Judesys Kaip Pokytis Ir Transformuojanti Šokio Galia
Movement as Change and Transforming Power of Dance

Summary/Abstract: The article analyzes the theme of movement as change in the philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and its influences in contemporary body studies and cultural phenomenology. It looks at the implications of the understanding of movement as change for dance. The article discusses the contradictory relationship of dance and aesthetics in Western culture and the collapse of important functions of dance due to the process of secularization. Against this backdrop, the descriptions of performances of healing are positive examples of practices which contribute to the change through motion. Anthropological examples of transforming experience and social relations are consonant with Merleau-Ponty’s philosophical insights. Such a perspective, I suggest, supplies the analysis of contemporary movement practices with a sociocultural dimension. It consequently allows viewing human movement as meaningful and able to transform the perceivable world.

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