Research published in Dance, Movement & Spiritualities

Breathing and standing: Taijiquan as resonant subjectivity

Dance, Movement & Spiritualities June 1, 2024 Serena Lee

In describing experiences of learning and practising the Chinese internal martial art of 太極拳 taijiquan in the context of artistic research, this paper asks how this movement practice opens ways of producing knowledge. By focusing on breathing and standing, taijiquan works with 氣 qi, often translated as ‘breath’ or ‘energy’, which philosopher Tu Wei-Ming has called ‘the continuity of being’....

DOI: 10.1386/dmas_00064_1

Aesthetics and possession: Katherine Dunham’s ‘Shango’ and the Black Dance Performance tradition

Dance, Movement & Spiritualities June 1, 2024 Y. W. V. Hunter

In this article, I explore the aesthetic interconnectedness between Katherine Dunham’s ‘Shango’ and Haitian Vodou spirit possession (a sublime embodiment). I assert that Dunham’s ‘Shango’ catalyses an aesthetic of Black Dance Performance through the enactment of spirit possession as an aesthetic value within the choreography and Black Dance Performance largely. I employ an intertextual,...

DOI: 10.1386/dmas_00069_1

Breath. Space. Encounter. An interdisciplinary exploration of secular spirituality through the lenses of dance studies and psychoanalysis

Dance, Movement & Spiritualities June 1, 2024 Veronika Heller, J. Spiegel

In our interdisciplinary research tandem of dance studies and psychoanalysis, we explore our ‘access to the world’ by seeking out, shaping, questioning experiential practices and the reading of bodies in these cultural spaces. By integrating conceptual perspectives from psychoanalysis and dance studies as culture theories, we analyse secular spirituality, cultures of consciousness and their...

DOI: 10.1386/dmas_00063_1

Sing, O Muse: Vocality as contemplative practice

Dance, Movement & Spiritualities October 1, 2023 Misha Penton

My practice as a singer–composer explores the sonorous expressivity of poetic language in a relational multi-layered meaning-making process. Drawing on a studio-centred contemplative approach, I focus on the intertwined and liminal spaces between my creative process and personal contemplative practices. My writing is a hybrid autoethnographic and poetic-postcritical engagement within a...

DOI: 10.1386/dmas_00055_1

See yourself through these hands: The moving body as a portal to spirit possession. Working with ancient ritual technologies to create portraits of spirits, gods and mythic beings

Dance, Movement & Spiritualities December 1, 2022 Red K. Elders

My creative, somatic and spiritual praxis combines the deep somatic trance work of authentic movement with ancient ritual technologies such as those found in the 2000-year-old Greek Magical Papyri. This article describes these embodied processes in and with wild nature places to facilitate visionary states which are recorded through poetic writings, and subsequently expressed in highly detailed...

DOI: 10.1386/dmas_00037_1

Moving Meditations: Embodying Bartenieff Fundamentals through sensorial awareness of breath, bones and gravity

Dance, Movement & Spiritualities December 1, 2021 Helen Kindred

This article shares a somatic approach to the practice of meditation reflecting on experiences of facilitating meditation classes for others as well as my own personal practice. I share my application of Bartenieff Fundamentals as a framework for meditation, outlining the language of the body it offers for imagery-based guided meditation ‐ a process of embodied fundamentals. Through exploring...

DOI: 10.1386/dmas_00026_1

Shamanic striptease

Dance, Movement & Spiritualities July 1, 2018 Mark James Hamilton

Abstract This article explores a performance called Salvation: Shamanic Striptease. It considers how my co-creation of this spiritual–erotic work with white South African performer Daniel P. Cunningham1 has elaborated ‘shamanic striptease’ – an emergent practice through which he seeks to discover movement and vocalization (words and song) that yield deep significance for him (as performer) and...

DOI: 10.1386/dmas.5.1.47_1

‘No mind’: A Zen Buddhist perspective on embodied consciousness

Dance, Movement & Spiritualities July 1, 2018 Aska Sakuta

Abstract This article explores the idea of a deeply embodied consciousness during movement, which has become one of the most intensely discussed topics in terms of the phenomenology and spirituality of dance and somatic practices. The strive towards an embodied state of consciousness has been historically present in the context of Zen Buddhist philosophy, wherein true embodiment is considered...

DOI: 10.1386/dmas.5.1.119_1

A phenomenological study of altered consciousness induced through movement

Dance, Movement & Spiritualities December 1, 2015 Shannon Len Deets

Abstract: This study contributes to an understanding of phenomenal consciousness through analysing altered consciousness induced through authentic movement (ACIM). Data derived from qualitative interviews of sixteen participants (eight female, eight male) aged 24–62 years were analysed within Moustakas’ Transcendental Phenomenological Model. Participants’ dance experience varied from less than...

DOI: 10.1386/dmas.2.2.181_1

Choreographing the site of impermanence: Performing body with Buddhist philosophy and meditation in movement-based performance

Dance, Movement & Spiritualities July 1, 2015 Tanatchaporn Kittikong 1 citation

This article offers some in-depth reflections on the body in Buddhism, and particularly the concept of ‘impermanence’ and ‘mindfulness of body’. I explore here, how the body is classified and intellectualized in Buddhist culture and tradition, with a focus on definitions and practices of Buddhist Theravada, including: Satipatthana, Vipassana Meditation, Nama-Rupa and Kayagatasati. I offer...

DOI: 10.1386/dmas.2.1.57_1

Papers