A historical and relational study of ballet and contemporary dance in Greece and the UK

This study examines the social conditions for the nature and development of theatrical dance as a historically constructed field. The first part consists of a sociologically informed narrative of the making of dance from its initiation as a courtly practice (court ballet) to its contemporary form (ballet and modern dance), with an emphasis on the social, political and aesthetic contexts in which it was shaped. This narrative outlines the logic of symbolic negotiation, focusing specifically on conflicts over the content, bodily forms and techniques of dance, which take place in different spaces and modes of production. These symbolic negotiations are conceived as reconfigurations of social and political struggles but they are of course expressed through the practices of specific individuals within the field. This historical analysis sets the scene for an examination of the particular logic or rules that govern dance production in contemporary Britain and Greece. Although ballet in Greece has been relatively dependent on the development of the from in Britain, the two countries are approached as separate cases. The experience of thirty working dancers and choreographers (twelve in Greece and eighteen in the UK) is charted within very divergent conditions, namely training and performing as institutionalized in each country. These dancers and choreographers shape their bodies and tailor their practices in relation to ideal types of performers. They form highly diverse dance styles, especially given their interest in differentiating their own practice from current dance forms. Such styles stand in competition to each other, resulting in conflicting definitions of dance – and of course – dancing experiences. These particular meanings of dancing and dance making are highlighted by artists’ various trajectories within the fields or subfields. The interviews reveal the interdependency of the British and Greek systems of dance production. As will be shown, the individual dancers’ and choreographers’ trajectories depend on their possession of capitals (economic, social, cultural). It is claimed that the “talented dancing body” in each society is shaped with reference to the particular aesthetic and technical components promoted by the different dance styles

Editor's introduction: The dynamics of film audiences: how they form and develop relationships with film

No abstract available

Hidden Voices: Disabled Women's Experiences of Violence and Support Over the Life Course

Violence against women is a worldwide social and human rights problem that cuts across cultural, geographic, religious, social, and economic boundaries. It affects women in countries around the world, regardless of class, religion, disability, age, or sexual identity. International evidence shows that approximately three in five women experienced physical and/or sexual violence by an intimate partner. However, across the globe, women and girls with impairments or life-limiting illnesses are more susceptible to different forms of violence across a range of environments and by different perpetrators including professionals and family members as well as partners. However, they are likely to be seriously disadvantaged in gaining information and support to escape the abusive relationships. This article stems from the United Kingdom part of a comparative study with three other countries (Austria, Germany, and Iceland) funded by the European Commission (EC; 2013-2015). It presents preliminary findings, generated from life history interviews, about disabled women's experiences of violence and access to support (both formal and informal) over their life course and their aspirations for the prevention of violence in the future. The article includes examples of impairment-specific violence that non-disabled women do not experience. By bringing the voices of disabled women into the public domain, the article will facilitate a historically marginalized group to contribute to the debate about disability, violence, and support

Dance, class and the body: a Bourdieusian examination of training trajectories into ballet and contemporary dance

This article is a result of a small-scale interview-based study that explored the social conditions of ballet and contemporary dance production in the city of Glasgow. This study draws on interviews given by twelve professional dancers and choreographers, both freelancers and company based, who for the purposes of this research offered to share their experiences of studying and making dance. More specifically, this article aspires to map the social conditions of possibility of dancing and making dance, drawing on the class condition and career trajectories of those individuals who became dancers. With the aid of Bourdieu’s (1984; 1990; 1993a) concepts of ‘capitals’ (economic, social, cultural and physical), ‘habitus’ and ‘trajectories’, this piece of work will discuss how class conditions give or limit access to vocational training as a career pathway to dance. It is argued that, although the social origin of this sample presents relative variety, dance is an activity that demands different types of support, which are eventually more accessible to those social groups with more assets.Publisher PD

Re-reading Mary Wigman's Hexentanz II (1926): the influence of the non-Western 'Other' on movement practice in early modern 'German' dance

This paper provides a re-reading of Mary Wigman’s Hexentanz II (‘Witch Dance’, 1926), emphasising the social and aesthetic conditions in which she created dance works. A renewed interest in the idea of a return to nature characterised the artistic mood of this period, and scholars conceive of this return as an antidote to the capitalist modernisation of Germany and the effects of the First World War. This paper views Wigman’s work as a prominent example of the reversion to ‘primitive’ forms as a means of devising a new, avant-garde creative practice. The witch’s dance indicates a return to ‘primitive ritualism’, which is linked to the construction of the non-Western ‘Other’ as authentic and pure. Hexentanz II drew on various non-Western cultural elements, which became crystallised into a new technique and style of movement. However, as Edward Said (1978) would argue, such cultural elements are utilised for the benefit of the West and the construction of a modern dance more widely, a fraction of which would be gradually fabricated as ‘German’.Publisher PD

The impact of COVID-19 on freelance contemporary dance work: Precarity and the vulnerabilities of the dancing body

No abstract available

Ethics as social justice research: co-review essay

No abstract available

Doing Online Collaborative Auto-ethnography during the pandemic to research academic precarity

No abstract available

Between and Betwixt: Experiences of Academic Precarity and Resistance During COVID-19 Pandemic

This paper reflects on our joint gendered experience of precarity in UK Higher Education; a conversation that started during the pandemic as a means of negotiating a joint sense of liminality and disorientation during this period. Academic precariousness impacts women specifically (Zhang, 2018), and through an auto-ethnographic exploration, we argue that we find ourselves constantly betwixt and between in terms of working conditions, career development and research, and this has been exacerbated during the pandemic. Our experiences of liminality are inextricably linked to time, the nature of which shifted during the health crisis. For precarious academics, time is always in short supply. The increased pressure to publish and to develop means that even though research takes time, the desire to take this time is often in direct competition with the 'publish or perish' conditions of neoliberal universities (Mountz et al., 2015). Furthermore, precarious academics often experience time running away from them, with a constant feeling that they are running out of time. This is especially so as precarity is often long lasting rather than short term, and a source of anxiety for most early career academics. The pandemic has further intensified this experience of liminality and anxiety for us. Moreover, there has been the imperative that the pandemic, and especially the lockdown, should be seen as a fertile time for research, or for catching up whilst for many academics on fixed term contracts it has also been a time of great uncertainty. Our analysis, therefore, focuses on our experiences of being between and betwixt as women academics, our positionality in the academic field, our strategies, our moments of failure and resistance as well as the strategies have developed against precariousness during the pandemic. It is our view that in order to build effective strategies to support precarious academics we need to understand the impact that the timeframes imposed by academia have. We, therefore, view precarity as a liminal space in which exploitation and resistance coexist. In the context of COVID-19 we will discuss how increasing acceptance of remote working has led to increased networks of support and accessibility. Finally, we place our discussion of precarity in academia within the wider phenomena of precariousness within capitalist societies and the rise of the 'attention economy' (Odell, 2020), where, as in academia, time is linked to productive activity.N/