The Choreography of Consent AHRC Network brings together dance practitioners, legal scholars, and policymakers to explore new ways of working across dance and law.
You can read an introduction to the project in this blog post.
Choreography of Consent online symposium 2026
AHRC Choreography of Consent Research Network event
13 February 2026
Booking is now open
Read more about this event
About the network
Led by Anna Macdonald (Reader in Movement at Central Saint Martins: UAL) and Marie-Andrée Jacob (Professor of Law at the University of Leeds), this network uses dance research to examine the movement of law. The goal is to better understand how law "moves" in an embodied way. It builds on Jacob and Macdonald’s longstanding collaboration, which explores how dance can reveal the affective and embodied aspects of legal materials.
The network focuses on consent, exploring how dance-based research can deepen legal understandings of consent, and how legal studies can influence dance practices related to consent.
Dance and Law
Legal scholars increasingly recognise that movement is key to understanding law as a dynamic, evolving force (Watt & Gurnham, 2020; Smith, 2021). However, despite its deep connection to movement, dance remains largely absent from legal research.
Most legal studies focus on words rather than the embodied aspects of law. This network seeks to change that by using dance as a method for legal research.
Upcoming events
Choreography of Consent online symposium 2026
An AHRC Choreography of Consent Research Network event
13 February 2026
Dance often asks that we work closely with others. Experiences of proximity and cooperation can be arrived at through processes of attunement and shared understanding, but may also involve assumption, persuasion, or even coercion. In recent years, practices of care often embedded within dance have taken form around consent, which is now seen as a useful tool for navigating its relational practices.
This online symposium asks: How does consent operate and find form in dance practices and to what effects?
It will address how dance practice and dance-based research can enrich understandings of consent within legal frameworks; and in turn, how contemporary legal interpretation might contribute to embodied and dance-embedded understandings of consent.
Schedule 9.30am-4pm
9.30 - 9.55 Anna Macdonald and Marie-Andrée Jacob: Welcome and introduction to AHRC Choreography of Consent: Experiments in Dance and Law Network
10.00 - 11.20 Rachel Drazek: The context of consent; methods of approach in exploratory dance spaces. A brief reflection on some early (practice) research.
Kimberley Harvey: Enter in stage left: the practice of saying no
Chrys Papaioannou: Transversal advances: freedom, risk, and non-consensual affect in contact improvisation.
11.20 - 11.30 Break
11.30 - 12.20 Jane McClean and Ruth Spencer: Dancing with Questions: Consent and ethics in practice with people with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities (PIMD)
12.20 - 1.20 Lunch
1.20 - 2.20 Debanjali Biswas: Irreconciliation and Movements in “Disturbed Areas”
Ella Peck Messma: Dancing in Agreement: The Wheel of Consent for Choice-Making in Dance
2.20 - 2.30 Break
2.30 - 3.30 Brian Toh: Social Dance as a Site for Learning Consent: Singaporean Reflections from West Coast Swing and Breaking: global south perspective
Caroline Derry: Rhythms and tempos of consent
3.30 - 4.00 Reflection and close
Working across dance and law
Exhibition, Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, London
March 2026
A 4-week exhibition at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, showcasing the findings and progress of the Choreography of Consent network.
Dance and Legal Materialities Network
Macdonald and Jacob have been awarded funding from the Law and Humanities Hub at Institute of Advanced Legal Studies to support a new Dance and Legal Materialities Network that refines and extends the CoC Network by focusing on embodied approaches to legal materials.
The Dance and Legal Materialities Network asks how embodied practice can open new, decolonial ways of reading, writing, and archiving law. We are looking for responses and provocations at the intersection of dance and law that respond to the following themes.
- Embodied acts of Reading
- Unsettling the Archives: Archiving movement and moving in the archives
- Silent Bodies: Somatic Experiences of Reading and Silence
- Amendments: Time, inscription and changes of heart
Past events
People Dancing Summer Intensive
Thursday 24 July 2025
De Montfort University Leicester, England
Choreography of consent: what happens when consent is withdrawn?
In this daylong event, practitioners and researchers from dance and law came together to explore the complexities of working with consent.
A participatory event featuring workshops and discussions focusing on consent practices within dance, with creative tasks to open up discussion of how dance practitioners work with consent and talks from legal scholars sharing examples of the way consent works in other fields.
Mapping Dance and Law
Siobhan Davies Studies, London
December 2024
An in-person meeting of all the core members that mapped existing work in dance and law and tested out new ideas through preparing a collaborative dance/law provocation focused on consent to share at Event 2.
What the network will do
The network will host 4 key events over 18 months, combining in-person and online activities such as exhibitions, symposiums and podcasts. These events will explore:
- How dance research can enrich legal studies.
- How law and dance can work together to address social issues.
- How dance can enrich legal understandings of consent—and vice versa.
Find out more:
Who is involved
Find out about the people involved in our network:
Network leads
- Anna Macdonald (PI) – A dance artist and scholar (Reader in Movement) at Central Saint Martins: UAL, specialising in participatory and embodied research in health, science, and law.
- Marie-Andrée Jacob (Co-I) – A socio-legal scholar (Professor of Law) at the University of Leeds, researching medical law, kinship, and research ethics.
Partners and collaborators
- Independent Dance (ID)– A dance organisation supporting the development of dance through radical enquiry, learning, community-building and audience engagement based at Siobhan Davies Studios, London.
- People Dancing – The UK’s leading community and participatory dance network, reaching 7,000+ practitioners worldwide.
- The Institute of Advanced Legal Studies – Europe’s largest law library and a centre for advanced legal research.
Core network members
Advisory group
Affiliates
- Dr Chantelle Jessica Lewis ethnographer for Event 1
- Cheniece Warner photographer and artist for Event 1
