In the labyrinth with Cora Beth Fraser and other attendees at a University College Dublin classical seminar during Autism Month 2024

I ended my previous posting promising further information about what I've been up to during Autism Month 2024 - including concerning a talk I attended by Cora Beth Fraser on autism, classics and labyrinths. Here is this promised information about the talk: as written in my notebook on 24th April and now typed up several days later, while we're still just about in Autism Month, i.e. April.

Labyrinth with Minotaur at the centre on a gem from the Medici Collection in the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence. In keeping with the classical tradition, the Minotaur is part-human and part bull and yet, inverting this tradition, it is the top half that is human and the bottom half bull. What this means I am still trying to process. Sourced from Wikimedia Commons here.

Earlier this week [my 24th April self wrote], I zoomed into an online session at University College Dublin by Cora Beth Fraser on autism, classics and labyrinths. Cora stressed the timeliness of her talk as one taking place during Autism Month. She discussed what it means for the Month to have moved from an 'Awareness' to an 'Acceptance' One when creating awareness is still worth doing, not least in academia.

For in academia, Cora Beth suggested, there might be particular numbers of autistic people. And more specifically, she mooted, numbers of neurodivergent people who are also classicists might be especially high.

Why might this be the case?! 

As Cora Beth shared, it's here that the labyrinth image comes in. It comes in for a range of reasons, including the mythological significance of Asterion, the Minotaur, and the relevance of the labyrinth as an image of autism. For as some (neurodivergent?) people might see it, the labyrinth evokes somewhere an autistic person is shut away - for their own protection and/or the protection of others. But then there is the image of the labyrinth as evoking autistic ways of being and of negotiating the world. Looked at in this way, the labyrinth is not so much a prison as somewhere reassuring - somewhere that is, for example, full of corners to shelter behind.

Cora Beth brought in the relevance of this way of seeing the labyrinth and its original inhabitant, the Minotaur, to the 'autistic headcanon'. This is a game where neurodivergent people share how they see themselves in particular characters from myth, fantasy or literature more broadly. Cora Beth proposed the Minotaur as one such character. The fit with what I have been trying to do with Hercules, and what I plan to try with Medusa, is exciting, and Cora Beth said nice things about the part of my book where I propose this.

How Cora Beth conducted the talk - in dialogue with attendees via the zoom chat - was amazing. I have said before that one thing that I welcomed during Lockdown was the opportunity zoom chat provided to keep me feeling connected. It also let me deal with the anxiety of being in a talk yet remote from it. Plus it allowed for sharing ideas. 

It still does... 

This time, the sense of communality that was created led me to ask - playfully, but with seriousness behind it - whether we could all meet every week to talk labyrinths etc.

More soon on the talk (I've only scratched at the surface of what Cora Beth said) and related things...

Athena, being autistic and Dance Movement Therapy - and how these connected in Athens on International Autism Awareness Day 2024

Over the past few years, I have put out postings on - and for - international autism day/week/month: sometimes whole series of postings. Here is a sample one. I have done this while seeking to convey that autism - a way of being - is not just about a specific period of time. It's always. But I have also noted that this time in March-April allows an opportunity to reflect and share. 

On this year's Autism Day, I was in Athens. I should perhaps write a posting on this visit as it had a deep impact on me, including as I sat - for probably two hours - in my special place on the slopes of Mount Lykavittos as the light went down over the city.

On Mount Lykavittos - the rock in Athens dropped by Athena as the ancient local myth went

I was in Athens to give a paper at the Swedish Institute at Athens' ancient religion seminar on Athena as a dancer. This paper was extending research I've done over some years - well decades - into Athena by looking at dance and other types movement connected with this deity. 

Title slide of my presentation at the Swedish Institute - when I write up the paper, the content of the images should become apparent

What I had found as I was preparing the paper - as I had when I gave an earlier version at a conference in Coimbra last year - was just how far my research has been informed by what I have been doing on autism and classical myth. 

On the one hand, this is because everything I do is shaped by a neurodivergent way of looking at ancient evidence, as I have been increasingly realising over the years. 

It is also because of the paper's specific content. For what I proposed was an approach to ancient dance that is informed by Dance Movement Theory. 

This is a theory - and practice - that can be used by, and with, anyone whether neurodivergent or neurtypical. However, as with Dramatherapy (which I've written about previously on this blog, beginning here) there is particular potential for connecting with autism: for example, as a means for autistic people to explore autistic minds and bodies, and to open up new ways to envisage the body in space and how movement and cognition correlate. 

Slide from my presentation in Athens on Dance Movement Therapy as defined by the Association for Dance Movement Psychotherapy UK

As I was giving the paper, I stressed that I was very much just getting going with my research. I wondered, too, whether, as someone who is very much not qualified in Dance Movement Therapy, I should be doing anything more than expressing my curiosity about what it entails. 

Then something happened in the question time straight after the paper that made me think again.

I often find transitioning from a paper I've delivered to the discussion hard - I have given my all. I am exhausted. Answering specific questions can be a challenge. But one of the questions this time - from someone present online (this was a hybrid session) - turned out to be from someone whose connections with the topic floored me: in a good way.

For one thing, she explained that she studied at Roehampton, the university where I am now an emeritus professor and whose artefacts have been key to my autism work culminating to date here. More than this, she shared that she is a Dance Movement Therapist. There is more still: she explained that is a member of a Non Profit Organisation called the Athena Foundation.

So there was me arguing for Athena to be explored in relation to Dance Movement Therapy when Dance Movement Therapists already see the potential of Athena to encapsulate the therapy.

I am hoping that we will be able to connect! Watch this space: hopefully...

Soon I'll share other experiences during Autism Month, including a SUPERB paper I zoomed into by Cora Beth Fraser on autism, classics and labyrinths last week...