EMILY BOWMAN

Emily Bowman (she/her) is an artist-researcher, choreographer, improviser, performer and teacher based in Naarm (Melbourne). She is PhD candidate at Deakin University, researching Contact Improvisation (CI) as a relational practice in more-than-human contexts. Emily is recognised for her work in dance improvisation performance and pedagogy, particularly CI and teaches and performs throughout Australia and internationally. Emily is interested in composition, co-authorship, practices of listening and care, labour and endurance, sustainability, ecology, walking, and working with young people. She has a long-standing collaboration Two For Now with Joey Lehrer, and a collaborative, eco-somatic research practice with  multidisciplinary artist-researcher Vanessa Chapple.

ABOUT US  

Emily and Vanessa bring together their artistic practices using improvisation, somatics, dancing-walking, artmaking, sound and writing. They are fascinated by the resonances between their distinct inquiries and driven to disturb binary categories through the matter and motion of bodies in relationship. Their choreographic approach is founded on ecological principles revealed through relational embodied practices.

ABOUT OUR NAME ‘Soma Ontogeny’ 

‘Soma’ is a Greek word which refers to the body in its living wholeness. ‘Ontogeny’ is a scientific term which refers to the growth and formation of a living thing. In philosophy, the term ‘ontology’ is about what it takes for a thing to exist, but the term ‘ontogeny’ is about how a thing is generated, how it grows. This shift from ontology to ontogeny has important ethical implications, for ontology suggests that things are far from close to one another, each wrapped up on its own, ultimately impenetrable world of being. On the contrary, ontogeny suggests things are fundamentally open, and all participate in one indivisible world of becoming. In other words, multiple ontologies signify multiple individual worlds, but multiple ontogenies signify one world. Soma Ontogeny for us is about living in one world where all beings correspond and are respons-able to one another.

VANESSA CHAPPLE

Vanessa Chapple is a performance director/dramaturg, multidisciplinary artist, teacher and community cultural consultant based in Naarm, Australia. Her recent artistic research practice is focused upon eco-somatics and livings systems creative ecologies and pedagogy.  Vanessa is a current PhD candidate at the Creative Agency Lab, School of Education, RMIT, (www.creativeresearchhub.com), undertaking research in somatics and ecologies of listening within socially-engaged art practice and public pedagogy. She is a certified Somatic Movement Educator,(www.seasomaticeducation.com) and co-founding member of ASTER, the Association for Somatic Therapies, Education and Research (https://asterassociation.org).