Category Archives: Culture and Politics

CFP: TaPRA Asian Performance and Diaspora Working Group

Conference Call, Culture and Politics
TAPRA – Asian Performance and Diaspora Group
University of Bristol, 5th – 7th September 2016

 

The aim of this working group is to research, promote and disseminate contemporary Asian performance and diaspora studies to highlight the historical and contemporary scholarship in the area. We also aim to encourage critical debates on the contemporary artistic practices of Asia and a thorough re-evaluation of the current understanding of its conceptual and practical paradigms of the Asian performance scene and its diaspora in Britain.

In short the aims of the group are:

  • To offer a dedicated platform for presenting Asian performance and diaspora research
  • To reflect, critique and debate Asian performance activities in Britain
  • To foster better dialogue between the academic work and performance practice in the field.

 

We welcome proposals from academics, practitioners, postgraduate and research students that speak to the following themes relating to Asian Performance and Diaspora such as:

 

  • The mapping of performance praxis
  • Historiography
  • Towards a contemporary Asian performance theory
  • Intra / intercultural performance
  • Adaptation
  • Gender and sexuality
  • Digital media and contemporary theatre

 

The format for your engagement could be by means of conventional paper presentation, lecture demonstration, practice as research or workshop. The convenors will particularly welcome closer interactions between practitioners and academics with a deliberate intention to foster better correspondence between the both. 

 

The deadline for submission of proposals is 18 April. Please send 150 word proposal for your paper to the convenors at: 

 

Many thanks:

Convenors: Asian performance and Diaspora Group

Arya Madhavan, , 

Dominic Hingorani, 

Sreenath Nair, 

Revised call for papers – Dance, Diaspora and the Archive

Conference Call, Culture and Politics, Dance History, Documentation

Society for Dance Research

in Association with State of Trust and Rimap (University of Bedfordshire)

Call for Papers

Dance, Diaspora and the role of the Archive

Saturday September 17, 2016

Venue: University of Bedfordshire

Deadline for receipt of proposals May 30th 2016.

As the work of the Black Dance Archives Project is revealing, an understanding and awareness of a particular dance style, artist or institution depends in part on how it is situated historically, how it is documented and remembered. As the field of dance research has expanded, the significance of archives and archival practices extend beyond concerns of recovering memory, providing avenues through which to investigate questions of authenticity, tradition and ownership, among other issues. Archives are constantly in flux, open to interpretation, and can increase the visibility of the invisible. Significantly under-represented in the past, more material records of dancers and dancing from various diasporas are currently being collected and catalogued. The concept of archive also extends beyond the official documents, to encompass the memories that reveal perspectives of performers, creators, funders, administrators and viewers, captured through interviews, personal photos, journals, rehearsal notes and correspondence.

Papers are sought that explore the concept of the dance archive with particular reference to dancers and dancing of diaspora communities. Presenters are encouraged to engage with the Black Dance Archives Project, but papers that explore wider issues around archives are also welcome. Themes may thus include:

  • The significance of particular archive materials relating to one artist/company
  • The work of a particular artist/company whose work is documented  as part of the Black Dance Archives collections or other diasporic dance archives
  • Issues revealed by archive materials relevant to the career trajectories and management of emergent Black British or other diasporic artists
  • The relationship between memory and the archive
  • Archival issues and complexities that are specifically relevant to dance and /or diaspora.
  • The influence of the work of dance artists from the diaspora on current choreographic and performance practices

Abstracts/Proposals of no more than 300 words with an indicative bibliography and any technical requirementsshould be sent to . Any enquiries may be directed to  or.

Abstracts/proposals will be blind reviewed by a panel. Individual papers should be 20 minutes in length but we also encourage submissions of roundtable discussions, lecture-demonstrations, movement workshops, performative engagements and collaborative presentations, or posters.

Deadline: 30th May 2016 

Information about State of Trust Black Dance Archives Project

With funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund, State of Trust* is working with partners across the UK to collate, preserve, document and make accessible 25 collections from eminent individuals and organisations from the British Black dance sector who have made a significant impact on dance in Britain. The initial stage of the project has collected materials from the following companies and individuals: ACE Dance & Music, Avant Garde, Boy Blue, Breakin’ Convention, Bullies Ballerinas, Jeannette Brooks, Carl Campbell, Shaun Cope, Jonzi D, June Gamble, Robert Hylton, , Kompany Malakhi, Greta Mendez (inc Maas Movers), Nubian Steps, Henri Oguike, Phoenix Dance Company, RJC Dance Company, State of Emergency, Step Afrika!, Norman ‘Rubba’ Stephenson, Tavaziva Dance, Sheron Wray, and Union Dance.

To prepare abstracts researchers are invited to contact and visit the archives:

Birmingham Museums and Libraries: 

Materials regarding ACE Music and Dance and Shaun Cope

Black Cultural Archives, Brixton, London: 

Email 

 

Materials regarding June Gamble, Robert Hylton, Kompany Malakhi, Nubian Steps, State of Emergency, Norman ‘Rubba’ Stephenson (oral history), Tavaziva Dance.

Plus materials from the following are being processed. Please ask if they are of specific interest: Avant Garde, Boy Blue Entertainment, Carl Campbell Dance Company 7, Step Afrika!

NRCD Guildford Surrey: 

Email: 

Materials regarding Bullies Ballerinas, Greta Mendez (inc. Maas Movers), Sheron Wray, Union Dance  – these are still being processed so only some may be accessible.  Please note that NRCD also have core collection materials related to many artists, companies and developments including Adzido and Black Dance Development Trust plus other special collections relevant to the area such as Angika Dance Company, Kokuma Dance Theatre and Shobana Jeyasingh Dance Company.

University of Leeds Library: 

Materials regarding Phoenix and RJC Dance Companies

* State of Trust is the registered charity sister company of State of Emergency Productions

Popular Music, Dance, and Cultural Memory: An Inter/Cross/Trans-Disciplinary Dialogue

Culture and Politics, Popular Dance, Research Seminars

You are warmly invited to the second of a series of free lunchtime seminars at University of Chichester jointly presented by the Research Dialogues series and the Dancing with Memory project. We are excited to welcome three Canadian scholars to engage in a dialogue around popular music, dance and cultural memory. Please feel free to circulate this information to your students and colleagues.

Thursday 14th April, 12-1.15pm

C120, Bishop Otter Campus, University of Chichester

 

Presenters:

Dr Jeff Packman, University of Toronto

Dr Danielle Robinson, York University, Toronto

Dr Farzaneh Hemmasi, University of Toronto

 

Chair: Dr Clare Parfitt-Brown, University of Chichester

This panel brings together three popular music and dance researchers, working in the Iranian diaspora, Brazil, and the United States, who are interested in how embodied cultural memory can be integral to how communities articulate and assert their sense of belonging within a mediated world. Ethnomusicologist Jeff Packman will discuss contemporary performances and “revivals” of old(er) carnival dance music in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil that inform not only a particular type of memory of the past, but also a tactical relationship with carnival practices of the present. Dance scholar Danielle Robinson will offer a re-historicization of early twentieth century social dancing from the perspective of the Black Atlantic. Finally, Ethnomusicologist Farzaneh Hemmasi will link emotion, dance, music, and the body in contemporary Iranian diasporic life and inquire into the interrelationships between mass media, collective memory, and affective attachments.

____________

 

Research Dialogues is a seminar series hosted by the Dance and Theatre Departments at the University of Chichester.

Dancing with Memory is a two-year AHRC-funded project exploring the relationship between popular dance and cultural memory through the case study of the cancan. The project is led by Dr Clare Parfitt-Brown at the University of Chichester.

 

Venue:

C120 is at the red lift symbol near 01 on this map, accessed via the corridor marked 02: 

Call for papers: Re:generations 4 ­ Diasporic dance: Legacies of Imagination

Conference Call, Conferences, Culture and Politics, Dance History
3-5 November 2016

MAC, Cannon Hill Park, Birmingham B12 9QH.

Following the highly successful 2014 conference Re:generations – Rethinking the past to reimagine the future, the steering group is pleased to announce Re:generations 4 – Diasporic dance: Legacies of Imagination.

Re:generations 4 builds on the success of the last three conferences in 2010, 2012 and 2014 which have established a distinctive combination of keynote addresses, panel discussions, papers, performances, and workshops focusing on dance and the African diaspora. The central theme of the fourth conference is Diasporic dance: Legacies of Imagination. Legacy here is understood as the impact that the Association of Dance of the African Diaspora created and is now passing on as it merges with other national dance associations to form the new organisation One Dance UK. Beyond that there is also the rich cultural heritage from the Diaspora, as well as heritages and legacies passing between countries – in Africa, the Caribbean, North America, and the UK – as well as between different generations or between practitioners who pass on the potential of different art forms as these develop. Artists continually investigate new aesthetic territories, when fusions emerge, or when they explore their roots. What legacies are we inheriting and how can we make the most of these? What are the different ways in which people from different generations make connections with cultural heritage? The 2016 conference will facilitate discussion and debate about these questions in order to build a positive future for the development of new dance talent in the UK.

Hosted in Birmingham at the MAC (Midlands Art Centre), this conference will be delivered by One Dance UK, IRIE! dance theatre, ACE dance and music, dance Immersion and De Montfort University.One of the conference keynote addresses will be delivered by Hilary Carty, who works internationally as a consultant (NTL UK), facilitator, coach (CIPD), Visiting Professor (Kufstein University of Applied Sciences) and speaker, embracing significant experience in leadership, strategic management and organisational development. There will be high level delegations from the US-based International Association of Blacks in Dance (IABD) and from Canada, Dance Immersion, who will be able to share diverse, international perspectives on the conference’s key concerns.

The conference partners invite proposals for papers, lecture demonstrations and workshops that address the theme of Diasporic dance: legacies of imagination. By offering opportunities to reflect on the heritage, legacies, histories, geographies, places and spaces of dance of the African Diaspora, the conference aims both to celebrate the achievements of elders and foster the talent of a new generation of dance practitioners and of new dance scholars.

We welcome proposals on the following subthemes:

  •   1. Youth dance work, training, and intergenerational dialogues.
  •   2. Heritage and Digital Arts
  •   3. Women and the dance profession, i.e. diasporic or street dance forms
  •   4: Health and Wellbeing.
  •   5. New approaches to creating histories of Breaking, street, old school and other popular and social forms, the development of African Peoples Dance, histories of interactions between African, Caribbean, and Western contemporary dance.
  •   6. International dialogues – with the African Continent, with the Caribbean, with other European countries, with USA and Canada.

We invite submissions of abstracts of no more than 500 words for proposals which address any of the above themes as well as other topics related to its central focus on Diasporic dance: Legacies of Imagination. The programme will include 20 minute papers, panel discussions, lecture demonstrations, performances, films, workshops, or other modes of presentation. Lecture demonstrations and workshops should be 25 and 45 minutes long including time for brief Q&A. As in previous years there will also be opportunities for MA students and PhD students at the start of their research to give five minute presentations about their research topics. Please clearly indicate the nature and length of your presentation together with any technical requirements.

The deadline for submissions is Friday 1st of July 2016. Submissions will be accepted by email only. Please direct emails to , including ‘Re:generations 4’ in the subject line.

About the Re:generations partners

One Dance UK

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On 1st April 2016, The Association of Dance of the African Diaspora (ADAD), Dance UK, National Dance Teachers Association and Youth Dance England merged to form a new unified national ‘go-to’ industry body for dance in the UK called One Dance UK. The new organisation represents dancers at all levels of the dance industry, and champions excellence in education and research, youth dance, dance of the African diaspora, performance and art form development, health and well-being, management, leadership and career development. One Dance UK aims to build on past achievements of the four merged organisations and enhance current programmes.

For dance of the African Diaspora (DAD), the programmes include;

The annual Trailblazers Fellowships for professional development and profile raising which has two strands to supports emerging and mid-career artists through a tailored mentorship programme, a bursary and a public showcase. The 36 trailblazers supported to date have had an exponential impact on the development of Dance of the African Diaspora in the UK,demonstrating leadership, creating new initiatives in performance, education, research and professional development.

The Heritage project, ‘Moments’ which was created with the support of the Heritage Lottery Fund has made a distinctive contribution to collecting, conserving, interpreting and narrating the history and heritage from 1930s – 1990s that informs the work of Black dancers in contemporary Britain. Launched in October 2006, the exhibition which is currently a photographic exhibition with a complimentary reader Voicing Black Dance, has toured to London, Leicester, Birmingham, Bristol, Leeds and Manchester and continues to tour nationally and internationally. One Dance UK aims to digitise ‘Moments’ and incorporate it in a new sector wide initiative to reflect the contribution of dance across the sectors in the UK and beyond.

The biennial Bloom National Festival will continue to enhance the regional reach for Dance of the African Diaspora alongside a concentrated programme of work across the UK, celebrating and showcasing local artists working with the dance styles rooted in the African Diaspora.

The international conference Re:generations, an academic and artistic event is delivered with national and international partners biennially, to make a significant contribution to the discourse, development and perspectives for dance.

IRIE! dance theatre

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Established in 1985, IRIE! dance theatre is Britain’s leading dance company working in the field of African and Caribbean dance fusion and education. The company delivers and sustains a range of creative, educational and artistic activities, based on the stimuli derived from Africa and the Caribbean. Located in the heart of South East London IRIE! occupies the Moonshot Centre, which houses dance studios, teaching rooms & archive and library facilities; where it continues to run and develop accredited qualifications, research programmes, community engagement and professional development for the dance sector.

The company provides employment, training, support and mentoring for a significant number of young people and professionals working in dance as well as related cultural industries. IRIE!’s collaborations have spanned across the UK and internationally. Established in 2009, IRIE!’s partnership with City & Islington College (Further Education) and London Metropolitan University (Higher Education) continue to deliver a Foundation Degree in Dance, where African, Caribbean and Street dance practice and theory are taught equally alongside contemporary dance.

De Montfort University

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De Montfort University has an international reputation for the quality of its research in dance history and theory, pedagogy, and performance-based research. It is has been offering degrees in dance since the late 1970s when it was Leicester Polytechnic. During the 1980s, the Black Dance Development Trust held its first Black Dance Summer School at Leicester Polytechnic. In 2007, it held the Black Britons and Dance conference with Professor Brenda Dixon Gottschild as keynote speaker on her first visit to a British university. From 2012 and 2014 the AHRC-funded research project British Dance and the African Diaspora run by Christy Adair and Ramsay Burt was based at De Montfort with ADAD as a project partner. Highlights of this project include the exhibition British dance: Black routescurated at the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool as well as public events in Birmingham, Leeds, Liverpool and the Royal Festival Hall in London. An edited collection of essays that have come out of this project, titled British dance: Black routes, is being published by Routledge in Autumn 2016.

ACE dance and music

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ACE dance and music winner of the ‘Diverse Company of The Year’ in the BEXLIVE 2015 Enterprise Awards, is a national touring dance company founded in 1996 and based in Birmingham UK. We are an internationally recognised leader in the field of Contemporary African and Caribbean Dance. Our signature style is Afro-fusion – dance which is rooted in traditional forms yet expressed through a purely contemporary lens. By combining African & Caribbean movement aesthetics with contemporary techniques we create high quality innovative performance – always combining dance with original music and often using new digital media and techniques from other disciplines including theatre. The company’s reputation has developed through 9 biennial productions touring to small and mid-scale theatres and festivals both across the UK and internationally. Led by Artistic Directors Gail and Ian Parmel, the company works regularly in collaboration with a family of international Artistic Associates. We offer a full range of bespoke education and outreach programmes, deliver in- house studio based dance classes, and play host to ACE Youth – our youth dance company, with its own independent reputation for excellence.

dance Immersion

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dance Immersion is a not-for-profit organization that produces, promotes and supports dancers and dances of the African Diaspora. The organization was founded in 1994 by Vivine Scarlett and was established to address the need for additional presentation, skill development, and networking opportunities for dance artists of African descent. During its 22 year history, dance Immersion has experienced considerable success in connecting with dance artists of African Decent throughout Canada and around the world with the services we provide. Our programs offer audiences and participants a variety of activities that evoke diverse artistic expressions.

The Conference Steering Group consists of the Partners together with Judith Palmer, ADAD Chair and Christy Adair, Professor Emerita York St Johns University.

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CfP: Asian Performance Conference UK, University of Lincoln

Conference Call, Conferences, Culture and Politics

Embodied Knowledge:
Training & Performance Practice
10, 11 June 2016
Lincoln School of Fine and Performing Arts

Keynote
Prof Erika Fischer-Lichte, Free University of Berlin, Germany
Topic: The Body as Site of Interweaving Performance Cultures: Between Being a Body and Having a Body

Call for Papers:
The aim of the conference is to explore the terrain of embodied knowledge of Asian performance, specifically the ways in which distinctively different concepts and methods of practice inform and shape the idea of ‘performance’ as a critical paradigm. It is also the focus of the conference to reexamine and reevaluate the ways in which the embodied knowledge of Asian performance informs the development of intercultural theory, training methods and production practices for the last many decades.

Asian performance offers a rich vocabulary of concepts and methodologies of practices enabling a complex and multilayered psychophysical ‘process’ in which the ‘technique’ becomes the ‘knowledge’ of the body. ‘Technique’ gains the status of ‘knowledge’ in Asian performance. The body becomes an instrument in the hand of its user and the performance knowledge is transmitted through the practical mastery of the practice of the body. The technique shapes and defines the form of practice and this practice, in turn, is embedded in the techniques of the body. The knowledge of the body is evoked and delivered in performance through a series of gestures, movements, utterances, physical modulations and voice. The performer uses a series of motion trajectories and mental manoeuvres in this process. What is this ‘process’ of technique becoming the knowledge of the flesh and what are the psychophysical dynamics involved in this ‘process’? What do we learn from Asian performance about this embodied knowledge in performance practice and how do we understand and theorise this ‘process’ of the sensuous scholarship of the body across different spatialities and temporalities? Training methods in Asian theatre insist upon relentless repetitions to stabilise the learning of specific bodily techniques. The body remembers and repeats all the limb movements and their numbers mechanically while taking the body out of its restrictive principles of practice. Similarly, Asian performance traditions offer a dynamic body relationship and alternative performance modes that are syncretic and multi-generic, integrating dance, music, text, decorative and symbolic colour coding and much more. This is the wider context in which the convenors of this conference invite proposals for papers, workshops, lecture demonstrations or poster presentations on the topics including, but not limited to, these:
•       Choreography and movement;
•       Training: Concepts, methods, pedagogy and artistic practices;
•       Psychophysical processes: technique, repetition and physical transformation;
•       Eclecticism, fusion and the problems of Intercultural paradigm;
•       The future of intercultural exchange in the contemporary Asian/Western/ cyber cultural settings;
•       Politics of colour, race and ethnicity;
•       Knowing through the body/thinking through the body;
•       Women in Asian theatre: Gender, sexual and trance-gender identities;
•       The body: techniques, terminologies and practices;
•       Ritual and play.
Please submit an abstract proposal (not more than 350 words) and a 200 word biographical note to the co-directors of the conference: Dr Sreenath Nair: [email protected] and Dr Arya Madhavan: [email protected]
Selected papers will be published in a special edited volume. Details to be announced soon.

DEADLINE FOR PROPOSALS: 15 March 2016
CONFIRMATIONS: 1 April 2016

CfP Dance, Diaspora, and the role of the Archive

Conference Call, Culture and Politics

Society for Dance Research

in Association with State of Trust and Rimap (University of Bedfordshire)

Call for Papers

Dance, Diaspora and the role of the Archive

Saturday September 17, 2016

Venue: University of Bedfordshire

Deadline for receipt of proposals May 30th 2016.

As the work of the Black Dance Archive Project is revealing, an understanding and awareness of a particular dance style, artist or institution depends in part on how it is situated historically, how it is documented and remembered. As the field of dance research has expanded, the significance of archives and archival practices extend beyond concerns of recovering memory, providing avenues through which to investigate questions of authenticity, tradition and ownership, among other issues. Archives are constantly in flux, open to interpretation, and can increase the visibility of the invisible. Significantly under-represented in the past, more material records of dancers and dancing from various diasporas are currently being collected and catalogued. The concept of archive also extends beyond the official documents, to encompass the memories that reveal perspectives of performers, creators, funders, administrators and viewers, captured through interviews, personal photos, journals, rehearsal notes and correspondence.

Papers are sought that explore the concept of the dance archive with particular reference to dancers and dancing of diaspora communities. Presenters are encouraged to engage with the Black Dance Archive Project, but papers that explore wider issues around archives are also welcome. Themes may thus include:

  • The significance of particular archive materials relating to one artist/company
  • The work of a particular artist/company whose work is documented in the Black Dance Archive or other diasporic dance archives
  • Issues revealed by archive materials relevant to the career trajectories and management of emergent Black British or other diasporic artists
  • The relationship between memory and the archive
  • Archival issues and complexities that are specifically relevant to dance and /or diaspora.
  • The influence of the work of dance artists from the diaspora on current choreographic and performance practices

Abstracts/Proposals of no more than 300 words with an indicative bibliography and any technical requirements should be sent to . 

Abstracts/proposals will be blind reviewed by a panel. Individual papers should be 20 minutes in length but we also encourage submissions of roundtable discussions, lecture-demonstrations, movement workshops, performative engagements and collaborative presentations, or posters. 

Deadline: 30th May 2016  

Information about State of Trust Black Dance Archive Project

With funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund, State of Trust* is working with partners across the UK to collate, preserve, document and make accessible 25 collections from eminent individuals and organisations from the British Black dance sector who have made a significant impact on dance in Britain. The initial stage of the project has collected materials from the following companies and individuals: ACE Dance & Music, Adzido, Avant Garde, Boy Blue, Breakin’ Convention, Bullies Ballerinas, Jeannette Brooks, Carl Campbell, Shaun Cope, Jonzi D, June Gamble, Robert Hylton, Kokuma, Kompany Malakhi, Maas Movers, Greta Mendez, Nubian Steps, Henri Oguike, Phoenix Dance Company, RJC Dance Company, State of Emergency, Step Afrika!, Norman ‘Rubba’ Stephenson, Tavaziva Dance, Sheron Wray, and Union Dance

To prepare abstracts researchers are invited to contact and visit the archives:

Birmingham Museums and Libraries: 

Materials regarding ACE Music and Dance and Shaun Cope 

Black Cultural Archives, Brixton, London:  (email or ).

Materials regarding June Gamble, Rob ert Hylton, Kompany Malakhi, Nubian Steps, State of Emergency, Norman ‘Rubba’ Stephenson (oral history), Tavaziva Dance.

Plus materials from the following are being processed. Please ask if they are of specific interest: Avant Garde, Boy Blue Entertainment, Carl Campbell Dance Company 7, Step Afrika!

NRCD Guildford Surrey: 

Materials regarding Bullies Ballerinas, Kokuma, Mas Movers, Sheron Wray, Union Dance

University of Leeds Library: 

Materials regarding Phoenix and RJC Dance Companies

* State of Trust is the registered charity sister company of State of Emergency Productions

New Research in Black Dance Studies

Culture and Politics, Publications

You may be interested in a Special Issue published in the journal The Black Scholar, titled ‘Black Moves: New Research in Black Dance Studies’.

Please find below an abstract from the Introduction:

‘Black Dance Studies sits at the intersection of dance and black studies—two disciplines that demand we contend with difficult archives, ones that we often must gather and produce as we dance and as we write. Black moves are everywhere, all the time; and yet the potent strategies that dance offers us via bodies in motion often goes unnoticed or brushed off as an object of study. And yet: dance illuminates something particular about Blackness, and Blackness illuminates something distinctive about dance. The compelling avenues of research exhibited in this volume extend—in many directions—the capacities of Black Studies to accommodate nuanced, careful discussions of dance as a site and symptom of historical, contemporary, and future modes of black life.’ | Thomas F. DeFrantz & Tara Aisha Willis

Interested? Read more here: 

Asian Performance Conference UK 2016

Conferences, Culture and Politics, Performing the Body

University of Lincoln, UK

Embodied Knowledge: Training & Performance Practice

10, 11 June 2016
Lincoln School of Fine and Performing Arts

KEYNOTE:
Prof Erika Fischer-Lichte, Free University of Berlin, Germany
Topic: The Body as Site of Interweaving Performance Cultures: Between Being a Body and Having a Body

CALL FOR PAPERS:
The aim of the conference is to explore the terrain of embodied knowledge of Asian performance, specifically the ways in which distinctively different concepts and methods of practice inform and shape the idea of ‘performance’ as a critical paradigm. It is also the focus of the conference to reexamine and reevaluate the ways in which the embodied knowledge of Asian performance informs the development of intercultural theory, training methods and production practices for the last many decades.

Asian performance offers a rich vocabulary of concepts and methodologies of practices enabling a complex and multilayered psychophysical ‘process’ in which the ‘technique’ becomes the ‘knowledge’ of the body. ‘Technique’ gains the status of ‘knowledge’ in Asian performance. The body becomes an instrument in the hand of its user and the performance knowledge is transmitted through the practical mastery of the practice of the body. The technique shapes and defines the form of practice and this practice, in turn, is embedded in the techniques of the body. The knowledge of the body is evoked and delivered in performance through a series of gestures, movements, utterances, physical modulations and voice. The performer uses a series of motion trajectories and mental manoeuvres in this process. What is this ‘process’ of technique becoming the knowledge of the flesh and what are the psychophysical dynamics involved in this ‘process’? What do we learn from Asian performance about this embodied knowledge in performance practice and how do we understand and theorise this ‘process’ of the sensuous scholarship of the body across different spatialities and temporalities? Training methods in Asian theatre insist upon relentless repetitions to stabilise the learning of specific bodily techniques. The body remembers and repeats all the limb movements and their numbers mechanically while taking the body out of its restrictive principles of practice. Similarly, Asian performance traditions offer a dynamic body relationship and alternative performance modes that are syncretic and multi-generic, integrating dance, music, text, decorative and symbolic colour coding and much more. This is the wider context in which the convenors of this conference invite proposals for papers, workshops, lecture demonstrations or poster presentations on the topics including, but not limited to, these:
•Choreography and movement;
•Training: Concepts, methods, pedagogy and artistic practices;
•Psychophysical processes: technique, repetition and physical transformation;
•Eclecticism, fusion and the problems of Intercultural paradigm;
•The future of intercultural exchange in the contemporary Asian/Western/ cyber cultural settings;
•Politics of colour, race and ethnicity;
•Knowing through the body/thinking through the body;
•Women in Asian theatre: Gender, sexual and trance-gender identities;
•The body: techniques, terminologies and practices;
•Ritual and play.
Please submit an abstract proposal (not more than 350 words) and a 200 word biographical note to the co-directors of the conference: Dr Sreenath Nair:  and Dr Arya Madhavan: 
Selected papers will be published in a special edited volume. Details to be announced soon.

DEADLINE FOR PROPOSALS: 15 March 2016
CONFIRMATIONS: 1 April 2016

CfP: Third International Conference on Media and Popular Culture, Vienna, Austria (8-9 September 2016)

Conference Call, Conferences, Culture and Politics, Dance and Technology, Popular Dance

Conference venue: ***** Hotel Le Meridien, 13-15 Opernring, Vienna, Austria

RATIONALE

It is an unobjectionable fact that media participate in formation of our daily lives by creating identities, images, and by generally influencing our views. This applies not only to politics (i.e. political campaigns), but also to the formation on how we see ourselves and others. Popular culture, on the other hand, also affects our daily lives by fostering images and ideologies, and by selling a way of life that is presented as acceptable or non-acceptable.Sociological theories presented five models of audiences (hypodermic needle model, normative model, model of satisfying needs, interpretative model, structural interpretative model), and scholars still debate usability of each model due to the influence of media and popular culture over current issues. In addition, the agenda setting theory of mass media influence postulates that media affect our views and influence what we think about even if media cannot influence how we think about issues. These and other issues will be discussed at our conference.

 

Papers are invited (but not limited to) for the following panels:

 

Media and identity

Media and political campaigns

Media and discrimination

Women in the media

Media Bias

Media and democracy

Media and human rights

Popular culture

TV shows and identity

Film and identity

TV shows and everyday lives

Film and everyday lives

Media and memory

Media and history

History of media and popular culture

Media and diplomacy

Media and the Collapse of Eastern Europe

Audience studies

Media and the war in Yugoslavia

Media and religion

Media audience models

Media and Business

 

Prospective participants are also welcome to submit proposals for their own panels. Both researchers and practitioners are welcome to submit paper proposals.

 

Submissions of abstracts (up to 500 words) with an email contact should be sent to Dr Martina Topić () by 15 August 2016.

 

Conference fee is EUR 290, and it includes

 

The registration fee

Conference bag and folder with materials

Access to the newsletter, and electronic editions of the Centre

Opportunity for participating in future activities of the Centre (research & co-editing volumes)

Discount towards participation fee for future conferences

Meals and drinks

Sightseeing for second day of the conference

WLAN during the conference

Certificate of attendance

 

Centre for Research in Humanities and Social Sciences is a private institution founded in December 2013 in Croatia (EU).

 

Participants are responsible for finding funding to cover transportation and accommodation costs during the whole period of the conference. This applies to both presenting and non-presenting participants. The Centre will not discriminate based on the origin and/or methodological/paradigmatic approach of prospective conference participants.

Call for Papers CMCI PhD Conference (In)Visible Cultures

Conference Call, Culture and Politics

We warmly invite you to submit your abstracts to the CMCI PhD Conference “(In)Visible Cultures) to be held on 13th and 14th of June at King’s College London (Waterloo Campus), London. Following on the last year successful event “Cultures in Disarray: Destruction/Reconstruction”, we welcome researchers to engage with the questions of (in)visibility in our society, culture, media environment and the creative industries – and to share their ideas with the colleagues from around the world in a friendly and stimulating environment.

Confirmed keynote speakers are Dra. Angela McRobbie (Goldsmiths) and Dra. Rosana Pinheiro Machado (University of Oxford).

Abstracts may be related to the following themes:

Politics of (in)visibility
Online (in)visibility
Gender, race and sexuality
Cultural labour and the creative industries
(In)visible media lives
Limits of mediatisation
(In)visible knowledges
Inequality and marginalised communities
Diaspora, migration and the media
The crisis of “borders”
International and intercultural communication
Science and environment communication
Remembering and forgetting: memory and commemoration
Seeing the unseen/ Unseeing what has been seen

The deadline for abstract submissions is 8th of April 2016.

The conference is organised by Culture, Media and Creative Industries (CMCI) Department of King’s College London.
Please check our website for more information: 
and submit your abstract through Online Submission Form.