Dr Paula Guzzanti is the Head of the Dance Studies Department of the University of Malta. She specialises in artistic and embodied research practices. Her teaching portfolio includes 'Technology and Interdisciplinary Performance', 'Dance and the Camera', and 'Professional Practice and Performance'. In her research practice she works at the intersections of critical improvisation studies, collaborative performance-making, and affect theory, applied to socially engaged projects.
Paula completed her practice-as research PhD project at Queen’s University Belfast. Her performance work develops in collaboration with sound artists and musicians. Her most recent performance pieces has been showcased at the International Metabody Festival (London, 2015); Envisioning Weekend Festival (Lisburn, 2016); JamJar Women’s Improviser’s Platform (Belfast, 2016), Sonorities Festival (Belfast, 2017), Digital Echoes Conference (Coventry, 2018), Senselab Speakers Series (Montreal, 2017); International Women’s Day Celebrations (PS2 Gallery, Belfast, 2018); International Dance Day University of Chile (Chile, 2019), and at the University of Costa Rica (San Jose, 2019).
In 2019, Paula won the Higginson Leadership Award of the year to facilitate a dance and well-being project for Nicaraguan refugees in Costa Rica, which is documented in her award-winning Screendance film 'The Broken Body' (2021). Paula is currently working on a collaborative artistic research project investigating the role of the sensorial body in sustainable development, using somatic and new digital media technologies.
Movement improvisation pedagogies applied to artistic and social contexts.
Collaborative performance-making practices.
Human-technology interactions in choreographic practice.
GUZZANTI, P., 2021. Documentary Screendance-making as a Practice of Kindness . Performance Paradigm, (6), pp. 218-226.
GUZZANTI, P., 2020. Facilitating dance in communities affected by forced migration.
GUZZANTI, P., 2019. On the Emergence of Choreographic Material in 'Silent Pact'. Revista Corpo-grafías, Estudios críticos de y desde los cuerpos, 6(6),.
GUZZANTI, P., 2018. The Language of Affect in Choreographic Practice: Conversations on the Making of Embodied at the GPO. Springer, pp. 93-111.
CONNELL, G., NEWLAND, I. and GUZZANTI, P., 2017. In and out of Flow! improvisatory decision-making in dance and spoken word. Choreographic Practices, 8(2), pp. 259-277.
GUZZANTI, P., 2017. I-Reflexes: The Affective Implications of Bodies in Dance Improvisation Performance. PARtake: The Journal of Performance as Research, 1(2), pp. 9.
