Embodied Knowledge and Decolonial Praxis in Global Dance Communities: Observations from 'Dancing with Decolonisation 2024'

The Dancing with Decolonisation (DwD) conference has established itself as a pioneering platform for interrogating the intersections of dance, movement studies, and decoloniality. Since its inception in 2021, the conference has sought to challenge colonial paradigms while fostering global conversations about the role of dance in addressing social, cultural, and ecological issues. In line with the Global Communities in Conversation, the 2024 edition encouraged the presenters to make their presentations understandable by people who speak at least one other language. The conference aims to bring together academics, artists, choreographers, and performers from diverse backgrounds to share their insights and practices.

This article intends to synthesize the presentations into key themes and highlights, offering a comprehensive observation of how dance is explored as a vehicle for embodied knowledge, decolonial resistance, and cultural preservation across global contexts.

1. Dance as an Academic Subject: Embodied Knowledge and Interdisciplinary Potential

One of the central themes of the conference was the recognition of embodied knowledge as legitimate scholarship and dance as a valid academic discipline capable of contributing to interdisciplinary discourses. Presenters highlighted how dance’s intersectional essence — which might once have been regarded as a disadvantage in academia — can be reframed as a strength offering limitless possibilities:

• Luz Condeza Dall'Orso's presentation on decolonizing academic research interrogated how dance has been marginalized as ‘minor knowledge’ within academia. She critiqued the logocentric bias and advocated the recognition of the body as a legitimate epistemic source. Her call for dance practitioners to establish self-determination through a ‘core political’ movement resonates with the transformative potential of dance's intersectionality.

• Lucy Bennett explored how visual dance notation can document embodied knowledge while addressing issues of accessibility and inclusion. Her presentation challenged traditional systems like Laban notation and proposed innovative methodologies for capturing movement's ephemeral nature and embodied experiences instead of focusing on reproducibility.

Image: Lucy Bennet explaining dance notation as a disability arts practice | Screenshot of conference recording

2. Dance as an Emergent, Inclusive, and Decolonial Art Form and its Implication on Well-being

Another recurring theme was dance’s potential to challenge colonial paradigms and ableist constructs, and offer methodologies for transforming societal and ecological relationalities, fostering co-creation, embracing vulnerabilities, and dismantling hierarchies. These approaches pave the way for more equitable and interconnected futures in movement practice and education.

• Nicole Oga's work on collective liberation through dance demonstrated how abolitionist values can transform dance education. By implementing techniques like check-in circles, intentional language use (e.g. non-codified dance terminology), and community agreements, her approach fosters inclusion, belonging and holistic growth, cultivating caring communities while dismantling hierarchical teaching methods.

• Rachel Tan Siringan's presentation on Filipino Pangalay dance offered an alternative to Western wellness concepts through Ginhawa, an indigenous concept of holistic health centered on breath and interconnectedness. This practice exemplifies how movement can transform ecological and societal relationalities by prioritizing communal wellbeing over consumer-driven individual pursuits.

• María Paz Vallejos examined walking as a fundamental human activity through the lens of Sri Lankan ritual dances and David Le Breton's In Praise of Walking. The workshop invited participants to experience walking as meditation and discovery, incorporating ritual walks with bent knees, outward-facing feet, and chest expansion. It fostered bodily awareness, challenged modern rushed rhythms, and honored traditional dance forms as pathways to cultural understanding and self-knowledge.

• The presentation of Georgia de Macedo García investigated Água redonda e comprida, a dance performance by anthropologist-dancer Geórgia Macedo and Kaingang pre-teen group Nayane Gakre, which interpreted the Kaingang cosmology of different forms of water. Through fabric, canvas, and intuitive movement, the performance transformed theatrical spaces into indigenous territories. It powerfully reclaimed Kaingang narratives through artistic expression.

Image: Georgia de Macedo García’s case study on Água redonda e comprida  | Screenshot of conference recording

• The first panel explored decolonization through different cultural lenses. Vipavinee Artpradid examined how performers in Thailand, a nation with a complex ‘uncolonized’ status, might approach decolonizing a Western-influenced curriculum through frameworks like ‘uncolonizing’ or ‘recentering’. Sophie Haydee Colindres Zuhlke, a German-Honduran dance practitioner, investigated pluriculturalism through dance, creating space for those navigating multiple cultural identities. Michael Walling (and Jessica Mirella Luong) discussed bringing indigenous dance to London, emphasizing the importance of decommodifying performances by placing them in community spaces and making them freely accessible to challenge colonial structures in the arts.

• The second panel, featuring Ester Eriksson, Elspeth Chan Chi Fan, Silvia Susanna Wolff, Elisabete Monteiro & Flavio Campos, revealed overlaps across seemingly different dance forms by disrupting aesthetic ideals and emphasizing corporeal exploration and interconnection. They challenged perceptions of the ‘self-contained boundaried body,’ demonstrating how bodies are co-constructed with environments. Ester’s ecosomatic frameworks, Elspeth’s relational ontologies in Butoh, and adaptive ‘Balé Possível’ of Silvia fostered more ecologically aware ways of moving and being, while dismantling conventional beauty standards. Silvia's personal story poignantly illustrated the importance of challenging ableism after experiencing a stroke.

Image: Panel 2 discussion across various dance forms on decolonization | Screenshot of conference recording

• The presentation examining Andean dance traditions by Nathalie Artal Vergara directly confronted Western art frameworks by highlighting how these communal practices unify music, song, and dance (‘taki') while serving functional relationships with nature. The recognition that these dances synchronize brains and deepen connections confirms what Andean cultures have known for millennia – the corporeal capacity to connect ecologically through movement.

3. Cultural/Social Identities: Dance as Preservation and Resistance

There were also sessions that explored how dance functions as a tool to reflect upon social and/or cultural identities in a form of preservation, resistance or activism, reclaiming autonomy and honouring indigenous wisdom.

• This workshop facilitated by Kimberly Prosa prompted participants to reflect on gender, strengths, culture, and more, identifying conflicting identities in the intersectional context of dance studies and sociology in mental health. The group developed movement motifs for each and explored identity reconciliation through movement phrases. Group reflection revealed how embodied practices provide unique insights into identity conflicts, suggesting that movement can help navigate complex aspects of self-definition, reaching harmonious coexistence of competing identities.

Image: Kimberly Prosa illustrating ‘Identity Mapping’ | Screenshot of conference recording

• ORCHESTRATING SPACES, led by Sharon Aacho and Giovanna Rovedo, interrogated identity and belonging through physical explorations of ‘safe spaces’. Participants used their bodies to reflect on how cultural and geographical borders shape their societal roles. This awarded project, touring Finland, Sweden, and Italy in 2025, connects communities through shared experiences.

• Afshin Derakh'shesh's examination of Iran's forgotten dance pioneers documented how innovators created ‘New Dance’ styles (Raqs-e Novin) from 1906-1953 despite religious and societal restrictions. This historical research illuminates dance as cultural preservation, recovering a ‘historically missed link’ while arguing that Western-influenced dance forms remain authentically Iranian — originated in and were part of the construction of ‘Modern’ Iran.

• The presentation on Afro-Cuban dance in diasporic contexts by Ruxandra Ana and Lynet Rivero Rubio explored how dancers navigate the contradictions of the global dance industry — Cuban dancers formulate understandings of dance-as-labor and dance-as-education, as counterpoints to the dominant dance-as-entertainment in European countries. Their research demonstrated how dancers exercise agency by creating initiatives like Decolonize Your Dance workshop in Berlin, directly challenging Eurocentric pedagogical models while reconnecting participants with Afro-Cuban movement traditions.

• The Parallel Gap presented by Ophey, Tsz Kwan Chan, a Hong Kong-born dance artist based in London, examined how Hongkongers reclaim cultural identity amid sociopolitical upheaval. Connecting personal experiences from Hong Kong's political movements (2016-2019) to global contexts, the artist used dance performances, installations, and collaborative art to embody resistance and question home, autonomy, and collective identity.

• Drawing from her intimacy coordinator experience, Nicole Perry advocated for ungrading in dance education to mitigate power dynamics and foster student agency. She uses ‘Movement Experiences Guides’ for goal-setting and self-assessment in technique classes, and ‘bundles’ of creative assignments for theory courses. By emphasizing safe experimentation, she challenges the idea that ungrading diminishes rigor, arguing instead that it requires greater instructor engagement and promotes student ownership.

Image: Nicole Perry sharing the Movement Experiences Guides | Screenshot of conference recording

The 2024 Dancing with Decolonisation conference illuminated dance's multifaceted capacity as an academic subject, decolonial art form, and vehicle for cultural preservation. Through the lens of embodied knowledge to challenge colonial frameworks and embrace inclusivity, presenters demonstrated how movement practices reimagines a more equitable and interconnected future. The event not only deepened theoretical understandings of decolonisation but also offered actionable methodologies for integrating these principles into pedagogy & research, performance, social relationships, and cultural heritage. 

As DwD continues to evolve, it holds the objective of amplifying global voices and fostering interdisciplinary dialogue — this conference inspires both reflection and action within the field of dance studies — and beyond.

*** For more DwD 2025 information, please see: https://globaldanceconfere.wixsite.com/d-w-d List of DwD 2024 Researchers (in the order of presentation flow): Kimberly Prosa Nicole Oga Rachel Tan Siringan

María Paz Vallejos

(Panel 1) Vipavinee Artpradid, Sophie Haydee Colindres Zuhlke, Jessica Mirella Luong & Michael Walling Luz Condeza Dall'Orso Sharon Estacio & Giovanna Rovedo

Georgia de Macedo García

Lucy Bennett

Afshin Derakh'shesh

(Panel 2) Ester Eriksson, Chan Chi Fan Elspeth, Silvia Susanna Wolff, Elisabete Monteiro & Flavio Campos

Ruxandra Ana & Lynet Rivero Rubio

Nathalie Artal Vergara 

Ophey, Tsz Kwan Chan

Nicole Perry DwD 2024 Conference Recordings:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNqc_2mBOfQ5VX0jWa2t3uDyiJ0kt0Ykr