News, events and opportunities!
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June 2021
News, events and opportunities!
Welcome to the latest edition of the C-DaRE Newsletter. Here we highlight the centre's most recent activities, academic achievements, upcoming events and opportunities.
For more details and our latest announcements and exciting events, including the 16th July 2021 New Moving Pain Online Webinar, please read on.
For any queries about the items below contact cdare.fah@coventry.ac.uk.
News
Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2021
Sarah Whatley has begun her work as REF panel member, for panel D33 (Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies). This is her second cycle supporting the REF process having served as an output assessor in 2014. She is assessing research outputs, impact case studies and environment statements.
Sarah is very pleased to be serving the research community in this role and helping to recognise the excellent research carried out across the UK in the disciplines in panel D33.
C-DaRE Conversation on... Communities
C-DaRE are continuing their conversation series with the subject of 'Communities'.
The conversation took place with colleagues from C-DaRE: Scott deLahunta, Rosemary Lee, Victoria Thoms and the Centre for Arts Memory and Communities (CAMC): Juliet Simpson at Coventry University.
On Communities will be a series of four conversations between C-DaRE and other researchers from across the university and externally. More coming soon...
C-DaRE’s Presence at the Modes of Capture Symposium 2021 (Limerick, Ireland)
This year’s symposium explores the theme of decolonising structures, thinking and embodiment within current modes of dancemaking and documentation.
Curators Dr Jenny Roche, Liz Roche and Dr Róisín O’Gorman, have brought together a group of local and international academics, dance artists, practitioners and scholars for the event, who shared their work through a series of recorded presentations, live-streamed discussions, workshops and performances. C-DaRE’s Rosa Cisneros, Kathryn Stamp, Trish Melton and Karen Wood all presented at the event.
More information available here.
C-DaRE Team Member Joins Future Leaders Fellowships Peer Review College
Victoria Thoms has joined the Peer Review College of the Future Leaders Fellowship award. The Future Leaders Fellowships is a UKRI wide initiative administered by the Medical Research Council (MRC) that helps universities and businesses to develop their most talented early career researchers and innovators or attract new people to their organisations, including from overseas.
Thoms will be involved with reviewing applications now coming in for Round 6 of the unique initiative and she will be held in reserve as part of the larger UKRI Reviewer database. Thoms is looking forward to contributing her expertise in Dance, Theatre and Performance, Culture and Museum Studies, and Gender and Sexuality Studies to the process of reviewing for UK research excellence.
Dance and the Outdoors Symposium
Rosemary Lee gave the keynote speech on June 8th for the Dance and the Outdoors Symposium. She also chaired the panel - Community, Co Curation and Collaboration, and gave the closing comments to conclude the symposium.
On the 8th & 9th June 2021 101 Outdoor Arts and The Place, in partnership with BIDF presented Dance and the Outdoor Symposium, a two day digital conference bringing together practitioners, producers and presenters of outdoor dance to explore how artists are creating work for public space.
This conference was part of the Outdoor Dance Collection 2021, a brand new programme also including the UK Dance Showcase (3rd-4th June) devised and delivered by XTRAX and Dance4 as part of Dance from England. Both events were delivered in partnership with DanceXchange, producers of BIDF.
Gypsy, Roma, Traveller History Month
Gypsy, Roma, Traveller History Month (GRTHM) was created in 2008, and celebrates the richness and diverse contributions that Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities have made throughout British history to present day. Through celebrating Gypsy, Roma, Traveller heritage and culture, sharing knowledge and raising awareness we are seeking to challenge the myths, tackle discrimination, and further empower the diverse voices of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller Community. We all have a role to play.
Check out “Roads from the past”, a short, animated clip (see above) about the history of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller people in Britain, from ancient times up to the present day.
The theme for this year’s GRTHM is ‘Make Some Space’.
Friends Families of Travellers have produced some amazing resources for GRTHM.
Participation packs are available to download here.
C-DaRE’s Rosa Cisneros was on the steering committee for the materials and helped develop the content for the resources used by social services, city councils, classrooms and art institutions. Cisneros is also working with Friends, Families and Travellers to choreograph the dance section of Crystal’s Vardo, a theatre production led by Gypsy, Roma and Traveller community which uses dance, drama, humour and music to share the rich culture and diverse histories of the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller community. The piece has been reworked for film and Cisneros supported Suzanna King, Director of Crystal’s Vardo, in that process and also created teaching resources for the classroom.
Here is the link to the Friends, Families and Travellers pack.
Post Graduate Research News & Opportunities
C-DaRE PGR Symposium 2021
On Monday 7th June 2021, members of the PGR Community at C-DaRE came together for the centre’s first ever Postgraduate Research Symposium. The symposium served to create a space where C-DaRE staff, PGRs, PGTs and researchers external to the C-DaRE across Coventry University could learn about the current PGR’s research ongoing at the centre and to bond as a cohort.
Overall, it was an enjoyable day of truly thoughtful reflections, practices, and presentations.
Full details of the symposium will be available on the CU research blog shortly (written by C-DaRE's PGR Charlie Ingram). Stay tuned for more!
Spotlight on PGRs!
We wanted you to get to know some of our PGRs, so for the next few months we will be spotlighting PGR’s and shouting about the great work they do.
Louisa Petts
Who am I?
I am a PhD researcher, community dance artist and dance science lecturer. I started my PhD journey in September 2020 and will be starting my second year soon. I am also a recipient of the Arts and Humanities Research Council studentship award offered by Midlands4Cities Doctoral Training Partnership. My research interests lie in community dance practice, psychosocial wellbeing and phenomenology particularly in older adult populations. Prior to my study at Coventry University, I studied an MSc in Dance Science at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance and BA Dance Studies at the University of Roehampton. Currently, I work as a dance artist with South East Dance Company, delivering dance classes to those living with dementia in assisted living homes. I also enjoy my roles as a dance science lecturer with bbodance and as an editorial assistant for the Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices.
What is my research?
Currently, my research queries whether community dance classes in different dance genres all offer entirely unique experiences of wellbeing, belonging and meaning for older adults. Existing research has continually recommended that the research community should broaden study parameters to explore dance styles other than contemporary and ballroom for the wellbeing of older populations (Hwang & Braun 2015). In response, I adopt an interdisciplinary approach by drawing on psychology, wellbeing, sociology, gerontology and dance research.
"I aim to place the dance activity at the centre of this research and simultaneously advocate for inclusionary, diverse and wide-ranging dance provision for older adults."
I recently featured as a guest on the SciDance podcast (@scidancepodcast on Instagram), a research informed podcast looking at all things dance science, should you wish to hear more about my research. You can listen now on Anchor, Apple, Spotify and more.
You can find out more about C-DaRE PGR Community on our website.
Events
AHRC Cities of Culture Network: The Coventry Cultural Policy and Evaluation Summit
24-25th June 2021
As you may already know, Coventry is currently the UK City of Culture for 2021. As part of the year, The AHRC Cities of Culture Research Network has organised The Coventry Cultural Policy & Evaluation Summit, running online on the 24th & 25th June 2021.
This is a dynamic event for regional and national leaders, policy makers and funders, cultural workers and academics involved in the planning, delivery and policy-shaping of UK Cities of Culture and other cultural mega-events including the Commonwealth Games 2022 and Festival UK 2022.
More details of the event can be found here.
As part of this event, students from universities including University of Warwick, Coventry University and University of Hull have organised two online events to happen around the City of Culture summit in June.
The first is aimed at introducing PhD students and Early Career Researchers to Cities of Culture Early Career Research Network on the 23rd June 13:00 - 16:00 BST. This will be an informal event with artists from Birmingham and Coventry talking about the cultural climate of the West Midlands. So even if it's not directly relevant to your research, why not come along!? Drinks and snacks welcome! For more information please click here.
The second is going to reflect on the policy summit itself and will bring together academics, researchers, artists and policymakers to explore in a discursive atmosphere the material presented in the summit. Anyone attending the summit is welcome to join, we hope that it will provide a space for reflection and discussion. For more information please click here.
Please come along and share this information with colleagues and PGRs studying ideas surrounding place, cultural policy, cities, culture, etc.
If you want any more information about the network or the events that we're planning, just get in touch with Charlie Ingram.
Dance Research Matters
Dance research is important. Stimulating and supporting the future of dance research in the UK
On May 27, C-DaRE partnered with the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) for a national event debating the future of dance research. Entitled ‘Dance Research Matters’ the event was organised to coincide with Coventry City of Culture and was organised in a hybrid format, with C-DaRE team members and AHRC colleagues at the Belgrade Theatre in Coventry and nearly 250 delegates joining online worldwide. The day included a range of chaired panel discussions and a conversation between Professor Christopher Smith, Executive Chair AHRC and Baroness Deborah Bull, Vice President and Vice-Principal at King’s College London.
The discussions were extraordinarily rich and diverse, with plenty of imaginative thinking about how to build and sustain the future for dance research, and important why dance research matters. Documentation from the day will be available soon and an event website is documenting the event and continuing the discussions to build a repository of ideas: https://danceresearchmatters.coventry.ac.uk/.
Somatic Practice and Chronic Pain Network: Webinar – Moving Pain Online
16th July 2021 12:00 - 14:00 BST on Zoom
Image © Rob Young
This webinar includes a panel discussion on how dance and somatic practices can be shared through digital technologies for people living with pain.
We will also launch several new videos developed by network members, which share dance and somatic practices for people living with pain.
To register for the event please click here.
Further information see here.
Paper Presentation with Participation from Marie-Louise Crawley and Rosa Cisneros (C-DaRE)
On 23rd June, Marie-Louise Crawley and Rosa Cisneros will be presenting their paper ‘Holding the Space: Choreography, Architecture and Urban Heritage’ as part of performing agora, an international online symposium, organised the Centre for Interdisciplinary Performative Arts (Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, UK), the Department of Theatre Studies at the University of the Peloponnese (Greece) and Staffordshire University (UK). Free registration: info@performing-agora.org.
Event Streaming with Participation from Marie-Louise Crawley (C-DaRE)
Marie-Louise Crawley will be speaking as part of an online roundtable on ‘Collective Trauma and Contemporary Crisis in Performances of Ancient Tragedies’, organised by the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama (APGRD), University of Oxford, on 30th June. The event will be streamed via the APGRD’s YouTube channel: http://www.apgrd.ox.ac.uk/events/2021/06/30-collective-trauma.
Kinesthesia Festival with Participation from Karen Wood (C-DaRE)
16-18th July 2021, Middlesex University and Zoom
Initiated by artists Dominique Rivoal and Claire Loussouarn, this new festival has been curated and produced collectively by them, freelance film curator Gitta Wigro and co-directors of ID Heni Hale and Nikki Tomlinson. The programmed works were found via an international open call, and selected by the festival team with guest panellist Adesola Akinleye.
Bringing together wide interests in dance, somatic practices, experimental film and sensory ethnography, Kinesthesia focuses on movement beyond visual impact and narrative to consider the whole range of sensory experiences, including visceral, proprioceptive and haptic awareness.
This edition combines screenings, short workshops, installations and discursive sessions that attend to the subtler felt sense of the body. We are delighted that it will be framed by keynote speaker Karen Wood, C-DaRE Assistant Professor and author of Kinesthetic Empathy: Conditions for Viewing, who will speak about meeting points between screen-based practices, eco-somatics and empathy.
Project News
Project NEFELI
Migration Matters Festival is the largest Refugee week Festival in the UK. It is a pay-what-you-feel arts festival that celebrates the positive impact migration & refugees have had on Sheffield & the UK. The Erasmus+ NEFELI project is part of the Migration Matters Festival. Cisneros will present the #NotInvisible M8 Campaign on Saturday June 19th, 2021 from 16.00-17.00. She will be joined by Roma woman Yassmin and Maria Polodeanu from Reel Master Productions, both who helped co-create the materials.
WEAVE – Widen European Access to Cultural Communities via Europeana
Researchers in C-DaRE (Rosa Cisneros, Marie-Louise Crawley, Sarah Whatley) have recently begun an 18-month project co-financed by the European Union under the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) programme that aims to develop a framework to link the tangible and intangible heritage of cultural communities, safeguarding the rich and invaluable cultural heritage which they represent. As one of 12 European partners, the project includes researchers, cultural organisations and technical SMES from 9 different countries. To keep up to date with the project, sign up for the WEAVE newsletter here: or follow us on Twitter @weave_eu
VIBES Project Update
Image © Maria from 'Reel Master Productions'
The VIBES project creative team got together on Wednesday 9th June for the first time since the project began to work on devising a choreographic protocol. We were fortunate to be able to work in the Imperial War Museum park in beautiful sunshine! Our base was Siobhan Davies Studios in London and we worked with a proto-type app, designed by Orbe (Paris). Our aim is to devise a choreographic experience in a public space with prompts from an app on the participant’s mobile phone. See here for more project information. We will be looking for participants to test the app so please email Karen Wood if you are interested.
E2-Create – First Year Anniversary
The Marie Curie Fellowship entitled “E2-Create” has been running for a little more than a year, and we would like to take this opportunity to summarise the main results achieved so far. Daniel Bisig has gained valuable insights into principles of embodied creativity through interviews with Jonathan Burrows and Siobhan Davies. Furthermore, motion capture recordings of contemporary dance solos were acquired at C-DaRE’s partner institution MotionBank. These recordings are complemented by interviews with dancers from the Staatstheater Mainz and will be made publicly available in 2022 for research and creative purposes. Two publications concerning dance and machine learning have been accepted at the international conferences xCoAx and AIMC. The first publication entitled “Granular Dance” describes a combination of a machine-learning
Performing Forgiveness from Coventry to Nanjing
Image © Caleb Wissun-Bhide
Performing Forgiveness is a research project based around Coventry-born writer and director Jude Christian’s acclaimed play NANJING, which explores themes of identity, memory and forgiveness in a personal response to the 1937 Nanjing Massacre. The play offers the chance for researchers to ask important questions about how performance interacts with concepts such as forgiveness, pacifism, identity, belonging, the character of trauma and the role of remembrance. Members of Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations (CTPSR), Centre for Dance Research (C-DaRE) and Centre for Postdigital Cultures (CPC) will work with Jude to hold participatory workshops and performances of NANJING. Several events and initiatives are planned in June 2021. There were three screenings of a film specially made of the work on the 16 June at Coventry Cathedral and Jude participated in after-screening curated discussions. Nanjing – Performing Forgiveness - Coventry UK City of Culture 2021 (coventry2021.co.uk). CTPSR and CDaRE will be hosting an online seminar on the topic of “Setting the Stage for Difficult Conversations: Theatre and Creative Methods as a Tool for Dialogue during COVID-19”. Performing 'Forgiveness' Seminar (onlinesurveys.ac.uk).The seminar will be recorded and available after the event. The research team will also be contributing a chapter called “Performing Forgiveness in the Age of Covid-19: Creating a Hybrid Performance for Dialogue and Peacebuilding” to the edited collection Art-Based Research in the Context of a Global Pandemic under contract with Routledge. Coventry University City of Culture Grants funds the research.
Human Centered-ness Project
In early June, C-DaRE’s Scott deLahunta and Postdoctoral Research Fellow Kathryn Stamp began working on a new project looking at human centered-ness in technology design and development, in collaboration with Coventry University’s Centre for Data Science. Working with James Brusey, Professor of Data Science, Professor Elena Gaura, Associate Dean (Research) and Dr Alison Halford, Research Fellow, this innovative research will go beyond thinking about design for biomechanical or anatomical human models and look towards modelling that attempts to bridge the biological and the social. Approaching the work in a transdisciplinary framework, the intention is to position human action (the “human in the loop”) at the centre of the design and development of dynamic technical systems in various contexts to improve understanding, modelling and prediction in human-machine interaction. The initial stage of literature reviewing has explored influences on how people think about modelling humans, the ‘certainty’ of machine-design merging with the unpredictability of human behaviour and how cognitive and bodily understanding may mutually inform the ‘human imaginary’.
system and generative algorithms for the purpose of creating new dance solos from motion capture recordings. The second publication entitled “Raw Music From Free Movements” describes a machine learning system that learns relationships between movement and audio based on recordings of free dance improvisations to music. This system can subsequently be used by dancers to control the creation of music through movement. Daniel was also invited to present his research in a seminar to researchers and students of the Centre for Dance Science (CDS). This presentation contributes to the establishment of a long-term and structured exchange between C-DaRE and CDS which is also being explored in the Human-Centered-ness project (see above).
The CDS Seminar recording can be viewed here.
Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices
JDSP Submissions
For more information about the journal and guidance on submissions please visit our website.
Call for Reviewers
We are currently looking to expand our group of reviewers for the journal. We are looking for reviewers with knowledge and expertise in the broad field of dance and somatic practices. If you have an interest in becoming a reviewer for our journal or would like any more information please contact Lily Hayward-Smith.
Publications
Q&A with Dr Alex Mason and HOTFOOT's 20 Years of Publication
Q&A with Dr Alex Mason - discussion on the Hip Hop Conference (July 2021)
HOTFOOT Online is One Dance UK’s bi-annual publication focusing on DAD and provides a platform for critical debate around the dance practices of the African Diaspora in the UK and beyond. While HOTFOOT Online celebrates 20 years of publication in 2021 and approaches a special anniversary celebration later this year, we also mark the first anniversary of George Floyd’s death.
The theme of HOTFOOT’s Spring 2021 edition is Paving the Way: Rebuilding and Reimagining. Cisneros is on the editorial team and also contributed to this issue by interviewing Dr Alex Mason, one of the organisers of the Hip Hop Conference in July, 2021.
The interview with Dr Alex Mason is available here.
Case Study by Rosa Cisneros and Kate Lawrence
Rosa Cisneros and Kate Lawrence published Diffraction and ‘In-Visible Light’: A case study of Vertical dance in Performance Research, Volume 25 Issue 5, and is now available to access via tandfonline.com. Free e-prints are available here.
Feminism and Physics underpin the theory of Diffraction. Re-turning as a multiplicity of processes is central to the work of diffractive theorists like Karen Barad and Donna J. Haraway. This paper explores diffraction from the perspective of the dancing and performing body, using as a case study Vertical Dance Kate Lawrence’s (VDKL) Yn y Golau/In-visible Light (YYG). Diffractive principles inspired VDKL and the Photonics Academy of Wales Bangor (PAWB) to discover how invisible aspects of light might be made visible to audience members, particularly those who had visual impairments. We will argue that a diffraction process occurs for audiences as YYG requires them to make meaningful correspondences between phenomena in different mediums: dance/objects/scientific ideas/spoken word/music. We draw on Barad’s (2003) notion of ‘correspondences’ to highlight the connections between the various components in the performance space.
Practice Research – New Reports
C-DaRE Director Sarah Whatley, as part of her role as member of the national Practice Research Advisory Group (PRAG), has been co-supervising the research and production of a major Research England-funded set of reports on practice research. The reports, focused on researchers, practitioners and those responsible for the storage and dissemination of practice research across all disciplinary fields, is published via the British Library Shared Research Repository. A series of workshops hosted by RCUK are organised to follow up recommended actions arising out of the reports. For further information please see here.
Chapter Publication by Marie-Louise Crawley
Marie-Louise Crawley has a chapter, ‘The Fragmentary Monumental: Dancing Female Stories in the Museum of Archaeology’ in ChoreoNarratives: Dancing Stories in Greek and Roman Antiquity and beyond, edited by Karin Schlapbach and Laura Gianvittorio-Ungar, just published by Brill.
“A collection of essays by classicists, dance scholars, and dance practitioners, ChoreoNarratives explores the uses of dance as a narrative medium. Case studies from Greek and Roman antiquity illustrate how dance contributed to narrative repertoires in their multimodal manifestations, while discussions of modern and contemporary dance shed light on practices, discourses, and ancient legacies regarding the art of dancing stories.”
New Article by Rosa Cisneros and Marie-Louise Crawley
Rosa Cisneros and Marie-Louise Crawley have a new article, ‘Moving, annotating, learning: MotionNotes LabDays - a case study’ published in International Journal of Performing Arts and Digital Media 17.1 (special issue ‘Digital Annotation and Bodily Practices’, ed. Scott deLahunta, David Rittershaus and Rebecca Stancliffe) p. 138-149.
This article investigates how dance annotation practices might expand and shape teaching and learning in dance performance and training environments. We focus on a central case study: the MotionNotes LabDay workshops that took place within the context of the EU-funded project, CultureMoves (2018–2020).
New Book Volume by Mark Evans
New Book Volume by Mark Evans (C-DaRE Associate, Coventry University) and Mark Smith (University of York). Mark Evans is delighted to share news that his latest co-authored book has finally hit the bookshelves!
Frantic Assembly have had a powerful and continuing influence on the popularisation of devising practices in contemporary theatre-making. Their work blends brave and bold physical theatre with exciting new writing, and they have collaborated with some of the leading theatre-makers in the UK. The company’s impact reaches throughout the world, particularly through their extensive workshop and education programmes, as well as their individual and collective impact as movement directors on landmark, internationally successful productions such as Black Watch and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.
This volume reveals the background to, and work of, a major influence on twentieth and twenty-first century performance. Frantic Assembly is the first book to combine:
- an overview of the history of the company since its foundation in 1994
- an analysis of the key ideas underpinning the company’s work
- a critical commentary on two key productions – Hymns by Chris O’Connell (1999) and Stockholm by Bryony Lavery (2007)
- a detailed description of a Frantic Assembly workshop, offering an introduction to how the company works.
The details of the book can be found here.
Thank you for reading!
