Customer Reviews

A Woman's Book of Power : Using Dance to Cultivate Energy

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Karen Andes has some great ideas in A Woman's Book of Power. The dance exercises and visualization techniques are superb. Movements are broken down in flowery right-brain and clinical left-brain fashions, which work well independently or in tandem. I have already been using some of her techniques in my own dance and fitness classes, and the students love it.

However, the exercises are only part of the book. The rest of the book appears to preach woman power. As an equalitarian, I find the language of these sections exclusionary. The book is written specifically with women in mind as an audience, but the materials within are of equal validity for men and children. I'm not sure why she labels right-brain thinking as feminine and left-brain thinking as male, but this seems to be the thesis on which this book is based. When Karen Andes waxes philosophical about the "feminine" shapes of circles, spirals, and waves, she falls into the same trap as Freud with his phallic imagery. Even Freud was credited as saying, "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."

Andes notes, "Young women seem instinctively drawn to a tribal way of life. They dress alike, travel in packs, love adornment and ceremony." Somehow, she seems to be overlooking how young men tend to act in the same way, with their similar clothing, tastes in music, and team sports.

When she laments "Would male architects design building not only in blueprints but also with a sensitivity to the ground the building sit on, the curves in a hillside, the angles of then sun?", she ignores visionary architects like Frank Lloyd Wright.

Similar false conclusions are made when she writes, "People will ask, 'What's this Goddess thing? It sounds so trendy.' The answer is simple. No one ever asks if God is a trend." As a secular humanist, skeptic, and agnostic, I beg to differ....

I could nit-pick other details like this for quite a while, but it wouldn't serve much of a purpose. If you are the sort of person who likes to read about the aggrandizement of feel-good femininity, you will most likely enjoy the book. Karen has a lucid, easy-to-follow writing style. If you're a more "masculine" (read, left-brain) thinker, you will enjoy the exercise breakdowns. And yes, men can glean practical information from them, too.

Every woman should read this book, Karen is entertaining and makes exercise fun. She addresses the true feelings of women and their bodies. Dance has never been so fun