The Paradox of the “ Subtle” Body: Dance, Tantra, and Science , University Press of Florida

Contemporary Sociology, 2005

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Dancing Forth the Divine Beloved: A Tantric Semiotics of the Body as Rasa in Classical Indian Dance

In this essay I explore the connections between the temple-originated dance traditions of Andhra Pradesh, the hermeneutics of rasa articulated in both Tantric and alamkara contexts, and the reflections on the danced-body by contemporary exponents of dance. This presentation reflects preliminary work on a larger book project on the embodied mysticism in Indian arts. In that work I seek to adopt Timalsina’s challenge for an application of a Tantric hermeneutics to Indian culture, an approach that employs the interpretive logic of Tantra via a creative hermeneutics of Indian culture as that field in which the deeper meaning of the symbol is displayed and communally encoded through ritualization (Timalsina 2006).

Comelles J M, Van Dongen (szerk.) Medical anthropology at Home contributes to health studies. Themes in Medical Anthropology Lecce: Argo, 2001. pp. 352-372., 2001

Medical anthropology has to contend with problems of the Cartesian gulf of mind/body dualism dealing with symbolic healing, psychosomatic phenomena and the anthropology of the body. Dance holds its own relevance in this framework because dance has multilevel, bio-cultural adaptive role as social practice. The fact that dance has induced limited interest among social scientists may reflect the extension of this Cartesian gulf between verbal culture and physical culture, incorporating non-verbal communication systems (Polhemus, 1993). This urges the reconsideration of our exclusive logocentrism, and the reintegration of the "bodily logos" (Sheets-Johnstone, 1983). On the other side-lining the dance-anthropological literature, we find abundant sources from the very beginning, from Spencer (releasing emotional tension, 1857), through Marrett (religion and dance, 1914) and Radcliffe-Brown (dance among Andaman Islanders, 1922). The list of classics can be continued with Evans-Pritchard (beer dance of Azande 1928), Franziska Boas (functions of dance, 1944), Mead and Bateson (dance from the perspective of culture and personality 1942) up to Blacking, Lomax, Williams, Lange, Hanna and Thomas and the contemporary anthropologists. To reveal the health related aspects of dances, we need the "tales of dancers", and the experiences of those who learn, teach, research or heal through dance. The embodied personal experiences of the observer with these dances are just as crucial as the reports of the others. What medical anthropological aspects are relevant based on the earlier anthropological interpretations? The dance might be seen as catharsis, or a release. One of the first anthropological concepts of dance had a covert health psychological framework. Spencer (1857) called dance a "safety valve for releasing emotional steam". We shall try to trace this release or "stress-manager" function back to its original setting in traditional societies based on the reports of researchers. This concept of release from tension or repression appears in other anthropological concepts, too. Such connotation of the dance implies the "release from children's rigorous repression and subordination" in Mead's (1928) interpretation. Langer writes about the "relief from the burden of actuality" (Langer 1953), and Gluckman sees dance a "release of tension following a period of economic anxiety". (1959; cited by Spencer 1985). The individual bodily benefits and psychological gains may be obvious, but dance is also serving as an important regulator of the "social body", as a help in learning social skills, gender roles accepted by the given society. Sometimes, according to the reports of our informants, dance may help to overcome barriers created by social rank in mate selection. Dance as stress-releaser, modifier of mood, source of joy, and preserver of physical fitness at the individual level may gain health related importance. Dance is body language that certainly has a pivotal role in socialization processes regarding the process of learning gender roles, empathy based cooperation and regulated social behaviour. In traditional societies, the dialects of dances lend cultural personality or identity to communities living together. The traditional collective learning process of dances is a fine tuned socialization process full of coded messages on how to behave and communicate in the gifted community. However, these health aspects of the dance are not represented as a principal theme in the mainstream discourses of dance research. Giurchescu and Thorpe compared continental European choreological and American anthropological perspectives on dance, emphasizing that the anthropological approach concentrates on "dancing people" while European choreology deals with comparative research, systematization and classification of the observed dances. As a sign of mutual convergence, folklore theories in Europe were directed towards the study of "dance reality" in its social and artistic dimensions after the Second World War (Giurchescu and Thorpe 1998) while American anthropology was extended by Alan Lomax's cross-cultural Choreometrics Project. It is obvious that the hidden "biocultural" functions of dance are not much articulated in these monographs. Also, less attention is directed towards the health or wellness aspects of folk and popular dances, and other non ritual everyday dance and musical social practices.

Journal of the History of Ideas, 2022

Indigenous histories told in dance compose a vast and understudied realm of modern knowledge filled with thinkers creating theory through movement whose contributions have been erased by the state. The memory capsule of dance—its ideas, theories, and generative transformations of the past—encodes a history denied by textual sources. The archive of body knowledge reorients our view of world history, disclosing the influence of Indigenous knowledge on modern thought.

Dance anthropologists and ethnomusicologists are trained to treat the labels ‘dance’ and ‘music’ with caution, because the terms carry preconceptions that may mask significant aspects of the structured movement/sound systems they study. Yet many talk about ‘the body’ – the medium through which these systems come into being – as something given and ‘true’, without investigating its emic conceptualizations or looking into the implications these may have in terms of how music and dance are experienced. The article investigates the dancing bodies of western ballet dancers and of Tiwi dancers of northern Australia. The latter have an extensive vocabulary for body parts, but no word for ‘body’ as a bounded entity, comparable to the ‘body’ conceptualized by ballet dancers. The article argues that for the Tiwi landscape and human bodies are unavoidably tied together and that the dancers incarnate both land and cosmology. While specific parts have a concrete practical existence, the whole body expands into the landscape so that the landscape becomes flesh. Through the aesthetic transformation of dancing, dancers and land become one, and life is sustained and the land revitalized.

Ethnographica et Folkloristica Carpathica, 2021

My paper outlines an anthropological approach to dance focusing on the body’s interpretation within the contexts of space, sensuality, theater, fashion, aesthetic quality, and the development of gesture systems of the body. The study addresses the question whether the bareness of the body and space may be defined as a form of emptiness or rather as a case of sincere manifestation and revolves around the issues of social and personal attitudes related to dance performance, including mimetic performers, limits of social body norms, and the possibilities of survival, especially the changes in the female body’s perceptual and social roles and strategies.

Thesis of Master of Arts in Choreography, July 2022, Netherlands

2016

Dance, Movement & Spiritualities, 2014

Before human beings gave importance to sitting still and staring at a fire, it is likely that they found their most meaningful inspirations and links to the unspeakable and unthinkable through spirited movement. The ancient rock art of southern Africa, and the ongoing healing dances of Ju/'hoan Bushmen (or San) give us a clue about the origin of dancing spiritualities and how they moved lives. From the cradle of Africa, movement and dance spread around the world, and were central to the earliest forms of shamanism and religion. In the earliest times, dance was inseparable from the mysteries that gave rise to religion. Following this, textuality, interpretation and narrative understanding became the more dominant forms of expression for matters of healing, transformation and soul work. With these came a false separation of mind from body, a dissociation of spirituality and healing from movement, and a distancing of dance performance and pedagogy from scholarly inquiries into spiritual aspects of human experience.