The NMDT network is excited to announce the first of our three workshops, which collectively aim to bridge contemporary neuroscience of dance, performing arts and creative therapies in identifying key concepts and mechanisms of brain change during dance.
Our first workshop ‘Observing Dance’ will set a critical discussion on the concept of recognition of actions and how quality of movement might inform emotions.
How Dance Training Can Enhance Social Perception
Our guest speaker is Prof Beatriz Calvo-Merino who is a Cognitive Neuroscientist investigating how sensorimotor memories and experiences influence cognition and social perception. Collaborations with dancers are core element of her research. She has explored expertise effect in the action observation network, interception, emotion perception and aesthetic appreciation using behaviour, physiology and neuroimaging methods.
Prof Beatriz Calvo-Merino’s talk ‘How Dance Training Can Enhance Social Perception: Insights from a Neuroscience Perspective’ will explore how research on dance expertise has helped shape social and cognitive neuroscience. It will revise a selection of studies working with dancers that describe the sensorimotor expertise effect at multiple levels and domains. Initially, we will explore how different brain activations and neural mechanisms are found in the dancer’s brain while perceiving movements. We will expand and provide examples of how this sensitivity to movements can be beneficial for detecting other social elements and propose that dance expertise effects can extend into the emotion domain. Evidence from studies using various methods such as behaviour, physiology and neuroimaging are discussed. A final discussion will be proposed on the nature of the different elements that compose the sensorimotor expertise described in the dancers, as well as a framework for a dialogue between research from the neuroscience area, dance practitioners and dance training therapies.
Movement Observation in Dance Movement Psychotherapy
The second half of the workshop will be facilitated by Emma Perris who is a Dance Movement Psychotherapist, Lecturer and Research Assistant at Edge Hill University.
Emma Perris will be facilitating an experiential workshop ‘Movement Observation in Dance Movement Psychotherapy’. The workshop will introduce some of the tools used by Dance Movement Psychotherapists to observe, explore and support clients’ movement. In particular we will look at elements of Laban Movement Analysis (LMA), explore how it relates to our own bodies, and reflect on how this might be used in practice. The workshop will introduce some theoretical principles of LMA and will offer opportunities to play with and creatively explore these principles.
