About The Institute
The Institute of the Study of Somatic Communication (ISSC), is an organization initiated by a dancer, Nita Little, and an anthropologist, Amanda Concha–Holmes, to enrich human relational practices.
The ISSC has expanded to a collective of research laboratories populated by dancer/researchers working in ensemble modalities, each with skills in physical/attentional practices of dance improvisation and Contact Improvisation.
As of March 2020, the dance ensembles, called CoLaboratories (CoLabs), form a research network across seven cities located in five countries internationally. The network is growing with the purpose to span numerous nations and cultures, exceeding its origins and inviting cultural complexity and diversity.
The ISSC is organized in collaboration with experts in research practices across the sciences and humanities including but not limited to anthropology, cognitive science, neuroscience, neuropsychology, and mathematics. The work of these cross-cultural and multidisciplinary researchers affords new knowledge, and expansion in the application of skills in somatic communication.
“My dream is for dancers to become valuable for what they can do, not just the show they can put on”
Nita Little
Somatic Communication:
Somatic communication describes actions of intelligent exchange, (e.g. coordination, coherent agreement/disagreement, and creative problem solving) organized by bodyminds at play in the world, functioning both as individuals and as entangled and inseparable from their objects of concern, which, through operations of bodily based attention in motion, make sense, together.
PURPOSE:
Our shared purpose is trifold. First, it is to expand human capacities for interpersonal and group resonance and coordination through advancing expertise in somatic communication within human social systems and between the human and the non-human. We call this “relational intelligence” not least because the quality of our relations determines the quality of our communication and vice-versa. This is, therefore, as much a study of relational practices as it is of communication.
Secondly, it is to encourage, advance and rethink the strength and breadth of embodied attention for individuals and groups at a time when attention spans and skills have been coopted by both the marketplace and the digital world. Cultures need explicit skills of attention in order to remain “in touch” with one another and the wild worlds of nature.
Thirdly, it is to support and make clear the value and significance to the human condition of embodied knowledge that is emergent through dancer and other mindbody research practices. Dancers can come to identify the as-yet- unarticulated experience within and beyond their physical form which researchers from other disciplines have not the skills to recognize and therefore miss. Thus, dancers need to research dancers in order to explicate these critically important nuances.
It should be noted that ISSC dancers research in improvisational ensembles utilizing organizing scores which frame their attention but does not regulate outcomes nor articulate specific actions, events, or relationships. Dancers are responsible in each immediate instance for the formation and quality of their relationships and for the composition of events that is subsequent to them. These relationships expose inter-dancer communication. Unlike other research subjects, dancers have the advantage of being able to be not only the subject but also the generator of the object of research which gives them the significant traction of in-sight.