Koeltzsch, Grit

After the changes of 1989 and the entry into the global world, the population of Eastern Europe was deeply affected. The particular situation in East Germany demanded adaptation to a new way of life in a “new” country, which implied abandoning habitual practices. However, bodily perceptions and experiences of female empowerment strategies under difficult political situations could not simply be erased. Based on my autoethnographic research –I was born in 1973 in Karl-Marx-Stadt–, I argue that one personal constant is and has been my dancing body expressing a femininity, which does not subordinate a global feminism. My bodily experience and the transformation from a worker’s body to an academic body also plays a role here. The autoethnographic narrative is a dialogue between Gret Palucca, as example of an unadjusted dancing body, and myself in order to explain this “Eastern” femininity. The research includes Palucca’s pedagogical and artistic approach based on archive material, which reaffirms that dance expression is anchored in our being; it transmits our experience and that of others.

I apply the performative autoethnographic approach as a powerful tool, because “telling by showing” not only awakens the interest in students and academics, but also reaches non-academic audiences (Sughrua, 2016). In the conclusion, I read my body as interface –Schnittstelle– (Barrière & Böhmisch, 2020), which often rises up against socio-cultural and gender norms, generating comprehension for otherness among other meanings. Dance promotes expressing myself through a universal language; it is the place where my (inter)actions become visible.

Grit Kirstin Koeltzsch is anthropologist, completed her PhD in Social Sciences; she has a Master’s degree in Theory and Methodology of Social Sciences. She is currently a CONICET doctoral fellow based at the research unit CISOR-CONICET/National University of Jujuy (Argentina). Her work has appeared in Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Latin American History, TEMPUS Revista en Historia General, Intercontinental Journal on Physical Education, among others. She is member of LASA (Latin American Studies Association). In 2019, she obtained a research scholarship from the University of Florida for the project “The joy of movement”, and in 2017 an honorable mention in the competition “LASA Graduate Student Paper Award”. She has worked as interim professor at National University of Jujuy, and currently lectures postgraduate courses on the topics of body, biopolitics and autoethnography at COLSAN (México) and UNJu (Argentina).

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