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Susan Sgorbati:
Creative Research Residency

In a prime example of cross-disciplinary research, Susan Sgorbati is exploring how her original work in emergent improvisation in dance has led her to the concept of “emergent structuring” for collaborative, applied problem solving for political, social, and environmental issues. A key feature of her work has been ongoing dialogues with scientists on how complex systems dynamics in brain research and biological systems are reflected in improvisational ensembles in dance and music. Sgorbati is a professional mediator, and believes her concept of emergent structuring has the potential to solve the impossible in intractable conflicts.

Sgorbati’s six-week residency brings together multiple perspectives to develop mechanisms and strategies for how groups with the right kind of pattern recognition and capacity for empathy can create collective meaning to enable structures that will solve complex problems.

Curator: Hélène Lesterlin

Activities include a weekly salon with Rensselaer research faculty and the following public events:

April 11—
Tim McGee: Biomimicry: Bridging Biology to Design, Engineering, and Business for a Thriving Planet

April 14—
Work In Progress: Emergent Improvisation

May 9—
Marco Iacoboni: Mirror Neurons and Our Capacity for Empathy

Bio:

Susan Sgorbati has created a form of dance called “emergent improvisation” that was inspired by dialogues with two distinguished scientists, Dr. Gerald Edelman, founder and director of the Neurosciences Institute, and Dr. Stuart Kauffman, first Macmillan Scholar-in-Residence at the University of Vermont. This work went on a national tour in 2006 and was supported by the Jerome Robbins Trust and Foundation and the National Performance Network’s Creation Fund. She currently is making the film Convergence: The Emergent Improvisation Film, with distinguished filmmaker Elliot Caplan. Sgorbati is a professional mediator, and the Barbara and Lewis Jones Chair of Social Activism at Bennington College, where she has been on the faculty for 25 years. She develops and supervises the curriculum in conflict resolution at Bennington College and a mediation clinic for Bennington County, and mediates for the Vermont Human Rights Commission.