down is.
Through air vibrating in our eardrums.
Through the faces that mirror meaning.
Through repeated utterances that shape the world.
We begin to separate out, but we are, in essence, undifferentiated. Whole. Missing nothing.
We learn to see colour through light refracting into our eyes.
But pink, yellow, orange are merely shadowed densities—until someone teaches us what to see, how to see, according to how others saw before us.
Because, to see as they see is to survive.
To belong with them, to them, is to live.
And so, as socialized body-minds, we learn to orient away from or toward certain dark patches and points of pressure—toward what we’ve been taught is valuable.
We shape our choices around these values. We define ourselves by our worthiness or unworthiness in their light.
But when we choose to connect and move without knowing, without assigning meaning, we return to something more primal.
We move like a child again, toward the vibrant surfaces in our landscape—with trust.
We allow contact to carve a pathway, and let our lives be carried.
Where things collide, disconnect—that is where we develop.
Where we grow resilience. Patience.
Where we learn to course-correct.
Where we choose again, to listen more deeply to what bridges the gap.
More play? More softness? More structure? More reach?
It’s when we mistrust, when we doubt and forget, that we conceal from ourselves the infinite playground of choices we are embedded within.
We only see the gap.
We contract. Collapse. Push. Avoid.
We determine we’re not enough.
We convince ourselves the old stories – of resentment, sacrifice, limitation, blame—must be true:
“I always have to be the responsible one.”
“The nice one.”
“The one who fixes things.”
“The one who insists in order to belong.”
We start grasping for someone, something, to save us
– As if the now that is present, now, is not enough.
But this is what dance teaches us:
Even in the awkward moments of disconnection, when we feel we’re not enough –if we pause and fine-tune our attention to what is actually happening – to the pressure, the sensation, the most immediate perception – we rediscover a capacity to participate again.
And it moves. It always moves.
This is physics.
This is karma.
This is the law of the universe.
Energy in motion must complete its motion.
It evolves, dissolves, becomes unstuck, uncollapsed, uncontracted.
Inevitably.
Even when we are alone – even when it feels like there is no one and nothing to give us the necessary pressure – this is an illusion.
There is always sensation. There is always breath breathing. Feet touching. The embrace of gravity pouring in from all sides – drawing us toward the earth.
And from the earth, we rise again and again into our bodies—into the you at the core of you.
Without others to press against, we gather what’s already here, already collecting at our centre. And from there, we can choose to lean with grace into the physics of what’s already in motion.
To enter the world with sound and body – to touch the world with our breath.
The boundary between inside and outside, dissolved.
Our voice echoing back to us like a lullaby from our preverbal self.
We let ourselves move – to be moved.
This is your solo.
And the spaciousness that emanates from this contact is your lifeline.
Join us in the exploration.
ATTUNE: Dance Voice Lab is where sensation becomes language, and movement becomes meaning.
The invitation is open. The contact is already happening. Will you listen?
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