Dance as a way of knowing–a creative inquiry into the embodiment of womanhood through dance

In this paper, I discuss how dance can operate as a method in the collaborative performance ethnography to explore the sensory and emotional dimensions of the embodiment of young womanhood. Drawing on one dance workshop where we explored material objects symbolic of womanhood, particularly introducing Nitika and her intuitive dance with gendered objects and her bodily ways of knowing and learning about gender, I illustrate how dance enabled exploration of young women’s identity intertwined with objects and their gendered meanings. I argue that creative embodied methods such as dance create space for working with the plurality of fleeting sensory and emotional information, not because it is more important than any other information, but because it is an alternative way of knowing about oneself, others and the world.