Identity, diversity and inclusion on the dance floor: Embodying self-reflexivity as mindful dance and movement teachers

Abstract

ABSTRACT In this article, we explore how inclusion and diversity in mindful dance and movement practices can be supported by a practice of self-reflexivity in regards to our embodied identities as teachers. We understand identities as created through processes of stratification, which tend to assign dualistic, fixed and often mutually excluding categories of identities onto individuals and groups. A self-reflexive practice can help open up and soften some of these categories without negating the very real structural and lived consequences that stratification imposes. We thus seek to unfold a transformative both-and awareness through which both the strata and what lies in-between, through and beyond can be engaged and acknowledged. In doing so, we apply an embodied, autoethnographic style of inquiry to explore our personal embodiment of identities as mindful dance and movement teachers and the ways they influence and relate to a larger teaching field and to broader socio-political frames. Through this, we arrive at an understanding of how self-reflexivity can unfold a relational and empathic awareness of both the effects of stratification and for different possibilities, which helps to create a vital in-between space where more authentic possibilities for diversity and inclusion can manifest.