During my two weeks of rehearsal at Centro la Fenice in Modena, Italy, I worked on two movement tasks, Intimidation and Moving the Goalposts. You can read about my thoughts behind the intimidation task here: https://www.emmaready.one/secondguessingblog/intimidation
“Fear and confusion are central to our understanding of coercive control; it is living in a world of moving goal-posts, shifting sand; it is like constantly walking on eggshells. It is a world of everyday terror.”
https://www.cedarnetwork.org.uk/about/what-cedar-achieves/what-is-coercive-control/
For the Moving the Goalposts task, I extended the work I had begun in June 2018 when I took part in a one day residency as part of Leith Festival at Custom House, Leith. One way the abuser moves the goalposts is by imposing and enforcing a set of rules that are particular to the victim. Once the victim feels they know the rules, the abuser will change them without warning. Changing the rules, or moving the goalposts, is a tactic used by the abuser to keep the victim on edge, hypervigilant and walking on eggshells. I explored these tactics in a physical manner, using cushions as ‘goalposts’. I started by travelling with a pattern of movement towards one cushion, then to the other. I would end up kicking a cushion so it moved to another part of the space, and I would have to change direction in order to reach it the next time. This meant that the movement also had to stretch or shrink, and as I randomly kicked the cushion, I never knew where I would have to go next. This led to me becoming tired and disoriented, mirroring the emotional effects moving the goalposts has on victims.
In Italy, I replicated this task without using cushions as props. I devised a new pattern of movement and tried to take it into different areas of the space. It was more difficult to imagine where the cushions would be, which I thought would add to the feel of confusion as I danced. When I performed this task with the cushions, the movement naturally changed as I chased the ‘goalposts’, without the cushions I had to imagine how the movement would change. I found this more difficult and struggled to create something that made sense. I think I was also too focused on the details of the movement which precluded me from exploring and expressing the emotions of the task. I decided to rethink this task and do some more research before beginning the next block of rehearsals.