Director of the project

Soili Hämäläinen

Dr. Soili Hämäläinen (PhD in Dance) was appointed as the first director of the Dance Department at the Theatre Academy Finland in 1983. During 1983 - 1992, she was responsible for the development of the MA-level study program and the courses offered in its three areas of emphasis: performance, dance education and choreography. During 1996 - 2002, she was the director of the newly established Dance and Theatre Pedagogy Department. Currently she is in charge of the doctoral studies of this department. Soili Hämäläinen received her MA in Dance from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1975, her MA in Physical Education from the University of Jyväskylä in 1982, and her Doctorate in Dance from the Theatre Academy in 1999. She began her professional career by teaching modern dance, improvisation and choreography in private dance studios and in various universities at both amateur and professional level which she did for ten years. Then she continued to teach choreography, dance pedagogy and dance research at the Theatre Academy, which she has now done for a few decades. Her doctoral dissertation "Teaching and Learning Processes in Choreography" focused on two different approaches to teaching and learning choreography. Currently her research interests are concerned with educating the dancer's body. In her research-work she focuses on ethical issues of evaluation in dance pedagogy. Her resent publications include "Evaluation in Choreographic Pedagogy" (2002) and "Taidekorkeakoulujen jatkotutkinnot taiteen ja tieteen välimaastossa" (The doctoral studies in Art Universities between art and science 2003).

Senior researchers

Maija Lehtovaara

Dr. Maija Lehtovaara (PhD in Education) is a senior lecturer of educational sciences (since 1974) and docent of the philosophy of educational sciences (since 1993) at the University of Tampere. She teaches university students at all stages of their studies. She has acted as a first examiner of several licentiate theses and as an evaluator of many doctoral dissertations. During her career as a university teacher, she has lectured and still lectures quite a lot outside the university. Her special scholarly interests include issues of the philosophy and methods of human sciences, especially the question of the possibility of studying the child and childhood scientifically. Other major objects of her interest are questions of power and authority in the teacher-student relationship. She has written many articles on these themes. She also wants to contribute to the search for a conception of learning more adequate to dance pedagogy. .

Ana Sánchez-Colberg

Dr. Ana Sánchez-Colberg (PhD in Dance) trained in classical ballet in her native Puerto Rico before turning to contemporary dance. After completing a BA (Hons) in Theatre at the University of Pennsylvania she pursued a Master of Fine Arts (Choreography) at Temple University in Philadelphia. During this time Sánchez-Colberg was a member of the Terry Beck Troupe, a Philadelphia -based dance theatre company, and Movement Coordinator for Intuitons, a physical theatre company. In 1986 she came to England to pursue further dance training and to follow a PhD programme at the Laban Centre London (which was completed in 1992). Ms Sánchez-Colberg is currently engaged in the direction of Theatre EnCorps international project Futur/Perfekt an international collaborative performance project exploring the relationship between individual histories, city landscapes and the notion of the global. The project began in Berlin in 1998 and has been performed in the USA, Austria, Puerto Rico, Colombia and MŽxico. In addition, she has worked with various international companies. She has produced four commissioned pieces for Ballet Concierto de Puerto Rico: Ojos Que No Ven (1992) which received the first prize in the Festival of Caribbean Choreographers and has been subsequently performed as part of Ballet Concierto's repertoire including performances in New York's Lincoln Centre and the Wuppertal Opera House, Sartorii (1994), Entre Huella y Pisada (1996) received various awards from the Corporation for Music and Scenic Arts (NEA) and Tejiendo Memorias (1998). She produced a piece for the Balletts des Staatstheater Cottbus es lasst sich nicht lesen.. which was supported by the British Council (Berlin). Strange Muse, produced in June 1997 was commissioned by the Institute of Culture of Puerto Rico in collaboration with musicians from the Puerto Rico Philharmonic Orchestra. In 1997 she premiered a work for Foreign Bodies Dance Company developed with support from East Midlands Arts. She has also completed a work for Andanza entitled Futur/Perfekt: Recollections (1999). The choreographic work is supported by work in education which has focussed on developing links between the choreographic work and training/educational opportunities. These have included seminars at the Conservatory of Ballet Concierto de Puerto Rico, the Paisley School Project in Glasgow, workshops as part of the International Tanzwochen Wien, the International Dance Week in Puerto Rico, Laban Guild, Nene College of Further Education, master classes at the Staatstheater Cottbus, master classes at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival sponsored by St Bride's In September 1997, she conducted various seminars on contemporary choreographic practice in Bogota, Columbia under the auspices of the British Council (London)and in April 1998 was invited to participate in the Festival of Iberoamerican Theatre where she led a performance project. Ms Sánchez-Colberg contributes regularly to dance publications such as Performance Research, Total Theatre Magazine, Animated and Dance Theatre Journal. Ms Sanchez-Colberg currently lectures in Choreography at the Laban Centre London.

Sue Stinson

Dr. Sue Stinson is Professor of Dance at University of North Carolina at Greensboro (USA), where she teaches undergraduate courses in teacher preparation and graduate courses in research and curriculum. She served as Department Head in Dance 1993 - 2002. As a dance educator, she has worked with all ages from infants through senior adults (including special populations), in settings that include public and private schools, day care centres, and community agencies. She is active in national and international professional organizations in dance education, and is a past-chair of Dance and the Child: international. Her scholarly work has been published as chapters in a number of books on dance and arts education, and in these journals: Ballett Internazional; Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education; Choreography and Dance; Dance Research Journal; Design for Arts in Education; Drama/Dance; Educational Theory; Impulse: The International Journal of Dance Science, Medicine, and Education; Journal of Curriculum and Supervision; Journal of Curriculum Theorizing; Journal of Physical Education, Recreation and Dance; Musical America; Pro-Posicoes(Brazil); Visual Arts Research; Women in Performance; and Young Children. Since the mid-1980's, her research has focused on how young people interpret their experiences in dance education.

Helena Wulff

Dr. Helena Wulff has a PhD in social anthropology from Stockholm University where she is Associate Professor. Trained in ballet, she had to stop dancing in her late teens because of an injury. Her publications include Twenty Girls: Growing Up, Ethnicity and Excitement in a South London Microculture (Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1988), Ballet across Borders: Career and Culture in the World of Dancers (Berg Publishers, 1998), and many articles for academic journals and volumes, as well as a number of popular articles for newspapers and dance magazines. She has co-edited the volume Youth Cultures: A Cross-Cultural Perspective (with Vered Amit-Talai, Routledge, 1995) and New Technologies at Work: People, Screens and Social Virtuality (with Christina Garsten, Berg Publishers, 2003). Her early research was on youth culture, ethnicity, and girls« friendship, her current interests centre on the anthropology of dance, the arts, visualization, information technology, and transnationality ("Steps on Screen: Technoscapes, Visualization and Globalization in Dance" in New Technologies at Work, edited by Christina Garsten and Helena Wulff). She is now engaged in a study of dance in Ireland and questions of memory and modernity ("Yo-yo Fieldwork: Mobility and Time in a Multi-Local Study of Dance in Ireland", Anthropological Journal on European Cultures, vol. 11: 117-136, 2002). She is a member of the EASA (European Association of Social Anthropologists) Executive Committee. She is also serving on the editorial boards of the Anthropological Journal on European Cultures, Social Anthropology: The Journal of the European Association of Social Anthropologists and the Ashgate monograph series Progress in European Ethnology.

Other researchers

Eeva Anttila

Eeva Anttila (Ed.Lic.in Education) has taught dance since the early 1980's. Trained in private studios, she first taught mainly jazz dance, but along her studies in education became increasingly interested in children's dance education and in dance in public schools. She received her Master's Degree in dance from UCLA in 1992 and her Ed. Lic. Degree from Helsinki University in 1997. The topics of her theses were related to dance education. She has continued her postgraduate studies at the Theatre Academy in Helsinki, where she is working towards her PhD degree in dance pedagogy. The topic of her dissertation is "Towards dialogue in dance education", again, focusing on pedagogical questions related to dance. She will gain her PhD degree in the fall of 2003. Eeva Anttila has worked in various universities as part time lecturer on dance education. Currently she works as full time lecturer in dance pedagogy and as department head in the department of Dance and Theatre Pedagogy of the Theatre Academy. Her current interests include feminist and critical pedagogy, dialogical philosophy and their applications in dance pedagogy, as well as body memories and issues of power and emancipation in dance education. She has been involved with daCi (dance and the Child international) since 1988 as an advisory board member, chair of the Finnish chapter of daCi, and was recently elected for a member-at-large position of the executive board of daCi. Her publications include "Tanssin Aika" (Time for dance), a handbook of dance education (1994) and "Tanssi: kehon leikkiä" (Dance: Body play; 2001) and "Kaikuja salista" (Echoes from the studio, 2003).

Teija Löytönen

Teija Löytönen (MA in Education) has been working in the dance field over ten years. To this field she was led by enthusiastic training in modern dance. Her first professional interest was curriculum development within higher education of dance. Later, after gaining experience in the field, her interest moved towards the daily working life of dance institutions. In order to concentrate on this perspective thoroughly, she educated herself to be a consultant. Now, working as a consultant, her main interest is in understanding and facilitating the many different processes and phenomena dancers and dance teachers encounter in their daily practice within dance institutions. She also teaches dialogical encountering and group dynamics in the Department of Dance and Theatre Pedagogy at The Theatre Academy of Finland. In her doctoral research, which is under construction, she asks how dancers and dance teachers construct their everyday life by conversing about it. Conversation in the research is an important metaphorical as well as methodological means for bringing different perspectives (practical, theoretical, researchers and the dance artists) into dialogue with one another. She has written a few articles concerning her interest area in dance. She has also been involved in some publications, which deal more generally with art education and higher education: "5 keskustelua taidepedagogiikasta - taito, tutkimus vai terapia" (Five Discussions on Arts Pedagogy - skill, research or therapy) (1998) and "Taidekorkeakoulupedagogiikka" (Art University Pedagogy) (1998).

Leena Rouhiainen

Dr. Leena Rouhiainen (PhD in Dance) studied at the Dance Department of the Theatre Academy during the years of 1986 - 1990 and received her Masters Degree in dance1994. Since 1990 she has worked as a freelance dance artist mainly in Helsinki. During this time she has co-operated with a various prominent Finnish contemporary choreographers and created her own choreography. The most recent two solo pieces she created and performed are Vox Naturae and This Red Patch on the Carpet. Rouhiainen is a co-founding member of the Suomussalmi-improvisation group which received a national award for artistic innovation in 1996. She participated in creating the Physical Art Theatre directed by choreographer Sanna Kekäläinen and has worked with an artistic cohort called Digital Multa exploring technology and dance. During the season 2001 - 2002 she worked as a dancer in Dance Theatre Eri in Turku. Leena Rouhiainen also lectures on phenomenology and dance in the Theatre Academy and other institutions of higher-level education, in addition to teaching contemporary dance and Pilates-technique. She received her Pilates-instructor certificate from the Stott-studio in Toronto in 1994 and currently educates new Pilates-instructors in Finland with in a private educational program led by Marja Putkisto and Jarmo Ahonen. Her doctoral dissertation Living Transformative Lives (Theatre Academy, 2003) explores questions related to being a freelance dance artist through a phenomenological framework. Her other publications include, for example, Movement as a Source of Pleasure (Nofod 2000) and An Encounter with Otherness: The Relationship of the Dancer and the Choreographer (Cord 2001). She has also been on the editorial board of the Finnish Year Book of Dance Research.

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