This project is an exploration of the ways that we can re-establish our connection to the world through expanded choreography and embodied practices. By examining the political and ecological dimensions of our everyday materials and experiences, it will foster curiosity and awareness in a society often desensitised to these critical aspects. In response to this disconnection, the project will rekindle our curiosity and emotional engagement with the ordinary and the contingent by exploring through choreographic tools the relationships between human bodies, everyday materials and the stories they hold.

Keep in Touch! explores the concept of hyperobject (Morton, 2013) to highlight the
interconnectedness of our world, the project aims to create a tangible, immersive space to
address equity, diverse voices, and welcoming environments. This choreographic research will incorporate inter-relational movement, tactile environments, layered soundscapes, and oral storytelling to engage participants in meaningful ways. By emphasizing embodiment and collaboration, the project will cultivate a sense of community and shared understanding, inviting participants to explore their connections within both micro and macro contexts.

Following a decades long process of researching how choreography is a collaborative body of knowledge, it asks how we might include non-human perspective into choreographic practice. In light of our current climate realities, it proposes new relational frameworks through transdisciplinary research-creation, co-learning environments, and participatory performance. Participation is understood as a continuum of “physical and symbolic participation” (Bishop,2006), offering a new lens for perceiving the world through a more embodied, reflexive, and ethical framework. Furthermore, it aspires to create experimental spaces where theoretical inquiry merges with collective embodied practices.

Building on my previous research-creation work, this project contributes to theories of ‘new materialism’ and ‘worlding,’ utilizing concepts of kinship and situated knowledges (Haraway, 2016, 1988), land as pedagogy (Simpson, 2017), and autotheory (Fournier 2021). We will practice with performative tools such as somatic practices, collective storytelling, soundscape design, and ongoing multimedia archival methods, the project will engage with various environments, through several collaborations (La Chapelle Scenes Contemporaines, Artenso, 3e, Laboratoire des sensorialités multiples / Dance Cité and i2ADS- Instituto Politécnico do Porto), each with their own systems of organization and knowledge creation yet aligned with the project’s values. The theatre will serve as the space where experimental imaginative embodiments come to life, enabling a collective envisioning of alternative futures, broadening past settler narratives (Hartman, 2019), and modes of connection.

By experimenting in other environments and communities with Artenso, 3e, Laboratoire des sensorialités multiples / Dance Cité and i2ADS- Instituto Politécnico do Porto we will share and transmit the knowledge generated while being transformed in return. Throughout the project, we will archive these powerful resources, culminating into a multimedia web-based platform to foster communication between performative technologies and community development for mutual enrichment. The project’s explorations, findings and reflections will be compiled in an open-source website to disseminate and encourage its usage. In collaboration with Espace Perreault, the project will create a space for in-person gatherings to continue to transmit and explore the knowledge made through shared embodied practice. Through its strategic, inclusive, and participatory approach, it will inspire collective action and imagination for a sustainable and interconnected future.