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Embodied Knowledge in Theatre and Dance: Teacher-Researcher group (EKTD)
The Embodied Knowledge in Theater and Dance Teacher-Researcher group (EKTD) is a structural learning community through which the ATD Lectorate provides teacher-researcher professionalization. It is a research group for teacher-researchers from BA courses, who meet monthly, paid by the lectorate. EKTD was founded in 2019 and is led by dr. Marijn de Langen. Over the period 2019-2025, 23 teachers from 7 different BA courses have participated in this group, as well as one teacher-researcher from Breitner Academy and three interns from Utrecht University (MA).
Teachers often operate individually within the ATD. EKTD creates a space for teachers to come together and reflect on their teaching practices, to exchange and share observations and experiences around the students needs and questions. The group often discusses issues that come straight from the classrooms, around decolonisation of the curricula, neurodiversity, abelism, embodied racism, inclusivity within the ATD, and how to improve and change conditions for the students. This dialogue and space for experiments and listening is indispensable, and flows back in many ways in the way we teach our students.
Marijn de Langen: ‘ As a research group we articulate, investigate and question the embodied knowledges that we work with in our teaching practices. This happens in monthly 3-hour meetings, that take place in a studio space at the ATD lectorate, or sometimes at Jodenbreestraat, or outside. We work on the floor, share and investigate. All members of the group develop their own research trajectory, in their own ways. Some of us are just starting to do research, some have completed phd’s. Sometimes we read together, sometimes we invite guests. We formulate our research interests, urgencies and questions, that are directly inspired by, and inspire our work with students. We explore difference and invent ways of working. Along the way we build connections to other platforms, artists and institutes.’
Outputs
The EKTD research group has a significant impact on ATD education though:
(Research-led) Curriculum innovation within Bachelors courses
Through the development of their individual research projects (supported by the group), teachers have been able to innovate their teaching practices within the ATD, developing new tools and formats. They have been educating their students in new ways. It is our experience that students are highly appreciative of the chance to experience, learn from and sometimes participate in the research done by their teachers.
Curriculum innovation throughcollaborations between Bachelors courses
As individual teachers, we innovate our own teaching by doing research, but our research sometimes also gives rise to new collaborations between teachers in the group (‘let’s explore this together’) and thus between different BA programs.
Impact on students' education though public dissemination: extra-curricular public presentations and publication
Students encounter the work of the EKTD teacher-researchers not only in the classroom, but also outside of the classroom through public events within the ATD/AHK and beyond. Teachers have been developing research ideas that led to ATD wide symposia, presentations, conferences and publications.
Participants
Teacher, Scenography
Carly Everaert has designed costumes for more than 200 stage productions, ranging from huge operas to intimate dialogues, in the Netherlands and Germany. Her costumes are extremely colorful (‘I used to describe myself as painter,’), literally and figuratively multi-layered (many of them are collages of found clothing materials, tailored to fit each actor’s body – ‘their bodies are my inspiration’) and gender fluid (see interview).
Research
In my research Maria Ines Villasmil (SNDO) and I developed a movement workshop about the question how knowledge can be found in the body itself. I wrote a lecture titled ‘Creating spaces for other(ed)’. It was my contribution to the annual Costume, Scenography and Critical Theory symposium at the Arts University of Bournemouth (2021). And I interviewed Esther Snelder, who teaches acting at the Mime School on what happens if you perform on stage in your own clothes: Is there a moment when your experience shifts, when you cross an invisible boundary between clothing and costume?’
Links
Carly Everaert Website
A conversation with Carly Everaert
An interview
Teacher, SNDO
Aion Arribas is a movement artist and researcher working with dance, somatics, theory, performance, writing, and video. Their work proposes the queering of body and movement patterns as a way to produce knowledge and as a way to critically approach somatic awareness. Aion's works with different notions of playfulness and pleasure as crucial to learning otherwise and as tools for political positioning. Their practice and pedagogical approach are developed by teaching movement research, facilitating workshops with non-dancers, and presenting work internationally and collaboratively.
Research
Aion's research focuses on the reparative potential of practicing movement in relation to the word pleasure and its many notions. At the same time, they are investigating the implications and transformations within their work of former SNDO teacher Gonnie Heggen's practice of "rapid change in action", which profoundly changed Aoin's way of relating to learning and dance.
Links
shy-play.nl
Bio
Maria Inés Villasmil is a Venezuelan-born dancer, choreographer, dance educator, writer, cultural manager, and academic researcher. Her work is rooted in a strong interest in people, society, social development, and multidisciplinary, multicultural collaboration.
Based in the Netherlands for the past 29 years, she is currently a faculty member at the Academy of Theatre and Dance at the Amsterdam University of the Arts (Amsterdam Hogeschool voor de Kunsten). There, she teaches Contemporary Dance Technique, Improvisation Techniques, and Choreography, and regularly leads workshops that focus on real-time composition processes. She works closely with both the Choreography Department (SNDO) and the Expanded Contemporary Dance Department, where she serves as a coach and has also co-developed projects such as the Critical Somatic Symposium during 2024 and 2025.
Maria Inés holds a Master’s degree in Choreography and an MBA in Cultural Management and Creative Industries from the University of Salamanca in Spain. She also holds two Bachelor's degrees: one in Sociology from Venezuela, and another in Choreography from the SNDO, where she originally trained.
She served as Interim Manager of the SNDO from October 2020 until December 2021, and was Interim Manager of the Expanded Contemporary Dance Department from February to July 2025. Since 2019, Maria Inés has also been an active member of the ATD research group, contributing to artistic and pedagogical discourse within the Academy
Research
Scores and Practices of Disobedience
By Maria Ines Villasmil-Prieto
My work as a choreographer, educator, and researcher centers around the use of scores—as both choreographic structures and tools for improvisation and critical engagement. While traditionally understood as fixed sets of instructions, I approach scores as open-ended proposals that invite spontaneous, collaborative, and often unpredictable responses. They serve as catalysts for collective creation, reflecting and challenging broader social dynamics.
At the core of my practice is the belief that improvisation within the frame of a score allows dancers to access the natural intelligence of the moving body. This unfolding—an intimate, embodied inquiry—becomes both the process and the goal. The tension between structure and freedom, between normativity and deviation, reveals the political and pedagogical potential of dance as a relational practice.
Drawing on sociological theory, especially Durkheim’s concept of anomie—the disconnection between individual agency and social norms—I explore how moments of disobedience within score-based practices can foster creativity, innovation, and deeper group dynamics. In the studio, these micro-deviations open space for performers to renegotiate their roles in real time, enhancing both personal agency and collective engagement.
This interplay is not limited to individual sessions. In collaboration with Carly Everaert, I co-developed a workshop for scenography students around the concept of "aware-wearing"—inspired in part by Eugenio Barba. We investigated how the wearing of specific costumes made from particular materials affects the experience of the body and its performativity. Here, somatic awareness, costume, and score intersected in a shared exploration of embodiment, aesthetics, and affect.
Across all of these projects, my teaching and research invite performers to engage critically with how they relate to structure, to one another, and to their environments. By integrating disobedience as a pedagogical tool, I aim to foster more inclusive, flexible practices that support individual expression and collective responsibility.
Ultimately, this work imagines the dance studio as a microcosm of society—a space where power, identity, and creativity are continuously negotiated. The practices developed in this context do not stay confined to the studio; they carry into the world, equipping performers to navigate and reshape the social structures they inhabit. Through this lens, performance becomes both an artistic and social act, cultivating more critical, creative, and engaged individuals.
Researcher, DAS Research
Mira Thompson (Amsterdam, 1993) is a singer, songwriter and performer. Informed by the tradition of vocal jazz, she is drawn to narrative songs and strong poetic and visual elements within music. During her time at HKU Utrecht Conservatory, she developed a fascination for the different ways in which the voice can function as an embodied instrument. Whether written, spoken or sung, Mira wields language to evoke deep and buried feelings with an earnest yet witty approach. Within her own artistic practice or that of others, cross-disciplinary collaboration is at the heart of Mira’s work. She writes on subjects of disability, language and activism to contemplate a more accessible world. Invested in embodied learning and disability justice, Mira brings into question notions of accessibility and its universality through lectures, workshops and consultancy to organizations, tutors, and students.
Research
This ongoing and ever growing research collaboration between Mira Thompson and Carly Everaert stems from Carly’s critical theory lessons, in which Mira also teaches a class on Disability Justice and Disability Theory. Mira and Carly explore the topic of Access Intimacy, a term coined by American/Korean thinker and educator Mia Mingus. In their research they expand on ableist notions within the (art) world. They argue through different examples how dreaming more accessible worlds can create an expansive and imaginative framework.
Teacher and Coach, Dance in Education
From 1992 to 2000 Nita Liem was co- artistic leader of youth theater Artisjok/Nultwintig. Creating shows and empowering inner city youngsters through the principles of hip hop culture. Together with theater journalist Bart Deuss she founded Don’t Hit Mama in 2000. The work of Don’t Hit Mama is inspired by the unlimited and capricious life styles one finds in the big city. Driven by its research, the path of the artistic core winds back to vital sources of dance in the America, Africa and Asia.
Research
Dancing bodies are like archives that are connected to another world, that holds much wisdom. After almost 30 years of working with dancers from the urban dance scene, I am now investigating what this has brought me, as teacher, coach and performer.
Links
Don't Hit Mama Website
Teacher, Dance in Education & Expanded Contemporary Dance
Patrick Acogny is a choreographer, teacher, dancer, researcher in African Dance. He is a teacher at Docent Dans and Expanded Contemporary Dance at the ATD. His new publication Contemporary African Dance Deconstructed will be released in May 2022.
Research
Patrick Acogny seeks to develop an (interactive?) video as tool for African dance for teaching and /or improvising.
Links
African Aesthetics and Contemporary Dance: a Practitioners Perspective
A conversation with Patrick Acogny
Rose Akras (she/her) was born in São Paulo, Brazil, and has lived and worked in Amsterdam since the mid-1990s. She studied and danced in São Paulo, London, New York, and Amsterdam, holds an MA in Education in the Arts (University of the Arts Amsterdam), and is a certified Somatic Movement Educator.
Since the beginning of her career, Akras has chosen a hybrid path—working as performer, initiator, and teacher-researcher—believing that these roles inform one another, creating an interwoven field that nurtures practice-based research. Akras is the founder - director of the performance art platform FLAM Live Art Amsterdam www.flam.online and is starting a position as performance programmer for a new art space opening in Amsterdam.
As a teacher, she defines her practice as movement research, offering embodiment-based classes and mentorship in diverse areas such as performing and visual arts, architecture, and corporate businesses, both in the Netherlands and abroad (at ATD -Docent Dans bachelor-, ArtEZ, Minerva Academie, Nike Europe, and various institutes in Brazil, Norway, and Poland, among others). Since 2020 Rose has been developing a practice with people on the autism spectrum, applying embodiment principles in individual coaching.
As a performer, she returned to the stage in 2019, working with choreographers Vincent Riebeek and Fernando Belfiore.
Ongoing Research in Practice
I am fascinated by the materials that constitute the human body and how their innate qualities and textures can influence and shape a personal movement language, presence, and expression. From the solid to the fluid, from structure to senses, and from internal to external perception of the body…
I intend to facilitate a deeper physical sense of embodiment. My proposition is to explore features of anatomy and physiology while in movement : the skeleton with its sophisticated design, fluids that run like rivers through the body, the delicacy of cells, and the different layers of body tissues. This exploration acknowledges the dialogue between brain and body, sensing and thinking.
When teaching or coaching, the focus is shaped according to participants and each group poses new challenges and questions. Therefore, the practice is not static but rather a flexible container where principles can be dynamically combined in diverse ways. Although grounded in Western anatomy and physiology, it is never a proposition for moving towards ideas of a “universal” or “correct” body. Instead, it is an invitation to explore movement through personal filter—for instance, with one’s bones —allowing perceptions to emerge through movement, words, images, colours, textures, and more.
At the Academy of Theatre and Dance in Amsterdam, the diversity of the Docent Dans student population requires adaptability in both propositions and language, in search of an effective dialogue with students to promote new insights and development of their qualities.
Research Proposition
Being part of the Embodied Knowledge in Theatre and Dance group (EKTD) allows participants to share research in progress with peers , free from deadline pressures. These meetings generate new perspectives while encouraging us to engage into further developments. Questions from peers can be as challenging as they are supportive, helping thoughts to evolve.
In 2023 and 2024, as part of the EKTD, I created a graphic map of my teaching practice at ATD. The intention was to clarify the process and method of the classes. Looking ahead, I propose to research a new aspect of mapping:
How can visual, graphic tools be designed for students to facilitate the creation of a personal movement archive?
Approaching movement as archive is not a new idea, but building from the graphic map already created, the intention is to design graphic forms that ATD students can use as tools to create a personal movement archive, using their own words and input. This could serve as a useful instrument for students to visualize their movement, inspirations, and development during their studies at ATD, and after school, when organising classes or creating work.
By visualising, naming, and tracing areas of interest and inspiration—through words, textures, images, or relations—students can gain new insights, dive deeper into known and unknown aspects of their movement identity, make new connections, and grow.
The first challenging arising is how to design an archiving form that provides a flexible framework—one that helps clarifies without freezing movement identity or constraining change and spontaneity, that permits updating and adaptation along the way.
Inspiration and Theoretical Research
Mariana Lanari and Dr. Nancy Mauro - Flude
What inspires me about both Lanari and Flude is their proposal to use intuition as a guide for creating and navigating complex systems and their ability to integrate the body perception and awareness into theoretical work, transforming theory into action.
I was first introduced to mapping practices by Mariana Lanari, who, together with R. Bladel, has been developing Archival Consciousness—a complex mapping and archiving method applied in institutions such as the Stedelijk Museum, libraries, and diverse cultural collections. Lanari shared her practices—ranging from simple to highly structured approaches—and encouraged me to create the first mapping of my own classes.
I collaborated and performed with Nancy Mauro-Flude (artist, feminist theoretician, and digital caretaker) while we were both studying Somatic Movement. During this time, she began developing performative online virtual mapping as a way of hosting her artistic research. By drawing connections between body systems and computer systems, Flude brings somatics into the computing world, which she describes as “embodied coding” and “embodied cognition.”
Although my research is not related to computing, and the archiving tool I designed for students is primarily a practical device, I recognise possible intersections with Flude’s eclectic way of linking disciplines, fields of study, sociocultural contexts, theory and the experiential and perceptual. I also intend to explore some of her publications, such as Methodology of Risks and Experimental Prototyping, among others.
https://www.rmit.edu.au/profiles/m/nancy-flude
Bio
S†ëfan Schäfer is an Amsterdam-based designer and researcher investigating the power of death and commemorative ritual in relation to environmental devastation. All projects result in various media and are declared D.E.A.D. (Death. Environment. Anthropocene. Design). They have been internationally exhibited and are close collaborations with people and institutions of different fields: for instance anthropology, poetry, music, hacking, dance, theatre, music-theatre artists, end-of-life care, funeral industry, green funeral activism.
Research
In June 2023 Schäfer started his Professional Doctorate (PD) at DAS Research, lectorate of the Academy of Theater and Dance, entitled “Breaking Apart Together: Performing speculative design with dying mountains and glaciers”. Given the increasing mortality rate of glaciers and mountains in the Alps and Iceland: What role can speculative design play in enabling humans and more-than-humans to face and respond to the death of glaciers and mountains? Can mountains and glaciers be equal collaborators in the design process regarding climate crisis? How are both, humans and more-than humans moved emotionally by the movement of mountains and glaciers as they cope with (future) ecological grief?
Teacher, SNDO
Tiana is a dancer, choreographer, teacher, writer, healing practitioner, screamer (and doesn't think any of these things are really separate from each other). They work with voice and body to amplify the unsayable and as an adapter to be together with people in spaces in uncomfortable, present, vulnerable and porus ways. They are a certified Klein Technique teacher, a graduate of S.N.D.O. (2016), an avid pedagogue who works to question how we position ourselves in the world from physical/political perspectives. They have been teaching at SNDO since 2017 and at FONTYS since 2023. Tiana's work and movement practices are strongly influenced by Ria Higler, Susan Klein, Judith Sanchez Ruiz and the constant ongoing collaborations and exchanges in and out of the studio with numerous artists and thinkers which is a huge part of the way that they understand learning as affective and care practices.
Research
My research looks into biases and belief systems from the point of our embodied experience. How are beliefs held in our bodies? How do they support or hinder our ability to learn or change? Change our posture? What is the relationship to healing? What are the belief systems in the institution that we are working in? In our classroom? Belief systems sometimes (often) come from our lived experiences and are often our system’s way of dealing with and making sense of the challenges that we have faced and continue to face on every scale. The solidification of these beliefs lives alongside our experience of what is mostly a patriarchal, capitalist, binary, colonial culture. I’m curious how to question these internal systems. What are the uses of the un/known in teaching and in learning contexts? Can the body through our ability to have non-linear experience be a site of change?
Website: https://itsallmoving.com/
Docent, Expanded Contemporary Dance
Na haar afstuderen aan de S.N.D.O in 1991, heeft Vivianne Rodrigues zo'n vijftien jaar lang intensief gewerkt voor verschillende dansgezelschappen in binnen- en buitenland. Ze is een gecertificeerd Feldenkrais Practitioner en Life coach. De afgelopen 20 jaar heeft zij Floor Work, Contact Improvisatie, Bewustwording door Beweging, en Coaching aan de ATD gedoceerd. Binnen deze technieken onderzoekt ze zelfbewustzijn, het nemen van risico's, zintuiglijke stimulatie, en de viering van het lichaam. In al die jaren is haar onderzoek gericht geweest op het creëren van een speelse plek om te leren op een holistische, niet-hiërarchische manier, waar waarden op één lijn liggen met artisticiteit, en beweging voortkomt uit een plek van waarheid.
Onderzoek
Recentelijk heeft Vivianne een discipline ontwikkeld genaamd Functional movement. Deze discipline is erop gericht om studenten met verschillende ingangsniveaus en bewegingsachtergronden zintuiglijke ervaring en kennis over hun eigen lichaamsstructuur te geven voordat ze zich met een hedendaagse danstechniek bezighouden. Vivianne werkt aan een lesmethode waarin ze de kennis die ze tijdens haar coachingopleiding heeft opgedaan, combineert met haar inzichten op het gebied van dans en beweging. In deze lessen verkent ze het idee dat hoe meer we weten over onze normen en waarden, maar ook over onze verwachtingen en verlangens, hoe meer inzicht we krijgen in onze patronen op het gebied van voelen, denken en handelen. En hoe beter we deze patronen begrijpen, hoe gemakkelijker het wordt om ze te accepteren, te staan voor wie we zijn en hoe we functioneren in de wereld. Dus; hoe meer we mentaal en fysiek in harmonie zijn met onszelf, hoe meer we aanwezig kunnen zijn in het leven, en effectief in onze dans.
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Alumi
Artistic Director, Modern Theatre Dance
Angela Linssen is the artistic director of the Modern Theater Dance department of the AHK, where she developed the program towards a contemporary dance education. She graduated from the Rotterdam Dance Academy, worked as a professional dancer and choreographer, and teaches contemporary dance in the Netherlands and internationally. In 2016, she finished the Master Education in Arts (AHK) with the project: HBO dance teachers as artists. Followed by design research in collaboration with John Taylor: Teaching dance in the 21st century. At the moment (Dec 2021) we work on a Post HBO for dance teachers, dance coaches, rehearsal directors in the whole build-up of professional dance, from pre-education, MBO, HBO, and the professional dance field. Since November 2021 chair of the Exam board.
Research
Angela Linssen works with 'embodied visualising' in her contemporary dance lessons. This entails the inner eye implies/initiates and follows the movement and delivers a continuous awareness of where and how the movement moves through the body.
Angela's research entails: The inner eye in relation to the outer eye.
"I have noticed that some international students from countries such as Russia, China, Japan, have trouble really seeing and looking at the audience. There is a big cultural difference behind and underneath it. As a result, the presence and performativity remains very restrained despite their strong physicality. What I want to investigate is whether, through the inner visualization of the body, I can allow and increased incorporation of the seeing of the outside world: the audience. How can that inner monologue, physical narrative be expanded further?"
Teacher, Mime
Fabián Santarciel de la Quintana is a mime performer and theatre maker. Graduated from the E.M.A.D (UY) and the Mime School at the AHK, he developed his career between Europe and Uruguay and since 2006 he is a mime teacher at the Mime School (AHK). He is co-founder of Mime Fabriek, a meeting point for the (inter)national mime & performance art community.
Research
My exploration is about the relation between the discipline of the Mime Corporel technique (Etienne Decroux) and the spontaneity and rawness of improvisation and what effect it has on theatrical actions/movement. I am interested in the dialogue between practice and reflection with the principle of “the body articulates the knowledge within” as a starting point. This process, started during the meetings of the research group, will continue in a series of workshops at Mime fabriek in 2022.
Links
Mime Factory Website
Teacher, Mime
Fleur van den Berg (Gouda 1981) is a teacher at the Academy for Theatre and Dance (ATD) of the Amsterdam University of the Arts (AHK), teaching corporeal mime technique, movement research and physical theatre. Based both in The Netherlands and in Spain, her work as a teacher, advisor, performer and director is internationally orientated.
Research
Fleur's research revolves around translation. She is working on the Dutch edition ‘Woorden over mime’, a Dutch translation of a collection of essays from 1963 on corporeal mime, written by the creator of this technique: Etienne Decroux. The book ‘Paroles sur le mime’ was written and developed by Decroux between the 30’s and the late 60’s. Translating this theoretical work, a key publication within the international mime field, implies a profound study of the thinking process of its author. This allows us to have a better understanding of the content and knowledge which stimulates the development of the artistic practice of corporeal mime technique, and especially of the way this landed in the Netherlands in the Mime study programme at ATD.
Teacher, Mime
Floor van Leeuwen is mimer and co-founder of theatercollective Schwalbe and Leeway for Arts, collaborating with Third Space and Tools for Action.
Within the research group Floor is currently exploring how the embodied knowledge of a mimer manifests in/ weaves with practises outside the artfield through ways of working.
Teacher, Modern Theatre Dance & Expanded Contemporary Dance
John Taylor is a dancer and educator based in Amsterdam and associated with the Modern Theaterdance and the Expanded Contemporary Dance departments at ATD over the past 25 years. Working with young dancers sparked an interest in the processes of how we collaborate and learn through co-creative processes, leading to the completion of his master thesis The Benefits of the Art Practice Based Technique Class for Dance in Higher Education in 2016.
Research
John has participated in the European research projects Inside Movement Knowledge, Labo 21, Idocde, LEAP, and MIND THE DANCE. As a member of the ARTI research group of the Amsterdam University of the Arts, he studied the potential of artist-produced digital tools for use in dance education. For the research group of the Lectorate Art Education he studied the conceptual change model. The model was the basis for the design of a professional development trajectory for dance teachers in higher education, Teaching Dance in the 21st Century. The research centered around the effect of conceptual change upon the participants and their teaching practice. Presently, it continues together with Angela Linssen and Rahanna Oemed toward the development of a new post HBO degree. For the Embodied Knowledge in Theater and Dance research group John has been focusing on his own teaching from an eastern wisdom and phenomenological point of view where looking inward to the personal experience of kinesthesia and tactility form a starting point for the creation and development of movement in the lived body of dance students. How movement emerges from silence, or the space where the senses are less dominant.
Teacher, Dance in Education & SNDO
Lot Siebe, researcher transcultural dance practices. Bachelor Choreography (SNDO 1989) and Master Art History (UvA 2008) In recent years I have researched dance education in the metropolitan context and I supervise dance education trajectories of dance teachers in secondary education. I was the coordinator of the Artist in Residence programs of Nita Liem / Don't Hit Mama in 2007-2008 and Germaine Acogny / Ecole des Sables in 2009-2010. In addition, I was the project leader for the design of the transcultural curriculum of the Bachelor of Dance in Education curriculum in 2015. With Patrick Acogny I worked on the development of the video 'Patrick Acogny African Aesthetics and Contemporary Dance; a practitioners perspective' (2019) and the publication 'Contemporary African Dance Deconstructed' (2022).
Research
My interest in transcultural dance practices awakened when I had the opportunity to join classes by Patrick Acogny in 2008 as part of the project ‘Dansen in het Zand’ organized by Nita Liem / Don’t Hit Mama. Patrick offered new challenging and inspiring somatic and rhythmic movement techniques. His practice made me aware of ‘other’ movement possibilities and perceptions of the body. Within the research group Embodied Knowledge I aim to theorize these experiences and how they reveal aspects of ‘whiteness’. Last season I presented an open dialogue with Nita Liem on our experiences to research and embody non-western dance forms. Currently, I am inspired by the publication ‘What a body can do’ by Ben Spatz (2015) and the publications by Sabine Sörgel (2015 and 2020). I focus on analyzing the frames of knowledge applied in embodied practices.
Links
Video interviews with teachers of Dance in Education on the technique and didactics of Germaine and Patrick Acogny
Video: African Aesthetics and Contemporary Dance
Lot Siebe on diversity in the Bachelor of Dance in Education
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Docent, Expanded Contemporary Dance
Na haar afstuderen aan de S.N.D.O in 1991, heeft Vivianne Rodrigues zo'n vijftien jaar lang intensief gewerkt voor verschillende dansgezelschappen in binnen- en buitenland. Ze is een gecertificeerd Feldenkrais Practitioner en Life coach. De afgelopen 20 jaar heeft zij Floor Work, Contact Improvisatie, Bewustwording door Beweging, en Coaching aan de ATD gedoceerd. Binnen deze technieken onderzoekt ze zelfbewustzijn, het nemen van risico's, zintuiglijke stimulatie, en de viering van het lichaam. In al die jaren is haar onderzoek gericht geweest op het creëren van een speelse plek om te leren op een holistische, niet-hiërarchische manier, waar waarden op één lijn liggen met artisticiteit, en beweging voortkomt uit een plek van waarheid.
Onderzoek
Recentelijk heeft Vivianne een discipline ontwikkeld genaamd Functional movement. Deze discipline is erop gericht om studenten met verschillende ingangsniveaus en bewegingsachtergronden zintuiglijke ervaring en kennis over hun eigen lichaamsstructuur te geven voordat ze zich met een hedendaagse danstechniek bezighouden. Vivianne werkt aan een lesmethode waarin ze de kennis die ze tijdens haar coachingopleiding heeft opgedaan, combineert met haar inzichten op het gebied van dans en beweging. In deze lessen verkent ze het idee dat hoe meer we weten over onze normen en waarden, maar ook over onze verwachtingen en verlangens, hoe meer inzicht we krijgen in onze patronen op het gebied van voelen, denken en handelen. En hoe beter we deze patronen begrijpen, hoe gemakkelijker het wordt om ze te accepteren, te staan voor wie we zijn en hoe we functioneren in de wereld. Dus; hoe meer we mentaal en fysiek in harmonie zijn met onszelf, hoe meer we aanwezig kunnen zijn in het leven, en effectief in onze dans.
Teacher, Expanded Contemporary Dance
Educated at Laban London and LIMS New York, I am based in Amsterdam since 2008 and work as a choreographer, performer and teacher in the field of dance and design. In that same year I started to teach at ATD’s Modern Theatre Dance department. Currently I teach at the new department Expanded Contemporary Dance. My parttime teaching position and the work within this research group inform my interdisciplinary artistic practice and vice versa.
Research
My research focuses on the readers I have developed for my classes: what do they articulate? And what do they not articulate? Informed by Euro-American Western perspectives on dance, which norms and values are (unconsciously) embedded? And do those norms and values connect to or clash with less Western-oriented views on dance? I am currently collecting my findings under the umbrella of this research group as well as the upcoming ‘MTD Legacy’-publication. I have been part of this research group since its initiation. It is a warm bath of artistic exchanges between teachers from different departments at the ATD.
Links
Why I teach what I teach – part 1
Roos van Berkel Website
Collective NOW Website
Sources
Hutchinson Guest, A. (1989): Choreo-graphics; Den Dekker, P. (2010): The Dynamics of Standing Still; Friedmann, E. (1993): Laban. Alexander, Feldenkrais: Pioniere bewusster Wharnehmung durch Bewegungserfahrung; S. L. Foster (2011): Kinesthesia in Performance; Reynolds, D (2007). Rhythmic Subjects; Hutchinson Guest, A & Van Haarst, R. (2011) Advanced Labanotation, Issue 2. Shape, Design, Trace Patterns; Bloom, K., Reeve, S., Galanter, M. (2014) Embodied Lives: Reflections on the Influence of the Suprapto Suryodarmo and Amerta Movement.
Docent, Mime
Mijn naam is Sarah Ringoet, ik ben theaterregisseur, performer, toneelschrijver en dichter. Ik ben ook docent, mentor en begeleider bij de Mime Opleiding en lid van de AR aan de ATD. Onderzoek
Mijn research gaat over Embodied Language. Hoe kunnen we een specifiek taalgebruik uit haar originele context halen en voor dit ‘distillaat’ een nieuwe overlevingskans/ bestaansrecht creëren in het lichaam? Welk (fysiek) idioom ontstaat er hierdoor?
Links
Sarah Ringoet Website
Nieuw boek: .in which dimension are we dancing
Interview met Sarah Ringoet
Meervaart in gesprek met Sarah Ringoet
Interns
Rita Sousa (she/her) is a multidisciplinary and atypical researcher: moving from an eclectic artistic pursuit while working with material objects (on self-publishing, collage, visual landscapes) or her own material body in performance and movement research; to, more recently, embracing a master program in Gender Studies at Utrecht University as a site of reinvention and confirmation of her feminist, queer and non-normative choices in life.
My research revolves around understanding, exploring, practicing, and imagining other ways of knowledge production inside the academic context in which I partake. Therefore, I'm interested in bringing an embodied approach to social sciences through a feminist and queer lens. Under queer and feminist thinking, it urges to complicate the conditions of knowledge production in their field and step away from normative, colonial, patriarchal, and capitalist systems of knowledge production and eligibility: to whom? by whom? The collaboration with EKTD gives me the ground for being in close relationship with practitioners that already depart from embodied knowledge for their research.
Andreia Porto is een Braziliaans/Italiaanse actrice en psychologe. Momenteel is ze masterstudent Contemporary Theatre, Dance and Dramaturgy aan de Universiteit Utrecht. Als kunstenaar is ze geïnteresseerd in nieuwe kunstervaringen en artistieke uitwisselingen. Ze heeft ook een diploma als psycholoog en werkt op beide gebieden. Andreia's scriptie is getiteld: Soundscapes of migrant dramaturgy in relation to spectatorship.
Andreia assisteerde Marijn de Langen tijdens haar stage (tussen februari en april 2021) bij de EKTD Onderzoeksgroep. De belangrijkste doelen van deze stage waren het creëren van nieuwe (online) ruimte om informatie uit te wisselen over belichaamde kennis en het bedenken van manieren om zichtbaarheid te genereren voor de onderzoeksgroep. Om dat te bereiken creëerde ze een archief op Google Docs en maakte ze twee video-essays. Een daarvan was "Pertencer" (ergens bijhoren), waarin ze haar zoektocht naar ergens bij horen documenteert als een migrant die in Nederland woont in tijden van pandemie.
Drawing Tiana Hemlock
Appreciation
Teachers experience the Embodied Knowledge group as very meaningful and useful for them for their teaching, research, professional practice and sense of community within the ATD
“Being part of this group gave me the confidence to approach research from a more inclusive perspective, where multiple ways of knowing were acknowledged and valued. Rather than conforming to traditional academic hierarchies, I found a space that welcomed my limited experience in research and embraced me as a practitioner. The group was genuinely curious about my work and encouraged me to explore it further. As a very hands-on practitioner, someone who learns more from doing than from reading, being part of the Embodied Knowledge group challenged my skepticism and fear around research. It inspired me to read and write, and it showed me that research can be embodied, relational, and meaningful”
(Vivianne Rodrigues-Brito, teacher-researcher Expanded Contemporary Dance)
“We have been building slowly but surely a group of teachers who are analysing what the decolonizing of a curriculum could look like. Creating a space for entering every teacher's practice with a constructive critical lens. Because of the long and slow build up in trusting each other's embodied knowledges and recognizing them - we are helping each other to see how our research and teachings might be inherently excluding/exclusive and how to build our courses with different language(s) and techniques. It takes time to be able to give critical, intersectional feedback and to receive it. It makes me a better listener and practitioner. This has been creating so much awareness and ripples out into the whole institute”.
(Carly Everaert, teacher-researcher Scenography, member since 2019)
In the often fragmented rhythm of academic life, where teaching can feel like a solitary path, the EKTD research group has become a vital shared ground. It is not merely a meeting point, but a living space of resonance—where we gather not only to exchange practices and reflections, but to sit with uncertainty, to dwell in the “not-knowing” as a generative force.
What EKTD offers is more than a forum—it is a practice. A shared, human commitment to inquiry shaped by the urgencies we encounter in our classrooms: questions of inclusion, decolonisation, neurodiversity, embodied difference, and the shifting needs of our students. These are not abstract conversations—they emerge from the everyday, from the entangled, emotional, and relational textures of pedagogical life and artistic practice
Its value lies in this rare capacity: to cultivate a reflective, resonant space where our teaching is not only supported, but deepened. EKTD sustains a mode of working that is collaborative, attentive, human, emphatic, and artistically grounded. It nurtures a way of being in education that recognizes complexity, welcomes vulnerability, and values dialogue. This approach is already enriching our academy from within, and continues to grow in relevance with each conversation we hold.
(Maria Ines Villasmil-Prieto, Expanded Contemporary Dance, member since 2019)
The EKTD research group became an important place for my development as an artist-researcher-teacher. It is very much a practice being in a liminal space, a space for questions, a space for re-inventing one self. A playground practicing different approaches on knowledge coming from the body. It makes me understand more about my education and my art practice in the past and where I am now. I needed a place to find out what, who and where I am after being so long with the dance theater organisation Don’t Hit Mama as my homebase. I am now 3 years in this group and since I started with the researcher fellowship of LIVING ARCHIVE, it became more clear what research is for me. Marijn’s gaze and back up she is giving as a fellowship coach, is really important for me. I really need a guide to find my way and place in a place like the AHK.
(Nita Liem, teacher-research Dance in Education)
Classes are nowadays formed by a diversity of students, not only in cultural backgrounds but also in the artistic qualities and styles they bring when entering ATD. Supporting their growth is a challenging task, as we wish them to develop their personal qualities but also their flexibility to be able to work within differences. Being part of the Embodied Knowledge Group feeds ourselves in exercising the relations between individual experiences and group dynamics, a praxis that is essential for our teaching today.
(Rose Akras, teacher-researcher Dance in Education)
Being part of this group has had a real impact on how I teach. It has given me the confidence and inspiration to explore new, embodied ways of approaching dance theory in the classroom. The diversity of the group members — in disciplines, cultural backgrounds, and mental and physical abilities — has helped me understand embodiment from perspectives beyond my own. As our educational landscape becomes more diverse and dynamic, we as educators need opportunities like this to grow with it. I’m truly grateful for this group. It has filled a gap and reminded me of the value of community, experimentation, and reflection in our work. It absolutely deserves a lasting place within the academy.
(Zeynep Gündüz, teacher-researcher Expanded Contemporary Dance)
Photos by EKTD group members, showing the group at work during the monthly meetings.
