Dancing Brains and Thinking Bodies

Across history, geography, cultures and the lifespan, humans express themselves through dance. Recent advances in human neuroscience are enabling artists and scientists to work together to explore the biological foundations of how we learn to dance, and why it can bring us such intense pleasure.

Join us for a hybrid lecture/performance/participation event where you’ll be invited to join the presenters for an on-your-feet exploration of the why and how of dance. As well as seeking audience participation in dancing and learning new grooves, the team – including dancers, neuroscientists, and a professional screen producer – will call for volunteers to wear mobile brain imaging devices. Discover how different patterns of brain activity in dancers correspond to an observer’s experience of watching dance, in real time, and in engaging with what it means to move one’s body, in a room, with others.

Imagine this scenario… You walk into a room and put on a headband that can ‘read your mind’. A dancer invites you to dance, and you follow his body as he traces slow, fluid arcs through space to a percussive soundtrack infiltrated with the calls of native birds. As your brain coordinates your body to move, to imitate, to dance, the large screen over the stage comes alive with its own choreography of colourful traces reading out activity from your visual cortex and your motor cortex. Thanks to small recording electrodes, the size and shape of $2 coins, embedded in the headband, you brain activity can be broadcast onto the big screen, and we, as observers, get the first glimpse of what’s going on beneath your skull and between your ears as you learn new dance moves.

This feel-good and informative session will get your body moving and your brain firing on all cylinders.