Abstract
Seeking to disrupt narrowly defined understandings of health and wellness and to inform the ongoing development of community somatic dance classes in Aotearoa New Zealand, we discuss how we imagine and cultivate more expansive experiences of movement and wellbeing for women across the lifespan. Our previous ethnographic research highlighted the nuances of women’s embodied experiences within intergenerational Movement for Wellbeing classes (Barbour, Clark & Jeffrey, 2019). These somatic dance classes fostered embodied awareness, ease and freedom in movement, and opportunities for creativity, agency and reflection. Consequently, this research extended our understandings of the multiple functions and nuanced lived experiences of wellbeing in intergenerational dance. These findings prompted us to critique Westernised and biomedical frameworks for wellness and illuminated possibilities for more generative models for wellbeing that incorporate values defined by ageing women dancers. Therefore, in this article, we dive more deeply into practices of wellbeing and movement that allow for greater fluidity (as material and conceptual potentialities) (Stephens, 2014) in women’s embodied transitions of ageing. Thinking with and through the unique holistic wellbeing model of Te Whare Tapa Whā (Durie, 1985), drawing on insights from interviews with key experts in women’s health and wellbeing in our region, and embracing the concept of fluidity, we call attention to subtleties in ageing women’s experiences of wellbeing that are not often discussed in dance literature.
@ The University of Waikato