Dance pedagogueArtistic-researcherGuest teacherResearch
Following an MA in Performative Practices, my doctoral research investigates the intersections between classical ballet pedagogy, contemporary dance and performance discourse, and the ethics of transmitting western classical techniques. It focuses on how minor gestures—moments of attention, guided by a witness—reveal alternative forms of knowledge within ballet practice.
Drawing from oral histories, studio experiments, and collaborations with dancers who studied with Janet Panetta, the project explores how to reconstruct an embodied archive of study in absence.
Held in the field of artistic research, the project combines textual analysis and material experimentation to explore the affective and political dimensions of dance pedagogy through film, archival/performance practice, and installation.
die Angewandte, University of Applied Arts Vienna, Vienna, Austria
Department Artistic Research PhD in Art
Supervisor: Bouchra Khalili
Photo with Yours Izundu, by Jakub Klak
Research Events
Talks, conference presentations, symposia, workshops, publications, and trans-art collaborations.
TQW Zine #4
Performance Score Contribution
Tanzquartier Wien, Vienna, Austria
with*in*stabilities (2025)
Lecture and Workshop in collaboration with Ruth Anderwald + Leonard Grond examining somatic-aesthetic themes of imbalance, staggering, and dizziness
Tanzquartier Wien, Vienna, Austria
Resisting Mastery (2025)
Lecture Performance
Dance Resonance Artistic Attunement in Motion Symposium
Die Angewandte, The University of Applied Arts Vienna, Vienna, Austria
Bad Ballet (2025)
Field Research Project
Studio research occasion (1 week/6hrs/day) co-facilitated with Elizabeth Ward & Kevin Fay, with contributions by Dance Historian Anna Leon & Guest Dance Educator/Choreographer Zvi Gottheiner
ImPulsTanz Vienna International Dance Festival, Vienna, Austria
Angewandte Public Colloquium (2025)
Performance Lecture
Die Angewandte, The University of Applied Arts Vienna, Vienna, Austria
Let’s Talk About Ballet (2024)
Knowledge Exchange Format for Faculty & MA Students
Dialogue & Workshop with Prof. Dr. Friederike Lampert
Zürich University of the Arts (ZHdK), Zürich, Switzerland
Diffractive Dialogues (2024)
Research Laboratory
Co-Teaching & Feedback Exchange with Somatic Practitioner and Educator Malcolm Manning
BACKPULVER, Vienna, Austria
Janet Panetta Repertoire (2024)
Exhibition on the Life and Work of Artist Janet Panetta
Scholar in Residence
Garth Greenan Gallery, New York City
Angewandte Public Colloquium (2024)
Performance Lecture & Epistemic Decompression
Die Angewandte, The University of Applied Arts Vienna, Vienna, Austria
Envelope 6 (2024)
Published Essay
Research Journal, Die Angewandte, The University of Applied Arts Vienna, Vienna, Austria
Soften and Make Space (2024)
Activation within Special Interest Group (SIG): Facilitation
Society of Artistic Research Conference, Tilburg, The Netherlands
Certain Dance Circumstance (2023)
Field Research Project
Studio research occasion (1 week/6hrs/day) conceived and co-facilitated with Choreographer Lenio Kaklea
ImPulsTanz Vienna International Dance Festival, Vienna, Austria
Envelope 5 (2023)
Published Essay
Research Journal, Die Angewandte, The University of Applied Arts Vienna, Vienna, Austria
Angewandte Public Colloquium (2023)
Performance Lecture & Exhibition
Research Journal, Die Angewandte, The University of Applied Arts Vienna, Vienna, Austria
Epistemic Adaptations in Art & Research (2022)
Junior Research Group for the PEERS Program & Artistic Research PhDs at ZHdK
Dialogue with VK Preston & Macklin Kowal
Zürich University of the Arts
University Collaborators
Iceland University of the Arts \ Bachelor Dance Program
Stockholm University of the Arts \ Teaching in the Bachelor Dance Program
University of the Arts Berlin / HZT \ Teaching in the Bachelor Dance Program
Zurich University of the Arts \ Teaching in the Bachelor and Masters Dance Program
The New School University \ Teaching in the Bachelor Dance Program
Courses Taught
Technique Courses: 1-Semester – Composition Workshop Ballet + Contemporary
Clarifying technique gives back unexpected possibilities for dancers’ sense of authorship. In these course aligning personal agency with the rigor of classical training.
Ballet
Functional anatomy is the foundation of technical study. This course emphases ways of connecting to both human expressivity and creative potential, as well as awareness of function and clarified movement pathways. The class focuses on initiating movement from the bones and allowing the muscles to function with greater efficiency, supporting a physically sustainable and artistically expansive ballet practice. Dancers engage with the historical repertoire of the Cecchetti technique, which is introduced and explored for its coordination of effort, jumping, syncopated rhythms, and focus in the body’s generative axis to the floor.
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Contemporary
Drawing from release-based principles of low muscular effort and greater freedom of the skeleton, this class is interested in momentum, suspension, rhythm, length, and ease. We work with the floor and move through space in repeating exercises and phrases we can dive deeper into choreographically. This material and approach to contemporary dance is oned in relation to personal study with brilliant teachers. I have studied with including Judith Sanchez Ruiz, David Zambrano, Peter Jasko, Alice Chauchat, Chrysa Parkinson, Ori Flomin, Antonio Ramos, and Todd Williams.
Choreography Workshop: 1 Week – Body Bricoleur
Embodied Bricoleur is a laboratory dedicated to exploring movement, pleasure, and technique as tools for collective choreographic invention and research creations. Highlighting sensual experience, the course centers on the creative process while fostering critical reflection on pedagogy and the transmission of knowledge. It asks: How can we remix, reconstruct, and reuse embodied artifacts — those familiar movement fragments, habits, and gestures — to generate new meanings and insights from accessible dance materials?
Inter-Disciplinary Course: 1-Semester – Rhythms, Colors, Patterns
Co-facilitated with jazz musician and piano teacher Asaf Fleischmann
This interdisciplinary course explored the relationship between embodied movement and musicality, bridging dance technique with sonic awareness related to sound and silence. Moving between practical and theoretical approaches to the dancing body and the experience of sound, we framed rhythm as both a technical skill and a historical form of knowledge. Students engaged with musical concepts such as jazz syncopation, polyrhythms, minimalism, and silence through structured movement exercises, guided listening, and hands-on work with piano, drums, and other percussive instruments.
Inter-Disciplinary Course: 1-Semester – Ballet in Times of Change, or: Why the Pleasant Face?
Co-facilitated with sound artist and dancer Zen Jefferson
This interdisciplinary course examined the genealogy of smiling and other codified facial expressions within the spectacle of ballet. As a conceptual and practical inquiry into normative representation and the dancing body, we worked with improvisational tools to explore the textures of the face and how certain expressions become habitual within this historical form.
Inter-Disciplinary Course: 1-Semester – Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow / My Movement Practice
Co-facilitated with teaching artist Regina Baumbart
The course starts with personal movement research, part reflection, or perhaps inflection, we spend time honing a movement routine or score that feels repeatable, sustainable In some way that can be both transmitted and self-sustaining. Students take turns facilitating their Investigations in movement and other physical and performative concepts.
Composition Workshop: Play it as it Lays
After Joan Didion’s novel of the same name. The workshop emphasizes collaborative experimentation, and the compositional potential of attentive listening and choreographic writing in real/performance time. In the workshop, participants developed co-authored spontaneous compositions, modifying score-based directives, reflected on their effects, and practiced performance.
