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An embodied narrative perspective on transforming trauma and illness experienceIn Anders Juhl Rasmussen & Morten Sodemann (eds.), Narrative Medicine: Trauma and Ethics, Vernon Press. pp. 15-26. 2024.Trauma is notoriously difficult to communicate, as it often defies understanding. It unfolds over time and cannot be told through linear narratives. Nevertheless, we show that narratives can become a medium through which experiences of trauma may be shared, alleviating the sense of alienation common to post-traumatic experience. Drawing from one of the authors’ lived experiences of cancer and her illness narrative, we focus on the question of whether traumatic events can be narrated, known, and …Read more
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Situating the gaze: Towards an embodied ecological approach to screendanceWorking Titles – Journal of Practice Based Research 1 (2): 1-14. 2023.This article presents an interdisciplinary conversation between the authors discussing the potential of cultivating a feminist, embodied, ecological approach to screendance and environmental attunement in video dance performance. It draws from Lux Eterna’s artistic research and body of work including the film AURA NOX ANIMA (2016) filmed on the sandy dunes in Anna Bay, New South Wales, Australia, and her current development in dance film production: THE EIGHTH DAY (2023) in conversation with Sar…Read more
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Cognitive ecologies of presence(s) in three different dance formsNordic Journal of Dance - Practice, Education and Research 14 (1): 6-19. 2023.Presence is a central yet controversial topic in the study of performing arts and theatrical traditions, where the notion of ‘stage presence’ is generally understood as the performer’s ability to enchant the audience’s attention. How do dancers relate to the idea of presence in performance, and how do they understand, enact, and perform presence in their artistic work and practices? In this paper I offer an investigation into presence’s variations in three different dance practices and choreogra…Read more
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81Shifting Perspectives: A cinematic dialogue about Synthetic Biology in a more-than-human worldBody, Space and Technology (BST) 1 (21): 1-5. 2022.The short experimental film Shifting Perspectives stems from a collaborative research project initiated in 2019 in Sydney, Australia, during the 'Choreographic Hack Lab-a week-long laboratory co-presented by Critical Path and Sydney Festival in partnership with the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences (MAAS), which asked artists and academics to rethink and respond to the idea of the Anthropocene (Pini & George, 2019). The film was later developed in 2020 during a Responsive Residency at Critical…Read more
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196Synchronous vs non-synchronous imitation: using dance to explore interpersonal coordination during observational learningHuman Movement Science 102776 (102776). 2021.Observational learning can enhance the acquisition and performance quality of complex motor skills. While an extensive body of research has focused on the benefits of synchronous (i.e., concurrent physical practice) and non-synchronous (i.e., delayed physical practice) observational learning strategies, the question remains as to whether these approaches differentially influence performance outcomes. Accordingly, we investigate the differential outcomes of synchronous and non-synchronous observa…Read more
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207Un approccio ecologico cognitivo alla presenza scenica nelle arti della performanceAntropologia E Teatro 12 (12): 88-108. 2021.The concept of stage presence in performing arts is generally understood as the ability of the skilled performer to capture the attention of the audience, a prerogative of the talented actor, who occupies a position of power in respect to the audience. This work challenges the classic model of stage presence as an intrinsic quality of the performer and proposes instead a cognitive ecological ethnographic framework which considers the role played by various social actors — the public and the perf…Read more
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27On the edge of undoing: Ecologies of agency in Body WeatherIn Kath Bicknell & John Sutton (eds.), Collaborative Embodied Performance: Ecologies of Skill, Methuen Drama. pp. 35-52. 2022.This chapter explores the practice of Body Weather (BW), a postmodern dance methodology, addressing how BW performers experience and enact agency in this context of practice. Adopting a cognitive ecological, ethnographic, and phenomenological approach, this work focuses on the creation of AURA NOX ANIMA (2016) – a short dance film directed by Sydney-based visual artist Lux Eterna and filmed on the sandy dunes in Anna Bay, New South Wales, Australia – to underscore the role played by the physical…Read more
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25Autoethnography and ‘chimeric-thinking’: A phenomenological reconsideration of illness and alterityAustralian Journal of Anthropology 33 (1): 34-46. 2022.This paper tackles the concept of alterity through an embodied perspective. By questioning my lived experience of cancer and how illness—as a disruptive event (Carel, 2008, 2016, 2021)—enables philosophical reflection and the exploration of ‘other’ ways of being-in-the-world (Merleau-Ponty 2012 [1945]), I ask if an embodied ‘chimeric-thinking’ can be used to question established notions of alterity and reshape our relationship with ‘otherness’ (Leistle 2015, 2016b). Building on a phenomenologic…Read more
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43Expanding empathic and perceptive awareness: The experience of attunement in Contact Improvisation and Body WeatherPerformance Research: A Journal of the Performing Arts 26 (3): 106-113. 2021.Dance as a complex human activity is a rich test case for exploring perception in action. In this article, we explore a 4E approach to perception/action in dance, focussing on the intersubjective and ecological aspects of kinaesthetic attunement and their capacity to expand empathic and perceptive experience. We examine the question: what are the ways in which the performance ecology co-created in different dance practices influences empathic and perceptive experience? We adopt an enactive ethno…Read more
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13Re-tracing the encounter: Interkinaesthetic forms of knowledge in Contact ImprovisationAntropologia E Teatro 7 (7): 226-243. 2016.We adopted a phenomenological approach, directly engaging with the community of practice of the form of movement under study. We discuss some methodological approaches that we considered in investigating the lived experience of a heterogeneous group of Contact Improvisation (CI) practitioners. We delineate how such a system of movement could provide a unique example for the analysis of the interpersonal dynamics between movers with a different degree of expertise, re-tracing some common paths to…Read more
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35Transmitting Passione: Emio Greco and the Ballet National de MarseilleIn Jill Nunes Jensen Kathrina Farrugia-Kriel (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Ballet, Oxford University Press. pp. 594-612. 2021.This work addresses the case of the Ballet National de Marseille (BNM) and the 2017 recreation of the piece Passione, created by the artistic directors Emio Greco and Pieter C. Scholten. This study, informed by a phenomenological approach, adopts ethnographic methods, including participant observation, in-depth interviews, and one researcher’s direct involvement with the practices of enculturation and enskillment in this dance form. It investigates how the dancers of the BNM articulate their div…Read more
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58Skilled performance in Contact Improvisation: the importance of interkinaesthetic sense of agencySynthese 200 (2): 1-17. 2022.In exploring skilled performance in Contact Improvisation, we utilize an enactive ethnographic methodology combined with an interdisciplinary approach to examine the question of how skill develops in CI. We suggest this involves the development of subtleties of awareness of intra- and interkinaesthetic attunement, and a capacity for interkinaesthetic negative capability—an embodied interpersonal ‘not knowing yet’—including an ease with being off balance and waiting for the next shift or movement…Read more
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289Resisting the ‘Patient’ Body: A Phenomenological AccountJournal of Embodied Research 2 (2). 2019.According to the biomedical model of medicine, the subject of the illness event is the pathology rather than the person diagnosed with the disease. In this view, a body-self becomes a ‘patient’ body-object that can be enrolled in a therapeutic protocol, investigated, assessed, and transformed. How can it be possible for cancer patients to make sense of the opposite dimensions of their body-self and their body-diseased-object? Could a creative embodied approach enable the coping with trauma tied …Read more
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258Performing Illness: A Dialogue About an Invisibly Disabled Dancing BodyFrontiers in Psychology 12 566520. 2021.This conversational opinion article between two parties – Kate, a disability performance scholar and Sarah, an interdisciplinary artist-scholar with lived experience of disability – considers the dancing body as redeemer in the specific case of a dancer experiencing ‘chemo fog’, or Chemotherapy-Related Cognitive Impairment (CRCI) after undergoing oncological treatments for Hodgkin Lymphoma. This work draws on Pini’s own lived experience of illness (Pini & Pini, 2019) in dialogue with Maguire-Ros…Read more
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University of Southern DenmarkDepartment of Sports Science and Clinical BiomechanicsAssociate Professor
Odense, Denmark
Areas of Specialization
Phenomenology |
Embodiment and Situated Cognition |
Anthropology |
Arts and Humanities |