Ecosomatic

Awareness

“Ecosomatic practice is a sensory and poetic exploration in movement: it is a dance with the inner and outer landscapes, a return to perception that is at the same time a dive into the places of our territory.”

— Raffaele Rufo

Practicing Ecosomatic Awareness

Ecosomatic Awareness is a movement-based sensorial, relational, and socially engaged art practice researched by Raffaele Rufo (PhD) during over twenty years of experience across Europe, Senegal and Australia. Ecosomatic Awareness facilitates personal transformation and ecosocial (re-)generation through listening with earth, seeding human-nature reciprocity and learning the art of commoning. Through with-nessing, interpenetration and attunement, these processes evolve in a more-than-human partnership across the vegetal, animal and mineral worlds.

Engaging the experience of the embodied self as connected and continuous with an embodied nature requires exploring and affirming the value of movement and sensoriality as key gateways into knowing and being. Through ecosomatic practice we come to realise our awareness as an embodied relational process embedded in the radically larger (and smaller) movements of the earth. This experience of reciprocity opens up a deeper and broader perceptual ground to engage the relation between body and earth as a source of inspiration, a mode of cultural resistance and a gentle act of repair of the connective tissues of life and matter in their many forms.

Slow Study Course

Slow Study Course

The Slow Study Course on Ecosomatic Awareness is under construction. Contact us to receive updates.

New Resources and Opportunities

Tree Mourners: Ecosomatic Performance

Ecosomatic ensemble performance project for a dying forest of sea pines on the coast of Rome (Central Italy). First phase conceived for the medium of a short film.

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Genius Loci (CfP): International Symposium of Ecosomatic Arts

Focus: “Bodies, Places, Communities” - submissions of proposal is now open. 18-19 September 2025, Spazio Rossellini, Rome (in-person and online).

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New Website Section of Ecosomatics Videos

A video collection of ecosomatic dance and movement practices, workshops, residencies, performances and artistic research projects

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The Gift: Choreographies of Reciprocity for the Nonhuman and Matter

Ecosomatic workshop for dancers, actors and performers.
26 May 2025, Spazio Rossellini, (organised by Sharing in Roma independent artists platform)

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Ecosomatic Participatory Performance Project for Youths

Ecosomatic outdoors and site-specific workshops series for youth. 4-8 June 2025, Antimateria Theatre Festival, Teatro del Lido di Ostia (Rome)

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Decolonizing Perception: In-depth Interview on Ecosomatic Dance Practice

In-depth interview on the lived experience and evolving methods of ecosomatic dance practice and artistic research

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What is Ecosomatics?

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What is Ecosomatics? *

Ecosomatics (from “oikos,” home or habitat, and “soma,” the living body in its entirety) is a rapidly growing field of practices that is spreading internationally by integrating artistic, educational, holistic and therapeutic knowledge (geared primarily toward sensory experience, dance, choreography and performance) with ecological, social and cultural knowledge (geared toward community and land re-generation). Ecosomatic art practices are set to impact broader areas of society such as education, health, social work, urban planning, ecology, and culture.

  • Ecosomatics: Introduction

    EXPERIENCING BODY AND ENVIRONMENT AS MUTUAL EXTENSIONS

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  • Ecosomatic Dance Practice

    VEGETALIZING THE SENSES AND REAWAKENING THE ANIMAL BODY

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  • Ecosomatic Artistic Research

    HUMANS, TREES AND THE RECIPROCITY OF PERCEPTION

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Raffaele Rufo

I believe that the ecosomatic arts can work as a catalyst for ecological awareness and social responsiveness. This involves, first of all, a return to perception and the recognition of the wounds of our destructive cultural heritage. This is a necessary step towards (re-)gaining the collective ability to grieve for ecological losses and challenge the destructive consequences of colonial / capitalist / extractivist practices of ecosocial destruction and individual alienation.

“My work with movement, textual and audiovisual practices aims to reconfigure the relation with the nonhuman and matter by rediscovering the continuum between life and death and the ritualistic dimension of human experience, exploring the tension between the need to connect with roots and the drive to reach towards the unfamiliar and the unknown, and revaluing the interpenetration of urban, natural and archeological places and landscapes.”

“My long term goal is to create networks and platforms for exchange and to disseminate tools, processes and perspectives of eco-somatic embodiment which support the development of translocal communities of practice and collaborative ways of inhabiting the Earth with other beings and forms of life and with vibrant matter. I aim to promote the role of dancers, movers and other somatic and eco-embodied artists more as grassroots agents of ecological consciousness and cultural change.”