Journal of Dance & Somatic Practices - Volume 11, Issue 2, 2019

This article describes a contemporary dance intervention among psychiatric outpatients with a diagnosis of mild-to-moderate depression. Five females participated in a pilot intervention, which was carried out twice a week over four consecutive weeks. During the intervention, the participants kept diaries about their personal experiences. The diaries were assessed using thematic content analysis. The dancing experience involved a combination of three elements: music, movement and creativity connected to the body. The qualitative findings were tentatively associated with positive mood over the short term. The participants experienced periods of relaxation, self-examination and elevated self-esteem during the session. Diary entries indicated that participating in contemporary dance may reduce mental anxiety and physical tension, and provide at least short-term symptomatic relief. Thus, participation in contemporary dance may be beneficial in the process of recovery from depression.

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.

This article draws from a collaboration between Rambert School of Dance, University of Kent, University College London Institute of Education and an anthropological filmmaker. Together we took a creative and embodied approach to teaching reflective practice within a conservatoire to second-year dance students. In this article, we explore where this somatically inspired pedagogy sits within dance training. We discuss the nature of reflection for dance training, and in particular consider embodied reflective practice. Finally we offer effective methodologies for drawing out and capturing embodied practice.

This article shares methodological meanderings that sit at the intersection of embodiment and improvised dance ethnography. Comprised of a series of personal reflections on fieldwork, the query of ‘how does ethnography feel for the researcher?' is explored. While questions pertaining to feelings researchers encounter in the field have been probed with some depth in existing literature, these are not always connected to how the feelings of the researcher are embodied at a somatic level. Through sharing two narratives of challenging moments I have confronted in fieldwork, ideas around notions of embodiment, performing and fear, and violence and vulnerability are illuminated. Through unpacking how improvisational ethnography plays out from an embodied place, from my lived experiences as a dance researcher, there is the potential for fostering a more fully developed somatic understanding of ethnographic dance research as a practice.

This article will share the early stages of a research project about gardening and dance/embodiment, one that examines ideas of practice, activities and art. It is fragile, and a disclosing of a process in a way that we do not normally share: so often our writing is after a project or piece of research or art is completed. I am curious about the gentleness and vulnerability of revealing the first phase of something, of asking questions that are ongoing and not yet answered. I am also aware of an expanding of focus in my own life and work from dance to gardening, with all of the in-betweenness, processes and connections of that.

A practitioner's reflections on the personal and artistic journey undertaken in the creation and performance of These are not my Father's Shoes, an autobiographical performance inspired by the author's relationship with her father. Both the Halprin Life/Art Process and the RSVP cycles are referenced as part of the working process.