‘Being in your body’ and ‘being in the moment’: the dancing body-subject and inhabited transcendence

Sports studies is currently dominated by the intellectualist approach to understanding skill and expertise, meaning that questions about the phenomenological nature of skilled performance in sport have generally been overshadowed by the emphasis on the cognitive. By contrast, this article responds to calls for a phenomenology of sporting embodiment by opening up a philosophical exploration of the nature of athletic being-in-the-world. In particular, the paper explores the conceptualisation of immanence and transcendence in relation to the embodied practice of dance, engaging with Merleau-Ponty’s important insight that the body can be a source of transcendence. I also draw on data from in-depth qualitative interviews with professional contemporary dancers to explore dancers’ concepts of ‘being in your body’ and ‘being in the moment’, and to suggest that during the actual embodied practice of dance, dancers do not experience transcendence and immanence as they are conceptualised in philosophy. Rather, I argue, dancers experience a third mode of being that is somehow in-between these two binary terms. I have called this ‘inhabited transcendence’.     

[Transgender] young men: gendered subjectivities and the physically active body

In this paper, I discuss [transgender] young men's social, physical and embodied experiences of sport. These discussions draw from interview research with two young people who prefer to self-identify as ‘male’ and not as ‘trans men’, although they do make use of this term. Finn and Ed volunteered to take part in the research following my request for volunteers at a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) youth group. Their narratives provide valuable testimonies on transgender and transgender and sport: more specifically, their experiences of school sport, their embodied subjectivities, transitioning and sport participation. The focus on transgender and sport also highlights the taken-for-granted assumption that a coherent LGBT collective exists and that transgender is a fixed, definable and agreed-upon category. The paper, therefore, has two aims. First, it intends to privilege and document the views of two young people who identify with a group that is often marginalised. Their narratives raise significant questions in relation to transgender and sport participation in educational and recreational settings. Second, the paper seeks to expose the methodological and ontological complexities surrounding ‘LGBT’ and ‘transgender’ and place these debates within sport and educational studies.     

Participation Profiles and Socialisation into Dance Among Non‐Professional Dancers

Abstract

The study was designed to determine how individuals become socialised into folk, competitive ballroom, ballet and modern dance through an investigation of background variables, the influence of significant others and the participation profiles of dancers, and the identification of those socialization and involvement variables that best discriminate among different groups of dancers.

The subjects were 308 adolescent and adult dancers of at least 16 years of age who had pursued their main dance form for a minimum of three years. The data were collected by questionnaire, supplemented with some additional data gathered through personal interviews. Differences between the four dance groups were analysed using t‐test, Chi Square analyses, analyses of variance, Scheffe's multiple‐range test and discriminant analysis.

Most subjects were from the middle or upper socio‐economic classes. Most art dancers were women while social dancers displayed a more even distribution of sexes. Ballet dancers were youngest and ballroom dancers oldest when they started dancing. Mother's influence was significant among those who had started dancing at a young age while a friend of the same sex was influential among all respondents regardless of the age at which they had taken up dancing. Among men the influence of a friend of the opposite sex was also significant. The involvement of other family members in dance correlated most strongly with folk dancing, least strongly with modern dance. The dance teacher or coach was perceived as the most encouraging person in every dance form.

The most wide‐ranging past and present dance activities were found among modern dancers. The variables which best discriminated between dance forms were starting age, the variety of present dance activities and the intensity of practising one's main dance form. Such differences in socialisation into different dance forms should be taken into account when developing dance and dance teacher education curricula, teaching dance and planning recreational dance activities.

     

Patellofemoral pain,body morphology and alignment in female pubertal dancers: One-year follow-up

The aim of this study was to assess changes in body morphology, anatomical alignment and prevalence of patellofemoral pain (PFP) in young female dancers along one year of pubertal growth, and to identify the risk factors related to PFP in these young dancers. Both legs of 60 dancers were evaluated during grade 7 and again after 1-year. At each of these points in time, the dancers were interviewed concerning their background, and anthropometric measurements, lower-limb physical examinations and knee ultrasound scans were performed. Morphological parameters changed significantly from baseline to follow-up. PFP was found in 53.3% of the dancers’ knees at baseline. At follow-up, 55.4% of the asymptomatic knees at baseline developed PFP, and only 9.4% of the symptomatic knees at baseline recovered. Lower BMI was identified among dancers who developed PFP during follow-up compared with dancers with no PFP, either at baseline or at follow-up. A positive grinding and positive Patellar Inhibition Test (PIT) were found to be risk factors for PFP at follow-up. A high prevalence of young dancers suffered PFP, from injuries they sustained mostly during the 1-year of dance practice. Parameters predisposing the dancers to PFP should be identified at early stages of dance class.     

The position of dance in physical education

Dance has been a part of the physical education (PE) curriculum in several countries for a long time. In spite of this, studies demonstrate that the position of dance in the subject of PE is contested and that little time is devoted to dance. The overall aim of this article is to examine the position of dance as a pedagogical discourse in Swedish steering documents over time. The empirical material consists of five Swedish curricula for PE over a period of 50 years (1962–2011). Discourse analysis is used to identify organised systems of meaning, including privileged and prioritised values. Our theoretical frame of reference draws on Bernstein's concept of codes. Three different knowledge areas within dance are found in the text material: ‘dance as cultural preserver’, ‘dance as bodily exercise’ and ‘dance as expression’. Three pedagogical discourses emerge from these knowledge areas: an identity formation discourse, a public health discourse and an aesthetic discourse. The identity formation discourse in earlier curricula focuses on the perpetuation of Swedish and Nordic cultural traditions, while in later curricula, it emphasises the construction of a broader multicultural identity formation related to the understanding of different cultures. The public health discourse constitutes a prioritised understanding of dance as physical training related to a healthy lifestyle. The aesthetic discourse, which has the weakest position over time, represents the valuing of embodied experiences and feelings expressed through movements. This discourse is closely linked to the construction of gender. Over time, a new performance code came to surpass the former competence code in the steering documents. The performance code positions dance in PE as mainly a physical activity with little artistic or aesthetic value. The pedagogical discourse of dance remains within a highly disciplinary framework of social control.     

Moving bodies beyond the social/biological divide: toward theoretical and transdisciplinary adventures

In this paper I call for ‘new forms of thinking and new ways of theorizing’ the complex relations between the biological and social in sport and physical culture. I illustrate the inseparability of our biological and social bodies in sport and physical culture via the case of exercise and female reproductive hormones. Inspired by feminist biologists and philosophers of science such as Lynda Birke and Elizabeth Grosz, I describe my current research project in which I am seeking to create space for female exercisers' (as distinct from female athletes) voices about their embodied experiences of exercise-associated amenorrhea. I offer reflections from my ongoing study and reveal a number of dilemmas that emerge as I consider how we might bring biology—and particularly hormones—back into conversations about women's moving bodies in non-reductionist and non-determinist terms. I conclude by advocating the need for more transdisciplinary approaches to help us move toward more multidimensional understandings of the body in sport and physical culture.     

Running into trouble: constructions of danger and risk in girls' access to outdoor space and physical activity

This paper considers girls' participation in running and other outdoor physical activities in their local areas in London, UK. The paper is concerned with the operation of risk discourses in and around this participation and looks at the way that such discourses impacted on girls' opportunities to take part in physical activities that required outdoor space. Drawing on data from longitudinal research into girls' participation in sport and physical activity, the findings suggested that girls, in particular, were subject to risk discourses around their participation in physical activities which constructed the girls as ‘weak’, and ‘vulnerable’. I look at the ways in which girls understood these messages and how they came to define certain spaces and activities as either ‘safe’ or ‘unsafe’. I look in particular at how girls were able to resist certain constructions of their embodied physical capacities and also at the ways in which this was constrained by specific incidences of sexual harassment.     

My journey to become a teacher educator

Purpose: Social theory of learning speaks to the social nature of our lives and our attempts to understand both what and how we learn from it. My experiences are built upon and reside with the social context in which they evolved. In this lecture, I will focus on my own experiences and how I interpreted them through social theory of learning that resulted from my collaboration between colleagues, mentoring that I received and shared and the pedagogical communities within which I grew.

Main outcomes and results: Within each of these contexts my experiences resulted from the dialogue in which I took part. Johnston-Parsons suggests that dialogue of pedagogies provides a means of coming to know yourself and your teaching. She describes ‘a mirror as one way of describing dialogue-as-learning’ as ‘when dialogue occurred we were sharing ideas at the same time we were, as a group and as individuals, recognizing and changing our minds’ (69). The types of dialogue experienced by this teacher educator have taken place over four decades in several contexts and have resulted in my own interpretations that have shaped my practices and pedagogies.

Conclusion: Through my own developing and changing teaching metaphor I will tell the story of my development as a teacher educator and the lessons I have learned that shape my practices and interactions with prospective and practising teachers.     

Embodied Rilkean sport-specific knowledge

This paper develops and introduces the embodied Rilkean sport-specific knowledge into the current sports knowledge philosophical debate. This idea is based on my interpretation of Mark Rowlands’ Rilkean memory theory. Broadly speaking, Rowlands proposed that an embodied Rilkean memory is memory content that is then ‘woven into the body and its neural infrastructure’ resulting in new bodily or behavioral dispositions. I propose that elite-level sports knowledge may become contentless bodily and/or behavioral dispositions and take the form of embodied Rilkean sport-specific knowledge. This version of sports knowledge enriches the current philosophy of sports debate that has centered on the analytical distinction between procedural knowledge (knowing how) and declarative knowledge (knowing that). After presenting the embodied Rilkean sport-specific knowledge concept and providing empirical evidence that supports its existence, I argue that the current distinction between ‘knowing how’ and ‘knowing that’ may not be exhaustive.     

Body learning: examining the processes of skill learning in dance

This paper was stimulated by the authors' attempt to understand the process of skill learning in dance. Its stimulus was a period of fieldwork based at the Royal Ballet School in London, and subsequent discussions with the school's teachers and with academic colleagues about how it was that the young dancers developed their characteristic set of skills. The paper's focus and method is philosophical, although it draws on empirical data (albeit sparingly) where it is relevant to the discussion.

Many accounts of skill learning are premised on the presumption that learners come to know about their environment by representing it in the mind and that such representation is a result of a computational process involving information received through the senses. This is the dominant position of researchers in the field. In this paper, we discuss weaknesses in this information processing theory, and explore the elements of a more satisfactory approach. The account offered here locates dance skills within the context of development, in which skills are incorporated in learners through practice and training in dance environments. Dreyfus' theory of expertise and Bourdieu's theory of practice offer insights into the practical mastery young dancers carry in their bodies, which cannot be accurately formulated in terms of a system of representations. Dancers, from this perspective, do not passively follow instructions, but actively engage in tasks involving characteristic ways of moving that are situated in the nexus of relations between people and the distinctive contexts of dance. The paper suggests that skill learning in dance (or indeed any domain) is not a matter of processing information, but is imminent in the active, perceptual engagement of learner and context.     

体能训练对牛仔舞动作质量提高的实验研究

牛仔舞,属于拉丁舞的项目,在我国发展非常迅速,是亚运会比赛的项目之一。其要求“快、轻、弹”,是速度与爆发力的集中体现。现如今,牛仔舞舞蹈演员的竞技水平不断提高,在世界体育舞蹈比赛高度越发趋同状态下,要求参赛者除了必须有过硬牛仔舞的技术基础以及优良的表现力,好的身体素质是非常重要的,纯粹的追求表现力、基本功、只强调这些方面的训练,是无法满足比赛的需要的,在训练发展中,必须将体育与舞蹈结合起来,用“力量”去支撑舞蹈动作的质量,基于此,关于体能训练对牛仔舞动作质量的影响研究是很有价值意义的。本文通过文献资料法和实验研究法分析牛仔舞舞蹈学员体能需求和体能训练特点,进而探析体能训练对牛仔舞动作的重要性。     

Let's dance – feel better! Mood changes following dancing in different situations

Abstract

In the present study, we examined mood changes following dancing. Previous works suggested that contextual factors may influence affective states; it has been shown that changes in mood following competition differ from those following recreational exercise. The study has been conducted in Warsaw, Poland. Mood was assessed before and after dance activity in three groups of ballroom dancers: recreational (n = 32) and competitive (n = 38) dancers doing ordinary training and competitive dancers taking part in a dance competition (n = 35). We observed a moderately positive change in recreational dancers doing ordinary training; they reported higher energetic arousal (EA) and hedonic tone (HT) and lower tense arousal (TA) after dance activity. In comparison dancers taking part in a competition were higher on TA before dancing and felt less pleasure after dancing than recreational and competitive dancers doing ordinary training; HT, TA and EA moderately decreased during competition. In general, the current study suggests that dance can elicit changes in mood; however, situational context has to be taken into consideration when explaining the influence of dance on mood.     

体育舞蹈摩登舞选手身体素质训练探讨

体育舞蹈摩登舞是国际流行的一项时尚体育运动,它有丰富的娱乐内涵和强烈的体育竞赛特征。随着摩登舞的发展,其对选手的身体素质要求越来越高。本文借助体育运动训练原理和其他相关学科的研究成果,结合训练经验,就摩登舞选手的身体素质训练进行了较深入的研究,为摩登舞选手的训练提供理论参考。     

论舞狮运动中舞尾者的针对性核心力量训练

采用文献资料法探究在舞狮运动中舞狮尾者所动用的核心肌群,及其所需具备的力量素质的先进协调训练方法,以指导舞狮运动的训练,以使舞狮表演或比赛时,具有更好的效果,并推进舞狮运动在全国甚至全世界的广泛开展。     

体育舞蹈运动技术特点及专项力量训练的研究分析

通过逻辑分析法和文献资料法,结合体育舞蹈的专项特点以及生理特点,研究分析体育舞蹈技术特征及专项力量训练方法。从体育舞蹈的控制技术、旋转技术、律动技术、扭摆技术、弹动技术和摆荡技术等方面及专项力量训练的静力性力量训练、速度力量训练、力量耐力训练和相对力量训练进行分析研究。研究目的是使舞者认识到专项力量的训练对于专项技术与专项体能的重要性,在日常的学习和训练中可以将体育舞蹈运动技术特点与专项力量训练相结合并制定出符合舞者的专项力量训练方法,从而更好地掌握体育舞蹈不同舞种的技术特点,提高专项技能与运动成绩。     

Reconsidering the Female Tradition in English Physical Education: The Impact of Transnational Exchanges in Modern Dance

Histories of the female tradition in physical education in England tend to celebrate the unique early twentieth-century achievements of dedicated women successfully creating their own profession to train the female body in healthful gymnastics and games through the establishment of specialist training colleges. Yet, the female tradition has also been painted as a ‘time-limited achievement’ where female physical educators erroneously tied their fortunes to particular movement practices and modes of training. Their perceived inability to change with the times has been blamed for their loss of power in determining the direction of post-WW2 physical education. Yet, the so-called ‘demise’ of the female tradition was not so straightforward. Female physical educators had already moved well beyond obedience to Ling's gymnastic regulations or Laban's notions of effort and flow by mid-century and were increasingly alert to emergent movement philosophies. Once interest in a variety of somatic practices along with the promise of modern dance had seeped into the worldview of forward-thinking female physical educators their authority to direct their profession may have been diminished, but it was also enhanced and diverted into important transnational streams of dance and therapeutic movement-related professional opportunities which have been less acknowledged.     

冰上舞蹈创编融入中国文化元素的构想——传统武术与民族舞蹈的使用

现代冰上舞蹈的创编中,融入各国文化与民族元素已经成为一种必然的发展趋势,我国冰上舞蹈运动员在冰上舞蹈的创编过程中融入中华文化元素,对于提高我国冰上舞蹈的比赛成绩、促进世界花样滑冰运动的发展具有重要意义。认为中华传统武术与民族舞蹈体现出的中华文化的内涵,是中华文化的表现形式之一。提出冰上舞蹈运动员在设计与表演中应从内容的来源、节奏的表现、舞蹈的编排、风格的展现等方面借鉴传统武术与民族舞蹈的元素,利于其用精彩的技术动作,深情地演绎出故事情景与音乐感受,使音乐表达与节奏的配合谐调、优美,用中华文化的博大精深征服观众与裁判。     

Physical education cultures in Sweden: fitness,sports, dancing … learning?

In a significant article from 1993, Crum describes the purpose of physical education (PE) as a ‘planned introduction into movement culture’. In broad terms, this purpose is tantamount to the stated purpose of Swedish PE in national steering documents. Crum contends, however, that physical educators do not prioritise learning, which is largely due to the different ‘movement cultures’ that constitute the PE lessons. This article explores how practice unfolds in movement cultures that are included in Swedish PE and their implications for teaching and learning in the subject. Some 30 (indoor) PE lessons in eight secondary schools in four cities throughout Sweden were video recorded. At ‘first glance’ these lessons indicated the prevalence of four logics of practice: a physical training logic, a sports logic, a sport technique logic and a dance logic. However, further analysis revealed that the teachers' and students' actions were not entirely in line with a logic of practice of training the body, winning the game, learning sporting skills or learning to dance. Instead, the PE practice largely unfolded as a ‘looks-like-practice’, where the purpose of teaching was blurred, and where any ‘planned introduction into movement culture’ was difficult to identify. In the final section, the authors discuss how physical activity logics can be recontextualised in a PE setting in order to emphasise the educational contribution of PE.     

Non-disabled secondary school children's lived experiences of a wheelchair basketball programme delivered in the East of England

Frequently an unquestioned belief is held in British schools in the value of ‘normalized’ ability in physical education (PE). Consequently inclusion of disabled students can be problematic. Negative perceptions of disability are rarely challenged. This study investigated the embodied experiences of 49 non-disabled secondary school pupils during a programme designed to introduce disability sport to non-disabled school children entitled ‘The Wheelchair Sports Project’. Funded by a County Sports Partnership, Wheelchair Basketball sessions were delivered by trained coaches during PE for a 12-week period. Forty-nine pupils aged between 10 and 12 years took part in the study. Non-participant observations were completed during the programme, and semi-structured group interviews were completed with 24 participants pre- and post-project. Bourdieu's theoretical framework guided data analysis. The impact of the project on pupils' perceptions of physical disability was investigated. Prior to the project, pupils emphasized the ‘otherness’ of disabled bodies and described disability sport as inferior and not ‘real’. Observations highlighted how pupils experienced physical challenges adapting to wheelchair basketball. Pupils struggled to control wheelchairs and frequently diverged from acceptable behaviour by using their lower limbs to ‘cheat’. Post-programme group interviews demonstrated that, due to their own embodied experiences, pupils began to question their perceptions of the potential ability of participants with physical impairments. Pupils described high physical demands of wheelchair basketball and began to focus upon similarities between themselves and physically disabled individuals. However, participants made no reference to impairments other than physical disability, emphasizing the specificity of the effects of pupils' embodied experiences on their embodied habitus, which, although difficult to assess over the long term, appeared to have an impact on self-perceptions over the short term.     

I am sailing—towards a transactional analysis of ‘body techniques’

In recent years there has been a growing interest in questions related to embodiment and learning. Within the field of ‘body pedagogics’ great efforts have been made to develop theory and methodology that can deal with the corporeal aspects of experience and knowledge without adopting any form of dualistic conceptions of body/mind and organism/environment. This article connects to this body of research. The purpose is to first present a synthesis of James' radical empiricism, Dewey's transactional understanding of experience and learning and Marcel Mauss' concept of ‘body techniques’ and the notion of education embedded in it. Against the background of this theoretical development, and with a Transactional Model of Analyzing Bodying (TMAB), we then show how we can analytically come to terms with different dualistic problems that research into ‘body pedagogics’ has to deal with. We use an empirical example of dinghy sailing to create knowledge about what we learn when learning embodied knowledge, and how this learning takes place. We argue that experience is an important concept for understanding the acting knowing human being, describing how experience is organized and developed and outlining how this organization can be understood as learning. We hold that situations where someone learns to embody certain knowledge are cases of overt actions, in which we can see what kinds of relations are created and how these relations become meaningful for further action.