Two islands, a phenomenological and self-ethnographic research on the cultural impacts of the Somatic and Cuban dance techniques in the construction and expansion of a dancing body. / Claudia Hilda Rodriguez Pozo (2021)

Motivated by the dancer-maker’s need to expand her dancing vocabulary, the current research explores fundamental concepts of body cultural construction and bodily expansion. The researcher approaches these conceptions through past and present training experience within Somatic practice and Cuban technique to thoroughly analysed their impacts on her dancing body. Two islands solo piece, was the outcome resulting of these practical and theoretical process through which insights about body habitus, body expansion, as well as the uniqueness of Cuban and Somatic techniques and their possible intersections were reflected. A methodological approach based on Phenomenology, Self-ethnography as well as Scholarly Personal Narrative (SPN) methods allowed the researcher to lead this project from a first-person reflective and creative perspective.