The Choreographic Approach: Collaborative Applications of Embodied Practice in Music and Performance Training and Education

In today's highly digitized, post-COVID world, where virtual interactions often replace human-to-human contact, society faces a critical challenge: the increasing disconnection from our bodies and a decline in direct human sensory experiences. This virtual disembodiment diminishes our capacity for empathy, emotional engagement, and social adaptability, weakening our collective ability to build healthier, more inclusive communities. To counter these trends, and in alignment with Horizon Europe’s 2023-25 focus on human-centred practices, we must promote shared, embodied experiences that primarily engage our senses and emotions. The performing arts, with their emphasis on physical expression, offer an ideal platform for fostering such engagements. The CHORA project aims to confront this issue by developing the Choreographic Approach (CA), an innovative training and teaching methodology for the performing arts, designed to promote human-centred, embodied learning in both academic and non-institutional settings. Leveraging the unique potential of the performing arts sector to engage people through shared sensory experiences, the CA integrates sound, voice, and movement into interdisciplinary exercises that foster creative, collaborative, and non-hierarchical practices. It provides a toolkit for sensory-based creation and interpretation, offering an accessible and adaptable framework for diverse educational settings. Conducted through practice-as-research (PaR) activities at the Department of Drama, Trinity College Dublin (host institution), the Department of Communications, Drama and Film, University of Exeter (secondment host), and the Nordisk Theaterlaboratorium, Hostelbro, Denmark (non-academic placement), the CHORA project will produce a practical training tool applicable across arts education, community engagement, and well-being programs.