Ami Skånberg is a performer, choreographer, filmmaker and writer. She holds a PhD in Dance from University of Roehampton, where the center of her practice-led project was to walk slowly in urban and other spaces, through the Japanese walk suriashi . The practice became a ceremonial, subversive act performed together and with others. Her research interests are practice-led and concern walking as artistic practice and screendance as a way of thinking.
She is a senior lecturer at Academy of Music and Drama at University of Gothenburg since 2019, where she serves as teacher, supervisor, course coordinator and opponent. She teaches Artistic Research, choreography, dance theory, historiography, screendance, and movement meditation. Between 2021-2026, she was the Head of the Master’s programme MADE at the Stockholm University of the Arts, where made she major changes to decolonize higher dance education. Ami is vice-chair of Nordic Forum for Dance Research (NoFoD) (the next conference happens in Reykjavik 2026). Between 2015 and 2018, she co-chaired the Nordic Summer University Study Circle of Artistic Research with Dr Lucy Lyons. She makes Peer Review for academic and artistic journals, such as Journal of Artistic Research.
She walks slowly as a ceremonial, subversive act thanks to her studies with Nishikawa Senrei and work with Japanese dance (Nihon Buyō and Nō) in Kyoto since 2000. Since 2014, she walks in suriashi in different spaces, which culminated in her doctoral dissertation Suriashi as Experimental Pligrimage in Urban and Other Spaces at Dance Department, University of Roehampton, UK. Ami is often invited to perform suriashi with local groups as a method for artistic collaboration or for political causes. She has written several articles showing how suriashi can become an important method for societal engagement, and as such reconnects with its origins in Daoist walking (for peace).Ami makes dance films and documentaries about dance. Her debut film won an honorary mention at VidéoDanseGrandPrix in Paris 1995. Her fiction film The Dancer - a fairy-tale was nominated the Golden Hat Award at Gothenburg Film Festival the same year. A collection of her films are released by Njutafilms. http://www.njutafilms.com Her 90 min solo performance A Particular Act of Survival received a performing arts award at Scenkonstgalan in Sweden in 2015.
Watch a video with Ami from The Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities here: [https://youtu.be/Pl4iE4mfcgY]