ABSTRACT
This chapter inquires into the bodily dimensions of the interlacing of world with self, into the role of bodily experience in negotiating historical and cultural configurations, and further into the imbrication of bodily practices and complex social systems. I show how the ruk (Palauan men’s dance) is a cultural practice enacting the already motion-laden body. Beyond the flesh, it actualises the human body in movement, allowing it to continually transform in sound while recomposing along historical, social and cultural configurations. When musical movement acts on bodily movement in this way, it creates resonances that travel back and forth between emotion, discourse and memory as they correlate with Palauan temporo-spatiality via felt-bodily attunement to traditional chant repertoire. These resonances are intrinsically atmospheric.
