IDOCs » Dancing the Domestic
This session explores how women’s experiences of domestic spaces have been explored through dance research and performance prior to, during and post lockdown. It combines a lecture presentation with a practical movement score for participants, followed by q and a / discussion. The presentation responds to the recent explosion of on-line dance activity from around the world resulting from lockdown and social distancing restrictions imposed in response to the Covid-19 global pandemic. Over recent months, dancing at home has become the new norm and videos of families mastering Tik Tok moves, couples learning to Tango and people dancing with their pets have gone viral, re-enforcing the life affirming and well-being benefits of dancing, moving and keeping fit. Despite this upsurge in activity and its associated popular appeal, however, dance in the domestic realm is not a new phenomenon. Many choreographers and practitioner-academics have created dance work in home spaces and researched the domestic realm as a site of labour, conflict, retreat and identity for a number of years (Sarah Black, 2016, Beatrice Jarvis 2014,Hunter, forthcoming 2021). For dance artists already engaged with the domestic realm, and specifically female experiences of domesticity, the lockdown presents a number of challenges and opportunities. How might these artists review their work and its significance during lockdown? How might issues of women’s experience in home spaces central to their work inform discussions of pressing issues emergent through the lockdown period? How has their own work been impacted by lockdown constraints - when the site and subject of their work is shifted in significant ways? How might these insights shape and inform broader working practices post lockdown and what insights might be offered to discourses of women’s experiences of domestic labour, care giving, and domestic violence? How might a ‘homing/ worlding’ practice emerge through site-based movement exploration that prioritises body-site relations and material engagement over aestheticized framing and utopian domestic narratives? Lockdown is a term commonly employed in the prison system to infer a state of confinement, restricted movement, and the withdrawal of privileges and freedoms. In the dance community, withdrawal of such freedoms has led dance artists (and the general public) to explore restriction as a catalyst for creative response. In some cases, confinement of physical space has led to the expansion of artistic, reflective and imaginative space, whilst for others it has led to inertia and creative paralysis. The impact of lockdown on personal freedoms, wellbeing and creative, artistic expression and endeavour involves the complex, interplay of social and personal conditions, experiences and affects. During lockdown therefore, domestic dancing becomes a space or site in which the social, personal, political and artistic are entwined. Through discussion and exploration of these ideas, combined with physical exploration of our own domestic spaces developed through the movement score task, we will share our embodied experiences of moving and embodying home-sites through corporeal enquiry. Tuesday 2020 07 21 (atlantic) Wednesday 2020 07 22 (pacific)
2020.07.21

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by Victoria Hunter

 

The text of the talk given by Victoria Hunter will be shared here soon. 

References for Victoria’s talk.

Crow, Barbara (2000) (ed.) Radical Feminism: A documentary reader, New York: New York University press. Hirsch, Marianne ‘Feminism at the maternal divide: A diary’ in Jetter, A., Oreck, A., Taylor, D. (eds.) (1997) The Politics of Motherhood: Activist Voices from Left to Right, Hanover, NH: University press of New England. hooks, bell (2000) Feminism is for Everybody, Cambridge MA: South End Press. Lorde, Audrey (1984) Sister Outsider, Berkely, CA: The Crossing Press. Mulvaney, Kelly (2013) ‘For what its worth: An examination of the persistent devaluation of “women’s work” in capitalism and considerations for feminist politics”, Gender, vol.21, pp. 27-44 Rich, Adrienne (1976) Of Woman born: Motherhood as experience and institution, London: Norton publishing. Nash, Jennifer, C. (2019) Black Feminism: After Intersectionality, Durham: Duke University Press.


 

Scores shared during the session :

3 scores; Do them in order for sense of progression; take 20/25 minutes to do scores; let bodies absorption of the score take you on the journey and work thought he score through the bodies; may stay with one score or do all three.
1>) find a space and measure it with your body. ex. How many arm spans to explore this wall; nose spaces; foot spans; rolls…etc.

2> Floor score: rolling and resting. Start in middle of space like a starfish and then curl form side to side slowly, til you begin to roll, and end when you roll up against an object. Take in the site, then roll back into center and roll again.



3> Find a corner space; feel what it is like to be partly closed and partly open. Advance into and retreat from the space; different modes of moving into and out of the space.


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