Full abstracts will be available to all delegates prior
to the event but here is just a sample of what will
be delivered and discussed.
Day 1 - 11th February 2021
Opening Keynote
Professor Victor Merriman: We Are Where We Are’: Dancing A Fractured World
‘We Are Where We Are’ considers how performers might navigate the present as a crisis of ideas and values. How might dance practices and performers make questions of power, class, gender and race central to better futures? How might artists project humane imaginaries beyond, not where ‘we’ are, but where ‘we’ have been positioned?
Dance and Resistance
Victoria Hunter: Site Dance and Urban Resistance
Drawing on discourses of neoliberalism (Harvey 2005, Kratzwald 2015, Whybrow 2010), urban performativity (Makeham 2005, Jacobs 1961, Seamon 1980) and urban design (Childs 2004, Carter 2015) the presentation explores urban parks and squares as stages for ‘everyday’ performances invoked by design, narratives, function and regulatory conditions. It questions; what level of engagement exists between site and the dance work performed in these spaces, what do such performance experiences tell us regarding the site’s contextual
make up and what (whose?) purpose might this work serve?
Susanne Foellmer: Movement Forbidden: Using Choreography
as a Means of Protest in Times of Curfew
The interweaving of dance and protest is a common phenomenon in recent social movements such as the regular flash mob One Billion Rising. Generally, bodies gathering in the public sphere are crucial in the struggle for social and political justice. But what happens if the physical public sphere is not available, as induced by the ongoing pandemic? How does protest change, and how can dance and choreography support the ongoing need for making one’s voice heard?
Performative Lecture
Michael Douglas Kollektiv and Dana Caspersen: Polarity Party
Participants are invited to consider the questions: What is polarization? What does it do in us? What do we do with it? The Polarity Party offers a situation where we can focus on the mechanism of polarization itself and our role in – this will be an experiment in delivering this event online as it is usually presented live.
Film : Circadian Rosemary Lee Circadian (2020)
A short dance film by Rosemary Lee and Roswitha Chesher. From one afternoon to the next over the summer solstice weekend 2019, one of 24 dancers, ranging in age from 10-70+ years, performed a short solo on the
hour every hour.
Dance and Identity
Professor Thomas F Defrantz - Black thought in motion
How are artists crafting unusual approaches to digital presence and formations of dance pedagogy and sharing? An offering of means and methods to encourage participation in digital offerings of thinking together towards movement that will be made in physical distancing.
Sharon Watson DL - Displaced positivity and the power of voice
When do we seize an opportunity and where do we enable the power of our lived experiences to drive change? How do we add power and impact to our voice? How can we ensure the messenger is the one
embraced and not just the message? This needs to change.
Workshop
Michelle Man – Dance Objects (DO): Tea Towel Dances workshop
The Tea Towel Dances workshop builds on the recent experiences of teaching online from my kitchen during lockdown. Tea Towel Dances emerged from the necessity to activate and communicate sensitized and affective touch as an embodied and creative experience across a screen. For ODD2, this workshop invites an exploration into the reciprocity between the tea towel and moving participant, with the aim to unfold personal narratives
and a space to question encounters with interculturalism across digital boundaries.
Please bring a tea towel to this session.
Dance and Identity
Thea Stanton: Immersion: Negotiating Boundaries, Difference and Democracy
This paper asks whether the creation of an immersive experience through a choreographic embodied lens
could help address these concerns. Acknowledging the pioneering works of companies such as the Judson Church Group who’s participatory performances were at the forefront of ‘the threefold agenda of ‘activation, authorship, community’ (Kolb, 2013), the presentation explores the use of movement practices that embrace a decentralization of decision-making and nurture an inter-subjective awareness in order to develop an immersive practice that embraces an ethic of respect and care.
Rosa Cisneros: Artists as critical workers
This paper responds to the notion of artists as critical workers and explores the manner which the Dancing Bodies in Coventry (DBiC) project is exploring questions around boundaries, borders, exclusion and buried histories. DBiC brought forward “lesser known” independent dance artists and voices that are hidden, such as Refugee and Migrants and the Roma from Romania.
Film: Unseen Designs, Bisakha Sarker
The film reflects in dance, spoken word, music and image on current scientific thought and hopes
to evoke greater curiosity amongst the general public on the mysteries of the world around us.
Key note
Dr. Elena Marchevska: There Are Other Worlds *
In this talk I will reflect on my most recent practice as research collaborative projects ‘Finding home’ (2018-2020) and ‘Third nature’(2020). I will look into how ways of studying and representing migrants can have world-making effects. How do we talk about the meaning of care from our own migrant marginalized experience of everyday caring? In this projects, we collaboratively think of different worlds. Worlds where it not enough to detect what is there, what is given in the things we study and experience about migration, but also worlds where we think about what is not included and about what migrant could become. Worlds that are constantly rethought, contested
and enriched.
Closing Act
Raconteur 1
Wendy Houstoun rounds up the highlights of the day
Film: Kontrol, Patricia Carolin Mai
KONTROL is a solo performance by and with Patricia Carolin Mai, and the epilogue to the trilogy
“bodies in states of emergency”. KONTROL is an intense experiment on competing with your own body.
* Inspiration drawn from Sun Ra’s There Are Other Worlds (They Have Not Told You Of)
Full abstracts will be available to all delegates prior
to the event but here is just a sample of what will
be delivered and discussed.
Day 1 - 11th February 2021
Opening Keynote
Professor Victor Merriman: We Are Where We Are’: Dancing A Fractured World
‘We Are Where We Are’ considers how performers might navigate the present as a crisis of ideas and values. How might dance practices and performers make questions of power, class, gender and race central to better futures? How might artists project humane imaginaries beyond, not where ‘we’ are, but where ‘we’ have been positioned?
Dance and Resistance
Victoria Hunter: Site Dance and Urban Resistance
Drawing on discourses of neoliberalism (Harvey 2005, Kratzwald 2015, Whybrow 2010), urban performativity (Makeham 2005, Jacobs 1961, Seamon 1980) and urban design (Childs 2004, Carter 2015) the presentation explores urban parks and squares as stages for ‘everyday’ performances invoked by design, narratives, function and regulatory conditions. It questions; what level of engagement exists between site and the dance work performed in these spaces, what do such performance experiences tell us regarding the site’s contextual
make up and what (whose?) purpose might this work serve?
Susanne Foellmer: Movement Forbidden: Using Choreography
as a Means of Protest in Times of Curfew
The interweaving of dance and protest is a common phenomenon in recent social movements such as the regular flash mob One Billion Rising. Generally, bodies gathering in the public sphere are crucial in the struggle for social and political justice. But what happens if the physical public sphere is not available, as induced by the ongoing pandemic? How does protest change, and how can dance and choreography support the ongoing need for making one’s voice heard?
Performative Lecture
Michael Douglas Kollektiv and Dana Caspersen: Polarity Party
Participants are invited to consider the questions: What is polarization? What does it do in us? What do we do with it? The Polarity Party offers a situation where we can focus on the mechanism of polarization itself and our role in – this will be an experiment in delivering this event online as it is usually presented live.
Film : Circadian Rosemary Lee Circadian (2020)
A short dance film by Rosemary Lee and Roswitha Chesher. From one afternoon to the next over the summer solstice weekend 2019, one of 24 dancers, ranging in age from 10-70+ years, performed a short solo on the
hour every hour.
Dance and Identity
Professor Thomas F Defrantz - Black thought in motion
How are artists crafting unusual approaches to digital presence and formations of dance pedagogy and sharing? An offering of means and methods to encourage participation in digital offerings of thinking together towards movement that will be made in physical distancing.
Sharon Watson DL - Displaced positivity and the power of voice
When do we seize an opportunity and where do we enable the power of our lived experiences to drive change? How do we add power and impact to our voice? How can we ensure the messenger is the one
embraced and not just the message? This needs to change.
Workshop
Michelle Man – Dance Objects (DO): Tea Towel Dances workshop
The Tea Towel Dances workshop builds on the recent experiences of teaching online from my kitchen during lockdown. Tea Towel Dances emerged from the necessity to activate and communicate sensitized and affective touch as an embodied and creative experience across a screen. For ODD2, this workshop invites an exploration into the reciprocity between the tea towel and moving participant, with the aim to unfold personal narratives
and a space to question encounters with interculturalism across digital boundaries.
Please bring a tea towel to this session.
Dance and Identity
Thea Stanton: Immersion: Negotiating Boundaries, Difference and Democracy
This paper asks whether the creation of an immersive experience through a choreographic embodied lens
could help address these concerns. Acknowledging the pioneering works of companies such as the Judson Church Group who’s participatory performances were at the forefront of ‘the threefold agenda of ‘activation, authorship, community’ (Kolb, 2013), the presentation explores the use of movement practices that embrace a decentralization of decision-making and nurture an inter-subjective awareness in order to develop an immersive practice that embraces an ethic of respect and care.
Rosa Cisneros: Artists as critical workers
This paper responds to the notion of artists as critical workers and explores the manner which the Dancing Bodies in Coventry (DBiC) project is exploring questions around boundaries, borders, exclusion and buried histories. DBiC brought forward “lesser known” independent dance artists and voices that are hidden, such as Refugee and Migrants and the Roma from Romania.
Film: Unseen Designs, Bisakha Sarker
The film reflects in dance, spoken word, music and image on current scientific thought and hopes
to evoke greater curiosity amongst the general public on the mysteries of the world around us.
Key note
Dr. Elena Marchevska: There Are Other Worlds *
In this talk I will reflect on my most recent practice as research collaborative projects ‘Finding home’ (2018-2020) and ‘Third nature’(2020). I will look into how ways of studying and representing migrants can have world-making effects. How do we talk about the meaning of care from our own migrant marginalized experience of everyday caring? In this projects, we collaboratively think of different worlds. Worlds where it not enough to detect what is there, what is given in the things we study and experience about migration, but also worlds where we think about what is not included and about what migrant could become. Worlds that are constantly rethought, contested
and enriched.
Closing Act
Raconteur 1
Wendy Houstoun rounds up the highlights of the day
Film: Kontrol, Patricia Carolin Mai
KONTROL is a solo performance by and with Patricia Carolin Mai, and the epilogue to the trilogy
“bodies in states of emergency”. KONTROL is an intense experiment on competing with your own body.
* Inspiration drawn from Sun Ra’s There Are Other Worlds (They Have Not Told You Of)
Full abstracts will be available to all delegates prior
to the event but here is just a sample of what will
be delivered and discussed.
Day 1 - 11th February 2021
Opening Keynote
Professor Victor Merriman: We Are Where We Are’: Dancing A Fractured World
‘We Are Where We Are’ considers how performers might navigate the present as a crisis of ideas and values. How might dance practices and performers make questions of power, class, gender and race central to better futures? How might artists project humane imaginaries beyond, not where ‘we’ are, but where ‘we’ have been positioned?
Dance and Resistance
Victoria Hunter: Site Dance and Urban Resistance
Drawing on discourses of neoliberalism (Harvey 2005, Kratzwald 2015, Whybrow 2010), urban performativity (Makeham 2005, Jacobs 1961, Seamon 1980) and urban design (Childs 2004, Carter 2015) the presentation explores urban parks and squares as stages for ‘everyday’ performances invoked by design, narratives, function and regulatory conditions. It questions; what level of engagement exists between site and the dance work performed in these spaces, what do such performance experiences tell us regarding the site’s contextual
make up and what (whose?) purpose might this work serve?
Susanne Foellmer: Movement Forbidden: Using Choreography
as a Means of Protest in Times of Curfew
The interweaving of dance and protest is a common phenomenon in recent social movements such as the regular flash mob One Billion Rising. Generally, bodies gathering in the public sphere are crucial in the struggle for social and political justice. But what happens if the physical public sphere is not available, as induced by the ongoing pandemic? How does protest change, and how can dance and choreography support the ongoing need for making one’s voice heard?
Performative Lecture
Michael Douglas Kollektiv and Dana Caspersen: Polarity Party
Participants are invited to consider the questions: What is polarization? What does it do in us? What do we do with it? The Polarity Party offers a situation where we can focus on the mechanism of polarization itself and our role in – this will be an experiment in delivering this event online as it is usually presented live.
Film : Circadian Rosemary Lee Circadian (2020)
A short dance film by Rosemary Lee and Roswitha Chesher. From one afternoon to the next over the summer solstice weekend 2019, one of 24 dancers, ranging in age from 10-70+ years, performed a short solo on the
hour every hour.
Dance and Identity
Professor Thomas F Defrantz - Black thought in motion
How are artists crafting unusual approaches to digital presence and formations of dance pedagogy and sharing? An offering of means and methods to encourage participation in digital offerings of thinking together towards movement that will be made in physical distancing.
Sharon Watson DL - Displaced positivity and the power of voice
When do we seize an opportunity and where do we enable the power of our lived experiences to drive change? How do we add power and impact to our voice? How can we ensure the messenger is the one
embraced and not just the message? This needs to change.
Workshop
Michelle Man – Dance Objects (DO): Tea Towel Dances workshop
The Tea Towel Dances workshop builds on the recent experiences of teaching online from my kitchen during lockdown. Tea Towel Dances emerged from the necessity to activate and communicate sensitized and affective touch as an embodied and creative experience across a screen. For ODD2, this workshop invites an exploration into the reciprocity between the tea towel and moving participant, with the aim to unfold personal narratives
and a space to question encounters with interculturalism across digital boundaries.
Please bring a tea towel to this session.
Dance and Identity
Thea Stanton: Immersion: Negotiating Boundaries, Difference and Democracy
This paper asks whether the creation of an immersive experience through a choreographic embodied lens
could help address these concerns. Acknowledging the pioneering works of companies such as the Judson Church Group who’s participatory performances were at the forefront of ‘the threefold agenda of ‘activation, authorship, community’ (Kolb, 2013), the presentation explores the use of movement practices that embrace a decentralization of decision-making and nurture an inter-subjective awareness in order to develop an immersive practice that embraces an ethic of respect and care.
Rosa Cisneros: Artists as critical workers
This paper responds to the notion of artists as critical workers and explores the manner which the Dancing Bodies in Coventry (DBiC) project is exploring questions around boundaries, borders, exclusion and buried histories. DBiC brought forward “lesser known” independent dance artists and voices that are hidden, such as Refugee and Migrants and the Roma from Romania.
Film: Unseen Designs, Bisakha Sarker
The film reflects in dance, spoken word, music and image on current scientific thought and hopes
to evoke greater curiosity amongst the general public on the mysteries of the world around us.
Key note
Dr. Elena Marchevska: There Are Other Worlds *
In this talk I will reflect on my most recent practice as research collaborative projects ‘Finding home’ (2018-2020) and ‘Third nature’(2020). I will look into how ways of studying and representing migrants can have world-making effects. How do we talk about the meaning of care from our own migrant marginalized experience of everyday caring? In this projects, we collaboratively think of different worlds. Worlds where it not enough to detect what is there, what is given in the things we study and experience about migration, but also worlds where we think about what is not included and about what migrant could become. Worlds that are constantly rethought, contested
and enriched.
Closing Act
Raconteur 1
Wendy Houstoun rounds up the highlights of the day
Film: Kontrol, Patricia Carolin Mai
KONTROL is a solo performance by and with Patricia Carolin Mai, and the epilogue to the trilogy
“bodies in states of emergency”. KONTROL is an intense experiment on competing with your own body.
* Inspiration drawn from Sun Ra’s There Are Other Worlds (They Have Not Told You Of)
Full abstracts will be available to all delegates prior
to the event but here is just a sample of what will
be delivered and discussed.
Day 1 - 11th February 2021
Opening Keynote
Professor Victor Merriman: We Are Where We Are’: Dancing A Fractured World
‘We Are Where We Are’ considers how performers might navigate the present as a crisis of ideas and values. How might dance practices and performers make questions of power, class, gender and race central to better futures? How might artists project humane imaginaries beyond, not where ‘we’ are, but where ‘we’ have been positioned?
Dance and Resistance
Victoria Hunter: Site Dance and Urban Resistance
Drawing on discourses of neoliberalism (Harvey 2005, Kratzwald 2015, Whybrow 2010), urban performativity (Makeham 2005, Jacobs 1961, Seamon 1980) and urban design (Childs 2004, Carter 2015) the presentation explores urban parks and squares as stages for ‘everyday’ performances invoked by design, narratives, function and regulatory conditions. It questions; what level of engagement exists between site and the dance work performed in these spaces, what do such performance experiences tell us regarding the site’s contextual
make up and what (whose?) purpose might this work serve?
Susanne Foellmer: Movement Forbidden: Using Choreography
as a Means of Protest in Times of Curfew
The interweaving of dance and protest is a common phenomenon in recent social movements such as the regular flash mob One Billion Rising. Generally, bodies gathering in the public sphere are crucial in the struggle for social and political justice. But what happens if the physical public sphere is not available, as induced by the ongoing pandemic? How does protest change, and how can dance and choreography support the ongoing need for making one’s voice heard?
Performative Lecture
Michael Douglas Kollektiv and Dana Caspersen: Polarity Party
Participants are invited to consider the questions: What is polarization? What does it do in us? What do we do with it? The Polarity Party offers a situation where we can focus on the mechanism of polarization itself and our role in – this will be an experiment in delivering this event online as it is usually presented live.
Film : Circadian Rosemary Lee Circadian (2020)
A short dance film by Rosemary Lee and Roswitha Chesher. From one afternoon to the next over the summer solstice weekend 2019, one of 24 dancers, ranging in age from 10-70+ years, performed a short solo on the
hour every hour.
Dance and Identity
Professor Thomas F Defrantz - Black thought in motion
How are artists crafting unusual approaches to digital presence and formations of dance pedagogy and sharing? An offering of means and methods to encourage participation in digital offerings of thinking together towards movement that will be made in physical distancing.
Sharon Watson DL - Displaced positivity and the power of voice
When do we seize an opportunity and where do we enable the power of our lived experiences to drive change? How do we add power and impact to our voice? How can we ensure the messenger is the one
embraced and not just the message? This needs to change.
Workshop
Michelle Man – Dance Objects (DO): Tea Towel Dances workshop
The Tea Towel Dances workshop builds on the recent experiences of teaching online from my kitchen during lockdown. Tea Towel Dances emerged from the necessity to activate and communicate sensitized and affective touch as an embodied and creative experience across a screen. For ODD2, this workshop invites an exploration into the reciprocity between the tea towel and moving participant, with the aim to unfold personal narratives
and a space to question encounters with interculturalism across digital boundaries.
Please bring a tea towel to this session.
Dance and Identity
Thea Stanton: Immersion: Negotiating Boundaries, Difference and Democracy
This paper asks whether the creation of an immersive experience through a choreographic embodied lens
could help address these concerns. Acknowledging the pioneering works of companies such as the Judson Church Group who’s participatory performances were at the forefront of ‘the threefold agenda of ‘activation, authorship, community’ (Kolb, 2013), the presentation explores the use of movement practices that embrace a decentralization of decision-making and nurture an inter-subjective awareness in order to develop an immersive practice that embraces an ethic of respect and care.
Rosa Cisneros: Artists as critical workers
This paper responds to the notion of artists as critical workers and explores the manner which the Dancing Bodies in Coventry (DBiC) project is exploring questions around boundaries, borders, exclusion and buried histories. DBiC brought forward “lesser known” independent dance artists and voices that are hidden, such as Refugee and Migrants and the Roma from Romania.
Film: Unseen Designs, Bisakha Sarker
The film reflects in dance, spoken word, music and image on current scientific thought and hopes
to evoke greater curiosity amongst the general public on the mysteries of the world around us.
Key note
Dr. Elena Marchevska: There Are Other Worlds *
In this talk I will reflect on my most recent practice as research collaborative projects ‘Finding home’ (2018-2020) and ‘Third nature’(2020). I will look into how ways of studying and representing migrants can have world-making effects. How do we talk about the meaning of care from our own migrant marginalized experience of everyday caring? In this projects, we collaboratively think of different worlds. Worlds where it not enough to detect what is there, what is given in the things we study and experience about migration, but also worlds where we think about what is not included and about what migrant could become. Worlds that are constantly rethought, contested
and enriched.
Closing Act
Raconteur 1
Wendy Houstoun rounds up the highlights of the day
Film: Kontrol, Patricia Carolin Mai
KONTROL is a solo performance by and with Patricia Carolin Mai, and the epilogue to the trilogy
“bodies in states of emergency”. KONTROL is an intense experiment on competing with your own body.
* Inspiration drawn from Sun Ra’s There Are Other Worlds (They Have Not Told You Of)
Full abstracts will be available to all delegates prior
to the event but here is just a sample of what will
be delivered and discussed.
Day 1 - 11th February 2021
Opening Keynote
Professor Victor Merriman: We Are Where We Are’: Dancing A Fractured World
‘We Are Where We Are’ considers how performers might navigate the present as a crisis of ideas and values. How might dance practices and performers make questions of power, class, gender and race central to better futures? How might artists project humane imaginaries beyond, not where ‘we’ are, but where ‘we’ have been positioned?
Dance and Resistance
Victoria Hunter: Site Dance and Urban Resistance
Drawing on discourses of neoliberalism (Harvey 2005, Kratzwald 2015, Whybrow 2010), urban performativity (Makeham 2005, Jacobs 1961, Seamon 1980) and urban design (Childs 2004, Carter 2015) the presentation explores urban parks and squares as stages for ‘everyday’ performances invoked by design, narratives, function and regulatory conditions. It questions; what level of engagement exists between site and the dance work performed in these spaces, what do such performance experiences tell us regarding the site’s contextual
make up and what (whose?) purpose might this work serve?
Susanne Foellmer: Movement Forbidden: Using Choreography
as a Means of Protest in Times of Curfew
The interweaving of dance and protest is a common phenomenon in recent social movements such as the regular flash mob One Billion Rising. Generally, bodies gathering in the public sphere are crucial in the struggle for social and political justice. But what happens if the physical public sphere is not available, as induced by the ongoing pandemic? How does protest change, and how can dance and choreography support the ongoing need for making one’s voice heard?
Performative Lecture
Michael Douglas Kollektiv and Dana Caspersen: Polarity Party
Participants are invited to consider the questions: What is polarization? What does it do in us? What do we do with it? The Polarity Party offers a situation where we can focus on the mechanism of polarization itself and our role in – this will be an experiment in delivering this event online as it is usually presented live.
Film : Circadian Rosemary Lee Circadian (2020)
A short dance film by Rosemary Lee and Roswitha Chesher. From one afternoon to the next over the summer solstice weekend 2019, one of 24 dancers, ranging in age from 10-70+ years, performed a short solo on the
hour every hour.
Dance and Identity
Professor Thomas F Defrantz - Black thought in motion
How are artists crafting unusual approaches to digital presence and formations of dance pedagogy and sharing? An offering of means and methods to encourage participation in digital offerings of thinking together towards movement that will be made in physical distancing.
Sharon Watson DL - Displaced positivity and the power of voice
When do we seize an opportunity and where do we enable the power of our lived experiences to drive change? How do we add power and impact to our voice? How can we ensure the messenger is the one
embraced and not just the message? This needs to change.
Workshop
Michelle Man – Dance Objects (DO): Tea Towel Dances workshop
The Tea Towel Dances workshop builds on the recent experiences of teaching online from my kitchen during lockdown. Tea Towel Dances emerged from the necessity to activate and communicate sensitized and affective touch as an embodied and creative experience across a screen. For ODD2, this workshop invites an exploration into the reciprocity between the tea towel and moving participant, with the aim to unfold personal narratives
and a space to question encounters with interculturalism across digital boundaries.
Please bring a tea towel to this session.
Dance and Identity
Thea Stanton: Immersion: Negotiating Boundaries, Difference and Democracy
This paper asks whether the creation of an immersive experience through a choreographic embodied lens
could help address these concerns. Acknowledging the pioneering works of companies such as the Judson Church Group who’s participatory performances were at the forefront of ‘the threefold agenda of ‘activation, authorship, community’ (Kolb, 2013), the presentation explores the use of movement practices that embrace a decentralization of decision-making and nurture an inter-subjective awareness in order to develop an immersive practice that embraces an ethic of respect and care.
Rosa Cisneros: Artists as critical workers
This paper responds to the notion of artists as critical workers and explores the manner which the Dancing Bodies in Coventry (DBiC) project is exploring questions around boundaries, borders, exclusion and buried histories. DBiC brought forward “lesser known” independent dance artists and voices that are hidden, such as Refugee and Migrants and the Roma from Romania.
Film: Unseen Designs, Bisakha Sarker
The film reflects in dance, spoken word, music and image on current scientific thought and hopes
to evoke greater curiosity amongst the general public on the mysteries of the world around us.
Key note
Dr. Elena Marchevska: There Are Other Worlds *
In this talk I will reflect on my most recent practice as research collaborative projects ‘Finding home’ (2018-2020) and ‘Third nature’(2020). I will look into how ways of studying and representing migrants can have world-making effects. How do we talk about the meaning of care from our own migrant marginalized experience of everyday caring? In this projects, we collaboratively think of different worlds. Worlds where it not enough to detect what is there, what is given in the things we study and experience about migration, but also worlds where we think about what is not included and about what migrant could become. Worlds that are constantly rethought, contested
and enriched.
Closing Act
Raconteur 1
Wendy Houstoun rounds up the highlights of the day
Film: Kontrol, Patricia Carolin Mai
KONTROL is a solo performance by and with Patricia Carolin Mai, and the epilogue to the trilogy
“bodies in states of emergency”. KONTROL is an intense experiment on competing with your own body.
* Inspiration drawn from Sun Ra’s There Are Other Worlds (They Have Not Told You Of)
Full abstracts will be available to all delegates prior
to the event but here is just a sample of what will
be delivered and discussed.
Day 1 - 11th February 2021
Opening Keynote
Professor Victor Merriman: We Are Where We Are’: Dancing A Fractured World
‘We Are Where We Are’ considers how performers might navigate the present as a crisis of ideas and values. How might dance practices and performers make questions of power, class, gender and race central to better futures? How might artists project humane imaginaries beyond, not where ‘we’ are, but where ‘we’ have been positioned?
Dance and Resistance
Victoria Hunter: Site Dance and Urban Resistance
Drawing on discourses of neoliberalism (Harvey 2005, Kratzwald 2015, Whybrow 2010), urban performativity (Makeham 2005, Jacobs 1961, Seamon 1980) and urban design (Childs 2004, Carter 2015) the presentation explores urban parks and squares as stages for ‘everyday’ performances invoked by design, narratives, function and regulatory conditions. It questions; what level of engagement exists between site and the dance work performed in these spaces, what do such performance experiences tell us regarding the site’s contextual
make up and what (whose?) purpose might this work serve?
Susanne Foellmer: Movement Forbidden: Using Choreography
as a Means of Protest in Times of Curfew
The interweaving of dance and protest is a common phenomenon in recent social movements such as the regular flash mob One Billion Rising. Generally, bodies gathering in the public sphere are crucial in the struggle for social and political justice. But what happens if the physical public sphere is not available, as induced by the ongoing pandemic? How does protest change, and how can dance and choreography support the ongoing need for making one’s voice heard?
Performative Lecture
Michael Douglas Kollektiv and Dana Caspersen: Polarity Party
Participants are invited to consider the questions: What is polarization? What does it do in us? What do we do with it? The Polarity Party offers a situation where we can focus on the mechanism of polarization itself and our role in – this will be an experiment in delivering this event online as it is usually presented live.
Film : Circadian Rosemary Lee Circadian (2020)
A short dance film by Rosemary Lee and Roswitha Chesher. From one afternoon to the next over the summer solstice weekend 2019, one of 24 dancers, ranging in age from 10-70+ years, performed a short solo on the
hour every hour.
Dance and Identity
Professor Thomas F Defrantz - Black thought in motion
How are artists crafting unusual approaches to digital presence and formations of dance pedagogy and sharing? An offering of means and methods to encourage participation in digital offerings of thinking together towards movement that will be made in physical distancing.
Sharon Watson DL - Displaced positivity and the power of voice
When do we seize an opportunity and where do we enable the power of our lived experiences to drive change? How do we add power and impact to our voice? How can we ensure the messenger is the one
embraced and not just the message? This needs to change.
Workshop
Michelle Man – Dance Objects (DO): Tea Towel Dances workshop
The Tea Towel Dances workshop builds on the recent experiences of teaching online from my kitchen during lockdown. Tea Towel Dances emerged from the necessity to activate and communicate sensitized and affective touch as an embodied and creative experience across a screen. For ODD2, this workshop invites an exploration into the reciprocity between the tea towel and moving participant, with the aim to unfold personal narratives
and a space to question encounters with interculturalism across digital boundaries.
Please bring a tea towel to this session.
Dance and Identity
Thea Stanton: Immersion: Negotiating Boundaries, Difference and Democracy
This paper asks whether the creation of an immersive experience through a choreographic embodied lens
could help address these concerns. Acknowledging the pioneering works of companies such as the Judson Church Group who’s participatory performances were at the forefront of ‘the threefold agenda of ‘activation, authorship, community’ (Kolb, 2013), the presentation explores the use of movement practices that embrace a decentralization of decision-making and nurture an inter-subjective awareness in order to develop an immersive practice that embraces an ethic of respect and care.
Rosa Cisneros: Artists as critical workers
This paper responds to the notion of artists as critical workers and explores the manner which the Dancing Bodies in Coventry (DBiC) project is exploring questions around boundaries, borders, exclusion and buried histories. DBiC brought forward “lesser known” independent dance artists and voices that are hidden, such as Refugee and Migrants and the Roma from Romania.
Film: Unseen Designs, Bisakha Sarker
The film reflects in dance, spoken word, music and image on current scientific thought and hopes
to evoke greater curiosity amongst the general public on the mysteries of the world around us.
Key note
Dr. Elena Marchevska: There Are Other Worlds *
In this talk I will reflect on my most recent practice as research collaborative projects ‘Finding home’ (2018-2020) and ‘Third nature’(2020). I will look into how ways of studying and representing migrants can have world-making effects. How do we talk about the meaning of care from our own migrant marginalized experience of everyday caring? In this projects, we collaboratively think of different worlds. Worlds where it not enough to detect what is there, what is given in the things we study and experience about migration, but also worlds where we think about what is not included and about what migrant could become. Worlds that are constantly rethought, contested
and enriched.
Closing Act
Raconteur 1
Wendy Houstoun rounds up the highlights of the day
Film: Kontrol, Patricia Carolin Mai
KONTROL is a solo performance by and with Patricia Carolin Mai, and the epilogue to the trilogy
“bodies in states of emergency”. KONTROL is an intense experiment on competing with your own body.
* Inspiration drawn from Sun Ra’s There Are Other Worlds (They Have Not Told You Of)
BIO
I was born in Liverpool, trained at the Laban Centre for Movement and Dance in London in the early 80’s then returned to Liverpool to develop dance in a variety of ways. Having set up the dance and mime department for Second Out Theatre Workshop (1986) a youth training scheme, I went on to manage the entire programme under the new name of 051 Media Training Limited (1991-92), overseeing the accreditation of the course with Chester University and managing 5 departments with 150 YTS students. Becoming Assistant Director at Cheshire Dance Workshop (1992-94), now Cheshire Dance, I produced, set up and delivered successful community dance programmes, teaching and choreographing alongside creating large scale performance projects and the first professional dance touring network across Cheshire supporting a variety of local artists and introducing works from the national dance circuit.
As Artistic Director of MDI (1994-2018) my passion for dance and how it can affect change in people’s lives alongside how as an artform it is appreciated through creation and performance was key to how I led and developed the company over many years.
A Graduate of Liverpool John Moore’s University (LJMU) in 2007 with an MA in Social Enterprise.
I received a BMOBO for MDI’s community dance practice (2010) and in 2011 was a runner up for Merseyside Woman of the Year. I received an MBE, awarded for services to dance in The Queen’s
New Year Honours List (2012) and awarded an Honorary Fellow of LJMU (2014).
Over the years I have been instrumental in devising and producing large- scale events for MDI and building its reputation as an award-winning organisation, alongside setting up various other projects:
-
Leap Dance Festival (1995-2018) presenting companies of national and international repute, developing Liverpool as a dance destination. In 2017 built a temporary dedicated dance venue
to host the event under one roof and collaborated with Liverpool Hope University in 2018 to host
LEAP in partnership with the university, working with Dr. Sarah Black to create Our Dance
Democracy conference. -
Big Dance NW – produced Big Dance NW Link Up (2012) raised over £170,000 to create a major mass participation event for the cultural Olympiad working with 35 artists and 1200 performers.
-
Decibel Performing Arts Showcase (2011) – Event Producer for Arts Council England, I produced the four-day event with 50 companies, 80 events and over 350 delegates, proved ability to work beyond home base of Liverpool with the event taking place in Manchester
-
British Dance Edition 2008 – on behalf of the Association of National Dance Agencies (now National Dance Network), produced the four-day event with 42 companies, and 500 delegates from around the globe and a general public audience of over 3000.
-
Co commissioning Akram Khan’s Bahok (2008)
-
Cultiv8 (2007 and 2009) a festival of African and Caribbean artists featuring: Urban Bush Women (USA), Nora Chipaumire (Zimbabwe/USA), Tavaziva and Francis Angol (UK).
-
Migrant Body (2006/7) developed a pan European dance project taking place in Liverpool (UK), Parnu (Estonia), Venice/Bassano (Italy), Sibiu/Bucharest (Romania), Rotterdam/Groningen (Holland). Supported through EU funding the project supported 15 artists to create work, perform and tour around respected countries.
-
Community Dance Courses – devised and taught two community dance courses for Liverpool
Hope University: a teaching dance choreography module for PGCE students 1999-2000 for Sports and Physical Education Department and in 2011-12 devised, delivered and assessed community dance module -
Guest lecturer at Edge Hill University – delivered fundraising module for dance department
and more recently worked with the team at The Arts Centre to develop audiences for a number
of dance events through marketing and PR.
I have been committed to inspiring people through dance, strengthening the dance sector and
providing access and support to all those who engage in dance activity (artists, participants and audiences), and finding new ways of reaching those who don’t, for many years. I have delivered this by acting as a creative catalyst, promoting quality practice across communities where the individuals' wellbeing and social sense of belonging has been instrumental in all that I have achieved.
