Selected Projects / Dance psychology
Dance
with Me
What happens when we move together, then talk about what that movement means to us?
I meet professionally trained and experienced dancers from different disciplines. We share our ways of moving, talk about the psychology of dance, and see what we can create together.
A dancer interested in taking part? Become a collaborator →
The collaborations
Featured collaboration / Chicago, April 2026
Cancer, Comedy
and Catharsis
With Justin Kimball and Sarah Beck
Comedy Dance Chicago
At The Second City in Chicago, I taught Justin and Sarah a dance to We No Speak Americano. They taught me a Titanic-inspired dinosaur duet. I had a great deal to learn about comic timing.
We talked about play, self-consciousness, and the personal memories that music can carry. Then I offered a more personal idea: could we create a comedy dance from my experience of cancer?
Together, we began trying it on its feet. I’ve written about the conversation, the ideas we explored, and how movement helped us develop the story.
Peter Lovatt with Justin Kimball and Sarah Beck.
The Second City, Chicago · April 2026
The story describes an initial creative workshop and a work-in-progress.
Sharing my dance
Teaching Justin and Sarah my routine to We No Speak Americano.
Learning theirs
Learning the Titanic-inspired dinosaur duet, with help from Sarah and Justin.
Contemporary
Gemma Bonner
In this video, Gemma and I tried some floor work. This was our second session dancing together. In the first, we had both said how difficult we found working on a hard floor, and therefore avoided it. We made various complaints about getting up, getting down, feeling ungainly, and knocking our knees, elbows and hips. We decided to confront our fear of the floor, and get down.
Our initial Dance with Me conversation moved between joy and vulnerability. We talked about what it means to collaborate rather than lead, about learning to breathe inside movement rather than control it, and about the tension between how dance feels and how we think it looks. Fear of the floor, fear of judgement, and fear of limitation sat alongside moments of deep expression, connection, and joy.
We found ourselves talking about trust: in music, in the body, and in each other.
Gemma Bonner & Peter Lovatt
Ballroom
Anastasia Shea
In this video, Anastasia is teaching me a Foxtrot. It was our first dance session and we spent a lot of time on head placement and body alignment. Anastasia is a competitive ballroom dancer, which involves a practice, discipline and judgement that is far removed from my natural freestyle groove. In our second movement session we worked on an American Smooth version of the Foxtrot.
Our first Dance with Me conversation moved through precision, dependence, and deep mutual awareness. We talked about what it means to dance in a form where nothing exists in isolation, where movement only works if two bodies think, feel, and act as one. Anastasia described a world of extreme detail and cognitive intensity, where technique must become automatic in order to free the mind to listen, interpret, and respond in real time to another human being.
Emotion runs high here through shared pressure, responsibility, and public exposure. Success and failure are deeply personal and highly visible. We explored trust, attunement, and surrender: to a partner, to timing, and to the invisible forces that only exist when two people truly dance together.
Anastasia Shea & Peter Lovatt
60s go-go / 70s disco
Laura Cherry
In these two videos, Laura and I meet and dance together for the first time at Pineapple Dance Studios. We had a conversation about how it feels to dance in different environments: in the studio, in a nightclub, on stage, or in a public space. We decided to directly compare studio and square, and took our routines outside to dance in Covent Garden, in London’s West End. We had no music outside, so we were feeling the groove with the tunes in our heads.
Our first Dance with Me conversation moved through joy, inclusion, and the quiet power of letting go. We talked about dance as something that begins privately, in bedrooms, in bodies, in music, and then grows outward into shared experience, community, and celebration. Laura spoke about disco and 60s go-go as democratic movement forms: dances that welcome every body, every age, and every level of confidence.
We explored how playful imagery and named steps dissolve fear, how mirrors can inhibit freedom, and how the moment when self-consciousness drops away can be emotionally profound. We talked about dance as release, a way of reconnecting people to their bodies, their emotions, and each other, until joy becomes something felt.
Laura Cherry & Peter Lovatt · Film 1
Laura Cherry & Peter Lovatt · Film 2
About the project
Movement, conversation
and psychology
Dance with Me brings together my work as a dance psychologist, the lived expertise of professionally trained and experienced dancers, and the reflective perspective of Lindsey Lovatt, an occupational and systemic therapist.
I work with collaborators across movement sessions, sharing, experiencing and co-creating movement. We explore our rhythms, tendencies, preferences and movement personalities, and notice the habits we return to without thinking.
01 / Movement
Share and create
We experience each other’s ways of moving, step outside familiar habits, and create a shared movement motif. We develop it into something that would not have existed without this collaboration. The dancing creates a connection and a starting point for conversation.
02 / Conversation
Talk with me
We explore our personal relationships with dance through the STEP Framework: Social, Thinking, Emotional and Physical. The conversation follows what emerges from the movement and what matters to each collaborator.
03 / Reflection
Reflect with Lindsey
In a separate conversation with Lindsey, collaborators explore their relationship with dance across their lifespan. They also reflect on the Dance with Me process and what the experience has meant to them.
Social
Connection, communication and collaboration.
Thinking
Learning, remembering and creating movement.
Emotional
Feelings, memories and personal stories.
Physical
How our bodies respond and adapt.
What emerges
A growing record
of dance and experience
What connects these encounters is a willingness to step into uncertainty, to dance without knowing exactly where it will lead, and to talk honestly about what happens.
I’m interested in noticing how bodies adapt, how minds respond, how emotions surface, and how connection develops through movement. Each collaboration is a moment in time. Together, they form a growing archive of dance and human experience.
Movement and reflection
The intended outputs include a new movement motif, alongside individual summaries of the STEP-focused conversation and each collaborator’s relationship with dance across their lifespan. These individual summaries are private.
Selected public material
Public material includes summaries of collaborators’ experiences, and written and video documentation of the themes and movements that emerge. An exhibition or performance is a possible future output.
For dancers and dance companies
Become a collaborator
I’d like to hear from professionally trained and experienced dancers who are interested in sharing their movement personality and exploring the psychology of dance with us.
The application page includes the project information and a short form where you can tell me about your dance style, where you are based, and what excites you about taking part.
Programmes / Performance / Collaboration
Have a project in mind?
I’m interested in making programmes and performances that explore human experience through dance. I’d be pleased to hear from producers, agents and creative collaborators.