Human Animal - a day of dancing

Human Animal — A Day of Dancing 

A workshop hosted by Harriet Roberts and Ruth Pethybridge, exploring ideas of animalism through movement, embodiment and composition.

How might a shared bodily vulnerability and our ecological connection to the non-human world inhabit our dancing? How might we practise being more animal? Or simply be inspired by the patterns, rhythms and movements of the natural world?

Through embodied experience, collective tuning and compositional propositions, we will explore our animalistic forms together — welcoming the gifts of physicality and state, while grappling with the possibilities of both solo and collective movement.

This is for those who want the moving body to inform their creative practice — dance or otherwise. For those wanting to unfurl their tissues through physicality and creativity, drop into the now, explore a project that’s bubbling away, or simply meet the blank page.

Some movement, studio or creative experience is recommended as a prerequisite. 

Where? 
Studio 12, Mardle Way, Buckfastleigh (in the industrial estate, instructions in confirmation email)

When? 

Friday Oct 30th 

10am - 3pm, we will have a break for lunch, please bring a packed lunch. There is a coffee shop near by, but food shops are a little further. 

Who are we?

The Open Movement School is a project founded in 2024, offering durational dance groups in Devon for those wishing to dive a little deeper than the drop-in class.

Centred around Contact Improvisation, somatics, contemporary dance and composition, we create spaces for sustained physical enquiry, creative practice and connection.

Ruth Pethybridge is a mother, maker and dance artist. She is a dance researcher and writer, Senior Lecturer in dance at Falmouth University, and a Unit Leader on the MA Dance: Participation, Communities, Activism at London Contemporary Dance School. Ruth has also worked extensively as a practitioner in the community dance sector using improvisation, imagery and release based techniques supporting dancers to enjoy their moving bodies at different life stages to create unique choreographies for different community contexts. Ruth is invested in dance spaces that involve collective care and inclusion as well as dancing. Her research interests centre on the politics of participation in dance informed by feminist theories and post-structural philosophy. Recent publications include Embodying Care: Community Dance and Trauma Informed Practice (Journal of Arts and Health, 2023), What does a Dancer have to offer this broken world? (People Dancing, 2024), and Moving into Action: Change Making Through Dance Activism, with Jo Parkes (in Contemporary Choreography: A Critical Reader, Routledge, 2025). You can often find her having a kitchen disco in Cornwall with her two daughters. 

Harriet Roberts:

With over a decade of experience in the dancing world, Harriet curates regular local groups as well as seasonal events for people to dive into the world of somatics, contact improvisation and the magic of the moving body. She believes that dance can bring us into a deeper understanding of self, one another and the environment we inhabit. Her practices are almost always relational, heavily based in the wisdom of touch, tactility, co-creation and fun. 

Harriet trained as a contemporray dancer before travelling the world in search of dancing experiences and communities. She primarily seeked places and people who have informed her CI and somatic experience, she is well woven into the tapestry of these communities far and wide. Here is Devon she co-founded SomaCI offering annual events and festivals, as well as her examining more deeply her personal teaching approach.