Next Care Forum April 18

Christine Leroy will present our next Care Forum, on Friday, April 18. The title of the presentation is Kinaesthetic Empathy, Ethics and Care. The Implications of Gravity. Attached is the introduction from her forthcoming book, Kinaesthetic Empathy, Ethics and Care.

PRESENTER BIO
Christine Leroy has a PhD in Philosophy of Art from Panthéon Sorbonne University (Paris I) and lectures in philosophy as a professeur agrégé to students preparing entry to France’s grandes écoles. She is a specialist in philosophy of the body and a former dancer. She has published numerous articles and books, including three monographs: La Phénoménologie [The Phenomenology] (Ellipses, 2018), Phénoménologie de la danse. De la chair à l’éthique (Hermann, 2021) translated at Routledge by Anna Pakes and published under the title Kinaesthetic Empathy, Ethics and Care (2025), and Le Corps [The Body] (Atlande, 2022). She also co-edited with Chiara Palermo the anthology Pesanteur et portance. Une éthique de la gravité [Weighing and up-Lifting. An Ethics of Gravity] (Hermann, 2022). Her work focuses on kinaesthetic empathy and the ethical dimension of experiences of gravity and movement in art and clinical practice. She recently published “Performance and Bodily Anchoring of Care: Dance’s Power to Care”, a chapter for the special issue “Art for the Sake of Care” of the International Journal of Education & the Arts, edited by Merel Visse and Elena Cologni

PRESENTATION ABSTRACT
Kinaesthetic Empathy, Ethics and Care. The Implications of Gravity.
This talk will rely on the book Kinaesthetic Empathy, Ethics and Care, to be published at Routledge in July 2025, to explicit the aesthetic and ethical significance of dancer-viewer interaction in the moment of
performance. I will draw on the phenomenological and aesthetical concept of Einfühlung, translated as “empathy”, to show how, in the contagion or interweaving between corporealities of dancer and viewer, each party supports or upholds the other in a process of mutual care. Dance movement involves a play with gravity which alleviates the weight of repressed desire and redefines the contours of the body image, facilitating psychological self-repair. Through projection into the body of another, we can develop our independence and autonomy as subjects, even in the midst of relational beings.

All Zoom presentations are at 12:00 pm Central Standard Time in the U.S. In case you have not attended in the past, each meeting lasts 90 minutes and is free to attend but requires registration in advance. After each presentation, there is plenty of time for open discussion. These meetings are an excellent opportunity for engaging in cutting-edge work on care theory and its application in a welcoming interdisciplinary environment.

The presentation is free, but you need to register here: https://uh-edu-cougarnet.zoom.us/meeting/register/4u2UquOfTQWR3r_wNmmlAw