Location: Zoom Room 2
Zoom Link: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/6087153816?pwd=ppMzS6CF8VMyDMKcF9DX0BiTTC3Exf.1
Abstract:
Educators who engage with embodied practices in relation to performance or performance creation face unique challenges. We are proposing a roundtable that explores pedagogies in practice, a space for movement educators to share what they are currently exploring, adapting, wrestling with etc. within their studio classrooms in relation to the needs of current student communities. With accessibility, inclusion and diversity at the forefront, we will investigate how we are setting up our spaces practically and pedagogically to invite different kinds of embodied learning. Drawing on critical frameworks from disability justice and somatics, we invite a process of reflection on what is changing in our spaces of embodied teaching and learning, and what might need to change or expand about our understanding and practices in these spaces.
A few key questions we will dive into are:
What are the key challenges that Canadian movement educators are facing today (student challenges, lack of training in inclusive methodologies, ingrained and outdated pedagogies, institutional restrictions etc.)?
How do we maintain the integrity of the practice without overshadowing the integrity of the person? (Moving beyond body as fixed object and embracing body as person/identity/individual in process.)
How can we encounter forms/practices that are clear and contextualized yet flexible enough for students to thrive in (Allowing students to find their own positionality in relation to movement theories and practices.)
We hope this roundtable will map out the landscape of movement pedagogy that is occurring in training institutions across Canada. We see this as a first step in what will hopefully be a longer project of collaborative discourse amongst Canadian movement educators.
-Mike Griffin and Gabi Petrov
Biographies:
Gabi Petrov is a practitioner of Overlie’s Six Viewpoints and Body-Mind Centering®. She will graduate in 2026 as a certified Somatic Movement Educator. In her artistic practice, Gabi uses movement improvisation to explore how we inhabit spaces of performance, everyday life, and at the encounter with emerging technologies. She lives in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal where she is a faculty member in the Dept. of Theatre at Concordia University.