Elise Mae Nuding is an artist-researcher working with dance, choreography, and writing. Her practice-based research has a transdisciplinary orientation, and current areas of exploration include somatic-linguistic entanglements, improvisation practices, and Contact Improvisation. She is curious about the slippages between artistic and pedagogic practices, and teaches internationally in contexts spanning higher education, professional training, and a variety of other settings. Most recently, she held the position of lecturer in dance at the University of Gothenburg between 2022-24.

I am a crunchy autumn leaf; your touch has made me so. My flesh cracks and crinkles as
your hands send me whirlwinding through space. I climb into your castle, more polar bear
than pillow. Touch melds. I forget whether it is you or I who are the balloon, but rubbing
hands conjure up static surfaces. I lose clarity about where my touch ends and yours begins.
Fantastical hybrids emerge—ship sails billow into balloons and lollipop-flavoured french fries
give us a taste of the nuances of touch. Experimental fingers ask questions that we together
try to answer. Clumsily.


* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *


I am forced to admit that I do not know how to touch you in the way you ask me to. It is a
non-verbal admission. But in admitting this I get to grips (literally) with another meaning of
the word.

[admit: to allow to enter; to allow the possibility of]

What do we allow to be possible through this touch? What do we want to allow the possibility
of?


* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *


Language touches. I see your lips move and I hear what you say. I believe that I understand
what you mean (although I ought to keep in mind the possibility that I do not). I imagine that I
can feel the vibrations from your words moving through the air, passing through my
membranes. Language touches (me). But although the soundwaves do resonate, in the end
I am touched by words not because they are vibrations but rather because they are more
than the sum of their sounds and syllables. By which I mean they offer a rich complexity of
meanings, associations, images, and sensory affects—what I like to call kaleidoscopic
unfoldings of language.

Language touches?

A bit flustered, I babble some kind of reply-non-reply. Your quizzical look tells me that you
are not sure if you understand what I mean. Or at least that you have your own thoughts
about it.


* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *


You navigate my sediments, subjecting me to intense pressure and compression. Soon I will
navigate yours, carefully at first and then more recklessly as we dig ourselves in deeper.
Compression: to press together. To press, together. As your weight presses me down, I
recognise the sense of confusion that arises when pleasure and pain collide. It is an
emotional confusion, arising from caution and tinged with (rational) fear. But my flesh doesn’t
care for these niceties and leans into it, greedily. Sweating, shaking. Stable bedrock
becomes unstable ground and repercussions of the moving terrain ripple through my
structure, causing me to restructure. To respond. Oscillating between survival and
collaboration, we discover that they are sometimes the same thing. Except when they are
not, and I am forced to let you fall unceremoniously into the water. Squish, squash, splash.
You re-emerge, clinging to my contours, hanging in the balance between desperation and
care. 1


* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *


Hours later, impressions remain. It is as if the material states of my body have been
destabilised and set in motion, with thick, viscous layers mobilising under the surface.
Pressure creating heat, heat shifting state, new textures forming. Hard and soft at the same
time. Not quite liquid or solid. But activated. Unstuck. The density of my flesh is altered.
Imprints remain in memory foam flesh, enduring. Intryck, avtryck.


* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *


Pink heart post-it notes map out the space through memory.

As you practice presenting, I think about the impressions a practice might leave on a body
over time. I think about the impressions a language might leave on a body over time. I think
about the impressions that a body might leave on a practice, or a language, over time. I think
about differing durations of such processes– the lifetime of a human, the lifetime of a
geological formation, the lifetime of a language.

As you practice presenting, I think, not for the first time, how many ‘p’ words permeate our
niche field– practice, process, product, performance, project, present(ation), participation,
presence. Did I mention practice?

As you present your practice, I let my still-molten flesh give in to gravity while the post-it note
beside me declares: YOU ARE STRONG.


________________________
1 Thanks to F for their articulation of what arose as a combination of desperation and care.

WORKSHOP BY STINA NYBERG

WRITTEN BY ELISE MAE NUDING