Dance touches us, without touching. What is this sense of feeling touched? In this talk, Corinne discusses the tactile body from a scientific perspective and reflects on dancer-audience interactions.
Touch is arguably the most intimate of all senses and in close relationship with the ‘sixth sense’, proprioception. Where, how, when and by whom we are touched is of crucial importance to our response to touch, which can span from sensual pleasure to pain. Dance audiences can feel touched through spectating touch as well as through the kinaesthetic sense of looking at dancers in motion. When dancers touch audiences, they might not actually be touching them. Corinne discusses scientific approaches to these forms of touch and expands on artistic applications.
This talk was part of Crossing Borders 2016 and was presented in partnership with London Contemporary Dance School.
Learn More:
Online Google round table discussion Corinne Jola with Nancy Stark Smith and William Seeley, Meta-academy (presented by Bates Dance Festival), Summer 2013 (starts at 11min).
Embodied neuroscience: Making sense of dance -presentation held at CRAL, Centre de Recherches sur les arts et le langage (starts in French but Corinne presents in English), Paris – spring 2014
Documentary Film on Corinne’s and others’ work on Dancers and the Brain, Taiwanese-French Co-production (English starts after 4min)
Corinne Jola is a scientist, lecturer and choreographer based in Dundee. She trained in Psychology and Dance with a Masters awarded in Choreography (Laban Trinity College London) and a PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience (University of Zurich). The dialogue between science and dance is given a real voice through her comprehensive interdisciplinary approach. In her role as a facilitator for communication between the disciplines, she aims at developing effective understandings of how people interact and communicate with each other. Her research investigates the neuronal and phenomenal links of embodiment in the sensory and motor system in dancers, non-dancers, and dance spectators. Her research has been published internationally in book chapters and peer-reviewed journals. She provides workshops for dancers and actors on the perceptual, cognitive and neuronal mechanisms underlying their practice internationally (ImpulseTanz-Vienna, Laban-London, ESADIB-Palma/Majorca, FAA-Bataville/France, Tanzfabrik-Berlin). Her performances and installations have been selected at festivals and conferences in the UK and abroad (eg. Bluecoat Gallery-Liverpool, The Place-London, Deptford Street Festival-London, Fringe-Edinburgh, DanceHouse-Zurich, Dance Festival-Olten, CultureGarage-Solothurn, Hannah Maclure Centre-Dundee, Ignite Festival-Dundee, ScottishDanceTheatre Scale Festival-Dundee). For more information, please refer to .
