ABSTRACT
This chapter examines notion that the phenomenological body, in general, and the body dancing to music churns with movement. This is the bodily disposition that accounts for sensations like klebelau to emerge from cultural practices that involve the human body in one way or another. The chapter argues that both music and dance are cultural practices enacting the already motion-laden body. Koror’s community meeting spots were bustling with activity, with people chatting, customers flocking to sales booths, kids darting around, vendors preparing and selling food, stray dogs scavenging for food scraps at their premises, music blaring from loudspeakers and teens hanging out. Music is material, acoustically palpable movement; dance, choreographed motion. Body percussion is an element integral to Palauan dance, and male dancing in particular, including foot stamping, clapping and slapping one’s hands against one’s thighs. The chapter explores how atmospheres bring about resonances between the divergent dimensions of the lived experience through the human body – allowing cognition.
