Other flesh: Embodiment in Couple and Group Dances

In my article, I investigate the possibilities of an embodied perspective in the research of couple and group dances. I intend to find ways to cross the boundaries between structural and cultural approaches, which have been in the main stream of the research of social dancing. In order to reach this purpose, I use the phenomenological concepts of flesh, reversibility and empathy to make a connection between the individual and community as well as form and experience. Importantly, I shall elucidate the idea of shared experience, which can be understood on the basis of these concepts. I wish to address how couple and group dances are fundamentally based on sharing certain horizons of experience, where bodies unfold themselves to other dancers through empathy in the context of shared dance forms and movement patterns. Consequently, the research of social dances should not concentrate merely on external or formal behaviour but on dancing as a part of embodied social reality.