WHEN IS IT ON?
Sunday 9.30am - 12.30pm
WHERE IS IT?
Studio 9
HOW MUCH DOES IT COST?
Pay what you can
presenters
DR ALEX BOYD
Dr. Alex Boyd has a passion for developing collaboration between embodied knowledge practitioners. He is the co-founder and conceiver of the Embodied Research Working Group at the IFTR and is Executive Director for ‘Intercultural Roots’. Alex is a practitioner-scholar who graduated in Performance Studies and Critical Education from the University of California at Davis (UC Davis). His PhD dissertation entitled ‘The Sustainability of Traditional Knowledge Systems’ draws on 20 years of professional work teaching the wide-ranging Taoist arts that he has immersed himself in since 1985. These include energy cultivation and expression, healing, martial and sacred arts that (re)connect humans with nature, the earth and the heavens! Alex is a Research Associate with UC Davis researching how actors and performers can cultivate and utilise chi (qi) in 'presencing' and how ideas manifest into happenings. He also works as a coach and mentor working with performers, athletes and CEO's internationally implementing his 'Personal & Professional Practice' embodiment toolkit.
DR ANDREA MACIEL
Dr. Andrea Maciel is a dancer, performer, teacher and scholar from Rio de Janeiro Brazil. Her academic/artistic work investigates the physical resonance of space in urban landscapes through dance, performance and installations. Teacher of the Department of Theatre – PUC / Brazil, Andrea holds a PhD in Political Performance for UNIRIO with a visiting scholarship at Performance Department – New York University. She has conducted several research groups in the field of Performance to undergraduate and postgraduate students at the Universities of Bristol, New York and Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and Bahia, Brazil. Andrea has 15 years of practice in physical theatre (Grotowski technique) training for dancers and actors.
DR CHRISTINA KAPADOCHA
Christina Kapadocha (Ph.D.) is a Lecturer in Theatre and Movement at East 15 Acting School. She is a London-based theatre and somatic practitioner-researcher, a Registered Somatic Movement Educator and founder of Somatic Acting Process®. Her practice research and publications concentrate on the modification and impact of somatically-inspired practices into theatre-performing environments and beyond. She introduces new praxical discussions on the somatic in theatre-performance and voice studies. Christina has been working as an actress, director and movement director in Greece and the UK. Prior to her full-time appointment at East 15, she has also taught at other major London-based drama schools.
DR NATALIE GARRETT BROWN
Natalie Garrett Brown is Head of Department for Music, Writing and Performance at University of East London, Vice Chair for DanceHE (Standing Conference of Dance in Higher Education) and founding member of enter and inhabit, a site-responsive collaborative project. Her practice and research interests are situated within feminist understandings of embodied subjectivity and the ways in which somatic and reflective practices can inform education, performance making, creativity, writing and digital cultural practices. Natalie is co-convener of the International Conference for Dance & Somatic Practices, held biannually at Coventry University. She is also co-editor of Attending to Movement, Somatic Perspectives on Living in this World (2015) and founding associate editor for the Dance and Somatic Practices Journal. She was recently co-investigator on the AHRC project Sensing the City.
DR EMMA MEEHAN
Emma Meehan is Assistant Professor in dance at Coventry University’s Centre for Dance Research. She received her BA and PhD from the Drama Department, Trinity College, Dublin. Research interests include somatic movement practices, dance in Ireland and practice as research. She co-edited Dance Matters in Ireland: Contemporary Performance and Practice with Aoife McGrath (Palgrave 2017) and Performing Process: Sharing Dance and Choreographic Practice with Hetty Blades (Intellect 2018). She is currently principal investigator on an AHRC funded network on somatic practices and chronic pain; and was co-investigator on the AHRC project Sensing the City. She is Associate Editor for the Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices and was co-convenor of the Performance as Research Working Group at the International Federation for Theatre Research (IFTR) from 2013-2017.
DR NITA LITTLE
Nita Little is a dance activist for relational intelligence, a purpose which began with her participation in the emergence and development of Contact Improvisation (CI). Specializing in dance improvisation as a choreographic, performance, and research form, Little shapes dancer’s physical attention in order to investigate the technical and creative potentials of embodiment. As one of the founders of CI (1972), she worked and toured with Steve Paxton. A performer, teacher, choreographer, scholar and theorist, Little is based in Seattle, USA and is invited to teach and lecture on five continents worldwide. With a PhD in Performance Studies, her writing investigates ecological actions of tactile attention and the creative potentials present in entangled relations. In 2016 she initiated a global project, The Institute for the Study of Somatic Communication (ISSC) populated by dance researchers working collaboratively in ensembles together with researchers from a wide variety of science and humanity-based disciplines. Their collective purpose is to investigate actions of physical attention, extended cognition, and the concurrence of presence toward developing expertise in non-verbal communication.
DR IAN KENVYN
Dr Ian Kenvyn was an academic in his former life; his field of expertise was Sport, Health and Nutrition, and he had a particular interest in wellbeing. He trained with Mental Health First Aid England and is an experienced Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) instructor working in higher education, commercial financial services and the voluntary and community sector. Ian is also an Exercise Referral Consultant, with a specialism in exercise to support those with physical and mental health issues. He has also developed and delivered a variety of workshops and short courses that engaged with wellbeing in the workplace and individual and organisational resilience. Outside of work, Ian was a keen triathlete for many years (until his knees said enough was enough!) and now focuses on cycling. He also has a great love of mountains both for summer cycling and winter skiing. Alongside these activities, Ian has been a student of Tai Chi and the Taoist arts for some 25 years. He regularly attends workshops in London with his teacher Dr Alex Boyd; these workshops share best practice within the Chinese Cultural Arts and serve as ongoing CPD for Ian, helping him developing his own practice and making his own classes relevant and positive for students.
JULIA POND
Julia Pond is a dance artist and facilitator based in London. She was a founding member of the Art Monastery Project. She performed in Lori Belilove’s Isadora Duncan Dance Company and Barbara Kane’s Isadora Duncan Dance Group, and with artists Serena Korda and Zorka Wolny. Past work explored new perspectives on history and myth using a choreographic approach to integrate music and dance and how contemplative practice informs creativity. Julia holds a BFA in Dance from Boston Conservatory, an MA in International Relations from St. John's University, and is currently a Leverhulme Arts Scholar completing an MFA in Creative Practice at Trinity Laban.
ADRIANA LA SELVA
Adriana La Selva is a theatre-maker, a performer, a networker and a researcher. Adriana is working on a practice-based Ph.D. at the University of Ghent in Belgium, in association with the School of Arts (KASK), where she is investigating contemporary performer training processes in relation to politics of embodied research. She is, since 2015, a member of the international theatre group The Bridge of Winds, led by Odin Teatret actress Iben Nagel Rasmussen.Adriana co-founded Cross Pollination together with Marije Nie, an international network of performers and researchers, which focuses on the dialogue in-between practices, new ways of knowledge building and understanding collaboration. Projects in this field range from interactive performances to lectures, workshops and sessions in which professionals from in- and outside of the arts work together on a shared theme. She is interested in artistic projects that support sustainable social thinking, all kinds of urban processions and parades and, yes, training.
