Chanting Body: Moving with Chinese Poetic Thought - Spring Term 2026

Chanting Body: Moving with Chinese Poetic Thought

Introduction

In classical Chinese poetry, the boundaries between nature, body, and mind dissolve into a shared rhythm. This course invites participants into a dynamic encounter with Chinese poetic thought—not as text alone, but as a lived and moving experience.

Through guided readings, somatic exploration, and improvisational movement, we will trace how poetry in the Chinese tradition breathes with cosmological awareness, inner stillness, and responsive embodiment. Drawing on Daoist, Buddhist, and Confucian aesthetics, the course explores key poetic voices and how their landscapes of language can be felt through the breath, the spine, and the sensing body.

Open to dancers, poets, movers, and all those with an interest in Chinese philosophy and aesthetics, this course offers a space to explore the body as a vessel of resonance—where poetic images chant through motion, and the space between words becomes a terrain for embodied presence.

Format

This course is offered both in person and online, blending intellectual discussion with guided movement practice.

DISCLAIMER - If you are undertaking an in-person course please note that we may need to move the course online due to any unforeseen circumstances. Please note no refunds are issued for moving courses online.

Time: Thursdays, 3:30–5:00 PM (UK time)

Location Richard Hoggart Building, Room 253, Goldsmiths

Do note there will be no classes on during the week of 16 February.

Discount

We offer Goldsmiths staff, students, alumni, local Lewisham residents, over 65s and those in receipt of income support a 15% discount. To receive the discount code, you need to provide proof to confucius@gold.ac.uk before we can send you the discount code.