Dancing the Biomes (DTB) is an indoor/outdoor, yearlong, trans-disciplinary eco-embodied pedagogy Stephanie designed that offers higher education students affective encounters with environmental ethics. It is the combination of her artistic inquiry exploring movement improvisation, somatic awareness, and creative process with the biomes of North America, her academic studies of environmental ethics in her master’s program, and her PhD research, during which she taught DTB at various universities, engaging over 100 students across a variety of disciplines including environmental studies, psychology, sustainability, outdoor education, and dance.
The core pedagogical principle of DTB is that ethics is embodied. Ethics arises through the creative moving body in relation to the more-than-human world. Students in DTB embody environmental ethics through a range of body-based practices, including movement improvisation, somatic awareness activities, sensorial walking explorations, active witnessing, reflective drawings, and tactile touch techniques.
Eco-curriculum
Module One: Critical Cartography
Students investigate landscape through the eco-critical practices of feminist mapping, deep mapping, and embodied cartography. Biomes explored: deciduous forest, lake, tundra.
Module Two: Feminist Post-humanist Perspectives
Students investigate landscape through the eco-critical and ethical lenses of emplacement, intersubjectivity, intra-action, and diffraction. Biomes explored: swamp, grasslands, river
Module Three: Ecological Ethics
Students investigate landscape through the ecological ethics of critical ecofeminism, hydrofeminism, queer ecologies, rights of nature, and natureculture. Biomes explored: desert, temperate rainforest, boreal forest, ocean/reef biomes.
Publications
Gottlob, S. (2026). Movement improvisation: A transdisciplinary pedagogical tool for embodying environmental ethics. Journal of Dance Education, 26, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1080/15290824.2025.2552464
Gottlob, S. (2024). Dancing the biomes: An ecological dance pedagogy. Animated: Cultural Issues and Practices in Participatory Dance, 52–57. https://www.communitydance.org.uk/DB/animated-editions/summer-2024
Gottlob, S. (2023). Dancing the biomes: Co-creating with nature through movement improvisation. European Journal of Ecopsychology, 8, 40–67. https://ecopsychology-journal.eu/v8/EJE%20v8_Gottlob.pdf
Student Testimonials
Here is what students are saying about their experiences participating in Dancing the Biomes
