PETER, dance with... – Details, episodes & analysis

This episode stays with improvisation and turns attention toward call and response, answering movement with movement. Rather than imagining improvisation as something that happens in isolation, the session proposes that dancing is always in relationship: to gravity, to the floor, to sound, to space, and to the presence or potential presence of others.

The episode explores different ways of responding. You might copy a movement, counter it, ignore it, or add to it. Copying is framed not as repetition but as response, since no movement is ever truly the same. Ignoring is also treated as a meaningful response, one that creates tension and awareness through distance rather than alignment.

A series of practical approaches are offered. You are invited to respond to music, to silence, and to the ambient sounds of the room, using rhythm, breath, and pulse as calls to move with, against, or alongside. Another prompt asks you to create a movement and then respond to it as if it were made by someone else, allowing pause and stillness to sharpen the identity of each response.

For those working with others, the episode suggests working in pairs or groups, responding to multiple bodies and movements. For those working alone, attention is placed on imagination, timing, and the use of pause as an active part of call and response.

The episode closes with an assignment: record a short improvisation, return to it after a few days, and improvise a response to the recording. This opens questions about what it means to answer rather than continue, when response becomes imitation, and whether a response can disagree.

Dance workshopExplore, imagine, move.

A companion series to PETER, dance with. These short audio workshops invite you to explore dance through imagination, movement, and curiosity. A space to rethink what dance can be, anywhere, for anyone.

To listen to the workshops: https://stillpeter.com/peter-audio-dance-workshop/

Music leaning by mobygratis

Dance Reflections is a weekly Friday podcast with Peter Mills and Yari Stilo, centred on conversation, shared practice, and taking time to look back in order to think forward. The series reflects on recent episodes, past experiences, and ongoing questions around dance, life, and practice. Through talking, occasionally dancing, and revisiting shared histories, Dance Reflections creates a regular space for continuity, response, and staying in contact across distance.

Dance Reflections sits alongside two other podcast series:PETER, dance with…, released every third Monday, where Peter invites a guest to dance one of their practices  and reflect on it together; and A Day In Dance with… where Peter and Yari reflect with a guest about a day in dance, and DANCE WORKSHOP, released on the Mondays in between, a series of short audio workshops exploring dance through imagination, movement, and curiosity.Watch videos of all Dance Reflections Episodes here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5iebzO4vouz_45v7u7SeYn6fpgp7uN2m

You can find more about all of Peter’s work at:https://stillpeter.com/

Listen to the other podcast series here:PETER, dance with…https://stillpeter.com/peter-dance-with-podcast/

DANCE WORKSHOPhttps://stillpeter.com/peter-audio-dance-workshop/

Music empty five by mobygratis

In this episode, we turn explicitly to research and recognise that we have, in fact, been researching all along.

The workshop explores multiple ways research operates within dance practice: researching by watching dance in performances, studios, streets, screens, and archives; researching through taking classes and experiencing different aesthetics, techniques, and pedagogical approaches; researching through movement research, understood as open exploration through doing, often overlapping with improvisation; and researching for creation, where texts, images, stories, politics, and contexts become material for choreographic work.

From there, the episode introduces artistic research as a distinct but still-emerging field. Artistic research is framed as a way of thinking through making, where practice is not an illustration of knowledge but a method of producing it. The artwork, process, and reflection form a single field of inquiry, and questions are asked not only with words, but through bodies, materials, time, and attention. What is discovered may remain situated, embodied, sensorial, and resistant to generalisation. The episode briefly situates artistic research historically, noting its relatively recent institutional emergence through PhD programmes in the arts in the 1990s.

The episode then unfolds through three open assignments:

1. Research a dance aesthetic or style Investigate a specific aesthetic through watching, reading, taking classes, or speaking with practitioners. Consider its history, imagery, context, and social or political conditions, then use this research as a starting point to create a dance. The outcome may be set or improvised, brief or extended, and should reflect on how different research methods shape the resulting choreography.

2. Research anatomy and bodily function Drawing on concerns of care, safety, and risk, this task focuses on researching a specific anatomical function or bodily system. Using critical sources from dance science, anatomy, and movement research, develop a warm-up, cool-down, improvisation, score, or choreography grounded in functional and safe practice. The episode reflects on how ideas of “correct” posture and healthy movement are historically, culturally, and scientifically unstable.

3. Research a non-dance topic Investigate a theme, person, story, place, image, or social situation not directly related to dance, such as people-watching, a character from a film, or a personal obsession. Use this research as material to generate a dance, allowing non-dance knowledge to shape movement qualities, structures, and staging.

The episode concludes by returning to research as an ongoing attitude rather than a fixed method. It reflects on autonomy, intuition, and criticality, arguing that intuition and research are not opposites. Research can also mean looking back at what we intuitively do, documenting it, analysing it, and learning from it. Artistic research is framed as an epistemic critique, challenging what counts as knowledge, who is allowed to produce it, and which forms of knowing are valued, including embodied, affective, collective, and non-verbal knowledge.

Rather than closing questions down, research is presented as a way of deepening complexity, increasing agency, and expanding the field of what dance can know and do.

Keep dancing. Keep researching. Reflect on how research shapes your practice.

Dance Reflections is a weekly Friday podcast with Peter Mills and Yari Stilo, centred on conversation, shared practice, and taking time to look back in order to think forward. The series reflects on recent episodes, past experiences, and ongoing questions around dance, life, and practice. Through talking, occasionally dancing, and revisiting shared histories, Dance Reflections creates a regular space for continuity, response, and staying in contact across distance.

Dance Reflections sits alongside two other podcast series:PETER, dance with…, released every third Monday, where Peter invites a guest to dance one of their practices and reflect on it together; and DANCE WORKSHOP, released on the Mondays in between, a series of short audio workshops exploring dance through imagination, movement, and curiosity.Watch videos of all Dance Reflections Episodes here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5iebzO4vouz_45v7u7SeYn6fpgp7uN2m

You can find more about all of Peter’s work at:https://stillpeter.com/

Listen to the other podcast series here:PETER, dance with…https://stillpeter.com/peter-dance-with-podcast/

DANCE WORKSHOPhttps://stillpeter.com/peter-audio-dance-workshop/

Music empty five by mobygratis

This workshop explores care, safety, and risk as choreographic conditions that shape how dance becomes possible. Rather than treating safety as a fixed set of rules, the episode considers care as an ongoing responsibility that is continuously negotiated within physical, emotional, and social contexts.

The session begins by reflecting on how the word dance itself creates invitations and expectations, and how different dance spaces specify what kinds of movement are allowed, valued, or considered safe. From this starting point, the workshop asks how care operates when dance appears outside formal stages and studios, and how responsibility is cultivated both alone and with others.

Listeners are invited to map the edges of their dancing by moving toward, but not crossing, their physical, emotional, and attentional limits. This practice focuses on noticing where risk, safety, and care begin to show their necessity, and how these boundaries shift depending on context and condition.

The workshop then introduces a central question: are you caring for the dance, or for the dancer? Through movement, participants explore what the dance might need in a given moment, less intensity, more time, a pause, or an ending, and how choreography might change in response to the dancer rather than asking the dancer to conform to a fixed form.

Further explorations examine the relationship between safety and unsafety, including the desire for risk in dancing and performance. The episode asks how unsafe sensations can be explored without physical harm, and what kinds of meaning, power, or resonance emerge from navigating this tension.

The session closes by considering care as an ethical and choreographic decision, including the choice to stop early, reduce duration, or actively seek the least risky form of dancing. Listeners are invited to reflect on what a dance of care might be, one that includes risk without ignoring it, and how safety, consent, authority, and interpretation continue to shape the conditions in which dance is practiced.

Dance Reflections is a weekly Friday podcast with Peter Mills and Yari Stilo, centred on conversation, shared practice, and taking time to look back in order to think forward. The series reflects on recent episodes, past experiences, and ongoing questions around dance, life, and practice. Through talking, occasionally dancing, and revisiting shared histories, Dance Reflections creates a regular space for continuity, response, and staying in contact across distance.

Dance Reflections sits alongside two other podcast series:PETER, dance with…, released every third Monday, where Peter invites a guest to dance one of their practices and reflect on it together; and DANCE WORKSHOP, released on the Mondays in between, a series of short audio workshops exploring dance through imagination, movement, and curiosity.Watch videos of all Dance Reflections Episodes here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5iebzO4vouz_45v7u7SeYn6fpgp7uN2m

You can find more about all of Peter’s work at:https://stillpeter.com/

Listen to the other podcast series here:PETER, dance with…https://stillpeter.com/peter-dance-with-podcast/

DANCE WORKSHOPhttps://stillpeter.com/peter-audio-dance-workshop/

Music empty five by mobygratis

S1 Ep19 Dance Workshop (Consent, Invitation, and Participation)

This workshop explores consent and invitation as ongoing choreographic processes rather than fixed permissions. The episode asks when participation begins, how it is negotiated, and how dancing emerges through subtle, often invisible invitations.

The session begins by attending to unspoken invitations to dance. Listeners are invited to notice when alignment, attention, watching, or responding begins without explicit requests, and to observe where the lines of consent feel active or withdrawn. These explorations can be taken into different contexts, including spaces where dance is expected, unexpected, or usually discouraged, noticing how context shapes what kinds of movement feel possible.

The workshop then introduces conditional participation, using self-imposed rules such as moving only when someone else moves, stopping only when another stops, or responding to attention, absence, or perceived invitation. These conditions foreground consent as relational and contingent, shaped by others and by the environment.

From there, the session explores performativity by creating consent for dance to exist and then deliberately withdrawing it. This practice examines what remains active when permission is removed, how space is produced through restraint or silence, and how the edges of dance continue to operate even when movement pauses.

The episode closes by turning attention inward, inviting listeners to notice when they allow themselves to dance. Reflection focuses on moments of inclusion and exclusion, asking who decides when one is inside or outside the dance, how invitations are internalised, and how different choreographic situations might allow for multiple forms of participation, refusal, and care.

Dance workshop
Explore, imagine, move.

A companion series to PETER, dance with. These short audio workshops invite you to explore dance through imagination, movement, and curiosity. A space to rethink what dance can be, anywhere, for anyone.

To listen to the workshops: https://stillpeter.com/peter-audio-dance-workshop/

Music leaning by mobygratis

Support the show

For information about PETER visit stillpeter.com.

And contact PETER email peterapeterpeter@gmail.com PETER would love to hear from you.

Support the podcast paypal.me/dancepeter 

Dance Reflections is a weekly Friday podcast with Peter Mills and Yari Stilo, centred on conversation, shared practice, and taking time to look back in order to think forward. The series reflects on recent episodes, past experiences, and ongoing questions around dance, life, and practice. Through talking, occasionally dancing, and revisiting shared histories, Dance Reflections creates a regular space for continuity, response, and staying in contact across distance.

Dance Reflections sits alongside two other podcast series:
PETER, dance with…, released every third Monday, where Peter invites a guest to dance one of their practices and reflect on it together; and DANCE WORKSHOP, released on the Mondays in between, a series of short audio workshops exploring dance through imagination, movement, and curiosity.

Watch videos of all Dance Reflections Episodes here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5iebzO4vouz_45v7u7SeYn6fpgp7uN2m

You can find more about all of Peter’s work at:
https://stillpeter.com/

Listen to the other podcast series here:
PETER, dance with…
https://stillpeter.com/peter-dance-with-podcast/

DANCE WORKSHOP
https://stillpeter.com/peter-audio-dance-workshop/

Music empty five by mobygratis

Support the show

For information about PETER visit stillpeter.com.

And contact PETER email peterapeterpeter@gmail.com PETER would love to hear from you.

Support the podcast paypal.me/dancepeter 

Today we dance with Tim Spooner. To get in touch and follow Tim go to https://timspooner.com/ and https://www.instagram.com/tspooner0.

Tim will be performing: 

• Matter Era
  • Battersea Arts Centre 7, 8, 9 May https://bac.org.uk/whats-on/matter-era/
  • Norfolk and Norwich Festival 12,13,14 May https://nnfestival.org.uk/whats-on/matter-era/
  • Westflügel Leipzig 22 & 23 May https://www.westfluegel.de/veranstaltung/matter-era/
• The Microscope Sessions dates (after 30th March):
  • 6 April, 4 May, 1 June (1st Monday of each month, times TBC) https://themicroscopesessions.net/ 

References:

1. Simon Vincenzi - https://www.simonvincenzi.com/
2. Terrapin - https://terrapin.org.au/
3. Sam Routledge - https://www.instagram.com/sirwam/
4. THE GRID OF LIFE 2010 - https://www.timspooner.com/thegridoflife
5. 24 GROTESQUE MANIPULATIONS - https://www.timspooner.com/24grotesquemanipulations
6. Lea Anderson - http://www.leaanderson.com/
7. PETER, dance with Lea Anderson - https://stillpeter.com/peter-dance-with-podcast/#LA
8. The Rest Is Science, Are Magnets The Most Familiar Mystery On Earth? - https://youtu.be/yXg_-2fpg-s?si=pUIv8VoPSzm0-RZ5
9. On the calculations of volume by Solvej Balle - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Calculation_of_Volume
10. Panpsychism - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panpsychism
11. O by Peter Mills - https://stillpeter.com/o/
12. Matter Era by Tim Spooner and Terrapin
13. Battersea Arts Centre 7, 8, 9 May https://bac.org.uk/whats-on/matter-era/
14. Norfolk and Norwich Festival 12,13,14 May https://nnfestival.org.uk/whats-on/matter-era/
15. Westflügel Leipzig 22 & 23 May https://www.westfluegel.de/veranstaltung/matter-era/
16. The Microscope Sessions - https://sites.google.com/view/themicroscopesessions/home
17. Rhiannon Armstrong - https://www.rhiannonarmstrong.net/
18. https://www.youtube.com/@TheMicroscopeSessions

Support the show

For information about PETER visit stillpeter.com.

And contact PETER email peterapeterpeter@gmail.com PETER would love to hear from you.

Support the podcast paypal.me/dancepeter 

Dance Reflections is a weekly Friday podcast with Peter Mills and Yari Stilo, centred on conversation, shared practice, and taking time to look back in order to think forward. The series reflects on recent episodes, past experiences, and ongoing questions around dance, life, and practice. Through talking, occasionally dancing, and revisiting shared histories, Dance Reflections creates a regular space for continuity, response, and staying in contact across distance.

Dance Reflections sits alongside two other podcast series:
PETER, dance with…, released every third Monday, where Peter invites a guest to dance one of their practices and reflect on it together; and DANCE WORKSHOP, released on the Mondays in between, a series of short audio workshops exploring dance through imagination, movement, and curiosity.

Watch videos of all Dance Reflections Episodes here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5iebzO4vouz_45v7u7SeYn6fpgp7uN2m

You can find more about all of Peter’s work at:
https://stillpeter.com/

Listen to the other podcast series here:
PETER, dance with…
https://stillpeter.com/peter-dance-with-podcast/

DANCE WORKSHOP
https://stillpeter.com/peter-audio-dance-workshop/

Music empty five by mobygratis

Support the show

For information about PETER visit stillpeter.com.

And contact PETER email peterapeterpeter@gmail.com PETER would love to hear from you.

Support the podcast paypal.me/dancepeter