Negotiating and Processing Discomfort

Exploring issues of consent in movement training

I attended a lovely movement workshop a few weeks ago. The activities were beautifully composed and compassionately led. Outside my regular martial arts or (more sporadic) tumbling practices, this was the one of the first workshops that I’ve attended since the start of the pandemic. It brought me great joy being in a room filled with care and curiosity. However, being back in a contemporary dance space after so long raised a few interesting - maybe difficult - questions. 

It was interesting to be in a space where movement was prioritised above speech - where there was an unspoken expectation that participants were ready to enter into movement and touch. In many ways the experience was wonderful, but it made me think about how much trust workshop participants are required to have in their facilitators and peers. It made me think how much dance or movement workshops rely on the expectation that participants are willing to step into the unknown. This is, of course, part of the fun. But it can also be scary. And much worse.

I think there is sometimes a tendency for those of us who spend our lives thinking about and practising movement to make assumptions about what might feel comfortable or natural.  (It’s something I explored in my post on Movement and Ideology). We sometimes presume that turning up at a movement workshop means that people are ready to move in the ways we’re used to moving.  But, as I’ve written before, we don’t know what we don’t know. People don’t always know how an activity is going to feel until they’re doing it. Some reticence is to be expected, even if it’s not always easy to perceive from the outside.

I’m sure this isn’t news to any of you. I’m sure you’ve all had experiences that felt alien or uncomfortable in studios or classrooms, and much has been written about movement training, dance and pedagogical ethics. However, I think some of my recent experience provides a simple and useful case-study - one that I want to explore in order to think through some of the things we need in order to step into the unknown without losing our agency.

At a certain point in the workshop, we were asked to stop next to someone and reach out to them. We were asked to rub the muscles around their shoulders or back. It was a fairly anodyne instruction, but it gave me pause for thought. While it may be difficult to tell from the photo on my profile, I am quite big. Although I find it tricky to believe, people have told me that I can, at times, appear somewhat imposing.  As I reached my hand towards the much smaller and younger woman who had stopped in front me, I suddenly felt quite uncomfortable about the idea of making contact – aware of the potential politics of our interaction. I found myself needing to slow down and maybe engage my voice. I needed more than the assumption of tacit consent. 

However, it takes courage to step outside the apparent parameters of a workshop – especially if it’s being performed without talking. As one of my valued and exuberant colleagues has said to me, ‘It’s not easy to be that bitch.’  In the end, I gave the young woman’s shoulders a slightly embarrassed squeeze and the workshop moved on.

So, what do we need in circumstances like this? What would have made me feel safer?

I think the first thing we need is a context and permission to explore our feelings. The second is the time necessary to observe them. We need time to attend to how an activity is making us feel, as well as time to interrogate the seriousness and legitimacy of those feelings.

It might have been that I needn’t have worried about that moment. The two of us could probably have talked through and resolved our feelings in a couple of sentences. But the journey from feeling and movement to speaking isn’t always a straight line – especially if it involves stepping outside the assumed parameters of an activity.  Just as it’s not always easy to know how we feel, it’s also not always easy to know how to describe what and how we’re feeling. So maybe the other important thing we need is to have had opportunities to practise describing how we feel (and what we notice about how we feel).

Of course, I’m not the first person to say any of this. There has been a long and detailed discussion of consent and agency in the fields of performer training, physical education, sex education and sexual health.  For those of you interested in education, I highly recommend Heather Piper’s edited collections Touch in Sports Coaching and Physical Education and The Journal of Consent-Based Performance Practice. For those of you interested in consent in the context of sex and interpersonal relationships, I strongly recommend Katherine Angel’s Tomorrow Sex Will be Good Again and Meg-John Barker and Justin Hancock’s Enjoy Sex: How, When and IF You Want To.  (There’s lots more.)

As you can imagine, there’s a lot to discuss here, so I’ve limited this week’s lesson to just one of the suggestions I made above. The lesson invitates you to spend time observing discomfort – which I think is maybe the most important skill needed for processing and responding to uncomfortable situations. You’ll need a space where you can lie down.

If you want to take this further, you might spend some time writing down some of the feelings you experienced in the lesson. As I note above, many of us would benefit from opportunities to practise translating our feelings into words that we can share with each other. It’s definitely not something that was prioritised in my education. And, as my awkward workshop experience demonstrates, it’s something I still need to practise.