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

Today we danced with Jonathan Burrows. To follow Jonathan’s artistic work go to burrowsfargion.com and for his academic work go to pureportal.coventry.ac.uk/en/persons/jonathan-burrows. To watch full length videos of Burrows and Fargion's work go to vimeo.com/burrowsfargion.

Jonathan Burrows danced for 13 years with the Royal Ballet in London, during which time he also began performing regularly with experimental choreographer Rosemary Butcher. He has since created an internationally acclaimed body of performance work including ‘The Stop Quartet’ (1996), ‘Weak Dance Strong Questions’ with Jan Ritsema (2001), and his long series of collaborations with composer Matteo Fargion including ‘Both Sitting Duet’ (2002), ‘The Quiet Dance’ (2005), ‘Speaking Dance’ (2006), ‘Cheap Lecture’ (2009), ‘The Cow Piece’ (2009), ‘Body Not Fit For Purpose’ (2014), ‘Rewriting’ (2021) and 'The Unison Piece' (2025). Burrows is a founder visiting member of faculty at P.A.R.T.S Belgium and has for many years been a regular collaborator for Jonzi D’s Back To The Lab hip hop theatre mentoring project at Breakin’ Convention, Sadler’s Wells London. He is the author of 'A Choreographer's Handbook' (Routledge) and ‘Writing Dance’ (Varamo Press, 2022), and is currently Associate Professor at the Centre for Dance Research, Coventry University.

References: stillpeter.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/peter-dance-with-jonathan-burrows-refferences-and-transcript.pdf

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 Ep10 Dance workshop (Breath)

In this episode, we return to breath as the basis of movement. I speak about the role breath played in my performance O, and how the score I used there can function as a simple structure for dancing:

grounding, breath, vocal resonance, expansion, and release.

We begin with grounding and noticing the breath without changing anything. From there, we work through a series of vocal and physical expansions inspired by Leah Landau and Lisa Schåman. We follow a progression of sounds — sighs, yawns, small vibrations, and vowel tones (u–o–e–a–m) — noticing how each one creates a different kind of movement or softening. The session also includes panting, laughter, and crying as physical rhythms rather than emotional expressions.

At one point, the group builds toward a short collective scream, simply as a shared peak of breath and sound, before letting everything drop back into quiet. After the scream, we stay with whatever movement remains when we stop “trying” to move.

Throughout the episode the focus stays on breath as the primary mover, allowing the body’s movement to remain secondary or responsive. The session ends with a period of dancing with breath in your own way — in silence or with music — followed by a brief reflection on how breath affected the quality of movement.

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

S3 Ep5 PETER, dance with Lorea Burge

Today we dance with Lorea Burge. You can get in contact with Lorea Burge here https://www.loreaburge.com/ and follow Lorea on instagram @loreaburge. And at the Rose Choreographic School https://rosechoreographicschool.com/.

References:

• Choreographic Devices 4 https://www.ica.art/live/choreographic-devices-4
• ICA (Institute of Contemporary Arts, London) https://www.ica.art/
• Rose Choreographic School https://rosechoreographicschool.com/
• Martin Hargreaves (Head of the Rose Choreographic School) https://rosechoreographicschool.com/people
• Sadler’s Wells East https://www.sadlerswells.com/your-visit/sadlers-wells-east/welcome-to-sadlers-wells-east/
• O baby performance by PETER https://stillpeter.com/o/
• Johnathon Burrows A Choreographer's Handbook

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 Ep8 Dance workshop (Size and Scale)
In this session, we explore the scale of movement, from the tiniest gestures inside the body to the expansive reach of the whole universe. Starting with the human body as a reference point, you’ll notice the range and limits of your gestures, the arcs and sweeps you naturally make, and the spaces you inhabit as a mover.

You’ll then be guided through exercises inspired by Glenda Batson and Susan Sentler, exploring the concept of the fold. First, you’ll investigate folds in your environment—fabric, paper, furniture—then shift your attention inward to the folds and creases within your own body. Finally, you’ll play with folding and unfolding yourself, imagining how your movements can expand into the surrounding world or contract into the universe.

The session concludes by inviting you to map your dance across multiple scales: from the particle level to planetary phenomena, from micro-movements to cosmic gestures. By the end, you’ll have developed a heightened awareness of scale, attention, and imagination in your dancing, and new ways to perceive and shape movement in relation to space, self, and the wider world.

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 Ep7 Dance workshop (Direction and Pathways)

In this session, we turn our attention to where movement goes, to direction, pathway, and the lines our bodies trace through space. What determines where we move? Is it choice, curiosity, gravity, emotion, or something else entirely?

We begin by drawing invisible lines through the air, straight, curved, spiralled, zigzagged, inspired by William Forsythe’s improvisation technologies, where the dancer becomes a kind of draftsman, sketching motion in space. From there, the session shifts toward losing and finding orientation: following impulses, sounds, or sensations that redirect us. We wander and deviate, noticing what happens when direction dissolves into discovery.

The episode then explores the body as compass, guided not by left and right but by north, south, east, and west, a way to reimagine orientation as planetary rather than anatomical. This expands into experiments with momentum and redirection, asking: how can we keep moving without simply continuing? What does it mean to be redirected, by a wall, the floor, another person, without stopping?

Finally, we play with forgetting direction: moving toward something, then letting go of the intention and finding a new path in the same motion. This practice of continuous reorientation invites a softer sense of purpose, where each line and curve becomes an open question.

By the end, the focus widens back to daily life, noticing how direction and pathway shape not only our dancing, but the way we inhabit the world: every trace, curve, and hesitation a kind of personal choreography.

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