Embodied Critisim¶
Embodied Criticism is a practice-based research project that investigates how the body, specifically movement and dance in my case, can operate as a critical tool within public space. Rather than positioning critique through language, representation, or spectacle, this project locates critique in embodied action: in hesitation, rhythm, proximity, discomfort, and presence. Even though my project started off as a movement exploration, it quickly shifted to public movement.
The project emerges from my lived experience of navigating public space as a gendered body shaped by social expectations of control, productivity, and visibility. From an early age, movement has been regulated where, how, and when it is acceptable to move. Dance is often permitted only within designated spaces or when framed as performance, fitness, or content. Outside of these frames, spontaneous movement becomes suspicious, shameful, or inappropriate.
This project begins from that friction.
Manifesto¶
I have joined dance classes, meet-ups, and movement gatherings where we learned new choreographies, techniques, or simply moved through improvisation. Each gathering carries its own agenda and boundaries, even when it is improvisation. Except for those moments when we just hear music and instinctively accompany its rhythm. Each time, I feel the same uncomfortable feeling where everything I learned so far tells me to stop but I simply feel that I want to follow the rhythm.
These learnings are deeply embodied, passed down from society: we learned that good girls don’t dance in public, they jog for productivity, stretch for posture, and sway only when no one’s watching; we learned how to act to be accepted. We’ve been told to sit still, behave, and smile politely while the world burns out our nervous systems. Every moment I’ve ignored my impulse to move has made me feel controlled. That same sense of control seeps into other parts of my life, unnoticed but persistent. Yet, every time I let go allowing movement to guide me, I feel both shame and unexpected relief. A release that remains, shaping the rest of my day, until I ignore it again.
My auto-ethnographic exploration of movement in public spaces emerges from the tension between inner rhythm and societal tempo. I observe my body as both subject and tool—understanding how motion regulates my stress, how visibility triggers shame, and how the act of moving publicly becomes an act of reclaiming presence.
Public movement is only glorified when it’s filmed and put on social media, movement becomes Instagrammable in the eyes of watchers. Public movement is an act of vulnerability, it’s shameful, powerful, terrifying, uncomfortable, and necessary. In an environment that values speed and productivity over well-being, movement as reflection without purpose becomes rebellion. We feel caged because we live by rules that were taught, not chosen. I believe the body remembers what the mind forgets, and the body knows when the mind is lost in a 9 to 5 trance.
I refuse to move only when the world allows it. I will dance because I feel like it and because I am tired of being still.
I invite you to; slow down listen to your body notice the world around you notice the rhythm of your environment rather than the voices telling you to stop. dance like nobody’s monetizing it. I invite you to feel uncomfortable, and ashamed. Use dance as a method, a meditation, and a manifesto.
- Each one of us is a dancer.
- There is no hierarchy of movement and nothing is unimportant.
- Resistance exists only with struggle. Movement must be an attack on the accepted learnings.
- Stress is not a badge of honor, it’s a symptom of control.
Auto-Etnographic Research¶
Embodied Criticism is grounded in my auto-ethnographic research. I use my own body as both subject and research instrument, observing how movement regulates stress, how visibility triggers self-surveillance, and how public space conditions behavior.
Throughout the process, i moved, jumped, danced in various places; my home, in the park, in school, in the mountains, with friends and alone. The research unfolds through repeated movement, reflections, documentation, and analysis on my shame and heartbeat. My main focus was not only on external reactions, but to internal states: hesitation, grounding, fear, pleasure, shame, relief. Movement becomes a method for sensing how power operates through infrastructure, social norms, and unspoken expectations.
Public movement, in this context, is not entertainment. It is a form of inquiry. A way to test how bodies are allowed to exist—and how they might exist otherwise.
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