Dance in Peacebuilding: Space, Relationships, and Embodied Interactions

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2017

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thesis

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Dance answers the call for creativity in peacebuilding through diverse perspectives of space, relationality, and embodied interactions. While there is growing interest in using the performing arts in peacebuilding, there remains limited theory or research regarding dance in this context. This study contributes to the scope of arts-based peacebuilding research through practice-based field research focusing on dance in peacebuilding in the Asia–Pacific region. It focuses on two island nations, the Philippines and Fiji, each with complex conflict histories, and investigates the experiences of local facilitators, participants, and the researcher as both a reflective practitioner and practitioner-researcher. The qualitative research methods employed include strategies of the reflective practitioner, participant semi-structured interviews, and sensory ethnography. This thesis argues that dance activates multiple ways to observe, create, and understand space, dialogue, and relationality. Through these embodied ways of knowing, dance contributes diverse approaches and knowledge to expand the range and diversity of peacebuilding practice and research. It first considers space from an embodied perspective and then explores dance as a form of non-verbal communication and dialogue in peacebuilding. This thesis introduces micro-storytelling and the “embodied dialogic moment” as ways dance can potentially diversify dialogic approaches and analysis. Next, dance is explored in terms of creating options for increased practitioner self-awareness and connections to quality of life and options for building relationships across difference. Last, it considers that movement activates multiple ways of understanding and that dance provides a pathway to explore and understand diverse concepts of space, including Indigenous approaches that, from a dance perspective, potentially provide new lenses in peacebuilding. These diverse and embodied ways of knowing open the possibility for further exploration of multidimensional approaches in peacebuilding while acknowledging the potential limitations and risks of using dance in peacebuilding.

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