Humanhood

Dance company

Humanhood is a forward-thinking dance company run by co-artistic directors Rudi Cole and Júlia Robert Parés. They create bold choreographic pieces, working with musical and lighting directors, and taking inspiration for their work from a variety of disciplines. Rudi and Julia have a particular interest in integrating concepts from physics and astronomy into their practice, and we have been working with them since 2017. Most recently, the interactions have focussed on the development of a new work called “Torus”, which was performed by the Humanhood dance company at Birmingham Dance exchange and is currently touring internationally.

We have run several immersive interaction sessions in which members of Professor Chaplin’s research team have engaged in workshops at the dance studio, exchanging ideas both on the collaboration itself but also how we each work to explore the similarities and differences in how artists and scientists practice in their field. A record of one of these sessions is below:

Professor Chaplin has taken part in post-show talks with Rudi and Julia. In them we have explored with the audience how artists and scientists can influence each other’s practice, which goes to the heart of the key theme we wish to explore in the collaboration: how enjoyment and the impact of the piece is influenced by the knowledge of the art-science interaction.

Reactions at post-show talks have included:

“Creative outside the box thinking”

“An expression of the love of science in movement… forward and positive”

And on developing the collaboration: “Go deeper and deeper: long-term brings unexpected results or nuances that spill into the work of both artists and scientists if truly open to the process”