When: Sunday, October 13th 6:00 – 8:00 pm
Where: English Theatre Berlin - International Performing Arts Center (Kreuzberg)
Lecture: Towards sensuous ecologies, rethinking ableism in choreographic and movement practices – by Dalija Acin Thelander
Dalija Acin Thelander will share insights into her current choreographic practice and academic research project (2022-2024). Her research aspires to expand the scope of action and perception of neurodiverse children and their adults as active audiences in interrelational, immersive sensory environments, and develop new transdisciplinary artistic methods that are attuned to neurodivergent perception, enabling the experience of communality, inclusiveness, and empowerment. It consists of multifaceted, emergent processes that interlace practice and reflection through a cyclical series of work with movement, choreography, and installation making.
The core of her research aims to inquire into how immersion and interaction, as negotiated processes, can lead towards sensuous, ever-changing ecologies of an event comprised of fluid aesthetic structures, aimed at integrated audience.
Aim and research questions
The research aims to explore new ways of performance structuring while actively cherishing a diversity of perception and expression, by investigating how can choreography and dance unfold and promote an interrelational ecology of artistic experience supportive of complex audience heterogeneity; how can body and performance practices respond to and be informed by this diverse audience, among other questions.
Research implementation and anticipated impact
This research aims to develop practices that can lead to devising potentially equalizing and inclusive environments that neurodivergent and neurotypical audiences can enjoy together. Forms and practices that arise through challenging the body politics of a dominant, normative culture will raise awareness of a need to increase the scope and visibility of inclusive artistic practices as well as address this lack.
The lecture will be held in English. A simultaneous translation into German will be offered.
About Dalija Acin Thelander
Dalija Acin Thelander works within the performing arts field as a freelance choreographer and researcher. Her work aspires to contribute to the notion of choreography as expanded practice and focuses on audience's agency, intersensoriality and emplacement.
From 2008 she gets involved in intensive research on interrelational choreographic practices, focused on creating immersive sensory dance performances exclusively for neurotypical babies. In 2022 she starts her three-year academic research project at Stockholm University of Arts, focused on developing new transdisciplinary artistic methods focused on fostering sensory immediacy, kinesthetic-embodied response, affect, and intersubjectivity, attuned to neurodivergent perception of the youngest children. She designs and makes immersive scenographies and costumes for her performances. Her work for the youngest audiences have been presented in Japan, Korea, India, China, Singapore, Macao, Hong Kong, Brazil, South Africa and across Europe, as well as commissioned by performances for Royal Opera in Stockholm in 2017 and 2022. She is teaching and lecturing internationally.
She is the recipient of ASSITEJ International Artistic Excellence Award in 2021 and of prestigious Swedish Expressen Culture Award in 2023.
She presented her works for adult audience internationally on numerous festivals such as Impulstanz, Tanz im August, and received Prix Jardin d’Europe at Impulstanz Festival 2008, Vienna. She initiated and coordinated the Generator, A collaborative platform for development of dance theater for children in the Balkan region, co-founded of Station Service for Contemporary Dance Belgrade, Kondenz Festival and Nomad Dance Academy. She collaborated with numerous theatre directors and won several awards for choreography for drama theatre.
Born Serbian, she lives in Stockholm, Sweden since 2012.
