Book shows how dance can help people reimagine their relationships with environment

• 
  Site, Dance, and Body
  
  book brings together perspectives from site-dance, phenomenology and new materialism
• Author Dr Victoria Hunter explores synergies between material bodies and material sites
• University of Chichester lecturer presents various suggestions for engaging with sites through the moving body

A NEW book explores how dance and movement can re-position relationships between individuals and the sites they live and work in and travel through.

Site, Dance, and Body

, which is out now, explores human and nonhuman relationships and considers how bodies engage with the materials, textures, and atmospheres of the sites they engage in.

The book, published by Palgrave Macmillan, brings together perspectives from site dance, phenomenology, and new materialism to explore and develop how site-based body practice can be employed to explore synergies between material bodies and sites.

Dr Victoria Hunter is a practitioner-researcher and Reader in site dance and choreography at the University of Chichester, located on the UK’s south coast. Her work explores site dance, materiality and corporeal engagements with space, place and lived environments.

She said: “Employing practice-as-research strategies, scores, tasks and exercises, I present a number of suggestions for engaging with sites through the moving body and offer critical reflection on the potential enmeshments and entanglements that emerge as a result.

“The theoretical discussions and practical explorations presented will appeal to artists, movement practitioners, academics, and anyone interested in exploring their lived environments through the moving body and the entangled human-nonhuman relations that emerge as a result.”

Dr Hunter, who began her career as a movement director and choreographer, had before the Covid-19 pandemic travelled to Lebanon to encourage dance participation across the country. She now teaches within the University of Chichester’s department of dance, which was recently voted as one of the top 20 schools in the UK by WhatUni student choice awards, 2020.

Her work includes the popular book

(Re) Positioning Site Dance: Local Acts, Global Themes

, which she co-authored with Karen Barbour and Melanie Kloetzel in 2019, and the acclaimed text

Moving Sites: Investigating Site-Specific Dance Performance from 2015

.

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Her latest book,

Site, Dance, and Body

, is available from Palgrave Macmillan at

http://www.

palgrave.

com/

gb/

book/

9783030647995

.

For more about Dr Victoria Hunter and her research in dance performance at the University of Chichester visit

http://www.

chi.

ac.

uk/

staff/

dr-victoria-hunter

.

Or visit its department of dance at

http://www.

chi.

ac.

uk/

dance

.