Dreaming to life Collective Liberation: Cultivating caring communities through dance and movement

Abstract

When I dream of what I want the future of dance education to look like, I imagine a truly liberated world where all people have access to liberatory dance and movement education. We, society at large, live in a world where all forms of oppression have been dismantled and all people are truly free. We live with a mindset of abundance, not scarcity, where there is space and resources for all types of movement and dance practices. In order to bring this dream of collective liberation, or a world where all people are free, into reality many societal changes must occur. I believe liberatory education praxis can bring about these necessary changes.

In my thesis, I utilize action research to examine and develop my own pedagogical praxis, seeing how implementing liberatory education praxis can bring collective liberation and abolition into dance education. For the practical work of the thesis, I organized and taught three Contemporary Dance and Partnering Community Practice workshops in three different countries. Through these teachings, I investigate if liberatory education praxis can be used to cultivate a caring community. I question, how can liberatory education praxis support the cultivation of a caring community within dance education? How does this contribute to bringing the collective liberation dream to life?

While my learning is a continual process which extends into many directions, I will focus on three main insights that I gained which directly relate to liberatory education praxis and cultivating a caring community. Through my own observations and reflections and based on the student’s feedback, I found that my pedagogical praxis fostered feelings of inclusion and belonging, supported holistic growth, and cultivated caring communities.

Through these teachings and research, I am finding what is needed from me, as a teacher, to support the creation of a caring community and how this can support bringing abolition and collective liberation into dance education. I am both strategizing ways to teach that do not uphold the current oppressive societal systems and dreaming of alternative ways of being that transgress current boundaries. This work is an ongoing process, where I must consciously continue to evaluate how I teach, what I teach, and why I teach. Through dance and movement, we can bring into reality part of the collective liberation dream and extend this into society at large, until all people are truly free.