Abstract
This chapter is a phenomenological exploration of dance as a mode of reflecting on and responding to environmental crisis. From 2015 to 2016, I engaged in a one-year, daily practice of dancing, photographing and removing trash from the Wissahickon Park, a woodland that stretches for several miles through northwest Philadelphia. During that time, my affective and spiritual connection to the park deepened, giving rise to a consideration of dance as an ethical practice with potential to renew and renegotiate human-nonhuman relations in the Anthropocene. In this account, I bring my emerging dance-based ethical inquiry into dialog with more-than-human philosophical frameworks proposed by Karen Barad and Shigenori Nagatomo.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Abram, D. (1996). Spell of the sensuous: Perception and language in a more-than-human world. New York: Vintage.
Abram, D. (2011). Becoming animal. New York: Vintage.
Ball, D. (2016, September 14). The new Anthropocene epoch has dawned, and it’s “very worrisome”. Retrieved from http://www.metronews.ca/news/vancouver/2016/09/14/new-anthropocene-epoch-has-already-dawned-warn-researchers.html
Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the universe halfway: Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Bennett, J. (2010). Vibrant matter: A political ecology of things. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Berwyn, B. (2016, September 5). Far from turning a corner, global CO2 emissions still accelerating. InsideClimate News. Retrieved from https://insideclimatenews.org/news/19052016/global-co2-emissions-still-accelerating-noaa-greenhouse-gas-index
Biggers, J. (2015, August 28). Call it what it is: A global migration shift from climate, not a migrant or refugee crisis. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-biggers/call-it-what-it-is-a-glob_b_8056186.html
Bingham, R. (2015, December). In the shadow of crisis: Dance and meaning in the Anthropocene. Paper presented at the annual Eastwest Somatics Network Conference, Springdale, UT.
Bingham, R. (2017). Improvising meaning in the age of humans. Doctoral dissertation, Temple University, Philadelphia.
Bohm, D. (1980). Wholeness and the implicate order. London: Routledge.
Brown, C., & Toadvine, T. (Eds.). (2003). Eco-phenomenology: Back to the earth itself. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
Bruzina, R. (2004). Edmund Husserl and Eugen Fink. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Chakrabarty, D. (2015, December). The geophysical agency of humans and climate change. Retrieved from http://globalenergyinitiative.org/insights/161-climate-change-and-the-geophysical-agency-of-humans.html
Chödrön, P. (1994). Start where you are. Boston: Shambhala.
Davis, H., & Turpin, E. (Eds.). (2015). Art in the Anthropocene. London: Open Humanities Press.
Fraleigh, S. (2016). Butoh translations and the suffering of nature. Performance Research, 21(4), 61–71.
Galanter, M. (2009). Dance, ecology, and the deep world. An interview with Arawana Hayashi and Jennifer Monson at SEEDS. Contact Quarterly, 34(2), 20–25.
Hay, D. (1994). Lamb at the altar: The story of a dance. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Heidegger, M. (1971). The origin of the work of art. Poetry, language, and thought (A. Hofstadter, Trans.). New York: Harper & Row.
Heidegger, M. (2010). Being and time (J. Stambaugh, Trans.). Albany: SUNY Press. (Original work published 1927).
Husserl, E. G. (2001). Logical investigations (D. Moran Ed.). London: Routledge. (Original work published 1900/1901).
Kimmerer, R. W. (2014). Returning the gift. Minding Nature, 7(2), 18–24.
Klein, N. (2012). This changes everything: Capitalism vs. the climate. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Kloetzal, M. (2011). Site dance. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida.
LaMothe, K. (2015). Why we dance: A philosophy of bodily becoming. New York: Columbia University Press.
Lepecki, A. (2016). Singularities: Dance in the age of performance. New York: Routledge.
Macy, J. (2014, November 6). A wild love for the world [Interview]. Retrieved from www.onbeing.org/program/joanna-macy-a-wild-love-for-the-world/
Malm, A., & Hornberg, A. (2014). The geology of mankind? A critique of the Anthropocene narrative. The Anthropocene Review, 1(1), 62–69.
Modi, P. (2016). Exclusive interview with the director of Harvard’s Food Law and Policy Clinic. Retrieved from www.change.org
Monson, J. (2016). Artist statement. iLand. Retrieved from http://www.ilandart.org/artist-biography/
Moran, D. (2000). Introduction to phenomenology. New York: Routledge.
Nagatomo, S. (1992). Attunement through the body. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
Nixon, R. (2011). Slow violence and the environmentalism of the poor. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Olsen, A. (2002). Body and earth. Middlebury, CT: Middlebury Bicentennial Series.
Robin, L. (2016). How do people live in the Anthropocene? Geophysical Research Abstracts, 18. Retrieved from http://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU2016/EGU2016-3339.pdf
Scranton, R. (2015). Learning to die in the Anthropocene. San Francisco: City Lights.
Sheets-Johnstone, M. (2011). The primacy of movement (2nd ed.). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Steffen, W., Crutzen, P. J., & McNeill, J. R. (2007). The Anthropocene: Are humans now overwhelming the great forces of nature? Ambio: A Journal of the Human Environment, 36(8), 614–621.
Sullivan, R. (2012). The meadowlands: Wilderness adventures at the edge of a city. New York: Scribner. (Original work published 1998).
Takenouchi, A. (2016). What is Jinen? Retrieved from http://www.jinen-butoh.com/top_e.html
Tippett, B. K. (Host). (2016, May 19). Kevin Kling: The losses and laughter we grow into. In B. K. Tippett (Producer), On being with Krista Tippett. Minneapolis, MN: KTPP.
Tonino, L. (2015). David Hinton on the wisdom of ancient Chinese poets. The Sun, 469, 4–12.
Vakoch, D. A., & Castrillón, F. (2014). Ecopsychology, phenomenology, and the environment: The experience of nature. New York: Springer.
van Manen, M. (1997). Researching lived experience: Human science for an action sensitive pedagogy. New Palz, NY: SUNY Press.
Yokobosky, M. (2000). Movement as installation: Eiko & Koma in conversation with Matthew Yokobosky. Performing Arts Journal, 64, 26–35.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Bingham, R. (2019). In the Shadow of Crisis: Dance and Meaning in the Anthropocene. In: Bond, K. (eds) Dance and the Quality of Life. Social Indicators Research Series, vol 73. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95699-2_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95699-2_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-95698-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-95699-2
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)