The 'female' dancer : a soma-scientific approach / edited by Claire Farmer and Helen Kindred.

I. Bodily knowledge -- Growing up in dance: Experiencing the pubertal transition in leotard and tights / Siobhan Mitchell -- Female dancer hormone health / Nicky Keay -- Female dancers: food, nutrients and body composition / Jasmine Challis -- Ballet culture and body image in recreational dance / Rebekah Wall -- A somatic approach to audiencing / Carolina Bergonzoni -- Embodied experience of bodies with breasts / Amelia Millward and James Brouner -- Moving through change -- Strength training considerations for the female dancer / Claire Farmer -- Pelvic floor considerations for female dancers through the lifespan / Brooke Winder -- Improvising with the pain(s) of endometriosis / Kate March -- The pregnant dancer / Chloe Hillyar -- Fascia illuminated / May Kesler -- FEMALE traces / Helen Kindred and Sandra Sok -- The embodied archive of the self / Celia Shaw Morris -- Taking up space -- Sustaining a dance career as a parent / Lucy McCrudden and Angela Pickard -- Dancer (noun) -- mother, daughter, sister, colleague, partner, warrior, sorceress, friend / Erica Stanton -- Are you a leader: The L word that women in dance fear / Avatâra Ayuso -- Coming out is a protest: a score for ritual queer emergence / Kars Dodds -- Geometry of gender: Analysing the anatomical specifications of a Bharatanatyam dancer / Shreya Srivastava -- Embodied wisdom -- Foregrounding (the) self in dance practice / Gemma Harman and Jayne McKee -- There's wisdom in them bones -- moving beyond the shape / Janine Cappello -- The trees, my pelvis and dancing through a life / Celeste Nazeli Snowber -- Dancing to live / Stella Eldon -- Body scapes: cCelebrating seasonality of wellbeing in somatic dialoguing with the natural world / Anna Dako in collaboration with Martina Polleros.

"The 'Female' Dancer aims to question dancers' relationships with 'female' through the examination and understandings of biological, anatomical, scientific, and self-social identity. The volume gathers voices of dance scientists, dance scholars, somatic practitioners, and dance artist-educators, to discuss some of the complexities of identities, assumptions and perceptions of a female dancing body in an intersectional and practically focused manner. The book weaves a journey between scientific and somatic approaches to dance and to dancing. Part I: Bodily Knowledge explores body image, hormones and puberty, and discussions around somatic responses to the concept of the gaze. Part II: Moving through Change, continues to look at strength, musculature, and female fragility, with chapters interrogating practice around strength training, the dancer as an athlete, the role of fascia, the pelvic floor, pregnancy and post-partum experiences and eco-somatic perceptions of feminine. In Taking up Space, part III, chapters focus on social-cultural and political experiences of females dancing, leadership, and longevity in dance. Part IV: Embodied Wisdom looks at reflections of the Self, physiological, social and cultural perspectives of dancing through life, with life's seasons from an embodied approach. Drawing together lived experiences of dancers in relationship with scientific research, this book is ideal for undergraduate students of dance, dance artists, and researchers, as well as providing dancers, dance teachers, healthcare practitioners, company managers and those in dance leadership roles with valuable information on how to support female identifying dancers through training and beyond"-- Provided by publisher.