ResDance S2: Episode 8: the f/ol\d, an impulse for multiplicity in languaging with Glenna Batson and Susan Sentler

Glenna Batson and Susan Sentler share insight into their 10-year collaboration, honing a practice-based language on bodily folding. Through discussion of their shared thinking and practices rooted in a inter/trans-disciplinary approach, they share insight into their ways of working and reflect upon their processes of making. They discuss their on-going collaborative research rooted in the concept of ‘the fold’ titled: the f/ol\d as somatic/artistic practice and offer thoughtful consideration around the ideas of languaging and the wider value (and power) of what making can offer. Glenna and Susan are currently writing a book entitled: Embodied Practices in Art Making: The Fold (Intellect Books 2023). Glenna Batson is a Professor emeritus of physiotherapy, Glenna has drawn from multiple sources both within and outside of the academy as catalysts for teaching, research, advocacy, and artistic growth.  Glenna has worked at the intersection of dance, movement science and somatic education honing a trans-disciplinary approach to embodied cognition. She has lectured and mentored in higher education within dance, bodymind disciplines and neuro-rehabilitation. She currently teaches Somatics as faculty of dance at Peabody Institute for Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore, MD USA), and is a guest dance educator at Duke University and University of Limerick. Clinical investigations offer fresh insights into integrative medicine, including dance improvisation for Parkinson’s, Alexander Technique & balance and mental imagery in stroke rehabilitation, research pathways underscoring mind-body methodologies. Written scholarship includes chief author of Body and Mind in Motion: Dance and Neuroscience in Conversation., a convergence of somatics, dance and neuroscience, and co-editor/contributor to Dance, Somatics and Spiritualities: Contemporary Sacred Narratives (2014).  Contact details: Email: glenna@glennabatson.net / glenna.batson@gmail.com Website: https://www.glennabatson.net/ Susan Sentler, (she/her), is an independent artist rooted in the field of Dance/Performance working as educator/lecturer, maker/choreographer, researcher, director, curator, dramaturg and performer. She has practiced globally for over 30 years and began teaching in Higher Education since 1992, in early 2000’s meriting Senior Lecturer status from Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance. As performer, she danced with the original second company ‘The Ensemble’ of the Martha Graham Dance Company in the 1980’s and has returned to performing in the past 10 years with artists such as Tino Sehgal, Xavier le Roy, Dora Garcia and Jerome Bel. Susan’s practice is inter/trans-disciplinary, anchored by a honed expanded somatic relationship to image, interested in ‘dissolving the indexical’, yielding greater potential of sensorial materiality.  In 2013, she received an MACP (Masters in Creative Practice, Dance Professional Practice) from Trinity Laban in collaboration with Independent Dance, London/UK. Susan was on faculty from 2015 to 2020 at LASALLE College of the Arts Singapore expanding the somatic and creative environment. Susan focuses on gallery/ museum contexts creating/collaborating on ‘responses’ or ‘activations’ within exhibitions as well as durational installations orchestrating moving/still image, objects, sound and absence/presence of the performing body.  Contact details Email: shsentler@gmail.com Instagram: @susansentler  Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/user9690001