1st Edition
The 'Female' Dancer a soma-scientific approach
The 'Female' Dancer aims to question dancers’ relationships with ‘female’ through the examination and understandings of biological, anatomical, scientific, and self-social identity. The volume gathers voices of dance scientists, dance scholars, somatic practitioners, and dance artist-educators, to discuss some of the complexities of identities, assumptions and perceptions of a female dancing body in an intersectional and practically focused manner.
The book weaves a journey between scientific and somatic approaches to dance and to dancing. Part I: 'Bodily Knowledge' explores body image, hormones and puberty, and discussions around somatic responses to the concept of the gaze. Part II: 'Moving through Change', continues to look at strength, musculature, and female fragility, with chapters interrogating practice around strength training, the dancer as an athlete, the role of fascia, the pelvic floor, pregnancy and post-partum experiences and eco-somatic perceptions of feminine. In 'Taking up Space', Part III, chapters focus on social-cultural and political experiences of females dancing, leadership, and longevity in dance. Part IV: 'Embodied Wisdom' looks at reflections of the Self, physiological, social and cultural perspectives of dancing through life, with life’s seasons from an embodied approach.
Drawing together lived experiences of dancers in relationship with scientific research, this book is ideal for undergraduate students of dance, dance artists, and researchers, as well as providing dancers, dance teachers, healthcare practitioners, company managers and those in dance leadership roles with valuable information on how to support female identifying dancers through training and beyond.
Introduction
Claire Farmer and Helen Kindred
PART I: Bodily knowledge
1. Growing up in dance: Experiencing the pubertal transition in leotard and tights
Siobhan Mitchell
2. Female dancer hormone health
Nicky Keay
3. Female dancers: food, nutrients and body composition
Jasmine Challis
4. Ballet culture and body image in recreational dance training
Rebekah Wall
5. A somatic approach to audiencing
Carolina Bergonzoni
6. Embodied experience of bodies with breasts
Amelia Millward and James Brouner
PART II: Moving through change
7. Strength training considerations for female dancers
Claire Farmer
8. Pelvic floor considerations for female dancers through the lifespan
Brooke Winder
9. Improvising with the pain(s) of endometriosis
Kate March
10. The pregnant dancer
Chloe Hillyar
11. Fascia illuminated
May Kesler
12. FEMALEtraces
Helen Kindred and Sandra Sok
The embodied archive of the self
Celia Shaw Morris
PART III: Taking up space
13. Sustaining a dance career as a parent
Lucy McCrudden and Angela Pickard
14. Dancer (noun)—mother, daughter, sister, colleague, partner, warrior, sorceress, friend
Erica Stanton
15. Are you a leader? The L word that women in dance fear
Avatâra Ayuso
16. Coming out is a protest: A score for ritual queer emergence
Kars Dodds
17. Geometry of gender: Analysing the anatomical specifications of a Bharatanatyam dancer
Shreya Srivastava and Shilpa Darivemula
PART IV: Embodied wisdom
18. Foregrounding (the) self in dance practice
Gemma Harman and Jayne McKee
19. There’s wisdom in them bones—Moving beyond the shape
Janine Cappello
20. The trees, my pelvis and dancing through a life
Celeste Nazeli Snowber
21. Dancing to live
Stella Eldon
22. Body scapes: Celebrating seasonality of well‑being in somatic dialoguing with the natural world
Anna Dako in collaboration with Martina Polleros
SCORE—FEMALEtraces
Helen Kindred and Sandra Sok
Biography
Claire Farmer is a senior lecturer in Dance Science at Middlesex University, UK.
Helen Kindred is a senior lecturer in Dance at Middlesex University, UK.
