FEMALEtraces/ Conferrence Proceedengs and The book " The female dancer: a soma-scientific approach 2023-2024
So so proud to announce SOON launching of the book The ‘female’ dancer: a soma-scientific approach
This book aims to question dancers’ relationship with ‘female’ through biological, anatomical, scientific and self-social identity. The book contributors were excellent dance and somatic scholars, and movement practitioners and researchers. Withing the book we were trying to discuss and unpack some of the identities, premises, and perceptions of female dancing bodies.
The ‘female’ is recognised as both a gendered and biological term and encourage contributions that consider how ‘female’ relates to lived experiences and bodily knowledge through social, psychological, philosophical, political, cultural contexts and those that relate to ‘female’ as attributed to biological sex and topics that reflect this in terms of physiology and anatomy.
This book draws together somatic experiences of the ‘female’ dancer, that are socially, politically and culturally informed. Spanning five central areas of training and performance; Body Image, Strength, Musculature and Female Fragility, Life Cycles: negotiating balance and change, Transgender Dancers, Empowering Women in Dance, Helen Kindred and I were encouraged to write a chapter together about female journeys, waiting, bodily traces, patterns, dancing ground, spaciousness, body-space-environment, undulations, reflections, ritual,...Our research engages with literature and artefacts in the field of somatic movement practice, ritual, the dancing female body, and eco-feminism, and is underpinned by our long-standing practices and research in LBMS, particularly engaging with the work of Irmgard Bartenieff through a feminist lens. FEMALE TRACES project is a sharing of moments of the research in improvised dancing. We embody key principles of Bartenieff’s work – yielding-pushing, stability-instability, inner connectivity-outer expressivity, in relationship with the traces of our bodies in ever-shifting environments, to explore an expanded feminist lens to Bartenieff’s work an eco-somatic performance practice.
FEMALEtraces as a performance shares a moment of the research in improvised dancing. We embody key principles of Bartenieff’s work – yielding-pushing, stability-instability, inner connectivity-outer expressivity, in relationship with the traces of our bodies in ever-shifting environments, to explore an expanded feminist lens to Bartenieff’s work an eco-somatic performance practice. The research is multi-modal; shared through scores in different places/spaces, through workshops, performances and through the written word as a live response on improving, nurturing female body through passionate exploration of Bartenieff Fundamentals in natural environments.
Dance, song and music in prehistoric time were the appropriate acts of worship in order to bring joy to the Gods and fulfil their ritual needs. Nowadays we see dance, music, performance as a vital act of nurturing our embodied Self in order to transmit non-verbally our feminine values, direct experience, joy, outpour ‘inner senses’ and fulfil needs by creating intersubjective space where individuals enter into relations with each other.
FEMALEtraces constantly tracks change in-woman in-nature, endlessly looking for transformation, healing, harmony, understanding, empathy, connectivity, alignment. In many ritualistic forms, dance was used as a tool, medium, that embodies many creative properties that are released through movement, rhythms, patterns, repetition, self-expression, communication. These resources allow individuals to shift emotional states and create experiential patterns of wholeness through organic, intuitive, gestures and movements. We can imagine that name of this individual is Lilith - powerful, pure, loud, openminded female demon, a symbol of autonomy, independence, sexual liberation and a main character of this project. FEMALEtraces can be seen as a symbol of the dancing goddess who dwell into springs, rivers, trees, ocean, seas, mountains, parks, grottoes, caves, almost everywhere in nature through transformative storytelling, employing the roots and coiling them into the magical, ceremonial arms circles. Using nature as a holy, and spacious place appropriate for the performance of ritual ceremonies and dance was something natural for the prehistoric period. This illustrates efforts to encounter with the divine and supernatural. This cult of the divine dancing can be found also in grottoes but in all places where watery element is strong as a pleasant spots where wildness of the scenery is equivalent to the freshens of water and pleasing our senses. Visiting such places became a sanctuary for the individuals, not just a solely spacious places inhabited by wild animals and cruel narratives. FEMALEtraces honors the time when dance was used to serve as a ceremonial dancing happening and expanding legacy of women and stimulate all the other questioning; what bodies, whose bodies have access, whose bodies feel and sense, move and feel, whose bodies are visible/invisible in scholarship.
Dance, song and music in prehistoric time were the appropriate acts of worship in order to bring joy to the Gods and fulfil their ritual needs. Nowadays we see dance, music, performance as a vital act of nurturing our embodied Self in order to transmit non-verbally our feminine values, direct experience, joy, outpour ‘inner senses’ and fulfil needs by creating intersubjective space where individuals enter into relations with each other.
FEMALEtraces constantly tracks change in-woman in-nature, endlessly looking for transformation, healing, harmony, understanding, empathy, connectivity, alignment. In many ritualistic forms, dance was used as a tool, medium, that embodies many creative properties that are released through movement, rhythms, patterns, repetition, self-expression, communication. These resources allow individuals to shift emotional states and create experiential patterns of wholeness through organic, intuitive, gestures and movements. We can imagine that name of this individual is Lilith - powerful, pure, loud, openminded female demon, a symbol of autonomy, independence, sexual liberation and a main character of this project. FEMALEtraces can be seen as a symbol of the dancing goddess who dwell into springs, rivers, trees, ocean, seas, mountains, parks, grottoes, caves, almost everywhere in nature through transformative storytelling, employing the roots and coiling them into the magical, ceremonial arms circles. Using nature as a holy, and spacious place appropriate for the performance of ritual ceremonies and dance was something natural for the prehistoric period. This illustrates efforts to encounter with the divine and supernatural. This cult of the divine dancing can be found also in grottoes but in all places where watery element is strong as a pleasant spots where wildness of the scenery is equivalent to the freshens of water and pleasing our senses. Visiting such places became a sanctuary for the individuals, not just a solely spacious places inhabited by wild animals and cruel narratives. FEMALEtraces honors the time when dance was used to serve as a ceremonial dancing happening and expanding legacy of women and stimulate all the other questioning; what bodies, whose bodies have access, whose bodies feel and sense, move and feel, whose bodies are visible/invisible in scholarship.
Shortly about us....
CV-HELEN KINDRED (UK)
Helen Kindred is a dance artist-scholar whose work is underpinned by the practice and philosophy of Bartenieff Fundamentals a life-practice. Helen has toured internationally as a performer and presented her own choreographic work at venues, festivals and conferences over the past twenty eight years. Helen believes in dance as a mode of being in the world and fuels this belief through education and performance contexts. Her work engages with people and places, creating improvisations of touch, text and image. Helen completed her PhD at Middlesex University which developed from her long-standing practice of Bartenieff Fundamentals and examined relationships between somatic practice and improvised performance-making, exploring the between-ness of body-space-environment. Helen is co-Artistic Director of DancingStrong Movement Lab with Adesola Akinleye and a Senior Lecturer in Dance and Professional Practice at Middlesex University. http://www.helen-kindred.com /
Helen Kindred is a dance artist-scholar whose work is underpinned by the practice and philosophy of Bartenieff Fundamentals a life-practice. Helen has toured internationally as a performer and presented her own choreographic work at venues, festivals and conferences over the past twenty eight years. Helen believes in dance as a mode of being in the world and fuels this belief through education and performance contexts. Her work engages with people and places, creating improvisations of touch, text and image. Helen completed her PhD at Middlesex University which developed from her long-standing practice of Bartenieff Fundamentals and examined relationships between somatic practice and improvised performance-making, exploring the between-ness of body-space-environment. Helen is co-Artistic Director of DancingStrong Movement Lab with Adesola Akinleye and a Senior Lecturer in Dance and Professional Practice at Middlesex University. http://www.helen-kindred.com /
Sandra is a dance-scholar, philosopher, artist-researcher, political scientist, somatic practitioner, yoga teacher and performer with more than 20 years experience of dancing, performing and teaching in Croatia and abroad.
Always try to combine a set of movement principles and elements into one synergy and give participants a new and holistic healthy approach to body and mind involving LBMS in her work in body connectivity with the breath.
...."All is between peace and conflict, gravity and verticality, relationship with the air and the ground, yet the strong awareness of dynamic alignment, neck-pelvis-toe connection, self-perception and breath in the conscious movement”...
She started a new journey related to dance, movement, somatic and breath and introduces own philosophy of movement called EXPERIENTIAL SOMATIC CONSCIOUS MOVEMENT (ESCM) ( a combination of reflective thoughts and active thinking to understand the movement or real-life activities we are engaged in; to find a meaning and give meaning to what we are doing in our presentness underpinned by the principles and patterns of Laban/Bartenieff Fundamentals, and breathing. Movement meditations enriched with imagery of our environments offers a different focus encouraging moments to pause and deepen our embodied awareness of Self and others) created as a product of the Master of Somatic Studies at Middlesex University, on Faculty of Arts and Creative Industries in London under mentorship of Dr. Helen Kindred with the thesis Embodied flow in motion: making conscious work with breath, touch, sound and movement (2022).
Sandra hold a BA in Philosophy and Religion Science, at the Faculty of Philosophy and Religious Studies in Zagreb and Master Degree obtained at the Faculty of Political Science in Zagreb. She also finished one year Women Studies Programs in Zagreb and the
Programe for International Yoga Practitioners at Swami VIVEKANANDA YOGA ANUSANDHANA SAMSTHANA University in Bangalore, India.
Sandra is also very active in dancing, researching and attending international dance and movement conferences as a lecturer.
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