Abstract
This article is a brief, first person account reflecting on the dance Six Reasons Why My Dance Card Isn’t Full performed for the Performance and Mindfulness Symposium at the University of Huddersfield in July 2016. For this presentation, I performed the solo dance and then guided audience members through a process that involves both individual and group reflection. This guided contemplative process is based on a Sufi practice of considering the presence of Divine Names and qualities within all of creation. The process reveals not just how performance can exist as an introspective practice for the dancer but also how it may inherently function as such for an audience, whether or not they initially intended for watching to be an act of contemplation.
Highlights
This article is a brief, first person account reflecting on the dance Six Reasons Why My Dance Card Isn’t Full performed for the Performance and Mindfulness Symposium at the University of Huddersfield in July 2016
The process reveals not just how performance can exist as an introspective practice for the dancer and how it may inherently function as such for an audience, whether or not they initially intended for watching to be an act of contemplation
As the choreographer and performer of this solo dance, I have been using it as a meditative process for myself and as a way to engage audiences in contemplative practice over the past four years
Summary
This article is a brief, first person account reflecting on the dance Six Reasons Why My Dance Card Isn’t Full performed for the Performance and Mindfulness Symposium at the University of Huddersfield in July 2016. As the choreographer and performer of this solo dance, I have been using it as a meditative process for myself and as a way to engage audiences in contemplative practice over the past four years. Having performed this dance for many different populations, I am only considering the new understandings that emerged from its interaction with the particular audience present at the Performance and Mindfulness symposium in this essay. Performance of the solo dance Six Reasons Why My Dance Card Isn’t Full has been a specific process of uncovering self-knowledge and a continuing practice of personal inquiry in the form of the question, ‘Why dance?’ in which dance functions as both a noun and a verb. By opening one particular pathway of motion, I am hoping to awaken others’ sense of movement potential and to extend the invitation to explore a journey into self-knowledge together
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