Georgie Goater is a dance artist from Aotearoa currently based in Helsinki.
Born in Japan and raised bilingually with her twin brother in Nagoya (JP) before moving to Ōtautahi (NZ), she is of Irish-Scottish and English heritage.
She performs, choreographs, facilitates, teaches, researches, writes, and collaborates both independently and within collectives.
She works with Kaaos Company (FI), collaborates with Body Island (NZ/FI) and Moving Translations (FI) and is currently a part of Humina ry.
She also organises and co-hosts online Social Dreaming Matrices with WSDM.
Her dance art practice has evolved over two decades between Aotearoa and Finland, shaped by working within disability and multicultural contexts, relationally with land, site and place, and multidisciplinary practices.
Improvisation is a core ground, nurtured through collaborations with Shameless Crowd Pleaser (NZ), Touch Compass (NZ), Bangers and Mash (NZ), Vitamin S (NZ), Resisting Extinction performances, Kaaos Company (FI) and its Sunday Inclusive Movement Improvisation classes, as well as through site-based dance in both natural and urban environments, through somatic and sensory practice.
Georgie holds an MA in Dance Pedagogy from Helsinki University of the Arts (2019) and a BPSA in Contemporary Dance from Unitec
School of Performing Arts (NZ, 2005).
My diverse embodied imprints:
-- from making early site-based works by BackLit in a derelict carpark (NZ/2006), to dancing in the opening ceremony of the Greenwich + Docklands Festival 2010 (UK); in Alexa Wilsons' Toxic White Elephant Shock 2009 (NZ), in Kelly Nash's the Meme (Skin) 2012 (NZ) and in the World of Wearable Arts shows 2010, 2013, 2014 (NZ); from performing at the World Body Painting Awards 2012 (AT) to dancing in airports with Touch Compass (NZ/2013), underwater filming in an aquarium for Vincent Ward Art 2011 (NZ), to making out pink duet, 2016with Alisha McLennan Marler, to documenting relational movement and poetry with a construction site in 2020 (FI) -- and more.
My artistic-pedagogical practice honours each person’s unique embodied perception and intelligence. I strive to cultivate a non-hierarchical space where dance and movement become an emergent field of inquiry and a shared act of resistance, rather than a fixed form to be replicated. Imagination, improvisation, and sensory awareness are central, tending to the body as both playground and witness.
My approach is grounded in relationality. I’m committed to holding space for agency, not only of the people moving but also of the environments, materials, cultural identities, aesthetics, and movement itself. I value multiplicity and collective empowerment through an intersectional feminist approach. For me, dance is not product-driven but a process of experiential learning, where knowledge is lived and felt, at once personal and made together.
Through task-based play, somatic exploration, and improvisational scores, I invite curiosity, presence, and co-creation. These methods foster a responsive relationship to time, space, and one another, while attuning to relationality and touch within living consent.
I view authenticity and creativity as inherent and aim to scaffold structures that support their emergence. In collective settings, I foster the skill of observation, where dancing unfolds as both an act of becoming and witnessing, creating space for what arises in between.
I draw from and value lineage through a rhizomatic, norm-critical lens. I am compelled by the edge between safety and the unknown—a generative threshold where risk, surprise, and new ways of perceiving are welcomed.
Other imprints:
- Memory ecologies
- Being a twin
- Growing up in Japan
- Dreaming
- The dance community in Aotearoa
- Being introduced to ConTact C.A.R.E and the foundation courses
- Fluidity
- Finding the frame: film and video art
- Being in nature
- Collaborating with fellow artists, process-oriented co-creation
- Making voice and sound art
- Being introduced to the Social Dreaming Matrix in Finland
- Material agency
- Finding embodied writing as choreographic practice
- Always learning as a performer and improviser
- Making mistakes, being humbled
- Participating in the Feminist Leadership Platform 2024
- Loss; grief rituals
- Asking questions