I am a Dancer

Physical, creative, ethnographic, psychological and developmentally formative aspects embedded within the culture of professional dance predispose dancers to being highly identified with their careers. As the field primarily priviledges physical standards and qualities associated with youth however, the dancing, performing body must eventually cease. While dancing must be grieved and the self and world around the dancer relearned in its absence, the highly embodied and ubiquitous nature of dancer identities can make this transition especially difficult. Drawing on the theoretical frameworks of Neimeyer and Attig, it is proposed that dancers moving out of a career so central to identity face similar challenges to those who have lost loved ones. Transitioning artists must confront not only the loss of status, community and identity, but often face the diminishing of their most familiar mode of voice and language. For many professional dance artists, this is a particularly salient memory, one that continues to desire a voice long after the performing body can provide an adequate instrument for its expression.