NAVIGATING BODY ARCHIVES
Workshop by Rūta Pūce and Rūta Ronja Pakalne for the Blatic Danca Network
This workshop brings together two Baltic-based artists—both named Rūta—who studied together in the same choreography course at the Latvian Academy of Culture (2011-2015). Their collaboration began later during a dance lab in Sweden (2023), where their shared interest in the body as an archive first surfaced. Since then, one continued her work in Latvia, the other in Estonia—developing parallel yet distinct research paths that interrogate how memory, identity, and cultural experience are embedded in movement. This workshop is a convergence point, a space where their two trajectories meet to explore identity through embodied memory.
We approach this identity not as a fixed tradition, but as a constellation of embodied memories shaped by education, politics, local contexts, and movement heritage. Our aim is to explore how individual and collective dance archives—stored in gestures, rhythms, and felt experiences—can become a tool for understanding, questioning, and shaping Baltic-ness through the body.
Participants engage in somatic and improvisational practices, memory-based movement tasks, partner work, and choreographic composition rooted in lived experience. Activities include guided revisiting of personal movement histories, collective reflections on production conditions in the region, writing tasks (e.g., “Why I Still Dance”), and playful physical explorations like "bad idea" charades, echo dances, metaphysical travel through past - present - future. These practices aim to surface both individual and collective archives.
The workshop offers a space for participants to examine their embodied histories and reflect on what it means to create dance in the Baltics today. Participants will leave with new tools for accessing their body’s memory. The outcome is not a finished product but an expanded awareness—of one’s own movement heritage, of shared patterns, and of the complex, sometimes contradictory forces that shape Baltic dance identity.
The Workshop "Navigating Body Archives" was originally created for the Baltic Dance Network open call for workshops which explores the Baltic dance identity, but it is possible to adjust the focus of the workshop to non-Baltic dance communities. It took place in November of 2025 in Tallin, Estonia. Baltic Dance Network aims to create a safe space for Baltic contemporary dance artists to connect and analyse their shared past, explore Baltic dance identity, as well as understand each Baltic country's context and uniqueness.
Photos by Rebecca Green
We approach this identity not as a fixed tradition, but as a constellation of embodied memories shaped by education, politics, local contexts, and movement heritage. Our aim is to explore how individual and collective dance archives—stored in gestures, rhythms, and felt experiences—can become a tool for understanding, questioning, and shaping Baltic-ness through the body.
Participants engage in somatic and improvisational practices, memory-based movement tasks, partner work, and choreographic composition rooted in lived experience. Activities include guided revisiting of personal movement histories, collective reflections on production conditions in the region, writing tasks (e.g., “Why I Still Dance”), and playful physical explorations like "bad idea" charades, echo dances, metaphysical travel through past - present - future. These practices aim to surface both individual and collective archives.
The workshop offers a space for participants to examine their embodied histories and reflect on what it means to create dance in the Baltics today. Participants will leave with new tools for accessing their body’s memory. The outcome is not a finished product but an expanded awareness—of one’s own movement heritage, of shared patterns, and of the complex, sometimes contradictory forces that shape Baltic dance identity.
The Workshop "Navigating Body Archives" was originally created for the Baltic Dance Network open call for workshops which explores the Baltic dance identity, but it is possible to adjust the focus of the workshop to non-Baltic dance communities. It took place in November of 2025 in Tallin, Estonia. Baltic Dance Network aims to create a safe space for Baltic contemporary dance artists to connect and analyse their shared past, explore Baltic dance identity, as well as understand each Baltic country's context and uniqueness.
Photos by Rebecca Green
