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)
NEWS
OUR DANCE DEMOCRACY CONFERENCE RETURNS AS ARTISTS AND ACADEMICS MEET ONLINE
Karen Gallagher MBE, Karen Gallagher and Associates( KGA) and Dr. Sarah Black-Frizell
(Liverpool Hope University) present Our Dance Democracy 2: Identity, Pandemic,
Protest/Resistance and Feminism
The role of dance and performance in democratic discussions and forging connections
through identity and belonging will form the heart of a two-day conference online
in February 2021.
The conference will be held ONLINE, 11th and 12th February 2021.
Building on the success of Our Dance Democracy (ODD) in 2018, this conference will further
the debate, extending the dialogue of how artists and academics interrogate the function of
dance in the 21st Century.
Our Dance Democracy 2 will consider the notion of our world as an ever-challenging and changing global society, in which social media facilitates the circulation of opinions and prejudices rooted in intuitive, and frequently unexamined narratives of contemporary societies. These are increasingly
taken up, legitimised, and recycled as common-sense master-narratives across the discursive circuits
of established media and political debate. A real expansion of inclusive public space is one outcome
of this and introspection another. These tendencies expose boundaries in human relations, always constituted – contradictorily – as zones of exclusion which are always also points of contact. The UK
as a bounded and bordered territory, demonstrates that perceptions of (in)visibility, identity and belonging have real-world significance, and the importance of interrogating assumptions
underpinning them cannot be over-stated.
“With the impact of Covid-19 and the cultural sector facing unique challenges of our time it is with regret yet tethered with a sense of curiosity and excitement that Dr. Sarah Black- Frizell and myself
have made the decision to produce our conference, Our Dance Democracy 2 (ODD2), as an online
event for February 2021.” Karen Gallagher, Creative Director, KGA.
Keynote speakers included:
-
Professor Victor Merriman: Critical Performance Studies, Edge Hill University
-
Dr. Elena Marchevska: Senior lecturer in Drama and Performance, London South Bank University
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Alexandrina Hemsley: Choreographer, dancer, writer and facilitator
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Dylan Quinn: Artistic Director, Dylan Quinn Dance Theatre
Papers and presentations by:
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Professor Thomas F Defrantz Professor in the dance program and African and African American Studies department at Duke University
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Sharon Watson DL Principal of the Northern School of Contemporary Dance.
Films include:
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Circadian Rosemary Lee
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Unseen Designs, Bisakha Sarker
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Kontrol, Patricia Carolin Mai
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RED, Liz Lea
Supported by People Dancing, new for this year we are delighted to have Wendy Houstoun
as our Raconteur and she will consider what occurs throughout the sessions and deliver a
short 10 -15 minute wrap up each day.
To find out more about the conference visit:
https://www.karengallagherandassociates.co.uk/odd-2
Our Dance Democracy is made possible with funding from Arts Council England National Lottery Project Grants and is a collaboration between Karen Gallagher & Associates, Liverpool Hope University, and People Dancing . With additional support from South East Dance (co-presenting Liz Lea: RED) and the NATIONALES PERFORMANCE NETZ International Guest Performance Fund for Dance, which is funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media (supporting Patricia Carolin Mai: KONTROL).
Follow on social media:
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Twitter: @kg_associates
Facebook: @KarenGandAssociates
https://www.facebook.com/Our-Dance-Democracy-251789032077569
For more information, interviews or images please contact Karen Gallagher: