Abstract
This performative presentation is a shared venture between four female academics working in the intersection of arts, arts education and artistic/qualitative research. The unexpected encounters of our worlds and thoughts have given birth to this shared process of inquiry. Through playful improvisation based on simple patterns, everyday actions, verbal reflections and experimental writing, we are fumbling towards collaborative research practices. We are challenging ourselves in a search for intuition, spontaneity and playfulness that too often become lost in the academia. Drawing from some of the principles and ideas of the late 20th century French philosopher, Gilles Deleuze our collaboration has moved us to consider the indeterminate and continually shifting, nomadic process of not-knowing in the midst of sometimes striated academic (writing and presenting) practices. We have approached this process by putting into play simultaneously our multiple experiences, accounts, stories on be(com)ing academics in our fluid fields. These fold in and back on one another, and ripple into diverse (theoretical) discourses as well as (scholarly and artistic) practices. This, we believe, disrupts the comfort, taken-for-granted (striated) academic spaces of reading, thinking and knowing. We are willing to see how our collaboration may help us in finding new, maybe happier ways to act, relate, think and write – or, to be(come) in the academia.
To write is certainly not to impose a form (of expression) on the matter of lived experience. [It]…moves in the direction of the ill-formed or the incomplete…Writing is a question of becoming, always incomplete, always in the midst of being formed, and goes beyond the matter of any livable or lived experience. It is a process that is a passage of Life that traverses both the livable and the lived. Writing is inseparable from becoming: in writing one becomes-woman, becomes-animal or vegetable, becomes-molecule … (Deleuze 1998, 1, sited in Wyatt et al. 2011, 59.)
Introduction and background
Our performative presentation was a result of a shared venture between us, four female academics working in the intersection of arts, arts education and artistic/qualitative research. The unexpected encounters of our worlds and thoughts have given birth to this shared process of inquiry that is ongoing, lightly and happily even after CARPA. The purpose of this presentation was to share our experiences on how embodied practices have become an integral element in our work as academics and researchers, and especially, how our collaboration through various embodied/artistic/experimental practices has made a difference in how we work, how we think, and how we write. Thus, the collaborative practice influences the outcomes of our work in many ways. It influences the process of knowing; what we come to know, what we research, how we approach our work in the academia. Through our collaboration we have found lightness, playfulness and joy in our work as researchers. Spontaneity, unexpectedness and intuition have found their way into our academic practices.
Dancing girl
Living woman
Alive and happy
Our “quartet” was formed by uniting two pairs that had previously collaborated; Teija had worked with Hanna, and Anita with Eeva. Here is an account on how Anita and Eeva encountered each other and started their collaboration:
One day, early fall, 2011. Theatre Academy Helsinki, hallway.
Eeva: Hey, Anita, can I ask you something?
Anita: Yes, sure, what?
Eeva: Well, I am writing this paper on embodied patterns and social choreography, and I am referring to developmental movement patterns as well. I remember that you have explored this area in depth in your research, could you please read this section and give me feedback about it?
Anita: Ok, of course.
Eeva: Thanks, I’ll send the paper to you!
A month or so later, in a dance education conference, Lissabon, Portugal.
Anita: I read the entire paper! It is really interesting. While I read it, I realized something really important about my own work.
Eeva: Oh, wow, that is great – tell me more!
Anita: It is complicated, but it is about the difference between “normal” development and learning difficulties, or obstacles…
Eeva: Sounds interesting. I would also like to understand more details about all this neuro-muscular patterning much better. We should talk more about this!
From this point of shared interest our collaboration grew into a performative conference presentation titled Playing with patterns: An embodied dialogue. The context for this presentation was the International Congress for Qualitative Inquiry to be held in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, USA (April 2012). This time, the conference was to include a special pre-conference day of the arts.
Before the conference, Teija, who was also going to attend the same conference and had taken part in a workshop by Anita and Eeva, contacted Eeva via email. She wrote:
Could I and my colleague Hanna somehow take part in your dance sessions? I enjoyed twirling in my skirt in your workshop! Hanna and I are writing collaboratively, and we both are also presenting in the Arts Day. Maybe we could share our work somehow before we go?
Yes, of course, Eeva responded to Teija. Since Eeva and Anita wanted the audience to participate, they agreed, “Let’s have Teija and Hanna help us in this!” And then, one Tuesday afternoon in March 2012, Teija and Hanna came to see our “rehearsal”.
This is how the two pairs initially met. Teija and Hanna supported Anita’s and Eeva’s presentation in Illinois, and out of this experience a collaborative article titled “Playing with patterns Fumbling towards collaborative and embodied writing” was created – lightly and playfully.
Our present(ation)
The CARPA3 conference gave us a time structure for continuing our collaboration. Once we agreed to propose a present(ation), our intention became shaped: we wanted to share our collaborative approach, which we described in the abstract as follows:
Through playful improvisation based on simple patterns, everyday actions, verbal reflections and experimental writing, we are fumbling towards collaborative research practices. We are challenging ourselves in a search for intuition, spontaneity and playfulness that too often becomes lost in the academia. Drawing from some of the principles and ideas of the late 20th century French philosopher, Gilles Deleuze our collaboration has moved us to consider the indeterminate and continually shifting, nomadic process of not-knowing in the midst of sometimes striated academic (writing and presenting) practices. We have approached this process by putting into play simultaneously our multiple experiences, accounts, stories on be(com)ing academics in our fluid fields. These fold in and back on one another, and ripple into diverse (theoretical) discourses as well as (scholarly and artistic) practices. This, we believe, disrupts the comfort, taken-for-granted (striated) academic spaces of reading, thinking and knowing. We are willing to see how our collaboration may help us in finding new, maybe happier ways to act, relate, think and write – or, to be(come) in the academia.
In planning our collaborative sessions that were to lead to our presentation, we soon recognized that we shared experiences on being somehow restricted or belittled as female academics working in the field of arts/crafts education and qualitative inquiry. We recognized ourselves as “dancing girls” in a metaphorical and literal sense. Without a conscious decision our collaboration more or less revolved around this theme.
We met in a dance studio for four times. The sessions consisted of movement, talking and writing in various combinations and approaches resulting in scattered words, scattered papers, scattered thoughts and movements – and lots of uninhibited utterances, laughter, fooling around, jokes. Underneath all this lightness, we could somehow sense shared meanings, shared experiences, depth, even seriousness:
Dancing with my shadow – my hand is having a shadow on this paper…
So, if shadows are weightless, how come they are so heavy?
The movement and writing in the studio seemed to offer us a more physical (embodied) foundation for exploring and expressing our experiences in the academia. It was an exploration into how be(com)ing in the mo(ve)ment together lead to emerging notions and to making sense of our experiences.
Becoming (a) present(ation)
coming together
travelling movements
How embodied collaboration
works, enhances, hinders – (or what)
ourselves in finding/covering/recovering/uncovering
what we want/need to present.
Present – a present – lahja?
Becoming (a) present(ation)
Finding the words …for… not connecting to my moving.
not connecting to my moving
not connecting to my words
connecting to my works
moving
empty
space…
meditation… light
I want to become a dancer in my next life.
Can I love dance, be a dancer, from distance periphery?
Between the sessions we wrote with each other via email. We decided to begin each message by a haiku – a practice that Teija and Eeva had explored some years ago in connection to another collaborative process. The following text is a collage of the texts that was created during this lighthearted process that lasted for about one month – a text that was also one part of our present(tation).
30.1.2013 Eeva
Katson sadetta — (I look at rain)
Kuuntelen sen tahtia — (Listen to its pulse)
Ajattelen taas — (I am thinking again)
I am a dancing girl and I want to remember that when walking through the corridors of the academia that echo cold sounds and remind me of a direction, a pathway towards destination that I should know.
I should know where to go.
I should know what to say.
What to wear how to speak when to be quiet.
How to sit.
Why sit? Why not dance through the day – the meetings, the corridors, the encounters.
I want to dance in my thoughts all day.
Let’s dance.
12.2.2013 Anita
Ny ei haiku tuu — (no haiku presenting itself)
Mut muita juttuja jaan — (but sharing other things)
Elämyksiä — (experiences)
Täällä Sallan pakkasessa puuskutan. Kunto on ihan tohjona, mutta
päivä kerrallaan. Olen nähnyt auringon valopatsaan, olen kiivennyt
sen päälle, halannut sitä ja antanut sen lävistää sydämeni.
— (Here in the frozen air of Salla I am breathing loud. My condition is out and low, but after one day comes another. I have seen the lightstatue of the sun, I have climbed above/on it, hugged it and let it pierce my heart.)
Confession: I forgot the papers at home, but you will get the papers before next rehearsal.
Humble, humble, humble.
I am a teaching, I am a learning, I am a being, a saying, a
listening… I am living!
All I am doing, I am.
Not asking what I am doing,
knowing. and again in English
or Finnish or what are the languages we…
use, write, speak, inhabit, embody?
13.2.2013 Eeva
Pysähdyn tähän — (I pause here)
Hetkeksi sormet jää — (For a moment, the fingers linger)
Odotan vaan en — (I wait, then, not)
Academia as a dancing system – flow of ideas, enriching,
flourishing, encouraging, nurturing, cross-fertilizing. What a
dream. Like heaven on earth.
How to be in the academia? How can art thrive in the academia? Even
in art universities, art is compartmentalized. What is good, what is
cool, who knows, who has a clue?
How to watch, how to talk?
Meetings, lectures, curricula — everything is standardized. We sit
like virkamiehet. We talk like virkamiehet. [office holders]
Meeting rooms, classrooms, hallways… they make us act and move in
certain ways.
Social choreography of the academia…
13.2.2013 Hanna
terkku täältä — (greetings from here)
hämärästä — (from the dusk)
hämystä, jossa vielä uuvuttaa — (from the twilight where still fatiguing)
jossa haikuja sivun verran — (where I wrote one page of haikus)
tai haikurunotunnelmia (tai hapuelmia, sanan syrjästä pitkästä aikaa kiinni..)
— (or haiku-poem-atmospheres, grasping the edges of the words again)
leikin, taas leikin (I play, again I play)
tahmealla pinnalla (on a sticky surface)
jään kiinni tähän (I remain stuck here)
ei haikuja voi (no, haikus cannot)
väitöskirjaan ei sentään (into a dissertation, no no)
tieteelliseen ei (into a scientific, no)
mistä leikki ilo (where to find play, joy from)
mistä leikki elävä (where a living joy)
jäänkö suruiseksi (do I remain sad)
hyppää tännepäin (jump here)
kuiskaa jokin hiljainen (whispers some quiet)
anna lentää pois (let fly/flee away) (lines of flight, Deleuze and Guattari 1987)
lennä tänne lennä (fly here fly)
lennä ilovoima tänne (fly, the power of joy, fly here)
käännä lauluni suunta (change the tide of my song)
tanssityttönen (dancing girl)
tanssi tyttönen, tanssi (dance, girl, dance)
tanssi sanoilla (dance with words)
tanssi ilosta (dance out of joy)
tanssi surusta, tanssi (dance out of sorrow, dance)
tanssi akateemisuudesta (dance out of being-academics)
Where are words going to?
Where do words come from?
How do thoughts emerge?
Speech!
How can we talk
how can we have a presentation
give a present
becoming-(a)-present(ation)
to and with each other and with the current situation, with the
haecceity of affects and percepts,
how to move,
how to talk,
what is the social, cultural choreography of a presentation,
of an academic presentation,
where are the border-lines in the academia, in an art institute, at
the university?
Can a presentation present something not-yet-known?
A mo(ve)ment of/towards something unexpected?
Can we remain asking
remain wondering
still breathing with everyone (t)here
still breathing
not only like white-collars (wirkamiehet, valkoisissa kauluksissaan?),
Holding breath and affects with the collar?
But moving, affecting and affected becomings
who knows, who says?
Thank you Eeva and Anita, I got some of the spirit to this grayness.
13.3.2013 Teija
illan hämyssä levossa — (in the evening dusk, at rest)
pehmeänä päästä — (soft on/in my head)
vi(u)hdoin vapaaksi vaatimuksista — (free of expectations, at last)
Hanna (t)here within the dusk, too
writing beautiful haikus,
poem(s) of living,
living poem(s)
with humility,
wondering and wandering
on the sticky surface(s)
approaching joy and play
through dancing and moving
with letters,
with words
with us.
And Eeva, (t)here, too
wondering and wandering
about compartmentalized art,
about meetings, lectures, curricula
about how everything is standardized.
Can we remain asking,
remain wondering,
asked Hanna.
Yes – can we remain wondering and wandering?
Wandering brings about wondering,
moving brings about curiosity,
or thinking
or what?
And Ani, (t)here, too
wandering in the freezing cold Lapland
wondering the (unexpected encounter with) sunlight,
finding its way to (y)our heart(s)
through (y)our fingers
dancing on the keypad(s)
humility (t)here, too
and Teija, and (t)here and now, and too
breathing, again, with you
thankful for our unexpected encounter(s)
our happy incident(s)
here, through writing with words and letters across the net
and there, in the spacious dance studio,
with the white soft floor supporting our
sitting, walking, talking, balancing, spiraling and and and …bodies
after the whole week writing academic proposal(s),
sitting (still) in my office
writing on standardized forms,
with questions asked and answers expected,
in a standardized manner
with limited space,
and word account,
fill to the brim,
but do not exceed.
And i ask
where is the play
where is the joy
where is the light(ness),
the dancing girl
dancing academia,
the poet girl
poeming academia.
And (t)here and now,
happy with you and our deleuzian rhizome
no beginning or end,
always in the middle, between things, interbeing, intermezzo.
still breathing
with humility
with you.
21.2.2013 Teija
istun ikkunan ääressä — (sitting in front of the window)
ulkona hanki hohtaa valoa — (outside snow, shimmering light)
iloa —(joy)
hello again
Yesterday I took part in (or watched) a performance called
love.abz
It dealt with a playwriter and writing and translations and computers
and I noticed something in me
something that has to do with our present(ation)
I smiled when i encountered something unexpected
I laughed when something unusual occured
I felt happy when the performers played with the material,
when they played and smiled their way through the play
A small piece of play
the lightness of playing with and amongst each other
21.2.2013 Eeva
Hämärä ilta — (Evening dusk)
Jäsenissä päivän paino — (The weight of the day in my limbs)
Ajattelen hiljaa — (I think silently)
It seems to me that we all have experienced trouble and frustration in our work
in the academia
as women
as dancers, educators
in the margin, missing the highway
Wandering around, our peculiar pathways, searching for crossroads
Encounters
So that we would be able to share and co-construct something more
than our individual threads of knowledge
So, here we are
Uni-ted
Uniting, connecting, sewing together our thin threads
Making a patchwork
Crafting a present(ation)
For whom?
Who will listen, who will respond, receive our present(ation)?
Are our voices still too weak, silent?
Hanna wrote beautiful haikus for us
What a present!
I read them many times – they keep echoing inside me
Thank you
And thank you all for sharing
I trust that this process carries us through and towards a meeting point we do not know yet…
We can change the course of lonely wandering and getting lost in the corridors
of the academia
Good night
Becoming (a) present(ation)
The present(ation) took place in a studio with big windows, open space. We decided to put the chairs for the audience along the two window-walls, and we used the only wall without windows for putting up our new title “Becoming (a) present(tation)”. We put papers and pens on the floor, for us to use like we had done during our preparatory sessions.
Anita was ill, unfortunately. She was present, anyway. We started with breathing together, back to back. Then, for about 15 minutes, we improvised with movement and words, beginning with a
S T A R T L E
. . .
I imagine
being a
lonely planet
Planet. PLAN. No plan. Planned pathways. Directions. Am I going to follow the plan(s) or what?
P u s h i n g t h e l i m i t s . . . .
Kokoelma sanoja, joista sommittelemalla tulee tai voi tulla jotakin, jota liikaa tietämällä etukäteen ei voisi tulla. Kun tietää ei kysy, leiki, etsi, ihmettele….
(By assembling a collection of words they become or can become something that cannot be anticipated. When you know too much in advance, you do not ask, play, wonder, search…)
As if we were intuitively following Gilles Deleuze (Deleuze and Parnet 2002, 3) and be(com)ing foreigners not only in a foreign language but be(com)ing foreigners in our own language.
UNI-VERSITY
DI-VERSITY
UNI-DIRECTIONAL
DI-RECTIONAL
MULTI-DIRECTIONAL
UNIVERS’ CITY
UNIFORMITY
DIVERSITY
DIVERS CITY
UNIVERSE
UNIWORD
UNITED WORDS
single words
single and flowing movements
r e a c h i n g
s p i r a l i n g
r
o
t
a
t
i
n
g to(wards) (y)our words and movements
connecting words, movements, bodies,
us
extending
towards the-not-yet-known
These words, or simple movements, were the framework for Anita’s and Eeva’s earlier work, “Playing with patterns”. They emerge from so-called developmental movement patterns. As Hannaford explains:
As we explore and experience our material world, initial sensory patterns are laid down on elaborate nerve networks. These initial sensory patterns become the core of our free-form information system that is updated and becomes more elegant with each new, novel experience. These patterns become our reference points and give us the context for all learning, thought and creativity. From this sensory base we will add emotions and movement in our life-long learning dance. (Hannaford 1995, 49.)
Breathing
Reaching
Withdrawing
Spiraling
Rotating
Startling
Bending
Extending
Opening
Closing
Rising
Sinking
The dance
The present(ation)
Afterthoughts
1.3.2013 Teija
Istun, taas, ikkunan ääressä — (Sitting, again, in front of the window)
tuuli viuhtoo ulkona — (the wind is swishing outside)
minä rauhassa sisällä — (me inside in peace)
eilinen esityksemme oli minulle hyvä ja vahvistava kokemus — (our presen/tation yesterday was a good and confirmatory experience for me)
olimme yhdessä, improvisoimme — (we were together, improvising)
ja keskustelimme niistä asioista, — (and discussing the things)
joiden äärellä olemme olleet. — (that we had deliberated earlier)
saimme yleisöltä palautetta, — (we got feedback)
osin ihmettelevää, — (some wonders)
mutta paljon kiittävää. — (but many thanks.)
Se huomio, että de- ja rekonstruoimme yliopistoa — (The notion that we were de- and reconstructing the university)
lämmittää vieläkin mieltä.— (still warm the mind.)
vanhempi nainen vielä torilla tuli sanomaan, — (the older lady, after the present/ation, came to me at tori and said,)
että “well done” — (well done)
(well done – hyvin tehty, kypsä, läpeensä paistettu… : ) — (well done – as if done well but also as well-done, ripe)
Ja ani, — (And ani,)
olit mukana alusta saakka. — (you were with us from the very beginning.)
Hanna luki sinun tekstisi, — (Hanna read your texts,)
myös sen aivan viimeisen, — (also the very late one,)
tekstiviestillä lähettämäsi. — (that you sent by text-message.)
aivan mahtavaa, että laitoit ne tulemaan! — (it was so awesome that you sent them!)
Minäkin toivon, sinun laillasi, — (Me, like you, I wish)
että jatkaisimme näiden — (we could continue)
ihanien tekstien ja aiheiden äärellä — (with these delightful texts and themes)
yhdessä, — (together)
ihmetellen, — (wondering)
kysellen, — (asking)
etsien reittejä eteenpäin…. (finding paths/lines forward…)
teija
And she referred to Michel Foucault
and the historically sedimented,
taken-for-granted habits
within the academia.
And we, probably, trying out
a line of flight (Deleuze and Guattari 1987),
in (per)forming
be(com)ing (a) present(ation).
Indeed, Foucault (Foucault 2002) has described how
discursively sustained institutions (or spaces)
in the press of normative expectations can be
challenged and disrupted by paying
attention to diversity, contradiction and
complexity.
Is that what we are fumbling towards,
diversity and complexity, even contradiction?
Could the supposedly formal institutional
territories of universities be spaces of flux
and transformation (Gale 2010, 304.),
instead of stable or unchanging
institutions striving towards fixed outcomes,
or pre-defined impact?
4.3.2013 Eeva
Kiitollisena — (I am thankful)
Uuden kuun koitteessa — (When the new moon rises)
Jatkan johonkin — (I will continue somewhere)
Aiemmat säikeet, aiemmat säkeet, yhteiset hetket, kohtaaminen, kosketus — (Former threads, former verses, shared moments, encounter, touch)
Kaikuvat, resonoivat, järjestävät ja ryhdittävät ajatuksiani uuteen asentoon — (Echo, resonate, organize and support my thoughts into new positions)
Entinen säilyy, osin häipyy varjoon — (The past stays, partly disappears in shadows)
Valoon nousee uutta, lämpöä, kutinaa, kutkutusta — (Something new comes into light, tickles, tickling)
Uteliaisuus, into ja tahto — (Curiosity, enthusiasm, and will)
Jatkaa matkaa — (To continue the journey)
Lämmöllä, and again in English
(Warmly) and/or again in Finnish
Eeva or
what are the languages
we…
use, write, speak, inhabit, embody?
5.3.2013 Hanna
Istun, taas, minäkin, ikkunan ääressä — (Sitting, again, me too, in front of the window)
kiitollisena viime viikon esityksestämme, present(ation) lahjasta toisillemme ja yleisölle läsnäolosta toistemme ja yleisön kanssa
— (thankful for the last week’s present(ation) to each other and the audience, being present with each other and the audience)
kiitollisena myös eilisestä tanssitunnista Zodiakissa
liikkeestä, läsnäolosta ja lahjoista
— (thankful also for yesterday’s dancing lesson in Zodiak
movement, presence and presents)
Eilen kukin tanssija oli hetken myös yleisöä ja kukin yleisö pääsi esiintymään, liikkumaan, improvisoimaan olemaan läsnä antamaan lahjaa
— (Yesterday every dancer became audience too and every audience became performer, moving, improvising, be(com)ing/giving (a) present)
And again the text changes while translating it…
Miten yleisön voisikaan ottaa mukaan
— (How could the audience become included)
yksi brittitutkija viime viikolla kertoi odottaneensa pääsyä mukaan
— (one British scholar told us she was waiting for that)
läsnäoloon/esitykseen/lahjaan, emme huomanneet antaa tilaa, me esitimme, valtasimme näyttämön, jätimme toiset katsomoon
— (we didn’t come to think to give space, we presented, we took the stage and left others in the auditorium)
mitä yleisö antaa — (what does the audience give)?
mikä on yleisön lahja — (what is the present of the audience)?
miten yleisö on läsnä — (how is the audience present)?
8.4.2013 Anita
sighing
Do not imagine that man invented language.
You’re not sure about that,
you have no proof, and you’ve seen
I dance through the university, no human animal become Homo
following all the universes between my fingers,
Sapiens just like that, in front of your
uniting with my breath, eyes. (Lacan 2008, 33.)
finding the uniwords giving the name for universe
in where we meet dancing united steps in our heartbeats.
26.4.2013 Eeva
So, it seems that I am a dancing girl and there is no escape from that
(that much I know after seeing the dance performance (Tanssityttö – Kuka hän on/ Dancing girl – Who is she?) by Arja Raatikainen & Co).
It is a bubbling sensation
At the same time, it is an embarrassment
Something to hide
Something to leave behind
Something light
Something silly
Something… girly
What is wrong in being “girly”? Everything.
Grow up.
Be a (wo)man.
Break the bubbles so that no one can catch you being light and airy and fuzzy and childlike and weak and playful….
A delicate bubble still emerges and tickles inside. It makes me laugh.
29.4.2013 Teija
a dancing girl
a poeming girl
a smiling girl (as Maria Nurmela presented and performed in the dance piece “Tanssityttö” [Dancing girl] last week)…
we get praised for smiling
we get praised for creating something new… something unexpected
for me a smile, a dance, a poem
makes a connection
it is an act of recognition and compassion….
dancing and poeming and smiling towards a compassionate university…
30.4.2013
.. and we continue dancing and writing poems and smiling,
we poet and dance girls, airy and light…
Is this the creation, the lightness, the joyfulness, instead of the dominant practices of mourning and melancholia, I (we/you) have been searching for, with Rosi Braidotti (Braidotti 2011)? Opening out to possible encounters with others, us, you, the world? Towards the practices of hope?
Bios
Eeva Anttila (Ed.Lic, Doctor of Arts in dance) has been involved in dance education since 1980’s. Currently she works as a professor in dance pedagogy at the Theatre Academy Helsinki, Finland. Her dissertation (2003) focuses on dialogical dance pedagogy, and her current research interests are, e.g., somatic approaches to dance pedagogy, embodied knowledge and embodied learning. She has published widely in national and international journals and edited books. She is an active member in many organizations in dance and arts education.
Hanna Guttorm (M.Ed.) is a Ph. D. Student at the Research Unit of Cultural and Feminist Studies in Education (KuFe) at the University of Helsinki. Her research interests focus on deconstructing and going beyond the traditional scientific and educational practices and discourses of expertise. She is currently finalizing her Ph. D. about educational knowing and writing as socially and culturally constructed, and as a nomadic process.
Teija Löytönen holds a Master’s degree in education (University of Helsinki) and earned her doctorate in dance by studying discourses in dance institutions (Theatre Academy Helsinki, Finland). Currently she is an Academy Research Fellow at Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture. Her particular research interests include higher arts education, disciplinary differences in university pedagogy as well as collaborative inquiry in relation to professional development and knowledge creation. Her current research project draws from Deleuzian and Foucaultian philosophy, among others. She has published in several national and international refereed journals, and presented her research in various networks such as Congress on Research in Dance, European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction and International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry.
Anita Valkeemäki holds a MA in Dance, pedagogy (Theatre Academy Helsinki, 1995). She is a Dance and movement educator and a doctoral student at the Theatre Academy (2008–).
References
Braidotti, Rosi 2011. Nomadic Theory. The Portable Rosi Braidotti. New York: Columbia University Press.
Deleuze, Gilles 1998. Gilles Deleuze: Essays critical and clinical. (Translated by Daniel Smith and Michael Greco), London: Verso.
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