Landscape as dance partner: a somaesthetic exploration

The study is based on an interview with the Prague-based dancer and choreographer Zden Brungot Svíteková on her artistic research during a 2024 residency in Ilulissat, Greenland, a site marked by ancient rock formations and extreme climatic conditions. Through Zden´s explorations of movements in dialogue with “rock bodies” we encounter the possibility of treating the landscape not as mere inspiration but as an active partner, akin to a dance partner. The article explores how somatic and improvisational practices with geological formations reframe, disrupt, and reconfigure habitual bodily patterns and perceptions as well as what insights and modes of world-making arise when choreography responds to the materiality of geological formations. The analysis focuses on three themes: somatic practice as relational engagement, expanded perception and the extended body, and world-making with its ontological implications. Zden´s engagement with rocks, terrain, air, and atmosphere exemplifies somatic practice as relational responsiveness, in which perception expands, and the body becomes extended into its environment.