Dance Technology And Social Justice

This book theorizes dance technique as the Greek techne translated as art, and shows how movement can inspire epistemic, philosophical, and cultural conversations in technology studies. Combining dance studies, religious studies, and technology studies, it argues that dance can be a technology of social justice bringing equanimity, liberation and resistance. It focuses on the eastern Indian art form Odissi and applied experimentations with motion capture technology, virtual reality (VR) gaming, and Arduino. It specifically examines tthe work of Ananya Dance Theatre (ADT), a Minnesota based contemporary Indian dance company that deconstructs Odissi towards social justice activism.

This book theorizes dance technique as the Greek techne translated as art, and shows how movement can inspire epistemic, philosophical, and cultural conversations in technology studies. Combining dance studies, religious studies, and technology studies, it argues that dance can be a technology of social justice bringing equanimity, liberation and resistance. It focuses on the eastern Indian art form Odissi and applied experimentations with motion capture technology, virtual reality (VR) gaming, and Arduino. It specifically examines tthe work of Ananya Dance Theatre (ADT), a Minnesota based contemporary Indian dance company that deconstructs Odissi towards social justice activism.

Dance, Human Rights, and Social Justice: Dignity in Motion presents a wide-ranging compilation of essays, spanning more than 15 countries. Organized in four parts, the articles examine the regulation and exploitation of dancers and dance activity by government and authoritative groups, including abusive treatment of dancers within the dance profession; choreography involving human rights as a central theme; the engagement of dance as a means of healing victims of human rights abuses; and national and local social/political movements in which dance plays a powerful role in helping people fight oppression. These groundbreaking papers--both detailed scholarship and riveting personal accounts--encompass a broad spectrum of issues, from slavery and the Holocaust to the Bosnian and Rwandan genocides to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; from First Amendment cases and the AIDS epidemic to discrimination resulting from age, gender, race, and disability. A range of academics, choreographers, dancers, and dance/movement therapists draw connections between refugee camp, courtroom, theater, rehearsal studio, and university classroom.

This book demonstrates the use of dance/movement therapy to directly counteract social injustices and promote healing in international settings. It also demonstrates the potential for dance/movement therapy in prevention and wellness in clinical and community settings. The use of improvisational and creative dance is presented throughout the book as a tremendously clear, strong and powerful inroad to healing in every setting. The chapters in this book do not directly address social justice in dance/movement therapy, but rather provide provoking social justice related positions. This call for a provoking re-examination of the definition of dance/movement therapy is fitting as we—as a community—challenge our identity as dance/movement therapists, educators, supervisors and as human beings who have internalized oppression in various forms through our many identifiers and the unique intersections of those identifiers. The editors and authors posit that social justice cannot be fully addressed by focusing solely on the social issues. Rather, we must be aware of where and how the social issues come into the individual(s), the setting, and the therapy process itself. Chapter “‘Breaking Free': One Adolescent Woman's Recovery from Dating Violence Through Creative Dance" is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license via link.springer.com.

Originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Dance Education, this collection brings together a number of insightful chapters which explore themes relating to responsible citizenship within dance education. Presenting research, scholarship, experiences, and pedagogical approaches from national and international contexts, and diverse educational settings, the chapters included in this book demonstrate how the study of dance requires students to develop a clear sense of self- and group-responsibility. Including high-level contributions from a range of researchers, educators, and dance instructors, the volume investigates how research and instruction can contribute to building communities; and ensure that dance education reacts to shifting social, political, and cultural norms. Responsible citizenship and civic engagement are examined in relation to course content, pedagogical approaches, systemic practices, and cultural assumptions. This valuable collection of diverse and insightful chapters will be of great interest to researchers, post-graduate academics, teachers and instructors in the fields of dance and teacher education.

"Dancing Transnational Feminisms brings together reflections and critical responses about the embodied creative practices that have been part of the work of Ananya Dance Theatre (ADT), a Twin Cities-based dance company of women of color who work at the intersections of artistic excellence and social justice. Focusing on ADT's creative processes and organizational strategies, the book highlights how women and femme artists of color, working with a marginalized movement aesthetic, claim and transform the spaces of contemporary concert dance into sites of empowerment, resistance, and knowledge production. Blending essays with epistolary texts, interviews and poems, the collection's contributors offer up a multigenre exploration of how dance and other artistic undertakings can be intersectionally reimagined. Building on more than fifteen years of collaborative dance-making and sustained dialogues, Dancing Transnational Feminisms delves into timely questions surrounding race and performance, art and politics, global and local inequities and the responsibilities of artists towards the communities they come from"--

Indigenous Dances: Lakota Bodies and Lands on and as the Frontlines / Tria Blu Wakpa -- Silk Road: Commerce, Conquest, and College / Laurel Victoria Gray -- Dance in the African Diaspora / Joanna Dee Das -- Ballet: From Louis XIV to Misty Copeland / Sekani Robinson -- Modern and Postmodern Dance: War and Choreography in the 20th and 21st centuries Kate Mattingly, PhD -- Dance and Social Justice: Retracing the Steps of Michio Itō / Dana Tai Soon Burgess -- Dance as Healing: Unearthing Therapeutic Modalities / Giselle Ruzany -- Dance on Film -- From Busby Berkeley to Bollywood / Kathryn Boland -- Intersecting body and machine: tracing the emergence of dance technology / Maria Francisca Morand -- The Future of Dance: Moving Through Time and Space / Monique George.