“In my work with experimental and improvisational dance practice and performance, I explore somatic ways of “thinking” that yield distinct knowledge about self, world and relationality. Like others, I believe this somatic knowledge can contribute to positive change in our being-in-the-world – together.

The disorientation project grounds meta-experiences of disorientation in phenomenological experiences of the moving-perceiving body, through scoring structures, multidimensional tasking and perceptual practices, as a way to excavate new understandings through artistic practice. I ask: What might we discover by sustaining our curiosity within the experience of disorientation? How might we productively resist the innate reflex to re-orient and re-stabilize in order to invite new knowledge to emerge through the experience? How might we then re-orient differently through new frames and relations?

As the world was recently thrust into the COVID-19 pandemic, my inquiry into experiences of disorientation has become increasingly relevant. Prior to this and more so now, we are collectively in a period of fundamental disorientation, the process and effects of which will persist beyond any immediate critical period. The disorientation project offers a creative methodology and artistic prism for refraction within this extended socio-historic moment.”

P. Megan Andrews, PhD, (she/her) is a settler dance artist and scholar, movement educator and writer/editor. Her artistic research queries the aesthetics of ethics through practices of movement, voice, perception and relationality, and through critical-poetic writing and dialogue. Megan’s passions are movement and communication, which manifest across her project portfolio in diverse ways: creation/performance, research/writing, teaching/facilitating. She is a Visiting Scholar at the Institute for Performance Studies at SFU, associate artist at Scotiabank Dance Centre and the BC Program Manager for the Dancer Transition Resource Centre. Also a Certified Laban Movement Analyst and Registered Somatic Movement Educator/Therapist, Megan coaches individuals and groups in embodied literacy. She holds a PhD in Communication and Cultural Studies. Megan recognizes and acknowledges the traditional, ancestral and unceded territories of the Qayqayt First Nation and the Coast Salish peoples of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations where she lives with her husband and daughter. pmeganandrews.com