Somatic invitations as method towards polyphonic research in academia and beyond

This proposal is intended for the Performance Conversation format of the PaR working group. It wishes to share ideas and insights primarily inspired by the suggested question on transdisciplinary potentialities of PaR. The contribution will be itself a narrative-based experiential invitation to the group exploring interconnections between practice and theory. This mode of sharing research draws from my praxis on the integration between somatically-inspired and practice-research methodologies within performance, pedagogical and other ‘community-conscious’ environments. My activities in these environments foreground and investigate interrelational dynamics between performers and spectators, actors and educators, researchers and active participants. They develop as part of movement-based actor training, immersive PaR, praxical gatherings within a research process, multivocal and multimodal writing practices. Reflecting upon my research activities whether as PaR projects looking at performer-spectator dynamics or PaR-inspired pedagogical approaches focusing on the support of diverse embodied learning, I noticed that I have been using several modes of experiential invitations (i.e. to actors in training, spectators, contributors, participants, readers) as method towards revisiting polyphonic potentialities of academic research within and beyond institutions. In that sense polyphony becomes the framework for methodological advancements and transdisciplinary interactions. More specifically I will shape the narrative of my contribution upon examples of invitations involved in my recent project Somatic Voices in Performance Research and Beyond and my current online project From Haptic Deprivation to Haptic Possibilities. Both PaR projects bring up insights on how somatic invitations for attending to diverse embodied experiences as method can allow transdisciplinary interactions, including dialogues with sociopolitical and health studies.