Daniel Bear Davis (MFA, SEP) is a movement educator, Somatic Experiencing® practitioner, and interdisciplinary performance maker whose work supports people in stepping into greater aliveness and inhabiting the details of lived experience more fully. He has taught Axis Syllabus, contact improvisation, contemplative movement practices, and embodied anatomy across Europe, Asia, North America, and the Middle East. Alongside group teaching, he maintains a private practice as a somatic coach, drawing on Somatic Experiencing® tools to help renegotiate trauma and support resilient nervous systems. His approach is also shaped by cultural somatics, with its awareness of the wider network of human and non-human relationships that inform our embodied experience. Through his work, he aims to connect the personal with ancestral lineage, nature, culture, and more, while fostering informed choice through curiosity and exploration.
Daniel has collaborated with veterans and non-veterans through work with Krista DeNio and the EchoTheaterSuitcase project, and he has also worked in San Quentin Prison with The Artistic Ensemble. His original performance, On Contentious Grounds, examined the intersections between the experiences of students at St. Mary’s College of Maryland and the experiences of oppression reflected in interviews he conducted with Palestinians in the West Bank.
His performance work has been presented at Performaticá in Mexico, the Imagining Bodies Symposium in Estonia, Dancing in Place Festival in Malaysia, SummerWorks in Canada, the San Francisco International Arts Festial, SoWat Now Contemporary Performance Festival, Looking Left Festival in California, the SEEDS Festival and E|MERGE Residency at Earthdance Center, MA, and at danceh0l0 in Brooklyn. He has also had the opportunity to perform with Guillermo Gomez Peña, Nancy Stark Smith, Nita Little, Pipaluk Supernova/Live Art Installations, Felix Ruckert, Kira Kirsch, Erika Tsimbrovsky, Scott Wells, Cid Pearlman, and many other inspiring body/minds.