Deep listening

a sensory technique to inhabit the darkness

Abstract

Deep Listening can be understood as a field of encounters between differences that build forms of relationship based on attention, sensitivity, and listening as ethical practices when intertwined. This approach invites openness to being transformed by space, by context — which is also culture — and by the entire sensory landscape that traverses the body. In this sense, listening becomes an embodied gesture of reflection on our modes of existence, opening paths for an active critique of hegemonic forms of perception, anchored in the centrality of the gaze, in certainties, and in Cartesian rationality. This article shows Deep Listening in its potential as an educational practice for the dancing body, while also articulating Afro-diasporic concepts and knowledge that help us understand imagination as a force for transformation. Originally developed in its sensory content by musician Pauline Oliveros and later deepened and recreated for the dancing body in the processes of Anikaya Dance Theater, Deep Listening expands here as a tool for creation and resistance, sustaining premises for interdependence and radical listening.