Anna is an interdisciplinary movement artist, and a Somatic Movement Educator and Therapist with nearly 20 years of experience working with dance, movement and creative arts. Anna’s experience stretches from dance research, dramaturgy and on-screen productions. She collaborates internationally and has lived and worked in Poland, the Netherlands, and now in Scotland, UK.
 
Anna is the founder and director of Dunami - Movement, Arts, Wellbeing, a platform for ecologically mindful growth, psycho-somatic health, intercultural dialogue and artistic development. Dunami’s offer includes regular practice-based workshops, Spring Seedling and Body Scapes, as well as self-therapy resources.
 
As a writer, she specialises in practice-based research, eco-psychology and environmental philosophy perspectives. In her doctoral research in art-based therapeutic education she has been developing movement-based approaches toward more embodied ways for ‘being well’ with the natural environment guided by processes of Somatic Felt Thinking. As a grounding methodology of reflexive and expressive self-inquiry, Felt Thinking opens up a whole new realm of philosophical contemplation on what it means to be human and on experiential movement as the basic ontology of relating to the living world. The methodology is now offered as Anna’s online course in EcoSomatic Movement Education and further described in her book ‘Dances With Sheep - On RePairing the Human-Nature Condition in Felt Thinking and Moving Towards Wellbeing’.
 
Following her interests in building bridges between movement arts practice and environmental psychologies of personal development, inspired by embodied reflection upon life experience in all-inclusive ways, Anna is now developing her movement productions with In The Open - Outdoor Arts Theatre, with her latest production Forest Within. She has delivered many workshops focused on inclusive self-care throughout UK including University of Oxford, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Edge Hill. She is also a winner of Images of Research Competition 2019 at the Un. of Aberdeen.
 
In her private practice Anna specialises in supporting and working through versatile psycho-somatic imbalances. She also loves guiding experiential walks throughout Aberdeenshire.

Recent and Upcoming Publications:

Dances with Sheep: On RePairing Human-Nature Condition in Felt Thinking and Moving towards Wellbeing (Intellect Books)

Body Scapes - Celebrating Seasonality of Wellbeing in Somatic Dialoguing with the Natural World (forthcoming chapter in Female Dancer, book edited by Dr Helen Kindred and Claire Farmer

Open Spaces, Open Senses – On Sensuous Presence in Eco-Somatic Practice of Walking to Wellbeing with Young People (forthcoming chapter in Arts in Nature, book by Routledge, edited by Dr Zoe Moula and Prof Nicola Walshe

Forest Within: Reflections on the Felt Qualities of Living Entanglements (forthcoming)
 
On How to Feel Think in Movement – A Short Introduction: Contemplating Ecological Belonging in Somatic Practice (forthcoming article in Journal of Dance & Somatic Practices 13.1&2, 2021)
 
Night(s) and Day(s) – A Behind the Scenes Story of Night(s) & Day(s) Short Dance Film Production, Inspired by Somatic Adventures into the Experience of Inter-Connectedness Between ‘Knowing’ and ‘Not Knowing’ (available online: www.aberdeen.academia.edu/AnnaDako)

‘I Am Movement’ – An essay on Movement, Connection and Support Based on Personal Practice (forthcoming)

Dynamic Composing - On Choreographic Processes of Conceptualization as a Way to Artistic Knowing (available online: www.aberdeen.academia.edu/AnnaDako)