Abstract
A large number of sociologists have adopted the notion of the embodied subject to escape the trappings of the rational choice theory in sociological analysis. From a phenomenological perspective, the notion of an embodied subject refers to a subject who is in unity with the world. In this paper, I will present my ethnographic study of a group of trainee dancers preparing to embody the world of modern dance. I will present my study of their training experiences as a case of subjects striving to embody a world other than the one they already embody. I observed that pain formed the core part of trainee dancers’ daily experiences. Following Leder's theory of the ‘absent body’ and Bourdieu's conception of the ‘modern social world’, I interpreted trainee dancers’ experiences of pain with respect to the historically shaped collective expectations of the world of modern dance. I argue that their experiences of pain indicate how far along they are in the process of their embodiment of the world of modern dance. As they experience a decrease in the intensity of pain during their training, trainees become closer to embodying the world of modern dance.
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