Dancing with Chronic Pain: Introduction

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Hello:

Take however long you need to settle in to where you are.

You may be on your own . . . with a friend, carer, nurse, partner, lover, pet, patient, family member . . . with colleagues, collaborators, pain clinic members, students, people you know, people you have not met until now . . . or in some other formation.

You could be inside, outside, at home, at work. You could be in an office, hospital, dance studio, classroom, café. You might be in your bed, on a sofa, in a wheelchair, in the park, up a mountain, resting against a tree . . . or somewhere else.

Wherever you are and however you are feeling it is perfect. Welcome.

You are invited to interact with, and experience, this research archive in ways that are most comfortable, caring and pleasurable for you :

your body and mind are welcome here.

You can sit, stand, lie down, stretch, lean, move around. You can stim, snack, drink, tic, make noise, look away, close your eyes.

You can engage with as much or as little of the material here as you wish. You can leave it and come back.

Take your time. Rest.

Try out a task, score, idea, intention. Journal. Let thoughts meander.

Read slowly. Follow momentum when it comes.

Allow yourself to breathe with the images, words, questions, concepts, discussions, perspectives.

Be led by your curiosities.

Hold the approaches and practices lightly. There is no pressure to understand them fully or be completely faithful to them. It is all allowed here.

Respond to the content in any way you wish: writing, drawing, moving, going for a walk, going for a ride or spin, looking up references, taking a long bath, chatting to a friend . . . expand the concept of study.

Attend to your body . . . thinking can emerge from it.

Feel free to agree, disagree, question, understand, misunderstand, explore, query.

You do not need to be a polite viewer. Use this research archive in ways that are most useful, interesting and inspiring for you.

Here. Chronic pain is welcomed in.

Pain is allowed to take up space.

Your pain, your experience, your body . . . can take up space.

Permission is given for pain can to take centre stage.

Your moods, emotions, feelings . . . are welcome.

This space does not merely accept you but needs you to be you for it to be itself. This space shakes its head at pressure and judgement.

It wants another way.

This is a space to rest into your body, to acknowledge yourself however you are, and to settle in to the richness of listening to pain.

Welcome to this work.

Let it be catching.

Context:

Dancing with Chronic Pain is a practice-led research project that explores dance practices and chronic pain. The aim is to develop new movement approaches by and for chronic pain bodies, and to develop creative practices that come directly from chronic pain lived experience.

I’m Dr Sarah Hopfinger (she/her) - a queer disabled dance artist and researcher who works across choreography, live art, performance, disability/crip practice, and ecology. I have lived with chronic back and neurological pain for over 20 years (Degenerative Disc Disease). Until recently I related to my pain solely as a barrier and hindrance to my life and work. Over the past 5 years I have been exploring what it means to turn towards my pain differently and how to work creatively with it.

// How can my pain be an artistic collaborator?

// What kind of dance aesthetic emerges when I work with the uniqueness of how my body moves and what it needs?

// What if the limitations and possibilities of my chronic pain body are the creative parameters for dancing?

To explore these questions further, I collaborated with four other disabled dance artists who live and work creatively with chronic pain: Raquel Meseguer Zafe (she/her), Laura Fisher (they/she), Amy Rosa (they/she) and Tanja Erhart (she/her). Through in-person and online residencies and interviews with these artists in various combinations, we collaboratively explored what dancing with pain can be. This work took place slowly, in small increments, between July 2018 and April 2022:

// October 2018 // 3 day residency // The Work Room

// Glasgow // Raquel Meseguer Zafe and Sarah Hopfinger //

// July 2019 // 5 day residency // Trinity // Bristol // Raquel Meseguer Zafe and Sarah Hopfinger //

// November 2021 // 3 day online residency // Raquel Meseguer Zafe, Laura Fisher, Amy Rosa, Tanje Erhart and Sarah Hopfinger //

// November 2021 // one-on-one online interviews // Raquel Meseguer Zafe, Laura Fisher and Amy Rosa //

// April 2022 // 5 day residency // Studio // Lenzie // Raquel Meseguer Zafe, Laura Fisher and Sarah Hopfinger //

Three main approaches for working creatively with chronic pain emerged: caring movements; cripping choreography; and following pleasure. These approaches are shared through three case studies, where each case study is a curated selection of materials from across the residencies and interviews. The words, practices, intentions, scores and dialogues are directly taken from transcripts recording the dialogues between us during the residencies and interviews. The images are from the Trinity residency. I wrote the critical analysis of key terms and studio reflections in response to the residencies.

I began this research with a hunch that chronic pain experience contains knowledge and expertise that is relevant, worth listening to, and pertinent to the times we are living in.

The approaches and practices shared in the case studies are about how we can creatively ‘stay with the trouble’ (Haraway 2016) : how we can dance with what is unwelcome and creatively collaborate with pain in dance and everyday life.

This work is about embracing the spectrum of chronic pain experience: the difficulties, hardships, fragility, unpredictability, lessons, insights, strengths, even joys.

I hope this work holds open the door for people to relate with pain beyond treating it solely as a problem and hindrance.

I hope it offers relief, energy, curiosity and alternative ways of dancing, thinking, knowing, being.

I hope it shares a sensibility that is helpful, expansive, opening.

Dancing with Chronic Pain is funded by the Carnegie Trust through a Research Incentive Grant. I am a researcher at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.

Footage from Trinity Centre: Bristol, England.

Yielding to the pain score: Raquel and Sarah (5mins)

Dancing with Chronic Pain is a . . .

. . . ongoing unfinished research archive

. . . guide to softly explore what it means to work creatively with chronic pain

. . . invitation to boldly turn towards pain as a collaborator

. . . resource to shamelessly dance with pain

. . . permission to quietly let go of thinking your body should be a certain way

. . . provocation to gently embrace your body as it is

. . . strategy to generously work with your body in its rich complexities, needs, qualities

. . . prompt to experiment without judgement in playful and delicate ways

. . . offering to fall (back) in love with movement, dance, your body

Dancing with Chronic Pain is for . . .

. . .

anyone with chronic pain

. . .

anyone who is unwell, ill, sick

anyone who is close to or knows someone with a chronic condition

. . .

. . . dancers, choreographers, performance-makers

. . . researchers and students in dance and performance

. . . pain researchers . . . pain medical specialists . . . nurses, doctors, carers . . . pain patients

. . . and anyone interested in the concept and practice of dancing with pain

Scores:

During the April 2022 residency with Laura Fisher and Raquel Meseguer Zafe, we explored and experimented with scores for our chronic pain bodies.

The motif ‘a score for’ comes directly from a score that Laura Fisher developed in their own practice: A Score for a Sore and Tired Body. They shared this practice with Raquel and I, and continues to share it with others in their ongoing work. Inspired by Laura’s approach, we created more score titles, which appear in each case study.

You may wish to dance in response to a score or you could create your own score to explore.

The scores are for moving in everyday life, in your home, in your dance practice, when you are in pain, when you are not in pain, when you are upset, bored, hopeless, excited, lost, enthusiastic, confident, unsure . . . they are ways of acknolwedging, giving credit to, and working with the spectrum of chronic pain experience.

When responding to a score from one of the case studies or your own score, hold the score lightly . . . you can drift away, around, back and forth . . . see what happens . . . see what qualities of being and moving emerge by embracing your body as it is.

The following frames for the scores were developed by myself, Raquel and Laura.

A score as: . . . something to be in dialogue with . . . a way in to attending and listening to your body . . . a beginning

. . . a poetic possibility

. . . an interruption

. . . a time frame for exploring . . . something to be in tension with . . . something to be resisted . . . a way to get to know your body today . . . a way to love stillness . . . a way to love the possibilities and limits of your body