Collective Improvisation: Belonging Beyond Identity
Publication information:
Abstract
Collective improvisation (theatre, circle songs, and contact improvisation) can be read as a contemporary spiritual technology: a disciplined way of listening, consenting, and co-creating in uncertainty. This talk explores how improvisational forms generate belonging as an event, not an identity category: a felt “we” that emerges through attention, risk, and repair. I focus on how voice, narrative, and touch function as micro-rituals of relation, practices that hold difference while loosening the grip of fixed roles.
Presenter Biography
Dr. Swan Dao is the founder of the Institute of Devotional Arts, which design formation-based learning at the intersection of expressive arts, philosophy, and systems change. Swan holds an MA from the University of Chicago Divinity School and PhD from the University of Cambridge.