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Raffaele Rufo
Raffaele Rufo (Ph.D.) is a dance and somatic movement artist and scholar. Over the last decade, he has been teaching, researching and performing different forms of movement-based improvisation in Europe and Australia. His current practice, referred to as ‘Liquid Lead Movement’, interweaves Argentine tango, dance improvisation, performance and the Feldenkrais method of somatic movement inquiry to explore the perceptual processes and agencies of embodied ecological connection. In 2020, Raffaele was awarded a Ph.D. in dance and performance studies by Deakin University for the somatic study of touch in the tango dance as an experience of kinaesthetic listening between the dancer’s inner and outer worlds. His research was published in the edited collection Thinking Touch in Partnering and Contact Improvisation (2020, edited by Malaika Sarco-Thomas), in the Journal of Embodied Research (2020) and in the Journal of Public Pedagogies (2017). His recent experiences include teaching and facilitating the teachers gathering at the International Festival of Contact Improvisation and Tango in Wuppertal (2018/2020), curating the session on The Public and Touch at the Melbourne Conference of Public Pedagogies (2018), leading workshops for the creativity and communication programme of Melbourne University’s Master of Entrepreneurship (2015-2017), and creating and performing The Tango Touch at La Mama Theatre and the Melbourne Fringe Festival (2016).