This is a collection of works by internationally recognised women leading the field of dance research and spirituality across the globe. Building on current soulful research scholarship in the discipline, these authors offer extensive and detailed research into spirituality, dance, gender, religion, somatics and women-centred dance research.

Preface: Dancing Incantations – Celeste Snowber Introduction – Amanda Williamson and Barbara Sellers-Young Part One: Patriarchal Critique and Spiritual Feminist Perspectives – Amanda Williamson   1: Woman, body, earth and spirit – Linda Hartley  2: Informed by the Goddess – Jane Bacon 3: Until The Lions – Jayne Stevens 4: Symbols of the Goddess in Balkan Women’s Dance – Laura Shannon 5: Spirals and circles – Amanda Williamson 6: Soul loss and retrieval – Eline Kieft  7: Reclaiming our innate vitality – Caroline Frizell Part Two: Somatic Ethnography, Diasporic Spiritualities and Postcolonial Voices – Barbara Sellers-Young  8: Dancing bodies and ritual spaces – Yvonne Daniel 9: ‘Niimikaage’ into the twenty-first century – Sandra Laronde and Elaine Keillor 10: Unearthing the presence of African women dancers in Nyanza province, 1900–40 – Seonagh Kummer  11: Love Poems to God – Veta Goler 12: Dancing the Four Directions – Rosalie Jones 13: Souls, soil and soma – Ojeya Cruz Banks and Miriam Marler 14: Dancing through myself – Barbara Sellers-Young Part Three: Spiritual Journeys in Dance Research – Amanda Williamson and Barbara Sellers-Young 15: Writing Why We Dance – Kimerer L. LaMothe  16: Mystery, magic and the mundane – Celeste Snowber 17: Creativity as medicine – Janet Lynn Roseman 18: Dancing evolutionary spirituality – Cheryl Pallant 19: Attunement and evanescence – Sondra Fraleigh 20: Awakening the spirit through dance, somatics and Scaravelli Yoga – Sara Reed 21: Spirituality in Aurelia Baumgartner’s Tanzphilosophie – Aurelia Baumgartner and Daniel Meyer-Dinkgräfe  

'This is an important publication for advancing research in dance and reinforcing the scholarly lens, giving voice to the body, mind, and soul as partners in exploration. The preface, “Dancing Incantations” by Celeste Snowber, beautifully sets up the reader’s adventure: “Be prepared to let this anthology sit with you for a long time. Each chapter stands alone in its beauty, depth and breadth of knowledge; it is truly a transdisciplinary conversation, which draws you back over and over again to nourish your whole being” (ix).'