Why practice matters – if practice is part of dance research, then what needs to change to reflect the value of practice as an epistemic system?
Chair and Panellists
Chair: Susanne Foellmer
Susanne is Professor in Dance Studies at Coventry University, Centre for Dance Research (C-DaRE). Main research areas embrace aesthetic theory and concepts of the body in contemporary dance, performance, and in the Weimar Era, relationships between dance and ‘other’ media, historicity and politicality of dance and performance. She also has been working as a dramaturge and academic consultant for Helena Botto, Isabelle Schad, Meg Stuart, and Jeremy Wade, a.o. From 2014-2021 she has been directing the DFG research project On Remnants and Vestiges. Strategies of Remaining in the Performing Arts (German Research Foundation). https://pureportal.coventry.ac.uk/en/persons/susanne-foellmer
Jonathan Burrows
Jonathan is a choreographer whose main focus is an ongoing body of pieces with the composer Matteo Fargion, with whom he continues to perform around the world. The two men are co-produced by PACT Zollverein Essen and Sadler’s Wells Theatre London. His A Choreographer’s Handbook is published by Routledge and has sold over 16,500 copies internationally since its publication in 2010, as well as being translated into 7 other languages. Burrows is currently an Associate Professor at the Centre for Dance Research, Coventry University.
Simon Ellis
Simon is a choreographer and filmmaker. He was born in Aotearoa/New Zealand, but now lives in London and works at C-DaRE. He thinks about the ways humans might value things that are not easily commodified, and likes to imagine a world filled with people who are sensitive to their own bodies, and the bodies of others. www.skellis.net; https://practiceasresearchblog.wordpress.com. https://vimeo.com/520358404.
Funmi Adewole
Funmi is a senior lecturer in Dance at De Montfort University, Leicester. She is also performer and a dance dramaturge. ‘Funmi started out as a media practitioner in Nigeria but went into performance on moving to England in 1994. For several years she toured with Physical theatre and African dance drama companies before studying for an M.A in Postcolonial studies and a PhD in Dance Studies. Her research interests include theorising of Dance of the African Diaspora in professional contexts, Africanist aesthetics in choreographic practice, the notion of Contemporary dance. She also developing modes of inquiry based on somatic self-inquiry, narrative and autoethnographic methods.
Efrosini Protapapa
Efrosini Protopapa is a London-based choreographer and academic. Her research interests lie in experimental and conceptual practices across dance, theatre and performance, and notions of value and labour, in/visibility, thinking and disagreement in/as performance. Having toured stage works across the UK and Europe, she now mostly works collaboratively and across disciplines for non-theatrical spaces. Efrosini is a Reader in Dance and Choreography at the University of Roehampton, where she supervises practice-led PhD projects. She also teaches workshops internationally, curates research platforms and exchange events, and has published in journals and arts publications. She is a co-author of the book The Practice of Dramaturgy: Working on Actions in Performance (Valiz, 2017) with Konstantina Georgelou and Danae Theodoridou.