Abstract:
The Kenning is an experimental and performative essay, composed from three strands of memoir. The first locates the somatic experience of Tai Chi in the Irish countryside, the second describes the use of the ancient Irish language of Ogham in a site-specific choreography, and the third is about growing up in Kent, England. The three strands compose a contemporary kenning—a way to say something poetically, which also casts a space of the unsaid/unsayable. Crafted as a series of elliptical scenes, these three narrative threads entwine thematically, somatically and locatedly, forming multiple and resonant connections, in particular between ancient and contemporary worlds, between an English childhood, an ancient Irish language, and choreography.