Movement and Music Optimizes Vital Energy (MOVE) Lab
From an African and indigenous world-sense, music and dance are inseparable. At the foundation of my own research is the examination of rhythm. For all humans, our self-perception is informed by our sense perceptions of our entire body — through breath, pulse, pressure and weight. Our humanity becomes more complex as it entangles with others through the exchange of language and other kinetic gestures.
Our perceptual world is made of many things at the same time, like an ensemble of musicians all playing different instruments in a synchronized manner. This subject of polyrhythm has bold implications for the study of complex phenomena like climate change and social justice, and this is what we are exploring in the Movement and Music Optimizes Vital Energy (MOVE) Lab.
As Director of the lab and as a Professor of Dance and Affiliate Faculty with the School of Medicine’s LEAD-ABC program, I am interested in improvisation both in dance as it is expressed through and within music — as shared, intertwined, human virtuosic phenomenon that can lead to human flourishing.
I deepened my understanding of this when I invented Embodiology®, a praxis arising from ancestral, corporeally held West African performance practices that are integral to life in rural settings in Ghana and other parts of Africa. I hold this practice with reverence to the living practice that it draws upon and seek to remain a cultural custodian that centers justice and recognition. MOVE Lab has built an interdisciplinary network of over 30 researchers that come from fields such as dance, music, medicine, neuroscience, psychology, musicology, and urban planning. At the MOVE LAB, we are exploring kinaesonic practices scientifically through interdisciplinary methods and integrative teams. What does this look like?
- Mentoring and collaborating with undergraduate students who are preparing for careers at the intersections of music, dance, and science to generate their own interdisciplinary research projects.
- Continuing the examination of the positive impact of creative movement practices on mental health, building upon the Susan Samueli Institute’s pilot funding of Students who are Resilient, Empowered and Moving (STREAM) with Dr. Dawn Bounds from the School of Nursing. Key findings from this program showed that Embodiology practices positively impact PTSD.
- Seeking to take an active role in bringing Social Prescribing into the USA healthcare system and especially bringing practices of African and indigenous/aboriginal foundation into the integrative space.
- Creating performances in live and virtual spaces to examine the effects of integrative experiences of dance and music on their wellbeing
- Hosting and taking part in summits, panels, and other large convenings with philosophers, scholars, artists, and scientists who are at the forefront of proposing innovative ways of understanding polycrises through the lenses of psychiatry, dance, climate change, ecological justice, AI, neuroscience, and social activism
- Leading workshops with those both familiar and unfamiliar with the arts that help participants make connections to their embodied knowledges. To date, this has included workshops with the UCI School of Medicine, the American College of Osteopathic Family Physicians 2024 Conference, and Accelerating Buffalo’s Opportunity to Upsurge Transformation (ABOUT-IT).
- Supporting a student-led a podcast series interviewing scholars and practitioners who work across dance, music, and science
- Joining research collaborations across the UCI Campus, including with faculty in Earth System Science, Chemistry, Urban and Environmental Planning, and Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, and with the Research Justice Shop
We are deeply committed to learning and creating across silos, which reflect the polyrhythms of the world we actually live in. We welcome you warmly to continue to stay in touch and learn together with the MOVE Lab.
Lab Location: Dance Department, UCI Claire Trevor School of the Arts
