Att mötas genom dans

Förkroppsligat lärande och upplevelser av samhörighet i ett interkulturellt dansmöte

Abstract

The article explores embodied dimensions of intercultural learning, through group interviews with seven Swedish upper secondary school students who participated in a dance exchange with a Kenyan cultural school. The concept of ‘embodied learning’ emphasizes that intercultural learning in the dance exchange takes place in the encounter between embodied experiences and discursive framings. The study analyses how the participants together navigate, negotiate and create meaning around coexisting layers of differences and similarities in the narratives of the dance encounter. In their narratives, the importance of a common interest in dance for constructing a common belonging as ‘dancers’ is evident. At the same time, the participants also underline differences in dance styles and attitudes towards choreography as significant. Through the dance encounters, they have also gained a concrete, embodied experience of the different spatial and material conditions of dance. Finally, the analysis shows how the experience of dancing together creates conditions for experiences of affinities, and how young people’s embodied dance encounters move along, across and beyond boundaries of ‘us’ and ‘them’.