Dance and Weightlessness: Dancers’ Training and Adaptation Problems in Microgravity

In this article the author discusses astronauts’ problems of adaptation to microgravity in relation to dancers’ body perceptions of space and time. Space sickness hampers the pleasures of being free from gravity; it also handicaps space-mission programs. To prevent space sickness, astronauts are submitted to a training program that is primarily physiological and medical. The author is developing a new training system (complementary to existing training methods), based on dance techniques, for improving the physical consciousness of astronauts—focusing on the body as subjective experience.