Embodied Performances (PDF)

BEATRICE ALLEGRANTIis a choreographer (for dance theatre and film), clinical practitioner (in the UK NHS in adult mental health, special needs schools and in private practice) and is a researcher and convener on the Dance Movement Psychotherapy MA at University of Roehampton, UK. A key focus of her work is on embodiment or how we can 'be in' and develop our relationship with our bodies through integrating dance movement, psychosocial and biological processes and understandings of human agency. Visit authors website: www.embodiedpractice.co.uk

'Dr Allegranti offers a rare addition to the literature concerning Dance Movement Psychotherapy, in which she deconstructs taken-for-granted ideas surrounding gender and sexuality through the medium of dance performance and film. In so doing she has traversed several media, expertly negotiating and performing her own identities as therapist, choreographer, film maker and writer. The result is a text with accompanying film resources that will challenge a range of practitioners and academics, including social scientists interested in looking afresh at gender and sexuality as performed identities.' - Bonnie Meekums, Lecturer, University of Leeds, UK

'In Embodied Performances, Beatrice Allegranti talks - yes, and sings and dances and more - of how the body knows, does, creates. In this rich and fluent work Allegranti calls us to pay attention to how the practices and discourses of dance movement psychotherapy, performance, film, narrative and feminist philosophy speak with each other; and implicitly she invites us to participate in this conversation ourselves. We cannot help but accept.' - Jonathan Wyatt, University of Edinburgh, UK

'Embodied Performances constitutes a deeply significant contribution to theory, practice, and pedagogy in embodied scholarship across disciplines. The book is committed to the rigorously creative, ethical, and cutting edge use of performance and movement to articulate hegemonic sociocultural performativities and then, subsequently, how we might embody alternatives to that and offer multiple ways of being and healing in our social worlds. A go-to book for anyone interested in embodiment praxes.' - Tami Spry, Cloud State University, USA

'Embodied Performances is a rich contribution to our understanding of the practices and politics of gender, sex and sexuality. Allegranti takes forward the very latest developments in feminist thinking to reconsider the ways in which we live as, and in, our bodies. The fluid