International Dance Conference Our Dance Democracy 2

Abstract

Building on the success of Our Dance Democracy 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. Artists and cultural workers perform a critical public role in exposing inherited and novel ideas and practices to examination and re-examination. Our Dance Democracy 2 sets out to explore the proposition that, because dance lives by contact across boundaries, borders, and frontiers, it has proven capacity to enable critical understanding of the human and historical contingency of even the ‘hardest’ borders, erected in the name of immutable, non-negotiable, traditions, beliefs, and value systems. Dance as a ritualistic act can perform difference as historical defiance, our art form is also practised in creative ways that can name – and, therefore, resist – complex contemporary forms of oppression, not least by promoting and supporting social and political activism. Dance and dancers can model, rehearse, and embody ways of living together for mutual flourishing, thus reinvigorating democratic concepts, practices, and structures for a fractured twenty-first century. In Our Dance Democracy 2 we propose dance and dancing, pedagogy and performance making, writing and critical discourses, as dynamic sites for critical thinking, progressive social intervention, civic engagement, ethics and activism – both established and emergent. We announce a space for ethical action, beyond borders imposed on our creative worlds: a platform for artists to make visible, and test the viability of, ideas of equity and embodied principles of collective endeavour. Karen Gallagher & Associates Our Dance Democracy 2 will be a two-day conference, dedicated to deliberating on the role of dance artists and scholars in ways including, but not limited to • Dance as cultural identity • Dance as protest/resistance/conflict/celebration • Movement of peoples: Belonging/displacement/segregation • Cultural forms as political legacies • Dance as peace-building • Cultural amnesia • Colonialism/Post-colonialism • Borders, boundaries, frontiers: contacts, exclusions, histories and futures • Dancing uncertainty, landscapes and re-mapping • Dancing Communities: social justice, civic responsibility and ethics • Internal Borderspaces: dancing the maternal in mind and body Abstracts excepted for 20 minute papers, experimental formats including performative lectures, workshop/seminars and provocation world-café style. The organisers are exploring a peer-reviewed collection of articles based on conference contributions and invited essays, and delegates may be invited to contribute to thi