Science on the Dance Floor

Movement lab

Exploring the intersection of neuroscience and dance - how we consciously experience and assess our own movements - and how well we can do so.

The project is funded by the Volkswagen Stiftung.

Free admission – registration required.

Workshop language: English

The workshop is offered on multiple dates. Each date is a standalone session with identical content. Please register for one session only.

The workshop on 09.05.2026 will be photographed by a professional photographer.

The images may be used for project documentation and promotional purposes.

Dance-artists and performers study movement every day - in studios, on stage, and in everyday life. Meanwhile, cognitive neuroscientists are investigating in the labs how our brains perceive, control, and remember movement. Each field is generating insights, yet they rarely meet in dialogue. This workshop is an invitation to bring them together.

We will explore what neuroscience currently understands about movement, awareness, and bodily control; and just as importantly, what remains unknown. We’ll engage with the questions: What does it feel like to move? Would it feel different if I inhabited a different body? What is conscious, and what remains unconscious in observing the moving self?

We will move, introspect on the way we move, and learn (some) scientific terms, using them as tools to deepen our understanding. This will allow us to bridge two ways to understand conscious experience; introspection and scientific enquiry. Equipped with a shared vocabulary, we will discuss whether we, as dancers and movement practitioners, through our training, have gained a particularly clear sense of our bodies in motion. And if — and how — we can help others improve that same skill. Ultimately, what we set out to do is not to find answers, but to help shape a kind of interdisciplinary research culture, that values exchange and brings together different forms of expertise.

The project is developed in collaboration between choreographer Irina Demina and cognitive neuroscientist Dr. Elisa Filevich and the "Metamotor Lab" from the Hector Research Institute of Education Sciences and Psychology, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen.

www.irinademina.com

www.scienceonthedancefloor.com