Satya Dunning

I am a Mixed Black interdisciplinary somatic movement artist and writer. I use primarily the body and movement to navigate the geography of survival, the choreography of endurance and resilience, the reclamation of my ageing Black mixed body and the aesthetics of healing.

My work is community and socially engaged, with my somatic movement practice developed for and with the Black female body on receiving support from gravity and the ground and taking up space. Other current interests include developing Entelechy Arts’ Ambient Jam and a creative project with a group of visually impaired Africans, both in Glasgow. Currently, I am an Iyengar Yoga Trainee and Mentee.

For the past twenty two years, I have been pioneering a movement language that is site specific, accommodates a chronic health condition, and a Black body layered with wounds, grief and trauma. I have been dancing and moving in the private architecture of trauma recovery to make sense of how to live well in this world, carve a place for myself, find sanity and joy through the media of body, movement, enquiry, nature and writing - because I felt so lost in life.

I have created work with collaborators (2009 and 2012). I have had fallow periods to take care of my health (2014 to 2018), explored a movement language that works for me within the confines of my living room, bedroom, bed, trees and nature (site specific) (since 2023).

I have also shared my discoveries at Independent Dance, my own online workshops, specifically with Black movers at the James McCune Smith 2024 Conference and for Mixed people as part of Being Mixed programme of activities in 2025. I have created containers to explore my work more deeply through RRR including mentoring with Amy Voris and Natalie Garrett Brown from 2023 to 2024 and 2024 to 2025.