Paper short abstract:

Based on fieldwork research conducted at dance workshops with eating disordered women, this paper explores the development of a new, joint anthropological and contemporary dance approach to understanding embodied experience.

Paper long abstract:

As part of a collaborative project bringing together a medical anthropologist and a contemporary dance choreographer, this paper explores the development of a joint anthropological and contemporary dance approach to understanding embodied experience. Based on fieldwork conducted at expressive contemporary dance and movement workshops with eating disordered women, this paper highlights dance practice as a channel to developing a theoretically- and data-rich examination of embodiment. It explores how dance practice, through eliciting and intricately examining experience in its immediacy, allows us to access and better understand the sensory worlds inhabited by both researchers and participants. Delineating the fusion of contemporary dancework and anthropological fieldwork in conducting research among eating disordered women, and examining the cross-fertilization of dance and anthropological theories of the body's 'being-in-the-world' (Csordas, 1993), this paper presents a new platform for thinking about the body, enacting scholarly-artistic collaborations, and broadening the remit of dance in anthropological research.