Choreographer Alain Platel trained as a remedial educationalist. He searches for a dance idiom that connects with the unconscious, the random and the uncontrolled. On this quest, he has worked with children with disabilities, taking inspiration from Gilles de la Tourette’s Syndrome and archive images that psychiatrist Arthur Van Gehuchten (1861-1914) made of the contorted, seemingly absurd movement patterns of his hysterical patients. Where is the boundary between bodily control and loss of control, between physical possession and being possessed? Using Alain Platel’s multi-faceted oeuvre as a guide, we look at places where dance and daily movement, whether intentional or not, embrace each other.