Dancing Bodies of Water. A talk by Béné Meillon, January 9, 1-2 PM

Dancing Bodies of Water is a research-creation project associated with the Sea More Blue interdisciplinary ecopoetic research group based at the Université d’Angers, France, and working on Oceanic and aquatic imaginaries, perception, and representations. This multimedia exhibit involves dance, film, photography and writing to foreground the multispecies choreography of Ocean life. Our work moreover taps into various bodies of water and aquatic imaginaries and representations emerging form a multiplicity of aquatic places and worldviews, and which have been collected through interviews led over two years both in France and in the Pacific Northwest. Excerpts from these interviews layer the video-dance soundtrack while braiding scientific and non-scientific discourses on water and Ocean. It thus offers a kaleidoscopic view of Ocean seen from a variety of perspectives as a reservoir for myriad forms of life, affects, and stories. Layered over Ocean soundscapes, the polyphony of the texts reveals the “invisible seascapes” —an expression I am adapting from Kent Ryden’s notion of “invisible landscape” –constituted by our “intra-actions” with Ocean (Karen Barad). The human bodies dancing with Ocean include a mix of amateur and professional dancers as well as filmmakers exploring how immersion may at once trouble, destabilize, disencumber, and empower moving and filming with Ocean. Humbly working within the technical constraints of dancing and filming in cold water with minimal equipment, this collective venture partakes in a blueing of our bodyminds via an ecopoetic piece that seeks to induce a sense of our multispecies interdepen-dance and becoming-with Ocean. The video-dance resonates with writing and photography, thus calling on different types of esthetic sensitivity and artistic form to diffract the natural and cultural biodiversity of Ocean.
This project is directed by Béné Meillon, Full Professor at the Université d’Angers, France, who specializes in ecopoetics and leads the Sea More Blue research group. She also currently serves as President of EASLCE (European Association for the Study of Literature, Culture, and the Environment). The project moreover includes Clotilde Amprimoz, professional dancer and film-maker who runs the Choréactif organization; Justine Dumay, Full Professor at Nantes Université, also involved in the Sea More Blue program, and who specializes in marine biochemistry with a focus on algae; Guillaume Duron, Dance and P.E. Professor at Université d’Angers; and Dr. Caroline Granger, who teaches English and art history in high school and works as an independent scholar. Some of us are professional dancers, some amateur dancers, and some have never been taught to dance. All of us are learning to dance with Ocean. The interviews from which pearls have been collected and strung together in a polyphonic text were conducted by Clotilde Amprimoz, Mascha Canaux—a PhD student at Université d’Angers and Université de Perpignan Via Domitia specializing in plankton ecopoetics, Béné Meillon, and Lucie Vejux—a Master’s student in the Environmental Humanities Master at Nantes Université and intern with the Sea More Blue research program 2024-2025.
Achieved over a period of two years and a half and involving fieldwork in the Pacific Northwest as well as in different parts of France, this research-creation project has been sponsored by the 3 L.AM, the Université d’Angers, The Structure Fédérative de Recherche Confluences at Université d’Angers, the Office Français de la Biodiversité (OFB), the Fédération Recherche Energie & Environnement at Université de Perpignan Via Domitia, the Programme Prioritaire de Recherche “Océan & Climat,” the IFREMER, the CNRS, the MSH Ange Guépin and the Région Pays de la Loire.





OpenEdition vous propose de citer ce billet de la manière suivante :
Bénédicte Meillon (9 janvier 2026). Dancing Bodies of Water. A talk by Béné Meillon, January 9, 1-2 PM. Écopoétique. Consulté le 15 février 2026 à l’adresse https://doi.org/10.58079/15h6x
