KONTAMINÁCIE: MOVING CONVERSATIONS OF SKIN AND LAND

Duration: 75 min.

 

In this interactive session I outline the evolution of a performative practice, teaching and research approach that is interdisciplinary in that it draws on theoretical and philosophical concepts from the biological, zoological, botanical, somatic sciences and arts.

I describe how the intuitive moving body becomes a site of radical knowledge, activism and research methodology (East, 2022) whose conscious attention and sensuous exploration encourages greater awareness between human beings and the rest of life on earth.

This form of activism is playful, non-confrontational, communal and dialogic. It is literally a practice in thinking through our skin and a process of re-membering our vegetal origins that continue to inform our daily and seasonal existence.

 

Alison (Ali) East (MPhEd), Aotearoa New Zealand.

Ali East is a New Zealand dance artist, educator and ecologist. She teaches choreography, somatics, community dance and dance ethnography. In 1980, along with poet/musician Denys Trussell, she founded Origins Dance Theatre, creating more than twenty-five eco-political mixed-media works. From 1989-1996 she founded and directed New Zealand’s first choreographic tertiary training programme, now Bachelor of Performing and Screen Arts (Unitec, Auckland). Ali co-ordinates the annual Shared Agendas Improvised Performance Events at Otago University – in their twenty-first year. She is a regular presenter at international conferences and has published Teaching Dance as if the World Matters – A Design for Teaching Dance-making in the 21st Century (2011): Lambert Press, Germany, and several book chapters and articles.