Dance your PhD

Dance your PhD

January 29 was the deadline to submit the video for the Dance your PhD contest. Julie Solbreux, PhD student under the supervision of Prof. Julie Hermans entered the contest. 

But what is the “Dance your PhD” contest? The idea is to record yourself expressing your thesis through movement and dancing, without speaking or using visual helps like PowerPoint. This contest was born based on two previous initiative. The first one was the “I love Buchomp” in 2012 by Rose Gomez Zuniga, a choreography presenting the life of narcotraffickers at the US-Mexican Border. The second one was a workshop in 2014 called “DanScie” by Gea Zazil Hernandez Castro, treating of the use of dance as a learning tool.

In December, pushed by a vivid interest in that contest, Prof. Nicolas Kervyn organized a workshop to help the doctoral students prepare their entry, but also just to give them the opportunity to think about their thesis in a new light. Due to obvious reasons, the workshop had to be held online, but it didn’t stop the two choreographers, Rosa A. Gomez and Gea Zazi, from doing a brilliant job. And since the workshop received great feedbacks from the attendees, we are already planning a second edition for the beginning of September.

Jolie Solbreux is currently doing her thesis about the social and sustainable entrepreneurship education and decided to enter the contest. In an interview with UCLouvain, she revealed she felt inspired by this inventive approach to transmitting an educative message, one thing she knows the importance of after 11 years of teaching entrepreneurship. She had no dancing experience previous to the workshop but she’s learned a lot during that week. Attending in a group setting and being able the exchange with the other participants were really what motivated her. She keeps a very positive memory over the experience.

If you haven’t checked her video yet, it’s time to do it here (or if you’ve seen it already, you can watch it again) :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBoxEnHkyZg