Dancing Dialogue, Dancing Freeing Action

This multi-modal qualitative study explores the use of dance processes to promote intrapersonal dialogue about the problem of oppression/domination, and engages this dialogue as a central ingredient in opposing oppression/domination within the self. Self-reflexive choreography, a process which draws from the phenomenological concept of the lived body as well as the dance therapy discipline of Authentic Movement, is described as an anti-oppression educational model that may be used in higher education dance classrooms as a kinesthetic process of unlearning oppression. This thesis interweaves phenomenological and autoethnographic methods while expanding research in the interconnected fields of dance studies, women’s studies and anti-oppression education.