Dancing in dialogue: The notion of dance in politically fragile contexts

This chapter investigates dance, community, and democracy. Through a duo-ethnographic approach, the authors engage in dialogue focused on their encounters as dance practitioners and researchers, asking, how might notions of democracy, dance, and community be bridged in some of the most troubled locations of the world? What can these experiences offer to better understand the challenges we face on a collective global scale? The duo-ethnographic dialogue reveals that dance can offer hope in troubled locations or unstable situations; however, there are diverse articulations of hope. Like hope, engagement with democracy in and through dance might be considered as equally varied. Nevertheless, the potential exists for dance to support democratic philosophies and practices. Space and place are considered in relation to how ‘places of freedom’ might connect with the act of dancing, and how the practice of dance in and of itself might offer freedoms when few other freedoms might exist.