Urgent Bodies is a group of dancers and movers who strive to apply dance skills and choreographic knowledge to support political actions and activist movements. We feel a strong need to engage with and respond to the political situations of our time.
Inspired by Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone, we understand hope not as something we feel, rather as something we do. We want to contribute to political struggles with dance, and at the same time, bring political urgency to our dance practice.
Activating Corporeality For Political Resistance
We activate, analyse and apply the corporeal knowledge embedded in practices of resistance and protest by engaging with activists and social movements. We develop dance as a toolkit for the practice of political hope and resistance, in response to the socio-ecological urgency we live in today.
Hope is an action, not a feeling.
Our objectives
- Bring dancers/movers and activists together to facilitate exchange and mutual learning
- Develop training methods and tailored workshops for dancers/movers and activists
- Make findings, methods and tools accessible to the public
We invite dancers, movers and activists of all genders, ages, abilities and colours, and anyone who finds joy in moving, to join us to our Research LABs and future actions! Let’s make the ground shake!
Organizers
Leonie
Leonie Naomi Baur has a background in contemporary dance, choreography and capoeira. Her artistic focus lies in movement-based conceptual performance, which has opened new spaces of imagination, reflectivity and political discourse to her bodily practice. Leonie’s research currently focuses on public space, especially urban transit spaces as performative spaces.
Ming
Ming Poon is a choreographer whose practice centers around the social and political potential of dance. For him, to move is to exercise our freedom, to take action, have agency and create change. He wants to tap on the knowledge and creativity of dancers to help create political actions.
Henna-Elise
Henna-Elise Selkälä works in the intersection of dance arts, environmental activism and Political Science. She is passionate about investigating what makes people, groups, ideas and societies move. At present, Henna-Elise is especially interested in questions around resistance and vulnerability.
Get in touch!
urgentbodies@riseup.net
Urgent Bodies 