Spiritual Herstories

Call of the Soul in Dance Research

Edited by Amanda Williamson, Barbara Sellers-Young

Publication date:

15 January 2020

Publisher

Intellect Books

Dimensions:

244x170mm
7x10"

ISBN-13: 9781789380828

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

'This is an important publication for advancing research in dance and reinforcing the scholarly lens, giving voice to the body, mind, and soul as partners in exploration. The preface, “Dancing Incantations” by Celeste Snowber, beautifully sets up the reader’s adventure: “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” (ix).'