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Chapitre D'ouvrage Année : 2021

Becoming autonomous together: Distanced intimacy in dances of self-discovery

Résumé

In most large Western cities, hundreds of people attend weekly sessions of collective dancing explicitly aimed to promote ‘self-discovery’, ‘authenticity’ and ‘connection with others’: 5 Rhythms, Biodanza, Movement Medicine and Open Floor, among others. A constant is these practices is the striking hiatus between the intense interpersonal intimacy participants are given to share and the lack of interpersonal commitment that these experiences might be expected to imply. Generally speaking, it is with those with whom dancers feel free not to have close relationships, that they develop and demonstrate their aptitude for entering into close relationships with hypothetical others at a further remove. Drawing on the practice of Biodanza, I argue that while these practices afford participants with an experience of self- actualization, there is a further complementary aspect to them, which is being part of a collectivity made up of such self-determined individuals. Indeed, while dancing, close interpersonal relationships, understood as constantly revised emotional entanglements with particular people, give way to looser, less problematic, higher-order assemblages in which individual self-construction is given pride of place. An anonymized, instrumental mode of intimacy, I suggest, is the hallmark of this particular flavour of we-ness, affording participants with emblematic experiences of the quintessentially modern (post-modern?) prospect of being jointly autonomous. My aim is to explore the performative mechanics through which this model of sociability comes into being.
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Dates et versions

halshs-03902362 , version 1 (31-01-2023)

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Paternité - Pas d'utilisation commerciale

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  • HAL Id : halshs-03902362 , version 1

Citer

Michael Houseman. Becoming autonomous together: Distanced intimacy in dances of self-discovery. Graham Harvey; Michael Houseman; Sarah Pike; Jone Salomonsen. Reassembling Democracy. Ritual as Cultural Resource., Bloomsbury Publishing, pp.87-104, 2021, 978-1-3501-2301-4. ⟨halshs-03902362⟩

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