Dr Shantel Ehrenberg
About
Biography
Shantel is a practitioner-academic principally working with and through contemporary dance contexts and related theory and practices. Before joining the University of Surrey, she held positions at Trinity Laban, Bath Spa University, and the University of California, Irvine. Interested in the complexity of the corporeal, Shantel's work crosses a number of disciplines, though all principally centred around the topic of kinaesthesia; including, but not limited to, phenomenology, ethnography, critical race theory, performance philosophy, cultural studies, post-humanism, and feminist theory. She is interested in knowledge from the perspective of the mover, context, and discourse, and how meaning is made out of complex lived experiences in relation to the body. This interest includes investigating the relationship between kinaesthetic and visually self-reflective experiences in dance and other practices/contexts. Shantel's eclectic career in contemporary dance includes invaluable experience working with Claudia Gitelman & Don Redlich (Hanya Holm), and Donald McKayle. Her practice research has been presented internationally and her written research can also be found in publications such as Dance Research Journal, Choreographic Practices, Research in Dance Education, and Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences.
Areas of specialism
University roles and responsibilities
- Co-Director, Centre for Performance Philosophy
Previous roles
ResearchResearch interests
Shantel's research encompass intersections between dance and philosophy (performance philosophy, phenomenology, visual culture), choreography, dance pedagogy, kinaesthesia, kinaesthetic empathy, practice research, screen dance. She has experience with phenomenological, sociological (ethnography), cognitive science, and practice research methodologies.
Please see also: https://shantelehrenberg.weebly.com/current.html
Research projects
Kinaesthesia and Visual Self-reflection in Contemporary DanceThis book, forthcoming with Palgrave MacMillan, expands knowledge about contemporary dancers’ embodied experiences in the practice. The work features interviews with UK-based professional-level contemporary, ballet, hip hop, and breaking dancers, the author’s twenty-plus years’ working in contemporary dance, and cross-disciplinary explication of kinaesthesia and visual self-reflection discourses. Expanding on the concept of a ‘kinaesthetic mode of attention’ leads to discussion of some of the key values and practices which nurture and develop this mode in the contemporary dance field. Zooming in on entanglements with video self-images in dance practice provides further insights regarding kinaesthesia’s historicised polarisation with the visual. It thus provides opportunities to re-reflect with reflections, opening up to a disruptive set of playful diffractions in becoming contemporary dancer, particularly amongst an increasingly complex landscape of visual and theoretical technologies.
Ideologies of motherhood are extremely limited in our culture, particularly in the mainstream media. My current practice-research project is helping to produce other, more sophisticated imaginations of what it means to be a woman related to (non)motherhood. As such, my work focuses on the subject of women’s experiences of infertility or subfertility, particularly experience at the point of diagnosis in medical contexts, such as when presented with ultrasound scans and/or blood test results as ‘proof’ of the condition. As a dance artist and academic, I am interested in foregrounding the embodied, subjective, and emotional aspects of women’s experiences of fertility-related issues, amongst ever-increasing technological innovations. In real terms, this means creating a series of workshops and performances, in collaboration with other women experiencing fertility-related issues, and specialists working across the fields of Psychology, Sociology and Medicine, to expand understanding of the shock that fertility-related issues blow to women’s gendered identities. The use of my skills in performance and choreographic expression is critical to investigate and produce expressions of embodied experiences related to infertility or subfertility. The project aims to help women feel agency in a process that can be significantly alienating, when constantly amongst cold hard medical devices and medical expertise, despite it being their bodies that are under investigation.
Research interests
Shantel's research encompass intersections between dance and philosophy (performance philosophy, phenomenology, visual culture), choreography, dance pedagogy, kinaesthesia, kinaesthetic empathy, practice research, screen dance. She has experience with phenomenological, sociological (ethnography), cognitive science, and practice research methodologies.
Please see also: https://shantelehrenberg.weebly.com/current.html
Research projects
This book, forthcoming with Palgrave MacMillan, expands knowledge about contemporary dancers’ embodied experiences in the practice. The work features interviews with UK-based professional-level contemporary, ballet, hip hop, and breaking dancers, the author’s twenty-plus years’ working in contemporary dance, and cross-disciplinary explication of kinaesthesia and visual self-reflection discourses. Expanding on the concept of a ‘kinaesthetic mode of attention’ leads to discussion of some of the key values and practices which nurture and develop this mode in the contemporary dance field. Zooming in on entanglements with video self-images in dance practice provides further insights regarding kinaesthesia’s historicised polarisation with the visual. It thus provides opportunities to re-reflect with reflections, opening up to a disruptive set of playful diffractions in becoming contemporary dancer, particularly amongst an increasingly complex landscape of visual and theoretical technologies.
Ideologies of motherhood are extremely limited in our culture, particularly in the mainstream media. My current practice-research project is helping to produce other, more sophisticated imaginations of what it means to be a woman related to (non)motherhood. As such, my work focuses on the subject of women’s experiences of infertility or subfertility, particularly experience at the point of diagnosis in medical contexts, such as when presented with ultrasound scans and/or blood test results as ‘proof’ of the condition. As a dance artist and academic, I am interested in foregrounding the embodied, subjective, and emotional aspects of women’s experiences of fertility-related issues, amongst ever-increasing technological innovations. In real terms, this means creating a series of workshops and performances, in collaboration with other women experiencing fertility-related issues, and specialists working across the fields of Psychology, Sociology and Medicine, to expand understanding of the shock that fertility-related issues blow to women’s gendered identities. The use of my skills in performance and choreographic expression is critical to investigate and produce expressions of embodied experiences related to infertility or subfertility. The project aims to help women feel agency in a process that can be significantly alienating, when constantly amongst cold hard medical devices and medical expertise, despite it being their bodies that are under investigation.
Supervision
Postgraduate research supervision
Teaching
BA (Hons) Dance Programme Leader; Dance Choreography I & II; Collaborative Choreography; Contemporary Dance Practices; PTY Placement Tutor; BA Dissertation Project
Previously taught (BA): Investigating Choreographic Practices; Arts & Society; Dance, Politics, & Identity; Research Methodologies; (MA): Performing Theories, Research Methodologies, Dissertation
Publications
Highlights
Please follow this link for current list of publications: