Peer-reviewed Journal Articles and Essays

Rufo, Raffaele (2024, forthcoming), ‘Somatic Arts and Liveable Futures: Embodying Ecological Connections’, Lagoonscapes. Venice Journal of Environmental Humanities vol. 4(1).

Abstract: The article explores the role of the somatic arts in challenging the culture of separateness between humans and nature typical of Anthropocentrism with the aim to enhance the debate on how to grow liveable futures in the face of ecological disaster. I discuss the cultural conditions shaping the growing field of ecosomatics and evaluate the implications of ecosomatic practices as acts of grieving and of regeneration. I reflect on the possibility to activate our eco-consciousness through embodied practices of connection with nonhuman living beings and systems by awakening the neurobiological memory of the body. Natasha Myers’ concept of ‘Planthroposcene’ is mobilised as an example of how we can envision the emergence of embodied ways of ‘conspiring’ with (i.e., breathing with) other forms of life. Throughout the article the reader is invited to engage with some ecosomatic interactive processes offered as examples of how we can shift our apocalyptic perception of ecological losses.

Rufo, Raffaele (2023), ‘Humans, Trees, and the Intimacy of Movement: An Encounter with Eco-Somatic Practice’, European Journal of Ecological Psychology, vol. 8, pp. 88-113, special issue on ‘Embodiment and Ecopsychology’, http://ecopsychology-journal.eu/index.php.

Abstract: This essay takes the reader into a synesthetic landscape to explore the possibility of relating with trees as intimate companions of movement and becoming. David Abram's ecophenomenology of perception is brought into dialogue with Kimerer LaMothe's philosophy of dance and with other voices in the growing interdisciplinary field of ecosomatics. Based on the author's inquiries as dancer-researcher, encounters with trees are staged as slow improvisational rituals of listening and attunement. In opening the senses and the imagination to the presence of trees, ecosomatic practice exposes the porosity and permeability of bodily boundaries and reveals the possibility of a perceptual shift into a heightened experience of embodiment. We are not only touching, witnessing, and dancing with trees, we are also being touched, witnessed, and danced by them. In these in-between spaces the soma is reached sensorially by ecological wounds and dance is reclaimed as a healing force. (Download full document)

Rufo, Raffaele (2022), ‘Sensing with trees: Explorations in the reciprocity of perception’, VENTI Journal: Air, Experience, Aesthetics, vol. 2(2), special issue on ‘Senses’, https://www.venti-journal.com/Raffaele-rufo

Abstract: This essay weaves together reflexive discourse and conceptual discussion on the reciprocity of perception with textual, photographic, and audiovisual materials from the author’s somatic explorations in nature. Drawing on Natasha Myers’s studies of plant sensing and David Abram’s eco-phenomenology of perception, “sensing with trees” is engaged as a slow improvisational dance of listening and attunement through which the human sensorium is imbued with arboreal attention and trees are recognized and honored as intimate companions of becoming. In opening the senses and the imagination to the bodily earthly ground, reciprocity emerges through the awareness of a deep perceptual shift: we are not only sensing and witnessing trees, we are also being sensed and witnessed by them. (Download full document)

Rufo, Raffaele (2020), ‘(Re-)engaging touch as a tango dancer: An experimental framework for kinaesthetic listening’, Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices, 12:2, pp. 207–228, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1386/jdsp_00024_1.

Abstract: This article explores how the felt sense of touch, as engaged through the enabling constraints of the Argentine tango duet, can facilitate an experience of kinaesthetic listening in the spaces emerging between the dancer’s inside and outside worlds. The author’s habitual perception of giving and receiving touch as a tango dancer is destabilized by framing a series of somatic experiences in settings where customary tango conditions and assumptions do not apply. This involves experimenting with methods and tools of inquiry borrowed from contact and contemporary dance improvisation. The article argues that when practiced as a form of kinaesthetic listening, tango is conducive to a process of sensing and feeling together. In this process, it becomes possible to be touched both physically and affectively by the movement impulses negotiated between the partners. This possibility unsettles the reductive idea of one’s body as a separate entity preceding the encounter. (Download full document)

Rufo, Raffaele (2017), ‘Crosswalk: Performing the city as a learning experience’, Journal of Public Pedagogies, vol. 2, pp. 42-53, DOI: https://doi.org/10.15209/jpp.1127.

Abstract: Crosswalk is a site-responsive performance conducted in the middle of a pedestrian crossing in the inner streets of Melbourne and exposed in the homonymous video attached to this article. The performance – an experiment with the duet dance form of Argentine tango – emerged out of a practice-based process of inquiry. My failed attempt to find my tango in the city while finding my place in the city through the tango becomes a drive to explore the nexus between learning and the experience of publicness and defuse the rationalist reliance on the isolated cognitive individual as the key pedagogical agent and target. I argue that, in Crosswalk tango worked (or could have worked) as a reverse public pedagogy through somatic connection not only between dance partners but also with the broader environment. Becoming vulnerable to the otherness of the outside world is one way of promoting diversity and fostering plurality. (Download full document)

Video-based peer-reviewed Journal Articles and Essays

Rufo, Raffaele & Weig, Doerte (2022), “Ecologies of Embodiment: Co-Editing With the More-Than-Human,” Journal of Embodied Research 5(2): 1 (20:09), Special issue on ‘Ecologies of Embodiment’. DOI: https://doi.org/10.16995/jer.10129. (View and download pdf)

Looking for ways to address and attune to the urgent ecological crises of our age, this special issue problematizes the notion of the “more-than-human” and explores the nexus between ecology and embodiment across different artistic disciplines and traditions of embodied research. The editorial evokes our ecosomatic processes of co-editing with the more-than-human, and we offer a poetic commentary alongside video excerpts from the authors’ works, which weaves connective tissues between the works. We conclude by discussing ecologies of embodiment as a bodily felt and cognitively thought generative space between certainty and uncertainty, knowing and not-knowing, sensing and naming.

Rufo, R, Ben-David, A, Cary, CA, Borland-Sentinella, D, Phillips, LG, Owen, A, Fari, NS and AmberBeckyCreative (2020), ‘Embodiment and Social Distancing: Practices’, Journal of Embodied Research, 3(2): 3 (27:50), DOI: https://doi.org/10.16995/jer.66.

Abstract: This video essay reengages the experience of leading a dance improvisation practice on Zoom during the Coronavirus lockdown. As a tango and contact improvisation dancer confined at home, I felt urged to ask: what can be learnt about embodied connection when we are not allowed to physically touch each other? The practice was run weekly for two months and involved exploring with participants the possibilities for dancing both with objects—in the confinement of the domestic space—and with distant partners—through the mediation of the screen. The explorations were guided by proposing tools and strategies of somatic listening and movement improvisation. Documentation and commentary are interwoven by combining the author’s voice, as both facilitator and narrator, with the work of other authors on the relation between connection and touch. The video essay reveals the contradictory workings of video conferencing as a window for sharing embodied practices. The possibility of feeling in the same space with distant partners cannot be disentangled from the feeling of isolation and from the physical memories of touching another human body. (Download full document)

Peer-reviewed Chapters in Book Collections

Rufo, Raffaele and Or, Yari (2023). Dekolonisierung der Wahrnehmung: Den Verlust ökologischer Verbindungen durch ökosomatische Tanzpraxis betrauern (Decolonizing Perception: Mourning the Loss of Ecological Connections through Ecosomatic Dance Practice). In: Or, Yari. (Ed.), Praxisbuch Transformation dekolonisieren. Ökosozialer Wandel in der sozialen und pädagogischen Praxis (Decolonizing Transformation: Ecosocial Transformation in Social and Educational Practice). pp. 194-216, Beltz Juventa: Weinheim. ISBN: 978-3-7799-7310-2 Print / 978-3-7799-7311-9 EBook (pdf). (You can find the free audiobook here)

Abstract: In this in-depth interview with Prof. Yari Or, artist-scholar Raffaele Rufo traces the autobiographical and philosophical background of his eco-somatic dance practice and discusses its pedagogical and socio-cultural implications for a world in deep ecological crises and a humanity afflicted by the inability to grieve for the loss of ecological connections. (Download full document)

Rufo, Raffaele (2020), ‘Touch in tango as a form of contagion’, in M Sarco-Thomas (ed), Thinking touch in partnering and contact improvisation: Philosophy, pedagogy, practice, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 129-148, ISBN: 1-5275-5363-9.

Abstract: The chapter discusses how the felt sense of touch involved in dancing Argentine tango can be explored and understood as a kinaesthetic experience of contagion. Rather than taking for granted the blueprint of the tango duet as a starting point—two people standing in front of each other, ready to dance together in an intimate space, focusing on touch—the focus shifts to exploring how the constraints of the form help the dancers engage with each other’s feelings and sensations. This involves experimenting with a range of perceptual modes and practical tools and strategies of movement inquiry borrowed from contemporary and contact dance improvisation. The research conducted in the studio reveals how the transmission of movement impulses through the medium of touch activates the porous and permeable bodily boundaries between the dancers. This in-between is described as a space of uncertainty and vulnerability which cuts across the perceived gap between inside and outside. Contagion is generally intended as the process by which our bodies carry germs, bacteria and viruses that can infect other bodies through touch; used metaphorically, this concept arguably extends to include the possibility that our sensations and feelings also affect others, specifically other dancers, both physically and affectively. (Download full document)

Public Lectures, Performance Lectures, Talks, Speeches, Conferences and Workshops

Rufo, Raffaele in conversation with Jessica Cudney and Michelle Rozek (2024, forthcoming), ‘Ecosomatic Connectedness and Cultural Regeneration’, artist talk presented at the EcoSomatics Conversation Series: Environmental Awareness through Movement on 19 June 2024. Hosted by the Centre for Interdisciplinary Performative Arts, Royal Birmingham Conservatoire (Birmingham City University), in collaboration with Birmingham Dance Network.

Abstract: In progress.

Rufo, Raffaele (2024), ‘Ecosomatic Seeds of Reciprocity: The Perceptual Roots of Ecological Crises’, public lecture presented at the Italian Cultural Institute of Bucharest, 26 March 2024. Part of the ROOTS Dance Residency Project of AREAL Space for Choreographic Development (https://arealcolectiv.ro/en) in partnership with "I.L. Caragiale" National University of Theatrical and Cinematographic Arts. Funded by the Romanian National Cultural Fund Administration (https://www.afcn.ro).

Abstract: This lecture explores how, in these times of ecological crisis and separation, the eco-somatic arts are growing as a field in which the practice of dance, choreography, somatic therapy and education, theatre and performance interpenetrates ecological and socio-political thinking to express and articulate the connective potential of embodied experience. The focus is on eco-somatic approaches to perception through movement. I describe how perception unfolds as a synesthetic experience of reciprocity through which we can rediscover the ancient resemblance and commonality with matter and the nonhuman. I draw attention to how seeding reciprocity starts from confronting the tragedy of our destructive cultural heritage and regaining the ability to grieve for ecological losses. I conclude by asking what seeds of reciprocity might take root if we engage artistic processes as collaborative acts of repair. The lecture includes documentary video material and field reflections from the ‘La Selva’ International Ecological Arts and Eco-Somatic Residency that took place in Rome in October 2023 with the participation of forty leading eco-embodied artists and educators from around the world.

Listen to this lecture:

Rufo, Raffaele (2023), ‘La Selva International Residency Introductory Speech’, delivered at La Selva International Ecological Arts and Eco-Somatic Residency, organised by Intercultural Roots, Teatro del Lido di Ostia, Humanitas Mundi Teatro, Ostia Antica Archaeological Park, Museo Digitale Diffuso del Delta del Tevere, Asilo nel Bosco & Piccola Polis, and Centro Habitat Mediterraneo Oasi LIPU, , 5-8 October 2023.

Abstract: Introductory speech to La Selva International Ecological Arts and Eco-Somatic Residency delivered by Raffaele Rufo in Rome on 5 October 2023. The speech positions the event culturally and historically in the context of Western colonial history and foregrounds the need to go back to the ancient Greek and Roman roots of the great socio-ecological challenges of our time. (Download full document)

Rufo, Raffaele (2022), ‘Somatic Arts and Liveable Futures: (Re-)Embodying Ecological Connections’, interactive public lecture, part of the programme (Re-)Gaining Ecological Futures - Ecosomatics, curated by Berit Fischer and funded by Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Europa, 23-25 June 2022, Floating University Berlin. (The lecture was broadcasted live by THF radio Berlin)

Abstract: This interactive lecture explores the role of the somatic arts in challenging the culture of separateness between humans and nature typical of Anthropocentrism. My aim is to enhance the debate on how to grow liveable futures in the face of ecological disaster. We will reflect on the possibility to re-activate our eco-consciousness through embodied practices of interconnectedness with nonhuman living beings and systems. We will discuss the cultural conditions shaping the growing field of ecosomatic practices and evaluate their political implications as acts of caring, collaboration and critical thinking. I will foreground the importance of awakening the neurobiological memory of the body and grieving for anthropogenic ecological losses. Natasha Myers’ concept of ‘Planthroposcene’ will be mobilised as an example of how we can envision the (re-)emergence of embodied ways of ‘conspiring’ with other forms of life. During the lecture the audience will be guided through some experiential processes of awareness through movement that can shift our apocalyptic perception of ecological crises. (Download full document)

Listen to this lecture:

Rufo, Raffaele (2022), ‘Eco-Spirituality Through Dance: Embodying Reciprocity with Earth’, eco-somatic dance workshop, part of the event Spirituality and Ecology, ‘The Ecological Conversion: A Workshop in Taizé (France)’, 10-13 November 2022, European Laudato Si’ Alliance (ELSIA).

Abstract: Ecological conversion is not only a mental conversion, it is also a bodily conversion. To restore our relationship with the earthly ground within which we are radically embedded we need to restore our relationship with our bodies in their living wholeness - our bodies experienced through direct sensory perception as a source of joy, connection and knowledge. This eco-somatic workshop offers participants a gentle pathway into simple processes, tools and perspectives for embodying reciprocity with earth (visit project page).

Interviews and talks

Rufo, Raffaele (2022), ContacTango: An Interview with Raffaele Rufo, in Aurora Ventruto, "ContacTango: riflessione ed analisi sulla contaminazione tra Contact Improvisation e Tango Argentino. Una proposta metodologica per la formazione del danzatore contemporaneo", Honours Thesis, Italian National Dance Academy, June 2022.

Abstract: A reflection and analysis (in Italian) on the connections and contaminations between Argentine Tango and Contact Improvisation in Dr Raffaele Rufo’s dance research and practice. (Download full document)

Rufo, Raffaele (2018, August), ‘Sensuous Contagion’, Deakin University, Faculty of Arts and Education, 3 Minute PhD Thesis Competition, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EV51tyUjMhk.

Abstract: This talk, based on my practice-led PhD project, was presented at the 2018 3 Minute Thesis competition Deakin University finals. (Download full document)

Rufo, Raffaele (2018, February), ‘The Feeling that is Danced’, Deakin University, Faculty of Arts and Education, 3 Minute PhD Thesis Competition, https://www.deakin.edu.au/students/research/three-minute-thesis-competition.

Abstract: This talk, based on my practice-led PhD project, was awarded the 1st place at the 3 Minute Thesis Competition run by the Faculty of Arts and Education at Deakin University in February 2018. (Download full document)

Calls for Proposals and for Participants

Rufo, Raffaele and Kampe, Thomas (2023), ‘Call for Participants: 'La Selva' International Ecological Arts and Eco-Somatic Residency', in partnership with Intercultural Roots (London) and Humanitas Mundi Teatro (Rome) and with the local support of Teatro del Lido (Teatri di Roma), Musel Digitale Diffuso del Delta del Tevere, and Parco Archeologico di Ostia Antica, Rome 5-8 October 2023

This bilingual ‘Human-Nature Connect’ residency (English/Italian) aims to bring together international and Italian practitioners with an interest in embodied, experimental and critical approaches to environmental and archaeological conservation and arts practices. ‘La Selva’ - a Latin expression from Ovidio's Metamorphosis  - indicates and evokes the co-presence of humans and forests and other species of the living world. The residency aims to curate a re-discovering of the deep knowledge of ecological connection within the human experience, as a necessary process of care, re-connection and cultural resistance. It offers a forum for embodied practices concerned with reconfiguring our relation of ‘being with’ body and earth and being human and nature. ‘La Selva’ forms an inspiration for working with nature as an agentic force of somatic experience and artistic processes as gentle acts of repair. (Download full document)

Rufo, Raffaele and Weig, Doerte (2021), ‘Call for Proposals: Ecologies of Embodiment', Special Issue of the Journal of Embodied Research, vol. 5(2) and 6(2), to be published in 2022 and 2023, https://jer.openlibhums.org/news/499

For this special issue of the Journal of Embodied Research we invite contributions that explore how the experience of embodiment is embedded within the larger body of the earth. We call artists and researchers of interdisciplinary practices to propose works that weave threads between somatic, audiovisual and textual ways of knowing. We are curious about proposals that document and articulate the shifts of perception unfolding when we relinquish control and attune our human senses to the sentient presence of plants and the many other nonhuman living systems. Contributors are encouraged to engage the inquiry as a process of co-composing with the more-than-human and to reflect on how our relationship with other forms of life can be reconfigured in accountable and collaborative ways. (Download full document)

PhD thesis

Rufo, Raffaele (2020), ‘Re-engaging Touch in Tango: An Experiential Framework for Kinesthetic Listening’, Deakin University, School of Communication and Creative Arts.

Abstract: This study places Argentine tango dancing within the field of contemporary dance improvisation. It proposes a critical somatic framework to extend the practice and understanding of tango as a form of kinesthetic listening. New insights are offered on the feeling of touch and how this is transmitted between the dancers. (Download full document)

Works in Progress

Rufo, Raffaele (2021), ‘Duets with trees: Eco-somatic pathways into the reciprocity of perception’, submitted to Emergence Magazine (https://emergencemagazine.org).

Abstract: Addressing the ecological crisis as a crisis of embodiment, this essay explores how we can displace the assumed separation between human and arboreal life to embrace the possibility of relating with trees as intimate companions of movement and becoming. The essay is based on the author’s embodied research and includes text and photos from his movement practice in nature. Duets with trees are proposed as eco-somatic pathways through which the readers as listeners and participants can experiment with a directly felt sense of the more-than-human. Audio-recorded explorations are mobilized as practical resources for engaging the perceptual window between body and earth with a spirit of co-creation and empowerment. The essay argues that an intimate encounter with trees cannot be constructed. What we can do is work on slow processes of listening and attunement by opening our senses and imagination to arboreal livingness and responsiveness. Reciprocity emerges as the awareness of an animistic shift of perception: we are not only sensing and witnessing trees; we are also being sensed and witnessed by them. When we recognize and value the profound need to dance underpinning our return to nature, we discover that trees are more wounded than we are and that they are not there only to heal us. They are there also to find out about our history of separation and alienation and to receive our healing. Earth-body practices can nurture mutual healing and instigate ecological consciousness by seeking a reciprocity that bears witness to the wounds of civilization while suspending the will to transcend them through sensorial experience. (Download full document)

Rufo, Raffaele (2021), ‘Danced by the tree: Explorations in the Reciprocity of Perception’, submitted to the Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices, special issue on ‘Somatics and Eco-consciousness’.

Abstract: Positioned within the growing field of ecosomatics, the article engages somatic-improvisational movement as a perceptual window into the more-than-human world and foregrounds the role of language in passing through this window. Based on a process of movement explorations in nature, it proposes a phenomenological approach to perception as an experience of reciprocity between sensing and being sensed. The encounter between the body and the tree is described and evoked as a dance which decentres human agency and allows us to be reached and changed kinaesthetically by the carnal presence of nature. The experience of being ‘danced by the tree’ is conceptualized as a mode of ecological embodiment. It is hope that the article will inspire other practitioners and researchers to reclaim the connecting power of embodiment and become grassroots agents of ecological consciousness. (Download full document)