Dr Teoma Naccarato
Lead, Centre for Pedagogy Futures & Research Fellow, Centre for Blended Realities
I work across choreography, philosophy, and technology, examining how movement is sensed, represented, and valued in contemporary culture. I approach choreography as a way of organising relationships between bodies, technologies, and differentiated ways of knowing. As Lead for the Centre for Pedagogy Futures and a Research Fellow in the Centre for Blended Realities at Falmouth University, I develop artistic, scholarly, and pedagogical approaches to embodiment in technologically mediated environments.
I create durational performances that unfold over hours or even days, situated within installations that incorporate continuous surveillance, biosensing, and biofeedback systems. I experiment with how audiences encounter each work, foregrounding the uneven and partial ways it can be perceived—from different vantage points and through mediated representations of live action. Since 2013, I’ve worked closely with composer and computer scientist John MacCallum on a series of projects about the heart—not just as a biological organ, but as something that can resist notions of control, measure, and synchrony. Together, we also run Interstitial Listening, a somatic and compositional methodology that explores how rhythms emerge between bodies, technologies, and environments in real time.
In my writing, I draw on feminist and philosophical approaches to think about how movement becomes something we can measure, analyse, and understand—especially through technology. I have developed ideas such as “critical appropriation” (reusing technologies to expose their underlying assumptions) and “the choreographic gaze” (how distributed systems encode what kinds of movement matter). My work has been published in journals including Performance Research, Leonardo, Dance and Somatic Practices, and Performance Philosophy.
A central strand of my work is the development of research platforms for collective inquiry, through which I extend these concerns into pedagogy and institutional practice. I co-run the Provocations Project and convene transversal reading groups and seminar series that bring together researchers across the arts, sciences, and humanities. Through these initiatives, I develop new formats for collaborative research and shape research agendas at the intersection of movement, technology, and critical theory.
External Links
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 develops choreographic and philosophical frameworks for understanding how movement is sensed, represented, and valued across artistic, technological, and pedagogical contexts. Through concepts such as critical appropriation and the choreographic gaze, I examine how systems shape what movement becomes visible, measurable, and meaningful. This work extends through practice-based methodologies and transdisciplinary research platforms, with a particular focus on transversal pedagogies and collaborative research methods.
Research Topics:
- Choreography, dance, and movement studies
- Critical approaches to technology in artistic practice
- Durational and installation-based performance
- Embodiment, temporality, and sensing technologies
- Practice-based and transdisciplinary research methods
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
Independent professional practice
I maintain an active artistic research practice across performance, installation, and transdisciplinary collaboration, presented through Friction Field.
III (2104-present) https://iii-iii-iii.org
A sustained cycle of durational performance-installations exploring biosensing, surveillance, and the temporal organisation of bodies and environments. Works function as experimental systems in which sensing, mediation, and rhythm are examined in situ.
Im/mediations (2021-present) https://immediations.com
A series of performance-installations examining perception, proximity, and mediated presence through multi-perspectival encounters with the body.
Social, community and cultural engagement
Interstitial Listening (2016–present) https://www.interstitial-listening.com
A somatic and compositional methodology developed with composer and computer scientist John MacCallum, delivered through workshops and research contexts across Europe and North America
Engagement with professional associations and societies
- Co-Director, Provocations Project (2018–present) https://www.provocations.online
- An international platform for critical discourse on authorship, ethics, and representation in transdisciplinary research, spanning conferences, open calls, and digital formats
- Transversal Imaginaries (2025-present) https://www.falmouth.ac.uk/research/projects/transversal-imaginaries
- A research and pedagogical platform supporting cross-disciplinary collaboration and the development of experimental formats for collective inquiry. Current activities include a Transversal Reading Group on Movement Philosophy.
- Assistant Editor, Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices (2016–2018; 2022–2023)
- Peer Reviewer for journals and conferences including Leonardo, International Journal of Screendance, and Movement & Computing