Chapters

Fearless belonging & river-me

Fearless belonging & river-me

Chapter in Geographies of Us: Ecosomatic Essays and Practice Pages, edited by Sondra Fraleigh and Shannon Rose Riley, Routledge(2024)

Reviews of the book :

“This collection of essays gathers together important strands in the current studies of ecosomatics. It includes many ‘practice pages’ that open doors to the feelings that have generated the commitment of the writers to creating common grounds for deep conversation about the way people live in the ecologies of the world. The combination of affective strength, so difficult to articulate, with practical exercises—such as the many approaches to breathing as a form of ecoproprioception—will draw readers into places/ geographies where artmaking and philosophy join together and suggest new languages for thinking and talking about engaging with this Earth.”
Lynette Hunter, Professor of Theatre and Dance, University of California, Davis

 

“This seminal collection of essays maps the contours of an emerging field: ecosomatics. At the intersection of dance studies, movement studies, philosophy, and ecology, ecosomatics encourages ways of thinking and doing that cultivate a human’s sensory awareness of their bodily enmeshment in enabling places and worlds—nexuses of material relationships which call for respect, reciprocity, and responsibility. In essays written by an international cast of contributors, ecosomatics demonstrates its fierce commitment to social and environmental justice; a ready embrace of Indigenous knowledges, histories, and rights; thoughtful engagement with established fields of phenomenology, eco-philosophy, and dance studies; a lived, dialectical production of theory and practice, and an overriding mission to participate as consciously as possible in generating worldviews and bodily practices that sensitize humans to the ongoing health and wellbeing of the Earth in us and around us.”
Kimerer L. LaMothe, PhD, author of Why We Dance: A Philosophy of Bodily Becoming

 

Geographies of Us provides an exciting snapshot of a diversifying field: of the different methods, playful encounters, bodymind approaches, and land politics that make up the contemporary ecosomatic inquiry, with plenty of invitations to join in the dance. At its heart, this collection is about local and grounded connection, about reaching out—in intergenerational liveliness and critterly entanglement, in touch and in movement, in human and more-than-human worlds.”
Petra Kuppers, author of Eco Soma: Pain and Joy in Speculative Performance Encounters; Anita Gonzalez Collegiate Professor of Performance Studies and Disability Culture, University of Michigan

 

“I consider this the most important work to emerge in interdisciplinary dance/performance studies this century. The depth and quality of engagement available to the reader in these pages has the potential to widely transform thought, practice, institutions, environments, and the lived relations between.”
Karen Bond, Chair of Dance, Temple University

Posted by Adesola in Chapters

The Distance of Education

The Distance of Education

I contribute Chapter 10 in Futures of Performance: The Responsibility of Performing Arts in Higher Education, edited by Karen Schupp.

The 2020/21 COVID-19 pandemic wrenched arts education onto the Zoom screen, but after my 12 years of teaching online with performance arts students, I suggest the online learning space offers more than just temporary replacements for in-person classes. In this chapter, I use the distance-education course I wrote/co-wrote and directed/co-directed for 12.5 years as a case study. The strangeness of “teaching” performance artists through an online course was often at odds with the main body of the university. However, the use of online mediums to educate was not to replace the physicality of being together familiar to a traditional construction of university. Rather it allowed students to practice arts around the world in early career settings, such as apprenticeships in touring companies. The courses utilized the Internet and distance education to create a performing arts pedagogical framing drawing on network theory and connectivism. I conclude the chapter by suggesting the embodied, creative knowledges of the performing arts have much to offer general pedagogical responses to the digital world of the 21st century.

Link to publisher 

Futures of Performance edited by Karen Schupp, inspires both current and future artists/academics to reflect on their roles and responsibilities in igniting future-forward thinking and practices for the performing arts in higher education.

The book presents a breadth of new perspectives from the disciplines of music, dance, theatre, and mediated performance and from a range of institutional contexts. Chapters from teachers across various contexts of higher education are organized according to the three main areas of responsibilities of performing arts education: to academia, to society, and to the field as a whole. With the intention of illuminating the intricacy of how performing arts are situated and function in higher education, the book addresses key questions including: How are the performing arts valued in higher education? How are programs addressing equity? What responsibilities do performing arts programs have to stakeholders inside and outside of the academy? What are programs’ ethical obligations to students and how are those met? Futures of Performance examines these questions and offers models that can give us some of the potential answers.

This is a crucial and timely resource for anyone in a decision-making position within the university performing arts sector, from administrators, to educators, to those in leadership positions.

Table of Contents

Section 1: Responsibilities to Academia

Introduction – Karen Schupp

Performance Across the Disciplines: Envisioning Transdisciplinary Performance Pedagogies in Postsecondary Education – Jesse Katen

Ethics, Standards, Evaluation, and Support of Creative Research in Academia – Ali Duffy, Isabella Gonzales, and Destanie Davidson Preston

Ugly Feelings and Social Justice: Interrupting Inaction in Times of Perpetual Crisis – Lauren Kapalka Richerme

Hosting Co(n)fusion: Art Residencies as Invitation-Practices – Janaína Moraes

Decolonizing Tertiary Dance Education Through Including Student Voices in a Curricula Change Project – Camilla Reppen, Lovisa Lundgren, and Tone Pernille Østern

The Creative Spaces at HBCUs – Avis HatcherPuzzo, Soni Martin, Denise Murchison Payton, and Amanda Virelles

Call of the Butterfly: The Tao of Genuine Generosity – Robert Farid Karimi

 

Section 2: Responsibilities to the Fields

Introduction – Karen Schupp

The Distance of Education – Adesola Akinleye

Performing Hartford: A Community Turns its Head – Rebecca K. Pappas

Integrating Disciplines–Disciplining Integration: Opera Curriculum through a Transdisciplinary Counter-Critical Pedagogy – Kevin Skelton

Sustainable Futures in Performance Practice, Production, and Distribution Ecologies – Max Zara Bernstein

Fighting for Equity With(in) Parasitical Resistance – Jessica Rajko

A Tertiary Music Performance Education Through a Lens of Entrepreneurship – Deanna Swoboda

“Undervalued, Underpaid, Underappreciated”: The Lived Experiences of Adjunct Faculty in the Performing Arts. – Karen Schupp, Artemis Preeshl, and Joya Scott

 

Section 3: Responsibilities to Society

Introduction – Karen Schupp

Performing Arts Education for Democracies: Are We Cultivating Citizens or Docile Laborers? – Robin Raven Prichard

Revitalizing the US Baccalaureate Dance Major: Integrating Values of Diversity and Interdisciplinarity – Sherrie Barr and Wendy Oliver

Interrogating the Academy’s Role in the Journey from Art Music to Heart Music – Fiona Evison

Toward a Pedagogy of Care: Well-being, Grief, and Community-based Theatre’s Role in Higher Education – Rivka Eckert

Arts Education in Community Colleges: A Critical Connection – Amy C. Parks

Pedagogies of Critical Embodiment: Activating Submerged Histories, Moving Toward Anti-Racist Futures – Dasha A. Chapman

The Performing Arts in the Next America: Preparing Students for Their Future – Peter Witte

Posted by Adesola in Chapters, Dance and the Digital

Keeping Movement at the Center as We Dance into Interdisciplinary Research

Keeping Movement at the Center as We Dance into Interdisciplinary Research

I contribute chapter 26. In this chapter I discuss dance within interdisciplinary research.

Link to publisher 

Citation: Akinleye A. (2023) Keeping movement at the center as we dance into interdisciplinary research. In Dance Research Methodologies: ethics, orientations and practices Candelario, R., Henley M.(eds) Routledge. pp 389-400

ISBN 9780367703073

About the book

Dance Research Methodologies: Ethics, Orientations, and Practices captures the breadth of methodological approaches to research in dance in the fine arts, the humanities, the social sciences, and the natural sciences by bringing together researchers from around the world writing about a variety of dance forms and practices.

This book makes explicit the implicit skills and experiences at work in the research processes by detailing the ethics, orientations, and practices fundamental to being a researcher across the disciplines of dance. Collating together approaches from key subdisciplines, this book brings together perspectives on dance practice, dance studies, dance education, dance science, as well as dance research in cross-, multi-, and interdisciplinary fields. Practice-based chapters cover methodological approaches that provide rich examples of how research design and implementation are navigated by practicing scholars. Dance Research Methodologies also includes a practical workbook that helps readers to decide upon, refine, and enact their research, as well as develop ways in which to communicate their process and outcomes.

This vital textbook is a valuable resource for research faculty interested in interdisciplinary conversation and practice, emerging scholars honing their methodological approaches, graduate students engaged in research-based coursework and projects, and advanced undergraduates.

Rosemary Candelario, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Dance at Texas Woman’s University.

Matthew Henley, PhD, is an Arnhold Associate Professor of Dance Education at Teachers College, Columbia University.

Part 1: Introduction

1. Dance Research in/as Communities of Practice

Rosemary Candelario and Matthew Henley

2. Research Ethics, Orientations, and Practices

Rosemary Candelario and Matthew Henley

Part 2: Dance Practice

3. Introduction to Research in Dance Practice: Practice-as-Research

Vida Midgelow

4. Choreographies of Presence: Improvisation as Feminist Practice

Jo Pollitt

5. Community Dance and Collection Creation: Art, Health, and Social Development Across the Hemisphere

Aurelia Chillemi and Victoria Fortuna

6. FutureBlackSpace: Weaving Art, Healing, and Activism

John-Paul Zaccarini

7. Practice (or) Research: A Conversation with Eiko Otake

Rosemary Candelario and Eiko Otake

Part 3: Dance Studies

8. Introduction to Research in Dance Studies: Dance as a Humanity

Thomas DeFrantz

9. Choreographic Analysis as Dance Studies Methodology: Cases, Expansions, and Critiques

Harmony Bench, Rosemary Candelario, J. Lorenzo Perillo, and Cristina Fernandes Rosa

10. Global South Archives: Listening and Acknowledging Authorship

Ana Paula Höfling

11. Cyphering with Oral History

MiRi Park

12. To the Motion Itself: Towards a Phenomenological Methodology of Dance Research

Nigel Stewart

Part 4: Dance Education

13. Introduction to Research in Dance Education: New Pathways to Discovery

Lynnette Young Overby

14. Towards a Decolonial Dance Research Paradigm: Ubuntu as Qualitative Hermeneutic Phenomenology

Alfdaniels Mabingo

15. Ethnography for Research in Dance Education: Global, Decolonial, and Somatic Aspirations

Ojeya Cruz Banks

16. Conducting an Experiment: How Quantifying Answers to a Question can Promote the Value of Dance Education.

Lynnette Young Overby and Matthew Henley

17. Classroom as Laboratory: Teacher Self-Study and Dance Education

Ilana Morgan

18. Mixing Methods and Approaches in Dance Education Research

Matthew Henley

Part 5: Dance Science

19. Introduction to Research in Dance Science: The Science of Movement and Choreography of Research – Evolving Methodologies in Dance Science

Margaret Wilson

20. Mentoring Dance Science Research: Circling the Square– Edel Quin in Conversation with Margaret Wilson

Edel Quin and Margaret Wilson

21. Thinking Statistically for Dance Research

Gregory Youdan Jr.

22. A Dance/Movement Therapy Approach to Interview Analysis

Tomoyo Kawano

23. Carving an Innovative Space for Dialogic Intersections: Dance, Disability, and Design

Merry Lynn Morris

Part 6: Dance Research Beyond Disciplines

24. Introduction to Dance Research Beyond Disciplines: Extending Dance-based Ways of Knowing

Rosemary Candelario and Matthew Henley

25. Strange Bedfellows: Dance Studies, Academic Disciplines, and Truth in Crisis

Janet O’Shea

26. Keeping Movement at the Center as we Dance into Interdisciplinary Research

Adesola Akinleye

Part 7

27. A Creative Workbook for Rehearsing Ethics, Orientations, and Practices

Rosemary Candelario and Matthew Henley

Reviews

“Both inspiring and instructive, Dance Research Methods captures the diversity of today’s dance scholarship and offers an array of methodological possibilities that will surely lead to research trajectories yet to be discovered. Reminding us that dance theory and dancemaking practices are always intersecting and shaping the myriad ways that we create and present new knowledge, experienced and aspiring researchers using this text will enter into an ever-widening conversation about praxis inquiry, artful research practices, the importance of ethical decision-making, and the joys of pursuing research as a creative and artistic enterprise.” Penelope Hanstein, MFA, PhD, Cornaro Professor of Dance Emerita, Texas Woman’s University, USA

“While some of the meticulous and rigorously curated essays contain pre-requisite standard approaches that are nourishing, there are many where scholarship itself is critiqued and stretched to include an invaluable selection of voices, grammars, registers, provocations, and contexts, making this a standout book for scholars in the pursuit of inclusive (as yet elusive) dance research methodologies. Imbuing this impressive assembly of work with a sustained call for pervasive ethics is a compelling masterstroke for our times.” Jay Pather, Director, Institute for Creative Arts, Professor, Centre for Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies, University of Cape Town, South Africa

Dance Research Methodologies includes comprehensive and detailed step-by-step methods, conversations, and personal reflections on ‘how to’ do dance research across myriad themes. Providing a wealth of different approaches in an accessible format, it is an invaluable resource for dance researchers, from undergraduate to post-doctoral.” Sarah Whatley, Director, Centre for Dance Research, Coventry University, UK

“The book functions like a set of hyperlinks that organize leaping off points to follow up in references and ideas across the diverse field of dance research. This wide-ranging collection highlights differences between ‘research’ versus ‘creating work’ or ‘rehearsing,’ and introduces archival research for where no archive exists, prompts for writing as dancing, ethics as research method, and other gems.” Jonathan W. Marshall, Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, Edith Cowan University, Australia

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Dancing Un-Visible Bodies

Dancing Un-Visible Bodies

I discuss how issues of marginalization in the dance studio raised by prejudices against age, ethnicity and/or gender have shared lessons of resilience. From my own presence as an experienced, Black, female body in Western dance settings, I look at social and cultural theory to describe the older dancer as having many bodies. I draw on personal reflections gathered over a year of observations of myself taking dance classes, suggesting strategies for surviving racism in my youth as a Black ballerina offer modes for thriving in the face of exclusionary practices around aging in dance.

Link to publisher 

Citation: Akinleye A. (2022) Dancing Un-Visible Bodies. In: Musil P., Risner D., Schupp K. (eds) Dancing Across the Lifespan. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. pp 113 -128 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-82866-0_8

About the book:

This book critically examines matters of age and aging in relation to dance. As a novel collection of diverse authors’ voices, this edited book traverses the human lifespan from early childhood to death as it negotiates a breadth of dance experiences and contexts. The conversations ignited within each chapter invite readers to interrogate current disciplinary attitudes and dominant assumptions and serve as catalysts for changing and evolving long entrenched views among dancers regarding matters of age and aging.

The text is organized in three sections, each representing a specific context within which dance exists. Section titles include educational contexts, social and cultural contexts, and artistic contexts. Within these broad categories, each contributor’s milieu of lived experiences illuminate age-related factors and their many intersections. While several contributing authors address and problematize the phenomenon of aging in mid-life and beyond, other authors tackle important issues that impact young dancers and dance professionals. 

Pam Musil, MA, is a professor emeritus of Dance, Brigham Young University, USA, and a former associate chair of the Department of Dance. As a post-retirement, she works as an independent researcher with interests that include human issues related to dance and literacy, education, gender, and age within populations that span grades 7-12, postsecondary dance education and beyond.

Doug Risner, Ph.D., MFA, professor of dance, distinguished faculty fellow, and director, MA in Dance and Theater Teaching Artistry at Wayne State University, USA, conducts research on the sociology of dance training and education. His book, Masculinity, Intersectionality and Identity: Why Boys (Don’t) Dance [2022], is published by Palgrave MacMillan.

Karen Schupp, MFA, is an associate professor of dance and an associate director of the Herberger Institute School of Music, Dance, and Theater at Arizona State University, USA. Her research interests include dance competition culture, dance curriculum and pedagogy in tertiary education, and equity across the spectrum of dance education.

 

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For Kaydence and her cousins: Health & Happiness in cultural legacies and contemporary contexts

For Kaydence and her cousins: Health & Happiness in cultural legacies and contemporary contexts

I contribute Chapter Three to this anthology. The chapter discusses the making of a performance work for young indigenous audiences. I suggest that being a part of, and the making together of, art is a healing and vital process: one that is particularly important for the next generation’s ability to determine themselves with creative agency.

Link to publisher

Citation: Akinleye. A (2021) ‘For Kaydence and her cousins’ in Van Styvendale, N., McDougall, J. D., Henry, R., & Innes, R. A. (Eds.). The Arts of Indigenous Health and Well-being. Univ. of Manitoba Press. pp 60-75

About the book: 

Drawing attention to the ways in which creative practices are essential to the health, well-being, and healing of Indigenous peoples, The Arts of Indigenous Health and Well-Being addresses the effects of artistic endeavour on the “good life”, or mino-pimatisiwin in Cree, which can be described as the balanced interconnection of physical, emotional, spiritual, and mental well-being. In this interdisciplinary collection, Indigenous knowledges inform an approach to health as a wider set of relations that are central to well-being, wherein artistic expression furthers cultural continuity and resilience, community connection, and kinship to push back against forces of fracture and disruption imposed by colonialism.

The need for healing—not only individuals but health systems and practices—is clear, especially as the trauma of colonialism is continually revealed and perpetuated within health systems. The field of Indigenous health has recently begun to recognize the fundamental connection between creative expression and well-being. This book brings together scholarship by humanities scholars, social scientists, artists, and those holding experiential knowledge from across Turtle Island to add urgently needed perspectives to this conversation. Contributors embrace a diverse range of research methods, including community-engaged scholarship with Indigenous youth, artists, Elders, and language keepers.

The Arts of Indigenous Health and Well-Being demonstrates the healing possibilities of Indigenous works of art, literature, film, and music from a diversity of Indigenous peoples and arts traditions. This book will resonate with health practitioners, community members, and any who recognize the power of art as a window, an entryway to access a healthy and good life.

Editors: Nancy Van Styvendale,  J.D. McDougall,  Robert Henry, Robert Alexander Innes 

Chapters contributed by: Adesola Akinleye, Jessica Bardill, Beverley Diamond, Nikki Dragone, Jo-Ann Episkenew, Linda M Goulet, Louise Halfe, Desiree Hellegers, Petra Kuppers, Warren Linds, Gail MacKay, Margaret Noodin, Karyn Recollet, Andrea Riley Mukavetz, Mamata Pandey, Nuno F. Ribeiro, Alena Rosen, Karen Schmidt

 

“There is a genuinely beautiful life-force at work in this text: it’s artful and creative, readable and forceful. The Arts of Indigenous Health and Well-Being offers important contributions to knowledge and conversations about Indigenous health and the humanities in times and space of contemporary coloniality.”

– Sarah de Leeuw, Canada Research Chair, Humanities and Health Inequities Professor, Northern Medical Program, UNBC

 

“The unique content of The Art of Indigenous Health and Well-Being may be useful for communities to heal, and to preserve cultural and traditional knowledge that can be passed down in the written form. The content can spark dialogue and learning by being discussed and used by families, generations, health providers/healers and a wide array of learners.”

– Margot Latimer, Indigenous Health Chair, Faculty of Nursing, Dalhousie University

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Bodies of Knowledge: Three conversations on movement, communication and identity

Bodies of Knowledge: Three conversations on movement, communication and identity

I wrote an introductory chapter “Pondering In Embodiment” as response to the work done through the three interdisciplinary, community projects that the book goes on to review. The chapter ties together the three projects through the notion of being ‘in embodiment’ (rather than being ’embodied’). The chapter also serves to introduce the following sections of the book that discuss and reflect on the projects. 

“…Bodies of Knowledge attends to layers of experience for noticing surfaces that reflect ourselves-in-embodiment. In doing so, the projects acknowledge experience, reflections, histories and stories that are often underrepresented in social verbal discourse, but remain vibrant in the bodily experience of those who live them. The depth of layers of the lived-experience are vitalised through the nuance of the arts, and in that vitalisation, they communicate reflections of ourselves-in-embodiment.” p.21

Link to publishers 

Citation: Akinleye, A. (2021). ‘Pondering in Embodiment’, in Purseglove, L. (ed.) Bodies of Knowledge: Three Conversations on Movement, Communication and Identity. Loughborough and London: Radar and Live Art Development Agency, pp. 10-21.

open book pages

About this book: The human body is a site of knowledge production. It holds, shares, creates, enacts, transforms, contests, resists and performs ways of thinking and being in-and-against our worlds, histories and futures.

Featuring conversations, essays, drawings and photographs, Bodies of Knowledge reflects and builds on an interdisciplinary project involving artists, amateur and professional dancers, wrestlers, members of a trans community group and academic researchers interrogating how our bodies are both produced by and productive of knowledges.

From the entanglements of violence and care in the wrestling ring to negotiations of identity through Kathak dance, and the use of photography as a means to explore and communicate the euphorias and horrors of gender, this beautifully designed book explores why and how our bodies know what they know.

Contributors: Adesola Akinleye, Isaac Briggs, Jennifer Cooke, Laurie Crow, Thomas Dawkins (aka Cara Noir), Tara Fatehi Irani, Julia Giese, Martin Hargreaves, Claire Heafford, Joe Moran, Kesha Raithatha, Raju Rage, Nat Thorne, Claire Warden, Sam West and Sam Williams.

Posted by Adesola in Chapters

Ballet, from Property to Art

Ballet, from Property to Art

In this chapter, I reflect on ballet using two lenses of property (ballet-as-property) and inheritance (the Manor House of Ballet). I draw on Cheryl Harris’s seminal paper ‘Whiteness as Property’ to explore how ballet could be seen as being treated as the property of a few rather than an art form in its own right. I suggest that being liberated into being ‘an art form’ offers ballet a rich future that avoids the decay of protectionism.

Citation: Akinleye, A.(2021) Ballet, from property to art, in Akinleye (ed.) (re:)claiming ballet London: Intellect books pp.21-35

Contents for context within book: 

(editor Adesola Akinleye)

Introduction: Regarding claiming ballet / reclaiming ballet

Part One – Histories

Chapter 1: Ballet, from property to Art – Adesola Akinleye

Chapter 2: Should there be a Female ballet canon? Seven Radical Acts of Inclusion – Julia Gleich and Molly Faulkner

Chapter 3: Arabesque en Noir: The Persistent Presence of Black Dancers in the American Ballet World – Joselli Audain Deans 

Chapter 4: Portrayals of Black people from the African Diaspora in western narrative ballets – Sandie Bourne

Part Two – Knowledges  

Chapter 5: The traces of my ballet body – Mary Savva  

Chapter 6: Ballet Beyond Boundaries – Personal History. Brenda Dixson Gottschild  

Chapter 7:“Auftanzen statt Aufgeben” and The Anti Fascist Ballet School -Elizabeth Ward 

Chapter 8: Dancing Across Historically Racist Borders – Kehinde Ishangi 

Part Three – Resiliences  

Chapter 9: Dance Theatre of Harlem’s radicalization of ballet in 1970s & 1980s – Theresa Ruth Howard  

Chapter 10: Personal testimony as social resilience – Theara J. Ward 

Chapter 11: “Can you feel it?”: Pioneering Pedagogies that Challenge Ballet’s Authoritarian Traditions – Jessica Zeller 

Chapter 12: The Ever After of Ballet – Selby Wynn Schwartz 

Chapter 13: Ballethnic Dance Company Builds Community: Urban Nutcracker leads the way – Nena Gilreath

Part four – Consciousnesses 

Chapter 14: The Counterpoint Project – When Life Doesn’t Imitate Art –  Endalyn Taylor

Chapter 15: Ballet’s Binary Genders in a Rainbow-Spectrum World:

A call for progressive pedagogies – Melonie B. Murray  

Chapter 16: Dancing through Black British ballet: Conversations with dancers – Adesola Akinleye and Tia-Monique Uzor 

Chapter 17: Ballet Aesthetics of Trauma, Development, and Functionality – Luc Vanier & Elizabeth Johnson 

About the contributors 

Index 

Posted by Adesola in Chapters

Dancing through Black British ballet: conversations with dancers.

Dancing through Black British ballet: conversations with dancers.

Co-written with Tia-Monique Uzor, this chapter, reflects on conversations with a number of non-white British dancers who have a long standing dance careers in ballet. The chapter maps histories of resilience and resistance in Britain and internationally

Citation: Akinleye, A. & T Uzor (2021) Dancing through Black British ballet: conversations with dancers Akinleye (ed.) (re:)claiming ballet London: Intellect books pp.216-231

Contents for context within book: 

(editor Adesola Akinleye)

Introduction: Regarding claiming ballet / reclaiming ballet

Part One – Histories

Chapter 1: Ballet, from property to Art – Adesola Akinleye

Chapter 2: Should there be a Female ballet canon? Seven Radical Acts of Inclusion – Julia Gleich and Molly Faulkner

Chapter 3: Arabesque en Noir: The Persistent Presence of Black Dancers in the American Ballet World – Joselli Audain Deans 

Chapter 4: Portrayals of Black people from the African Diaspora in western narrative ballets – Sandie Bourne

Part Two – Knowledges  

Chapter 5: The traces of my ballet body – Mary Savva  

Chapter 6: Ballet Beyond Boundaries – Personal History. Brenda Dixson Gottschild  

Chapter 7:“Auftanzen statt Aufgeben” and The Anti Fascist Ballet School -Elizabeth Ward 

Chapter 8: Dancing Across Historically Racist Borders – Kehinde Ishangi 

Part Three – Resiliences  

Chapter 9: Dance Theatre of Harlem’s radicalization of ballet in 1970s & 1980s – Theresa Ruth Howard  

Chapter 10: Personal testimony as social resilience – Theara J. Ward 

Chapter 11: “Can you feel it?”: Pioneering Pedagogies that Challenge Ballet’s Authoritarian Traditions – Jessica Zeller 

Chapter 12: The Ever After of Ballet – Selby Wynn Schwartz 

Chapter 13: Ballethnic Dance Company Builds Community: Urban Nutcracker leads the way – Nena Gilreath

Part four – Consciousnesses 

Chapter 14: The Counterpoint Project – When Life Doesn’t Imitate Art –  Endalyn Taylor

Chapter 15: Ballet’s Binary Genders in a Rainbow-Spectrum World:

A call for progressive pedagogies – Melonie B. Murray  

Chapter 16: Dancing through Black British ballet: Conversations with dancers – Adesola Akinleye and Tia-Monique Uzor 

Chapter 17: Ballet Aesthetics of Trauma, Development, and Functionality – Luc Vanier & Elizabeth Johnson 

About the contributors 

Index 

Posted by Adesola in Chapters

Narratives in Black British Dance: an introduction

Narratives in Black British Dance: an introduction

In order to introduce the narratives in the chapters that follow across the book, this introductory chapter positions a range of approaches to the terms Black, British, and Dance. The chapter discusses how artists who identify are cross contribute to a dance scene whose complexities and stories are often invisiblized. The chapter discusses contexts for talking about the dancing body, to expose them as having concealed Black, British dance stories in the past. I draw attention to the context of the historical legacy of abuse to the ‘Black body’ and the effects the has on how Black dancers are audience today. I offer a (re)articulation of the physical and cultural mapping of the richness of British dance.

The book as a whole explores Black British dance from a number of previously-untold perspectives. Bringing together the voices of dance-artists, scholars, teachers and choreographers, it looks at a range of performing arts from dancehall to ballet, providing valuable insights into dance theory, performance, pedagogy, identity and culture. It challenges the presumption that Blackness, Britishness or dance are monolithic entities, instead arguing that all three are living networks created by rich histories, diverse faces and infinite future possibilities. Through a variety of critical and creative essays, this book suggests a widening of our conceptions of what British dance looks like, where it appears, and who is involved in its creation.

Citation: Akinleye, A.(2018). Narratives in Black British Dance: an introduction, in Akinleye (ed.) Narratives in Black British Dance: embodied practices. London: Palgrave MacMillian pp. 1- 17 

Contents for context with book: 

(editor Adesola Akinleye)

1. Narratives in Black British dance: an introduction – Adesola Akinleye

Part i 

2. “I don’t do Black-Dance, I am a Black dancer” – Namron

3. Dance Britannia: the impact of global shifts on dance in Britain – Christy Adair and Ramsay Burt

4. Negotiating African Diasporic identity in dance: brown bodies creating and existing in the British dance industry – Tia-Monique Uzor

5.Tracing the evolution of Black representation in ballet and the impact on Black British dancers today – Sandie Bourne

6. In-the-between-ness; decolonising and re-inhabiting our dancing – Adesola Akinleye and Helen Kindred

Part ii

7. Trails of Ado: Kokuma’s cultural self-defence – Thea Barnes

8. Moving Tu Balance: an African holistic dance as a vehicle for personal development from a Black British perspective – Sandra Golding

9. ‘Why I am not a fan of the Lion King’: ethically informed approach to the teaching and learning of South African dance forms in Higher Education in the United Kingdom – Sarahleigh Castelyn

10. Performativity of body paintingL symbolic ritual as diasporic identity – Chikukwango Cuxima-Zwa

11. Dancehall: a continuity of spiritual, corporeal practice in Jamaican dance – H. Patten

12. Our Ethiopian connection: embodied Ethiopian culture as a tool in urban-contemporary choreography – Ras Mikey (Michael) Courtney

13. Reflections: snapshots of dancing home, 1985, 2010 and 2012 – Hopal Romans

Part iii

14. Battling under Britannia’s shadow: UK jazz dancing in the 1970s and 1980s – Jane Carr

15. Caribfunk Technique: a new feminist/womanist futuristic technology in Black dance studies in Higher Education – A’Keitha Carey

16. More similarities than differences: searching for new pathways – Beverley Glean and Rosie Lehan

17. Epistemology of the weekend: Youth Dance Theatre – Hopal Romans, Adesola Akinleye, and Michael Joseph

18. Transatlantic voyages: then and now – Anita Gonzalez

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