Geographies of Us: Ecosomatic Essays and Practice Pages(Routledge Studies in Theatre, Ecology, and Performance)

Geographies of Us: Ecosomatic Essays and Practice Pages is the first edited collection in the field of ecosomatics. With a combination of essays and practice pages that provide a variety of scholarly, creative, and experience-based approaches for readers, the book brings together both established and emergent scholars and artists from many diverse backgrounds and covers work rooted in a dozen countries. The essays engage an array of crucial methodologies and critical/theoretical perspectives, including practice-based research in the arts, especially in performance and dance studies, critical theory, ecocriticism, Indigenous knowledges, material feminist critique, quantum field theory, and new phenomenologies. Practice pages are shorter chapters that provide readers a chance to engage creatively with the ideas presented across the collection. This book offers a multidisciplinary perspective that brings together work in performance as research, phenomenology, and dance/movement; this is one of its significant contributions to the area of ecosomatics. The book will be of interest to anyone curious about matters of embodiment, ecology, and the environment, especially artists and students of dance, performance, and somatic movement education who want to learn about ecosomatics and environmental activists who want to learn more about integrating creativity, the arts, and movement into their work.

Table of Contents:
Land Acknowledgments List of Contributors List of Figures Ear and Heart to Earth with Gratitude (Acknowledgements) Introduction: Locating Geographies of Us Sondra Fraleigh and Shannon Rose Riley St. George, Utah, U.S.A: 37.0941° N, 113.5749° W Fremont, California, U.S.A.: 37.5483° N, 121.9886° W PART I Enworlding, Rewilding, Decentering, Transing/Pluraling, Performing, Attending to, Dancing 1 A Critical Ecosomatics: Cultivating Awareness and Imagination Shannon Rose Riley Grau Pond, Fremont, California, U.S.A.: 37.5735° N,121.9847° W Essay 2 What Native American Dance Does and the Stakes of Ecosomatics Tria Blu Wakpa University of California, Los Angeles, California, U.S.A.: 34.0700° N, 118.4442° W South Dakota State Penitentiary, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, U.S.A.: 43.5668° N, 96.7250° W Essay 3 Ecosomatic Performance Research for the Pluriverse Daniel Ìgbín’bí Coleman San Cristóbal de las Casas, México: 16.7370° N, 92.6376° W Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.A.: 33.7532° N, 84.3853° W Practice Pages 4 Material/ Material: Thousandfold Somas and Poetry of EmergenceSondra Fraleigh St. George, Utah, U.S.A.: 37.0941° N, 113.5749° W Essay 5 Decentering the Human through Butoh Lani Weissbach Indianapolis, Indiana, U.S.A.: 39.7684° N, 86.1581° W Practice Pages 6 Shaky Islands and Rising Seas: Dancing Entanglements in the Global South Karen Barbour Kirikiriroa (Hamilton), Aotearoa (New Zealand): 37.7869° S, 175.3185° E Essay PART II Horse, Lion, Queer Animal, Skin 7 Crittercal Somaticity: Rewilding Our Horse Senses Stephen Smith Pitt Meadows, British Colombia, Canada: 49.3058° N,122.6057° W Essay 8 Moving with CatsShannon Rose Riley The Berlin Zoological Garden, Berlin, Germany: 52.5079° N, 13.3378° E Grimmuseum, Berlin, Germany: 52.4911° N, 13.4127° E Private multispecies dwelling, Fremont, California, U.S.A.: 37.5483° N, 121.9886° W Practice Pages 9 Embodying Islands: Ecosomatics and the Transnational Queer Fei Shi Nex̱ wlélex̱ m (Bowen Island), Canada: 49.3768° N, 123.3702° W Chongming Island, China: 31.6813° N, 121.4820° E Essay 10 Skinbody and the Skin of the Earth Alison (Ali) East Otepoti (Dunedin), Aotearoa (New Zealand): 45.8795° S, 170.5006° E Practice Pages PART III Tree, River, Carbon, Stone 11 Practicing with Trees 219Annette Arlander Galway Road, Johannesburg, South Africa: 26.1658° S, 28.0223° E David Bagares Street, Stockholm, Sweden: 59.3373° N,18.0687° E Kaivopuisto Park, Helsinki, Finland: 60.1557° N, 24.9557° E Practice Pages 12 Fearless Belonging and River- Me Adesola Akinleye Thames River, London, U.K.: 51.4925° N, 0.0288° W Mystic River, Boston, Massachusetts: U.S.A.: 42.3979° N, 71.0797° W Denton, Texas, U.S.A.: 33.2302° N, 97.1213° W Essay 13 How to Apprentice with Land in Enchanted Kinship Christine BelleroseRockcliffe Park, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada: 45.4471° N, 75.6847° W Practice Pages 14 Feel the Carbon under Your Footprint: Indigenous Approaches to Grounding Nathalie Guillaume Kūkaniloko Birthstones State Monument, O’ahu, Hawaii: 21.5048° N, 158.0364° W Port- au- Prince, Republic of Haiti: 18.5358° N, 72.3331° W Practice Pages PART IV Place, Plasma, Pluriverse, Potato 15 My Place Is a Chiasmatic Dance Glen A. Mazis Marietta, Pennsylvania, U.S.A.: 40.0559° N, 76.5517° W Essay 16 Cosmic Plasma Echoing in (Our) PlaceDebra Lacey Conneaut Lake, Pennsylvania, U.S.A.: 41.6033° N, 80.3058° W Practice Pages 17 Languaging Body by Field: Ecoproprioception George Quasha Barrytown, New York, U.S.A.: 41.9998° N, 73.9248° W Essay 18 Outdoor Dances: Meditations on Loss in the Finger Lakes and Beyond Missy Pfohl Smith Finger Lakes, New York, U.S.A.: 42.7238° N, 76.9297° W Practice Pages 19 Awe and Empathy Edward S. Casey Stony Brook, New York, U.S.A.: 40.9027° N, 73.1338° W Essay 20 Enworlding Place Dances and Potatoes Sondra Fraleigh Snow Canyon, Utah, U.S.A.: 37.2145° N, 113.6402° W Yokohama, Japan: 35.4437° N, 139.6380° E Circleville, Utah, U.S.A.: 38.1688° N, 112.2696° W Practice Pages Index

About the Author :
Sondra Fraleigh is Professor Emeritus, Department of Dance, State University of New York, Brockport, U.S.A. Shannon Rose Riley is Professor of Humanities & Creative Arts, San José State University, U.S.A.

Review :
“This collection of essays gathers together important strands in the current studies of ecosomatics. It includes many ‘practice pages’ that open doors to the feelings that have generated the commitment of the writers to creating common grounds for deep conversation about the way people live in the ecologies of the world. The combination of affective strength, so difficult to articulate, with practical exercises—such as the many approaches to breathing as a form of ecoproprioception—will draw readers into places/ geographies where artmaking and philosophy join together and suggest new languages for thinking and talking about engaging with this Earth.” Lynette Hunter, Professor of Theatre and Dance, University of California, Davis “This seminal collection of essays maps the contours of an emerging field: ecosomatics. At the intersection of dance studies, movement studies, philosophy, and ecology, ecosomatics encourages ways of thinking and doing that cultivate a human’s sensory awareness of their bodily enmeshment in enabling places and worlds—nexuses of material relationships which call for respect, reciprocity, and responsibility. In essays written by an international cast of contributors, ecosomatics demonstrates its fierce commitment to social and environmental justice; a ready embrace of Indigenous knowledges, histories, and rights; thoughtful engagement with established fields of phenomenology, eco-philosophy, and dance studies; a lived, dialectical production of theory and practice, and an overriding mission to participate as consciously as possible in generating worldviews and bodily practices that sensitize humans to the ongoing health and wellbeing of the Earth in us and around us.” Kimerer L. LaMothe, PhD, author of Why We Dance: A Philosophy of Bodily Becoming “Geographies of Us provides an exciting snapshot of a diversifying field: of the different methods, playful encounters, bodymind approaches, and land politics that make up the contemporary ecosomatic inquiry, with plenty of invitations to join in the dance. At its heart, this collection is about local and grounded connection, about reaching out—in intergenerational liveliness and critterly entanglement, in touch and in movement, in human and more-than-human worlds.” Petra Kuppers, author of Eco Soma: Pain and Joy in Speculative Performance Encounters; Anita Gonzalez Collegiate Professor of Performance Studies and Disability Culture, University of Michigan “I consider this the most important work to emerge in interdisciplinary dance/performance studies this century. The depth and quality of engagement available to the reader in these pages has the potential to widely transform thought, practice, institutions, environments, and the lived relations between.” Karen Bond, Chair of Dance, Temple University