This project aims at understanding the role dance plays in reflecting, initiating or resisting changes that communities in the Asia-Pacific experience in the social ecology they inhabit. For this we task to develop an interdisciplinary conceptual lens and a kit of mixed methods that reflect, respect and help unpack the dynamics through which dance enables to embody, signify and act upon the landscape.

In the Asia-Pacific region, dance, as a ritual, religious, or entertainment practice, has traditionally been one of the core mediums of expression and maintenance of that relation with the landscape. Dancers embody the landscape, enacting gestures that portray and pay homage to natural and supernatural features and forces, such as the sea and the mountains, but also animal and human deities, ancestors or other heroes that crossed and somehow marked that space. The embodiment is also enabled by the outfit which envelops dancers as a second skin inspired either by a rough and yet luxuriant nature or the glittery appearance of divine realms. The embodiment is often more than just symbolic as it might take the form of mediumship or shamanistic travels bridging into other realms of existence. In other instances, gestures translate daily activities related to the landscape and necessary to people’s survival, such as cropping and fishing. In sum, dance reflects and reproduces the strong bond between bodies and places.

PI: Céline Coderey  
Collaborators: Aparna R Nambiar, Alvin Eng Hui Lim, Roslynn Ang, Liang Peilin, Maiya Murphy, Miguel Escobar Varela & Amin Farid

Funding Agency: Humanities and Social Sciences Seed Fund, NUS
Project Duration: 20 June 2023 – 20 December 2024