ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces interdisciplinary dance movement psychotherapy (DMP) and choreographic research, practice and activism with people living with rare young onset dementia, their families and the artistic team—Beatrice Allegranti Dance Theatre. Framed by feminist new materialism and posthumanism, the chapter foregrounds conceptual and political discourses that work towards counterhegemonic understandings of bodies, affect and relating. In doing so, this writing demonstrates what happens when insights from DMP, choreography and dementia are read through one another—with the aim of opening pathways for alternative narratives of human-environment relations to ethically flourish. Case studies presented from this ongoing project offer examples of feminist new materialism ‘in action’ and in doing so, speak to the ethical imperative of choreography as a potent form of activism that yields constantly renewable kin-aesthetic insights and neurodiverse ways of relating—for people affected by young onset dementia, healthcare, medical and artistic practitioners. As such, dancing activism is a creative contribution to nourishing equitable citizenship and counterhegemonic narratives of aging, agency, illness, vulnerability, living and dying for dementia, arts, psychotherapy healthcare and justice policies.
