Choreographies of Knowledge: Practices of Togetherness Beyond Now

How does knowledge move? How can embodied collective practices offer vital perspectives for navigating a world in rapid transformation and turbulent times?

This event brings together two researchers, who both work on investigating modes of collectivity  through movement — one from the academic and science communication field (Manisha Biswas - PhD in Social Neuroscience, HU Berlin, winner of the “Dance your PhD contest” 2025 with her video “The Powerful Outcomes of Collective Synchrony”), the other from the performing arts (Irina Demina - choreographer and artistic researcher, recipient of Pina Bausch Fellowship 2021, currently artist in residence at the Centre for Cultural Techniques at HU Berlin). In this event, they will share their projects and reflect on dance as an evolved human behavior, a cultural technique and as a practice of embodied knowledge.

In Demina’s project folk dances are placed in dialogue with artificial intelligence, exploring how heritage can be rethought through technologies as a way to reinvent modes of collectivity. Biswas in her scientific experiments, and her science communication film - winner of the “Dance your PhD contest” 2025 - emphasizes the centrality of the body in human connection by exploring the evolutionary roots of ritualistic movement, showing how coordinated bodily expression has long played a vital role in forming and sustaining social groups.

Beyond now, we can begin to rethink and reimagine physical and digital spaces, crafting them to be more aligned with our origins as a social species rooted in movement, presence, and shared experience. Our proposal is both a conversation and an invitation: to move beyond now by moving together.