Full Description
Kinaesthetic Empathy, Ethics and Care develops a philosophy of dance that highlights the psychological, aesthetic and ethical significance of dancer-viewer interaction in the moment of performance.
Leroy draws on phenomenology, psychoanalysis, dance studies and care ethics to analyse kinaesthetic empathy as a form of intersubjective performance. She shows how, in the contagion or interweaving between corporealities of dancer and viewer, each party supports or upholds the other in a process of mutual care. Dance movement involves a play with gravity which alleviates the weight of repressed desire and redefines the contours of the body-image, facilitating psychological self-repair. Through projection into the body of another, we can develop our independence and autonomy as subjects, even in the midst of relational being. Richly illustrated with theatre dance examples, Leroy's argument develops a corporeal basis for ethics and reveals how a return to the moving body through dance helps lay the foundations for a more humane society.
This book will interest philosophers, dance researchers, care ethicists and care practitioners, as well as advanced students in these fields and general readers curious about the aesthetic and ethical potency of theatre dance.
Contents
Introduction to the English Translation
Translator's Preface
Foreword: On Gravity by Angelin Preljocaj
Introduction
PART I. THE AESTHETICS OF EMPATHY
Chapter 1. Prelude by way of example: Wim Vandekeybus's Blush
Chapter 2. Kinaesthetic empathy and dance theory: fundamentals of a concept
Chapter 3. Aesthetic emotion in dance: kinaesthetic experience of the flesh
Chapter 4. Between bodies: transitional space and potential space - the space of play
Chapter 5. Playing with gravity
PART II. A QUESTION OF ETHICS: UP-HOLDING, SUPPORT AND CARE
Chapter 6. Holding and handling: reciprocal care
Chapter 7. Care for being
Chapter 8. Up-holding and care
Chapter 9. The ethical force of dance
Chapter 10. Maurice Hamington and the embodied epistemology of care
Chapter 11. From kinaesthetic empathy to care for the other: DV8's The Cost of Living
PART III. HEALING THE SELF, REPAIRING THE FLESH: ΔESIRE'S (RE-)DESIGN
Chapter 12. Dance and care of the self: from the weight of the flesh to an ethics of subjectivation
Chapter 13. Overture by way of a conclusion: movement as ethical restoration
