International Dance Conference Our Dance Democracy 2

Black-Frizell, Sarah and Gallagher, Karen International Dance Conference Our Dance Democracy 2. Liverpool Hope University. (Unpublished)

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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 this

Item Type:	Other
Keywords:	Dance, Democracy, Conference, Interdisciplinary, Artist, Academic
Faculty / Department:	Faculty of Creative Arts & Humanities > School of Creative and Performing Arts
Depositing User:	Sarah Black-Frizell
Date Deposited:	15 Oct 2021 09:07
Last Modified:	08 Nov 2024 11:33
URI:	https://hira.hope.ac.uk/id/eprint/3382

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