Taking into account the critical approaches that characterize movement and dance studies as well as an exhaustive reading of the evidence, this paper examines various aspects of the Salian ceremony and its relation to the complex concept of ‘Romanness’. For the past century, scholars have questioned the functions and contexts of these rites, but the importance of choreography as a channel for religious participation has been largely overlooked, especially in what concerns to the relationship between performance, territory and visibility. For (...) this phenomenological approach to the rite, I will consider a series of somatic and kinesthetic processes that explain the spectators’ involvement in the dance. We will also emphasize the potential of this choreography to reflect and create the identity of the Roman elite in the construction of the citizen body. (shrink)

This essay extends the epistemology of practice put forward in *What a Body Can Do: Technique as Knowledge, Practice as Research* through a detailed application of Hans-Jörg Rheinberger’s social and historical epistemology to a 2011 solo performance by the author at Movement Research in New York City. Whereas *What a Body Can Do* surveys a range of historical and contemporary practices, this article attempts for the first time to enact a close technical and epistemic reading of the author’s own embodied (...) research. Eleven minutes of practice are analyzed in what the author, following Rheinberger, calls the phenomenotechnical mode. The article works to distinguish this mode of analysis from more prevalent approaches such as those associated with phenomenology, semiotics, and cognitive studies. In addition to suggesting how a rigorous phenomenotechnical analysis might be applied to one’s own embodied practice, the article offers insight into a specific line of embodied inquiry in post-Grotowskian song-action, with supporting photo and video documentation. (shrink)