ABOUT
DUNAMI
DUNAMI - MOVEMENT ARTS WELLBEING CIC
is an umbrella Community Interest Company combining the fields of movement and eco-somatic arts, therapeutic counselling, experiential education, intercultural dialogue through arts projects, as well as environmental awareness research.
Meet the Board
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Dr Anna Dako
Dr Anna Dako, AHPP, RSME/T, UKSMDT is the founder of DUNAMI - Movement Arts Wellbeing CIC, a platform for ecologically mindful growth, creative development, psycho-somatic health and intercultural dialogue projects. DUNAMI’s offer includes regular practice-based workshops: The Seedling and Soma Scapes, as well as self-therapy resources. She specialises in supporting and working through versatile psycho-somatic imbalances, and loves guiding experiential walks outdoors, especially throughout Aberdeenshire. Her practice focuses on practice-based research in creative arts and environmental psychology perspectives on mental health and wellbeing. She has developed a movement-based approach towards more embodied ways for ‘being well’ with the natural environment guided by processes of Somatic Felt Thinking. The methodology is now offered as an online course in Eco-Somatic Movement Education and further described in her recent books ‘Dances With Sheep - On RePairing the Human-Nature Condition in Felt Thinking and Moving Towards Wellbeing’ and Walking to Wellbeing - A Guide to Practising Self-Care in Somatic Felt Thinking.
Dr Sarah Luczaj
Sarah Luczaj PhD, MBACP, DipCouns is a writer, artist, person centred therapist in private practice, inventor of the Creative Regeneration method, Reiki master, translator and co-founder of the terrealuma healing refuge in south east Poland, as well as enthusiastic cello learner and spontaneous mover! Her poetry and literary translations have been widely published, and she is the author of Creative Regeneration (Wayward Publications, 2019) and The Chi Book: Reiki from the Roots (Wayward Publications, 2021). Currently based in Glasgow, she is the mother of two grown daughters. Sarah's connection with Anna Dako and her work goes back two decades, and she is honoured to be a Director of Dunami, whose active exploration of the life force in thoughts, feelings, bodies, and nature is very close to both her mind and her heart.
Shayne Lilith-Moon
Shayne Lilith-Moon is a classroom assistant in special needs school. Her primary job is working with neurodiverse children, and young adults, using a curative approach based upon Rudolf Steiner's and Camphill's pedagogy. Her BA is in Steiner Education. In her free time, Shayne likes to spend time outdoors, running, cycling, walking, and indoors at the gym. She has always liked to move and enjoys movement per se. She also completed the MA in Somatics and Wellbeing in 2017 and has been accompanying Anna on many of her wellbeing walks since. Shayne enjoys the change she is currently experiencing from seeing herself as very progress-orientated to becoming more process-orientated and noticing the shift in her nervous system taking place during the walks. ...
Dunami CIC is a Scottish arts organisation based in North East Scotland, creating interdisciplinary artistic experiences that connect people with movement arts, living landscapes and creative wellbeing.
Founded by Dr Anna Dako in 2012 in Poland and in 2024 in Scotland UK, Dunami develops original artistic work alongside opportunities for creative participation, artist development and public engagement.
Our work is rooted in
Eco-Somatic Felt Thinking
an artist-led methodology developed through over two decades of creative practice and doctoral research. Bringing together movement, visual arts, film and place-responsive practice, it explores the relationship between body, landscape and creativity, inviting people to experience the natural environment not simply as a backdrop for art, but as an active creative collaborator.
At Dunami, eco-somatic movement practices form the foundation of our artistic research, creative process and educational work. Through embodied engagement with place, we encourage artists, participants and communities to reconnect with the natural world, deepen sensory awareness, and discover new ways of creating, learning and relating to their environments. Our work promotes ecological awareness, embodied creativity and wellbeing while supporting more intuitive, place-responsive artistic practice and personal growth.
We create artist residencies, interdisciplinary art projects, exhibitions, performances, films, publications, workshops and educational programmes across indoor, outdoor and digital settings. Alongside supporting professional artists, we are committed to making contemporary arts and somatic practices accessible to people of all ages, backgrounds and abilities through creative participation, wellbeing initiatives and public engagement.
Guided by our 4 I's principles:
Inclusive | Intercultural | Interdisciplinary | Integrative
we believe meaningful artistic experiences emerge through collaboration—with landscapes, with communities and with one another. Through partnerships across the arts, education, health and environmental sectors, we foster dialogue, creativity and shared learning while creating spaces where diverse perspectives can flourish.
Our long-term ambition is to establish North East Scotland as a recognised home for eco-somatic and place-responsive contemporary arts through In The Open - Living Landscape Arts Initiative. By supporting artistic innovation, interdisciplinary collaboration and meaningful public engagement, we aim to strengthen connections between contemporary arts, local landscapes and environmental dialogue, inspiring more creative and sustainable ways of living in/with the natural world.
We warmly invite artists, communities and organisations to join us in exploring new ways of creating, learning and connecting through landscape, movement and the arts.
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DUNAMI's regular collaborators include also other
wonderful teachers, practitioners, and artists whose work inspires and nourishes many, every single day!
both UK and internationally based:
MARTINA POLLEROS, RSME/T, MA Dance and Somatic Wellbeing Martina trained in Dance between Art and Therapy, at the Bewegungsinstitut Essen and continued her education with Bodybliss – Continuum Movement at the Somatic Academy in Munich. She also studied the Life Art Process of Anna Halprin with Ulla Schorn and completed her MA in Dance and Somatic Wellbeing at UCLAN University U.K. with distinction in 2014. She is currently teaching somatic movement classes, working as a somatic coach for a health prevention program in a large insurance company and working as an ISMETA certified somatic movement therapist in Vienna. She teaches sensory integration for pedagogues and is also the founder of a one year “heart-listening circle”, an exploratory research circle to cultivate heart-listening. Martina is a part of a German NGO called Emergency Pedagogy, that works mainly with children of all ages in areas of huge crisis around the world. Her last operation was in a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon in 2019. Besides her practice as a movement educator, she also value her further development and seeks out regular research opportunities. She has worked with Susan Harper, Miranda Tufnell, Andrea Olsen and Caryn McHose, to name a few of wonderful teachers who have formed, inspired and supported her work throughout the years.
Dr MARTA BURY, Artistic Director at O.de.la Marta is the founder of O.de.la Dance Theatre and a director of Nowe Strategie Choreograficzne (Cotemporary Dance Festival) in Rzeszow, Poland. Marta Bury – PhD in dance pedagogy, sociologist, choreographer and instructor of contemporary dance II degree (diploma issued by the Ministry of Culture and Art in 1998), actress (in the years 2001-2016 actress of the Maska Theater in Rzeszów), originator and co-founder of creative associations (Rzeszów Association of Artistic Initiatives "Pełna Kultura" and the O.de.la Theater Foundation), producer of theater and dance performances, founder of the Gestu Theater (1998-2009) and the o.de.la Theater (2014-). Member of the Polish Choreological Forum Association since 2024. Freelancer since 2016. Teacher of the method of work on deepening body awareness, "Becoming Space", and author of a doctoral thesis in the field of dance pedagogy on the influence of colorful psychokinetic visualizations on the body, defended in 2022 at the University of Silesia. Marta has received numerous awards for her acting and choreographic work. https://www.facebook.com/odelateatr
FRANCIS ANGOL, RSME/T, MA Dance and Somatic Wellbeing Francis is the founder and Artistic Director of Movement Angol dance, a UK based Dance Company which produces work that draws from the teachings and practices of dance from the African Diaspora, synthesised with Western Contemporary dance and underpinned by Somatic practice. Francis’ other roles are that of Somatic Movement Educator / therapist, performing artist, choreographer, Creative Educator and Lecturer in dance at the University of Surrey. He works extensively in professional, HE and FE education as well as community practice. Over the course of his career, Francis has produced works that have contributed to the enrichment of British dance culture through the production of a range of training programmes, classes, courses, and performance works, most notably he produced and curated the Flat Feet Dance Festival with the support of the South Bank Centre. Over the years, Francis has worked to develop a distinctive movement modality, an individual approach to dance art. Through his work, Francis enables people by creating opportunities for intercultural exchange and dialogue. He synthesises cultural traditions with contemporary norms to offer individuals a space for self-actualisation, through exploration and expression. Francis strives to encourage change by influencing the future, through impacting the present with work that is accessible, inclusive and is physical and mentally empowering. His work is deeply rooted in the spirituality of the self, a way of life that taps into the unspoken rhythmic dialogue of mind and body, to form a unique cultural synthesis in movement form. The practice is a way of allowing the individual to journey through a widening "field of possibilities, folding presence with existence, to allow self-expression to organically unfold. In his work he offers individuals a fresh and creative approach to engage with their body, to awaken the inner self through a dialogue of movement, rhythm, dance, imagery, and the imagination. This forms the basis of his mode of expression referred to as ‘Embodied Flow’. As a performer / choreographer and creative educator, Francis works to synthesise his accumulated knowledge of dance and the arts, with that of his lived experience, to help individuals bring about clarity, meaning and understanding to their mental and physical flow, through movement and dance.