ABOUT | Portfolio

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 heritage.

She performs, choreographs, facilitates, writes, and collaborates both independently and within Kaaos Company (FI), Body Island (NZ/FI), and Memory as Medium (FI). She also co-hosts online Social Dreaming Matrices with WSDM.

Her dance art practice has evolved over two decades between Aotearoa and Finland, shaped by multiple threads.

Working across diverse embodied perceptions—within disability and multicultural contexts—has been a ground for her approach.

Improvisation is a core ground, nurtured through collaborations with Shameless Crowd Pleaser (NZ), Touch Compass (NZ), Bangers and Mash (NZ), Vitamin S (NZ), Kaaos Company (FI) and its Sunday Inclusive Movement Improv classes, as well as through site-based dance in both natural and urban environments, and the practice of Contact Improvisation.

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).

A diverse spectrum of performance imprints her embodied experience

—ranging from early site-based works by BackLit in a derelict carpark (NZ/2006), to the opening ceremony of the Greenwich + Docklands Festival (UK/2010), and the World of Wearable Arts shows (NZ/2010–'14); from performing at the World Body Painting Awards (AT/2012), to dancing in airports with Touch Compass (NZ/2013), and underwater filming in an aquarium for Vincent Ward Art (NZ/2011), among others.

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 a shared field of inquiry and an 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 adopt a feminist approach, valuing multiplicity and collective empowerment. For me, dance is not product-driven but a process of experiential learning, where knowledge is lived and felt.

Through task-based play, somatic exercises, and improvisational scores, I invite curiosity, presence, and co-creation. These methods foster a responsive relationship to time, space, and one another—attuning to relationality and touch.

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.