Dancing intercorporeality: a health humanities perspective on dance as a healing art

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 Me...

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Main Author: Purser, Aimie Christianne Elizabeth.
Format: Article
Published: Springer 2017
Subjects:
Online Access:https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/43755/
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author Purser, Aimie Christianne Elizabeth.
author_facet Purser, Aimie Christianne Elizabeth.
author_sort Purser, Aimie Christianne Elizabeth.
building Nottingham Research Data Repository
collection Online Access
description 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 this Merleau-Pontian framework we can therefore come to appreciate the true potential of dance as a positive and deeply humanising experience, thus 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.
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spelling nottingham-437552020-05-04T19:23:21Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/43755/ Dancing intercorporeality: a health humanities perspective on dance as a healing art Purser, Aimie Christianne Elizabeth. 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 this Merleau-Pontian framework we can therefore come to appreciate the true potential of dance as a positive and deeply humanising experience, thus 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. Springer 2017-12-20 Article PeerReviewed Purser, Aimie Christianne Elizabeth. (2017) Dancing intercorporeality: a health humanities perspective on dance as a healing art. Journal of Medical Humanities . ISSN 1573-3645 Merleau-Ponty Phenomenology Dance https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10912-017-9502-0 doi:10.1007/s10912-017-9502-0 doi:10.1007/s10912-017-9502-0
spellingShingle Merleau-Ponty
Phenomenology
Dance
Purser, Aimie Christianne Elizabeth.
Dancing intercorporeality: a health humanities perspective on dance as a healing art
title Dancing intercorporeality: a health humanities perspective on dance as a healing art
title_full Dancing intercorporeality: a health humanities perspective on dance as a healing art
title_fullStr Dancing intercorporeality: a health humanities perspective on dance as a healing art
title_full_unstemmed Dancing intercorporeality: a health humanities perspective on dance as a healing art
title_short Dancing intercorporeality: a health humanities perspective on dance as a healing art
title_sort dancing intercorporeality: a health humanities perspective on dance as a healing art
topic Merleau-Ponty
Phenomenology
Dance
url https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/43755/
https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/43755/
https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/43755/