Dancing a Curriculum of Hope: Cultivating passion as an embodied inquiry

Authors

  • Celeste N. Snowber

Abstract

This poetic essay explores embodied knowing within the academy and its relationship between a vibrant place of scholarship and connection to cultivating passion within ways of living and articulating knowledge. The practice of dance is a container for the depths to be drawn out, and poetic inquiry and embodied forms of inquiry are integrated as a place of discovery. The author proposes the presence of the body could be a site for hope, where cultural and ideological differences, break down and invite students into a pedagogy, which honors body, mind, spirit. She asks, what can the body teach us in rediscovering a curriculum of hope?  The limitations and wonder of being human can transcend past cultural constraints to find a place where dance can be a place of play and discovery. Could hope reside in the belly?  Or could unfiltered joy or lament be in the tissues or skin?

Author Biography

Celeste N. Snowber

Celeste Snowber, Ph.D. is a dancer, writer and educator, who is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University outside Vancouver, B.C., Canada. She has focused her work in the area of embodiment and its intersection  between teaching, writing and learning as well as arts-based inquiry.  Celeste mentors many graduate students exploring alternative forms of research. A well-published author, she has written essays, articles and poetry in various journals and chapters in books in the areas of the arts, holistic education and curriculum studies as well as is author of Embodied Prayer, which is in its second edition and co-authored with her colleague Stuart Richmond, Landscapes in Aesthetic Education.   Celeste has made it a practice over the last two decades to present her research at conferences through performance and she continues to create site-specific work in connection to the natural world on sites by the sea.  She is presently working on a one-woman show comprised of dance, voice and comedy, which explores themes of sexuality, spirituality and mid-life. Celeste lives outside Vancouver and has three sons, all a tribe of artists.  Her website can be found at www.celestesnowber.com and her Bodypsalm blog at www.bodypsalms.com.

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Published

2013-01-17

Issue

Vol. 28 No. 2 (2012): Journal of Curriculum Theorizing

Section

General Themes

License

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