Becomings: Pregnancy, Phenomenology, and Postmodern Dance

This book explores postmodern choreographic engagements of pregnant bodies in the US over the last 70 years.

Johanna Kirk discusses how choreographers negotiate identification with the look of their pregnant bodies to maintain a sense of integrity as artists and to control representations of their gender and physical abilities while pregnant. Across chapters, the artists discussed include Anna Halprin, Trisha Brown, Twyla Tharp, Sandy Jamrog, Jane Comfort, Jody Oberfelder, Jawole Willa, Miguel Gutiérrez, Yanira Castro, Noémie LaFrance, and Meg Foley. By presenting their bodies in performance, these artists demonstrate how their experiences surrounding pregnancy intersect not only with their artform and its history but also with their personal experiences of race, gender, and sexual identification. In these pages, Johanna Kirk argues that choreography offers them tools that are alternative to medicine (or other forms of social representation) for understanding what/how pregnant bodies do and feel and what they can mean for individuals and their communities. The works within these chapters invite readers to see dancing bodies and pregnant bodies in new ways and for their potential to manifest new possibilities.

This study will be of great interest to students and scholars exploring dance, theatre and performance, race, and gender.

Johanna Kirk is a Lecturer in World Arts and Cultures/Dance at UCLA. She is a choreographer, writer, and movement educator with undergraduate and graduate degrees in Dance. She has designed and taught courses in Experiential Anatomy, Yoga and Dance to students of a wide variety of ages and backgrounds on three continents.