Dance, empathy and care - with Christine Leroy

What is the connection between dance and care, and in what sense can dance be described as an ethical activity? What does it mean to say that empathy is anchored in the body? And what are the implications for the practice of care and for care ethics?

These are some of the questions we discuss in this episode, with Christine Leroy. Christine is a researcher at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, working at the intersection of philosophy, dance, and care ethics. She also directs a dance theatre company and leads contact dance improvisation workshops in clinical settings. Christine is the author of Phénoménologie de la danse: De la chair à l'éthique, published in 2021, which develops original and intriguing connections between the experience of dance and the practice of care. She is also the author of La phénoménologie, published in 2018, a useful introduction to some key phenomenological thinkers, and of Le corps, from 2022. With Chiara Palermo, Christine edited the collection Pesanteur et portance: Une éthique de la gravité, also published in 2022. Although most of Christine’s writings have yet to be translated from French, she is the author of a forthcoming article in English, ‘Performance and bodily anchoring of care: dance’s power to care’, which will be published later this year.

We discuss the following topics in this episode:

Christine's training in dance and philosophy (03:03)

The influence of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and other phenomenological thinkers on Christine's work (05:40)

Phénoménologie de la danse (09:10)

Dance as an ethical activity and the bodily anchoring of care (11:26)

'Kinaesthetic empathy' (15:15)

Kinaesthetic empathy in the dance works of Angelin Preljocaj (21:40)

The influence of Donald Winnicott on Christine's thinking (24:01)

Dance, care and self-care (27:18)

Dance, empathy and disability (28:27)

The concept of portance (33:50)

Translating 'care' (37:25)