In this chapter, I trace my sustained engagement with dance pedagogical practices and related theories, culminating in my proposal for an improvisation-based, intra-active dance pedagogy understood as a practice of dancing-with. I begin by outlining the methodological assemblage of Hunting–Gathering with Embodied Listening, and then conceptualise this pedagogy and discuss its significance within contemporary educational contexts.
6.2.1 The Methodological Assemblage of Hunting–Gathering with Embodied Listening
The methodological assemblage of Hunting–Gathering with Embodied Listening emerged through sensitive listening, being-with, and dancing-with children in daycare. This assemblage foregrounds the relational and intra-active dimensions of improvisation within a collective moving body, enabling diverse artistic expressions to generate co-constructed meanings. From this approach, I outline three practical implications: nurturing creativity, listening differently by listening to difference, and reconceptualising the teaching of art as a process of making art. (Colliander 2026, forthcoming)
Nurturing Creativity
The methodological assemblage of Hunting–Gathering with Embodied Listening can be framed as a collective dancing body assemblage that enables equal engagement and creates opportunities for creative participation to take its own form and momentum (Lenz Taguchi, Palmer, and Gustafsson 2016). This approach also allows children to experience being listened to rather than being asked to perform (Tortora 2005). In this way, the methodological assemblage of Hunting–Gathering and Embodied Listening invites educators and children into co-creative exploration without demanding technical mastery. Grounded in shared authorship and collective discovery, this approach positions everyone as both learner and teacher, transforming dance into an inclusive space for diverse ways of moving, relating, and creating.
In the methodological assemblage of Hunting-Gathering with Embodied Listening, educators immerse themselves as co-dancers with the children. In this role, they relate to children’s movements through their own body, which fosters sensorial, ethical, and relational encounters and enhances their ability to acknowledge children’s needs for additional support (Sutela 2023). For educators without formal training in dance pedagogy, this approach offers freedom from the expectations of dance expertise, as dance is framed as an inclusive, participatory practice accessible to all. This way, educators can draw on what is already present to gently guide exploration, cultivating both confidence and security, which are essential foundations for creativity and learning.
Listening Differently by Listening to Difference
The integration of a holistic practice such as Embodied Listening into dance pedagogy underscores the sensory dimensions and attunement to others’ embodied expressions, thereby enhancing response-ability and pedagogical sensitivity. When this approach is combined with the posthuman perspective—where listening is not merely about listening to the self or others, but about listening to the forces and intensities operating within and through us (Davies 2014)—it opens up ways to both listen differently and listen to differences. This intra-active process extends beyond listening merely to understand, value, or interpret. It involves listening as a respectful and active engagement in relating, enabling educators to become respons-able to the diverse ways children express themselves.
The methodological assemblage of the Hunting–Gathering method with Embodied Listening allows the gathering of ideas from a collective movement improvisation facilitated by educators’ bodily experiences and sensations. Movements are sensed as a resonating embodied intensity, which closely links them to MacLure’s (2013) concept of glow in research methodology. In this way, Hunting–Gathering extends from a pedagogical approach into a research method, enabling researchers to practice it both in their work with participants and in their analytical approaches. In such moments, the memories of these experiences, as embodied traces, can evoke embodied resonances comparable to the glow MacLure (2013) describes.
Educators can also employ the Hunting–Gathering method by observing the improvisation without participating in the activity, with a visual focus on dancing. This way, educators can view dancing as a form of thinking in movement, making it a particularly relevant approach for working with children, as it can offer a more nuanced and profound way to hear their voices than verbal expression. Extending this idea, I playfully suggest that the Hunting-Gathering method grants educators a pedagogical superpower— the ability to read thoughts.
For children, the Hunting–Gathering method can provide an opportunity to be seen as competent and creative agents who influence others’ dancing, while also trying out others’ movements and being affected by those embodied ideas. Additionally, verbalising a child’s movement provides the child with an opportunity to find a connection between meaning and experiences (Tortora 2005). By broadening their understanding of dialogue to encompass not just communication through words but also embodied aspects, educators in ECEC can adopt a more holistic, embodied approach to education. This orientation calls for sensitivity and respect for children’s emerging initiatives, which involves giving time and space and listening to the process instead of quickly offering an idea.
The educator’s engagement through Embodied Listening requires a bodily mode of attunement that privileges trust in the body over reliance on words. As Pape-Pedersen (2022) argues, dance can offer a way for teachers to explore materiality and space through their own bodies, positioning language as secondary. From this perspective, the aim is not to define, describe, or label but to uncover, discover, and transform through a collective process of shared encounter in dance.
Transforming Teaching Art into Making Art
I propose that the Hunting–Gathering approach has the potential to transform pedagogical activity into a process of making art rather than teaching it (Colliander and Anttila 2022). As this method is based on improvisation, movements are not transmitted from the teacher to the students. Instead, children generate movement ideas as the teacher invites participation and facilitates the process through an attentive, sensitive gathering process. Gathering movement material from children honours their agency, challenging the notion of adult authority and expertise. In line with intra-active pedagogy, children become active co-creators of knowledge, which is viewed as situated, relational, and constantly evolving (Lenz Taguchi 2010).
When combined with Embodied Listening, the Hunting–Gathering method may become a child-led yet teacher-guided process that can foster being together in and through dance. Through aiming at attentive, embodied engagement, each participant can contribute to the evolving choreography. In this process, educators can draw on dancers’ tools—relating, listening, and responding—to align pedagogical work with artistic processes.
6.2.2 The Practice of Dancing-with
Transforming the view of early childhood dance education from dance education for children to dance education with children is one of the central aims of my research. In this process, I came to an understanding of an intra-active orientation to improvisation-based dancing as first and foremost needing to be articulated as a relational practice of dancing-with. This approach entails a practical, embodied application of relational ontology, in which ethics, being, and knowing intertwine into a holistic, inseparable entity. Becoming and remaining response-able—available to affect and be affected—is the central approach that makes the practice of dancing-with possible.
The practice of dancing-with encourages us to view dance as part of movement across entangled, intra-active assemblages, in which neither children nor adults are the central agents. This reorientation challenges the assumption that children’s dancing can or should be fully known, understood, or evaluated according to predetermined frameworks. Furthermore, this approach enables participants to engage on their own terms and in intrinsically meaningful ways, while simultaneously becoming part of a dancing assemblage in which collective actions and movements take precedence over individual achievements. The unique strength of these qualities is that they apply equally to children and adults alike.
Dancing-with children may also introduce features of wildness into pedagogical settings. This practice includes embracing alternative, child-like temporalities, such as repetition, waiting, and re-turning, which enhances learning by valuing children’s natural modes of being, such as sustaining intimate connections and playful relations with more/other-than-human worlds. This approach supports the creation of inclusive, flexible environments that promote continued, purposeful engagement in dancing that is grounded in joy, play, and experimentation. These dynamics resonate with the notion of wild pedagogies in environmental education, which challenge domesticated, traditional pedagogical models (e.g., Jickling, Blenkinsop, and Morse 2024; Alonso del Casar 2025). As Alonso del Casar (2025) argues, wild pedagogies cultivate relational and less anthropocentric orientations, opening up space for spontaneous, emergent, and untamed modes of learning. Dance improvisation can promote these goals by offering spaces where wildness is welcomed as a quality of being and relating.
From an intra-active perspective, pedagogical space can be understood as a multiplicity of interconnected events moving in different directions and at different intensities (Lenz Taguchi 2010). Land (2022, 74) describes this overflow of creative impulses as a ‘flux of constantly re-materialising posthuman child bodies.’ Within the context of dance improvisation, what might initially appear chaotic instead reveals children’s embodied, complex, and dynamic expressions through a fluid interface of experience. This multiplicity reflects a heightened holistic sensitivity, which Turpeinen (2015) has also emphasised. Yet such moments also risk being dismissed as noisy or unruly, potentially suppressing unique forms of meaning-making. I view improvisation-based dancing as counteracting this risk, as a practice that can introduce disciplined disorganisation and collectively controlled chaos into ECEC. By this, I mean the ability to use an improvisation-based, intra-active dance pedagogical orientation to create spaces where alternative modes of being, doing, and knowing become possible, and to treat such spaces as valuable sites for searching, discovering, and learning about alternative embodied ways of engaging with the world.
The practice of dancing-with also extends into the embodied research method of dancing-with theory (Colliander 2024). In the context of the pre-examined artistic component Käännöksiä – Transpositions, my investigation of Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) concept of lines of flight unexpectedly led to an experience of embodying Barad’s (2007) concept of intra-activity. This experience highlights the intertwined relationships between theories and bodily practices, as well as the emergent nature of this research. Dancing-with theory supports the practice of thinking through and with the body, enabling movement to generate diverse artistic experiences. Consequently, this embodied engagement may both deepen conceptual understanding and stimulate artistic inspiration. Similar to philosophy as method (Tesar 2021), the dancing-with theory approach resists the view of dance or theory as isolated tools. Instead, it fosters ongoing, relational engagement with movement and ideas. This embodied practice with concepts may generate new insights and alternative pathways to understanding.