Abstract This 120-minute movement workshop emerges from a practice-based PhD project investigating response as a choreographic strategy in relation to the movement practices of pioneers of modern dance in Poland and Germany. Through historical research, I encountered the semiotic foundations of Ausdruckstanz, rooted in the semantic density of the German language. In developing a choreographic response, I began an intensive studio practice that reconfigured my understanding of a forgotten kinetic language.
The workshop draws on Kirsten Seeligmüller’s research identifying 113 German verbs related to Sinken – such as Neigen, Versinken, Umkippen, and Abflauen. These verbs operate as ideophonic carriers of movement semantics: they activate subtle distinctions of movement qualities that exceed direct translation. Unfamiliar with the meaning of German kinetic verbs, my practice was informed by Johannes Birringer’s motion-based interpretation.
My gradual comprehension of this linguistic concept and the multiplicity of “falling” became emblematic of lineages in which the conceptual engine of Ausdruckstanz was gradually detached from its linguistic foundations and continued to circulate as a bodily form in contemporary dance, often without conscious awareness of its origins.
I invite participants to delve into the practices developed through my research thesis: first, to engage in kinesthetic resonance with the material and develop kinesthetic imagination as a research strategy; later, to progress towards a movement choir — an archival method used by pioneers of German modern dance — to experience descent as both a somatic event and a creative act. We will reflect on how Sinken examines embodied knowledge and juxtaposes processes of technogenetic homogenisation and aesthetic standardisation. The session positions artistic research not as representation of history but as its kinesthetic reactivation — offering a reparative practice that reclaims fragility as a creative force.