About
Teoma Naccarato is an artist and scholar working at the intersections of performance, technology, and philosophy. Originally from Canada, she has lived and worked in the US, UK, and Europe for over 15 years. She holds an MFA, PhD, and Postdoctoral Fellowship in Dance and has served as a Visiting Professor in Dance at universities in Canada and the US. In June 2025, she will begin a new position as a Research Fellow at the Centre for Blended Realities at Falmouth University.
Naccarato creates hybrid performance-installations that function as microcosms for interrogating the ongoing mediation of bodies and identities within techno-cultures. Her artistic practice critically engages with surveillance and biomedical technologies, exploring how these apparatuses represent and reshape understandings of the body. Working across live, livestream, durational, and 1:1 performance formats, she pushes the boundaries of traditional stage practices.
Recent projects include III: Once Returned (2022–2023), a 72-hour durational performance live-streamed via an array of 12 surveillance cameras; 9x9x9 (2022–2023), a series of nine portraits from nine angles in extreme close-up, illuminating the intricacies of movement-within-stillness; and Remains (2021–2022), a livestream/dance-film in which multiple cameras gaze down on a performer, reflecting the pervasive surveillance of the digital age. Through these works, she invites audiences to engage with the computational machinery of representation and its impact on our perception of movement and identity.
In her scholarly research, Naccarato draws from feminist, new materialist, and process philosophies to examine the aesthetic and ethical dimensions of movement analysis and representation across disciplines. Her writing has been published in Journals such as Dance and Somatic Practices, Performance Research, Leonardo, Tempo, and Performance Philosophy. She is committed to fostering dialogue around systemic inequality in research methodologies and pedagogies. From 2021–2022, she co-led a virtual reading and discussion group on race, colonialism, and diaspora at the intersection of dance and computing, emphasizing transversal, diffractive readings that cut across disciplinary and cultural boundaries. Since 2018, she has co-run the Provocations Project, curating open calls and discussions on these pressing issues within cross-disciplinary research.
Naccarato’s work has been recognized through fully funded fellowships for her MFA and PhD, as well as grants from Canada and Germany. She has received full-time residencies at institutions such as IRCAM (Paris), CLOUD/DansLab (The Hague), Lake Studios (Berlin), CNMAT (UC Berkeley), and The Djerassi Resident Artist Program (San Francisco). In addition to her research and artistic practice, she has held teaching positions at universities in Canada, the US, the UK, and Europe, leading undergraduate and graduate courses in choreography, contemporary dance, multimedia performance, videodance, and performance philosophy.
Choreography
Click on the images below for descriptions, videos, and images from each piece.
Publications
Naccarato, T. (2022) “Book Review: The Routledge Companion to Performance Philosophy”. Journal of Dance & Somatic Practices. 14 (1), 129-133. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1386/jdsp_00067_5
Naccarato, T. and MacCallum, J. (2020) “Cutting together-apart (une greffe)”. Performance Research. 25 (5), 135-142. DOI: https://doi.org/10.21476/PP.2019.42234
Naccarato, T. (2019) Re/contextualization: On the critical appropriation of technologies as artistic practice. PhD Thesis. Coventry University, UK.
MacCallum, J. and Naccarato, T. (2019) “Collaboration as Differentiation: Rethinking Interaction Intra-Actively”. Performance Philosophy. 4 (2), 410-433. DOI: 10.21476/pp.2019.42234
Naccarato, T. and MacCallum J. (2019) “The Touch of the Stethoscope: Shaping Context in Intimate Performance”. TEMPO. 73 (287), 71-75. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0040298218000669
Naccarato, T. (2019). “Book Review: Radio Strainer: Part Two of the Kinesthetic Archive”. Journal of Dance & Somatic Practices. 11 (1). 129-135. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1386/jdsp.11.1.129_5
Naccarato, T. (2018) “Artistic Practice as Research: A Genealogical Account”. A World of Muscles, Bone & Organs: Research and Scholarship in Dance. eds. Ellis, S., Blades, H., and Waelde, C. 435–455. available at: https://bit.ly/3Jdg5jj
Naccarato, T. and MacCallum, J. (2017) “Critical Appropriations of Biosensors in Artistic Practice”. Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Movement Computing (MOCO ‘17). London. 1-7. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3077981.3078053
Kirk, P., Naccarato, T., and MacCallum, J. (2017) “Intimate Listening”. Performance Research. 22 (3), 57–60. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/13528165.2017.1348589
Naccarato, T. and MacCallum, J. (2016) “From Representation to Relationality: Bodies, Biosensors and Mediated Environments”. Journal of Dance & Somatic Practices. 8 (1), 55–70. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1386/jdsp.8.1.57_1
Naccarato, T., MacCallum, J., Boudou, L., and Pelinka, S. (2017) “Peripheral Encounters”. Leonardo. 50 (3). 240-241. Project MUSE. https://www.muse.jhu.edu/article/662394
MacCallum, J. and Naccarato, T.J. (2015) “The Impossibility of Control: Real-Time Negotiations with the Heart”. Proceedings of the Conference on Electronic Visualisation and the Arts. London. 184-191. DOI: https://doi.org/10.14236/ewic/eva2015.19
*The full, pre-print version of each article is available upon request. Please email: teomajn@gmail.com
Project Websites
Over the past decade, Teoma Naccarato has developed two main bodies of artistic work: III and Im/mediations, as well as a somatic listening practice called Interstitial Listening. The website for each project serves as a living archive, with documentation and announcements from past and upcoming performances and workshops.
Click on the images below to be redirected to the website for each project, or view the individual performances and installations in the next section.
Each performance in III explores technology as an intervention in ways of looking, listening, touching, and relating. III takes the form of durational performances spanning days, immersive video installations, and one-on-one encounters.
Im/mediations is a series of performance-interventions that explore qualities of togetherness and intimacy in virtual contexts. A key theme in Im/mediations is the interplay between that which is shared on screen, and that which lies beyond the frame.
Interstitial Listening is a multi-sensory listening practice, aimed at tuning awareness of how rhythms emerge in movement and music. It is a technique for exploring and reimagining habits of relation between performers and media in real-time – on stage and off.