Spiritual Herstories

Amanda Williamson is visiting honorary professor of somatic movement dance education at Coventry University in the UK. She is founding editor of The Journal of Dance, Movement & Spiritualities, a peer-reviewed journal, coeditor of Dance, Somatics and Spiritualities: Contemporary Sacred Narratives, both also published by Intellect.Barbara Sellers-Young is a senior scholar and professor emerita at York University in Toronto, where she was dean of the School of Arts, Media, Performance and Design. She is the author of many books, including The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Ethnicity and Belly Dance, Pilgrimage and Identity. She is currently editor-in-residence at Dance Chronicle.

'This is an important publication for advancing research in dance and reinforcing the scholarly lens, giving voice to the body, mind, and soul as partners in exploration. The preface, “Dancing Incantations” by Celeste Snowber, beautifully sets up the reader’s adventure: “Be prepared to let this anthology sit with you for a long time. Each chapter stands alone in its beauty, depth and breadth of knowledge; it is truly a transdisciplinary conversation, which draws you back over and over again to nourish your whole being” (ix).'

• Preface: Dancing Incantations – Celeste SnowberIntroduction – Amanda Williamson and Barbara Sellers-YoungPart One: Patriarchal Critique and Spiritual Feminist Perspectives – Amanda Williamson  1: Woman, body, earth and spirit – Linda Hartley 2: Informed by the Goddess – Jane Bacon3: Until The Lions – Jayne Stevens4: Symbols of the Goddess in Balkan Women’s Dance – Laura Shannon5: Spirals and circles – Amanda Williamson6: Soul loss and retrieval – Eline Kieft 7: Reclaiming our innate vitality – Caroline FrizellPart Two: Somatic Ethnography, Diasporic Spiritualities and Postcolonial Voices – Barbara Sellers-Young 8: Dancing bodies and ritual spaces – Yvonne Daniel9: ‘Niimikaage’ into the twenty-first century – Sandra Laronde and Elaine Keillor10: Unearthing the presence of African women dancers in Nyanza province, 1900–40 – Seonagh Kummer 11: Love Poems to God – Veta Goler12: Dancing the Four Directions – Rosalie Jones13: Souls, soil and soma – Ojeya Cruz Banks and Miriam Marler14: Dancing through myself – Barbara Sellers-YoungPart Three: Spiritual Journeys in Dance Research – Amanda Williamson and Barbara Sellers-Young15: Writing Why We Dance – Kimerer L. LaMothe 16: Mystery, magic and the mundane – Celeste Snowber17: Creativity as medicine – Janet Lynn Roseman18: Dancing evolutionary spirituality – Cheryl Pallant19: Attunement and evanescence – Sondra Fraleigh20: Awakening the spirit through dance, somatics and Scaravelli Yoga – Sara Reed21: Spirituality in Aurelia Baumgartner’s Tanzphilosophie – Aurelia Baumgartner and Daniel Meyer-Dinkgräfe