December 2021

News, events and opportunities!

Welcome to the latest edition of the C-DaRE Newsletter. 

2021 has been an eventful year, full of changes to how we live, work, communicate and collaborate. During this time, C-DaRE has responded with activities and events that have brought our community together. These include the AHRC-sponsored Dance Research Matters event in May and ongoing campaign, our PGR Symposium, our Inventing Embodiment podcast series, our joint collaboration on the Inclusion and Intersectionality Symposium, our contributions to City of Culture, and our C-DaRE Invites... events series, with many more planned to come in the new year. 

Our most recent activities include new practice research projects, international collaborations, new fully-funded PhD opportunities, public engagement events and publications.

For any queries about the items below contact cdare.fah@coventry.ac.uk.

News

Rewriting and Science Fiction

Image: Hugo Glendinning

Associate Professor Jonathan Burrows premiered two new performances this Autumn with composer Matteo Fargion. Rewriting and Science Fiction build on his recent research into overlapping and interdisciplinary practices within contemporary dance. Burrows also collaborated this month with Serbian performance theorist Bojana Cvejic, continuing their ongoing research into the relationship between choreography and new movement-based perspectives on human perception. Burrows has current articles in Performance Research Magazine, Etc. Magazine Belgium and Maska Slovenia, and is co-curator with Elisabeth Leopold on 'What's Next?', an ongoing online conversation commissioned by Tanzfabrik Berlin. 

Susanne Foellmer (C-DaRE), a New Board Member of the NGO Coventry Dance

Professor Susanne Foellmer has been appointed as a board member of the NGO Coventry Dance.

Coventry Dance is a partnership hub who “advocate[s] for an inclusive, diverse, vibrant and well networked dance community at the heart of the cultural life of Coventry and it’s region”. Susanne will be in charge of international collaborations.

'And Breathe…' a Film Co-directed by Karen Wood (C-DaRE)

Image: Kesha Raithatha (Dancer)

Dr Karen Wood co-directed a film, 'And Breathe…', which premiered at Watermans Arts Centre, Brentford, London on 26th November. A Q&A was held after with a panel consisting of Karen, Sima Gonsai (Director), Kesha Raithatha (Dancer) and Babatunde Anifowose (Assistant Professor, Centre for Agroecology and Water Resilience, Coventry University). The film was co-commissioned by Watermans and Akademi’s Climate Change Screendance series. The film weaves narratives of preservation, tradition and change and is inspired by the newly introduced Clean Air Zone in Birmingham. Screened at the same time as COP26 happening.

There will be a screening in Birmingham, so watch this space!

II Narrativas Diversas Seminar Series (Brazil-UK)

Image: Rosa Cisneros

C-DaRE has a strong link with Brazil as it has welcomed several dancers, artists and academics to the Centre. Dr Andrea Moraes, postdoctoral researcher at the Performing Arts Postgraduate Program in the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul and Dance director, Dancer and choreographer of belly dance in south of Brazil, invited Rosa Cisneros to be part of the II Narrativas Diversas nas Artes Cênicas seminar series where she sat on the Orientalismo e Decolonialidade na dança: da pesquisa à prática docente round table (Orientalismo e Decolonialidade na dança: da pesquisa à prática docente). Andrea recently published the first seminar e-book. You can watch the rest of the series here.

British Film Institute's London Film Festival Expanded Jury

Image: BFI 

For the British Film Institute's London Film Festival 6-17 October 2021, C-DaRE's Ruth Gibson was invited by the BFI to join Bruno Martelli (Gibson/Martelli) and Felix Barrett (Punchdrunk) for the first-ever jury for www.youtube.comLFF Expanded, a new strand exploring XR and immersive art. The LFF Expanded programme includes new forms of visual storytelling, presenting artists' work from across different media. 2021's programme featured 18 different projects in Virtual and Augmented Reality and Immersive Audio and Interactive Performance from all over the world.

PGR News & Opportunities

In Review: Love Coventry & its People, an Evaluative Performance 

Image: Charlie Ingram

On 26th November, PhD Researcher Charlie Ingram hosted a headphone verbatim theatre performance exploring Coventry residents’ perceptions of Coventry before and during the UK City of Culture 2021 celebration year.

"The show was created as part of my PhD that investigates headphone verbatim and its ability to act as an evaluation method when reviewing projects that are designed to affect social change, such as Coventry UK City of Culture 2021."

The performance itself was a collection of edited interviews that were placed alongside one another exploring if residents’ involvement in the City of Culture Love Coventry programme had caused a shift in civic pride.

PhD Cotutelle: Making Motion Tangible 

Image: Gibson/Martelli Drawing Levels

Deakin MotionLab and C-DaRE are excited to announce that Deakin University (AUS) and Coventry University (UK) are offering a new doctoral Cotutelle project in ‘Making Motion Tangible: embodied & critical research at the human-machine interface’. 

'Making Motion Tangible' aims to engage two researchers, one hosted at the Deakin Motion Lab, Deakin University and one hosted by C-DaRE, Coventry University, to develop complementary research strands. Both strands will explore the application of embodied knowledge and experience in the context of practical experimentation with novel immersive multimodal haptic interfaces aimed at enriching human interactions between the digital and the physical. 

To learn more about this unique opportunity and apply (deadline: 31 January 2022):

For Deakin, please visit here.
For Coventry, please visit here.

Tavistock PhD Studentship

Image: TIHR 70th Anniversary Festival @ Swiss Church, London. Marking the opening up of the archive. Credit: Sam Nightingal

C-DaRE is inviting applications for a Midlands4Cities (M4C) Collaborative Doctoral Award project, supervised by Professor Scott DeLahunta (C-DaRE) in collaboration with The Tavistock Institute of Human Relations.

This PhD project presents a unique opportunity to develop arts practice-led research based on the archives of the Tavistock Institute, an organisation with over seventy years supporting progressive social change in the UK and abroad.

The collaboration with C-DaRE will engage the latest developments in dance research, particularly embodied methodologies.

Application deadline: 12 January 2022.

To find out more about the project, please contact Scott DeLahunta.

For more information and to apply, please follow this link. 

Upcoming Events

Save the Date - C-DaRE Invites...

Our C-DaRE Invites... 2022 series kick off with a return to Body AI, Ethics and Diversity with Scott Delahunta on Wednesday 9th February 13:00 - 14:30. More details and booking information will follow! 

Recent Events

C-DaRE co-hosts Inclusion and Intersectionality Symposium

Image: Society for Dance Research

On 19th-20th November, C-DaRE hosted the Inclusion and Intersectionality Symposium, a hybrid event organised in collaboration with the Society for Dance Research and Candoco Dance Company. Attended by over 100 attendees, from over a dozen countries, the symposium examined the practices and processes of inclusion and exclusion at play within the fields of dance production, practice, participation and scholarship. There was a magnificent array of presentations exploring a plethora of different intersectional topic areas, from PGRs to academic collectives to artist provocations. The event prompted challenging but vital discussions around accessibility, voices, action, complacency and identit(y/ies), in a wonderfully open forum that produced rich conversations and thinking.

Image: Kathryn Stamp

The event included a panel hosted by C-DaRE staff and alumni: Kate Marsh, Vipavinee Artpradid, Rosa Cisneros and Sarah Whatley, as well as a discussion panel with Candoco Dance Company. The Society for Dance Research are currently considering how to move forward from the event, asking how can we move the conversation on, away from discussions and towards actions? Check out the Wakelet repository for useful resources and content from the symposium, available here. Documentation from the days, including recordings from the event and a report from PGR attendees, will be available soon on the Society for Dance Research website. If you would like access to the recordings from the event, please email societydanceresearch@gmail.com for more information.

VPTS - Immersive + 5G Narrative

Image: Ruth Gibson

Ruth Gibson, Associate Professor at C-DaRE, has been invited to Digital Catapult and Target 3D’s Virtual Production Test Stage (VPTS) to be Artist-in-Residence. On December 1st 2021, an in-person event at Guildford VPTS demonstrated to funders, partners and other stakeholders (UKRI, Innovate UK, AHRC, 5G) the implementation and capabilities of both the stage and the collaborations showing the next steps and future possibilities. The open rehearsal and hands-on technical demo showcased initial examples of the research and development that the VPTS has enabled with Gibson/Martelli and Peut-Porter (CreativeXR alumni). Ruth will be exploring theatre tools for remote and virtual performance in 2022.

Susanne Foellmer Co-hosted the 'Criticising Populus' Event

Image: Freie Universität Berlin

Professor Susanne Foellmer co-hosted the event “Populismus kritisieren“ (Criticising Populism), together with the Margherita-von-Brentano-Zentrum für Geschlechterforschung (MvBZ) at Freie Universität Berlin, and the Institut für Kulturmanagement und Gender Studies at Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst in Wien (mdw). Find out more here.

Susanne also participated in a round table on dance and ageing as part of the Alkantara Festival, Lisbon, Portugal, with an intervention on the problematic notions of cap/ability and “mastery”. The round table was also joined by Ramsay Burt (UK), Emma Lewis (France/Germany), Ana Macara (Portugal), Nanako Nakajima (Japan), and Kaite O’Reilly (Ireland). For more information about the symposium, please click here.

Image: CLÁUDIO MARQUES

Marie-Louise Crawley Presented at the CAMC ‘Cultural Memory’ Event

Image: Juliet Simpson

Dr Marie-Louise Crawley gave a talk on Thursday 9th December 2021 for Professor Juliet Simpson's CAMC series on the work that has emerged from her CAMC/Hosking Houses Trust practice-research residency. Entitled 'Illuminations', Marie-Louise looked at dance as radical historiography in re-examining the stories of two medieval women:Coventry's Lady Godiva and German saint and visionary Hildegard of Bingen.

Image: Marie-Louise Crawley

Projects

Project NEFELI Delivers Final Training

Image: Project NEFELI 2021

The Erasmus+ Project held its final weeklong Training to Support & Empower Women Autonomy through Non-Formal Learning Exchange. From November 29th- December 3 2021, the team hosted women from Hungary, Spain, the UK and Greece. Host organisations of the training included FACEPA (Spain) and Coventry University (UK) and delivered by Ana Lebron, Bea Villarejo, Adelaida Morte and C-DaRE's Rosa Cisneros. The participants included academics, grassroots women and young people, facilitators, educators and post graduate students.

The project team also honoured the UN’s 16 days of activism campaign of End Violence against Women through sharing the Grow and Glow film co created with women across the UK and Europe.

WEAVE Project Coordinates a Series of LabDays

Image: WEAVE Project 

Over the last few months, the WEAVE team (Rosa Cisneros, Marie-Louise Crawley and Sarah Whatley) have been busy co-ordinating a series of ten project LabDays held in conjunction with partners IN2, ARCTUR, UNL, ERIAC, Europeana Foundation, PhotoConsortium, CRDI-Ajuntament de Girona, KU Leuven, TopFoto, PédeXumbo, as well as with artists and organisations such as the www.earlydancecircle.co.ukEarly Dance Circle.  

Underpinned by Communicative Methodology, these LabDays have been designed to engage a range of different communities on topics ranging from the ‘Digital Innovation of Cultural Heritage’, ‘Roma Self-Representation in the History of the Venice Biennale’, ‘Presenting Europeana’, ‘A Workshop of Portuguese Dances’ to ‘Poetry and Photography’, ‘Castellers in the World’ and ‘Early Dance’. The LabDays have offered open spaces to discuss important questions about how communities and cultural heritage institutions can work together to safeguard and manage tangible and intangible cultural heritage. For more information on past and forthcoming LabDays, please visit here. The WEAVE project YouTube Channel can be accessed here. The WEAVE team has also recently published a White Paper on the ‘Digital Transformation of Intangible Cultural Heritage’ available here. To learn more about the digital tools being developed in WEAVE, please go here. 

Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices

JDSP Webinars

The journal editors and advisory board aim to make the journal inclusive and open to anyone that has an interest in publishing from writing to editing. We are planning to put on a series of webinars about journal publishing in order to demystify the process and build confidence in our community about publishing in and for journals. 

We have devised this short anonymous survey in order to gain some insight into the needs of the community. We would appreciate your input! Please also share with your peers. 

For more information and to take the survey please click here

For information on submissions to the Journal, please contact the editors at jdsp@coventry.ac.uk.

Publications

"Hopes for the Future" 

Image: Hotfoot

HOTFOOT Online is One Dance UK’s bi-annual publication focusing on Dance of the African Diaspora (DAD) and provides a platform for critical debate around the dance practices of the African Diaspora in the UK and beyond. The theme of HOTFOOT’s S 2021 edition is Paving the Way: 20th Anniversary Edition. The editorial team were asked to think about the future of dance and each member contributed an article for this special edition. Dr Rosa Cisneros is on the editorial team and wrote “Hopes for the future”. Read www.onedanceuk.orghere.

Interactive Machine Learning Drops!

Image: Gibson/Martelli

The interactive machine learning project that Associate Professor Ruth Gibson, has been working on with the Goldsmiths University project 4i (funded by the UKRI and an Epic MegaGrant) finally dropped in the Epic marketplace on 28 November 2021. 

This open-source, free plugin for Unreal Engine enables VR Developers and others to implement gesture interfaces in immersive experiences. Ruth is using InteractML in her live-streaming mocap immersive experience DAZZLE with Gibson/Martelli and Peut-Porter. Funded by an Epic Megagrant, InteractML is entirely open source. Read More. Get the tool here. See docs here.  

A ‘semaphore recogniser’ has been created to teach the semaphore flag code - a good use case and test for the IML system as the gestures needed to form each letter are specific and discrete. This semaphore tester has made it into the project as one of the demo files available here.

Looking back at 2021...

C-DaRE Conversation... on Communities

Image: C-DaRE

We continued our 'Conversations on...' series with a conversation on communities this time with Professor Juliet Simpson from the Centre for Arts Memory and Communities. While we couldn’t meet in person we stayed connected online, our C-DaRE conversations were a great way to remain in touch with our colleagues in other centres and externally by exploring issues like our communities and touch, all still available on our YouTube channel. 

AHRC City of Culture Summit

Image: AHRC City of Culture

C-DaRE Researchers Rosa Cisneros and Emma Meehan presented the AHRC Coventry Cultural Policy and Evaluation Summit and published the AHRC Summit Summary and contributed to the Coventry Creates Report. The video summary is available via the YouTube link. 

PGR Symposium 2021

Image: AHRC City of Culture

June 2021 saw the first ever Postgraduate Research Symposium. The symposium created a space where C- DaRE staff, PGRs, PGTs and researchers external to C-DaRE across Coventry University could learn about the current PGR’s research ongoing at the centre and to bond as a cohort. Charlie Ingram commented that the day was "deeply intimate, thoughtful, open and honest" read his full account here. 

Listen to the Dance Research Matters presentations!

The presentations from the Dance Research Matters event in May this year are now available to listen to on the C-DaRE SoundCloud. The opening presentations from each of our panelists show some of the breadth of dance research in the UK today and also the many challenges facing dance research and why it is important that we continue to talk about why it matters. 

Image: AHRC City of Culture

May 2021 saw C-DaRE partnered with the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) for a national event focused on the importance of Dance Research debating the future of the field. The ‘Dance Research Matters’ event was organised to coincide with Coventry City of Culture. With almost 250 delegates online and in person discussing a range of diverse dance research topics. 

The Dance Research Matters wider campaign is now developing. C-DaRE are continuing to collaborate with the AHRC to bring together a network of dance researchers from across the field to continue to the conversation and develop strategies to keep the campaign moving forward. We are also working on a publication with contributions from the event panelists which will be published next year. 

For more information and to keep in touch with the campaign please visit our website: Dance Research matters.

Inventing Embodiment Podcast

Image: Jonathan Burrows Inventing Embodiment

Catch up on our series of podcasts done throughout the last year here which ask the question 'what do we mean when we talk about embodiment?' featuring our many talented academics perspectives.

Somatic Practice and Chronic Pain Network: 2021

Image: Rob Young

2021 has been an exciting year for the Somatic Practice and Chronic Pain Network. The funding from the AHRC/UKRI has come to an end but we will continue with more talks, videos and blogs on the way.

•    We held 3 webinars on the Fear and Joy of Moving; Movement and Communication; and Moving Pain Online.

•    Our blog has been active with posts on Migraine, Parkinson’s, the Mechanics of Pain, Children’s Pain, Research Methods, Resting, Virtual Reality, Dancer’s Pain and the Pandemic. 

•    We also curated a series of movement practices that can be done at home, that explore body awareness, chair-based movement, flow, Qi Gong, walking and self-care.

•    We gathered a series of resources, including talks with Pete Moore from the Pain Toolkit, and Ian Tennant from the Inner Sense project, as well as features in blogs with Theatre, Dance and Performance Training Journal and the WITHIN project. And finally, we produced an article on somatic practice and pain.

•    Special thanks to all network members, contributors and attendees at network events. We could not have done this without you!

•    If you’d like some of your own related activities to be shared on our Facebook, Twitter or Blog, please just let us know at ab4488@coventry.ac.uk. 
 

Thank you for reading! 

C-DaRE are now out of the office for the Christmas break. We wish you all a wonderful festive time!

Funders, supporters and partners