Dance and the Quality of Life

This is the first volume devoted to the topic of dance and quality of life. Thirty-one chapters illuminate dance in relation to singular and overlapping themes of nature, philosophy, spirituality, religion, life span, learning, love, family, teaching, creativity, ability, socio-cultural identity, politics and change, sex and gender, wellbeing, and more. With contributions from a multi-generational group of artists, community workers, educators, philosophers, researchers, students and health professionals, this volume presents a thoughtful, expansive-yet-focused, and nuanced discussion of dance's contribution to human life. The volume will interest dance specialists, quality of life researchers, and anyone interested in exploring dance's contribution to quality of living and being.

Autorentext
Dr. Karen Bond is Chair of the Temple University Department of Dance, Philadelphia, USA. She was formerly Senior Lecturer and Coordinator of Dance Education and Research at the University of Melbourne, Australia, where she developed several of Australia's first Master's level courses in dance. She was a founding member of Al Wunder's Theatre of the Ordinary, Australia's first improvisational performance company, and of Adzohu, a West African music and dance ensemble based at La Trobe University, Melbourne. She is known for her research into experiences and meanings of dance for participants from a range of populations and settings encompassing education, community arts, performance and therapy. Dr. Bond is widely published in books, journals and conference publications, and has presented papers, courses, and workshops in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Jamaica, Japan, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Saipan, Singapore, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and the USA. In 2013, she was the inaugural recipient of the Outstanding Dance Education Researcher Award from the National Dance Education Organization (NDEO).

Inhalt
FOREWORD; TBA.- PREFACE; Karen E. Bond.- INTRODUCTION; Karen E. Bond.- NATURE.- I'm not an eagle, I'm a chicken! Constructions of Animal-Selfing in Childhood Dance; Karen E. Bond.- How Seudati Put Me in Touch with Birds; Sally M. Gardner.- Canyon Consciousness; Sondra Fraleigh.- Dance and Meaning in the Anthropocene; Robert Bingham.- Give Life a Dance: A Bio-Cultural Manifesto; Ellen Dissanayake.- RELIGION, PHILOSOPHY.- Dancing Aliveness; Maxine Sheets-Johnstone.- Earth Bound: Revisiting Evolutionary Theories on Dance and Religion; Kimerer L. LaMothe.- Dance, Christianity and Quality of Life; Jessica Van Oort.- Decision Making/Choice/Power/Responsibility: A Choreographic Perspective; Simon K. Ellis.- Drawing and Dancing: Exbodying the Unknowable; Molly Shanahan.- Beauty in Disability: An Aesthetics for Dance and Quality of Life; Aili Bresnahan.- DANCING THE LIFE SPAN.- Dance and Quality in Young Children's Lives: A Perspective from Aotearoa; Adrienne Sansom.- Daddy, root me in! Aesthetic Community Building in a Male, Inter-generational, Child-Centered, Dance Education Project; Byron Richard.- Fathers and sons: Dancing Encouters-Stories of Love and Longing; Isto Turpeinen.- Teenage Dancers' Perceptions of Identity in Three Community Engagement Settings; Miriam Giguere.- Stories from a Dancing Life; Teresa Benzwie.- 60+ Shades of Grey: Acculturation, Ambiguity and Dancing Elders in Northern Australia; Nicholas Rowe, David McMicken and Tim Newth.- LEARNING, TEACHING.- Dance, Embodied Learning and Quality of Life in Nordic Schools; Eeva Anttila and Charlotte Svendler Nielsen.- Making Meaning Through Somatic Dance Education: An Interactive Cognitive Subsystems (ICS) Perspective; Janet Rebecca Weber.- Teaching Dance in Higher Education: Valuing the Highs and the Lows; Alba Pedreira Vieira.- Dance Teacher Education: Turning to Creativity.- ABILITY, HEALTH, WELL-BEING.- Dance and Quality of Life in Indigenous Cultures in Australasia; Kim Dunphy and Vicki Ware.- Dance in Community Health Nursing for Women with Post-Partum Depression; Uzo Nwankpa.- Assessing Quality of Life in Community Dancers with Parkinson's.- Life-Changing Meetings in Disability-Inclusive Dance; Tone Pernille Østern, Philip Channells and Tone Pernille and Elen Østern.- Dance Economies of Difference; TBA.- IDENTITY, rESTORATION, TRANSFORMATION.- Brothers of the 'Bah Yah': Perceptions of Maleness in the Umfundalai Tradition of African Dance; C. Kemal Nance.- West African Dance: Restoring the Transmission of Cultural Knowledge in the United States; Ojeya Cruz Banks and Adama Jewel.- Dance and Human Dignity in Post-Apartheid South Africa; Marelize Marx.- Smart Phones: A Ghanaian Village and Traditional Dance; Kariamu Welsh.- Finding your Feet: Hip Hop Dance Participation amongst Migrant and Refugee Youth Arriving to Live in Australia; Jacinda Richards and Sally Gardner.- Dancing it Out: Building Positive Peace.