Embodied collaborative writing in graduate dance education.

This paper explores how embodied writing can inform teaching, learning, and research presentation in graduate-level dance education in a kinesiology faculty. The focus is on a graduate dance course "The Dancing Body in Motion", which combines the anatomical analysis of the physical body, social theory, and lived dance experiences to promote more embodied and holistic teaching and learning. The authors, an instructor and a student of the course, share their experiences and reflections on the course through an embodied presentation of a dialogue that combines the instructor's lecture notes, the student's learning journal entries, and their reflections both separately and in conversation with each other. Their reflections offer insights into how the body and mind, material and social body, and practice and theory can all be brought together using embodied writing practices, such as a learning journal and performance ethnography, in a dance performance.

Women's Articulations of Aging: "Learning to Be Affected" Through Experiences in Recreational Ballet.

In this article, we draw upon the experiences of mature recreational dancers who participated in classes facilitated by a professional ballet company and catered to older adults. Moving with 11 women through a 10-week ballet course, and immersing ourselves in the empirical material, we recognized opportunities for broadening our analysis of aging dancing bodies. Inspired by a Latourian understanding of bodies and a recent new materialist turn in humanities and social sciences, we became curious about the ways that the women were being affected by their experiences in ballet. The ballet studio, the barre, muscles, sweat, and music were all discussed as influential aspects contributing to their understandings of aging and dancing. Moving beyond biomedical prescriptions and extending socio-cultural constructions, we reveal opportunities for Latourian theory to dance with us toward re-imagining what is possible for aging recreational ballet dancers. Here, we allow the women's articulations of aging in ballet to exist as unique expressions unbound by limitations. Moving with women as they learn to become more affected through dance, we are given the opportunity to think about bodies, ballet and aging differently.

"It Can Be Magic:" Creating Age Awareness Through Contemporary Dance.

Professional dancers typically retire before age 40. Although the physical requirements for dance performance are often considered the reason for retirement, there is an increasing number dance researchers who demonstrate that the idealization of youthfulness on the stage is also a result of complex cultural, social, and economic realities and as such, in need of critique. As a group of mature women dancers who continue to perform, we aim to critique the idealization of youthfulness as a form of ageism in professional dance. In this paper, we present findings from our feminist memory-work study in which we critically reflected the rehearsals and performance of a choreography titled "Initiation." We detail three main themes-"It Will Only Get Worse;" "It Can Be Magic;" "Once a Dancer Always a Dancer"-that emerged from our study. We conclude that we gained critical awareness of the gendered and ageist construction of dance as a performing art. As a result, we now feel empowered to continue our work as mature dance artists.