#StayHappening
Tue, 10 Nov, 2026 at 05:30 pm UTC+13:00

Professorial Lecture: Embodiment, site dance and place-based research with Professor Karen Barbour

  • Gallagher Academy of Performing Arts and Gallery · Hamilton
The University of Waikato Publisher / Host The University of Waikato
Share
Professorial Lecture: Embodiment, site dance and place-based research with Professor Karen Barbour
Advertisement
The arts provide a vital means of making sense of who we are, individually and collectively, revealing the ways identity, community and place shape our lives. Creative practice research in dance foregrounds embodied experience, generating insights that cannot be accessed through words or data, and encouraging critical reflection on how we understand ourselves and the world around us. At a time when environmental and climate change are profoundly reshaping our relationships with place, embodied forms of knowledge can offer important insights into how these transformations are lived and felt. Dance not only makes our embodied experiences visible, but also opens ways of imagining and creating possible futures.
Grounded in Waikato, Professor Karen Barbour traces a journey shaped by place-based creative practice, a commitment to growing local dance communities, and collaborations that span disciplines and continents. Drawing on recent work in site dance and ecological somatics, she considers how dance, education, and the arts can help us think differently about the environment, and how creative practice can support both learning and action in a rapidly changing world.
This lecture demonstrates Karen’s sustained commitment to expanding the traditional boundaries of academia, representing knowledge through dance, screendance, photographs and forms of creative writing. Karen’s embodied practices enable insights and offer opportunities to investigate the aesthetics of the Anthropocene, reimagining the more-than-human world as a practice of hope.
Advertisement

Event venue

Gallagher Academy of Performing Arts and Gallery, Gallagher Academy of Performing Arts,Hamilton, New Zealand

Tickets
Concerts, fests, parties, meetups — all the happenings, one place.

Ask AI if this event suits you

Keep the plans coming

More events in Hamilton

Seed Swap

Wed, 11 Nov at 02:00 pm Hillcrest Library at Hamilton Gardens

Hamilton is happening.

See everything else that’s on — concerts, markets, comedy and more.