Geographies for Moving Bodies: Thinking, Dancing, Spaces

The body is well established as a research focus within contemporary human geography. Yet, the matter of how and in what ways bodies are geographical remains an open question. In this article, I address this question by examining work by geographers and others about the spaces of moving bodies . My points of departure are the twin claims that bodies move in more ways than one (spatio‐temporally, kinaesthetically, affectively, collectively, politically and imaginatively) and that this movement is potentially generative of different kinds of spaces. These claims are developed through a discussion of dance. By drawing on work from a range of disciplines, I argue that research encounters with dance offer opportunities for thinking about three sets of issues: the relation between bodies and cultural geographies; the importance of affectivity in spatial experience; and the relation between the lived and the abstract. I conclude by outlining a series of pathways along which geographical research into the spaces of moving bodies might be developed further.