Category Archives: Popular Dance

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: 

‘Muse of Modernity?: Remembering, Mediating and Modernising Popular Dance’ symposium

Conferences, Popular Dance
Please find here to download the provisional schedule and registration details for the ‘Muse of Modernity: Remembering, Mediating and Modernising Popular Dance’ symposium at Senate House, University of London on Saturday 16th April. The event is free, but please register via Eventbrite here:  
The deadline for applications for travel bursaries to attend the symposium has now been extended to 14th March. For further information see: 
This event is part of the AHRC-funded Dancing with Memory project based at University of Chichester. For more information see the website here:  or the Facebook page here: 

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.

New Publication Salsa World, Edited by Sydney Hutchinson

Culture and Politics, Popular Dance, Publications

Salsa World

A Global Dance in Local Contexts

Edited by Sydney Hutchinson

“As Salsa World amply document, the lifts, flips, and dips…were typical of a shift in salsa practice at the turn of the twenty-first century, from a social dance performed in informal settings primarily by Latin/o Americans, to a studio dance phenomena practiced by professionals across a network of formal gatherings and competitions on every continent.… Salsa World takes a more global approach, chronicling the global phenomena of studio salsa in nine essays documenting the studio salsa scene in nine cities in the United States, the Caribbean, Europe, and Asia.”–Dance Research Journal

Since its emergence in the 1960s, salsa has transformed from a symbol of Nuyorican pride into an emblem of pan-Latinism and finally a form of global popular culture. While Latinos all over the world have developed and even exported their own “dance accents,” local dance scenes have arisen in increasingly far-flung locations, each with their own flavor and unique features.

Salsa World examines the ways in which bodies relate to culture in specific places. The contributors, a notable group of scholars and practitioners, analyze dance practices in the U.S., Japan, Spain, France, Colombia, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic. Writing from the disciplines of ethnomusicology, anthropology, sociology, and performance studies, the contributors explore salsa’s kinetopias – places defined by movement, or vice versa- as they have arisen through the dance’s interaction with local histories, identities, and musical forms.

Taken together, the essays in this book examine contemporary salsa dancing in all its complexity, taking special note of how it is localized and how issues of geography, race and ethnicity, and identity interact with the global salsa industry.

Contributors include Bárbara Balbuena Gutiérrez, Katherine Borland, Joanna Bosse, Rossy Díaz, Saúl Escalona, Kengo Iwanaga, Isabel Llano, Jonathan S. Marion, Priscilla Renta, Alejandro Ulloa Sanmiguel, and the editor.

Temple University Press

Studies In Latin America & Caribbean Music

September 2015 240pp  9781439910078 Paperback £20.99 now only £16.79* when you quote CSL16SALSA when you order

Roehampton research seminar: Dr Larraine Nicholas – ‘Seven Veils’ at the Windmill: Anatomy of a Dance, 20 Jan

Dance History, Popular Dance, Research Seminars

Centre for Dance Research, University of Roehampton

Research Seminar

‘Seven Veils’ at the Windmill: Anatomy of a Dance
Dr Larraine Nicholas, Honorary Research Fellow, University of Roehampton
20 January 2016, 6pm–7.30pm, DU.102 Duchesne, Digby Stuart Campus
Free, all welcome, no need to book

In the Coronation Year of 1937 a moral panic set in around the supposed importation of striptease from America, now increasingly being seen in clubs, and music halls. The management of the Windmill Theatre, famous for its static female nudes, had always positioned its productions as ‘middle-brow’, more decorous and artistic than vaudeville or music hall. In the midst of the striptease debacle, a new attraction, a ‘Dance of the Seven Veils’, was introduced into a Windmill show. In this paper I will attempt a description of the dance from pictorial and paper records. To what extent did it draw on the historical genre of performances with this name from earlier in the century?  Was it more like a striptease disguised under another name? Discussions about the dance also reveal the workings of theatre censorship under the Lord Chamberlain’s Office and its interactions with theatres and morality campaigners.
Larraine Nicholas was a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Dance at the University of Roehampton, 2000–2014. She is currently Honorary Research Fellow there.  Her research centres on twentieth century dance in Britain across genres of ballet, modern dance and musical theatre.  She is author of the monographs Dancing in Utopia: Dartington Hall and its Dancers (2007) and Walking and Dancing: Three Years of Dance in London, 1951 – 53 (2013).  She currently investigates the professional lives of dancers at the Windmill Theatre, London, 1932 – 64, including an oral history project.

More: 

The Role of the Choreographer in the Stage and Screen Musical, St Hilda’s Oxford – 28 November

Conferences, Popular Dance

Tickets are going fast for the DANSOX/SDR conference on Saturday 28 November looking atThe Role of the Choreographer in the Stage and Screen Musical at St Hilda’s College, Oxford.

Dame Gillian Lynne, acclaimed British dancer, choreographer, and theatre/television director; and Professor Millie Taylor (University of Winchester) will give keynote speeches.

There will also be presentations by Sarah Browne and Hannah Dulson, Ann David, Michael Huxley and Francis Yeoh on topics that include: Twyla Tharp’s choreography for the musicalHair; Bollywood film; the popular theatre work of choreographer Hanya Holm and the Jerome Robbin’s legacy.

Attendance is free (lunch and coffee for £8.50) but we ask you to register.

Registration closes on Monday 24th November, so please book soon on Eventbrite:

Centre for Dance Research, University of Roehampton ‘Not only Bollywood… Dance & Dancers in Indian Cinema(s): Some Thoughts’

Culture and Politics, Popular Dance, Research Seminars

Dr Tiziana Leucci, Chargée de recherche CNRS (Research Scholar), Centre d’Etudes de l’Inde et de l’Asie du Sud, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CEIAS/CNRS), Paris

26 November 2015, 6pm-7.30pm,DU.103 Duchesne, Digby Stuart Campus, University of Roehampton, London

Free, all welcome, no need to book

My presentation will examine the role played by the dance in Bollywood films and in other forms of Indian regional cinema(s). Special emphasis will be given to those dancers, masters and musicians belonging to the hereditary communities of temple, court and salon performing artists (known in South India with the generic terms of devadāsī, rājadāsī and naṭṭuvanārs) who acted, choreographed and sang for those movies, making many of them highly successful. Some members of these hereditary performing artists found in the cinema a way to continue to practice their profession after it had been taken away from them by other communities through the application of the Devadasi Act, voted into law three months after the declaration of the Indian Independence in 1947. Stigmatised and criminalised by that law, for a short time they found in the cinema a form of patronage, though not devoid of ambiguity. I will also discuss my bharatanāṭyam dance master, the late naṭṭuvaṉār V.S. Muthuswamy Pillai, who worked in the cinema during the 1940s and 1950s. He trained a number of dancers and film actresses by choreographing the items they performed in Tamil and Hindi movies.

Dance historian and anthropologist at the French National Center for the Scientific Research (CNRS/CEIAS, Paris), Tiziana Leucci’s research focuses on Indian courtesans’ cultures. She teaches bharatanāṭyam at the Conservatoire ‘G. Fauré’, Les Lilas, and is co-editing a volume on Dance in Early South Indian cinema with Davesh Soneji (McGill University, Montreal) and Hari Krishnan (Wesleyan University). More: 

CDR website: 

Call for Papers East Asian Popular Culture Conference 29th January 2016

Conference Call, Conferences, Culture and Politics, Popular Dance

Humanities Research Centre, University of York

Keynote Speaker: Margaret Hillenbrand, Associate Professor of Modern Chinese; Fellow of Wadham College, University of Oxford

In recent years, there has been an explosion of global interest in East Asian popular culture. Although it has proved incredibly fascinating amongst the general public, East Asian popular culture remains an underdeveloped area in academic research. This conference seeks to redress this imbalance between popular engagement and critical attention. As the body of early career researchers and PhD students expands and breaks new ground in this area across British institutions, it seems to be the perfect time to bring researchers together to forge new networks, inspire collaboration, provoke stimulating debate and encourage the sharing of knowledge.

It is imperative to this emerging and dynamic field that we think critically, not just about the content, but about how academic research itself is conducted on East Asian popular culture in the UK. What is unique about East Asian popular culture within an East Asian, and global, context? How has East Asian popular culture been studied in the past and how might we approach it in the future? To what extent can we challenge or extend existing debates around ideas of popular culture? And how might we situate research on East Asian popular culture within the rapidly transforming social, political, cultural, philosophical and economic contexts? Through this interdisciplinary one-day conference, we intend to develop a friendly and supportive environment to cultivate, reflect on and exchange ideas about this field with specialists from across the UK.

We are delighted to announce that Dr. Margaret Hillenbrand, University of Oxford, will deliver a keynote speech. Dr. Hillenbrand is an associate professor of modern Chinese, whose research and publications to date have focused on literary and visual culture in twentieth-century China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Japan. She is currently completing a book on the intermedial relationships between photography and a range of other aesthetic forms – literature, cinema, painting, and sculpture – in post-socialist China.

To this end, we aim to be as inclusive as possible and to provide a space for all colleagues working on topics related to East Asian popular culture. Therefore, we welcome discussions on all forms of popular culture, including film, television, anime, music, theatre, literature, magazines, comics/manga, art, video games, fan-produced content, fashion, etc.… Topics may include, but are not restricted to:

Ø  Identities

Ø  Gender, sexuality and representation

Ø  Audiences and fandom

Ø  Popular culture tourism

Ø  Remaking/re-interpretation of cultural products

Ø  Industrial practice and production of popular culture

Ø  Transnationalism, textual migration and translational practices

Abstracts of no more than 250 words should be sent to  by 10th December 2015. The conference is free to attend and includes a light lunch and wine reception in the evening. We may also be able to offer some financial help towards travel costs; please get in touch so that we can discuss this with you.

We wish to thank the White Rose East Asia Centre (WREAC) for its financial contribution to this event. The White Rose East Asia Centre is a collaborative endeavour between the departments of East Asian Studies at the Universities of Leeds and Sheffield under the umbrella of the White Rose university consortium. The organisers also gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the British Academy through their funding of the White Rose East Asia Centre (Grant Ref: AH/L006758/1).

CFP deadline approaching: Second Dancing with Memory Symposium

Journal Call, Popular Dance

The second symposium will take place on 16th April 2016 and is entitled ‘Muse of Modernity? Remembering, Mediating and Modernising Popular Dance. The deadline for the call for papers is 2nd November 2015. Click the link or see below for more details: 
CALL FOR PAPERS
The Dancing with Memory project is now inviting submissions for its second symposium “Muse of Modernity? Remembering, Mediating and Modernising Popular Dance”.
This symposium seeks to address the mediated memories of popular dance practices. From the colonial circulation of dance prints to YouTube, popular dances have been ‘captured’ in mediated forms. As texts, artworks, films and digital files, popular dance forms gain a mobility, exchangeability and material persistence that alter their relationships to discourses of modernity, capitalism and history. Mediation may grant popular dance forms entry into the literary canon, the modern art market and the archive (offline and online), changing the way they are remembered (or forgotten). Meanwhile, these mediations continue to interact with popular dance practices in live spaces of performance and participation. This symposium focuses on popular dance forms as they shift back and forth between the immediate and the mediated, the repertoire and the archive (Taylor, 2003), ‘unauthorised’ popular culture and authored text, image or film (Holt, 2011). Researchers and researcher-practitioners working on popular dance forms in any time period, cultural context and mediated form are welcome, as are those who wish to interrogate ‘popular dance’ as a category. Issues may include, but are not limited to, the following:

  • If popular dance forms can be considered practices of memory (repertoires, in Diana Taylor’s terms), how are these mnemonic practices changed by ‘fixing’ (or, indeed, mobilising) them in a mediated form? How do popular dancing bodies, texts, images, films and digital forms carry memory differently? What happens to memory as it shifts between these different manifestations? And why do these shifts occur?
  • What are the ethics of representing popular dance forms? How are popular dance histories written, visualised or performed, and by whom? Who chooses what is remembered and forgotten in the cultural memories of popular dance forms?
  • How do the identity politics of gender, race, class, nationality and sexuality function in mediations of popular dance? What role does the gendering of the muse/artist relationship play historically in the representation and memorialisation of popular dance forms?
  • To what extent can the representation of popular dance forms in writing, art and film be considered an act of creation of ‘the modern’? If works of art depicting popular dance forms are labelled ‘modern’, then how ‘modern’ are the dance forms they represent? How do popular dance forms engage with the practices, hierarchies and power relationships inherent in notions of modernity and modernism?

Future opportunities
Selected speakers from this symposium and the Dancing (trans)national memories symposium (20th June 2015) will be invited to submit extended versions of their papers for a peer-reviewed volume on popular dance and cultural memory to be edited by Clare Parfitt-Brown.
How 
to 
apply
Please 
send 
the following 
by 
2nd November 2015 to
dancingwithmemory@:

  • Document 
1: Title, Abstract and
 Bibliography
(see 
Proposals
 below). Proposals for pre-organised panels are also welcomed, in which case please include the title of the panel, a 100-word overview of the panel and a title, abstract and bibliography for each paper.
  • Document 2: Title, presenter’s 
name,
affiliated institution, email address,
format of presentation, space and time 
requirements (if relevant) and AVS needs (see Technical
 Requirements below).

Proposals

  • An
 abstract
 of 
300
 words 
is
 required, outlining 
the key
issues
 and
methodology
  • An 
indicative 
bibliography 
of 
4‐5 
key 
texts 
should 
be 
included
  • ​The name of the speaker should not appear in document 1, as the abstracts will be blind reviewed.

Technical 
Requirements

  • Presentations 
may 
take 
the
 form 
of 
a 
paper, 
lecture‐demonstration, workshop or alternative format (please specify)
  • Paper 
presentations 
should
 be 
20 
minutes 
in 
length
  • Other formats can 
be 
45 
or 
60 
minutes 
in 
length. Please 
indicate your space 
requirements.
  • Please identify any AVS needs, e.g.: DVD 
playback, data 
projector,
or
internet 
access

Accommodation
See Senate House website: 

Call for Papers- STAGING THE OLYMPICS- Brazilian Journal on Presence Studies

Culture and Politics, Journal Call, Popular Dance

Brazilian Journal on Presence Studies

STAGING THE OLYMPICS

CALL FOR PAPERS

The Brazilian Journal on Presence Studies [Revista Brasileira de Estudos da
Presença], an open access, peer-reviewed, online journal, will be receiving
until 31 January 2016 new articles that fall within the broad theme of
STAGING THE OLYMPICS.

In August 2016, the city of Rio de Janeiro will play host to the world’s
biggest sporting event – the Olympic Games. More than 10,000 athletes from
over 200 countries will compete in events that are punctuated by a series of
spectaculars including its opening and closing ceremonies as well as the
medal awarding ceremonies marking the conclusion of each event. The Games
have often been caught up in controversy whether in relation to the illegal
performance-enhancing drugs of athletes, the future host city selection
process, or the social and economic benefits (or otherwise) of pre- and
post-Games legacies, all of which have become increasingly permeated with
tensions and interests that exceed the notion of sport as an end in itself.
Further examples can be seen by the spectacle of bodies optimized by the HD
(High Definition) television technologies and the use of recent innovations
in picture capture technologies. In addition, the Olympics is a site for the
performances of other bodies through the Para-Olympics – whose presence
can be traced back to World War 2 invoking ideas of bodies marked by
conflict (which can be further developed into considerations of the tensions
brought by the binomial natural / artificial).

Moreover, considering the Brazilian context leading up to the Olympics in
Brazil, it can be said that these elements compound one on top of the other
where  following on from the unprecedented demonstrations against the World
Cup in 2014, Rio 2016 promises to offer an international stage for those
seeking to both promote Brazil’s emergence from the wings of its fellow
BRICS countries as an economically successful nation of modernity and those
staging protests as a new, diverse wave of politically complex agents for
change (where once again the host country becomes caught up by the tensions
that seek to reconcile high financial investments with local priorities and
needs).

To mark the Olympic and Para-Olympic Games coming to South America for the
first time, the Brazilian Journal on Presence Studies [Revista Brasileira de
Estudos da Presença], an open access online journal, aims to provide an
opportunity for exploring the dual themes of protest and spectacle.
Contributors might offer theoretical, empirical, and/or historical accounts
of the impact of the Olympic and Para-Olympic Games on performance (and
vice-versa) in relation to one or more of the following:

·      Rio de Janeiro and spectacle
·      Amateurism and professionalism in performance
·      Medals, the podium and ceremonies
·      Sport, performance and the city
·      The Olympics and The Para-Olympics
·      The Olympics as aesthetics
·      Staging the political in Rio 2016
·      Staging sexualities and the Olympic Games
·      The Olympics and notions of ‘community’
·      Performance, economics and the Olympics
·      Opening and closing ceremonies
·      Globalisation and internationalisation
·      Counter-Olympic stagings
·      The Olympics and the performative body
·      The Olympics and conflict
·      The Olympics, training, pedagogy, and performance

The journal expects to receive works derived from research with a conceptual
engagement in the field of the Performing Arts and will give particular
consideration to those utilising images and video to develop their
reflections. Submissions should conform to the journal’s standards and be
posted directly to our submission system to follow the general evaluation
process of the journal by clicking on the corresponding section (Staging the
Olympics). The journal does not charge submission or publication fees and
uses the double-blind peer-review system. The text can be in Portuguese,
Spanish, English, or French, and will be published in two languages. Authors
sending texts in Portuguese or Spanish will be required to send an English
translation. More information can be found on our website,
.