China Academy of Arts Dialogic Design for Dance; The Bauhaus Re-imagined

Natasha has taught in HE and FE institutions, and her international academic engagements include roles at the University of Salford and lead tutor for the Dialogic Design for Dance module at the China Academy of Arts, Shanghai. She specialises in combining research and practice, methodologies to explore the intersection of technology, movement and design.

Natasha’s pedagogical approach integrates projection and the moving body to manifest immersive XR environments, embracing a positive “cyborgian” (Haraway, 1985:65) perspective to foster interactive design for dance. At the University of Salford, her work investigated pathways between technology, design, and performance focusing on dialogic interplay to encourage interaction, creative exploration and collaborative “becoming” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1972:39, 1980:232).

While teaching at the China Academy of Arts Natasha guided final-year students to examine the relationship between the moving body and interactive design, drawing inspiration from Bauhaus pioneers such as Johannes Itten, László Moholy-Nagy, and Oskar Schlemmer. These explorations resulted in experimental approaches to garment-led choreography, interactive set design, and wearable technologies. She also developed textural, audio, and visual methods to bridge the gap between dancer and projection, creating a reimagined dialogue through a Bauhaus-informed framework.