Dancing with pain: agency through pain worlds

Abstract

This article examines a series of qualitative interviews with seven dance artists in the UK who make dance works with and about their own chronic pain. It integrates research from dance studies (on dance and agency) and health-based chronic pain research (on agency with pain) to focus on individual, interpersonal, and environmental dimensions of agency with chronic pain. The research addresses therefore how the dance artists have individually acted as agents by making change in their own self-identities and working lives. Further, it highlights the importance of peers and audiences alongside the environments of performance which enable agency for the artists. Finally, the article proposes that agency is created in performance through the ‘pain worlds’ shared by the dance artists, that give felt and sensorial pathways to understanding aspects of living with pain.