Spirituality in Aurelia Baumgartner’s Tanzphilosophie

Abstract

Against the background of a non-religious understanding of spirituality in the context of consciousness studies, the article analyses the dance practice, understood as embodied philosophy, of Aurelia Baumgartner. The article considers her inspiration, intuitive collaboration with other artists, the concepts of femininity, beauty, and non-linearity central to her practice and thinking, her biography (in terms of training, a pivotal, life-changing, crossroads she encountered at the age of 14 and her heritage), and cultural and philosophical contextualizations. SpiritualityFrom the earliest history, the arts have been associated with a beneficial impact on those exposed to it as makers or receivers. In the West, Aristotle in his Poetics wrote about the 2 cathartic impact of theatre, while in the East, the Natyashastra, the ancient Indian text about drama and theatre, which also includes music and dance, relates how dance/drama were created by Brahma, the creator, in response to the request of the Gods for him to create an art form accessible to all human beings and with the explicit purpose of restoring the golden age to humankind. The use of the arts in therapy (dramatherapy, dance therapy and so on) confirms the validity of such early claims of the beneficial impact of the arts on humans in terms of increased well-being, as does research into that impact.This role of the arts in improving our lives has been contextualized further in the fields of religion, philosophy and consciousness studies. The high currency of contextualizing the arts in these fields is reflected in academia in the emergence and continuing success of the For most of these contexts, spirituality, explicitly or implicitly, is central, and in many, the term and concept of spirituality has been understood in a non-religious way. It is this understanding that forms the basis of my article, with the implication that 'spirituality culminates in the full development of mind', and 'any move in the direction of this fullness can be called spirituality ' (Malekin and Yarrow 1997: 90). Aurelia BaumgartnerIt is against this understanding of spirituality that I discuss the performative practice of German Aurelia Baumgartner (www.tanzphilosophie.de). The discussion is drawn from a personal, three-hour conversation I held with Baumgartner in one of the studios of her dance school, within a few feet of Lake Starnberg near Munich, in December 2013. The tranquillity of the studio and its surroundings provided an ideal environment to allow the physical and emotional memories of Baumgartner's performance of Nomad's Rhythm on the evening before that interview to inform the conversation.Insert Image 1 here It is possible to describe and analyse Baumgartner's work in terms of these circles. They constitute an approximation of the core, which can be understood as the communal experience of Baumgartner's performances, arising in the spaces she shares with her spectators: the physical spaces of the venues she performs in, and, much more intangibly, the spaces...