ABSTRACT
In this chapter the author explores the notion of hope from an embodied perspective and contemplates how hope may be ignited and sustained through dance and embodied interaction. She engages in a dialogue with her Danish colleague, Anamet Magven, whose experiences as a dance educator at a Russian orphanage shed light on a setting rarely discussed in arts education literature. Other partners in this dialogue are scholars and authors who have explored hope as action and affect. Anttila asserts that critical arts educators who are animated and mobilized by hope may be able to counteract disengaging and immobilizing forces in society. She claims that education in hope is urgently needed especially in contexts of dire conditions. Further, she discusses the significance of relations and connections, both social and material, as elements that form the core of critical arts education. Finally, she contemplates how posthuman ontology might be connected to critical arts education. Through this dialogue Anttila aims at understanding the notion of hope from the perspective of sensing, living body, its social and material connections, and within the practice of dance and arts education.
