“Dancing With and for Others. Dance and the Transmission of knowledge”

In reference to my ethnographic work on dance among Yolngu people in Northeast Arnhem Land, Northern Australia, this paper shows how dancing embodies statements about being-in-the-world and being-with-others from a performance perspective based on participation, and explores the sensuous and affective nature of teaching and learning knowledge. The paper argues that the meaning of dance is not only in the referential meaning of movements, but in the relation established with other dancers and members of the public in the empatbic space one enters through dancing. Empathy, both in the context of Yolngu performance and or engagement in fieldwork, is a: modality of co-presence and co-presencing enacted in the encounter with others.