Interbodied: Practice-based research exploring human-object interactions through dance / Panagiota Pantelidou (2025)

This research investigates how objects can act as active participants in choreographic processes, informing how they can shape movement material and performance dynamics alongside human bodies. It combines theory with practice-based exploration, inviting both the mind and body to explore relational possibilities between dancers and everyday materials. Rather than treating objects as passive props, the work positions them as responsive, lively collaborators in the choreographic process. The methodology is grounded in iterative, studio-based practice. Six female dancers with diverse movement backgrounds participated in improvisational and task-based explorations using everyday items including chairs, tables, plastic bottles, and trash bags. Each rehearsal followed a cycle of exploration, documentation, and reflection, allowing theoretical concepts to emerge through embodied experience. Improvisational tasks encouraged dancers to imagine objects as dynamic partners with assigned personalities that foster new modes of interaction. Over time, dancers learned to treat objects as coperformers, shifting attention, intention, and movement quality. A shared framework “moving the, from, with, like” articulated four relational approaches between dancers and objects: leading the object, responding to its qualities, creating mutual influence, and embodying the object itself. This enabled nuanced interactions, allowing dancers to explore the objects’ agency. Objects were treated as protagonists, particularly plastic bottles, which became the primary focus of the staged work. Dancers developed bonds and cared for these objects, intending to influence both movement quality and audience perception. Interbodied (2025), performed at Trinity Laban Theatre, is a 17-minute choreographic work structured in two distinct sections. The first section opens with a composed still image of bottles and bodies, emphasizing the objects’ presence and allowing improvisational interactions to unfold. Low to the ground movements blur distinctions between dancers and objects, supported by a meditative soundscape and clear, bright lighting that foregrounds materiality. The second section shifts to a more composed, human-centered movement vocabulary drawn by contemporary techniques such as release and floorwork. Faster tempos, solos, duets, and ensemble lifts retain traces of the objects’ qualities, reflecting heightened physical intensity. The Bottled Human figure appears at the finale, emphasizing equality between human and non-human participants and reinforcing the objects’ agency. Analysis revealed that interaction with objects generates movement that is both unfamiliar and rich, revealing new choreographic possibilities. Dancers’ improvisations with bottles produced novel geometries and qualities that required adjustment and rehearsal to 3 integrate effectively. Maintaining playfulness, curiosity, and attentive care was crucial for sustaining the object’s agency. I intended for the audience perception to shift accordingly: by treating objects with care and purpose dancers drew attention to them as active participants, creating a dynamic shared focus on stage. The movement carried particular intention that was created from experimenting with objects. Choosing to leave the piece open-ended, without a fixed narrative, emphasized the exploratory nature of the work and highlighted choreography as a practice of movement-making itself. This research demonstrates that my methods of working with objects can shape movement material, performance dynamics, and audience engagement. Future investigations could explore how sensory qualities, size, texture, and weight can influence movement generation and choreographic decisions, extending even further the concept of objects as active collaborators. Working with diverse materials could create novel movements and challenge traditional hierarchies in dance, positioning objects and human bodies as co-creative partners in performance.