Dr Anna Macdonald

Biography

I am a dance artist/scholar whose work moves between moving image, live art and contemporary performance practice. I am interested in the relationship between the body, time and affect and use film to expose the resonance of simple movements, such as, moving from ‘here to there’, ‘holding’ or ‘gettIng slower’. My work is regularly exhibited in both festival and gallery settings. Selected international festivals include: Regardes Hybrides, Montreal, Athens Video Dance Project, Festival Cine-Corps, Paris, Riff Festival, Norway, and Movimiento Movimiento, Mexico. Selected galleries include: Art Currents, New York, Somerset House (Utopia Series), London and Bluecoat Arts Centre, Liverpool.

I specialise in working with the public and have spent the last ten years developing innovative models for participatory and embodied research that foregrounds lived experience. My practice has generated interdisciplinary findings in the fields of health, science and law, within large-scale projects funded by AHRC, Arts Council England and Wellcome Trust. Recent examples include a fellowship, awarded by the Institute of Liberal Arts fellowship at Keele University, which focused on the relationship between movement, time and chronic pain and a large-scale participatory commission, led by Wellcome Sanger and funded by Wellcome trust, examining the ethics of consent.

I have extensive experience of facilitating Masters and PhD level study within HE and bring my practice and research together within my current role as Course Leader for MA Performance: Society. I publish regularly about the body, time and loss and welcome PhD applications from candidates working in the fields of somatic practice, screen dance, temporality, arts and health, arts and law, contemporary performance and participatory practice.

Contact Anna: a.macdonald@csm.arts.ac.uk
https://vimeo.com/annamacdonald