The Choreography of Consent AHRC Network brings together dance practitioners, legal scholars, and policymakers to explore new ways of working across dance and law.
You can read an introduction to the project in this blog post.
Led by Anna Macdonald (Reader in Movement at Central Saint Martins: UAL) and Marie-Andrée Jacob (Professor of Law at the University of Leeds), this network uses dance research to examine the movement of law. The goal is to better understand how law "moves" in an embodied way. It builds on Jacob and Macdonald’s longstanding collaboration, which explores how dance can reveal the affective and embodied aspects of legal materials.
The network focuses on consent, exploring how dance-based research can deepen legal understandings of consent, and how legal studies can influence dance practices related to consent.
Legal scholars increasingly recognise that movement is key to understanding law as a dynamic, evolving force (Watt & Gurnham, 2020; Smith, 2021). However, despite its deep connection to movement, dance remains largely absent from legal research.
Most legal studies focus on words rather than the embodied aspects of law. This network seeks to change that by using dance as a method for legal research.
Thursday 24 July 2025De Montfort University Leicester, EnglandSign up at Community Dance
Choreography of consent: what happens when consent is withdrawn?
Join us for a daylong event with practitioners and researchers from dance and law coming together to explore the complexities of working with consent.
This is a participatory event which features workshops and discussions focusing on consent practices within dance. Members of the Network - including Heni Hale, Anna Macdonald and Jo Fong - will share creative tasks designed to open up discussion of how dance practitioners work with consent. We will also hear talks from legal scholars - including Marie Jacob and Amanda Keeling - sharing examples of the way consent works in other fields.
Through this event we are interested in opening up discussions about:
If you wish to join in the practical workshop elements, please wear something comfortable that you can move in.
Online symposium February 2026
A one-day symposium for network members and the broader dance and legal communities. The event will include a keynote by Macdonald and Jacob and selected papers from an open call.
Exhibition, Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, London March 2026
A 4-week exhibition at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, showcasing the findings and progress of the Choreography of Consent network.
Siobhan Davies Studies, London December 2024
An in-person meeting of all the core members that mapped existing work in dance and law and tested out new ideas through preparing a collaborative dance/law provocation focused on consent to share at Event 2.
The network will host 4 key events over 18 months, combining in-person and online activities such as exhibitions, symposiums and podcasts. These events will explore:
Find out more:
Find out about the people involved in our network: