DANCE BLACK JOY: Global Affirmations and Defiance
February 16 - 18, 2018 - Duke University - Durham NC
CALL FOR CONFERENCE PROPOSALS
The Collegium for African Diaspora Dance (CADD) third conference aims to carry forward enlivening discussions on the power and politics of global Black Dance by bringing together scholars, practitioners, educators, and other stakeholders for three days of intellectual and artistic inspiration. DANCE BLACK JOY: Global Affirmations and Defiance seeks to center African diaspora dance as a resource and method of aesthetic possibility. It pursues the following lines of inquiry:
- How do dance and movement practices across the African diaspora articulate and affirm the lived experiences of Black people?
- How might dance function as a tool to critique or confront systemic oppressions faced by people of African descent globally?
- What are the limits and possibilities for African diaspora dance/performance to challenge the state?
- What new pedagogical pathways for diasporic dance practices are emerging within higher education?
- What opportunities for affirmation and defiance emerge when Afro-descended bodies perform non-diasporic dance vocabularies? Or when others perform African diaspora dance?
Anchored by critical dialogue and provocative research presentations, the conference will feature breakout sessions, movement workshops, film screenings, and a performance of CANE: a responsive environment dancework, conceived by Thomas F. DeFrantz and SLIPPAGE: Performance|Culture|Technology in collaboration with Wideman/Davis Dance.
We are interested in papers and presentations that consider dance practices throughout the African diaspora, the specific contexts that engender them and the ways in which they circulate to affirm Black life and thriving. Similarly, we are interested in conference contributions that imagine various practices of African diaspora dance as a fugitive site for Black joy. We welcome papers that represent a rigorous engagement with a number of disciplinary and methodological perspectives.
Possible topics include:
- African diaspora dance and the Movement for Black Lives
- Black dance and the politics of joy, elation, and community building
- African diaspora dance geographies and the specificity of place
- African diaspora dance in US higher education: opportunities and challenges
- How race, gender, class and sexuality inform African diaspora dance communities
The Collegium for African Diaspora Dance aims to facilitate an interdisciplinary discussion that captures a variety of topics, approaches, and methods that might constitute Black Dance Studies.
Deadline for Proposals: October 1, 2017 - Confirmations Sent: October 15, 2017
Submit your proposal here.