Dance Research Practices for Somatic Communication - Training with Nita Little

August 29 - September 1, 2025
10:00am - 4:30pm each day
Sliding scale: $340 - $550
Payment plans and 1 Work exchange spot are available. Please reach out.

At the Peace, Education and Somatic School (previously called the Aikido Peace Education Center) in the Masonic Hall, downtown Bellingham, WA.

Registration

Dance Research Practices for Somatic Communication

Description
The ISSC* seeks to develop Relational Intelligence and other transferable skills of Somatic Communication in dancers, affiliate researchers, and ultimately everyday humans for the benefit of peoples in all walks of life. This Training Workshop is meant for dancers to extend their research beyond choreographic choice-making to find that Somatic Communication offers emergent relations of immediate coordination and surprise. Outcomes will include a deeper understanding of the potentials for Co-Creative Practices where new knowledge and data might emerge, as well as access to establishing CoLab research groups under the resource umbrella of the ISSC.

The workshop format will involve theoretical and practical work, including training that involves listening, moving, reading, and practicing research interview techniques with one another. We will investigate the language of embodied states that support somatic communication within contact improvisation and ensemble practices, offering dancers a shared language base from which to anchor their research inquiry.

Learning Outcomes will include:

+ a deeper understanding of the potentials for Co-Creative Practices where new knowledge and data might emerge.
+ shared language from which to begin research inquiry.
+ research practices and tools that are specific to dancing, improvising, and inquiry.
+ materials that outline our work together.
+ access to establishing CoLab research groups under the resource umbrella of the ISSC.
+ access to a worldwide network of dancer/researchers collectively investigating new ways that dancers bring dance values and potentials into the broader world.
+ access to establishing CoLab research groups under the resource umbrella of the ISSC.

*ISSC=Institute for Somatic Communication