Georgie Goater is a dance artist from Aotearoa, based in Helsinki.
She was born and grew up bi-lingual with her twin brother in Nagoya (JP) and Ōtautahi (NZ), and is of Irish-Scottish descent.
She performs, choreographs, writes, facilitates workshops and collaborates independently, with Kaaos Company (FI) and with collectives Body Island and Mome: memory as medium.
Her dance practice has been developing over the past two decades between Aotearoa and Finland, through multiple threads.
Working with diverse embodied perceptions across disability and multi-cultural contexts has been a ground.
The practice of improvisation is a fabric of this ground. It has been cultivated with Shameless Crowd Pleaser (NZ), Bangers and Mash (NZ), Vitamin S (NZ), Touch Compass (NZ), Kaaos Company and its Sunday Inclusive Movement Improv classes (FI), as well as through Contact Improvisation, somatic practices and dancing outside in natural and urban places.
Georgie gained her BPSA in contemporary dance from Unitec School of Performing Arts (NZ) in 2006, and her MA in dance pedagogy at the Helsinki University of the Arts in 2019.
She's a co-founding member of dance collective BackLit Productions, and has had the opportunity to work with many choreographers and artists over the years including Carol Brown, Malia Johnson, Alexa Wilson, Kelly Nash, Anna Bate, Katie Burton, Claire O'Neil, Zarah Killeen-Chance, Kristian Larsen, Tallulah Holly-Massey, Marc Brew (TC), Anna-Maria Häkkinen,
Maija Mustonen, Maria Nurmela, Kati Raatikainen.
Things I value -- What moves practice:
Moving and being moved through sensing and feeling
Relationality, what emerges in between
Being a twin, and being so different
Memory ecologies
Always learning as a performer and improviser
Collaborating with fellow artists, process-oriented co-creation
Being in nature
The playground of the body layers: physical, material, experiential, and immaterial aspects as the political
Vibrant materials
Dreaming
Embracing all learning and making with neurodivergent and different lived embodiments toward equality and creativity
Listening
Being introduced to Social Dreaming through patella and practising with WSDM
Finding embodied writing as movement and choreographic practice
The travelling imagination
Asking questions, taking risks