Embodied Performances

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-ix

   PDF

2. Introduction

   • Beatrice Allegranti

   Pages 1-11

3. Bodies as Knowledge

   • Beatrice Allegranti

   Pages 12-48

4. Embodying Ethics

   • Beatrice Allegranti

   Pages 49-75

5. The Autobiographical Body

   • Beatrice Allegranti

   Pages 76-116

6. The Relational Body

   • Beatrice Allegranti

   Pages 117-153

7. The Political Body

   • Beatrice Allegranti

   Pages 154-195

8. Conclusion

   • Beatrice Allegranti

   Pages 196-211

9. Back Matter

   Pages 212-234

   PDF

With a companion website that includes short online film episodes, this book proposes expansive ways of deconstructing and re-constituting sexuality and gender and thus more embodied and ethical ways of 'doing' life, and offers an understanding and critique of embodiment through an integration of performance, psychotherapy and feminist philosophy.

• Embodiment in performance
• Practice as research
• film
• gender
• performance

'Dr Allegranti offers a rare addition to the literature concerning Dance Movement Psychotherapy, in which she deconstructs taken-for-granted ideas surrounding gender and sexuality through the medium of dance performance and film. In so doing she has traversed several media, expertly negotiating and performing her own identities as therapist, choreographer, film maker and writer. The result is a text with accompanying film resources that will challenge a range of practitioners and academics, including social scientists interested in looking afresh at gender and sexuality as performed identities.' - Bonnie Meekums, Lecturer, University of Leeds, UK

'In Embodied Performances, Beatrice Allegranti talks - yes, and sings and dances and more - of how the body knows, does, creates. In this rich and fluent work Allegranti calls us to pay attention to how the practices and discourses of dance movement psychotherapy, performance, film, narrative and feminist philosophy speak with each other; and implicitly she invites us to participate in this conversation ourselves. We cannot help but accept.' - Jonathan Wyatt, University of Edinburgh, UK

'Embodied Performances constitutes a deeply significant contribution to theory, practice, and pedagogy in embodied scholarship across disciplines. The book is committed to the rigorously creative, ethical, and cutting edge use of performance and movement to articulate hegemonic sociocultural performativities and then, subsequently, how we might embody alternatives to that and offer multiple ways of being and healing in our social worlds. A go-to book for anyone interested in embodiment praxes.' - Tami Spry, Cloud State University, USA

'Embodied Performances is a rich contribution to our understanding of the practices and politics of gender, sex and sexuality. Allegranti takes forward the very latest developments in feminist thinking to reconsider the ways in which we live as, and in, our bodies. The fluid integration of creative practice and rigorous scholarship provides an eloquent case for how knowledge can be developed through the connecting and crossing of disciplinary boundaries.' - Jill Halstead, Grieg Academy of Music, University of Bergen, Norway

BEATRICE ALLEGRANTIis a choreographer (for dance theatre and film), clinical practitioner (in the UK NHS in adult mental health, special needs schools and in private practice) and is a researcher and convener on the Dance Movement Psychotherapy MA at University of Roehampton, UK. A key focus of her work is on embodiment or how we can 'be in' and develop our relationship with our bodies through integrating dance movement, psychosocial and biological processes and understandings of human agency. Visit authors website: www.embodiedpractice.co.uk

Policies and ethics