The Quest for an Ecosomatic Approach to Dance Pedagogy

Abstract

As a dance teacher I am interested in finding ways to improve the quality and effectiveness of the dancers' learning process. My investigations toward this end have primarily focused on uncovering essential somatic characteristics as they relate to dance teaching and learning. The essential somatic concept that the senses and sensitization of the body facilitates awareness has provided the basis for this rather unconventional turn to my investigation. This discussion proposes that developing sensitization of the body's relationship—not only with itself or with others, but with the environment, the natural world at large—may shed new light on how to perceive a somatic perspective in dance. It uses an ecological model to reframe our thinking about somatic approaches to teaching and learning dance. Laura Sewell, an ecopsychologist who specializes in the neurophysiology of vision, has enumerated five skills of ecological perception: learning to attend; learning to perceive relationships, contexts and interfaces; developing perceptual flexibility; learning to re-perceive depth; and the intentional use of the imagination. Sewell's skills, originally intended to enlighten our view of the natural environment and our place within it, will be applied as both a guide as well as a metaphorical lens to re-examine somatic viewpoints of dance teaching and learning. Dance applications for each of the five skills will be discussed.