Touch Transmission Natalie Bowling, Teresa Brayshaw and Catherine Laws
Event details
Touch is often used to control musical instruments, but research is uncovering the ways in which experiencing touch affects not only how performers ‘feel’ the music, but also how listeners respond. It seems there is a link in music between touching and being ‘touched’.
Join pianist and musicologist Catherine Laws, theatre and Feldenkrais Method practitioner Teresa Brayshaw, and specialist in the psychology of touch Natalie Bowling, for hands-on exploration, in performance and workshop activities, of the power of musical touch.
Image credit: Minyung Im
About the speakers
Dr Natalie Bowling is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Greenwich. Her research uses a social neuroscience approach to investigate how we represent the experiences of others (such as in empathy for pain, or for the sense of touch), and how these representations impact conceptions of the self. Natalie is passionate about science communication and public engagement. She has previously exhibited at the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition (2019) and the ESRC Festival of Social Science (2018), and has worked with Scientists in Schools.
Teresa Brayshaw is a theatre maker, writer, creativity coach and Feldenkrais practitioner. She lectures in contemporary performance at numerous University and Drama Schools in the UK and has worked extensively in the Higher Education and European Theatre School sectors over the last 35 years. She works as a director, performer, and collaborator across a number of international, EU funded, interdisciplinary and intergenerational performance projects.
Catherine Laws is a Professor of Music at the University of York. A musicologist and pianist specialising in contemporary music, Catherine performs and records regularly, often working closely with composers, theatre makers, and audiovisual artists to create theatrical, multimedia piano performances. Catherine leads the research project ‘Musical Touch and Vicarious Perception’, while other research focuses on the body and identity in musical performance. Recent projects include her solo multimedia performance piece, Player Piano, a series of ‘piano films’ developed with film-maker Minyung Im, and the publication Voices, Bodies, Practices: Performing Musical Subjectivities (Leuven University Press, 2020).
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