Back to the Dance Itself

Sondra Fraleigh is a professor emeritus of the Department of Dance at State University of New York College at Brockport. She is the editor of Moving Consciously: Somatic Transformations through Dance, Yoga, and Touch and the author of Butoh: Metamorphic Dance and Global Alchemy.

"A primer of phenomenological categories and their application in varying contexts . . . Back to the Dance Itself is like a tribute, an unplanned Festschrift, celebrating Fraleigh's contribution to the dynamic entwining of dance and phenomenology." --Journal of Folklore Research "This beautiful collection is a choreography of voices emanating directly from movement. It celebrates Sondra Fraleigh's lifetime of integrating philosophical knowledge with somatic experiences at the same time as providing an empathic space for the contributions of others. Pressing contemporary issues such as climate change, the vitality of matter, and escaping from anthropocentrism are addressed, revealing new resonances for the philosophy and practices of phenomenology."--Susan Kozel, author of Closer: Performance, Technologies, Phenomenology "Diving deep inside the boundary spaces that link body and language, this book is a tour de force. Asking 'What makes dance what it is?', Fraleigh et al. thread experiential paths that will appeal to movement practitioners across the dance and somatics spectrum. Plural phenomenologies are made philosophically accessible, with evocative exemplars revealing dance's immense horizons: diverse, relationally purposeful and always closer than we think."--Daniel Deslauriers, California Institute of Integral Studies