Welcome to Emily Davis, who joins us as a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Moving Bodies Lab and the Department of Sport and Exercise Sciences. Emily is a former professional ballet dancer with Philadelphia Ballet. She was recently awarded a PhD in Dance, Health and Social Science, which explored dance and health via Scottish Ballet’s programme for people with multiple sclerosis (MS) and was jointly undertaken across the University of St Andrews, Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, and Glasgow Caledonian University.
If your research was a film, what would the title be?
Conveniently for me, there is a beautiful documentary film that already exists titled Capturing Grace (2014), which captures the community developed around dancing with Parkinson’s disease. Similar to this film, my research aims to understand the personal and social experience of dancing with a chronic illness through more visual and arts-based methods. Maybe my research could be thought of as a kind of sequel, Continuing Grace…
What will you be doing during your postdoctoral research with The Moving Bodies Lab?
My postdoctoral research in The Moving Bodies Lab will build on my doctoral research in dance, health, and social science, which focused on dancing with multiple sclerosis (MS). This will involve publishing existing work, while also developing new projects to further understand the relationship between dance and health, particularly for those with chronic illnesses. Part of this work will consider the role of different contexts shaping and situating the dancing experience, such as looking across island and urban settings. Another strand of my work will involve continued development of dance-centred research methods, including choreography and performance, to help broaden our understanding of the dancing body beyond dominant disease-centred methods like clinical assessments. Overall, in line with the Lab’s aims, I hope to deepen understanding of the dancing experience across a range of relationships, spaces, and contexts by advancing interdisciplinary approaches.
What expertise and experiences will you be drawing on?
My research draws on my experiences as a former professional ballet dancer, dance for health practitioner, and researcher across the arts and health. Working as a professional ballet dancer for six years with the Philadelphia Ballet provided me with a close understanding of the dancing body and experience. My experience as a dance for health practitioner continues to inspire my work in this area, allowing me to engage with the real lives, stories, classes, and contexts of dancers and practitioners intersecting with health. I have also developed expertise in researching a range of arts and health projects, from older adults dancing in care homes to freelance musicians working in public spaces. Across these experiences, I have worked interdisciplinarily across various arts and health institutions, most recently, during my PhD, working across the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, University of St Andrews, Glasgow Caledonian University, and Scottish Ballet. I am keen to continue working both interdisciplinarily and collaboratively, but now under one roof, i.e., The Platform.
Why are you excited about working on The Platform?
I am inspired by The Platform’s overall ethos and vision around pursuing creative, collaborative, and experimental health research that works across disciplines and sectors, while centring lived experience. I am also particularly excited by The Platform’s unique balance of risk and innovation alongside structure and rigour, which provides an ideal environment for meaningful and novel work in the medical humanities. Further, The Moving Bodies Lab offers the ideal setting and collaborators for my research, given its dual focus as a research hub and methods incubator for rethinking dominant framings of moving bodies. I am delighted to contribute a focus on dancing bodies to the ongoing work of The Moving Bodies Lab.
What changes would you like to see as a result of your research?
While exercise is widely recognised as a key pillar of a healthy lifestyle, dance has historically been undervalued in its role in health promotion as a physical, creative, emotional, and social activity. Now, as research aims to ‘prove’ the effectiveness of dance for health, most research draws on biomedical paradigms and methods, often neglecting the totality of the dancing body and experience. I hope my research will expand our understanding of the relationship of dance to health, recognising not only its role in promoting health, but also its potential in helping to make sense of our bodies, selves, and the world around us. Ultimately, I hope my work will inspire curiosity about the potential of dance for health in research contexts and for daily life, encouraging the question: have you danced today?
What interests or hobbies do you have outside of your research that might surprise people?
Rather unsurprisingly, most of my hobbies centre around moving my body (pun intended). I still find myself taking the occasional dance class, and now explore other forms of movement, from swimming to hill walking.
We warmly welcome Emily to Durham University and look forward to working with her.
