Dr Teoma Naccarato

Research Fellow

Teoma Naccarato is a choreographer, media artist, and researcher whose work explores the complex and curious intersections of bodies and technology. Her performances integrate surveillance cameras, biometric sensors, and other machines not typically invited to the dance floor. She works across live, livestream, durational, and one-on-one formats, creating intimate, often uncanny encounters that ask: who’s watching, who’s moving, and who’s in control? 

Teoma holds an MFA and PhD in Dance, and recently completed a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Centre for Dance Research at Coventry University. She has taught at institutions across Canada, the US, the UK, and Europe in areas ranging from choreography and videodance to performance philosophy. Her writing appears in several peer-reviewed journals focused on embodiment, digital culture, and interdisciplinary performance. 

In 2025, she joins Falmouth University as a Research Fellow at the Centre for Blended Realities, where she looks forward to collaborating with artists, scholars, and intelligent systems—artificial or otherwise—to explore critical engagements with mixed-reality performance. 

External Links

Research Fellow

Contact details

    Qualifications

    Qualifications

    Year Qualification Awarding body
    2023 PostDoc Dance Centre for Dance Research (C-DaRE), Coventry University
    2019 PhD Dance Centre for Dance Research (C-DaRE), Coventry University
    2011 MFA Dance & Technology The Ohio State University
    2004 BFA Contemporary Dance Concordia University

    Research Interests

    Research interests and expertise

    My research weaves together artistic practice and critical theory to explore how bodies, technologies, and temporal structures come to matter in performance. At the heart of this inquiry are three interrelated themes: the critical appropriation of technologies, the abstraction and representation of time, and what I call the choreographic gaze. 

    In long-standing collaboration with composer / computer scientist John MacCallum, I explore how technologies—whether clocks, ECGs, algorithms, or ideas—can be repurposed as artistic tools and conceptual provocations. I define critical appropriation as the deliberate recontextualization of these technologies to examine the values they encode and the systems they uphold. Rooted in feminist, new materialist, and process philosophies, my work emphasizes relationality: how bodies and boundaries are not given, but made—and remade—through performance. 

    Projects like III: Once Returned (2023), a 72-hour livestream in which every breath and gesture was scored, explore how timekeeping devices choreograph human and nonhuman rhythms. Alongside this, I co-developed Interstitial Listening, a somatic technique for attuning to subtle shifts in movement and sound, fostering new modes of togetherness across media. 

    My current book project develops the concept of the choreographic gaze: a pluri-sensorial lens through which motion is parsed, framed, and made meaningful across disciplines. From dance to data science, this gaze reveals how movement is not just observed—but shaped—by the systems that render it intelligible. Across all my work, I pursue transdisciplinary, ethically attuned approaches to performance, research, and pedagogy that ask: how do we move, and who gets to decide what movement matters? 

    Research Topics: 

    • Choreography, Dance, and Movement Studies 
    • Durational and installation-based performance 
    • Critical appropriations of technology in/as artistic practice 
    • The “choreographic gaze” 
    • Interstitial Listening 
    • Performance Philosophy 

    Areas of teaching

    • Dance & Choreography: Choreography, improvisation, contemporary technique, dance for camera 
    • Media & Intermedia Arts: Video editing, interactive design (Isadora), projection mapping, biosensors in performance 
    • Performance Art: Installation, durational, virtual, and one-on-one performance 
    • Critical Theory & Philosophy: Dance studies, critical technology studies, philosophies of movement and embodiment, transversal methodologies 

    Professional Engagement

    Engagement with professional associations and societies

    • Co-Director, Provocations Project (2018–present) Curates international discourse and events on the aesthetic and ethical dimensions of movement analysis and representation across disciplines. Activities include online forums, conference panels, and video series. 
    • Assistant Editor, Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices (2016–2018, 2022–2023) 
    • Peer Reviewer for: Leonardo Journal,  International Journal of Screendance, Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices, MOCO, ICMC, etc. 
    • Co-Facilitator, Interstitial Listening (2021–present) Somatic technique workshops delivered across Europe and North America, supporting artists and researchers in developing attunement to emergent rhythms in performance. 
    • Mentorship for Professional Artists: SomoS Artist Residency (2023–2024),  Digital Body Lab, Lake Studios Berlin (2022) Artist Talks & Invited Presentations on choreography, technology, and ethics in artistic research at institutions including: Centre for Dance Research (Coventry University), Hamburg University of Music and Theatre (HfMT), Arizona State University, Synthesis Center, Barbican Guildhall School, UC Berkeley, Department of Music 
    • Co-Moderator, Dance Computing Studies Reading Group (2020–2021) Led themed reading rotations on race, colonialism, and ethics in movement and computing practices, and developed resources on critical digital praxis and transdisciplinary collaboration, hosted on multiple platforms and research communities.