A Somatic Ethnography of Grand Gestures Elders Dance Group

The research is a partnership between Sunderland University and Equal Arts. It aims to contribute to the debate about how we can better understand the impacts, for individuals and for society, of engaging in arts and cultural activity. It looks in particular at dance and ageing, and takes as a case study an Elders dance group, Grand Gestures. This group of men and women aged 57 to 87 meet for a weekly dance class, perform as a dance company, and also share their skills as volunteers in residential care homes, where they work with people with dementia. The researcher, an older dancer herself, will participate in, observe and interview the dance group over a five month period. The investigation focuses in particular on the significance of bodily awareness senses such as touch, sense of movement (kinaesthetic sensation), sense of where the body is located (proprioception), and physical empathy within the dance group's activity, their individual and personal development, and their interactions with others, including dance interactions and wider civic and social engagements. These sensory aspects of dance are an important and tangible aspect of the experience of dancing, but are not often talked about or evaluated, and the project aims to find some creative new ways of 'speaking' of them not just through words, but also through performance and other media such as film. It will also reflect on the potential usefulness of its particular approach for the evaluation of arts and cultural activity.