Inclined bodies that imagine

Abstract

This text links the trajectory of American choreographer Steve Paxton with specific aspects of the thinking of Adriana Cavarero and Donna Haraway. For decades, Paxton has researched the human body through the experience of walking, the study of gravity and the creation of organic compost. Based on the concept of inclination developed by Adriana Cavarero, as a relational model in which the self inclines, becomes destabilised and relates from a state of vulnerability, I will argue that this awareness allows us to re-experience our relationship with the body and, therefore, with the world. To incline, to feel gravity and to imagine, opens different perceptions. They make up a sensibility from which, as in the creation of organic compost and its microorganisms and microspecies, it is possible to affect a wider structure. Haraway states that we are all compost, which leads us to position ourselves closer to the earth and to think of ourselves as human beings, humus beings: spaces in which others can grow.