Drama dance and performing artshttp://hdl.handle.net/10547/6137182024-03-15T23:35:54Z2024-03-15T23:35:54ZSteps towards decolonising contact improvisation in the universityAshley, Tamarahttp://hdl.handle.net/10547/6260762023-11-24T03:27:06Z2023-11-24T00:00:00ZSteps towards decolonising contact improvisation in the university
Ashley, Tamara
To begin the work of anti-oppression and anti-racism is to start from an acknowledgment of positionality and privilege, or oppression. Mine is a privilege of a mobile life lived in many countries as well as the complexity of a multi-lineage family, with traumatic histories of migration and displacement, as well as arrival and settlement. I am of Scottish, English, Portuguese and South Asian descent, and my pronouns are she/her. I am a dancer, teacher, researcher, yoga and somatic practitioner, with degrees from universities in the UK and USA. I have focused my work in somatic practice, contact improvisation, yoga, bodywork and contemporary dance through the lenses of critical pedagogy and ecological justice for over twenty years. I have been interested in how oppressions intersect and how harm is perpetuated across minorities and marginalised populations as well as the planet itself. As a teacher, I also believe that practices such as contact improvisation, provide contexts in which critical, activist and reflective processes of individual and social transformation can occur through the engagement with the form itself. Decolonising the practice of such a form is a logical extension of a critically engaged pedagogy and becomes essential to an ethical anti-racist teaching practice when it is acknowledged how racism permeates every aspect of social, cultural and political life.
2023-11-24T00:00:00ZArt in water and sanitation research in Nepal: a performance with sanitation workersMacpherson, HannahFox, AliceRanjit, AshminaChurch, Andrewhttp://hdl.handle.net/10547/6260432024-03-06T04:01:34Z2023-06-12T00:00:00ZArt in water and sanitation research in Nepal: a performance with sanitation workers
Macpherson, Hannah; Fox, Alice; Ranjit, Ashmina; Church, Andrew
This paper documents and discusses the creation of a performance (dance and song) by 12 sanitation workers in Nepal working with artists Alice Fox (UK) and Ashmina Ranjit (Nepal). This creative work was one element within an international, interdisciplinary research programme that explored shit flow, wastewater and marginality in five rapidly developing off-grid towns. Performed at the Lumbini Peace Park as part of the 2022 Women of the World Festival, an important objective of the work was raising awareness of issues affecting sanitation workers, who are among the most precarious workers in the world. Using photos and artist commentary, ‘we’ (geographers and artists) show how the performance (un)seen (un)clean opened a creative space through which to engage and circulate the lived experiences of workers.
2023-06-12T00:00:00ZThe tangible and intangible: dance and the safeguarding of intangible cultural heritageCarr, Janehttp://hdl.handle.net/10547/6256742023-06-05T10:25:38Z2023-06-01T00:00:00ZThe tangible and intangible: dance and the safeguarding of intangible cultural heritage
Carr, Jane
This article returns to issues raised in the pages of Dance Research regarding UNESCO’s 2003 adoption of the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. Bakka and Karoblis’ article published in 2021 refuted the proposal made by Iacono and Brown in 2016 to replace the Convention’s term ‘Intangible Cultural Heritage’ (ICH) with the concept of ‘living cultural heritage’.
I examine both articles to propose how the discourses surrounding safeguarding ICH and those that consider dance as a significant part of culture might inform one another. The discussion draws on findings from a project led by Dr. Violet Cuffy, a Creole specialist in the field of tourism, that drew together researchers, policy makers and practitioners to explore approaches to safeguarding Creole Intangible Cultural Heritage. These highlighted what Bakka and Karoblis emphasise as the importance of UNESCO’s aims to counterbalance cultural and economic inequalities, the impact of which threaten the sustainability of many older traditions, particularly in what they refer to as the ‘global south’. However, by drawing on my experiences as a dancer and dance teacher, born and educated in the UK, I suggest that, even in this economically privileged part of the globe, the cultural significance of dancing is all too often undervalued and significant dance practices are vulnerable to being irretrievably lost. I argue that for both dance and ICH a continued (dualist) privileging of mind over body informs a powerful episteme which shapes the language and implementation of the policies intended to sustain them. In response, I emphasise the importance of those strategies that support the activities and interactions which facilitate the continuation of practices and which recognise the necessity of those debates that interrogate the changes in those practices.
2023-06-01T00:00:00ZSustainable arts and health: the role of a university in facilitating an intergenerational, interdisciplinary community arts projectFarrer, RachelDouse, Louise EmmaAujla, Imogenhttp://hdl.handle.net/10547/6253822022-05-06T08:17:36Z2022-03-31T00:00:00ZSustainable arts and health: the role of a university in facilitating an intergenerational, interdisciplinary community arts project
Farrer, Rachel; Douse, Louise Emma; Aujla, Imogen
There is growing interest in the use of intergenerational practice in arts and health to support psychological well-being and community cohesion. However, little research has addressed the facilitation of such projects, or how higher education institutions can support them. Here we examine the role of the University of Bedfordshire in Generations Dancing, an 11-week dance and photography project for older adults and young people in Bedford. Focus groups were conducted with the older adults, young people, artists, independent living centre leaders, and schoolteachers involved. Inductive content analysis highlighted the university’s role in brokering between community sectors, promoting the project, and offering resources. These factors appeared to play a significant part in enabling the project to develop beyond what smaller organizations working independently might have achieved, and in facilitating a sustainable model for its perpetuation.
2022-03-31T00:00:00Z