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From January through May 2025, six to eight researchers – including dancers, therapists, equine trainers, medical researchers, musicians and scientists - will convene in a NYC studio once a month for 4-hour sessions that will include:

Shared somatic experiences focused on Physical Listening, creative brainstorming, devising plans, networking and creating strategies for bringing this research forward.

 

Research Premise

I have been a dancer my entire professional life: A performer, an educator, a choreographer and an arts advocate. I taught in conservatories – Juilliard, Ailey, Tisch, Cornish – and in academia – Mount Holyoke, Princeton and most recently at Stanford.

I choreographed for traditional stages and, for 30 years, have directed The Equus Projects – a company of dancers that creates site specific performances with dancers and horses, teaches Physical Listening workshops throughout the USA and in Europe, and advocates for more compassionate communication with equines.

I am a student of natural horsemanship. I am a Laban Movement Analyst (CMA). In 2024 I

 co-created and co-taught a course in Physical Listening for Physicians in the Stanford University School of Medicine.

 

Why am I spearheading this research?

 I am concerned for the future of dance. not only as a performance form but also for its survival as a stellar example of embodied thinking and a dynamic process for creating community.

Movement-based learning can teach humans to be more effective embodied communicators.

 

Beyond the dance-specific focus, I believe that we humans have a capacity for embodied decision-making, patient physical listening and long-term thinking that is not only in day-to-day survival mode. The mental health, physical well-being of our human species and our planet need these skills.

 

Research Topics

We will explore these, and a roster of other questions curated from our team:

• What are the primary elements of the dancer’s embodied intelligence?

• How can we bring these skills into arenas beyond making dances and performing?

• How can we humans make better use of this form of perception and thinking?

• How can dancers bring active engagement with movement intelligence into arenas beyond the stage and studio, what are our transferable skills and how can we translate those into non-dance modalities?

• What is the creative potential of our embodied intelligence?

• Examples: Bring Physical Listening into medical practice, connect our work to Social Emotional Learning in the schools?

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Fee Paid to Research Team

My plan is that each person on this research team gets paid $500

This project is being funded in part by a 2024 grant from the RSF Foundation.

 

Outcomes

• A curriculum for Physical Listening Training

• A list of proposals for pivotal folks in positions that can put these ideas into action

• A series of articles written by each team member get submitted to a variety of professional journals, and research and conclusion essays written by each team member to be assembled into a booklet.

• Outreach to podcast hosts who might be interested in this research and interview members of our team

• Speaking invitations

• Meetings with NDEO, ADF, and other dance institutions

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Participants

Joan Bradford - Dancer, Interspecies Researcher, Laban Movement Analyst

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Margaret Brackey – Dancer with Equus Projects, Naturalist

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Robin Collen - Dance Faculty SUNY Potsdam, Former Dance Chair, Laban Movement Analyst

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Shana Corrada – Dancer, Educator, Arts Advocate, Founder, Tampa Dance Rising Founder Tampa Dance, Equestrian and horse owner

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Sarah France – Ice Dancer, Instructor & Director of Outreach for Ice Theatre of NY, Performer with Equus Projects 

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Jenny Greenough - Acupuncturist, Equestrian and Equine Trainer

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Matt Henley - Associate Professor of Dance Education, Columbia Teachers College

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Jessica Michal – Rutger Mason Gross Faculty, Equus Projects dancer

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Roberta Samet - Therapist, former dancer, PT performer with Equus Projects

 

Convening Dates

Mondays – 9-12:30

 115 Wooster Street, NYC

1/27, 2/17, 3/10, 4/14, 5/12

 

Potential Guest Speakers

Lauren Vogelstein, PhD in Education – Former Dancer, Tulane PhD, NYU Post Doctoral Fellow, studies embodied practices in education

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Alex Bellar - Dancer, Educator, Choreographer, CMA

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Nina Shevzov-Zebrun - Stanford Pediatric Resident, Harvard and NYU Medical School grad, Co-creator of Physical Listening for Physicians

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Dr Cindy Loomis - NYU, Dermatologist

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Dr Todd Linden - GI Specialist

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Erich Jarvis - Former Dancer, Researcher of Neurology of Language Acquisition in Birds, Rockefeller University