About
Julian is the co-founder of WUSHIREN and an emerging arts practitioner with a deep interest in creating systems across disciplines.
Drawing from his background in medicine, where he studied in his undergraduate degree, filmmaking, entrepreneurship and theatre practice, Julian is completing his masters research in arts pedagogy and practice on interdisciplinary embodiment at the LASALLE College of the Arts, University of Arts Singapore.
As a national athlete with Singapore’s Traditional Wushu Elite Team, he has participated in high-profile competitions such as 10th World Kung Fu Championships and 9th Tai Chi World Cup.
The Impossible Curriculum: On cultivating conditions for embodied kearning
This study investigates the conditions through which embodied learning can be intentionally facilitated within physical theatre pedagogy. While embodied practices are increasingly recognised across education, performance and healthcare, there remains limited guidance on how facilitators can create learning environments that foster genuine transformation rather than the acquisition of physical skills alone.
Drawing upon my practice as a physical theatre practitioner and educator, this study documents and analyses an iterative pedagogical process conducted through action research. Through cycles of teaching, reflection, observation, participant journals and video analysis, recurring patterns were identified that informed the development of a pedagogical framework.
The findings suggest that embodied transformation emerges through four interconnected pedagogical movements: Destabilisation, Articulation, Reorientation and Integration. These movements describe conditions which the facilitator can construct that invite learners to move from automatic action to conscious noticing, from implicit experience to explicit awareness, from fixed perception to exploratory perception; and ultimately from deliberate practice towards an embodied way of being.
The study argues that the facilitator's role is beyond transmitting knowledge; in the case of embodied learning, it is to cultivate conditions in which participants construct meaning through lived experience. By articulating these pedagogical movements, this research contributes a practical framework for educators seeking to facilitate embodied learning across theatre and related disciplines.
More broadly, it proposes that embodiment is not merely a method of learning, but a mode of becoming – offering implications for pedagogy, professional training and human development.
Professional practice
Embodied theatre, pedagogy and practice-led research
Exploring the body as a site of knowing, transformation and action.
I work at the intersection of physical theatre, embodied practice and pedagogy. Drawing from Taiji, physical theatre and somatic practices, I create performances and learning environments that explore the body as a site of knowledge, transformation and human connection. My practice spans theatre-making, facilitation and practice-led research, with a particular interest in how embodied experience can enable forms of learning and knowing beyond conventional intellectual instruction.
