People Dancing

A unique event where practitioners and researchers from dance and law come together to explore the current complexities of working with consent.

This is a participatory event which features workshops and discussions focusing on consent practices within dance. It forms part of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funded research network The Choreography of Consent: Experiments in Dance / Law Research, which brings dance and law together to share challenges, complexities and good practice around consent.

Members of the Network - including Heni Hale, Anna Macdonald and Jo Fong - will share creative tasks designed to open up discussion of how dance practitioners work with consent. We will also hear talks from legal scholars - including Marie Jacob and Amanda Keeling - sharing examples of the way consent works in other fields.

Through this event we are interested in opening up discussions about:

• Capacity and consent
• How consent is negotiated
• How does dance practice sits within legal expectations
• What happens when consent is withdrawn.

If you wish to join in the practical workshop elements, please wear something comfortable that you can move in.

Find out more about The Choreography of Consent: Experiments in Dance / Law Research here.

About Marie Andrée Jacob and Anna Macdonald

Anna Macdonald and Marie Andrée Jacob have been working collaboratively, exploring the intersections of dance and law, since 2016.

Marie Andrée Jacob is a Professor of Law at the University of Leeds and her socio-legal work is interdisciplinary, drawing on ethnographic and archival methods.

Anna Macdonald is a screendance artist/scholar who focuses on the relationship between the body, time and affect. She is a Reader in Movement at UAL: Central Saint Martins.

Together they are leading the AHRC Network, Choreography of consent: Experiments in dance/law methods (AHRC network 2024-2026) where they are examining the movement of consent across fields of research integrity, dance and health.

Image credit: Cheniece Warner.

About Jo Fong and James Leach

James Leach (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique/French National Centre for Scientific Research) is an anthropologist who has a long-term interest in dance knowledges.

Jo Fong is a director, choreographer and performer whose artistic practice puts ideas around belonging or forming community in the forefront.

For the choreography of consent project, they have been exploring the process of coming into contract in dance.

Image credit: Cheniece Warner.

About Heni Hale and Sean Mulchay 

Heni Hale (co-director of collective Dog Kennel Hill Project and former co-director of Independent Dance) is a dance artist whose work incorporates improvisation, somatic practice and choreography. She is currently exploring embodied archival research methods at the Tavistock Institute, London as part of her PhD with C-Dare, Coventry University.

Sean Mulcahy (based at the Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society, Latrobe University) has been examining consent as a movement into the unknown, both in dance and in dark rooms (Mulcahy 2024)

Image credit: Heni Hale.

About Amanda Keeling 

Amanda Keeling is a legal researcher who brings expertise in the law around decision-making for people with cognitive impairments – in particular, the way that people can be supported to make decisions around consent and the relationality that exists in that process. She has an interest in Contact Improvisation and non-verbal consent processes.

Image credit: Unknown.

About Karen Wood and Sara Ramshaw

Karen Wood is a practitioner, researcher and educator based at the Centre for Dance Research, Coventry University. She was part of the AHRC InVisible Difference: Dance, Disability and Law project (2013-16) and is currently exploring collaboration and the ethics of care in dance communities.

Sara Ramshaw is interested in Youth Theatre practice as a site where, along with dance studios, consent has become more contentious in recent years.

Image credit: Victoria Barker.