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Dancing Across the Lifespan Negotiating Age, Place, and Purpose Edited by Pam Musil · Doug Risner · Karen Schupp Dancing Across the Lifespan “Presented under three organizing categories: social-cultural, educational, and artistic,thiscollection…probesissuesofageandagingatvariousstagesofadancer’s life through sociological, auto-ethnographic, and ontological/phenomenological perspectives. The scholarship is strong … often stated in first-hand kinaesthetic terms,thebookprivilegestheembodiedexperienceasamodeforresearching,discovering, and knowing, helping to collapse the critical distance that often exists in dance studies literature.” —Betsy Cooper, Professor of Dance, California State University, USA “Dancing Across the Lifespan interrogates workings of age and ageing across the lives of dancers, and those who make dance their livelihoods—an important contributiontothedanceliterature.Chapterstrulycrossthelifespanfromchildhood, middleage,olderadult,toendoflife.Intersectingissuesofraceandsexualitywithin life stories, the book provides a needed resource for anyone who is living a lifetime of dance.” —Lynette Young Overby, Professor of Theatre, University of Delaware, USA “This book will most certainly move the field forward by depicting key issues that a lifespanofdancemustconfront.Astheartsworldrespondsmostkeenlytoimportant societal/cultural concerns, this text will contribute to much needed scholarship and promotedialogueinareasofcriticalracetheory,appropriation,competitionculture, aging, and mortality. The strength of the research is also its ‘humanness’—in short, how the authors have focused on their personal experience, while also reflecting a universal understanding. Readers will see themselves in the lives discussed in the book.” —Karen Clemente, Professor of Dance, Ursinus College, USA · · Pam Musil Doug Risner Karen Schupp Editors Dancing Across the Lifespan Negotiating Age, Place, and Purpose Editors Pam Musil Doug Risner Spanish Fork, UT, USA Detroit, MI, USA Karen Schupp Tempe, AZ, USA ISBN 978-3-030-82865-3 ISBN 978-3-030-82866-0 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-82866-0 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,electronicadaptation,computersoftware,orbysimilarordissimilarmethodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such namesareexemptfromtherelevantprotectivelawsandregulationsandthereforefreefor general use. Thepublisher,theauthorsandtheeditorsaresafetoassumethattheadviceandinforma- tion in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respecttothematerialcontainedhereinorforanyerrorsoromissionsthatmayhavebeen made.Thepublisherremainsneutralwithregardtojurisdictionalclaimsinpublishedmaps and institutional affiliations. Cover image: Danny Willems, Tornar by Choreographer Seppe Baeyens, Production Ultima Vez 2015 This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Foreword What does it mean to dance across the lifespan? With dance as our partner ininquiry,celebration,connection,andexpression,howdoesithelpusshape our understanding of the world as a child and then as an adult. There is so much to reflect about as I consider the varied and rich experiences of dance throughout my life. There are moments in life when our bodies express first, whether we are in pain, in love, in frustration, in joy. This is an enduring truth and it is an ageless one. For me, watching a child wriggle with abandon while observing a bug in motion in the garden, or feeling my own body fall to the floor at the news that my father had died, our bodies are our stalwart partners in discovering the news of the world and in communicating our presence in that world. Now that I am in my seventies, I look backward and forward in time soverydifferentlythanwhenIwasyoung.Butoneconstanthasbeenthe reminderofhowincredibleourbodiesare,especiallywhenweremember to take the time to notice. Dancing helps the noticing and somehow augments all the tiny discoveries of daily living. At its best, it gives us shape to see, momentum to experience, and connectivity to share with other humans, animals, and the natural and built world of which we are a part. Some of us have been lucky enough to make a field of this noticing. We have been participants in dancing as a reflection of cultural and individual identity, as a forum in which to put our thoughts and v vi FOREWORD sensations into the world, and as an ongoing inquiry in the nourish- ment of others by engaging in pedagogical and community processes. We may have struggled to find the right forms, or styles, or genres, the bestcornerofthemarkettooccupy,ormaybethewaytonavigateprofes- sionalupsanddowns.Still,ourbodyanditsknowledgegiftsuseveryday with comprehensions unique to each of us but common to our human enterprise. I began dreaming of dance before I could talk. Thankfully, my parents noticed and believed enough in the power of art, and with financial support from their parents, sent me off with glee to Saturday morning danceclasses.Iwas,fromthebeginning,evenatfiveyearsold,movedby therigorandimprovisationthat beganandendedeachsession.Iwasnot just a wild child; I was a driven one. By the time I was 14, I was entirely consumed by how to be an artist in the world and how to address the world’s issues with movement. Now, I like to warn parents and teachers alike to never underestimate a teenager’s passion for work, for changing things, for living life fully, and if that teenager, like me, is lucky enough to be in an environment that encourages the body to be a part of, not separatefrom,ourbiggestconcerns,well…allkindsofthingscanhappen. Iamnotsurewhichdecadeoflifeisthehardest,butwhenIreflecton my own, I think getting through my twenties has to be it. And what role did dance play? It was the refuge I needed and the catalyst for the woes. Much later in my life, when I ran the intergenerational Dance Exchange, Iwasalwaysamusedandsentimentalaboutwatchingtheyoungerdancers intheirtwentiesconnectwiththeolderdancersintheirsixties.Ipondered the nature of these two decades and decided that they were both about finding yourself after you had completed some of the expectations that our contemporary society demands. Trouble of all kinds ensued, with dance as both balm and thorn. Decades later, as I raised my own daughter, I again observed the way dancewasabsorbedintothefamilyandhowourrelationshipwasreflected in the nature of the work. Parent child dance classes replaced the work I had been doing in residence at Children’s Hospital. Now we were a pair, and we were joined in our movement explorations by all the ways that parents, children, families congregate whether in the living room, the studio, the house of worship, or the stage. One of my favorite pieces that involved intergenerational performers (and inter species too) was In Praise of Animals and their People. In that dance we did a section about the death of our cat, and I count it among the most essential pieces I FOREWORD vii have made. Young and old, children and their fathers in a ceremony of loss.Lifereplicatedonstageormaybeitwasnotreplicationbutlifeitself. Now I look back on these stories and endless ones not told, and I am struckbyaconversationIamhavingwithmyselfandotherswhoarenow older. I am well beyond the age of who would have been invited into the Dancers of the Third Age, my first foray into intergenerational practices formed after my mother died in 1975. Here I am, making a piece called WickedBodies,aboutthewisdomandexperiencesoffeminineknowledge, held in bodies who have survived so much. As some cultures see it, the future is behind us; the past is in front of us; and the lifespan spirals around us as our bodies spin within. Tempe, AZ, USA Liz Lerman April 2021 Contents Introduction 1 Pam Musil, Doug Risner, and Karen Schupp Educational Contexts A Letter Re-Membering Ballet Class: My Young Black Self Writes Her White Ballet Teacher 11 Nicole Y. McClam The Youngest Dancers and the Curricula that Engage Them 27 Monica J. Cameron Frichtel Empowering Young Male Dancers: Perspectives of Adult-Collaborators from the Outside-In 45 Hamish McIntosh, Alfdaniels Mabingo, Clare Battersby, and Carol Brown When Students Become Teachers 63 Michelle R. Zimmerman Aging in Place in Higher Ed Dance: A View from Middle Age 79 Rebecca Gose ix x CONTENTS Social and Cultural Contexts B-Girl at 50 97 Sherril Dodds Dancing Un-Visible Bodies 113 Adesola Akinleye Parenting While Dancing While Parenting 129 Pam Musil, Karen Schupp, and Doug Risner Aesthetic Community Building: Moving Stories of Fathers and Sons 149 Byron Richard DanceMetotheEndwithLove:ADuetwithNeuroscience and Dance 171 Rebecca Barnstaple, Christina Hugenschmidt, and Christina Tsoules Soriano Artistic Contexts Age Appropriate Ideals in Dance Competition Culture: More! More! More! 191 Karen Schupp Age as Another Other: Why I Make Intergenerational Dances 209 Robin Prichard Conversations on Change: A Project About Women, Dance, and Aging 225 Mary Fitzgerald and Eileen Standley Narratives on Dancing and Expiring: An “End of Life” Autoethnographic Essay 243 Doug Risner Index 265 Editors and Contributors About the Editors Pam Musil, MA, is Professor Emeritus of the Department of Dance at Brigham Young University and certified Level Two Franklin Method Educator. Her teaching spans over four decades and numerous courses, including contemporary dance technique, improvisation, performance, dance studies, dance science, dance education and pedagogy, among others. She has served in various administrative capacities and received numerous teaching, leadership and scholarship awards, most recently the National Dance Education Organization’s Outstanding Dance Education Researcher Award in 2020. Post-retirement, Musil continues selective teaching and pursuing research interests intersecting dance education, gender, and age within populations that span grades 7–12, postsec- ondarydanceeducationandbeyond.Recentnotablepublicationsinclude authored chapters in Ethical Dilemmas in Dance Education: Case Studies inHumanizingDancePedagogy (2020,editedbyDougRisnerandKaren Schupp); and Dance & Gender: A Evidenced-Based Approach (2017, edited by Wendy Oliver and Doug Risner). Doug Risner, Ph.D., MFA, is Professor of Dance and Distinguished Faculty Fellow at Wayne State University. Dr. Risner publishes research on the sociology of dance training and education, gender in dance, curriculum theory and policy, and humanizing dance pedagogies. He has xi