The ‘Female’ Dancer: A Conversation with Claire Farmer

This episode of Science of Slink: The Evidence-Based Pole Podcast features an engaging discussion with dance scientist Claire Farmer, who is currently working on her PhD in the biomechanics of dance. The conversation delves into her book, 'The Female Dancer: A Soma Scientific Approach,' which brings together research authors on topics ranging from hormone effects on dancers to gender dynamics in dance spaces. Claire and Rosy explore the importance of both scientific and somatic approaches to understanding dance, the misconceptions around strength training for dancers, and the societal and cultural factors affecting training and participation in dance.

Links: 

Claire’s instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dancesci_claire/

Claire’s website: https://www.clairefarmer.co.uk/

Find the book: https://www.routledge.com/The-Female-Dancer-a-soma-scientific-approach/Farmer-Kindred/p/book/9781032466897

Chapters:

00:00 Introduction and Guest Introduction

01:03 Claire Farmer's Background and Research Focus

02:28 Discussion on Female Dancer Health and Hormones

07:15 Gender Dynamics in Dance and Pole

14:11 Strength Training for Dancers and Circus Artists

18:43 Building Confidence Through Strength Training

22:22 The Importance of Progressive Overload

25:06 Efficient Workouts and Microdosing Exercise

27:34 Understanding Soma Scientific

31:56 Exploring Somatic Practices and Lived Experiences

36:54 Conclusion and Further Resources

Transcript:

Rosy: [00:00:00] All right. Welcome to Science of Slink :, the Evidence-based poll podcast. And I am joined today by someone who is not a pole dance researcher, but is a dance scientist and looks at the biomechanics of dance, uh, currently working on her, her PhD. And those of y'all who follow me on Instagram or have been in classes, you might have heard me refer to this.

Focus this book, uh, the Female Dancer, uh, Soma Scientific approach, which I think certainly as a reformed, lapsed, I dunno, former researcher myself who, who are now teaching dance full-time, I think talks to, speaks to a lot of the, um, things that I care a lot about and also some of the. Not necessarily tensions, but complexities of dance and doing research on that.

It's Claire Farmer is who it is. I haven't said your name yet. It's Claire Farmer. And I would love for you to introduce yourself a little bit 'cause I know you've got a background that's very relevant to a lot of us in Pole and are interested in, uh, a lot of the same stuff we [00:01:00] are so. 

Claire: Thank you.

Yes. Uh, to be honest, I don't have a succinct introduction to myself 'cause I, I'm one of those people that likes to dabble in lots of things. But my background is as a dancer, I call myself a circus dabbler. 'cause I've dabbled in several things in circus that I'm not great at. But I love to try.

But I haven't actually tried pole dancing. Maybe that should be next on my list. And yeah, my research is mainly focused on upper body strength in dance, but I also research in dance for health. And I'm particularly interested as per the book, um, in female athlete health, female dancer health and how we can train more effectively.

Yeah. Thank you very much for having me. 

Rosy: Of course. Thank you for agreeing to, uh, to be on the podcast. I definitely want us to dig into like a lot of the things we talked that it, uh, you know, is covered in the book, uh, which is by the way, like a, a collected, chapter, goodness, 

Claire: what's it called? An edited collection. So yeah, absolute huge. [00:02:00] Kudos to the 21 authors in the book whose wealth of knowledge make the book? I couldn't do it by myself. Absolutely not. So yeah, 

Rosy: so if you do pick it up, that's what to expect. A bunch of research papers or different papers. I definitely do wanna dig into that a little bit, but I do wanna talk a little bit about the title, uh, 'cause there's a couple things here that jumped out at me. So, uh, the first that those of you all who are listening probably didn't see is that female is in quotes.

And so I think there is a really helpful discussion to be had in the differences between sex and gender because a lot of the discussion, well, I mean both are touched on in the book, but a lot of the discussion, especially around hormones, is really about people with estrogen dominant systems. And then the other thing that I wanna touch on.

And I we can start with the sex and gender thing, and then I can come back to it is the Soma Scientific approach because I mean we're both women of science, right? Interested in that research based, evidence-based, um, way of interacting with the world and sort of epistemology and way of developing knowledge.

But at the same time, uh, there is more to the core of dance than that, [00:03:00] right? Like I think every dancer can agree there's something, sort of ineffable and joyful. And I mean, the, the evidence is in our bodies and our experience, but it is perhaps slightly. Slightly, let's just say slightly challenging to quantify.

Mm-hmm. Lemme put it that way. Uh, and how do you marry these things? 'cause they're both important. Right. I think just trying to reduce dance completely to, like a set of force diagrams, uh, does a disservice to, to us as movers and, and what it means to dance and those, the cultural embedding of the practice.

Let's come back to that. Let's start talking about, let's start talking about female, right? Uh, and again, estrogen dominant, uh, systems and how that affects dancers. I know that's a huge, this huge question. 

I'm just gonna hand that to you. 

Claire: Yeah. Let me just actually just address why we put female in, in kind of verted commerce, um, because we try and outline it in, in the introduction, but it's maybe not.

As obvious, we don't explicitly explain [00:04:00] it in every chapter. So Helen Kindred and I, who, um, so she's the co-editor, had very long discussions about this because, as you say, some things are just essentially biological. If we're gonna talk about hormones, it has to be female as sex. If we talk about experiences as a female, we are talking more to gender.

So we the way that we've approached the book is to put in the introduction that. Depending on the topic of each chapter that it speaks to either sex or to gender, and that we're not spelling out in every chapter, but hopefully it's kind of obvious from, from the way those chapters emerge.

Rosy: Is there anything in particular that you, um, maybe sticks out at you if, as you, you're thinking back on this project and it's like a, maybe a theme that really tied a lot of the, the work together? 

Claire: I think if we, if we're talking estrogen, there's. The main thing that stands out to me and what I see in the world of Instagram social media, is that we have a [00:05:00] huge lack of understanding of.

Hormones, estrogen, how it affects our lives, our mind, our body, our training, everything. And yet we find recommendations online. You should train this way in this phase of your cycle, or you should feel this way at this point in your life when actually, if we dive into the research. It's not that clear cuts at the moment.

It's very varied. The results are very ambiguous at the moment. And so it's hard to say, we should be training this way, we should think about these things when we still don't have the answers, because the research is so far behind on female health. So that definitely stands out to me as something that impacts so many of the chapters, so many areas of our life and our training.

And yet we can't have the answers just yet. 

Rosy: Yes, definitely. Uh, a lot of misinformation out there around uh, what's the thing that I, I keep seeing like, balance your hormones, fix your hormones [00:06:00] by eating the right number of cups of celery or something. It's like this, there's, there's no research to back this up.

You were making this up to sell your celery cups? 

Claire: Yes. I mean, I, I could go down a very, a very big rabbit hole. The health industry and how it utilizes that lack of information in female health to sell us fat loss products, balancing your hormones, drink this tea, drink this supplement. But I think that might be a discussion for an entire podcast on its own.

Rosy: Yeah. Fair enough. So that's more on the sort of like the hormone side. Do you wanna talk a little bit about some of the things that, that came up more on, more on the gender side in the social aspects of dance and how that, uh, how that affects people.

Claire: Yeah. I think there's, there's a number again of, of areas within that, because there's the, just existing in the space, especially in. Weirdly in dance, and I actually don't know if this is, I presume this is similar in pole dance specifically that the participants are [00:07:00] predominantly female or female identifying.

And yet the leadership in dance is predominantly male. So decisions about your training are made by predominantly male leadership. So even just existing in those spaces with decisions that are made about your training, about the way that you interact in the space are made by other people and how that can influence people's motivation, their confidence in those spaces, even turning up to those spaces to start with.

And this obviously. Feeds into my area of interest in strength training that then those spaces are heavily gendered. I wrote about that in, in my specific chapter about strength training for female dancers, which is also female athletes, or just females in general. That yeah, gym spaces are heavily gendered.

There's the. The areas of weight, like free weights that are perceived as the male spaces and, you know, the treadmills and the cardiovascular areas perceived as the female [00:08:00] area. And yeah, there's that feeling of moving into the free weights training area, that there's a lot of things that come with that, that perhaps men in those spaces don't have to think about of how I feel.

Am I being watched? Am I doing it right? Should I be here? So there's a lot of societal, cultural norms at play that, that need breaking so that we can enter these spaces and feel confident in what we're doing. 

Rosy: Yeah, definitely. Especially thinking about like gyms and like locker rooms.

Uh, obviously for folks who are, are gender fluid or trans, uh, obviously any sort of, um, gendered detention is going to be even greater for some folks.

And I'm more on the recreational side rather than the um, professional performer side. Um, I don't have the stats off the top of my head on this, but I would guess that the majority of strip clubs are owned by men. Um, so I think even though that dynamic is quite different, because at least in the US strips tend to be independent contractors, certainly a lot of choices about how they [00:09:00] show up are made by men. Um, and I, I know less about usually it's, it's gay clubs where, where men are stripping. So, uh, but yes, I do think there is that, that same sort of thing.

Claire: Obviously not as conversant in pole and also male gaze, but there is a really interesting chapter in the book about male gaze. Mm-hmm. And not just in pole dancing, but that a lot of perceptions of the world, but also specifically dance come through male gaze and the choreography, the aesthetics of dancers.

Mm-hmm. And therefore, although there's pole fitness and it has seen a huge increase in popularity, that there is still the o like the. Dominance of the sexualized view of pole, as you say, it is sexy. But that, that, that specific strip club narrative is the overarching one. 'cause it comes from kind of male gaze, but I say it's not really my area, but there is a really interesting chapter about it.

Plug in the book again. 

Rosy: And just for folks who are listening that is [00:10:00] GAZE, not GAYS. I've had, uh, people be confused about that before. Yeah. It's the looking watch. Yeah. I've envision. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. That is interesting because I'm definitely, I am aware of stage shows that are specifically women for women that are sic, that are burlesque, but I don't know off the top of my head of any that are.

Pole that are specifically sapphic certain I queer. Yes. But yeah, that is interesting. It had never occurred to me before. It may be something that's a little bit more common in the burlesque scene. Interesting. Gender, man, it keeps showing up.

The thing that you brought up about having barriers in. I, I think of it on the sociology framework of habitus, right? Like, what is, what would you consider normal? What would you consider within your like. Regular range of things you can do. Right. Um, and this is, it's a very [00:11:00] overloaded term, but one way that I think about it is like, am I gonna go to this restaurant or not?

Right? And certain restaurants, I'm like, yeah, sure. That fits with my social class, that fits with, you know, my budget, that fits with where I am geographically. In other restaurants, I'm like, absolutely not. I'd never go there, right? Like, I don't think I've ever eaten at a Michelin star restaurant. Uh, if someone was like, Hey, you, you wanna come with me?

I might say yes, but like, it's just not, just not in my, like, range of things that I see myself doing.

And when we think about. Exercise and especially strength training. Uh, I agree with for a lot of folks strength training and, you know, uh, resistance training and lifting weights isn't necessarily something they see themselves doing.

Uh, and I, I, I think that pole can sometimes see a little bit of a gateway drug because people are like, I wanna do cool shit. Oh, I gotta get a bit stronger, so maybe I'm gonna do some conditioning, so maybe I'm gonna add some weight training. So it can be a way to sort of, reduce that reduce that friction.

So I'd love to hear more about what you've learned about that transition and getting people from the dance studio into a weight training [00:12:00] environment.

And some of the, the challenges and then maybe some of the things that have made it easier for people.

Claire: Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of this comes down to myths. Myths that we all believe until someone actually proves it wrong. That tend to be very perpetuated in dance as well, so. I do work with, uh, ballet dancers with contemporary dancers a little with kind of hip hop dancers and then some circus artists as well.

So there's a range of experiences there, which is actually quite interesting. Yeah, in terms of strength training for dancers, ballet is the harder one. So I have just done some research that was looking at lifts and. As much as I'm a proponent of, like women can lift as well. When I did the research, the female ballet dancers weren't actually lifting that much in the performances, which is kind of what we expect, except in more contemporary choreography where they might do a little bit.

And the men were doing a lot more lifting. In contemporary though, there's kind of equal amounts of lifting and there's also a lot of handstands [00:13:00] having to hold your own body weight, you know, lifting with other people, women lifting men, all those sorts of things. And then obviously in aerial arts you've gotta lift yourself.

So actually when I was doing some work with circus artists and I did some research on perceptions of strength training between dancers and circus students, I thought the circus students were gonna be far more. Confident in strength training because there's a lot more at risk, right? You've gotta hold yourself in the air.

If you don't have the strength to do that, then you're falling to the floor and there's a lot more at stake than falling from standing on the floor. Obviously n neither we want, don't want injuries, but I really thought they were gonna be far more for it than the dancers. But actually, what's really interesting.

Is, I think perceptions are slowly shifting. They're not completely shifted, but all the dance students they speak to, they understand the need for strength training. They know the choreography's hard, like you say, it's like, I want to do that movement. Especially, I [00:14:00] probably, especially with social media, like that trick, I wanna be able to do it, but to do that, I know I need some strength, so they know they want to do it.

This, the, the trouble we're in now is they don't know how. They haven't got that specialist knowledge. So we've had this myth of strength training's gonna make you big and bulky. It's gonna ruin you. Flexibility. These things that go round and round, and I feel like I've said it a million times, it's not true.

It is not true. You're not gonna get huge. Muscles like a bodybuilder from picking up some weights. So we end up in this kind of perpetual cycle of, oh, just do like little three kilogram weights and do muscular endurance. But actually you need to build your strength. And that means lifting heavier weights, but that's not gonna mean huge muscles.

That kind of comes back to the whole. Hormone discussion. You need more testosterone to build bigger muscles. And even for the guys, they're still hard to build those huge muscles. It's just not gonna happen. And the flexibility thing, I think [00:15:00] again, comes from more bodybuilders where done loads of strength training.

They didn't do any stretching at the same time. So yeah, they lost their flexibility. But if you do both, then you're gonna keep your flexibility, but you are also gonna be stronger. And more importantly, especially if you are. Hyper mobile, I have loads of range of motion. You are gonna be strong in that range of motion, way safer if you are doing any kind of physical activity, but especially kind of pole, aerial, et cetera.

So yeah, there's a shift in I want to strength train, which is great. I love it because eventually those people will become the teachers and it'll get better. But now they need the specific guidance because the part of the fear of the gym is. I don't know what to do, so I'm either gonna hurt myself, someone's gonna laugh at me, or they're gonna be watching me and judging me.

Although, spoiler alert, most people are like more concerned with what they're doing at the gym, then they're not looking, they're not. So what we need then is somebody to provide that expertise. And that's, that's the [00:16:00] gap at the moment. So that's why when I coach, so I do one-to-one coaching with dancers.

Circus artists I normally coach in a semi-private gym because that means there is generally no one around or maybe one PT with one other client. So there's nobody looking, nobody judging, and we can spend time focusing on technique. How do I set up the squat rack? Like it, like really simple things like what does this piece of equipment do?

How do I set it up? Because then once you know that, you're like, right. I'm going into the weight training area. I'm heading for that squat rack that's currently empty. I know how to set it up and then I'm gonna do my squats or my deadlifts or whatever I'm gonna do, and then I leave. And it's, it's that knowledge of I know what I'm doing and I know what I need to do for me as well.

Specific, don't do the exercises everybody else's doing. So yeah, it comes down to education, I suppose. Because. The other thing that people don't talk about, you start lifting weights. Yeah. You get stronger. [00:17:00] It's great. That increases your confidence. 'cause now you're like, yeah, I could pick up that weight.

I'm big, I'm strong. I can do that. And then that transfers into the pole studio or whatever it is you're doing. 'cause you're like, I know I'm strong now I can pick up that weight. So I can definitely do this thing. And I'm guessing probably in the skill acquisition there's a bit of, yeah, I'm stronger and I can do it.

And there's also the belief. I can do that move. So you try it and then it becomes easier. So I find a lot of the buy-in is once you've got through that first four eight weeks of training, building the skill building, you get quite good. Strength trains, strength gains. What I was trying to say at the beginning, 'cause you get all this neuromuscular adaptation.

So once you get through those first eight weeks and then they start to see when they're dancing, when they're doing the pole, it's, that becomes easier. And then the buy-in for the strength training gets easier 'cause they're like, oh, that move I've been trying to [00:18:00] do is easier and it's 'cause I've been doing that.

And then they do it well, and, and that's what we wanna get into. Is that like positive cycle instead? 

Rosy: Yeah. Yeah, I like that. So I, I would say sort of the two, two themes that I was really picking out there was a just knowing what to do, right? The education component, like you mentioned, but also the emotional component, right?

Like feeling confident, having from psychology, like a sense of self-efficacy, right? Like, you can do it, you're, you're going to have success when you try something. And then building up that history and being like, yes, I can do it. Yes, I can do it. Yes, I can do it. And then getting to, having that branch out into other, other parts of your movement life as well. 

Claire: Yeah, definitely. It's like with everything, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy, right? You don't believe you can do it, and then you don't try, or like, you can't, like pushups, everyone hates pushups. Like, I can't do pushups.

Well, you're not gonna get better at pushups if you don't do the pushups. But once you get through it, they get better and you go, I can do them now. So like we, there's this thing of we go [00:19:00] to the gym and we train stuff. We're good at. Because it feels good, right? You don't wanna train the stuff you can't do.

It's like my physio keeps telling me to stop doing so many calf raises 'cause my calves are too tight. But I know I'm good at them, so I keep doing them. But actually, yeah, so if you push through the hard stuff, the stuff you're not good at, eventually it will increase your kind of motivation to do that thing and then you get better at it.

Rosy: Yeah. Yeah. And I think there's also you know, you mentioned the, the sort of the neuromuscular adaptation you have that like really fast learning and adaptation at the, at the beginning. But I'm talking to Polars here specifically. Uh, I know what You'all are doing is you are trying to find the hardest conditioning exercise you can and you try it and it's impossible.

And you you, what you're conditioning is, is you trying and fail like a bunch. And you will get better adaptation and also feel better about yourself if you find the [00:20:00] variation of those appropriate for your current strength level. And then work there. And I know y'all love to do hard stuff and I see it and I appreciate it, but there is such a thing as too hard when you are selecting an exercise for yourself.

Claire: Definitely. I think this is one of the biggest mistakes, like two biggest mistakes people make in like they've joined the gym and they're like, great, I'm gonna go, is. Not including what's called progressive overload. So like you say, starting with something that's, you know, hard, but it's, you can't not pick up the weight.

So it is hard. And then eventually that gets a bit easier. So then you either do more reps or you increase the weight and then eventually that bit gets easier and then you increase it again. So there's little step-by-step progress instead of, like you said, go straight for the hard stuff and then you're not gonna be motivated 'cause you can't do it.

And. Yeah. Or not changing your, your program and then you plateau. So you might get some good strength gains at the beginning, [00:21:00] and then you're not increasing the weight, you're not increasing the repetitions, you are not increasing how difficult it is. So you just stay the same. And then also you get bored 'cause you're doing the same thing.

So there are a multitude of exercises that target the same muscles. So there's nothing stopping you mixing up your program like every four weeks. Change it. Pick a different exercise that targets the same muscles, but it's something different for your brain. Keeps you interested. Or if you're doing several workouts in a week, instead of doing the same workout three times a week, do three different ones that target different parts of the body, different muscles or the same muscle groups, but a different exercise.

And then it keeps you interested and then you wanna keep doing it. Those are the two things that I think people find. They're just stuck in a little rut of plateauing or doing the same thing over and over and expecting to be stronger. 

Rosy: Yeah. And these are [00:22:00] of course, things that you can do for yourself, especially if you, you wanna do the research about it.

But that's also where a trainer can really help you. Or a personal trainer or someone who can help you, look up your program, build program for you. Some folks like sell pre-made programs.

And just make sure that you are, I mean, using your time effectively Right. Is what it comes down to. Mm-hmm. Because especially. You know, if you were conditioning for something else, right? I don't have infinite time to condition for pole. I do, you know, maybe like two hours a week not actually pole dancing that I'm doing as conditioning.

Which is, it's fine, but it is, it is not the thing that I wanna be doing. So when I am using that time and when I'm, you know, doing programming for my students, uh, I, I try to, use time efficiently, uh, and make sure that you're, you're getting the most bang for your buck. Yeah. And that's, I think, one of the big benefits.

But of course you can absolutely, you can figure it out for yourself as well. 

Claire: Yeah. I am a huge advocate of efficient workouts. When I go to the gym and I'm out the door again, 50 minutes later, [00:23:00] I don't have time to hang around, just small. If you plan it effectively and yeah, exercises that you get the most bang for your buck out of, great, do that.

Or if you don't have time, you know, calf raises while brushing your teeth, squats while you are waiting for the kettle to boil. There's ways of kind of microdosing it into your, into your life if you need to, if you are really busy. So like trying different things and see what, what sticks, I suppose. 

Rosy: Yeah. Yeah. When I was talking with Emily Scherb one of the things that she brought up was like, you are the scientist of your body, right?

Like, you are going to, there may be general recommendations that work for most people in the population, but they may not work for you. And the way that you're gonna find out is trying it and, taking note and seeing, seeing what it's like in your body. Yeah, absolutely. 

Claire: Yeah, that's like science is great, but it is, it is normally averages right and normative data for the normal person that fits in this little bracket when [00:24:00] most of us live probably at the edges of brackets or over the edge.

So yeah, it's absolutely take the thing, try it out, see if it works for you, and if it doesn't, that's fine as well. It doesn't mean you are abnormal, it just means you don't fit in the normative days of everybody else. So, yeah, absolutely.

Rosy: Yeah.

Way back at the beginning of the episode, we were talking about the title, I really, I like this term Soma Scientific and I think folks have. I think somatics is a pretty overloaded term, right? I think a lot of different people use it in a lot of different ways. So would you like to talk about what you mean when you see Soma and what, uh, uh, what you're trying to convey when with Soma Scientific?

Claire: Yeah. So first of all, I can't take credit for that title because that was all Helen, or was Helen's idea to have Somo Scientific as kind of one, kind of one word. So Helen actually is a hugely experienced somatic practitioner. So she works with, uh, bartender fundamentals. So [00:25:00] she was kind of more I do work in somatic practice but Helen much more so, so she was much more of that side of the, the book of the intertwining of the science and the somatic practice.

But I think you're right, it gets overused in a variety of ways, but to me and Helen kind of speaking on Helen's behalf, but. To us somatics, like the word soma is about focusing from the inside out. So it's how things feel that we're taking the focus in rather than looking at the objective kind of aesthetics of it.

How does the movement feel? Can we generate movement from o elsewhere in the body and paying attention to the sensing, the feeling, the action, everything that goes into the movement without just. Quantifying it, I suppose, and, and being very objective from the outside. So in terms of somatic practice, that's things like Feldenkrais technique, Alexander technique, body mind, centering id kinesis Baria Fundamentals.

[00:26:00] Then Pilates and yoga, which I say tentatively because I think that's where some things get a bit blurred because if we're going to traditional yoga, yes, somatic practice, very kind of internal focus and the same with traditional Pilates. But there are strands of that I would probably say now are not so focused on that.

Internal exploration and internal focus. But also I suppose somatic as in the lived experiences, which is a lot of where that title comes from in the book, that it's that intertwining of the things we read in the science that we can apply. But actually the, like we were just saying actually, if I then apply that into my life, how does it feel for me as a lived experience in my body?

Maybe it doesn't fit as well as that objective quantified view. So we can't have one or the other. And that's what happens sometimes. I think the science gets put over here and the somatic practice and the lived experience gets put over here 'cause it's more [00:27:00] qualitative, harder to measure. But they're both super important and you have to have the intertwining of both because that is life.

So we have to, yeah, we have to have both. You can't have one without the other. 

Rosy: Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a really wonderful way of putting it, and I strongly agree. The specific movement tradition I'm in is really freestyle based. So a lot of our movement is noticing very, like focusly how we are feeling and then reacting to that in the moment.

Which. Pretty different from some other dance traditions and also pretty different from some other ways of doing poll. That is to say, uh, I think that sort of semantic focused on embodying and feeling and really. Really fine, detailed connection between the mind and the body is, uh, something that I think is very important in, in my, my movement tradition and my teaching.

And hopefully for my students. Hopefully I'll enjoy it. You keep coming back, [00:28:00] so I have to assume. Yeah. Must be a good approach if they're coming back. Yeah. Uh, so I'm, I'm interested, so I think we talked about some of the main sort of findings and, and themes from more talking about the more hormonal, little bit more scientific, a little bit more quantifiable side of things. What are some of the main themes that, uh, you would say would be more on the, the Soma side perhaps from the book, if folks were if you, if you, if you could summarize one or two that really stick out to you.

I'm not asking you to, uh, you know, do you a great job summarizing, you know, the whole thing. 

Claire: I think. Interestingly, quite a lot of them were focused on obviously bodily experiences from things like chronic pain. So there's a, a really interesting chapter actually about endometriosis, which is very late diagnosis for like, it takes so long to get diagnosed under researched undersupported, un misunderstood in [00:29:00] terms of.

The medical community but then women living with that and quite a interesting chapter about actually utilizing that pain from a choreographic standpoint of this kind of flexion of the body. So something else that comes through in somatic practices, that negative emotion comes through inflection.

So as in kind of curling forwards in like a fetal position, and that that's negative. So this chapter kind of reframes that movement, that kind of flexion of movement into a choreographic exploration as well. Um, so there's quite a few chapters that I think it's actually, now I'm saying out loud, it sounds kind of sad that, um, women embodying.

A lot of kind of negative emotions or negative feelings, but actually how can we utilize that? How can we explore different spaces, um, in nature to experience, or I suppose cathart work through those feelings or explore different ways of [00:30:00] moving. And then again, that ties in with feelings and explorations in different spaces.

So. Things like leadership and embodying those spaces and about women taking up space, I suppose, in different places. How we explore those different places and find our way into those spaces where maybe there are barriers, physical or otherwise, um, to those. So yeah, I think that's why we, like I said, we can't ignore that part of it.

We can have the numbers on paper, but it's that experience of those. Misunderstood medical conditions or our experiences of being in different different rooms with different people. The hierarchy and the impact of that. 

Rosy: Yeah. Yeah. Any qual quantitative study is always gonna be a reduction. And that's what makes them useful, right? It's, it's a map. Um. And there's a difference [00:31:00] between looking at a map of a place and actually being in a place physically and then representing that place with say a piece of, of representative art, right?

Those are all going to capture different but equally true experiences of a thing. 

Claire: I really like that analogy, especially someone who likes to go exploring in the countryside. I really like that. Yeah, they're all different sides of the same coin, right? It's important to have it all.

Although I will just say on the research front that there is a bigger push, more and more for multimodal research that has both, because like you say, you can't tell the whole story with just one side of it. So the kind of research that's got that quantitative data, but then it's got the human voice in it as well.

So important, especially I think in the arts and to keep pushing that, that. That kind of research design forward. 

Rosy: Yeah. Yeah. And I think it also brings in the kind of, um, [00:32:00] anthropological understanding that you as the researcher are also in culture, right? You are not an alien, uh, body list entity beamed in here and able to be completely impartial.

You are also within it, uh, and everyone that you are talking to is also within it. So, acknowledging the, the subjectivity of work, I think is a challenge, but important. Oh, also, I mean, anyone who has done both qualitative and quantitative research knows that qualitative research is much harder. 

Claire: Oh, yes.

Much harder. That's why I do buy mechanics. Yeah. 

Rosy: Yeah. If folks wanted to, I mean, I'm just gonna pitch the book, right. There we go. Uh, which is the Female Dancer, a Soma Scientific, that's hyphenated approach. Uh, and the, the link will be in the down there as well, uh, edited by Claire Farmer and, uh, Helen Kindred, who he mentioned a couple times.

Uh, but if besides perhaps just reading the book, uh, if folks wanted to learn more about your work, uh, or wanted to, to follow you and keep up with what you're doing in the [00:33:00] future, where are some places that could do that? 

Claire: I'm not to admit I'm not very good at the socials, but I am on Instagram at dance I as in the shortening of dance science Dance s TCO Claire, um, or my website is very simple, which is claire farmer.co uk. I love chatting all things dance, science circus, et cetera. So I'm always happy for. A cup of coffee in the chat about anything that interests people, I will waffle on for a really long time about it.

So yeah, always happy if people should reach out for a chat or training recommendations or research collaborations, anything. I'm a huge geek on that front, so, 

Rosy: well, I, uh. Listeners not to call you out, but I know y'all are geeks too, so I think you found some of your people. Well thank you so much for joining us today on the podcast, Claire, I hope you had a lovely time.

I certainly had a wonderful time talking with you and I'm sure [00:34:00] everyone listening also enjoyed it. 

Claire: Thank you. Yeah, it's been, it's been great to chat, so thank you very much for inviting me.