How can we go from “watching” to “telling” dance? How can we express an experience that goes beyond words? How can we understand the movement of the other and identify what is unique in it to help them discover and develop their potential? Observing, identifying and understanding are at the basis of the clinical process of any intervention, be it educational or therapeutic. And yet, the tools available for this process deserve to be reviewed in light of new scientific knowledge, especially in the fields of perception and movement analysis.
With this webinar, Nicole Harbonnier and Geneviève Dussault will present the Movement Observation Analysis, an approach they have developed after conducting a research project that involved specialists in two types of movement analyses, the Laban Movement Analysis and the French Functional analysis of the body in the dancing movement. Their approach is unique in that it pays attention to all the observation activities which support any movement analysis and it integrates functional and expressive movement dimensions.
The crossover between the two approaches has made it possible, on one hand, to identify the processes supporting the activity of observation and analysis of the movement, by using the epistemology of the “Activity Analysis”; on the other hand, it offers a new conceptualization of the observable movement parameters which allow to understand the individual through the fundaments of their body, the phoric, haptic and expressive functions. This event is presented by the National Centre for Dance Therapy and supported by the RBC Foundation. It is dedicated to dance therapists and dance intervention professionals.
Duration: 1h webinar followed by a 30-minute Q&A period.
Platform: Zoom.
Language: the webinar will be presented in French.
Recording: the webinar will be recorded and will be later available on our blog.
Price: the webinar is free of charge, but registration is required.
Nicole Harbonnier has been a professor in Movement Studies at the Dance Department of the University of Québec in Montréal since 2004. She has a PhD in Adult Training from the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers (CNAM-Paris, 2009). Specialized in the Functional analysis of the body in the dancing movement, she has worked for the past 12 years on a research project on the movement-observation-analysis in performing arts, with the support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (Insight Development program in 2013-2016 and Insight program fin 2019-2024). She has worked in France as a choreographer and dancers for the company La Marelle (1988-2004) and as dance teacher professor for the State Diploma (1997-2004). She has cofounded the Laboratoire-théâtre en arts vivants interdisciplinaires (LAVI) at UQAM and has published over 50 texts on teaching and analyzing movement in dance.
Geneviève Dussault has been a lecturer at the Dance Department of the University of Québec in Montréal for the past 36 years and she has been awarded a prize in excellence in teaching (2016). She teaches movement analysis, rhythm, expressive movement and dance history. With a master’s in dance from York University (1991) focused on the comparative analysis of Baratha-Natyam and baroque dances, she is also certified in movement analysis with the Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies (1996). She has worked as a choreographer and dancer in contemporary and baroque dance and has performed in Canada and Europe with the support of the Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Québec. Since 2013, she has participated to the multigenerational choreographic projects of Sarah Dell’Ava, who have been presented at Tangente and in the urban space. Since 2011, she collaborates to the research project in movement-observation-analysis led by Nicole Harbonnier, with whom she has published fifteen articles.
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