Dancing the Anthropocene: Envisioning Rituals, Bodies, Environments and Political Situatedness through the Lens of Dance - II

Abstract

Dancing is a ubiquitous form and a powerful expression for thinking about bodies, energy, ecology and temporalities. At the same time dance is performed at different scales and intensities while also affected by experiences, improvisations and evocations. Dancing, as performative mode, draws our attention to two issues of ongoing importance to STS: (1) movements, fluidities and meanings and (2) relationality and materiality. Dance may thus be simultaneously literal and metaphorical, structured and spontaneous, producing situations that may lure knowing but render it beyond words. In this way it generates pathways to think through, but also possibilities to rethink/regenerate social life more generally. Here, dancing becomes an interesting focal point for exploring the Anthropocene.

This panel considers dancing as both a lens and a site for understanding social life and naturecultures. We invite papers and/or performances that attempt to disrupt entrenched ideas about human and/or multispecies relations, using dance and dancing to envision alternative worldviews and reframe key problems. We ask: how can STS scholars explore dancing as epistemic practice in the Anthropocene, both in its own terms and in conversation with more conventional academic ways of knowing?

Possible topics are:

- Dance in relation to memory, ritual, bodies, health, care
and/or healing.
- Dance in environmental perspective: relationality,
materiality and senses of place.
- Dance and temporalities.
- Dance in/as political protests, resistance, negotiations.
- Dance and migration.
- Dancing as knowing-knowing as dancing.
- Dancing as collaboration-collaboration as dancing.
- Multispecies, human-nonhuman dancing.
- Frictions and/or stillness/stasis/interruptions in dancing.

Chair

• Annika Capelán, Independent/Aarhus University

Discussant

• Jennifer Monson, University of Illinois

Individual Presentations

• Dancing with the Environment as Epistemic Practice - Mariaenrica Giannuzzi, Cornell University - German Studies

• Dancing at the End of the World: Choreographies of Time and Uncertainty - Charli Brissey, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

• Stochastic Choreography - Ekaterina Zharinova, UC Davis

Session Organizers

• Gloria Baigorrotegui, Instituto de Estudios Avanzados - Usach

• Flavio D'Abramo, MPIWG Berlin