As a dancer I think about birds and brittle-stars.

In describing the kind of not-quite-conscious behaviour of bird flight, philosopher and magician David Abram refers to distributed sentience—an “intelligence of the limbs”. Abram describes an avian way of knowing and experiencing environment that is distributed diffusely across the muscles, bones, nerves and feathers of wings and body—as well as the central nervous system and head. This allows for the bird to respond in minute articulation to all kinds of meteorological and environmental situations?

Echinoderms are the group of organisms that includes starfish, sea cucumbers, sea urchins, and brittle stars. They do not have heads—though their nervous system is centralised as a ring-shaped organ, with a radial nerve chord for each limb. Within this group, Brittle-stars in particular embody a kind of distributed sentience, with each limb reaching, feeling, curling, palpating, and investigating its surroundings. The limbs do the thinking.

In the shadows, as a dancer for hire in gay nightclubs, I think about bird wings and brittle-stars. In durational dances I imagine my arms as furling and unfurling, and the hair on my forearms as feathers or bristles. In doing so I am learning about the distributed intelligence of the human body, its capacity to feel-out and respond, and its relationship to the substance of space, time, light and sound.

The bodies of Echinoderms include a madreporite.

The madreporite is not-quite an orifice. It is a grate-like covering that is also an opening—something like the grate at the bottom of a bathtub.

 Through the madreporite, seawater flows into an echinoderms water-vascular system, pumped around smaller and smaller chambers until it eventually leaves the animal’s body via tube-like feet along the underside of the animal’s legs. This flow of water allows the animal to control its limbs, hold onto surfaces, and move about the seabed.

A brittle star’s external environment flows through its madreporite, into its body, and out of its feet. The organism’s environment is inseparable from the dance of its limbs.

On stage I imagine the entirety of my skin as madreporite. Photons enter my body via strobes and spotlights, rebounded from the mirrors of a disco ball. Sub-woofers push basslines through invisible chambers along my limbs, my body is flooded with smoke and sound.

The nightclub surrounds me but also moves me, ushering me forward and backward, a dip or a twirl. I am moving within and through it, as it moves within and through me.

The gyrating arc of a hip contains the hardwood floor beneath my feet.

The nightclub itself erupts from my fingertips with the flick of a wrist.

Object details:
Spirit specimen; Echinoderms, various species
Cape York, QLD
NHE.119