The act of dancing as a spiritual endeavour: a revelatory experience shaped by “free-form mindful dances”

Through the study of ethnographic materials from four years of fieldwork with Danses Libres en Conscience (free-form mindful dances) in the greater Paris region, this article explores a distinctive component of contemporary Western practices involving the body in a holistic work with a spiritual vocation. This common distinctive feature allows us to go beyond what initially appears as a highly heterogeneous range of practices. It provides a model that allows us to think through the experience (sensitive, bodily, affective, mental and collective) that is at the heart of these practices.