Description
The workshop will draw from current artistic practice and research situated at the intersections of choreography, activism, trauma-focused psychotherapy and neuroscience (Allegranti, (2019; 2020; Allegranti and Silas 2021). I will introduce a more-than-human feminist new materialist methodology that speaks to the ethical imperative of somatic and wider embodied practices as potent acts of micro-activism that yield constantly renewable ‘kin-aesthetic’ insights and neurodiverse ways of relating – beyond dance. My neologism ‘kin-aesthesia’ includes proprioception, interoception and the material kinship that emerges between people dancing and its ethical and political implications with the more-than-human (Allegranti 2019; 2020; Allegranti and Silas 2021). Participants will be invited to experientially shift between and critically engage with, solo, duet and group dancing, moving, witnessing, writing and discussion — within the choreographic structure of Landscape Scores (Allegranti 2011/2015) outdoors. The workshop will open an opportunity for participants to investigate how this more-than-human methodology emphasises the non-neutrality of kin-aesthetic relating: that ‘inclusion’ means an attention to an ethics of engagement including issues of safety, consent, self-other care, and our intersecting body politics — gender, sexuality, race, age, size, dis/ability, space/place, mental health (Crenshaw 1989; Allegranti 2020). In doing so, the workshop will offer an opportunity to examine how we can cultivate an extended capacity for ‘response-ability’ (Harraway 2016) as a ubiquitous part of ethical and sustainable relating in kin-aesthetic, and therefore more-than- human ways.
About Beatrice
Dr. Beatrice Allegranti is an Italian-Irish who has been working for over 25 years as a transdisciplinary choreographer/director, filmmaker, UKCP trauma-informed psychotherapist, and Reader in Dance Movement Psychotherapy and Choreography at the University of Roehampton, School of Arts. Beatrice makes work across a variety of media: dance, film, installation, writing that engages diverse audiences and participants (mental health, young onset dementia, refugees, LGBTQ+ communities). Beatrice’s award-winning choreography and film work tours internationally (France, U.S.A, Canada, Norway, Finland, Ireland, Hong Kong, Japan, Poland), and her trauma-informed psychotherapy experience includes private practice and the UK National Health System (adult mental health and dementia services), and consultancy (Arts for Peace, Irish Defense Forces, Wellcome Trust). Across her artistic, clinical, and scholarly work, Beatrice’s transdisciplinary feminist new materialist focus involves an ethical re-visioning of the way we relate within the world through the lens of our intersectional body politics (gender, race, sexuality, age, class, mental health) in human and more-than-human ways. Beatrice is currently working on her second book (Routledge 2023) about the Arts Council England and Public Health supported Moving Kinship project.