SYMPOSIUM: Bridging dance training contexts: re-assessing techniques and skills for the social and cultural sphere.

Tuesday 18 December 2018
9.00AM - 6.00PM

Confirmed contributors

UK Speakers:
Adesola Akinleye, Fiona Bannon, Andrea Barzey, Laura Doehler, Jamieson Dryburgh, Vicki Hargreaves, Gillian Hipp, Denise Horsley, Jenna Hubbard, Chris Hutchings,Veronica Jobbins, Rachel Piecarczyk, Sara Reed, Stephanie Schober, Erica Stanton, David Waring, Becca Weber, Libby Worth.

International Speakers:
Melanie Bales & Rebecca Nettl-Fiol  (USA), Ingo Diehl (Germany), Jenny Roche, (IRL).

Symposium Convenors:
Noyale Colin & Cathy Seago

Building on the Roundtable on dance technique in May earlier this year, we are pleased to announce the event Bridging dance training contexts: re-assessing techniques and skills for the social and cultural sphere. This Symposium aims to provide a wider forum to share practice and discuss issues arising within dance training in HE and FE environments with a particular focus on issues of bridging between different contexts including educational, social and cultural.

Dance fosters both singularity and collectivity in artistic education, offering invaluable training to operate within the immediate and interconnected contemporary professional world.  However, a number of issues pertaining to the shifting politics of education in the UK challenge the access of dance training and its relevance for contemporary society. This is evident in the reduction of provision for dance at schools in Britain, as well as in the increasing pressure from industry for flexible, multi-skilled and efficient dancers. The rise of technology, with its implication for youth culture and education, and also its impact on dance as a form of embodied knowledge are important points of consideration encouraging a rethinking of dance technique and skills.

Presentations will investigate the ways in which dance techniques and skills are bound up with the following overlapping contexts

Educational Context: (HE/FE/secondary/private dance school).
Social Context (community engagement/health and wellbeing)
Cultural Context (traditions/post-colonial)
Research Context (creative/practical/theoretical/teaching and learning/ pedagogic research)

Topics might include, but are not limited to the following themes

•        Relationship between technology and training
•        Student expectations and the impact of mediated forms
•        Issues related to generational gap in dance training and dancing
•        Relationship between research in dance and teaching dance
•        Traditions and innovations in dance technique
•        Ethics and social engagement in dance training
•        Manifestos for and activism in the dance class
•        Dissidence, values and principles