Greetings DSWG Community!
We hope you have all had a wonderful summer and wish to extend a warm welcome back! Please join us for the opening meeting of DSWG and what promises to be a year of groundbreaking adventures in dance scholarship and artistic practice. We would like to express our gratitude to last year’s coordinators, Ashley, Sima and Mary, for all of their valuable contributions to the growth of DSWG. In our newly assumed positions, we hope to bring diverse and crucial perspectives on dance, performance, practice and scholarship and very much look forward to getting to know all of you better. In the meantime, allow us to briefly introduce ourselves.
Naomi Elizabeth Bragin: 1st year PhD student in Theater, Dance & Performance Studies, UC Berkeley (BA Dance, Wesleyan University; MA Folklore, UC Berkeley). Naomi is a dancer, choreographer, educator and scholar. She researches the roots of hip-hop during the Bay Area’s Funk and Black Power Eras, considering how political/politicized movements link with local movement aesthetics, to corporealize experiences of solidarity and liberation. Her style is informed by house, waaking, hip-hop and Afro-Caribbean dance.
Heather Rastovac: 2nd year PhD student in Theater, Dance & Performance Studies, UC Berkeley (BA Persian language, Anthropology and Dance, University of Washington). Heather is a dancer, choreographer, artistic director and scholar. Her research interests include the history and position of dance in the Iranian cultural sphere, post-1979 Revolution aesthetics in Iran and the Iranian diaspora, and the role of Persian poetry in Iranian performance arts. She is particularly interested in contemporary Iranian experimental and multi-media performances, how they shape Iranian dance aesthetics, and their relationships to the state, transnationalism and globalism.
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Fall 2010 DSWG CALENDAR
September Meeting: Popping and Other Dis/Appearing Acts
Monday, September 13, 2010
6 – 8 PM
126 Dwinelle
For our first meeting, DSWG Coordinator and incoming PhD student Naomi Bragin will discuss her research, in preparation for her panel presentation at Show & Prove, a hip-hop studies symposium taking place at the Department of Performance Studies at NYU later in the month. In addition to continuing the flow of feedback and engagement within DSWG, we believe this is an excellent opportunity for us as new coordinators to orient you to our research on a deeper level.
Conference information:
Show & Prove: The Tensions, Contradictions and Possibilities of Hip-Hop Studies in Practice
September 18-19, 2010
Department of Performance Studies at New York University
http://www.nyu.edu/life/student-life/diversity-at-nyu/multicultural-educationandprograms/show-and-prove.html
September Event: Corporeal Nationalisms: Dance and the State in East Asia
September 10-12, 2010
370 Dwinelle, UC Berkeley campus
Free and open to the public!
Corporeal Nationalisms: Dance and the State in East Asia will convene an interdisciplinary and transnational community of scholars to investigate through analysis and practice the significance and power of dance and its relationship to the state and the nation in contemporary East Asia. Following a practice as research approach, we will integrate scholarly/performative papers, roundtables, movement workshops, and dance on film screenings into a coherent intellectual event, held over the weekend of September 10-12, 2010, at UC Berkeley. The conference calls for critical conversations within and between the different cultural and political entities of contemporary East Asia, including Japan, the People’s Republic of China, South and North Korea, and Taiwan.
For more details:
http://eventful.com/berkeley/events/corporeal-nationalisms-dance-and-state-east-asia-/E0-001-032809737-4
The Conference is currently looking for volunteers. If interested, please contact: Emily Wilcox (eewilcox@berkeley.edu)
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October Meeting: date, time and speaker TBA
October Event: Sins Invalid (5th annual performance)
“Sins Invalid celebrates the power of embodiment and sexuality, stripping taboos off sexuality and disability to offer a vision of beauty that includes all bodies and communities.”
Friday, October 8th, 8 PM
Saturday, October 9th, 8 PM (ASL interpreted and Audio described)
Sunday, October 10th, 7 PM
Z Space @ Theater Artaud
450 Florida Street, San Francisco, CA
2010 artists include: Aurora Levins Morales, Antoine Hunter, Leroy F. Moore Jr., Juba Kalamka, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Ellery Russian, Amal Kouttab, Pamela Greenberg, Tina D’Elia, Adrienne Krug, Todd Herman, seeley quest, Maria Palacios, Alex Cafarelli, Nomy Lamm, and Patty Berne.
Wheelchair accessible.
Buy tickets online or for cash at the door. $15 – $25 sliding scale; no one turned away for lack of funds.
Please note: Show contains explicit content
For more information, please visit: www.sinsinvalid.org
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November Meeting: date and time TBA.
Bay Area native Adia Tamer Whitaker will be presenting on her research and artistic process, as well as conducting a master class that explores connections between Afro-Haitian dance and hip-hop culture.
Adia Tamar Whitaker is one of the youngest professional choreographers and master teachers of Afro-Haitian folkloric dance in the United States. A former member of Blanche Brown’s Group Petit La Croix and Colette Eloi’s Reconnect, she has studied and performed Afro-Haitian dance in the U.S. and abroad for 13 years. Her artistic work focuses on neo-folklore of the African Diaspora, linking contemporary modern dance, original vernacular movement, and traditional dance theater. Recently Whitaker completed the first part of a Jerome Foundation Travel and Study grant in Ghana. Her new project combines dance, media and music inspired by “ampey,” a rhythmic game played by little girls in Ghana.
http://counterpulse.org/performing-diaspora/artists/adia-tamar-whitaker/
www.myspace.com/asedance
November Event: Performing Diaspora: Ampey!
Nov 11-21, 2010
Thurs-Sat at 8pm, Sun at 3pm
Tickets: Purchased online before 9/30 – $14 (Members $9)
Purchased online after 9/30 – $19 (Members $14)
Purchased at Door – $24 (Members $19)
“Ampey!” is a multidisciplinary theater, music and dance piece that explores the spiritual, emotional and physical disconnect between African-Americans and Continental Africans. Choreographed and written by performance artist Adia Tamar Whitaker, “Ampey!” breaks open the paradigms that each culture grasps onto in regards to identity and social construct.
For more information, please visit: http://counterpulse.org/performing-diaspora-adia-whitaker-ampey/
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December 2010
No DSWG meeting
Event: date and time TBA.
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DSWG Contact Information
E-mail: dswgberk@gmail.com
