Search

This paper focuses on the working relationship between the director of an HE institute in the UK, and an artist-researcher navigating the higher education dance working environment and motherhood. The paper draws on personal experiences, sections labelled "vignettes" that highlight a tension faced by the individual and reflects on how the director of a HE institution in the UK facilitated egalitarian work environments through her charismatic leadership style. Such leadership from a senior female colleague allowed me to live out my Romani feminism and encouraged an inclusive work culture within higher education and the dance sector.

This essay looks at how embodied knowledge of the city can be shaped by the intentional movement of dance and sensory mapping experiments, through a close examination of two different movement practices undertaken as part of the Dancing Bodies in Coventry(DBiC) project. The essay also explores the different ways in which embodied experiences of urban space and place are documented, as well as what the hybridisation of the digital and the bodily might mean for how we understand and navigate our urban environments.

The focus of this paper is on the WhoLoDancE EU Horizon 2020 project and the tensions between the technology and the potential impact on dancer education -- the aspirations versus the realities. We explore how neuroscientific concepts can help to understand the embodied experience of working with digital tools in a mediated learning environment. The paper focuses on scoping the literature that contributes to our thinking about the use of avatars and learning in the dance studio. The authors draw on neuroscience and education theory, supported by experience from developing the tools to offer insight into what technology in the dance studio could offer. We explore the possible potential for WhoLoDancE to contribute to future technologies for dance education and creation, and what opportunities might arise for teachers, learners and choreographers.

The paper explores the activities conducted as part of WhoLoDancE: Whole Body Interaction Learning for Dance Education which is an EU-funded Horizon 2020 project. In particular, we discuss the motion capture sessions that took place at Motek, Amsterdam as well as the dancers’ experience of being captured and watching themselves or others as varying visual representations through the HoloLens. HoloLens is Microsoft’s first holographic computer that you wear as you would a pair of glasses. The study embraced four dance genres: Ballet, Contemporary, Flamenco and Greek Folk dance. We are specifically interested in the kinesthetic and emotional engagement with the moving body and what new corporeal awareness may be experienced. Positioning the moving, dancing body as fundamental to technological advancements, we discuss the importance of considering the dancer’s experience in the real and virtual space. Some of the artists involved in the project have offered their experiences, which are included, and they form the basis of the discussion. In addition, we discuss the affect of immersive environments, how these environments expand reality and what effect (emotionally and otherwise) that has on the body. The research reveals insights into relationships between emotion, movement and technology and what new sensorial knowledge this evokes for the dancer.

This writing explores the experiences of people in the UK's contemporary dance sector during the COVID-19 pandemic.1 It draws on qualitative data from a small research project--Dance after Lockdown--to examine how that sector understands their work, and how the language and ideology of the creative industries have shaped the lives and experiences of contemporary dance artists and institutions in the UK. The paper offers a range of diverse voices as one of the goals of the research was to examine the breadth of experiences, which we hope makes a case for the need to have a dance sector that is flexible and responsive to the needs of many freelance dance artists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Roma culture has always been a marginalised community within Spain yet revered for its performance artistry. This article explores flamenco and female flamenco dancers under the Francisco Franco dictatorship, 1939-1975. I discuss censorship under the political leader and its influence on flamenco as well as investigating the dynamics of women onstage within the flamenco sphere as seen through the documentary series Rito y Geografía (Rite and Geography) (1971-1974). Gender roles are examined through analysis of popular culture during Franco’s Spain and the manner in which he portrayed and romanticised the female flamenco dancer. I argue that he used the flamenco series as the vessel to manipulate discourse. Franco exploited flamenco to promote tourism and capitalised on the female flamenco dancer and used the series to promote a national identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the many layered and multi-faceted questions of hybridity as interdisciplinary encounter through the lens of a central case study – the EU-funded project, CultureMoves (2018-2020), on which the Centre for Dance Research (C-DaRE) was a collaborating partner. With Europeana principles as a backdrop for the re-use of cultural heritage content, CultureMoves was an 18-month long project that aimed to develop a series of digital tools enabling new forms of touristic engagement and dance educational resources. The CultureMoves project is marked by hybridity in terms of its very interdisciplinarity, in its rooting in an interpretation of 'creative tourism' (Richards and Raymond 2000; Richards and Marques 2012) as a means of enhancing encounters between artists, tourists and communities and in its focus on the expanded sense of the coming together of dance artist and cultural heritage site. With particular reference to the broader field of creative tourism, this article reflects on the key questions and assumptions that underlie existing and potential collaborations between the dance research/ education, digital technology and tourism sectors, and which prepared the terrain for the toolkit development. The article will also provide a close examination of experiments in the project that intend to awaken new experiences of space and place, and dormant histories, through bringing dancing bodies into relation with the built environment and digital technologies, as an intervention into creative (and cultural) tourism. Marked by the intersection of the human and non-human, and the differing expectations of stakeholders and audiences, the discussion also considers where experiments fail, to offer a view of what that tells us about the limits of hybridity in performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic forced numerous touch-based fields, including manual therapy, body psychotherapy, arts therapy, creative arts practices, and the fitness industry, to swiftly transition to web-based service delivery. These disciplines faced substantial challenges in adapting their traditionally in-person practices, which rely heavily on physical touch and close proximity, to a web format., Objective: This review intends to provide a systematically sourced overview of the literature concerning innovative approaches for adapting touch-based practices to the web format in response to the COVID-19 pandemic., Methods: A systematic search across 7 databases and gray literature sources identified studies presenting innovative web delivery methods, particularly those addressing the challenges arising from the absence of physical proximity and touch. The inclusion criteria were designed to encompass studies exploring the creative adaptation of touch-based practices to web formats in response to the COVID-19 pandemic irrespective of study methodology. The exclusion criteria applied to studies focusing solely on technical aspects of web delivery or nontouch or noninteractive practices. There were no geographical restrictions, but the selection was limited to publications from 2020 onward. As only qualitative studies were found, data synthesis was conducted thematically., Results: The review encompassed 17 studies revealing that touch-based fields successfully devised innovative and creative methods for web service delivery. These methods were categorized into five main themes: (1) adapted working methods (cross-field methods), (2) adapted working methods for sensorial experiences and nonphysical connections, (3) creative methods using materials or additional tools, (4) creative use of web-based platform tools or additional technologies, and (5) creative methods requiring previous preparation of practitioners or participants. These creative approaches allowed practitioners to address the challenges of web touch-based practices, fostering connections and offering unique sensory experiences, albeit with some concerns related to technology and preparation., Conclusions: These innovative methods demonstrate promise in circumventing the limitations imposed by the lack of physical touch and proximity in web settings during the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, these insights hold potential for application in other fields in the future. This systematic search and thematic synthesis provide valuable guidance for practitioners and educators seeking to navigate the evolving landscape of web service delivery in touch-based disciplines, ensuring continuity of care even in challenging circumstances., Trial Registration: PROSPERO CRD42022379731; https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/display_record.php?RecordID=379731., (©Greta Gauhe, Rosemary E Kostic Cisneros, Jade Ward, David J Hohenschurz-Schmidt. Originally published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research (https://www.jmir.org), 26.10.2023.)