The 'Female' Dancer: A Soma-Scientific Approach, published by Routledge aims to question dancers’ relationship with ‘female’ through biological, anatomical, scientific and self-social identity. Recognising the complexities of a fixed-ness of ‘female’ (as much as a fixed-ness of ‘male’), we seek through the contributory voices of scientists, dance and somatic scholars, and movement practitioners to discuss and unpack some of the identities, assumptions, and perceptions of female dancing bodies.

 

We recognise ‘female’ as both a gendered and biological term and encourage contributions that consider how ‘female’ relates to lived experiences and bodily knowledge through social, political, cultural contexts and those that relate to ‘female’ as attributed to biological sex and topics that reflect this in terms of physiology and anatomy, and how multiple lenses to the ‘female’ offer a rich and complex understanding of dancers’ health, training, and well-being.

 

This book draws together somatic experiences of the ‘female’ dancer, that are socially, politically and culturally informed, alongside evidence based scientific information relating to the physiological, biomechanical, psychological and sociological experiences of ‘female’ within the dancer sector. Spanning five central areas of training and performance; Body Image, Strength, Musculature and Female Fragility, Life Cycles: negotiating balance and change, Transgender Dancers, Empowering Women in Dance, the editors encourage readers to meet at the intersections of dance science and somatics, in a holistic consideration of the ‘female’ dancer.

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The text will be published in Spring 2024, to stay up to date with news, events and launch sign up to the mailing list below.