Abstract
As a contribution to the burgeoning field of health humanities, this paper seeks to explore the power of dance to mitigate human suffering and reacquaint us with what it means to be human through bringing the embodied practice of dance into dialogue with the work of the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Merleau-Ponty’s conceptualisation of subjectivity as embodied and of intersubjectivity as intercorporeality frees us from many of the constraints of Cartesian thinking and opens up a new way of thinking about how dance functions as a healing art through its ability to ground and reconnect us with self, world, and others--with our humanity. It is argued that through a Merleau-Pontian framework, we can come to appreciate the true potential of dance as a positive and deeply humanising experience, demonstrating how expressive arts practice understood through the lens of philosophical theory can open up new dimensions of understanding and experience in relation to well-being and self- (and other-) care.
Highlights
Dance plays a role in healing rituals across a number of cultures and is recognised to promote social bonding (Chaiklin 2009)
Even in contemporary Western medicine, dance is used in psychotherapeutic contexts in the form of dance/movement therapy (DMT)
As a contribution to the burgeoning field of health humanities, this paper seeks to explore the power of dance to mitigate human suffering and reacquaint us with what it means to be human through bringing the embodied practice of dance into dialogue with the work of the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Summary
Dance plays a role in healing rituals across a number of cultures and is recognised to promote social bonding (Chaiklin 2009). The promise of the health humanities – and we should note here that the medical/health humanities should not be thought of as a discipline but rather as a multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary or perhaps even post-disciplinary field of study (Atkinson et al 2015) – is of a broader and richer understanding of what is healthful and therapeutic through exploration of and insight into the human condition As such, it celebrates the uses of arts and humanities within traditional healthcare settings, practices and training and calls for a reimaging of the boundaries of health and healing, so that our intellectual and therapeutic focus might escape the physical and, perhaps more importantly, the epistemological constraints of the clinical (Crawford et al 2010; Crawford et al 2015; Jones et al 2014). Professional dancers, in particular, were chosen for this study because their daily engagement with dance as reflexive practitioners gives them a heightened awareness of their own embodiment and that of others
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
