Ecosomatic Awareness
Ecosomatic awareness is a sensory and poetic exploration in movement, a dance with our inner and outer ecologies that returns us to perception and opens pathways for facing the crises of our time. It is an embodied inquiry into the places of the territory we inhabit, cultivating relational presence within the wider web of life. As a practice-portal, it invites listening, attunement, and becoming-with the more-than-human, offering transformative ways of thinking, feeling, and acting through embodied participation.
— Raffaele Rufo (PhD)
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.
Listen up.
An short interview for ‘In the Mouth of the Wolf’ Podcast on Ecosomatics and the Genius Loci Symposium: Dr Raffaele Rufo talks with Marco Adda about how ecosomatics can become not only a personal practice, but also a cultural and ecological one: a way of inhabiting the world that weaves together care, creativity, and awareness.
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 (Online)
Slow Study Course (Online)
Explore the Pages
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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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Ecosomatics: Roots & Trajectories
URBAN ENCOUNTERS AND BROADER ALLIANCES FOR LIVEABLE FUTURES
Recent Projects
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.
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).
New Website Section of Ecosomatics Videos
A video collection of ecosomatic dance and movement practices, workshops, residencies, performances and artistic research projects
The Gift: Choreographies of Reciprocity with the Nonhuman and Matter
Ecosomatic workshop for dancers, actors and performers.
26 May 2025, Spazio Rossellini, (organised by Sharing in Roma independent artists platform)
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 with focus on positionality and situeteddness.
