Affective Somaesthetics: Reflections on Flowing and Feeling with Fire Dancers in Thailand

This paper reflects on the entanglement of embodiment and affect in ethnographic research with male fire dancers in Southern Thailand’s tourism industry. I explore my embodied learning with dancers, and my attempts to attune to the affects that structure their worlds and their artistry. Central to fire dancers’ art form is the cultivation of “flow” and particular energies that can be felt through this experience and aesthetic. I examine how my gendered embodiment affected how I moved in and through spaces with fire dancers, and my learning to sense and feel in new ways. The felt experiences and affects in fieldwork created opportunities for different bodily relationalities, including the sharing of embodied knowledge and affects, but they also created moments of rupture and disconnect. In conversation with concepts of affect, embodiment, and somaesthetics, this paper foregrounds “flow” as an affective and embodied methodology that highlights the relational nature of our engagements in the field.