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Saturday, April 13, 2019

CONFLUENCES 10


Deadline for submissions of proposals: April 15, 2019

The University of Cape Town Centre for Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies & the Institute for the Creative Arts hosts CONFLUENCES 10 Dance, (e)merge, Theatre in Cape Town, South Africa from August 29 to 31, 2019.

Submissions of proposals are invited.

Acclaimed NYU professor of Performance Studies, André Lepecki will present the keynote address.

The Centre for Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies at UCT has evolved out of a merger between the School of Dance and Department of Drama in 2018. Many universities and colleges also negotiate the disciplinary and interdisciplinary connections of the study of Dance, Theatre and Performance.

Dr Gerard M Samuel, Senior Lecturer and Head of Dance Section explains: “This 10th anniversary conference will allow for a deepening conversation and theorisation of such praxis and experiences in all our teaching, research and socially responsive contexts. The Centre is engaged in an ongoing process of reimagining what a study of performance in a contemporary, African university might involve. As we are challenged to strip away old and colonial habits in terms of body, question the issues of such erasure and replacement, what are some of the new directions in choreographic practices and contexts of dance teaching when one of the central concerns of Performance Studies discourse is culturally framed bodies?

“Our critical enquiry for this conference centres on the continuing call for decolonisation and decanonisation in varied educational contexts and what this all might mean for dance in and from the global South. We want to relook at earlier debates around dance as an embodied practice to understand shifts in complex interstices of gendered bodies, classical dance and its negotiations with e.g. pedestrian movement and innovations of the twenty-first century.”

Some of the key research areas Confluences 10 will begin to address.

-How has Dance and the study of physical performance been academised in your institution?
-What is the inter disciplinary relationship between Dance, Theatre and Performance Studies and how is it being negotiated?
-What does it mean to decolonise Dance/ physical performance in 2019? How do we translate the theory of decolonisation into a praxis in the classroom?
-How has the inclusion of other dancing bodies begun to shift an understanding of the politics of movement?
-How do the transdisciplinary approaches in performance make visible new pedagogies of hope in Freirian terms?
-Why is a relook at Dance and physical performance as an 'agent of change' still important to discuss?
-What role should a theatre and dance archive play in the development of post-colonial curriculum?  Whose dance knowledge is being produced (and consumed)?
-What is the impact of new technology and social media incorporating physical performance on traditional performances and teaching spaces?
-Why is a differentiation of the role of the artist in residence and professor of Performance Studies an imperative in a tertiary institution?

Samuels continues: “We invite the submission of proposals which could be in a range of formats (including papers, posters, workshops, masterclass, performances). Your proposal must include a brief rationale and abstract (max 250 words) of your intended contribution. Please provide us with your name, institutional affiliation, email address and contact details. Your proposal should outline whether you intend to make a joint presentation (max. 30 mins) or individual paper (max. 20 mins) or workshop or performative experience (max. 60 mins). We will endeavour, as far as possible, not to run papers concurrently in the conference programme.”

Send your proposal(s) in MS Word to http://www.ctdps.uct.ac.za/CTDPS/Confluences

All proposals will be reviewed by the Conference Committee and feedback provided to applicants by May 20 2019.