Anna Halprin’s ecosomatics in the 1960s and boredom as environmental participation

This article argues that ecosomatics informed Anna Halprin’s work during the 1960s. Following a definition of ecosomatics grounded in current theoretical frameworks, it aims at showing that Anna Halprin developed her own set of conceptual tools to approach the interaction between body and environment. Various intellectuals who influenced her art point to a porous boundary between the interior and the exterior of the body – whether from the standpoint of philosophy as in the case of John Dewey, psychology as regards Fritz Perls or architecture with respect to her husband Lawrence Halprin. The artistic and cultural context of that decade also offers tools for thinking about and experimenting with an ecological conception of the relationship between bodies and space. Moreover, Anna Halprin is not the only choreographer dancing outside traditional theatre spaces during that characteristic moment of the emergence of environmental ethics. Finally, a creative critique of a happening that took place in a San Francisco park in 1966 seeks to capture the full range of the spectator experience it engendered, from boredom and distraction to participation.