Folk dance and Somatics

This study aims to investigate how dance teachers who are educated in Swedish folk dance are reflecting and thinking over the body and the use of bodily self-awareness in their teaching. Furthermore it wants to examine whether the use of somatic principles can act as a tool to support the ideas which dance teachers express. Four folk dance teachers have been interviewed as qualitative empirical material. These interviews have been transcribed and analyzed using codes and categories. The result of the study provides an image of the body as it is seen in folk dance today and points out similarities between that picture and somatics. Folk dance and somatics treat the whole body as a single unit and strive towards a relaxed and functional way of moving. Since folk dance and somatics have these similarities the possibility of using somatic principles in folk dance, such as training to gain consciousness of the body and its different parts to be able to relax actively, is discussed. However the result of this study shows how a rather small part of folk dance teachers think, since it only provides the opinions of four different teachers