Becoming animal: Children's physical play and dance improvisation as transformative activities that generate novel meanings

Abstract This article addresses the transformative potential of children's physical play and dance improvisation. Using the enactive approach as a theoretical framework, it is argued that play and dance improvisation trigger novel sense-making capabilities by a deep engagement with the environment. Both activities give rise to transformative forces, ways of becoming that create openings and passages through which one re-engages and re-connects with the environment. This article combines theoretical reflection with artistic practice. By intermingling the thinking with the doing, I hope to gain embodied insights in underlying mechanisms of both play and dance improvisation. First, I discuss the concept of transformation. Then I explore how the enactive approach can be helpful in understanding the emergence of new values and meanings in both play and dance improvisation through dynamic coupling. From here I move to my artistic practice. I present an auto-ethnographic research that consists of two events. The first event is a spontaneous play event of my 12-year-old daughter that serves as an entrance point to examine animal becomings as transformative forces. The second event is an improvised dance solo, in which I re-enact the animal becomings of my daughter. The aim is to grasp, in a corporeal sense, the transformative forces that are at work here.