UPCOMING WORKSHOP
Listening Practice with Edith Buttingsrud Pedersen
Dance Workshop
2-4th Oktober 2026
10:00–16:00 Uhr
In Berlin, Studio „Fahrbereit- schaft“, Herzbergstr. 40-43, 10365, Berlin
Register : [email protected]
Students 160 € Professionals 200 €
Event is organised by Mitteldeutscher Verband für Sprechwissenschaft und Sprecherziehung e.V.
To register you write them an email and transfer fee to :
MDVS e. V. | IBAN: DE30 8005 3762 0388 0603 20 | BIC: NOLADE21HAL
Verwendungszweck: Listening Practice [Name]
Listening Practice with Edith Buttingsrud Pedersen
Dance Workshop
2-4th Oktober 2026
10:00–16:00 Uhr
In Berlin, Studio „Fahrbereit- schaft“, Herzbergstr. 40-43, 10365, Berlin
Register : [email protected]
Students 160 € Professionals 200 €
Event is organised by Mitteldeutscher Verband für Sprechwissenschaft und Sprecherziehung e.V.
To register you write them an email and transfer fee to :
MDVS e. V. | IBAN: DE30 8005 3762 0388 0603 20 | BIC: NOLADE21HAL
Verwendungszweck: Listening Practice [Name]
Video from Workshop with Company Cisne Negro in Sao paolo FILMED BY MY SELF
The Listening Practice
My choreographic practice and my teaching practice naturally inform one another and, at times, merge into one. When teaching, I call my practice The Listening Practice. It is the pedagogical counterpart to my artistic research, which asks: Can we do love? If my choreographic work explores love as an active force and a way of being in relation, The Listening Practice translates this into teaching: a practice of listening, resonance, and embodied attention. It grows out of the same interest in the thinking body, in playfulness, curiosity, and in creating spaces where we can meet one another with openness.
The Listening Practice offers tools that allow students to listen to their own bodies, to the bodies of others, to the space, to emerging compositions, and to the audience. How does the body stand in relation to the world? How can we learn to listen to everything that is present?
In The Listening Practice, we explore different approaches to listening—to space, to the body, and to everything surrounding us. We step into resonance and create space for the thinking body. We work towards freeing body and mind from habitual patterns and predetermined pathways, encouraging layers of complexity within our physical language and performative expression.
We invite laughter as much as tears and search for spaces of resonance, where the body can become open, attentive, and ready to be moved.
My movement practice is rooted in score-based choreography, improvisation, and instant composition, favouring ongoing research and the continual re-evaluation of its processes. I am fascinated by the human body, its physical and cognitive capacities, its history, its multitude of possibilities for expression, and its endless potential for transformation.
When teaching, playfulness and curiosity are essential to me and I cultivate a collaborative working atmosphere. I value a sense of lightness and a healthy relationship to failure, giving students the space to play and recognise the gift within each challenge and to become excited by what they don't know.
As a dancer, I often used auditions as an opportunity to discover what other dancers could do and what fascinated me about them. I wish to cultivate an atmosphere where this is possible; where comparison does not lead to competition, but to inspiration. I hope to nurture a sense of community and a genuine excitement about our differences, as well as a shared curiosity about what the body is capable of, both internally and externally.
Choreographic Practice
The central question of my practice: Can we do love? Inspired by bell hooks’s understanding of love: “love is an active force that leads us into communion with the world.”
How do I, as an artist, go into communion with the world? How do we create spaces not only of agreement, but of connection beyond agreement?
I do not understand love as a feeling, but as a verb, as something we choose, something we consciously do. Not in the sense of an idealised notion - through “rose-colored glasses” or “we should all just love each other,” and not limited to romantic love - but as an attitude: a way of being, a way of seeing, and perhaps even a way of acting politically.
In my research, time and resonance has become increasingly relevant. Sociologist Hartmut Rosa deeply inspires me - Rosa describes that relationship and resonance can only arise if we are responsive to the world: open, attentive, and ready to be moved. How can art be responsive? evoke empathy and connection? how can I, as an artist, support the creation of spaces of resonance and time? - Rosa describes love as an experience and force that can bring us into connection and resonance with the world.
In my practice, I explore how artistic processes can be shaped by an attitude of love: what can love as an attitude be within artistic processes? How do I engage with love? With open listening and bodily awareness? How do I consciously work with patience? With time? And what does that mean for the results of the work? What kinds of attitudes emerge in the process that are still unknown to me?
My research on love has become the central question of my practice and connects my choreographic work with my practice as an intimacy coordinator.
My work as an intimacy coordinator informs my artistic practice in that I cultivate respectful, safe, and consent-based working environments.
As both an artist and an intimacy coordinator, I aim to question and break normative narratives around sexuality, intimacy, and the body, in favor of complexity, multiplicity, and diverse identities.
My work explores themes of identity, social structures and human behaviour, and aims at creating sensory and poetic experiences that invite audiences into a shared space of reflection and empathy.
My focus lies in cultivating these shared spaces: working and performance environments for resonance, encounter, and embodied experience.
I consciously work with intergenerational and interdisciplinary groups and understand dance as a social and discursive space in which different perspectives, bodies, and lived experiences come into relation.
I strongly believe in diversity on stage, both in terms of subjectivities and corporealities. Everyone can dance if the space exists for it, and dance can be many things.
My work engages with questions of belonging, collectivity, and social fragmentation, and artistically negotiates contemporary cultural and social theoretical discourses on resonance and singularization. In doing so, I aim to contribute to current discourses on community, empathy, and artistic responsibility in a present marked by fragmentation.
Testimonial
by Sarah Plattner, Previous Students and collaborator.
Edith teaches something fundamental: an artistic way of being. An approach to a profession that constantly challenges us, pushes us to our limits, asks us to cross boundaries, and confronts us with dreams, hopes, failures, overwhelming workloads, periods of uncertainty, and questions of financial survival. It is our attitude towards these realities that Edith nurtures throughout her teaching.
Through Edith's approach, and through her many years of experience as a dancer, choreographer, and educator, I was able to develop my own artistic language, professionalism, bodily awareness, expressiveness, and sense of agency.
With her clear teaching structure, Edith creates a safe environment that continually supported and challenged me in ways that have had a lasting impact on my professional life. Her interdisciplinary approach allowed me to bring my own perspective as an actor into the work while continually shaping, strengthening, and questioning it.
Within this safe framework, Edith's teaching encourages you to discover your own boundaries—and, at times, to move beyond them. It enables you to develop the confidence to stand by yourself, your artistic voice, your body, your presence, and your way of being in the world and within the profession.
In short, Edith's own attitude towards the profession of a performing artist has profoundly shaped my own. Her professionalism, extensive experience, playfulness, curiosity, remarkable sensitivity in collaboration, and unique ability to both support and challenge make her an exceptional teacher—one who fundamentally contributes not only to the development of artists, but also to the development of human beings.
by Sarah Plattner, Previous Students and collaborator.
Edith teaches something fundamental: an artistic way of being. An approach to a profession that constantly challenges us, pushes us to our limits, asks us to cross boundaries, and confronts us with dreams, hopes, failures, overwhelming workloads, periods of uncertainty, and questions of financial survival. It is our attitude towards these realities that Edith nurtures throughout her teaching.
Through Edith's approach, and through her many years of experience as a dancer, choreographer, and educator, I was able to develop my own artistic language, professionalism, bodily awareness, expressiveness, and sense of agency.
With her clear teaching structure, Edith creates a safe environment that continually supported and challenged me in ways that have had a lasting impact on my professional life. Her interdisciplinary approach allowed me to bring my own perspective as an actor into the work while continually shaping, strengthening, and questioning it.
Within this safe framework, Edith's teaching encourages you to discover your own boundaries—and, at times, to move beyond them. It enables you to develop the confidence to stand by yourself, your artistic voice, your body, your presence, and your way of being in the world and within the profession.
In short, Edith's own attitude towards the profession of a performing artist has profoundly shaped my own. Her professionalism, extensive experience, playfulness, curiosity, remarkable sensitivity in collaboration, and unique ability to both support and challenge make her an exceptional teacher—one who fundamentally contributes not only to the development of artists, but also to the development of human beings.
REFLECTIONS FROM STUDENTS
“Toller Unterricht! Ich habe gelernt, persönliche Grenzen zu überwinden, besonders in Bezug auf Körperkontakt mit anderen Menschen”
“Great class! I’ve learned to overcome personal boundaries, especially when it comes to physical contact with others.”
“Es macht großen Spaß und man sieht und spürt die Lernfortschritte sehr deutlich. Und eine superliebe Frau.”
“It’s a lot of fun, and you can clearly see and feel the progress. And she’s a very kind woman.”
“In der ersten Woche war ich noch skeptisch gegenüber der Art des Workshops, doch mittlerweile gefällt es mir sehr. Wir stärken bei Edith unsere Körperwahrnehmung. Sie fordert von uns volle Konzentration in den Übungen und das ist sehr gut, denn wir machen Fortschritte.”
“In the first week I was still skeptical about the type of workshop, but now I really like it. With Edith, we strengthen our body awareness. She asks for full concentration during the exercises, which is great because we are making progress.”
“Ich habe das Gefühl, dass ich schon allein durchs Zuschauen enorm viel lerne.”
“I feel like I learn a lot just by watching.”
“Ich werde langsam lockerer und entdecke die Vielseitigkeit meines Körpers. Meine Körperwahrnehmung und meine Ausdauer steigern sich.”
“I’m gradually becoming more relaxed and discovering the versatility of my body. My body awareness and stamina are improving.”
“Man spürt echt die Evolution.”
“You can really feel the development.”
“Auf eine sehr gelassene und angenehme Art und Weise bringt Edith uns bei, wie wir uns von unserem Körper führen lassen. Ihre Methode hilft mir sehr dabei, auf mich zu hören und bei mir selbst zu bleiben, und es macht Spaß!! Man hat Respekt vor ihr, wenn sie uns offen und ehrlich ihre Meinung über Eigenverantwortung und unsere Arbeitshaltung kommuniziert. Edith regt uns oft zum Nachdenken darüber an.”
“In a very calm and pleasant way, Edith teaches us how to let our bodies guide us. Her method really helps me listen to myself and stay grounded, and it’s fun!! You naturally respect her when she openly and honestly shares her views on personal responsibility and our work ethic. She often encourages us to reflect on these things.”
“Man lernt schnell auf seine eigene Körpersprache und auf die des Partners, der Partnerin zu reagieren.”
“You quickly learn to respond to your own body language as well as that of your partner.”
“Edith verbreitet viel gute Energie und Konzentration im Raum”
“Edith brings a lot of positive energy and focus into the room.”
