Dance Reflections is a weekly Friday podcast with Peter Mills and Yari Stilo, centred on conversation, shared practice, and taking time to look back in order to think forward. The series reflects on recent episodes, past experiences, and ongoing questions around dance, life, and practice. Through talking, occasionally dancing, and revisiting shared histories, Dance Reflections creates a regular space for continuity, response, and staying in contact across distance.

Dance Reflections sits alongside two other podcast series:
PETER, dance with…, released every third Monday, where Peter invites a guest to dance one of their practices and reflect on it together; and DANCE WORKSHOP, released on the Mondays in between, a series of short audio workshops exploring dance through imagination, movement, and curiosity.

You can find more about all of Peter’s work at:
https://stillpeter.com/

Listen to the other podcast series here:
PETER, dance with…
https://stillpeter.com/peter-dance-with-podcast/

DANCE WORKSHOP
https://stillpeter.com/peter-audio-dance-workshop/

Music empty five by mobygratis

Support the show

For information about PETER visit stillpeter.com.

And contact PETER email peterapeterpeter@gmail.com PETER would love to hear from you.

Support the podcast paypal.me/dancepeter

S1 Ep12 Dance Workshop (What is choreography?)

In this session, we shift focus from how we dance to what is being danced. After exploring multiple approaches to improvisation and movement, the workshop turns toward choreography, not as fixed steps to be copied, but as the set of conditions, influences, and structures that inform movement.

The episode begins by questioning a common understanding of choreography as something taught and reproduced. Instead, choreography is approached as that which informs dancing: histories, contexts, people, objects, spaces, moods, language, and attention. Improvisation is examined not as complete freedom, but as something already shaped by these influences. This opens a blurred space where choreographed and improvised practices overlap rather than oppose one another.

From here, the session introduces the idea of choreography as an art form in itself, sometimes referred to as expanded choreography. Rather than asking only how steps are made, the workshop asks what causes dance to take the form it does, and whether those causes might themselves be considered choreographic material. Furniture, clothing, architecture, habits, music, instructions, and social situations are all considered as potential choreographers.

The practical exploration invites participants to dance while paying attention to what is structuring their movement. This includes revisiting earlier exercises, such as trying not to dance and noticing when dance emerges, or deliberately dancing and asking what makes it feel like dance. Participants are encouraged to experiment with music and silence, different spaces, and varying contexts, while observing what informs their movement choices.

The second part of the session focuses on collecting choreographic influences. Participants are invited to gather what choreographs them: movements they’ve learned, music they return to, objects, environments, images, words, or observed behaviours. Reflection is approached through multiple methods including journaling, drawing, recording, watching, copying, and revisiting material, emphasising rehearsal, repetition, and noticing.

The workshop concludes with a reflective practice drawn from Zoë Poluch’s work: a simple instruction to “just dance.” Without analysing or structuring, participants are invited to let go and allow dancing itself to become the reflection on choreography and the questions raised throughout the session.

This episode frames choreography as an ongoing, lived process rather than a finished product, offering tools to notice how dance is continually shaped in everyday life.

https://www.buzzsprout.com/2251240/episodes/15073886-ep-29-peter-dance-with-zoe-poluch

Dance workshop
Explore, imagine, move.

A companion series to PETER, dance with. These short audio workshops invite you to explore dance through imagination, movement, and curiosity. A space to rethink what dance can be, anywhere, for anyone.

To listen to the workshops: https://stillpeter.com/peter-audio-dance-workshop/

Music leaning by mobygratis

Support the show

For information about PETER visit stillpeter.com.

And contact PETER email peterapeterpeter@gmail.com PETER would love to hear from you.

Support the podcast paypal.me/dancepeter

S1 Ep11 Dance workshop (Coordination)
In this session we investigate coordination as the practical work of organising different moving elements so they relate rather than collide. We begin simply: choose one or two parts of yourself and explore timing and sequencing — can you make a rhythm or pattern that feels connected rather than disjointed? From there we broaden into multiple-element awareness, noticing and managing several impulses or qualities at once (speed, intensity, flow) and trying the work with and without music. Next we examine independence and interaction — how one movement depends on, supports, or interferes with another, and how these relations change when you bring in space, gravity, breath or imagined constraints. We then extend coordination outwards: match and contrast your movement with the environment, furniture, objects, other people, or music, testing opposition and counterpoint as part of being “coordinated.” Finally, we explore fluidity and adaptability — how patterns arise, how established habits shift, and how transitions are coordinated between different activities. The session closes with a short reflection: what does coordination mean to you after practising it — timing and sequencing, balancing multiple qualities, or something else?

Dance workshop
Explore, imagine, move.

A companion series to PETER, dance with. These short audio workshops invite you to explore dance through imagination, movement, and curiosity. A space to rethink what dance can be, anywhere, for anyone.

To listen to the workshops: https://stillpeter.com/peter-audio-dance-workshop/

Music leaning by mobygratis

Support the show

For information about PETER visit stillpeter.com.

And contact PETER email peterapeterpeter@gmail.com PETER would love to hear from you.

Support the podcast paypal.me/dancepeter