ABSTRACT
In the late 1950s and early 1960s the California dancer and teacher Anna Halprin pioneered the nexus of affective behaviors and psychological states of the body. Her insights helped provide the impetus for what was to become post-modern dance, avant-garde theatre and eventually a deployment of ritual in the broader social spectrum. By the 1970s Halprin was also using dance to support her own recovery from cancer, as art, play, ritual and healing became increasingly united in her participatory performance work. It was this belief that dance could be simultaneously expressive to the spectator and healing to the performer that led her in the late 1980s to the invention of urban ritual as a path for emotional and physical repair. Initially by addressing socially charged issues like political repression, violence and racism, Halprin had discovered how emotional distress and psychological turmoil became mapped on the body.
