Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book provides readers with contexts, new ideas, and new ways of thinking about dance, dance education, professional practice, work, the workforce, and the workplace. It deals with ‘Embodying Precarity, Pain and Perfection: Young Dancers’ Commitment to the Ballet Body as Aesthetic Project’ as an examination of the embodied practices of young adolescent dancers and their aspirations to become professional, performing ballet dancers. The book discusses auto-ethnographic reflection, fieldwork, and phenomenological theory to investigate the ways in which Gaga practice brings new ‘understanding of flesh, chiasmic relationships, and somatic attention, as well as his positions for relational ontologies and embodied knowledge.’ It examines how neuroscientific concepts can assist teachers, learners, and choreographers in understanding the embodied experience of working with digital tools in the mediated learning environment of the dance studio.