Sally E. Dean is a choreographer, performer, educator, and researcher with over 25 years of international experience. Her artistic practice is an interdisciplinary weave of somatic-based movement, costume design, and cross-cultural collaboration—integrating site, materials, and the body.
Sally leads the Somatic Movement, Costume & Performance Project (2011–2026), which co-creates Somatic Costumes designed to generate psychophysical awareness in the wearer and immersive sensorial performances. Her work has been produced internationally at venues such as the 14th Prague Quadrennial, The Place (London), and the International MASQUE Theatre Festival, as well as in site-specific settings ranging from Javanese traditional markets to the Spitalfields Church Crypt. Her research and performance work have been supported by Arts Council England and the British Council.
Currently a Research Fellow at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts, Sally is completing her PhD: The Somatic Costume Dressing Room – Choreographing Attention through Touch & the Poetic. This research redefines choreography as the “art of attending,” challenging ocularcentrism to foster embodied reconnection through Somatic Costume and the sense of touch.
Sally has been practicing Skinner Releasing Technique (SRT) since 1997, beginning her training at Bennington College with Lionel Popkin. She deepened her practice through summer intensives in Seattle with Joan Skinner, Stephanie Skura, and others, eventually certifying at both the Introductory (2004) and Ongoing (2011) levels. She has taught SRT at major UK universities—including Trinity Laban, Central School of Speech and Drama, and Chichester University—and internationally, such as in Europe, the USA, Indonesia, and Sri Lanka.
Sally’s work contributes to the evolving dialogues regarding the technique’s philosophical underpinnings and future. Her writing on the intersection of somatics and materiality is included in several publications, such as her chapter on the encounters between SRT and Somatic Costume in Skinner Releasing Technique: A Movement and Dance Practice (Dean, 2021) and her development of the Aware-Wearing methodology in Performance Costume: New Perspectives and Methods (Dean, 2020).
