City Dances: what the city reveals using dance as a method

Abstract

This exposition shares findings from my ongoing research that explores cities through the spatial and somatic practices of dance and urban studies. I am interested in how we enrich our concepts for understanding and developing cities to include their sensory textures as political realities. As a choreographer artist-scholar, I offer insights from an embodied approach, engaging cities as responsive collaborators when encountered through movement. Here, I share reflections and findings drawn from using dance-based knowledges to engage cities as living archives, which include an ever-changing record of how people move, imagine, and enact what it is to be human. I have found that dancing with cities reveals interwoven environments shaped by the ideologies that govern how mobilities are fostered, constrained, and enacted. In this exposition, I temporarily gather these dynamics into three categories (connection, transformation, and learning) as a framework for analysis and discussion.