A New Kind of Learning: Somatics, Dance Improvisation and Transdisciplinarity

Through this chapter I seek to elaborate how somatic and improvised movement practices might be refigured to promote transdisciplinary learning. I propose an approach to teaching in the university that recognizes the ways in which all thinking dwells in a corporeal space and values the processes of the improvised to foster learners who exhibit characteristics that are key to the knowledge economy. The chapter concludes by offering insights as to how improvised dance can activate the ‘four pillars of learning’ (Delors et al. The treasure within, report to UNESCO, International Commission on Education for the Twenty-first Century. UNESCO Publishing, Paris, 1996).