My research interests reflect my interdisciplinary training and working life through dance and movement.
Research positions and projects
2023 Researcher for the European Dance Development Network (EDN) on increasing equity in working conditions in dance. Read the free publication here.
2022 Contextual and production research for choreographer Angela Woodhouse on the concepts of touch and absence.
2021-22 Post-doctoral research fellowship, University College London, Institute of Advanced Studies. Moving the modes of encounter: Embodying (in)equalities in the university, Equity, Diversity & Inclusion research project.
2020-21 Post-doctoral research assistant to Dancing Through Crises: Increasing diversity in the UK freelance dance scene under the combined pressures of Brexit and Covid-19 (SPF seed funding Jan-April, Roehampton University), led by Dr. Alexandra Kolb (Roehampton) with Dr. Nicole Haitzinger (Paris-Lodron) contributing to research design and conceptualisation, sourcing and conducting interviews, analysis and co-writing.
2020-21 Freelance researcher and team member of a group of Laban Movement Analysts responsible for movement-coding 50+ interviews in a qualitative and quantitative personality assessment testing research project, carried out between the University of Chicago (USA) and the University of Haifa (Israel) led by Dr. Rachelle Tsachor. Contributed to the design of the coding sheet and methodology, and subsequent coding.
Publications
2024 Dancing and moving in coaching, chapter in Arts-based Coaching: Using Creative Tools to Promote Better Self-Expression, eds. Andrea Giraldez Hayes and Max Earnes, Routledge
2024 Festival-making and choreography: tales of affordance and crises in the work of Dušan Murić, chapter in (Post)Socialist Dance: A Search for Hidden Legacies, eds. Annelies Van Assche, Dunja Njaradi, Igor Koruga, and Milica Ivić, Bloomsbury
2023 Freelance, year-long part-time researcher for the European Dance Development Network. My publication Equity in Working Conditions in Dance can be found here and below.
2023 Journal article, Maska, Somatics Edition, Somatic Practice and Dance Improvisation in non-traditional contexts: Ethics, Responsibility, Hospitality (in English and Slovene)
2023 Contemporary Dance Festivals in the former Yugoslav space: (in)dependent scenes. Routledge.
2022 Curatorial impulses in festival-making chapter contribution to an edited book Within Time, Beyond Time: A Journey Through CoFestival, International Festival of Contemporary Dance, Slovenia, ed. Nika Arhar, published by Nomad Dance Academy Slovenia
2022 Co-editor with Dr. Lo Marshall, Think Pieces journal, Institute of Advanced Studies, UCL.
2022 Arts festival-making as utopia book chapter (peer reviewed), Dancing Europe: Identitites, Languages, Institutions (Epodium, Munich, DE), eds. Dr. Alex Kolb and Dr. Nicole Haitzinger, developed from paper presentation at ‘Dance, Europe, Now’, symposium at University of Salzburg, AT (2020)
2021 Contexts, traces, inspiration: three statements of working principles from the Former Yugoslav space article (peer reviewed), published in Critical Stages journal
2021 Dramaturgical Awareness article (peer reviewed), published in Global Performance Studies journal
2020 Essential labour article, published in the Journal of the Anthropology of Work (editorial reviewed)
2019 That word doesn’t exist in my language: teaching and learning LBMS in multiple languages article in CAET/Creative Arts and Education journal (peer-reviewed)
2019 Contributed an essay How an uncertain temporality provokes an unwitting festival in Die Akte mo.ë on the end of an artists’ collectively-run space in Vienna, AT. Eds Alisa Beck and Marie-Christin Rissinger
Conferences / presentations
2024 Co-wrote and presented online with WholeMovement colleagues Karen Studd and Cat Maguire, LBMS (Laban/Bartenieff Movement System) Motif as creative pedagogy, for EUROLAB conference, Germany/online
2024 Co-wrote presentation with Ivan Mijačević on Terpsichorean Sonics, a movement/sound pedagogy, for daCi/Dance and the Child International conference, Lj, Slovenia
2024 Podcast interview by Gemma Harman for ResDance
2024 Book presentation, Contemporary Dance Festivals in the Former Yugoslav Space
- Institute of Advanced Studies, UCL, May 2024, with guest speakers online Marijana Cvetković, artistic director of Service Station for Contemporary Dance, Belgrade, Serbia; Jasmina Založnik, curator, scholar and co-producer Nomad Dance Slovenia/CoFestival, Ljubljana, Slovenia; and Biljana Tanurovska-Kjulavkovski, director of Lokomotiva, Skopje, North Macedonia. Guest speakers in person independent curators from the London dance and performance scene including Heidi Rustgaard (H2Dance / Fest En Fest), Giuliana Majo (Trip Space) and Hanna Gillgren (H2Dance). We used the book as a point of departure for a conversation across about working conditions for dance practices and the functions of festivals, thinking from and across our specific contexts.
- CoFestival, Ljubljana, Slovenia, November 2024
2024 Guest lecture, Phrasing Social Safety, Fontys Academy of Dance, Tilburg, Netherlands
2023 Speaker in online conference How Can We Move? held by the European Dance Development Network, presenting my publication Equity in Working Conditions in Dance.
2022 Lecture-demonstration Scenes seen and heard with Dr. Anna Leon about ecologies of relations between freelancers and institutions in the UK dance scenes (2020-21), at the Tanzkongress, Mainz, Germany.
2020 Lecture-demonstration with Ivan Mijačević for interdisciplinary arts symposium ‘Music Pours Over The Sense’ on movement-sound relations and improvisation, University of Graz, AT (online)
2019 Paper presentation at ASA/Association of Social Anthropology annual conference, University of East Anglia, extract of fieldwork on independent dance scenes vs the Ministry of Culture in Serbia (2016-17)
2019 Paper presentation at PSi 25/Performance Studies international, University of Calgary, Canada, on Macedonian independent dance scenes, and presentation in Dramaturgy Working Group
2017 Paper presentation on volunteerism in festivals, at ‘Theatre and Employment’ conference, Queen Mary University, UK
2016 Co-presented paper with Jasmina Založnik on inability festival at the Katalyst Festival, Köln, at ‘The politics of performance and play: feminist matters conference’, Leiden University, NL
Movement-sound relations, Somatic sound practices
Terpsichorean Sonics
A system of education created by Ivan Mijačević with Alexandra Baybutt on music theory, and movement-sound relations for dancers in training. Lecture-demonstration with Ivan Mijačević for interdisciplinary arts symposium ‘Music Pours Over The Sense’ on movement-sound relations and approaches to dance improvisation, University of Graz, AT (online, 2020). MORE
Play As We Are
Somatic movement interventions for musicians between Alexandra Baybutt and violists Maya Felixbrot and Alex Welch. MORE
Barefoot Opera
Opera educators Jenny Miller (artistic director of Barefoot Opera) and Penelope Randall-Davis work with movement specialists Evelyn Freebury and Alexandra Baybutt on a unique integrative holistic approach to opera singing training and performance. MORE
My other academic work includes
Peer reviewing for CAET journal; Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices; Frontiers in Robotics and AI
Academic teaching / supervision / assessing
2023 – ongoing I teach the module Preparation for Performance for UCL on the BA Creative Arts and Humanities.
2019- ongoing I supervise, grade and give feedback to BA (level 6) dance, theatre and musical theatre students on their creative projects, papers and dissertations. Bird College/University of Greenwich (2019-22); Rose Bruford European Theatre Arts BA (2021-24); guest lecturer and examiner on the MA in Dance at the University of Lincoln (2020-22)
2021-22 External Examiner for the Open University & Sheffield College for the BA Drama and theatre arts.
2013-2014 I was an external supervisor to Maya Felixbrot during her MA in music composition at The Royal Conservatory of Music in the Hague, NL. As a CMA (Certified Laban Movement Analyst), I supported her deployment of Laban’s Effort theory within her research and practice.
2013-ongoing I assess and give feedback to both written and individual and group practical assessments on the Certification programmes in Laban/Bartenieff Movement System I contribute to (programmes recognised by ISMETA)
alexandrabaybutt.co.uk 