From ancient sacred dancers, to the pioneers of 20th century dance, to the current explorers of the Authentic Movement, the dancing female body is an incarnation of the soul, an alchemical vessel, a container subject to dark and divine projections. The Devadasis of South India who served the gods in ritual temple worship, embodying sensual devotion, were banished by the British colonizers of the Victorian Era. The “hysterical bodies”, which illuminated the birth of psychoanalysis and which together with the first modern dancers challenged patriarchy, are linked with a “red thread” to the corporality of feminism. In this way, the implicit and explicit dances of contemporary women are traced in the processes of Authentic Movement, generating soul and ethical confrontation with the personal and collective unconscious as nourishing, necessary incarnations in this moment of arid and violent authoritarianism.
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The Arts of Inclusion and Connection
Contemporary Challenges for Art Therapy, Dance Movement Therapy, Expressive Psychotherapy