Elucidates the field of movement and dance somatics.
 
Somatics in Dance, Ecology, and Ethics explores the relationships between self, world, and earth to understand the experience of being alive and corporeal. In doing so, Sondra Fraleigh develops a philosophy of an ethical world gaze that promises to enliven the senses. Chapters borrow from wide-ranging intellectual influences—phenomenology, Buddhism, butoh, dialogics, aesthetics, poetry, feminism, ecology, and more—Fraleigh describes the ways somatics can help people to feel well, practice empathetic communication, and recognize the psychic, unpredictable edges of experience as they move. An interview with Amanda Williamson complements the chapters. “The body is the fascinating home for all our dispositions,” Fraleigh tells hers. “Spiritual qualities are embodied. We dance and sing them into being.”

Sondra Fraleigh is professor emeritus of dance at the State University of New York (SUNY Brockport). Her books include Back to the Dance Itself: Phenomenologies of the Body in Performance; Moving Consciously: Somatic Transformations through Dance, Yoga, and Touch; and BUTOH: Metamorphic Dance and Global Alchemy.

Introduction


Ethical World Gaze
Body and Nature: Quest for Somatic Values, East and West
Mind Matters: Mind as Portal and Precarity in Somatic Experience
A Future Worth Having: Somatic Ethics of Flow and Curiosity
Walking Well: A Play of Touch and Restoration in Three Acts
Everyone Needs to Breathe
Talking to Tremors: Somatics in Dance, Dialogics and Silence
Back to the Dance Itself: In Three Acts
Phenomenologies in the Flowing Live Present
On Dance and Phenomenology: An Essay Interview with Sondra Fraleigh         
Enacting Embodiment and Blue Muffins
Attunement and Evanescence      

 

Postscript Notes to Self

Bibliography