Call for articles, Special Issue: Play and Expanded Choreography

2026-03-03

Editors: Zanitha Hamilton Månegaard1 and Mari Flønes2

1 Kolding School of Design, Denmark

2 Faculty of Performing Arts, University of Stavanger, Norway

Deadline for article abstract submissions: 20 April 2026
Please submit an abstract consisting of:

  • 300-word abstract including the context, research question(s), material(s), method(s) and theories of the article
  • name(s) and affiliation(s) of authors
  • suggested literature list to be used in the article

Acknowledgement of accepted abstracts: 19 May 2026
Deadline for full article submissions: 10 September 2026
Intended publication of special issue:  December 2027

Contact/questions and abstract submission to: Zanitha Hamilton Månegaard zhm@dskd.dk

About Dance Articulated: https://www.ntnu.no/ojs/index.php/ps

Choreographic practices today increasingly unfold beyond conventional performance formats and professional domains, taking shape within educational settings, artistic research, public space, digital environments, and collaborative or speculative projects (see e.g. Flønes, 2025; Gormly & Klien, 2008; Klien & Valk, 2007, 2008; Lavender & Spencer, 2011; Leon, 2020; Østern, 2018; Østern et al., 2025)  Such expansions are not only spatial or institutional; they also involve rethinking choreography itself as a way of sensing, knowing, and organising relations among bodies, materials, and worlds (e.g. Flønes et al., 2023; Foster, 2011; Klien & Valk, 2008). At the same time, play has gained renewed attention within these expanded choreographic fields, not only as a compositional or pedagogical strategy, but also as a broader orientation toward how movement, participation, and knowledge take shape (Husby, 2025; Pedersen, 2023).

With the theme “Play and Expanded Choreography,” this special issue invites research that explores how playful practices intersect with choreographic forms that exceed traditional understandings of dance-making and performance. We approach expanded choreography as practices that operate across education, design, social contexts, technology, and community settings, and that attend to atmospheres, relations, material agencies, pedagogical encounters, and speculative or participatory processes.

Play is here understood broadly: as aesthetic and existential practice, compositional principle, research methodology, pedagogical strategy, political resistance, or relational mode of being in the world (Henricks, 2015; Schiller, 1996; Skovbjerg, 2021; Sutton-Smith, 2021). Play may involve games, scores, improvisation, world-building, poetic writing, material exploration, speculative design, or pluriversal rhythms of engagement (Gudiksen & Skovbjerg, 2020; Sicart, 2021; Poulsen, 2022). Such practices invite renewed attention to questions of agency, authorship, access, normativity, labour, and participation (Månegaard & Skovbjerg, [in review]; Skovbjerg & Sumartojo, 2023).

This special issue is motivated by a belief that playful choreographic practices can open alternative ways of sensing, knowing, and organising collective life. Yet play is never neutral. It is shaped by institutional expectations, cultural norms, developmental discourses, and geopolitical conditions. Who is invited to play – and whose forms of play are rendered invisible, unproductive, or disruptive? How do playful formats redistribute or reproduce power? How do expanded choreographies challenge normative ideas about bodies, cognition, ability, age, professionalism, or artistic value?

While recent scholarship has addressed participation, interdisciplinarity, artistic research, and experimental choreography, there remains a need for sustained inquiry that foregrounds play as a central analytic lens in expanded choreographic practices – particularly in relation to poetic world-making, neurodivergence, materiality, and norm-critical pedagogies.

We invite research-based articles from scholars, artists, educators, and artist-researchers that engage critically and creatively with these questions across diverse institutional, cultural, and geopolitical contexts. Co-authored submissions bridging artistic and academic perspectives are especially welcome.

Possible themes include, but are not limited to:

  • Play as choreographic method, score, or compositional logic in expanded practices.
  • Poetic, aesthetic, or speculative approaches to choreography and movement research.
  • Neurodivergent, crip, or norm-critical perspectives on choreographic play and participation.
  • World-building as choreographic, pedagogical, or design practice.
  • Expanded choreography in educational settings, community contexts, museums, or public space.
  • Material agencies, atmospheres, and more-than-human relations in playful choreographies.
  • Performative materials and aesthetic experience in playful and expanded choreographies, including how matter, media, and environments co-compose sensation, rhythm, and participation.
  • Digital play, gaming cultures, interactive systems, or virtual environments as choreographic fields.
  • Power, authorship, consent, and labour in participatory or ludic choreographic formats.
  • Ecological, posthuman, or multispecies choreographies grounded in playful practice.
  • Methodological innovations for researching playful or expanded choreographies.
  • Artistic research practices that mobilise play as epistemic and political force.
  • Potentials for bodily learning and teaching strategies through choreographic and playful practices


A maximum of 10 articles will be accepted for this special issue.

All articles will be sent to double-blind review.

 

About the guest editors

Zanitha Hamilton Månegaard is a PhD Fellow at Kolding School of Design. Her research explores neurodivergent play practices through performative design, with a focus poetic worldbuilding, speculative design and performative materialities. Zanitha has a background in philosphy and design management and is Head of Drakonheart research, challenging understandings of what play, learning and community looks like. Publications in review include Poetic World-Building and Neurodivergent Play: A Critical Review on Inclusive Play Design (Månegaard [Manuscript under review]) and Playing with Materialities: A Poetic Method for Design Resereach (Månegaard et. al [Manuscript under review]).

Mari Flønes (PhD) is an Associate Professor in dance education at the University of Stavanger, Faculty of Performing Arts. Her research explores choreographic and performative approaches to dance education, with a particular focus on the entanglement of arts and education practices. Mari’s background as a dancer, choreographer and teacher is informing her academic work, together with a heart that beats strongly and warmly for dance in public education and community dance settings. Previous publications include the doctoral thesis Edu-choreography – choreographing-researching-teaching performative re-turnings of dance (education) in primary school (Flønes, 2025), the co-authored chapter Edu-choreographing: Approaching dance teaching as choreography (Østern et al., 2025) and the co-authored visual essay Choreographing an essay: Walking through the docks (Flønes et al., 2023).

Open access policy
Dance Articulated is a researcher-driven peer-reviewed open access publication channel, hosted by NTNU Open Access Journal utilizing the platform Open Journal Systems (OJS). Dance Articulated is licensed in DOAJ and articles are published with CC BY 4.0., meaning that all articles are published open access golden standard, with immediate open access upon publication. Dance Articulated has an article processing charge that is used to pay for the proofreading, design and layout of the articles, read more here. A full waiver can be requested upon submission if the first author is not affiliated with a research institution that will pay the publication costs.

Editorial Board of Dance Articulated

Dr. Alfdaniels Mabingo, Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda

Dr. Ninnie Andersson, Stockholm University of the Arts, Sweden

Dr. Mari Flønes, University of Stavanger, Norway

Saša Asentic, per.art, Serbia and PhD candidate at Oslo National School of the arts, Norway

Dr. Tone Pernille Østern (Editor-in-Chief), NTNU Norwegian University of Science and Technology, and Stockholm University of the Arts, Sweden

 

References

Foster, S. L. (2011). Choreographing empathy. Kinesthesia in performance. Routledge.

Flønes, M. (2025). Edu-choreography – choreographing-researching-teaching performative re-turnings of dance (education) in primary school [Doctoral thesis, University of Stavanger]. Stavanger. https://uis.brage.unit.no/uis-xmlui/handle/11250/3195990

Flønes, M., Sandberg, G., & Øyen, E. (2023). Choreographing an essay: Walking through the docks. In J. Roldan, R. M. Vladel, M. Mosavarzadeh, K. Morimoto, & R. L. Irwin (Eds.), Visual methods, a/r/tography & walking. Métodos visuales, a/r/tografía y caminar (pp. 76–93). Tirant lo Blanch.

Gormly, J., & Klien, M. (2008). Choreography definition. In J. Gormly (Ed.), Framemakers: Choreography as an aesthetics of change. Daghda Dance Company.

Gudiksen, S. K., & Skovbjerg, H. M. (Eds.) (2020). Framing Play Design: A Hands-On Guide for Designers, Learners and Innovators. BIS-Verlag.

Henricks, T. (2015). Play and the Human Condition. University of Illinois Press.

Husby, V. (2025). How to Care in Dance Education: Or How to Hold Each Other’s Sorrows. Journal of Dance Education, 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1080/15290824.2025.2513259

Klien, M., & Valk, S. (2007). What do you choreograph at the end of the world? In R. Ojala & K. Takala (Eds.), Zodiak: uuden tanssin tähden [Zodiak: For the sake of a new dance] (pp. 212–231). Like.

Klien, M., & Valk, S. (2008). Choreography as an aesthetics of change. In D. D. Company (Ed.), Framemakers. Choreography as an aesthetics of change (pp. 20–25). Daghda Dance Company Ltd.

Lavender, L., & Spencer, C. (2011). Choreography in the expanded field. NDEO 2011.

Leon, A. (2020). Between and within choreographies: An early choreographic object by William Forsythe. Dance Articulated, Special Issue: Choreography Now, 6(1), 64–88. https://doi.org/10.5324/da.v6i1.3639

Månegaard, Z. H & Skovbjerg, H. M. (2026) Når normen spænder ben for legen: poetiske forskydninger og neurodivergent leg. [manuscript in review]

Pedersen, L. D. (2023). Playful choreographies and choreographies of play: New research in dance and play studies. American Journal of Play, 15(1), 60–81

Poulsen, M. (2022). The junk playground as agora: Designing spaces to re-invigorate democratic participation. In DRS2022: Bilbao — Research Papers. Design Research Society. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2022.679

Schiller, F. (1996). On the aesthetic education of man. Dover Publications. (Original work published 1794).

Sicart, M. A. (2021). Playthings. Games and Culture: A Journal of Interactive Media, 17(1). https://doi.org/10.1177/15554120211020380

Skovbjerg, H. M. (2021). On Play. Samfundslitteratur.

Skovbjerg, H. M., & Sumartojo, S. (2023). Design implications of feeling playful: Play moods atmospheres in dialogue. In Nordes 2023 — Research Papers. https://doi.org/10.21606/nordes.2023.29

Sutton-Smith, B. (2021). The ambiguity of play. Harvard University Press.

Østern, T. P. (2018). Koreografi-didaktiske sammenfiltringer [Choreographic-pedagogical entanglements]. In S. Styve Holte, A.-C. Kongsness, & V. M. Sortland (Eds.), KOREOGRAFI 2018 [CHOREOGRAPHY 2018] (pp. 24–30). KOLOFON.

Østern, T. P., Flønes, M., Reppen, C., Simonson, A., & Joten, L. (2025). Edu-choreographing: Approaching dance teaching as choreography. In T. P. Østern, A. Mabingo, & A. S. Dahlstedt (Eds.), Dance Education and Pedagogies in Contemporary Contexts: Danspedagogik och dansdidaktik i samtida kontexter. Stockholm University Press. https://doi.org/ https://doi.org/10.16993/bcx