Ravn, S: Sensing Movement, Living Spaces

In the book,‘Sensing Movement, Living Spaces,‘ Susanne Ravn explores and describes how 13 professional dancers, as expert movers, offer enriching insights into movement and body consciousness - and in particular into the internal sensing of movement that in a variety of ways takes centre stage in the dancers‘ praxis. All 13 dancers have established international careers and represent a cross-section of genres and backgrounds in classical ballet, improvisation, modern/new dance and techniques related to Butoh and Body-Mind Centering. This allows the author to make a comparative study of ways in which lived experience can be structured - and of how space, sensing and memory are shaped and given form in movement. The book interweaves ethnographical studies with a phenomenological perspective to explore how movement is essential to experience. In the central part of the book this layered approach allows Ravn to take the diversity of the dancers‘ descriptions to suggest that their expertise in movement offers important material for phenomenological descriptions of movement and body consciousness.