Sustaining the Discipline:
Embedding the Right to Dance in the C21st. 28th-29th October.
Hosted by the Northern School of Contemporary Dance, School of Film, Music and Performing Arts Leeds Beckett University and School of Performance and Cultural Industries, University of Leeds.
We meet to debate the broadening identities of dance scholarship and research at a time when arts knowledge and engagement continue to face precarious economic futures. With sustainability as our central theme, we invite you to explore the value and further progress of dance as a social, cultural asset and route to individual identity.
What are the ideas and practices that we prioritise as we design programmes of study, create dance works and conduct research? How can we forge a practical philosophy of dancing as embodied and embedded in our collective subjectivity, as an art and science of living, as a discipline in critical debate with what we are, what we do and how we do it?
From this vantage point we ask how to we move positively towards a future identity of dance as a discipline, as a cultural identifier, as a research imperative, as a source of creative thinking, as performance, as political action, as artistic activism, and as art-making behaviour.
We invite contributions that respond to a broad range of themes exploring the fortunes and futures of dance as a C21st discipline. What do we know, what do we value and seek to sustain and what do we want to change?
Culture and Arts Representation
- Advocating the ‘value’ of art and creativity,
Pathways to Europe: Maintaining Dialogues. - Making art that matters, questioning the place of dance in culture.
- Politics in the making of policy, process and programmes.
- Sustaining selves – working as academic, artist and practitioner.
- Dance as a human right – of self, social and cultural expression
Dance Pedagogy and Training
- Integrating models of practice, Arts education, and independent thinking
- Dance as a catalyst for other disciplines: What do we learn?
- Scientific inquiry-embodied science, revealing what we know.
- Does ‘contemporary’ matter? Caught in the restrictions of nomenclature.
- Improvisation, what is taught and what is learned?
Dance Somatic Practice and Technologies
- Somatics: Curriculum designs that enhance learning through movement.
- Assessment for learning: open, accessible, negotiated and transparent
- Dance techniques, whose vocabulary, facilitation, safe practice and intermittent training
- Dance Moves – Online.
- How do we recognise a dance graduate?
Dance 2056: Looking Back, Looking Forward.
- A struggle from the middle: Mid-career challenges in practice.
- Early Careers in Dance: Identifying your professional practice.
- Being an External Examiner and critical friend.
- Artists and practitioner: professional development and communication
- Dancers speaking out – Giving voice to generations of practice and engagement.
- Forging valuable long-term partnerships in research?
Open call for contributions
We invite contributions across a range of formats
- 20 mins scholarly paper,
- Curated panels,
- Round table cafe debate,
- Poster/exhibition,
- Performative presentations/workshops/ lecture demonstrations (45 mins). Possible double session.
- We are open to discussion of other formats.
SUBMISSION 15th JULY 2016.
Please include the following detail in your submission
- Names/s of all presenters: Include biographical information and affiliation (maximum 100 words per person)
- Mode of presentation – from list shown above.
- Abstract:All presentation types (Maximum 150 words).
- Technical Requirements.
Please submit to
Laura Griffiths – DanceHE, Secretary ([email protected]) and Fiona Bannon DanceHE, Chair ([email protected]).