14.11.2024
3 min read
Inquiring Bodies: Ways of Knowing
With Guest Artist Lisa Dowler
Inquiring Bodies is an event by dance artists, for dance artists, which creates a mutually supportive environment for exploration and open dialogue. We aim to create a safe and supportive space where both participant artists and Guest Artists can offer, share and investigate together.
For 2025, Inquiring Bodies from Cheshire Dance is being led by Lisa Dowler who will explore ‘Ways of Knowing’.
ABOUT THE DAY:
As the significance of dance practice outside of studio and theatre settings flourishes, how can we ensure that the dancer’s voice and contribution to knowledge is heard and understood in contexts outside of the arts? By what means can we elevate and position subjective, experiential, bodily knowing alongside objective, reasoned knowledge?
We will explore improvisation and touch as ways to fine tune our attention (and clarify our intention) in solo, duo and ensemble compositions. Acknowledging the collaborative and relational nature of dance improvisation, we will reflect on our unique practices and their potential to enrich multidisciplinary working and consider how we can translate embodied experience and knowing into language that supports dialogue across disciplines and settings.
The day will be accompanied by live music from musician and composer Henry Horrell.
WHO IS IT FOR?:
Inquiring Bodies with Lisa Dowler is for experienced dancers/movers who have a desire to engage in dialogue and enquiry into embodied knowledge.
Places are limited to ensure we can hold space for authentic enquiry and exploration.
ABOUT LISA:
Lisa is an independent dance artist, researcher and Somatic Movement Educator with more than 25 years experience in facilitating dance practice and performance making in diverse contexts including community, professional, Higher Education and health. Her work is inspired by Contact Improvisation, Instant Composition, Body-Mind Centering ® and enviromental dance, and nurtures a collaborative approach to dance-making, creating innovative audience relationships and developing inclusive participatory practice.
In 2006 she was invited by at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital, Liverpool, to be their first Dance Artist in Residence. This led to a long-term collaboration with Alder Hey in practice development and research and she has worked extensively with children undergoing neuro-rehabilitation and pre and post cardiac surgery. This includes regular one-to-one somatic dance sessions with infants, children and young people; large-scale public to bespoke bedside performance; research studies exploring the effects of somatics and improvisation for children with acute conditions; and a Somatic Dance App as an educational tool for parents and hospital staff. Building on their experience during the Covid-19 pandemic, where STDC created and nature-inspired dance films and socially-distanced multidisciplinary performance, the current project at Alder Hey called ‘Shifting Landscapes’ includes ‘Dwell’ and ‘Oscillate’, two 360° immersive performances in natural landscapes for VR.
As a Senior Lecturer in Dance at Edge Hill University 2007-2015, Lisa’s teaching centred on improvisational, somatic and eco-feminist approaches to dance-making. Recently, Lisa completed a retrospective PhD entitled ‘Towards a multidisciplinary approach to healthcare: A case for dance improvisation in clinical and care settings,’ with C-DaRE, Coventry University. Through this process she reflected on the nature of knowledge and the existing hierarchies which priviledge objective knowledge over subjective experience. The question of how dance artists can undo or recalibrate this is one she has been left with and looks forward to investigating further.
INFO & BOOKING:
Date: Saturday 1 February 2025
Times: 10am-5pm (arrive from 9:30am, in time for a 10am start)
Venue: University of Chester Kingsway Creative Campus, Kingsway, CH2 2LB
Cost:
FREE for Freelance Artists/those not in employment/students
£25 for employed or in receipt of regular wage
Number of places available: 20 (places are limited to ensure we can hold space for authentic enquiry and exploration.)
