CONTEXT
INFLUENTIAL EXPERIENCE:
DANS MED DIN NABO / DANSEHALLERNE (2016)
TEACHING AT INTERNATIONAL SCHOOLS (2018-2025)
THE FLYING SEAGULLS / ASSITEJ NORWAY (2024)
ASSEMBLE THEATRE COLLECTIVE’S TEGNSPROGSPROJEKT (2023-2026)
RED NOSE EMERGENCY SMILES (2025-2026)
Empowering Collective Performing Arts: A Facilitator's Toolkit for Overcoming Language Barriers
Alice Presencer
Red Nose Artist Lab Research 2025-26
VIS OPEN CALL Application #15
I am a performing artist exploring voice and dance to challenge expressive norms. Having experienced relocation as a child, grappling with unfamiliar languages and a sense of being "othered," I recognise the profound significance of emotional expression as a universal language. This has led me to investigate this within my own creative endeavours, for example, My MFA research The Expressions of a Familiar Vessel (2023)examined the emotive potential of non-textual voice and dance. With my ongoing professional work and interests becoming more community-oriented, I now propose this project as a departure from my masters project, focusing on the pedagogical and practical elements of community facilitation. Through radical softness and humor, I aim to break barriers and foster connection.
Recently, I have been teaching international children and collaborating with deaf and hearing performers who do not share a common language. In the past, I have worked with marginalised communities - including immigrant children, refugees, and the deaf. Partaking in ASSITEJ Norway’s residency ‘Creative Aid’ (2024) was a catalyst for this research, where I attended a workshop with The Flying Seagulls, deepening my interest in the powers of community engagement. This then spurred me on to work with Red Nose as an artistic researcher for the artist lab titled ‘Collective Space and Boundaries’ looking into the intersection between culture, arts and health (2025).
Now, combining my work with these different groups, I am developing a toolkit. Through interactive performing arts workshops using movement, play, and sensory engagement, I will develop and test methods that encourage connection beyond spoken language. This research challenges society’s prescriptive, text-centric tendencies by advocating for the legibility of body language.
I aim to overcome language barriers and cultivate a sense of community through facilitating shared performing arts experiences. These collective processes can serve as a powerful tool for building community and expanding our understanding of non-textual relationships and connection.
By exploring what transpires in these settings, I hope to demonstrate the power of non-textual communication to bridge differences, challenge “othering,” and encourage inclusive spaces where diverse voices and forms of expression are celebrated.
I am compiling a collection of facilitation techniques that help build collective experiences and foster connection with tips on how to navigate language barriers and ensure comfortability for those involved. I wish to share these scores with other practitioners as an open-source, accessible resource to encourage inclusivity and disseminate the methods I develop and discover along the way.
This toolkit directly relates to my current practice. I teach dance to children who do not share a textual language and I am a movement director for a project involving both deaf and hearing performers. In these settings, I do not rely on traditional, text-based communication. Instead, I use movement, touch, gesture, and other non-verbal methods to facilitate understanding and collaboration. These ongoing relationships and environments will allow me to directly test and refine my preliminary question within my current practice.
POINTS OF REFERENCE:
- Olufemi, Lola. Experiments in Imagining Otherwise. London: Hajar Press, 2021.
- Clough, Patricia Ticineto, and Jean Halley, eds. The Affective Turn: Theorizing the Social. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007.
- Haraway, Donna. “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective.” Feminist Studies 14, no. 3 (1988): 575–599.
This project acknowledges the colonial dominance of English and the exclusionary tendencies of language-based structures.Living in a society where the embodied is largely suppressed underscores the importance of challenging existing power dynamics and examining the selective encouragement of textual communication styles. Inspired by Olufemi’s work ‘Experiments in Imagining Otherwise’ (2021) which confronts the colonial tendencies within the dominance of text in Western society, my work is fundamentally driven by a desire to establish trust in the legibility of bodily expression. By shifting the focus from textual fluency to embodied presence, I hope to create more accessible, equitable forms of cultural participation.
Power structures are present within groups, therefore it is vital to approach this process with an understanding of context, affect and situatedness. “The Affective Turn: Theorizing the Social” conveys how power operates through affect, moving beyond the traditional linguistic frameworks and focuses on how feelings circulate beyond language (2007). Similarly, Haraway’s “Situated Knowledges”(1988) demonstrates how our positionality—shaped by lived experiences, identities, and environments—contributes to and produces our knowledge . This is relevant because language skills are highly situational, and although someone may lack proficiency in a specific area, this does not reflect their overall knowledge or abilities in other domains.
As a facilitator, it is extremely important that I remain attuned to the emotional dynamics, as well as the affect and situational factors influencing the individuals within the group. Having contextual knowledge and using emotional intuition helps me to navigate the group processes. By adopting an emotionally intuitive approach, prioritising consent and safety, I strive to create a space where participants feel comfortable and supported. This also includes the right to withdraw. These principles are foundational in creating a respectful and ethical environment that facilitate meaningful, trust-based collective experiences.
Gibbs' Modes of Expression (2009)
MIMICRY
EMULATION
IMITATION
MIMESIS
(society exists in a cycle of affect and effect)
With these, facilitators can move beyond sole reliance on textual communication. As these modes can be used to supplement or clarify instructions.
* Here is one example of an instructional score, as this project continues I will expand upon the list of activity scores, write more scores and post video demonstrations when necessary.
---------------------->
Hatfield et Al's Emotional Contagion (2003)
"Synchrony of facial expressions, through vocalisations, postures and movements with those of another person"
"Encouraging a tendency to converge emotionally".
Looking at these outward displays of emotion, as they spread through the group helps the facilitator to guage how the experience is being recieved.
