Attending to Movement

Sarah Whatley is Professor of Dance and Director of the Centre for Dance Research (C-DaRE) at Coventry University. Her research interests include dance and new technologies, dance analysis, somatic dance practice and pedagogy, and inclusive dance practices. Her current AHRC-funded project is 'InVisible Difference; Dance, Disability and Law'. She is also leading a major EU-funded project (EuropeanaSpace), exploring the creative reuse of digital cultural content. She led the AHRC-funded Siobhan Davies digital archive project, RePlay, She is also Editor of the Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices and sits on the editorial boards of several other Journals. Dr Natalie Garrett Brown is principal lecturer in dance at Coventry University, UK, where she contributes to the BA(Hons) Dance course and co-ordinates postgraduate provision for the Performing Arts Department. She is associate editor for the Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices and sits on the editorial board for the Dancelines section in Research in Dance Education. She has recently completed her Somatic Movement Educators Training in Body-Mind Centering with Embody Move Association, UK and is co-convenor of the International Conference for Dance & Somatic Practices, held biannually at Coventry University. Alongside this she is a founding member of enter & inhabit, a collaborative site responsive project and the Corporeal Knowing Network; an exchange between theatre and dance artists & scholars interested in embodied writing practices and process. Kirsty Alexander studied law and then trained in contemporary dance. She performed with a diverse range of artists including Gill Clarke, Rosemary Butcher, Gaby Agis, Michael Clarke, Station House Opera and Michel Laub. Her own choreographic work is generally site specific and in collaboration with artists from other disciplines. She has been involved in educating dancers within the higher education sector for over 15 years, including as Head of Undergraduate Studies at Laban from 2000-2004, and as Assistant Director of London Contemporary Dance School from 2005-2010. In October 2010 she was awarded a University of Stirling PhD studentship, and is currently drawing on kinaesthetic experience to reconsider the dynamics of pedagogical experience. Her research draws on Derrida and Deleuze / Deleuze and Guattari to explore the particular understandings of intersubjectivity and responsibility afforded by kinaesthetic experience; and to approach the role of education, and therefore the dynamics of pedagogical interaction, from the perspective of these affordances. She is particularly interested in the role of hesitation, or non-doing, in pedagogical experience; in the responsibility of the actors involved for holding this space of hesitation open; and in whether the play between attention and intention that this brings can offer not only an experience of transformation, but also an experience of justice. As a certified teacher of Skinner Releasing Technique her approach to the philosophy of education has been significantly influenced by somatic practice and she is associate editor of the Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices. She undertook the MA Values in Education at the Institute of Education, London.