Spiritual Herstories

Description

This is a collection of works by internationally recognized women leading the field of dance research and spirituality across the globe. Building on current soulful research scholarship in the discipline, these authors offer extensive and detailed research into spirituality, dance, gender, religion, somatics and women-centred dance research. Written by women dance scholars in higher education, this evocative and illuminating work highlights a growing discourse on gendered leadership in dance research. Spiritual Herstories provides new pathways and innovative research methods that respond to the educational needs of women emerging in male-centric socio-historic research traditions.

Preface: Dancing Incantations – Celeste Snowber

Introduction – Amanda Williamson and Barbara Sellers-Young

Part One: Patriarchal Critique and Spiritual Feminist Perspectives – Amanda Williamson  

1: Woman, body, earth and spirit – Linda Hartley 

2: Informed by the Goddess – Jane Bacon

3: Until The Lions – Jayne Stevens

4: Symbols of the Goddess in Balkan Women’s Dance – Laura Shannon

5: Spirals and circles – Amanda Williamson

6: Soul loss and retrieval – Eline Kieft 

7: Reclaiming our innate vitality – Caroline Frizell

Part Two: Somatic Ethnography, Diasporic Spiritualities and Postcolonial Voices – Barbara Sellers-Young 

8: Dancing bodies and ritual spaces – Yvonne Daniel

9: ‘Niimikaage’ into the twenty-first century – Sandra Laronde and Elaine Keillor

10: Unearthing the presence of African women dancers in Nyanza province, 1900–40 – Seonagh Kummer 

11: Love Poems to God – Veta Goler

12: Dancing the Four Directions – Rosalie Jones

13: Souls, soil and soma – Ojeya Cruz Banks and Miriam Marler

14: Dancing through myself – Barbara Sellers-Young

Part Three: Spiritual Journeys in Dance Research – Amanda Williamson and Barbara Sellers-Young

15: Writing Why We Dance – Kimerer L. LaMothe 

16: Mystery, magic and the mundane – Celeste Snowber

17: Creativity as medicine – Janet Lynn Roseman

18: Dancing evolutionary spirituality – Cheryl Pallant

19: Attunement and evanescence – Sondra Fraleigh

20: Awakening the spirit through dance, somatics and Scaravelli Yoga – Sara Reed

21: Spirituality in Aurelia Baumgartner’s Tanzphilosophie – Aurelia Baumgartner and Daniel Meyer-Dinkgräfe

 

Sujets

• Biblical Biography
• Performing Arts
• Philosophie et théologie
• Religión
• Live Art
• Spiritualism
• Choreography
• Performance art
• General officer
• Gender
• Spirituality
• Feminism
• Dance
• Art
• Religion
• General
• Cultural Studies
• Performance

Informations

• Publié par: Intellect Books
• Date de parution: 15 janvier 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781789380835
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 4 Mo

Extrait

First published in the UK in 2020 by
Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK
First published in the USA in 2020 by
Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Copyright © 2020 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Cover image: Thank you to ‘Red Sky’ and Sandra Laronde, a member of the Teme-Augama-Anishnaabe (People of the Deep Water), and photographer Don Lee for offering this stunning photo of Jinny Jacinto with horse skull ‘Tono’.
Copy editor: MPS
Cover designer: Alex Szumlas
Production manager: Jessica Lovett
Typesetting: Contentra Technologies
Print ISBN: 978-1-78938-082-8
ePDF ISBN: 978-1-78938-084-2
ePUB ISBN: 978-1-78938-083-5
Printed and bound by Short Run.
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This is a peer-reviewed publication.
‘Dr. Amanda Williamson and Professor Barbara Seller-Young’s new collection of writings, co-authored by pioneering female academics from across continents, on dance and embodied spirituality, is shimmying in my heart.
Spiritual Herstories emphatically shakes the grounds of the academy. It challenges the assumptions of positivist methodologies with embodied insights, research of the imagination and creative moving investigations. It queries Europeanist thinking with post- colonial discourse, new historiographies, and offers re-evaluations of pre-patriarchal spiritual traditions in contemporary contexts. Feminist epistemologies are honoured and also critically examined. Written by female academics from Native American, African-American, European, and Pacific traditions, and from diverse fields of dance studies, (somatics, philosophy, ethnography, theology and thealogy, psychotherapy and more), this publication shares interdisciplinary approaches and listens to transnational and transcultural voices, particularly female voices, to create a wide dancing circle, where academic writing can be moving and bodied with soulful knowledge; and where academic questioning is inspirited.
We need inspired and fresh approaches to academic knowing and to spirituality and embodiment in Higher Education, which makes this text an essential resource for scholars, students, thinkers, feelers, movers and makers – artists, dancers and seekers. ‘Spiritual Herstories’ is a key text for those who want to explore how spiritual values and experiences underpin creativity, or drive ethical and humanistic standpoints in research (secular and sacred). This is essential reading for those who need to refresh and re-vitalise our current cultural ecologies.’
June Gersten Roberts has contributed to the Higher Education Landscape in the UK through extensive lecturing, through making films and her publications on Dance, Health and Spirituality. She is a freelance dance maker and video artist, researcher and author, and recently retired Senior Lecturer in Dance at Edge Hill University. Her most recent research is focused on the ageing body, captured through text and film.
Contents
Preface: Dancing incantations
Celeste Snowber
Introduction
Amanda Williamson and Barbara Sellers-Young
P ART 1: S PIRITUAL F EMINIST P ERSPECTIVES ,
A MANDA W ILLIAMSON
Chapter 1: Woman, body, earth and spirit: Journeys of descent through myth, embodiment and movement practice
Linda Hartley
Chapter 2: Informed by the Goddess: Explicating a processual methodology
Jane Bacon
Chapter 3: Until The Lions : Amba’s story
Jayne Stevens
Chapter 4: Symbols of the Goddess in Balkan women’s dance
Laura Shannon
Chapter 5: Sensing her: Matrifocal symbolism in the field of Somatic Movement Dance Education and Therapy
Amanda Williamson
Chapter 6: Soul loss and retrieval: Restoring wholeness through dance
Eline Kieft
Chapter 7: Reclaiming our innate vitality: Bringing embodied narratives to life through Dance Movement Psychotherapy
Caroline Frizell
P ART 2: S OMATIC E THNOGRAPHY , D IASPORIC S PIRITUALITIES AND P OSTCOLONIAL V OICES ,
B ARBARA S ELLERS -Y OUNG
Chapter 8: Dancing bodies and ritual spaces: Diaspora practices of transcendence and conversion
Yvonne Daniel
Chapter 9: ‘ Niimikaage’ into the twenty-first century
Sandra Laronde and Elaine Keillor
Chapter 10: Unearthing the presence of African women dancers in Nyanza province, 1900–40
Seónagh Kummer
Chapter 11: Love Poems to God : The contemplative artistry of Dianne McIntyre
Veta Goler
Chapter 12: Dancing the Four Directions: The spirit of intuition
Rosalie M. Jones
Chapter 13: Souls, soil and soma: Memoirs of Japan and Guåhan/Guam in (post)colonial times
Ojeya Cruz Banks and Miriam Marler
Chapter 14: Dancing through myself: Memory, identity, spirituality
Barbara Sellers-Young
P ART 3: S PIRITUAL J OURNEYS IN D ANCE R ESEARCH ,
A MANDA W ILLIAMSON AND B ARBARA S ELLERS -Y OUNG
Chapter 15: Writing Why We Dance : The predicament, pitfalls, potential and promise of writing about dance and spirituality
Kimerer L. LaMothe
Chapter 16: Mystery, magic and the mundane: A dancer’s journey in the liturgy of life
Celeste Snowber
Chapter 17: Creativity as medicine
Janet Lynn Roseman
Chapter 18: Dancing evolutionary spirituality
Cheryl Pallant
Chapter 19: Attunement and evanescence
Sondra Fraleigh
Chapter 20: Awakening the spirit through dance, somatics and Scaravelli Yoga
Sara Reed
Chapter 21: Spirituality in Aurelia Baumgartner’s Tanzphilosophie
Aurelia Baumgartner and Daniel Meyer-Dinkgräfe
Notes on Contributors
Index
Preface
Dancing incantations
Celeste Snowber
Imagine sitting down to a grand gourmet feast, filled with the richest colours, textures and sumptuous flavours from all over the world, and allowing every combination of taste to infuse one another. This is the experience of reading Spiritual Herstories: Call of the Soul in Dance Research – so ripe with the gestures and textures of soul and body that one needs time to marinate – and be marinated in the feast. This book is steeped in diverse, cultural, somatic understandings of spirit and soul. Post reading, I continue to be catapulted into gratitude for these writers, and their lives, immersed in so many kinds of somatic and dance practices, research methodologies and insights. These are not only insights, but also bodysights , inviting us to dwell in the terrain of fecundity.
The original meaning of the word preface stems back to the Old French meaning, ‘opening part of sung devotions’ and the Latin to ‘say beforehand’. This anthology is an act of devotion to what has often been absent in the canon – the exquisite interconnection between dance, soul and mind within scholarship. It proclaims that one does not speak, but dance, and it is living through and in the body that informs words. Here is a rewriting of history, a herstory, and a cross-fertilization that goes beyond gender and is both diverse and inclusive. We are offered a new lens and interpretation of history. This is an invitation that enchants us back to soul, celebrating herstories through spiralizing knowledges. The word ‘incantation’ comes from the Latin incantare , which means to enchant, and reminds us that ritual has always been associated with chanting and music, and I would extend that to dance. So, this preface is a dancing incantation, singing the praises of Spiritual Herstories.
Be prepared to let this anthology sit with you for a long time. Each chapter stands alone in its beauty, depth and breadth of knowledge; it is truly a transdisciplinary conversation, which draws you back over and over again to nourish your whole being. Amanda Williamson and Barbara Sellers-Young have brought together a multi-disciplinary transformative work. Their comprehensive introductions weave inter-relationality between chapters. The gift is to witness the interconnections among authors. These authors represent not only themselves, but are steeped in the incommensurable traditions of dance, and even those who have gone before us are woven seamlessly into the text. We are found in each other’s stories, and I invite you to sit at this table and be nourished. Not only sit – but also move, shift, breathe, sigh and dance through the pages.
Astounding in its diversity in both form and content in the way spirituality is articulated, the reader is invited into what has been present for so long, and yet absent. I am reminded of Kimerer LaMothe’s stating, ‘its absence haunts at the centre’ when referring to a philosophy of bodily becoming. For too long there has been an absence of serious expressions of spirit, soul and body in the vast amount of dance literature, and particularly an absence of women’s spiritualties. Here, in this anthology, women draw on a variety of fields and dare to inhabit the realms of mystery and the unknown. Seldom has there been such a mosaic of writers in a collection, where spirituality is grounded in the embodiment of what it means to be a whole person, including not just the ‘light’, but the ‘shadow’ and pain of the sacred.
Spiritual Herstories does not only have ramifications for dance studies, but for all who want to explore what it means to be fully human and attentive to working holistically, ecologically and ethically in the world. More than ever, we need a somatic and embodied scholarship, rooted in the pulse and rhythm of the body, the wisdom that seeps from earth and sky, and the bones and skin of our own bodies. Cosmology and ecology meet in this anthology, where visceral practice invigorates disciplines.
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