Enactive Embodiment Practice (EEP)
​​
"Enaction is the idea that organisms create their own experience through their actions. Organisms are not passive receivers of input from the environment, but are actors in the environment such that what they experience is shaped by how they act.” (Hutchins, 1996)
The Enactive Embodiment Practice emerges from Astrid Boons’ choreographic practice, offering a choreographic and educational approach that invites participants to explore diverse relationships between imagination, movement, and sensory awareness over extended, durational sessions. These sessions are designed to create a sense of timelessness and liminality, guiding participants into a space where the boundaries between self and environment, inner and outer experience, begin to blur.
While the term enaction offers a helpful way to describe its principles, the method grew out of artistic practice and exploration rather than theory, bridging embodied practice and creative methods. The connection to enaction emerged later through artistic research within creative processes, opening up new possibilities for exploring and further developing enactivist ideas in and through Boons’ choreographic practice.
This practice understands the body as an active source of meaning, where movement and sensation become ways of discovering oneself and relating to others. Through this process, physical movement is explored as something that emerges naturally, as the body’s expressive potential grows out of the interaction between sensory, imaginative, and relational experiences. By engaging deeply with both inner and outer sensory experiences, participants develop a multilayered and adaptive awareness of the present moment, exploring the ongoing exchange between their inner world and the environment around them.
This practice is designed for movers, educators, and choreographers seeking an immersive process to deepen their connection to their bodies, enrich their creative work, and explore how embodiment and movement can function as transformative acts.
​​
Astrid Boons has offered workshops and taught this practice at Nederlands Dans Theater, Opera Ballet Vlaanderen, Hessisches Staatsballett, Dance Theatre Heidelberg, The Norwegian Opera and Ballet, ArtEZ University of the Arts, Amsterdam University of the Arts, Royal Conservatory of Antwerp, Arts Umbrella, Nuova Officina della Danza, among others.