We are building a new network for ecosomatic dance. Ecosomatic dance is a practice that engages the body as a site for confronting and processing the ecological crisis, connecting artists from BodyCartography’s Resisting Extinction internationally. Pending funding it will begin with artists from Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and Estonia, with an in-person gathering in Oslo in June 2027. The network will grow into a long-term international community rooted in solidarity and shared resources.
Why this network
Cultural discourse on the ecological crisis rarely asks us how we reckon with it personally and collectively, through our physical and emotional bodies? By working through the body, we come to recognize, viscerally, that we are not separate from our surroundings, our bodies don’t exist outside the crisis, they live within it.
At its core, the network develops practices that support resilience, ways to stay present, embodied, and deeply connected with the more-than-human world amid this time of profound change.
This work is urgent for the artists, scientists, and activists involved, as we forge new ways of being with this crisis, physically, cognitively, emotionally, and collectively. For the wider field, the network offers transferable structures for ongoing research, mentorship, and exchange.
Our goals
- Understand where our collective energy and resources can have the greatest impact
- Build future collaborations on reciprocity rather than extraction
- Form long-term relationships rooted in the places we work
- Adapt, scale, and share successful models without losing local specificity or relational integrity
Oslo gathering June 2027
Participants will exchange ecosomatic research and artistic process, and hear from Nordic Climate Action, Sami activists, and environmental philosophers in dialogue with the Deep Ecology tradition of Arne Næss. Some sessions will be open to the wider performing arts community.
