Sgorbati Awarded Creative Research Residency
Dance faculty member and professional mediator Susan Sgorbati has been awarded a six-week Creative Research residency at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC).
Beginning in April 2012, Sgorbati will use the residency to continue her research on emergent improvisation, a dance form that she's been studying for more than 20 years.
By presenting a series of showings, panels, and dialogues with artists, scientists (including longtime collaborator Stuart Kauffman), and community leaders, Sgorbati hopes that a new improvisational form exploring multiple perspectives may relate how emergent structuring principles apply to collaborative problem solving and conflict resolution, she says.
Sgorbati, who is currently making a film on emergent improvisation with distinguished filmmaker Elliot Caplan, serves on the Vermont Human Rights Commission, and is Bennington's Barbara and Lewis Jones Chair of Social Activism.
She has taught dance and mediation at Bennington since 1983.