TOWARDS A DANCE COMMONS - A FORUM FOR CROSS-COMMUNITY SHARING

Community is as much an ideal people strive towards as an actual fact. Community making is a crucial part of democratic society; it helps avoid harmful conflicts and repair inequalities. Dance assumes a special place in community building. Happening in spaces that are both open (‘brave’ space) and protected (‘safe’ space), dance promotes inclusion and offers new models of what a community can be. Projects developed in the frame of community dance can tackle marginalisation, inequality, exclusion, forge social engagement, and heal trauma. We propose a forum at which scholars, dance practitioners, and community dancers across the North East exchange knowledge and experience about community making in the context of dance. Grounding the event in interdisciplinary research on embodiment and cognition, affect and trauma, dance and performance, we will engage a range of distinct communities to explore how they share through sequences of embodied movement, gesture, and touch.

Info: Martin Wilson (TIN Arts)
Fusako Innami (Durham University, Trustee of the Surface Area Dance Theatre)
Ally Hunter and Alison Thain (Converge Northumbria)
Pelican Theatre (Live Well and Dance with Parkinson’s)
Rachel Kurz and Emily Davis (Institute of Medical Humanities)

Info: Ellen Jeffrey (working with communities through time-specific performance)
Sophie Douglas & Lucia Piquero (N'Alcordanza project on embodied memories)
Eliot Smith (Eliot Smith Dance, The Pitman Project)
Laura Connolly and Emily Wallace (Dance Heritage Project)

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Host or Publisher School of Modern Languages and Cultures, Durham