News

Dancer and choreographer Suzan Tunca publicly defends the research project entitled 'Spiritual Corporeality: Towards Embodied Gnosis through a Dancing Language'. On 31 October at 10.00, she will present her artistic work SEI, a dance and music performance developed in collaboration with composer Giuliano Bracci, at the Marekerk in Leiden. On the same day at 13.45, Tunca will defend her dissertation in the Academy Building of Leiden University.

Suzan Tunca investigates numinous dimensions of embodied experience through the dancing body. The main thesis of Suzan Tunca’s research is that the dancing body can act as a creative interface between the physical and the metaphysical. Tunca weaves corporeal theory – embodied and verbal reflections on dance experience – and discursive practice – a dialogue with perspectives from physics and psychology as well as metaphysics and revelation – together into a dancing language. This dancing language conducts movement and thought toward an experience where the sensible and the intuitively intelligible come together.

Suzan Tunca’s thesis resonates in the dance and music performance SEI, which navigates on the edge between improvisation and choreography. SEI brings together Tunca’s PhD research at PhDArts and Bracci’s PhD research at docARTES. The musical dimensions created by Bracci support Tunca’s search for a polyphonic body: a multilayered, sensory-suprasensory resonating space that draws together physical and metaphysical layers of being, seeking to unite dichotomies between gravity and levity and between matter and spirit.

PERFORMANCE SEI
31 October 2023
10.00 – 10.45 including Q&A
Marekerk
Lange Mare 48, Leiden
Dance: Suzan Tunca
Music: J.S. Bach and Giuliano Bracci

PUBLIC DEFENSE SUZAN TUNCA
31 October 2023 at 13.45*
Great Auditorium
Academy Building, Leiden University
Rapenburg 73, Leiden

SUPERVISORS
Prof. Dr. Janneke Wesseling, Professor Emeritus in Practice and Theory of Research in the Visual Arts, Academy of Creative and Performing Arts, Leiden University
Dr. Sher Doruff, DAS Research, Amsterdam University of the Arts; Stockholm University of the Arts

*A livestream is made available for those who cannot attend the ceremony in person.