Dancing Otherwise: New Assemblages for Pluriversal Practices

Victoria Hunter; Daniela Perazzo; Michelle Elliott

doi:10.47061/jasc.v5i2.10214

Authors

Victoria Hunter Bath Spa University https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9835-3853
Daniela Perazzo Kingston University, London https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3239-4038
Michelle Elliott Bath Spa University https://orcid.org/0009-0009-7641-7092

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.47061/jasc.v5i2.10214

Keywords:

dance, pluriverse, embodied relationality, horizontality, dance ecology, being otherwise

Abstract

This writing articulates praxis-led approaches arising from the co-authors’ research network Dancing Otherwise: Exploring Pluriversal Practices, funded by the United Kingdom’s Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) from October 2023 to March 2025. It presents commentary on embodied modalities of reflexive enquiry employed by the network, which aimed to examine the structures and frameworks around which dance research is organised in the UK. This article explores how the research presents innovation in praxis within dance studies and dance research, and contributes to an emerging inter- and transdisciplinary field of awareness-based approaches to systemic transformation.

Author Biographies

Victoria Hunter, Bath Spa University

Professor Vicky Hunter is a Practitioner-Researcher and Visiting Research Fellow in Site Dance at Bath Spa University. Her research is transdisciplinary in nature spanning choreographic research and Environmental Humanities and draws on Feminist New Materialism, Phenomenology, Spatial theory, Critical Geography and Posthumanist theoretical approaches.

Her research explores site dance and corporeal engagements with space, place and lived environments. She adopts an interdisciplinary approach to exploring human-site engagement and frequently collaborates with architects, human geographers, artists and social scientists to develop multi-layered perspectives on contemporary themes and issues (such as social and spatial justice, Anthropocene and ecological discourses and human-nonhuman entanglements), she is co-editor of Encountering Environments through the Arts: Interdisciplinary Embodiments, Politics and Imaginaries, London: Routledge (2025) and the Routledge Companion to Site-Specific Performance (2024).

Her monograph Site, Dance and Body: Movement, Materials and Corporeal Engagement was published with Palgrave in March 2021. She is co-author of (Re) Positioning Site Dance: Local Acts, Global Themes (2019) with Melanie Kloetzel (Canada) and Karen Barbour (Aotearoa), and editor of Moving Sites: Investigating Site-Specific Dance Performance (Routledge, 2015).

She led the AHRC funded Dancing Otherwise: Exploring Pluriversal Practices network (Jan 2024 – March 2025) at Bath Spa and is co -convenor of the CPEK research group on embodiment and creative practice, independently she convenes the cross-institutional and interdisciplinary research group on ‘Environment and Experience’.

Daniela Perazzo, Kingston University, London

Dr Daniela Perazzo is Associate Professor in Dance Studies at Kingston University London. Her research interrogates the intersections of the aesthetic and the political in contemporary choreography, focusing on the ethical, po(i)etic and critical potentialities of experimental and collaborative practices. Her publications include the monograph Jonathan Burrows: Towards a Minor Dance (Palgrave, 2019) as well as peer-reviewed articles in Performance Philosophy, Performance Research, Dance Research Journal, Choreographic Practices and Contemporary Theatre Review. Her current research engages with notions of vulnerability and discomfort and attends to the gaps, difficulties and entanglements of modes of being in relation.

Michelle Elliott, Bath Spa University

Michelle Elliott is the Subject Leader for Dance at Bath Spa University, where she co-convenes the Creative Practice and Embodied Knowledge Research Group. Her publications include peer-reviewed work in Research in Dance Education and writing on the work of French choreographer Philippe Decouflé. Her research investigates how contemporary dance practices can be a site for exploring creativity through an ontological lens. Her current work draws on theories of embodied cognition and investigates how movement-based practices can enhance creative thinking.

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Dancing Otherwise

New Assemblages for Pluriversal Practices

Authors

DOI:

Keywords:

Abstract

Author Biographies

Victoria Hunter, Bath Spa University

Daniela Perazzo, Kingston University, London

Michelle Elliott, Bath Spa University

References

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