Practice-led symposium on gender and identity

Stylized Repetition Of Acts?

We would like to invite you to participate in this dance research symposium about gender and identity on Thursday February 1st in Theater a/d Rijn in Arnhem. This symposium is part of Moving Futures and meant for dance professionals. In this practice-led symposium ArtEZ Bachelor of Dance, ArtEZ Studium Generale, the National Centre Performing Arts and De Nieuwe Oost wish to establish and deepen a dialogue between dance professionals to be able to understand what are current issues in the field and to be able to strengthen the field by allowing for words to follow practice.

How do dance and performance address gender/identity?
In recent years there have been several performances addressing the concept of gender/identity. Some of these take a personal stance and are based on personal experiences of the maker while others tend to be more politically driven. These works of art provoke a dialogue with or at least a reaction from their audiences. Since the issue of gender is highly influenced by how the onlooker perceives, this raises various questions a maker needs to deal with. Many choreographers have been creating work dealing with the notion of gender as “stylized repetition of acts”, as Judith Butler described it. By doing so they are also confronted with the question asked by Ann Cooper Albright: What would it mean “to destabilize a cultural identity without denying the very real materiality of the body?” In recent years a new push can be noticed in the discussion on gender and dance professionals seem to be embracing this by actively addressing gender issues in their work or by taking the more fluid approach to gender as a given.

This symposium addresses the subject of gender/identity to be discussed and at the same time it aims to strengthen the field by starting to develop a lexicon of and by the dance field itself. The dance field struggles to explicate its own relevance outside of the performance situation. There is a need for a stronger voice representing the dance field in both the societal and the political arena.

Program
14.00-14.45  introductory conversation by Liedeke Plate and Isis Germano with collective NEON and Lana Čoporda
15.00-16.30  practical sessions in small groups
16.45-17.30  conclusion and exchange of experiences
17.30-18.00  drinks in the foyer

20:30            the first night of Moving Futures Arnhem in Stadstheater Arnhem.
Participants of this symposium get a discount of 5 euros for this evening with Jasper van Luijk’s new performance BLISS.

Practical Information
For                Dance professionals
Where          Theater a/d Rijn, Arnhem
When           February 1^st 14.00-18.00h
Costs           Entrance is free of charge, however registration is required
Application  Mandatory, you can apply by sending an e-mail to nina@denieuweoost.nl.

Organizing partners 
Productiehuis De Nieuwe Oost, ArtEZ Bachelor of Dance, ArtEZ Studium Generale and NCPA.

Mark your agenda 
March 15 2018 ArtEZ Studium Generale and partners initiate a large symposium on gender and identity.

Program information

NEON
NEON is a choreographic collective, consisting of Nanna Hanfgarn Jensen (DK) and Leon Emil Franzke (DE). The NEON collective addresses the personal history of one of its members in Körper Körper (performed in Moving Futures), but it wishes to open up a dialogue as well: “Emerging from a need for proper discussion and reflection, the performance explores a part of Leon’s life that shaped who he is today. The story is told through Nanna; the feminine in the masculine, the woman in the man. Nanna can be seen as an earlier body of Leon. The body he finally got rid of, but often looks back upon and is constantly confronted with, wherever he goes.” More about NEON

Lana Čoporda
Lana Čoporda is a choreographer whose work is rooted in dance research and creative practice. Her work shows social and political integrity in its working methods, its contextualization and its choreographic and artistic form. After her graduation from from ArtEZ Dansacademie in 2014, she made ZOOM – Hestia and Sheela na gig, which deals with the representation of women’s sexuality in today’s media and the inner desire for sensuality. DRAAIPLANEET is a poetic work for children, about the infinity of the universe and of time. She is currently working on CREEP DEEP, a piece about how we deal with our emotions, and Lions & Liquids, a sex-positive work for ages nine and up. Video trailer ZOOM – Hestia and Sheela na gig 

Liedeke Plate
Liedeke Plate is Associate Professor of gender studies and literary and cultural studies at Radboud University Nijmegen. She studied English and comparative literature at Utrecht University (NL), the University of Southampton (UK) and Indiana University (US), where she obtained her PhD in 1995. She wrote her dissertation on women’s rewritings of classic texts: Visions and Revisions: Female Authorship and the Act of Rewriting. She publishes internationally on the subject of women, reading and rewriting, the material turns in literary and cultural studies, cultural memory, and gender and urban space. Her current project explores literature as participatory culture, focusing on the social and material ‘things’ people do with great books. More about Liedeke Plate

Isis Germano
Isis Germano is dramaturge and works as a teacher and researcher at Media and Culture Studies at Utrecht University. With her thesis Between Stage, Brain and Body: Using Cognitive Science to Flesh Out the Embodied Act of Looking she won the first prize for best Academic Thesis and the first prize for best Theatre Science thesis. Within her PhD research, she approaches the looking behaviour of the public from a cognitive perspective. More about Isis Germano 

Foto credits: NEON choreographic collective