ABSTRACT

Floating Bones charts the author’s journey into tensegrity, which begins in ballet and culminates in a model for addressing one’s body as a teacher.

Tensegrity flips traditional biomechanical models such that instead of support coming from the bones, the bones float, and it is the muscles and other soft connective tissue that provide support for the moving body. Using the model of tensegretic experience, Roses-Thema connects somatics, cognition, rhetoric, and reflective practices detailing the means that constructed approaching the body as a teacher. This study presents the argument for extending the models of thinking to include bodily thinking, by citing how the experiential perspective of tensegrity constructs physical evidence of the rhetorical concept, metis, where the body thinks as it moves.

This book will be of great interest to students, scholars, and practitioners of dance, theater, and sociology.

chapter |2 pages

Introduction

part I|38 pages

Floating bones overview

chapter 1|12 pages

How I bumped into my floating bones

chapter 2|4 pages

Questioning

chapter 3|4 pages

The Big +

chapter 4|4 pages

Valuing weight

chapter 5|5 pages

Quantum awareness

chapter 6|3 pages

Catching breath

part II|23 pages

Thinking as overview

chapter 8|8 pages

Rodin is only half the process

chapter 9|8 pages

Metis unleashed

chapter 10|5 pages

Metis at depth

part III|32 pages

Configuring the dancer’s tensegretic body as teacher overview

chapter 11|11 pages

The shape of listening

chapter 12|8 pages

Changing strength and flexibility