Sarah Pini

University of Southern Denmark | SDU · Institute of Sports Science and Clinical Biomechanics

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 w...

This book brings together scholarship in performance studies, cognitive science, sociology, literature, anthropology, psychology, architecture, philosophy and sport science to ask how tightly knit collaboration works. Innovative methodological approaches are applied to detailed case studies from martial arts, tango, social interaction, Body Weather...

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...

In exploring skilled performance in Contact Improvisation (CI), 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 interkinae...

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...

In this article, we discuss the potential of artist-researchers inviting research participants to engage directly in arts- and practice-based ethnographic work. To enable openings for this engagement, we find that the artist-researcher ontologically must stay oneself but also be able to share the self so that embodied knowing and years of embedded...

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 san...

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...

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 ref...

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...

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 o...

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 dire...

The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Ballet is the first work of its kind to treat contemporary ballet as a genre within ballet history. In contrast to many, the anthology prioritizes connections between communities as it interweaves chapters authored by scholars, critics, choreographers, and working professional dancers. The work broadens the scope...

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 appr...

The concept of presence in performing arts and theatrical traditions has historically been related to the intrinsic quality of the performer to enchant the audience's attention. In this view, presence is conceived as the prerogative of the skilled performer, resulting from regimens of training, as well as intrinsic charisma. The main problem with t...

Moving Perspectives – a video art collaboration investigating the binary concepts of nature and technology, to open an unusual perspective to ‘Laboratory Life’ and the human and non-human organisms that inhabit it. This video work "Synthetic Organisms’ Variations" leads the viewer to explore synthetic biology’s core principles choreographically.

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 sens...

Stage presence in theatrical traditions is generally understood as the singular actor's ability to enchant an audience, in what has been called the 'classic model of presence' (Sherman, 2016). According to such a model, presence is conceived as a prerogative of the skilled performer, resulting from intrinsic charisma and regimens of training. Wheth...

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 provid...