The project investigates how dance as a creative and expressive form of movement potentially rehabilitates not only one’s physical body but also one’s sense of agency and self. This will provide important insights into the potential of dance and the performing body as a rehabilitative intervention for young cancer survivors. The project explores the experience of the body in illness from an ethnographic, embodied, narrative, and phenomenological perspective.

A core of the work is a number of practice-based dance workshops informed by the original methodology developed by Mette and Marie in ‘Fieldwork in the Body’, combining creative movement scores, expressive drawing, and writing, and shared reflection between young cancer patients, dance practitioners, and researchers.

Beyond the workshops, the project will produce a narrative of cancer, healing, and the body through film work from the workshops and the young patient’s own film documentation and diaries. The findings of this study can potentially provide a new form of rehabilitation that can address the physical and psychological challenges of cancer survivorship while supporting young patients in regaining an agentic perspective in their lives after cancer treatment.

Find the full list of grant recipients here (in Danish)